Thoughts on Warhammer 40,000

Warhammer 40,000 is definitely the most popular miniatures game out there. Its very popular at my local game store. I like the game. I like the miniatures. At the same time I have a complex relationship with the game. The first issue I have with this game is the way that Games Workshop markets it. They like to push for larger and larger armies. The perfect example of this is their latest product--Apocolypse. If you don't know what that is it provides rules to play extremely large battles. Even before that official tournaments generally play at 1,500 points. For me the game peaks at 500 points and anything over 1,000 points borders on unplayable. I know that there are people that disagree. I challenge any of them to say that they played a game over 1000 points that took 2 hours or less. I have never seen one. Now I know that Games Workshop has good reasons for pushing for larger armies. Larger armies cost more. They are a business and they are looking to make money. I don't have a problem with that. What I'm really saying here is that instead of playing larger and larger games maybe 40k players should consider playing smaller games. They may find them even more enjoyable than the large games.