Regardless of how many youtube channels constantly mention One Page Rules, no one plays it. I've seen people try to play it, maybe a couple of friends who are both irritated by GW because of something they did that particular week give it a try, and then never touch it again.
I've played more OPR than 10th edition! ... and it's still not that much. I'm sure there are more dedicated communities, but there was some hubub in my local area that kind of just died off on it's own. It goes back to the usual reality that for a non GW game to thrive, it needs a champion or 3 to constantly organize events and meetups, at least till it starts getting actual traction. I am working on my High Elf Fleets (bootleg Eldar) printed army and has given me an excuse to collect a small Eldar force focused around Aspect warriors that is actually gameplay viable. I'm also using them as proxies for Firefight, though again, that one is also pretty light,
I've heard Kings of War has(or at least had) a following in Europe. Never seen that following in the US.
Have a big community of that here, but I am in Europe. The KoW people are very dedicated though. I personally love the game and how many opportunities for modelling it offers. Have a full Free and Imperial Dwarf armies made out of Oathmark, Avatars of War, Forgotten World, MOM miniatures, offical Mantic and other smaller brands here and there and being able to customize it with whatever I thought was cool as pure joy. Also have some Riftforged Orcs in the pile of shame I'll get to once I have finished all of my Dwarfs.
Biggest suggestion I can give is to join the big Facebook group if you can stomach that and ask if there is anything near your area. I honestly think the game is worth it, specially if you want rank and flank.
Hell, you're more likely to be able to find a game for Marvel Crisis Protocol, Star Wars Legion, or Shatterpoint than any of what you just listed and look at how Disney has been treating those IPs for the past decade. A Song of Ice and Fire has a decent following if you're into that. Conquest and Infinity I've also seen people host successful events for, so those also have a draw. I'd put Battletech on the "could find a game if you asked around enough" list as well.
Crisis, Legion and Shatterpoint do seem popular in my area, but I have a seething hatred for the disney goyslop, so even if the system is possibly great, I'm just unwilling to engage.
I played a lot of Song of Ice and Fire during it's first edition though and its alright, though the game is pretty swingy and it's not really rank and flank as much as 4-6 units on the table with a gigantic foot print due to how mobile they are, models are great for the price point though, have been considering more than a few times to use them as a base for another KoW army. It's definitely on the cheaper side or you can look into installing the vassal module to try it with some online rando if that makes you more comfortable, since the module is incredibly refined.
Conquest... is weird as fuck, the game feels astroturfed to high hell with a lot of venture capital behind it, like if it was some rich dude's passion project. I do have an army of Dweghom that I've fielded a few times, but I pretty much just use it as an Ogre army in KoW. The game's scale is huge so model reusability is on the hard side and it demands big formations to really get to the meat of it. Basically, it's a very high investment game to get into. Rules are changing constantly which can be a good or bad thing depending on where you fall there. I did play it before it's 2.0 and after playing KoW, it honestly just felt very clumsy, though that may have improved (heard that unit trays of 4 models are now treated like single entities instead of a base with 4 models that reduce efficiency while taking wounds, this is important because cav and monsters that were a single one to a tray were strictly better thanks to being faster and being better at attrition). I'm also more and more convinced that rank and flank games really benefit a lot more from full IGO UGO turns than alternating activations, with IGO UGO formations are actually important, but with alternating it suddenly becomes a game of actions, reactions and outactivation.
As for Infinity, like the models, but never gelled with the game, needing laser pointers to play properly drives me up the wall, the older I become, the more I believe abstract LoS is king and "Real line of sight" is just arguments waiting to happen and in Infinity it's one of those systems where you really need to be able to get those clearly defined firing lanes.
Black Powder? Bolt Action I've seen sold and played in stores. Hell, I've seen events for it. There's a reason why someone thought that World of Tanks f2p grind fest could make for a miniatures game IP. But Black Powder? Again, it's one of those maybe someone can get a game in once a year type of things.
There was some noise about Bolt Action and was tempted to collect some germans, but never seemed to get traction on locals ad project fell on the wayside. System seemed neat though the random activation based on unit dice seemed like it could be very swingy. I've also heard that if you play it in a "non cavalier" way, a horde of angry nips running and stabbing is one of the most efficient forces in the game which is pretty retarded. But again, I wouldn't mind getting to a WW2 army eventually.
At least you didn't bother trying to bring up completely dead games(malifaux, warmahordes, xwing, etc.). Don't get me wrong, I would like for there to be more games to play, and GW doesn't need to occupy 80% of the market while the rest fight over the scraps. More variety is a good thing.
Well, again, this is all based on your community. There is a surprisingly active Malifaux community in my area, the fuckers have been keeping the game alive for like... what 5-6 years now? Since it stopped getting proper store support. They are very much still into it even though it's hell to actually get new players. I haven't played Malifaux in ages since I just couldn't keep up with the game's feature creep (aside from the setting and background becoming gayer and gayer each book as well as their designs being more insipid as time goes on) but as an objective based skirmish game it's still one of the best I ever played. Warmahordes I'm still sad it died the incredibly stupid death that it did... though you never know, if there are some grognards still playing MK2 and MK3, well, might be worth taking a peek is all I'm saying.
Unfortunately, in my opinion this cheap(er) credit is a form of malinvestment, because I think the goal of a company should be to earn revenue and make profits, not try to get by with borrowed money forever.
It's a ponzi scheme. Very much "first taste is free" territory. It's become more and more obvious to me that a ton of companies have become addicted to "free money" and now that it ain't free, there is a lot of panic in the air because they made their whole strategy around it, but it's not as easy to secure anymore. That GW is pandering to this faggotry this late is what baffles me.
I've always wondered how do players generally react to say, unpainted models or non-standard third party models?
Very much dependent on game. Hyper competitive 40K? They demand official models, give 0 shits about paint. For other competitive players it's strictly conditioned by how strict or lax the army presentation rules are. 40K for the most part is the most anal one about WYSIWYG though. For more casual environments, it depends more on the age of the game itself (and how it tends to attract some players or others). Older games have a lot more fully painted armies, KoW you barely ever see a table in events where everything isn't painted, it may or may not be the best quality, but it's mostly older men that have been in the hobby a very long time and have done a lot of projects. Song of Ice and Fire on the other hand you see a lot of plastic since it's much newer, it is also a good gateway game so for a decent number of people it's their first wargame and since there is no model assembly, the process of purchase to table is instant.
the only thing widening its appeal is his asshole for gay cocks
ill never get why they think we have some duty to make spaces we have for everyone. well i know they actually dont and they just want money i guess i dont get why they think its a good excuse, i mean they think were nazis. why would nazis want a nazi thing to be for queers niggers faggots and spics?
Well, yeah, of course it's about money, for the desire for the elusive "mass appeal", but these faggots never understand that if you change something too much to make it appeal to more people, it can suddenly lose it's appeal for the people that always stuck with you and you suddenly start bleeding out. It's the usual "why are the white people leaving but no women and blacks replacing them in droves?", because you pissed off the whites by alienating them and the women and blacks never cared from the outset.
It depends. We'll have to see how well this sells. If it fails, then yes, the fans rejected it. But if sells out, well, that wouldn't surprise me.
There are no sells to correlate though. It's why this move is extra shifty. GW has always taken decisions based on their release schedule. But there is nothing to release here. Women custodes are a thing now, but if you look at the model range only, you would be none the wiser. Ursual Creed wasn't just name dropped, you had her ugly mug right then and there day 1 with the Guard release. This was purely a virtue signal to the faggots asking for female space marines and they will get asspats for a day till the thirst for their blood comes back louder than ever since they bent the knee for effectively nothing.
How do you know they're all tourists and not all long term fans of 40K?
Also, 40K is a strange beast since it's the only wargame that is not just about the wargame. You can be a 40K fan and only read the novels, or be a 40K fan and only play the videogames.