What Brought You Back?

[xbenblasterx]

After recently watching the piece that the BBC did about the 40k hobby in 2012 , during which the gentleman being interviewd tells the tale of how many people who take up the hobby during their younger years proceed to back out during the teenage years at a risk of not appearing cool, only to then rediscover their hobbying passion again in their adult years.

It got me wondering just what is it about 40k that we just can't escape, if this is is you and you've recently re-discovered you're 40k passion, or passion for any hobby just what is it that got you hooked once more? Whats different or improved with the hobby that wasnt arou d before?

[Wolfshade]

I used to play a lot of 2nd edition, 3rd came round and the new rules were a little clunky and I didn't play, this coincided when I moved away from home and didn't really find another gaming group. I moved back to the area I grew up and was chatting with mates and it came up that I used to play and so did they and it turned out that all of the group used to play and so we got back into it that way. Reminising in the pub. Though sometimes the "If I" conversation wears a little thin, especially with one player, the intermiable conversation of what the outcome would have been "If I" had done X instead of Y, took unit A instead of B, had better rolls etc...

[Defenestratus]

I cam back after college because of my friend Derek, who I played with in middle and high school. He got leukemia-lymphoma, and passed away. He left my friend Triumphus and I a bunch of Orks and it rekindled my interest in the hobby. He would absolutely love the direction the hobby has taken with huge titans and fortifications and allies. He was the ultimate hobbyist. He had created an Ork village with a fortress that used his asthma puffer machine to make smoke for a smokestack. It was awesome.

Anyways... I got back into the hobby when he rekindled it for me in the most unfortunate ways.

[DWest]

I got out of 40k entirely due to one prick at my FLGS, who did things like jump into a match between me and another player who was playing Tau, and insist that because the Tau player forgot to do something on his turn, my entire turn (currently in Assault) was invalid. I stayed out for about 7 years, entirely due to lack of any space to store the models and related materials, then got back in because a friend of mine wanted to show me this "cool new wargame" he had discovered. I went "oh, hey, 40k! I love that game, let me go dig out my old stuff" and I've been stuck in ever since. I think I scared my friend off of it though, which is too bad.

[Wildeybeast]

I've never been out of it, I've just had periods of time where I had no friends to play it with. :(

[ElectricPaladin]

My story is kind of weird. I almost got into 40k back in 1997 (I would have played either Ulthwé Eldar or Space Wolvs, by the way), but decided not to because of my crazy mother (she would have gone through my room and thrown out anything sci-fi or fantasyish - depressing when it's books, infuriating if it's $200 worth of models) and general poverty (said crazy mother kept me pretty poor). It was a sad choice, but probably the right one.

My interest was rekindled in 2011, because I suddenly realized that as an adult I had complete control over my money. I've been making up for lost time ever since.

[Bigred]

I've been in it since Rogue Trader.

I was briefly out during late 2nd, early 3rd, then was back in with a passion since. All I remember was coming back after about 2 years and seeing the horrid "Orky Eldar Phantom" from EPIC and thinking the company had gone off the rails. Luckily that was an outlier.

My Eldar are the only RT army that still get any tabletime, but I have plenty of newer ones. I just can't quite bring myself to field my 2nd edition Tyranid army with the Screamer Killers, and those horrid adams-appled Warriors...

[Renegade]

Dropped in and out of the hobby as time and money flowed, sometimes WHFB sometimes 40K... unless things like Space Crusade count.

It comes back to the main story, it's a good one.

[euansmith]

A big marine... named Camouflage... an ambush came down on me and... Oh, into the hobby... sorry, man... flashbacks...

I played Rogue Trader with a mate, but got out of it due to moving away to for further education. I still played lots of roleplaying games and other wargames, but no 40k.

Eventually I just uped and decided to get some stuff and start playing again. I found a local club and bought a few sets of Battle for Maccragg. I was not a big fan of 5th Edition Rules but persevered because I enjoyed the converting and painting.

It seemed that the writers of 6th Edition listened to everything that I disliked about 5th Ed and doubled up on it for 6th. I'm back out of 40k now. I've been clean for around 12 months.

Wooooo oooooh ooooooh Camouflage... he really was an awfully big marine...

[SaveModifier]

Got out after 3rd, when girls and booze was more important, 10 years later, realised girls weren't as much fun as painting little men. But really, went into a GW to look at new models, saw people I knew, the staff were really nice in my local shop, so I was hooked in

[YorkNecromancer]

Started collecting in 1989. Stopped in 1994 when I discovered Vampire: The Masquerade and got heavily into tabletop RPG.

Got back into 40K in 2007, because of several reasons:


White Wolf stopped releasing new books for WoD because they're allergic to money or something.
I had run out of computer games I wanted to play (because when all you want is to play Doom, and people keep giving you two guns only and making you fight poor people, you lose interest real quick. Have I mentioned how much I despise 'Halo', 'Call of Duty' and modern shooters in general? I really, really hate those damn games. Hate 'em.)
I hadn't realised how much I missed the smell of poly cement. No word of a lie.
The 3rd ed. Space Marine boxed set reminded me of RTB01 marines and I got all nostalgic. The start of a slippery slope...



In short, I really miss WoD roleplay (nothing else is remotely as good), and generally loathe modern computer games, with very few exceptions (Borderlands, Splinter Cell, Mass Effect, Batman: Arkham Whatever and a few others.)

[FTGT]

I dropped out at the end of 3rd/beginning of 4th, in large part because of going to college - I took my stuff Freshman year but took it out of the closet once the entire year. Just didn't have the time/space/money to play, and my primary opponent, who was my roommate, lost interest around the same time.

I got back in when a friend from college was moving to town and mentioned he had gotten into it. I promptly fell off the wagon - hard.

[Insert_nickname_here]

In short, I really miss WoD roleplay (nothing else is remotely as good), and generally loathe modern computer games, with very few exceptions (Borderlands, Splinter Cell, Mass Effect, Batman: Arkham Whatever and a few others.)[/QUOTE]

Yep. Started in about 1990, stopped in about 1998 and our group played Vampire. When they restarted the world of darkness, a friend gave me a loan of Eisenhorn, and I got back into GW. I really enjoy the GW games, but nothing compares to that period we had playing Vampire with a good group of friends.

I'm a bit sad now.

[Xarga]

It's funny really, i just couldn't give up on it entirely if i tried. There would always be that lingering love for it in the back of my mind.

So yeah, I first got into it back when i was a wee child. Couldn't have been older than 5 or 6, though i can't fully remember. I have vague memories of my two friends, who were brothers that lived across the street from me, coming over with a PC demo CD of a 40k game. Like those old ones you got with PC Gamer or something back in the day. This would have been '97/'98? It was a turned based strategy game and so fuzzy in my memory i don't recall what it was. Though i was instantly hooked on the look and feel of it. They told me that it was also a "board game" and invited me over to play it and i loved it. I was using my friends small space marine army and he was using chaos space marines on a battlefield of cups, plants and cereal boxes, ha. I had no idea what I doing and was just rolling and moving where i was told really. Naturally being kids he was probably cheating, though i wouldn't have been able to tell you how.

This brings me to my first purchase, this was so cool to me back then and all the choice was overwhelming. I remember going into the GW store in Bourenmouth center (which has now relocated) for the first time and just marveling at all the boards and figures. I remember asking all the silly questions you would at my age. "Who's the good guys?" (Which i remember being answered and shown some Ultramarines, naturally as you would expect *yawn*). "Who's the baddies?" "Who's the strongest?" etc. I can't actually remember the first thing i bought, it was probably a tactical squad. Though i do remember i just had bits of everything, i never really played back then. Just got what i thought at the time was cool. So i had random squads of Space Marines, Dark Eldar, Eldar and Chaos Space Marines. I definitely remember getting one of the 3rd edition predators, with the metal turret and sponsons. I still have it somewhere, though god knows where. Though at some point, i can't remember when i stopped collecting them and they all got broken or lost.

Fast forward to me being around 10 year old. I don't remember how i got it but i just remember reading a new white dwarf issue in my kitchen and saying to my mum "I want to do warhammer again." Which i did and the next day went down to a local store called Battlescar that had somewhat recently opened. This time i knew what i wanted to get, i wanted to collect. I wanted Chaos Space Marines and i bought a pack of 4 Khorne Bezerkers with my pocket money. I had no idea how to play, or what was good but in the mind of a 10 year old nothing was cooler than chainaxes and spiky armour. I painted them up real nice, for my age at least and was so proud of them. Though for some odd reason i remember being content on just collecting them and not learning how to play. It just so happened that when i went to buy my next box at the GW store one of the staff asked me if i knew how to play. I said no and he took me over to a scenario likely set up for teaching new people. I was given two squads of five space marines, one squad had a missile launcher in it and the other had a flamer. On the opposite side i was confronted by a few small Ork mobs screaming and clanging their weapons together, eggin' me on fer a gud fight! (At least in my head at ay rate). I pictured them all roasting as i burnt them out of a building withmy flamer squad and dust and debris flying and i destroyed another with my missile launcher. It felt so cinematic playing on a real board with the store models in my 10 year old mind. One of my best memories of them game. I was hooked and invited down to the learner club, my forces steadily grew as i attend and learned new thing each week. That old predator from when i was younger got a repaint of black and covered in spikes for warband of chaos. At this point the newer rhino chassis space marine vehicle were out and my predator was picked on for look old and crummy. Though to me it was just grizzled and hardened from many battles.

Fast forward 2/3 years or so and i'm still happily playing at the Saturday club with a reasonably large chaos force, a sizable Dark Angels force and a small force of Tyranids (which i quickly stopped collecting as i didn't like the way they played). I gotten most of my friends into the hobby by this point as well and it was just fantastic, i loved it. Though for some reason i couldn't explain over the next year or so i slowly lost interest. I can't say why or how and it certainly wasn't the "This is becoming uncool" sort of thing. My group of friends were the kind that still played pokemon link battles on ruby/sapphire in the playground at this point when no one else did. I still attend every week with my friend David but we just started playing less and less games each week to the point we showed up and just didn't play any. Just watched the odd game, got a McDonalds and had a chat with the other gamers. After not playing a single game at the saturday club (but still attending) for about 5-6 weeks in a row, one of the staff asked us "What's the point in you even showing up if you're not going to play any games?" I can't remember what i said in response to that but he had a point, even if it was pretty rude and annoyed me. So i just didn't show up next week and lost interest and stopped at about age 14.

Now six years later at age 20 i ripe to get back into the hobby and have been dipping my toe in to start for the past year or so now. What brought me back? A whole combination of things really. Seeing all the new models since i used to play. How the rules have advanced with things such as running, hull points, over-watch, flyers, fortifications and a plethora of other changes (and in my opinion for the better). The frequency of updates is another thing that i'm loving now. Though i think the main reason is for the hobby itself, i just really wanted to do something creative again and do what i used to love but try and take it to the next level. Really up my game in my painting skills and convert and alter my models to get a really unique, fantastic army that i can be proud to place on the table top. The well painted/modeled units always felt like they played better, even though there's no real truth to it. Though i need to stop procrastinating and just start now. I bought the Dark Angels codex back in February because i loved them so much as a kid, though after procrastination and scrutinizing their rules changed my mind around the time Eldar got updated and bought their codex on impulse. I have to say the Eldar codex is fantastic and was certainly up for collecting them. I had all these cool conversion ideas for Warp Spiders, Swooping Hawks and other stuff. Then for some odd reason felt super bummed at the idea of a possible second wave invalidating the time, effort and money i would put into those units and ended up procrastinating it further until i was just like. **** it, space marines are coming out in September (as rumor suggested at the time), they already have a wide range on nice models and will surely have a well balanced codex. So now on my third codex purchase and no new army yet bought I've been settled on doing an Imperial Fists force about two months now and i'm really looking forward to making my first unit feel special. It'll be expensive but i want a good variety of armour marks in my force and a good amount of grime and battle damage. I always feel imperial stuff looks so much more awesome weathered and battle damaged. Also perfect timing with Sentinels of Terra supplement and i'm now just waiting some more cash to build up with christmas coming up and everything.

So there's my feckin' essay. Which i almost lost entirely, damn accidentally closed my browser and though i'd lost it. Thank god for the auto-save function. I was ready to come back and be moody with a quick response, ha.

[ElectricPaladin]

Have you looked into the nWoD? I'm a bit biased - I've been lucky enough to get to freelance on some Mage, some Promethean... :D - but it's pretty good stuff.

[YorkNecromancer]

Have you looked into the nWoD? I'm a bit biased - I've been lucky enough to get to freelance on some Mage, some Promethean... - but it's pretty good stuff.

Played it since it came out. Seriously, I love White Wolf's WoD WAY more than I love 40K. I have every book for Vampire: The Requiem, Promethean: The Created, Changeling: The Lost, as well as the core books for Hunter and Geist, and all the core nWoD. Fantastic setting. Far more coherent than the oWoD; they took all the good stuff from the Black Dog game line and made a roleplaying game about roleplay, not rollplay (which if people like, cool, more power to them, but I frankly hate it even more than CoD).

Promethean is my favourite of the new games by a wide, wide margin. Of course, the whole concept puts off a lot of people ("Wait, so the universe as a concept literally hates me, I can't rest in any place for longer than a week without it becoming a blasted nuclear wasteland, and I'm trying to give up all my super-awesome magical powers and become a bog-standard human?" It's literally the antithesis of D&D. I love it so, so much.

I never liked Werewolf (too much damn combat, plus an added dose of stupid) or Mage (just didn't like anything about the setting at all; the magic system was great, but the background was just repulsive).

When I ran a WoD game, it was always with the background from 'Kult', which is pretty much the darkest RPG ever written. It's even darker than some of the horrible Giovanni Necromancy rituals (brrrr.... Giovanni Necromancy...), so you know that's saying something.

[xbenblasterx]

similarly to yourself, avoiding complete videogaming addiction and becoming somewhat of a hermit as a result! I dropped them completely and filled the gap with 40k, haven't regretted it at all I don't miss the video gaming scene half as much as I expected I would, beyond Zelda I can't see my self ever returning really I can honestly say this hobby has stolen my time and my heart!

[Matt Byron]

My friend came out of nowhere and said he was interested in learning how to play. He chose necrons and I chose imperial guard. Two months later I had a 2000 pt force and an utterly flabbergasted wife! A great return after nearly a decade off!

[Arkhan Land]

my roomates junkie brother went to jail his mom gave us his belongings so he couldnt hock em for more dope. 100 space marines and a few tanks enter my llife and i dug out my old stuff

[xbenblasterx]

I'm loving how coulrful some of these 'return~ stories are haha

[SuperDann]

Got back into 40K in 2007, because of several reasons:

I hadn't realised how much I missed the smell of poly cement. No word of a lie.


Amen to that. Nothing brings back my early days nostalgia like that smell.

The reason I came back was surplus cash from a new job. Well, the thing that actually kick-started it was my in-laws hearing me talk about when I used to collect and play way back when, then buying me a £20 GW for my birthday a few weeks later. 3 years down the line and hundreds of pounds later I find myself still going strong with no signs of slowing.

[chicop76]

Playing at different stores really help me stay interested. I play at about 7 different stores which really helps to keep the game fresh and less boring.

[Chaoschrist]

I got out of it over money issues. I needed money and figured I had armies people wanted to buy from me. That, and a diminishing interest to play and paint. That was around early 2009.

Then in 2012, I got back into it to get something to do with my time. I had some money I could burn monthly and that's how I got back into it. For some reason I think that still having paints from a few years back and the fact that I had a miniature around which I painted late 2011, just to kill some time, were factors though.

Still, I don't have a lot of drive to play games. I prefer painting over playing; I just put it into more perspective now I guess. I'm buying less and thinking over what I want a bit more now. That, and the fact that I'm also looking into other games. And I might mention the fact that a friend of mine got into the hobby through me in 2012, which is rather convenient if I want to play a game here or there. Even more convenient he lives around the block. Those are some factors that played a part into getting into it and staying into it with some interest. Slowly, I'm losing interest in GW products in general, but the painting and gaming aspect sticks around though. Luckily there's a few good alternatives, heh.

[Renegade]

I hadn't realised how much I missed the smell of poly cement. No word of a lie.
[/LIST]

Man I don't miss the smell of that stuff! Humbrol/Airfix glue had a real kick back in the day and I had the smallest room in the house for my hobby stuff, leaving an 8 year old alone with glue and craft knife was perfectly acceptable in the eighties, even if they did look a bit pale and had pin prick eye's when they were called down for dinner. The headaches and the thirst were the worst part.

[phil035]

For me personally it was the Rogue trader RP book that got me to start doing the hobby again... that and the lust for battle fleet gothic ships that aren't way over priced

[Jams O'Donnell]

I quit in the mid 90s purely because the people I gamed with (my older brother and a few friends in his school year) all went off to university and I didn't know any other gamers in my area. I never was much of a gamer to begin with -- my brother was a committed powergamer and would manipulate his army lists for maximum asshattery, whereas I was much more interested in painting and modelling and would be more inclined to field lists with my most attractive models.

About eight or so years later, my better half and I were visiting my folks where she saw some of my old models. She thought they were cool and that it was awesome that I used to paint such tiny things, and persuaded me to paint again. Since then I've still not played any games, but I've painted a whole bunch of Orks and a handful of other things. I have no idea if I've even got enough of anything to field an army -- I just pick out the things that look fun to paint.

[Iyandagar]

Going back to my early early teens, or even just before I found a game called Heroquest, that literally blew my noodle. I spent many hours with family playing that game to death, I painted the miniatures up, not brilliantly but hey a dab of colour was better than drab plastic and who cares if the barbarian was orange, it was the closest colour I had to skin tone (yes, yes I realise one could always have mixed some colours up to create different shades). I progressed onto a box of Marines, the one with the Crimson Fists on the front and picked up a few additionally kits as I went and wound up getting 2nd edition as a Christmas gift. Back in those halcyon days I pretty much only painted them up, nobody I knew was interested in actually playing games and so over the course of my life I collected and painted. Right up to about halfway through The Lord of the Rings releases and then suddenly just stopped, cold turkey. Cold turkey with boxes on boxes of painted, unpainted, assembled and un assembled models.

A colleague/ friend kept trying to swing me round to actually playing 40k towards the end of my collecting and painting to which I always politely declined. A few years later whilst at said friends house chatting I saw a beautifully painted Tyranid on a shelf and for reasons unknown caved in and agreed to give it a go. That was about 3yrs ago and I have never looked back. I get to game pretty much every week or so, the painting is back, and yes I blend colours and shade my models and have started a number of armies and haemorrhaged a pile of money to the hobby and I couldn't be happier about it...

[Aldavaer]

My son starting to play a few years ago.

I started wargaming and rpgs back in the late 70's aged 11 and played a variety of systems right through university. Then I started work, got married had a family and drifted off. When my son got into 40K I started helping him, first with painting, then terrain, then I found myself with an Eldar army.

[RGilbert26]

Never left :P

[oni]

I started back in 1993 shortly after 2nd edition came out. I was a MtG player... One day I walked into my LGS and saw the 2nd edition box set and was blown away, so I jumped in head first.

Once 3rd edition came out all of the regular players disapproved of the rules and had all decided to move onto to other games. I think I played maybe two or three games of 3rd before the player pool dried up completely. I had moved onto other games myself, primarily Legend of the Five Rings.

I don't think I ever really stopped gaming, but my interests had certainly gotten focused on many other things over the years... Girls, Cars, Girls, Partying, Girls, Cars... You get the idea.

So I ended up meeting the proverbial "one" and settled down. And one day in early 2008, completely out of the blue I got nostalgic about 40K. I'm not even sure what triggered it, but I then started looking online to see what was what with 40K.

I found that a new edition was on its way, 5th edition, and started reading up on it. One site / picture lead to another and I had stumbled into a thriving, global 40K community that never existed when I first started playing (internet wasn't widely available back in 1993). I was caught (again) hook, line and sinker.

[ElectricPaladin]

You know, it's interesting. I have heard that a lot of people tend to develop new hobbies after they get married. It's certainly true for me - I became both an amateur herpetologist and started wargaming in the year after my wife and I got married, and my wife has become an expert in makeup and recently started flying trapeze. In our case, it was that we had been living together for years and were way too entangled. Maybe in other cases it's gentlemen and ladies picking up hobbies that were drowned out by hormones, or that they thought wouldn't help them attract a mate?

[Wildeybeast]

You study herpes? That sounds like a...risky....hobby.

[ElectricPaladin]

You study herpes? That sounds like a...risky....hobby.

Lizards, you doofus.

[Fanboy]

6th Ed brought me back to 4th Ed, along with 12 others in our gaming community.......

:-)

[Wildeybeast]

Lizards, you doofus.

I know that, but I can never let the word pass without making a herpes comment.

[ElectricPaladin]

I know that, but I can never let the word pass without making a herpes comment.

Well, that's what got you to where you are today.

[Wildeybeast]

Doing the same job you do? :D

[ElectricPaladin]

Doing the same job you do? :D

Touché.

[Psychosplodge]

I've never been out of it, I've just had periods of time where I had no friends to play it with. :(

This