In the Begining...

[Aldramelech]

Where did it all start for you? When was the moment that you decided to skip mortgage payments and fill your house with plastic bits and bobs and the wife/girlfriend first uttered the words "You care more about those soldiers then me!"

When did it all go wrong:D

I started wargaming at the age of 15. Quite late by todays standards but very early back then. I was for many years before that into Military Modelling in a big way, 1/48th scale aircraft being my thing. So my parents house (or at least my room) was already full of plastic! Of course back then plastic wargames figures were just a crazy dream.

A friend of mine persuaded me to play a game of Medievals in 15mm using a set of rules he wrote himself.

I had fun, I had lots of fun! it was fantastic, my eyes were opened. Id been spending years making pretty models that stood still and did nothing, what had I been thinking?

I got into metal in a big way. 15mm was king then and only very rich and stupid people could afford 28mm.
I started to collect a Medieval horde. They are long gone now, a distant memory, Id hate to see what they looked like now. I joined the local wargames club and discovered all manner of great stuff.

Another friend turned up one day and asked if I would like to try his game. I was interested and he brought round some figures to show me. They were GW Bretonians. I wasnt keen. This wasnt propper wargaming at all. My friend stuck with it and invited me round to his house. I didnt have anything better to do so I thought what the hell, might as well. I wasnt expecting much.

I arrived to find a fairly impressive table set up and then looked at the shelves. They were completley loaded with hundreds of pro painted GW figures. He then gave me the Warhammer armies book and told me "Go pick an army".

I had one of the most enjoyable afternoons of my life, and the rest is history...........

[eldargal]

I've not had a wife/girlfriend (or husband/boyfriend:p) to say that, but my mother did say once "I should be worried about you getting pregnant, instead I worry about paint poisoning and eyestrain*".:rolleyes:

When we arrived in Britain my brothers got packed off to Eton. When they came back in the holidays they brought back all these strange metal things and magazines and books. I started looking through, found some of them were Girls (some Eldar Harlequins I think they were). Decided I wanted in on that. Started collecting Eldar. A few years later Dark Eldar came out and I started with them as well. Decided that Lelith Hesperax was a kindred spirit and appropriate role model for an eleven year old girl. Now I have 43,000pts of Eldar and all the boys are scared of me.


*Won't she feel silly when I die of cancer from resin dust inhalation.

[Beta_Ray_Bill]

My first time, I walked into a friends basement, where we all regularly hung out... It was the summer after sophomore year.

Behind the laundry room door there was another room that I had never known was there, they called it(and we do to this day) the war room. Two of my friends were seated at a 4' by 5' gaming table, painting their last few miniatures of 'Nids and DAs. I have a HUGE weakness to cheesy sci fi movies, so instantly, starship troopers came to mind. :D

When I asked what was going on, they collectively gave me an explanation that nearly convinced me that my car didn't need new tires just yet. They did however say it was expensive, especially for kids of our age group, and myself only having a part time job at a grocery store, which was a deal breaker.

A few weeks later, we went to our local GW for a fairly big gaming session. 4-5 tables, all strung together in a line ready for battle. THAT was amazing to watch, yet I remained poor and skeptic if it was really worth my measly paycheck.

Then the Necron codex came out and that was all over. I sold most of my 'Crons, and all of my Tau and BTs on Ebay, which I honestly do kind of regret(Not so much the Tau though..). I moved to wisco in 06 and there was NO "lgs" within at least 60 miles. I moved back to Chi-town in February and now we're back on track to start the cycle all over again. Only this time we have a group 10 strong. Currently we're all a little more focused on fantasy, but ironically, the two friends from earlier in my story still play 40k, and we all play outdated armies; this keeps the playing field kind of level.

This is getting way too long, I'm done...

[Col.Gravis]

It all started one fateful day when I walked into a newsagent quite bored and spotted the hallowed/hated tome that is White Dwarf, issue 223 to be specific (is it wrong I can remember that?), there was a huge WFB Empire army in there and it hooked me there an then, within a week I'd pre-ordered the (then) new Solider of the Empire boxset (the decent one where they actually all had shoes!), for a year or so I collected Empire building up a huge army - all long since sold.

Not long after 3rd Edition came out I made friends with some fellow gamers at my school and got into playing 2nd Edition 40k with them with a small space marine force called the 'Strike Masters', they only ever reached a thousand points or so and because then I realised that the Praetorian Imperial Guard that I spotted in an issue of WD were not conversions but available in the shop - I bought my first blister of them and thats when the madness really began. I've painted the army (or started too anyway) three times, each time the old models got stripped and a whole host of new ones got added until I reached the current point in time.

When I moved into my current house I had to insist on a spare room - 'Then we can have visitors to stay!' I argued, it was of course just a ruse, the room looks more like a GW store from yester-year :rolleyes:, my girlfriend is luckily very tolerant!

[Kirsten]

I started 13 years ago, when I was 12. I saw boxes of plastic models on the shelf in a local toy shop, back when they were four pounds for eight identical infantry. I got the 5th edition fantasy boxed set for christmas a few months later, collecting empire for all those lovely cannon. In the space of a year or so I amassed 50 halberdiers, 20 swordsmen, 20 handgunners, 20 greatswords, 3 great cannon, 3 helblasters, a steam tank, a war wagon, I used the bretonnian knights and archers from the boxed set.

I went along to a local club, won a few games, lost a few games, watched some second edition 40k and was interested but not significantly. 3rd edition 40k came out right about the time I was looking to branch out from fantasy, I had around 4,000 points each of Empire and High Elves, and was looking for something to add variety. I had already convinced my brother and three friends to play with me, then got my brother to go halves on the 3rd edition 40k boxed set.

A dozen or so armies later and I still play both systems, along with inquisitor, mordheim, aeronautica, space hulk, and warhammer quest.

[DarkAngelHopeful]

I started playing 2nd ed 40K when I was 16 and still in high school. I was walking with a friend of mine to meet a new guy in the neighborhood. His parents told us he was at the neighbors. We walked over there and found him in the garage with the two neighbor boys and another friend. They had an elaborate board set up and where trying to play a 4 way objective based mission. The invited us to join in and take control of the objective which was an independent character. I promptly did so and moved the objective from cover and he was vaporized by a lascanon. lol. I was hooked by the models and the fluff. I was always into video games and fantasy and sci-fi movies. This was just a natural next step.

I was entranced with Space Marines. I started off with Ultramarines and later in college moved to Dark Angels.

Maybe a year or so later the group got into 5th ed Warhammer Fantasy. I started off with Dark Elves and am now building a High Elf army.

I have been table top gaming ever since.

The most important thing I have taken from this beginning experience is the group of friends, in particular, my two best friends. So, I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for Gamesworkshop.

[HsojVvad]

It all started for me, when I walked into my comic book shop and I saw Battletech. I picked up the box and went "cool giant robots battling each other."

I loved playing with Battletech. So I got into Star Trek and a few other Fasa stuff. I even got 2 hard cover books. Rouge Trader and Warhammer (what ever edtion it was, it was when Rouge Trader came out.) My problem was, while my friends played a bit of BT, they didn't want to get into the hobby with me because it was uncool, and I had nobody to play with so I quit.

Got back into it decades, later, with 40Krd edtion, but since nobody played this in my area, I gave up on it again. Then 4th came out, but got too busy in real life so it took a back burner. Now 5th is out, I just collect knowing that I can't get any gaming in now. I was able to get a few games in but in it for collecting and reading.

So I have been in and out alot.

[Melissia]

My mother made comments about being glad my older sister gave her grandkids because she figured I sure won't be giving birth any time soon, lol.

Has as much to do with DnD, Battletech, and White Wolf as it does 40k and Dark Heresy.

[Lerra]

My mother is terribly confused as to how I could enjoy scifi/fantasy at all. At least with wargaming, she can grasp that I enjoy painting. I just have to make sure that she doesn't see the models!

I started wargames a little over a year ago. My DnD group all decided to pick up 40k at the same time, and I wasn't terribly interested, but I figured it would be better to collect a small army so that we could play together - it would be much better than just watching them play all the time. I have a profound dislike of the super-human-marines-in-space trope (so hyper-macho, so overdone), but Black Reach offered me a cheap way to get a small army, so a friend and I bought two boxes. He really wanted to play Orks, so I ended up with the marines. I figured I'd never buy another GW model. I've got about 3000 points of marines now . . . although I still dislike space marines >.> I enjoy the rules of the game, though. That's why I'm also working on Chaos Daemons (1000 points) and Tau (1750 points).

[Mauglum.]

Hi all.
I started making plastic kits when I was 6.(Airfix 1/72 nd and 1/76th scale tanks and airplanes.)
(It was what boys did indoors before console games and computers were developed.:D)

When I was 16 a new shop opened in town , and they did wargaming and RPGs upstairs in the spare stock room.
I played a wide variety of historical war games over 4 or 5 years.
Then several people brought in new games by GW.
Warhammer , and the new Rouge Trader rule book.
Adeptus Titanicus followed by Epic then -Blood bowl,Space Hulk and Darkfuture!:eek:

After 3rd ed 40k was unleased we just gave up on it , as we did not like the direction the rules were going.
So used other rule sets with out 40k minis.
And after AoA was brought to our club we didnt bother with WHB rules either .

I simply use the minature I have to play the rule sets I like, with the people I enjoy wargaming with.

And as I am NOT paying a small fortune to keep up with GW marketing , my wife and kids dont mind my 'slightly silly toy soldier games.'

TTFN.

[BlacknightIII]

I started with Necrons when 4th first came out. I had just moved to South Carolina and a bunch of kids at a local game shop were playing and I thought it looked cool and reminded me of Star Craft. Eventually Dark Angels came out and I started playing them all the way until space wolves came out when I decided to upgrade to the 5th edition space marine book. Ive collected, painted and sold many other armies but nothing has stuck around like my necrons and dark angels.

[Tacoo]

For me, i started after playing the DoW games, up to dark crusade. mw and my friends then started talking about getting into TT (this was a year ago, i was 17 with a part time job and no paments on anything yet) after a while of talking about it we all finally sprung on to it. we got the Black reach set since there was a space marine player (cody) and a ork player (ryan). Since i was dedicated to start wiith necrons and some convincing from the LGS i saved up and got the mega necron set (the $200 one that came with everything you needed for a big army). well me and the ork player had issues with army selction tho. after about 2 nibths he swiched to daemons, and me to Nids, then about a month after that, me and him traded armies. i stayed with daemons for a while (even got bloodletters and thrister painted by goatboy) for a while and then 1 more month later he got a nid army of ebay. well that stayed for a while then he got bored and got Daemonhunters, doing some stupid move and buying well over buying 1 inquisitor with retinue, 3 boxes of PaGK, 1 box of terminators, and a land raider. That army didnt even get past getting filed down. after a while i got bored with daemons after trying out daemonhunters for 2 months on vassel, Itraded them(daemons) to my friend (time of trade was 2 grinders missing a arm, the letters, 10 more of the orginal letters, and the thrister) for all of his Daemonhunters. been playing daemonhunters ever since.

Incase your wondering, the space marine player eventually quit, he never had any money for it, since he now has a kid.

Also after looking at these threads in the past, Necrons should really get a new codex, seems more then half the people starting like to start with necrons lol.

[scadugenga]

I blame my cousin.

He got me started on D&D when I was like, 10. Then onto things like Squad Leader & ASL (Avalon Hill--nigh on mysterious esoterica to the tween mind...)

Discovered Btech in high school, and in '89 some friends introduced me to this Rogue Trader thing. Our group consisted of 2 marine players, 1 squat player, 1 ork player, and me, the lone eldar ethusiast.

Then came college & grad school, and not so much gaming--until I moved in w/some friends and discovered 40k again (2nd ed) Fortunately, gaming was offset by girls, and life was good. (Apparently, if you can dance, drink & be merry, it mitigates the geek factor of being a gamer. :))

Thankfully, there was no point where I was forgoing things like rent, electrical bills, food, etc to buy gaming stuff. I guess not being uber-focused on one thing helps with that. ;)

[Sister Rosette Soulknyt]

Well for me it started around 11, a freind of my brothers who we played roleplaying games of Space Masters/RoleMasters, and varies other Roleplaying games at the time, he had a open box of Space Marines the very first plastic Beakie ones.
Well being a new painter and who loved painting models and DnD miniatures i decided i wanted to paint those too. So i offered to paint his whole army.
Years later i started my own 40k army of Dark Angels, collected them for nearly 10 years and amassed a 10,000+ sized 3rd ed army by then.
Then i spied the Sisterzs of Battle when it was first released, and decided that from then on they would be my only army. Sold off all my beloved Dark Angels to my best mate, and collected this army of Faith.
Now today i have well over 10,000+ points of Sisters of Battle, even Ephrael Stern miniature just freshly finished last night.
And now i await the one day GW blesses us with new SoB miniatures so i can rid my bank account of all that hard saved money.

[BuFFo]

I just finished plowing a hooker good, and she rolled over and asked me if I played Warhammer 40k. I asked what that was, and that was it for me.

I have since given up the 'poon' and my only whore now a days is my obsession with War Gaming....

[chromedog]

My mother put me onto reading SF, so she can't blame me for taking it further.

My granddad was a Napoleonics wargamer (I think he had Prussians or something - they weren't French or English). He got me interested in it (the gaming side of things). This was when I was 10. By 12, I was building plastic models (my first one was an Airfix Spitfire). By High school, I'd branched out to tanks (1/72 scale).
After High School, I hooked up with some guys who were playing "wargames" with some 1/72 scale WW2 and/or modern stuff. In 1987, 40k Rogue Trader came out and after reading through the book, and seeing the parallels to the 'great' SF novels I had read, I saw a new direction happening. I became a two-genre player.
By 1990, I was playing modern period (as in contemporary) wargames. We were playing Operation:Desert Storm while it was happening - and afterwards, we played 40k.

Pretty much it.

[Chris Copeland]

I just finished plowing a hooker good, and she rolled over and asked me if I played Warhammer 40k. I asked what that was, and that was it for me.

I have since given up the 'poon' and my only whore now a days is my obsession with War Gaming....

/spits hot coffee out of mouth... hot coffee also comes through nose!

Ha! Oh my God! Hahahahahahaha... (breathe)... hahahahaha!

/still chuckling in real life

(didn't see that one coming)

[Daemonette666]

Where did it all start for you? When was the moment that you decided to skip mortgage payments and fill your house with plastic bits and bobs and the wife/girlfriend first uttered the words "You care more about those soldiers then me!"

When did it all go wrong:D

I started wargaming at the age of 15. Quite late by todays standards but very early back then. I was for many years before that into Military Modelling in a big way, 1/48th scale aircraft being my thing. So my parents house (or at least my room) was already full of plastic! Of course back then plastic wargames figures were just a crazy dream.

A friend of mine persuaded me to play a game of Medievals in 15mm using a set of rules he wrote himself.

I had fun, I had lots of fun! it was fantastic, my eyes were opened. Id been spending years making pretty models that stood still and did nothing, what had I been thinking?

I got into metal in a big way. 15mm was king then and only very rich and stupid people could afford 28mm.
I started to collect a Medieval horde. They are long gone now, a distant memory, Id hate to see what they looked like now. I joined the local wargames club and discovered all manner of great stuff.

Another friend turned up one day and asked if I would like to try his game. I was interested and he brought round some figures to show me. They were GW Bretonians. I wasnt keen. This wasnt propper wargaming at all. My friend stuck with it and invited me round to his house. I didnt have anything better to do so I thought what the hell, might as well. I wasnt expecting much.

I arrived to find a fairly impressive table set up and then looked at the shelves. They were completley loaded with hundreds of pro painted GW figures. He then gave me the Warhammer armies book and told me "Go pick an army".

I had one of the most enjoyable afternoons of my life, and the rest is history...........
Started collecting building and painting WWII 1/35 scale tanks and vehicles in Grade 8 high School. I became the nerd of the geek club.

Later when I walked into a toy/gaming shop that sold board games and miniature games in the first Shopping Centre our town/city built. Classic Battletech boxed set was the first game I bought, followed by Warhammer 1st edition with the orange hardback Army List book, and Rogue Trader. Within 6 years, and a stint in the Army Reserves, and still living at home, I had collected 9 Fantasy armies, and 7 40K armies including Space Zoats, Space Slaan, and Squats.

10 years after playing my wargamer, I moved from Queensland to Sydney, and sold off all my GW miniatures, because I could not transport or store them all, and the rule kept on changing too much for me. By 1995 I had also nearly finished completing my Epic Spacemarine Armies, and kept my Battletech miniatures (around 150 or so).

Back in Dec 2006 I started collecting Warhammer 40K again. I never liked the space marines, and always seemed to like playing the evil armies. Chaos was the obvious choice and I have been collecting and corrupting seemingly good armies ever since. I now have an extremely large Chaos Space Marine army, a decent sized Chaos Daemons army, Corrupted Sisters of Battle (the Sisters of Perfection), Renegade Imperial Guard, and an experimental Army of Adeptus Arbites I made up as a project that went out of control. I based it on the BOLS mini-dex.

As far as I am concerned, Apocalypse is the best thing GW did for Warhammer 40K, and I have unfortunately not played any games over 18,000 points. Fortunately I have amassed a whopping 43 Apocalypse formations, including 26 Super Heavy and Gargantuan units.

I do not play 40K as much as I used to when I was still in the Australian Regular Army, but I have a great group of friends that I play Battletech with every 2nd Saturday in an ongoing campaign.

i suppose I got the wargaming bug, and i could not ge tit out of my system.

Also I love to paint miniatures. I have my partly painted Khorne Tower of Skulls in the Chaos Space Marine section of the miniatures gallery on this site. I am thinking of making a base for it with hundreds of skulls pressed into DAS modeling clay, and making it so the skulls driven over by the tank treads have been crushed. It should be effective, especially if I get the washing, and dry brushing effects correct.

Pity that every time I use my Tower of Skulls it never last more than 2 turn. The concentrated fire from everyone else has obliterated it before it can get anything but it main gun into range. My Nurgle Plague tower with 15 Obliterators mounted on it usually fares better.

If anyone is looking for a game of Apocalypse and live in the Sydney area drop me a line

[Chris Copeland]

It seems that folks either get here via two routes: historical wargaming and RPGs. I got here via the RPG route...

In 1982 (6th grade) a buddy and I got TSR's Basic Dungeons & Dragons... the one with the red cover that came with the module B2: Keep on the Borderlands. We had some much fun that summer! Basic D&D led me to Advanced D&D... from there I moved onto Villains & Vigilantes.

I played plenty of other RPGs, but from 10th grade through college V&V was my main game (I just dig superhero adventures). A friend showed me Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader in 1990 and I thought it looked fun... played a game, bought a box of terminators, borrowed my friend's Rogue Trader book... and then I lost contact with the guy, lost the box box of terminators, and didn't think about 40K for a LONG time...

In college I discovered Magic the Gathering (4th edition)... I loved it and mostly stopped roleplaying for most of ten years getting my gaming fixes as a card-flopper.

By the time Ravnica came out for Magic the Gathering (9th edition, right?) I was tired of being a card-flopper... I HATED the rarity system. My son and I were cleaning out the attic and we came across the box of metal termies and the Rogue Trader book. We both thought that 40K looked pretty neat so we tracked down a store that would give us a learning game...

That was about four years ago. Since then I've sold off my RPGs and Magic cards... I consider myself a wargamer only these days. These games are what I was searching for all along! I love the creativity of modeling and painting, I love the camaraderie of good game nights, I love the spectacle of beautiful armies clashing! I've been gaming for 28 years now (from age 12 to 40) and my only regret is that I didn't start table-top wargaming earlier. Cheers.

[Faolain]

I started playing 2nd ed 40K when I was 16 and still in high school. I was walking with a friend of mine to meet a new guy in the neighborhood. His parents told us he was at the neighbors. We walked over there and found him in the garage with the two neighbor boys and another friend. They had an elaborate board set up and where trying to play a 4 way objective based mission. The invited us to join in and take control of the objective which was an independent character. I promptly did so and moved the objective from cover and he was vaporized by a lascanon. lol. I was hooked by the models and the fluff. I was always into video games and fantasy and sci-fi movies. This was just a natural next step.

I was entranced with Space Marines. I started off with Ultramarines and later in college moved to Dark Angels.

Maybe a year or so later the group got into 5th ed Warhammer Fantasy. I started off with Dark Elves and am now building a High Elf army.

I have been table top gaming ever since.

The most important thing I have taken from this beginning experience is the group of friends, in particular, my two best friends. So, I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for Gamesworkshop.

And I remember the next day you came over with a massive scratch built castle (built all in one night) for us to use. That was awesome.

I got into it when my brother came home from school one day raving about this new game he had heard about. He was talking about Warhammer Fantasy. So I started with Wood Elves, switched to Lizardmen, and then while looking at a GW catalog I saw the model for Maugan Ra and I decided right then and there I would play Eldar. We got more into 40k than Fantasy, and back and forth between systems.

I actually rage-quit during third after the crazy 2nd ed Eldar codex got turned into a boring entry in the end of the 3rd edition rulebook. I pinned all my hopes on the new codex, and when the 3rd ed Eldar codex came out I was flattened. They pretty much copy-pasted the reference sheet from the back of the rulebook. I lost interest.

I came back during 4th and love it! Dark Angel Hopeful actually got me back into it, when I was the one who got him into it.

[RocketRollRebel]

I got into actual wargaming about 4 years ago when I was 21 with 40k. My roommate at the time who was into MTG had just bought a Tyranid army and told me all about the Imperial Guard. What grabbed me right away was the Valhallan army that I saw pictures of and one of the guys there had because I loved the WW2 Red Army feel to them. I didn't want to wait to get Valhallans so I grabbed the Vostroyan platoon box that was on the shelf ("same thing right?" I thought) and have built my IG army up from that and have never looked back.

I love these threads and all the interesting stories about how people got into wargaming (especially Buffo).

I feel a bit different because I was never all that into sci-fi or comics or role playing games(still not some how:p) as a kid. I was (and still am) really really into history and especially military history as a younger kid. Had piles of American Civil War and Green plastic army men that I would make epic battles with and as I got older started to make rules playing with them. I'd seen some historical wargames as a young kid too and was fascinated by them but never was able to actually play. Even made my own gaming boards on large pieces of cardboard and stuff that was laying around my grandparents.

Finding 40k was super sweet and a hobby I wish I had known about years ago!

Cheers all!

[Porty1119]

I got into 40k around...four years ago when I saw an article in MAKE magazine about some guy who scratchbuilt a Thunderhawk. I showed my friend, he looked interested, I bought up around 40 Imperial Guardsmen (back when they came in sets of 20 :D), but didn't do much until just before 5th ed came out. I scratchbuilt a Vulture and a Chimera, and got my entire army except the Vulture destroyed. Once 5th ed IG came out, I bought some Valkyrie boxes and the rest is history.