so how many people use figures in the campaign for representing marching order , positions etc?

I ordered the Deathwatch Coversion kit from GW along with a Techmarine, Librarian, and Apothacary fig, then created a Devestator, Assault Marine, and two Tacticals from my bits box (since I have Space Wolves, Blood Angel, and my own Codex Chapter SM armies, I have lots of SM bits). I've still got left over Deathwatch bits if my players for some reason decide to go with two Assault Marines (for example) rather than a more well-rounded Kill Team. I also have two IG armies. I'll probably end up using my Catachan army as rebels and Cadians as PDF/allies. Plus I've got a Chaos Marine army, a Tau army, an Ork army, an Eldar army, a Necron army, and a huge Tyranid horde to draw opponents from. So yeah, I use figures.

I play Eldar myself, and my other players are Tau, Tyranid and Orks, so we have figures to use for the enemies and we are in the process of making our characters as well.

As everyone in my group are 40k players with some form of marine army each, we have gone to great lengths to make out kill teams figures, including a diorama on a display base. As well between us we have enough xenos minis for adversaries, and I have guardsmen to use as pdf/allies/cultists. As a group were really looking foward to making a set of landspeeders with the team in them for our waterworld arc, as well as a scout squad version for our hive infilitration story arc

Cheers

I have a ton of figures I've converted to represent characters in my Dark Heresy campaign, and I've just started working on some Deathwatch marines. I can't imagine playing any game set in the 40K universe without using some GW figures! There's nothing like a dinner table covered with Necromunda buildings...

we've got about a 50/50 split of people who play 40k regularly (or did) and those who don't in the group. as GM, i'm trying to nudge the players towards using the figs to simply represent general battlefield ideas but they seem to be leaning towards more of a minis game mentality where everything is WYSIWIG with terrain and one square equals a meter. i don't think the old school 80's rules that DW uses lend themselves to that kind of play very well (as opposed to d&d 4.0 or 4.5 where its a minis game with RPG elements mixed in).