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What are the Most Popular Games Workshop Games?

As I was browsing Reddit, I saw a question that surprised me. Someone asked “Is Warhammer 40k or Age of Sigmar more popular?”

Now I, being a very old timer in the hobby (I bought my first Warhammer Fantasy skeletons around 1987, and got into Warhammer 40k in First Edition), thought that the answer to this question was very obvious: Warhammer 40k is far more popular than Age of Sigmar. But I wanted stats to back it up for me, so I went to closest thing we have to a reliable data source: Google Trends. I plugged in Warhammer 40k and Age of Sigmar and out popped the following graph for the past 12 months. What are the most popular Games Workshop games?

Now the first thing to understand about Google Trends is that it’s relative. The numbers on the left (0-100) are relative measures of search volume. But this is actual Google data search volume, and that’s pretty dang reliable.

Warhammer 40k is far more popular than Age of Sigmar. By a country mile.

But now I was in Google Trends and I wanted to get more data. I wanted to compare certain Games Workshop properties to see what was drawing the most traffic and what was drawing the least.

I went for controversy first. See, there’s a contingent of people online who say that if Games Workshop would just release plastic Horus Heresy that they would be gathering money hand-over-fist. I didn’t personally believe that, but I wanted to check and see if my gut was telling me the truth. How does Horus Heresy stack up against Warhammer 40k?

And the result… well I think it speaks for itself. Interest in Horus Heresy does not seem to be the non-stop moneyfest that Horus Heresy fans think that it is.

Which led me to the other big rivalry, and I think that this one shows a little more promise. Which is more popular: Age of Sigmar or Warhammer Fantasy?

Now it’s difficult to judge this one because there is surely going to be spill over into this from the Warhammer Total War III crowd–but, by the same token, don’t we want those video game players to become tabletop wargamers? So shouldn’t we count all of the numbers?

At the very least, this shows that Age of Sigmar and Warhammer Fantasy are surprisingly close to each other.

This led me to wonder what about the boxed games? But there’s a problem with this, because Kill Team isn’t that uncommon of a phrase (it’s surprising that Games Workshop would choose a game’s name that isn’t completely trademarkable). Still, I had to check.

So Kill Team is vastly more searched of a term than Warcry. Does that prove anything, seeing how there are military units called kill teams, and there are even other units in Warhammer 40k called Kill Teams (see: Deathwatch)?

So then I decided to throw caution to the wind and see if I could figure out if I could break Google Trends. We’ve written about What Space Marine Chapter is Best? but would Google Trends show us which Space Marine chapter is most searched for? This was going to be a messy graph…

But, alas, there were two problems with the graph. First, it only let you look at five search terms, not all nine of the Space Marine Legions, and second, there are an awful lot more people searching for “Salamanders” than are searching for “Blood Angels” because, you know…. Salamanders are an animal and some sixth graders were doing science projects.

So what if we wanted to see what kind of impact a big publicity push from Games Workshop had on a certain IP? There seemed to be a perfect test case for that.

Yep, the Aeldari saw a big sudden jump in popularity starting in January.

But now I wanted to see something completely different. How do the smaller games hold up against each other? I chose these three not because I think they’re most representative but because I thought they’d be the easiest to define as search terms. Bolt Action is hard because if you just search “Bolt Action” then you get a lot of guns, but if you search “Bolt Action game” you also lose a bit of traffic. Either way, I was surprised to see that Malifaux was doing so well. I wanted to gauge Infinity, too, but even searching “Infinity game” there are a whole lot of video game titles that pop up to skew the results.

I wanted to end with one final graph. I’ve written before about how my FLGS (friendly local game store) has cut back on their Games Workshop stock and it carrying more Star Wars Legion, and my other FLGS is cramming in more Star Wars Legion, too. So is that a trend?

Doesn’t seem to be.

What are your thoughts?