How did you get into the hobby?

[Captain Sandoval]

Heyo, was curious as to how folks go into the hobby, what their first exposure was that initially led them down the rabbit hole, and to share my own story.

 

Flashback nearly 16 years. I was 13, had some exposure to miniature wargames in the form of the, now long dead, MechWarrior Clix game, but never really paid attention to the prominent aisle placement of 40k.

 

Then one fateful April day, I was at Barnes & Noble with my grandmother and uncle, he was only 3 years my senior, and I had been told I could go ahead and get my normal PC Gamer magazine or whatever. So off I went to the magazine wall, and there was not one, but TWO PC Gamer magazine issues for April, one being for the US and the other for the UK.

 

(U.S. PC Gamer, April '04)

 

As soon as I saw that Space Marine on the front, my inner StarCraft nerd fanboy kicked in and I knew I had to have them. So with a little convincing and my soul sold to chores, I was able to obtain both.

 

I still remember it, the feeling of total captivation, the need to purge the foes of the Emperor coursed through me, for I was now his righteous weapon.

 

Aaannd... then my friend Steven turned me to Chaos worship, but I eventually found redemption after a stint with some Xenos that is. :P

[Axineton]

Very late 80s or early 90s GW partnered with MB games to release Heroquest and Space Crusade, a sort of simplified versions of fantasy and space hulk type games I suppose. I was around 10-11 years old and just had to have them and that is that really mate. Around 93-94 I got out of the hobby as I got into dj-ing but then came back last year after reading the Eisenhorn omnibus.

[Grotsmasha]

As a young(ish?) lad of 10-12yrs, I was on a bus home from visiting my Dad for xmas holidays, a 20hr bus ride (my brother and I would do it unattended). There was another kid, 15 or so, doing the trip as well. He had White Dwarf 200. At the end of the trip he gave it to me and I've been knee deep in the hobby since I bought WD 211. 

[Shinn]

Back in 2012 a coworker heard me talking about my love of scifi books. He let me borrow one of his (Nightbringer) after I finished I asked if he had more...He instead gave me a Tac Squad and I've been hooked since.

[Captain Sandoval]

@Grotsmasha, that's amazing!

 

@Shinn, awesome, my friend Steven gave me my first Combat Squad when I got in.

[point_Zer0]

Dawn of War 1 => books => glorious miniatures. 

[ShibeKing]

Saw a Primaris Marine cutout and Dark Imperium. I read that rulebook in a day. Fell in love quickly.

[Knightsword]

I can't actually remember how I got into it, just that a group of 6 of us started collecting when we were 12. I vaguely remember an issue of White Dwarf that featured a Space Marine army with an AT-ST that had been converted into a titan count-as being a big influence at the beginning.

[N1SB]

This is a really good thread.

 

I was also introduced to The Hobby via Heroquest and actually Space Hulk in the '90s.  I lived about a year in England, remembered seeing the Heroquest TV ads but also the original Space Hulk boxset, which at my young age really impressed me but I also knew it was too advanced for a young kid like me (this will become relevant later), but I remembered its cover art.

 

Then I moved to the United States.  While there, I befriended someone who also moved there from England.  We were both good at maths and drawing, so we'd draw comic book characters during maths class.  It was during one of these exchanges over "look what I drew" that he explained he painted miniatures.  Soon after he told me about Warhammer Fantasy, which was still a mystery to me, but he mentioned Heroquest which I had seen before, and he kindly invited me over to play it with him.  I described how I saw a game which featured these red armoured space soldiers shooting really cool looking aliens on the cover, in detail, but I couldn't remember the name at the time; it was of course Space Hulk.  He pointed out that was the sci-fi version, called Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader.

 

When I realised both these very cool things came from the same source/company/developer, it was like the final piece of the puzzle that, now put together, showed a far greater picture of The Hobby.  I was like, "Whoa."  It was like an epiphany.  Keep in mind this was back in the States in the '90s before there were Games Workshop stores everywhere/online shopping, so every piece of Warhammer item we got was like a major prize.  I'd soon move back to England and I felt very fortunate that I could visit a Games Workshop every week if I wanted.

 

Those 1st impressions still affect me today.  Because I learned of The Hobby from someone who liked drawing as I did, I'm more focused on the painting aspect, it's like 75%/25% painting/gaming for me.  Now, I live about 20 minutes from a Warhammer Store...in Hong Kong, China, and I definitely still feel very fortunate.

 

As a young(ish?) lad of 10-12yrs, I was on a bus home from visiting my Dad for xmas holidays, a 20hr bus ride (my brother and I would do it unattended). There was another kid, 15 or so, doing the trip as well. He had White Dwarf 200. At the end of the trip he gave it to me and I've been knee deep in the hobby since I bought WD 211. 

 

This is an excellent story that reminds us we are all ambassadors for The Hobby.  We have, all of us, become that random guy with a copy of White Dwarf.  People will shape their understanding of The Hobby based on their interactions with us.  It's worth keeping in mind.

[Panzer]

Well I was originally a MtG player and when a new FLGS opened in my city I went there to play for a few months. There were also some WHFB players and I got kinda tired of having to buy new cards every few editions or to spend a ton of money for the really rare cards while it's still just paper so I took the leap from MtG to WHFB 7e with Tomb Kings.

At the start of WHFB 8e most of the group stopped playing for various reasons (one of them being the FLGS itself) and that was basically the end of warhammer for a while for me.

Queue some years and creating a new group of friends based around a pen&paper group we got talking about how some of us used to play warhammer (I fantasy and two others 40k). One of them having too much money and likes spending it on presents for his friends so we all ended up with a Codex of our choice and a surprise unit (Furioso Dread in my case) for christmas.

Come to think of it, that's pretty much how our pen&paper group started as well minus the presents lol

[Wassa]

I played this a lot as a kid:

 

 

 

Then I saw some kids at school playing 40k with some space marines and I wanted in.

Though at the time me and all my friends had hundreds of Micro Machines so me made our own rules for that to start with.

[m0nolith]

1996.

I was walking in a mall with my mom and I walked next to a store that had a massive cardboard cutout of this really big red guy shooting a gun with a big fist in the air.

I didn't know what that was back then, all I knew is whatever it was, I wanted to be a part of it.

 

[Dragonlover]

The year was 1998, and a bunch of my mates had got into the hobby. Me being me, I'd randomly read a Tyranid codex one of them had and decided they looked fine so I'd play them. That lasted about two weeks until one lunchtime I borrowed a Chaos codex to read and the Dark Gods took my soul. I blagged 30 quid off my Mum and bought that guys codex and his collection of Chaos stuff and never looked back.

 

Dragonlover

[NatBrannigan]

Found an old white dwarf in a cupboard at school and loved the look of epic 40k. After a while visited the Portsmouth games Workshop who were having a massive sale (those were the days!) with a massive participation game. I blew up a tank with a Devastator Squad, and a rotund, bespectacled games workshop employee leapt up on a chair, took a massive swig of diet coke and yelled "Lets kill some Orks! Yeaaaaah!"

 

My sister was aghast and I was hooked.

[Soldier of Dorn]

It was probably the mid-2000s, I guess. Loved cars, loved robots as a kid. Both loves lead me to Transformers and model kits. Being a bit sharpish I thought I might be able to combine the two. Now, being homeschooled, I didn't get to spend much time with mates -- you don't have a huge number of them to begin with, though I had a few -- and not having internet at home (though the public library was only a five~ten minute walk away, I wasn't allowed much screen time) meant that I read. I read a *lot*, and probably stuff that I shouldn't have been reading at my age, but I consumed it all. To sustain this rampant bibliophagia we went to a lot of used book sales, and at one I came across this book:

http://images.dakkadakka.com/gallery/2008/12/18/13205_sm-Heroes%20for%20Wargames.jpg

 

Had a flick through it, figured it might be helpful with my newly christened hobby of customizing Transformers, and picked it up. And it was fascinating. I never really did get around to chopping up and painting any of my Autobots or Decepticons but I did lust over the miniatures within those pages -- Nick Bibby's Great Spined Dragon, the first few Skaven, John Blanche's Chaos Minotaur, and a few "power armoured mercenaries" (the book was published in 1986, forbearing Rogue Trader by a couple years.)

 

I think that's when the seeds were set? Soon afterwards I came across Bill King's Gotrek and Felix novels and read those to death. My introduction to 40k, though, would come later, through a gift of a bunch of Chaos Space Marines from the boyfriend of a good friend's sister -- he had no intention of playing the game anymore, and wanted someone to get some use out of them -- and I properly caught the bug then.

[Huggtand]

For me it was autumn 1989 I was 17 and had just moved to a new town. Since I had been playing various RPG:s for many years I hooked up with a new group in school. Before one session of Call Of Cthulhu a friend showed me a cool looking marine with big shoulder pads and two power fists, it was love at first sight  

 

Next weekend we played Rogue Trader on the kitchen table with a squad of five marines each with pots and mugs as terrain  

 

I still think Rogue trader and second edition is the best 40k to this day (except the vehicle movements in RT). It´s only the quality of the miniatures that got better 

[Hfran Morkai]

I was always a bit of a modeller as my dad and stepdad were both RAF and bought me Airfix kits when I was a nipper (I also remember having sponges made of tanks, helicopters and planes that we used to paint my bedroom walls).

 

Secondary school trialled an enrichment programme whereby school finished early on a Wednesday but students were required to take part in one of the organised enrichment activities, one of which was tabletop wargaming. From there I was hooked.

[Brother-Chaplain Kage]

I had gotten into painting minis in my early teens (late 80s, early 90s) and most of what was available to me at the time was old Ral Partha stuff that was still made of lead  soft enough you could do some gentle reposing of limbs without breaking them. Or drop a mini on its face and flatten the nose. I'd seen the IMPERIAL SPACE MARINES box in my only LGS back then and thought the cover art looked really weird. Then came the 2nd Ed box with the iconic Blood Angels art and I still thought it looked like some weird game I had no interest in. Somewhere in that time I saw a copy of this at my LGS:

 

 

At the time, the Citadel Miniatures section was one single wire shelf about two feet wide and I remember seeing blister packs of these really odd hunchback "Terminator" figures and some guys with weird helmets and bird wings that turned out to be Swooping Hawks. I still wasn't all that interested in the minis, but I bought a copy of that painting guide and put it to good use.

 

Now, I thought that painting guide -- both the blue and red cover version being practically the same 16 pages -- had a section on converting minis, but I've found a PDF copy of it and there's nothing in it about conversions. I don't recall which Citadel guide book it was, but that article on chopping up minis and reposing them changed me forever.

 

Not long before 3rd edition dropped, I met a friend of a friend who was playing 2nd ed 40k with his room mate and he gave me one of those old plastic marines in the static standing pose with push-fit bolter and hands. It was one of the first minis I had ever tried drybrushing on and it looked absolutely horrific! I still have it around here somewhere. 

 

I've been in the hobby ever since 3rd edition hit the shelves and I split a starter box with my brother. 

[Frostglaive]

Originally started out playing Heroscape with my friends. We wanted to make our own rules and have different miniatures for our games. At the time I was also into building model planes and such. I went to a hobby store to pick up a new kit, saw these weird looking sci-fi models called Warhammer 40,000. Initially I bought a box of Eldar Guardians to use for Heroscape. Then I had found out that Warhammer was also its own game. Bought the Battle of Macragge starter set within the first month of it coming out. Been playing ever since.

[RobWrath]

I remember a friend bringing in Space Hulk one lunchtime in our final year at Primary school (so age 10), which would have been in about 1991. 

I don't remember much about the game but I recall the bright yellow imperial fists SMs and being actually quite frightened of the Genestealers.

 

It became a sort of games club; my memory is hazy but I remember seeing the 1st or 2nd Ed Blood Bowl and I'm sure it's where I first saw the 40k Rogue Trader index.

 

I didn't act on that for a few years, until after I went around to a friend's house for a massive 3-way 40k battle; Imperial Guard vs Eldar vs Orcs. My friend had scratchbuilt a baneblade from cardboard and I remember using it as a looted Orc tank with the same 'rules' as Battlewagons at the time; it could carry as many models as you could actually pile on it, any that fell off died.

 

It was crazy. Took most of the day to play probably 3 turns each, and it ended when the lad who's house it was got the hump after we killed Yarrick with a Shok Attak Gun while he was hiding in a bunker.

 

Anyway, I bought the Space Wolves codex (mostly because none of my friends had any SWs at the time), started collecting and painting, then branched out into Blood Bowl and Necromunda as they were far more feasible games to play in terms of time. 

 

Then I had 20 years off until my 7yo son found the only box of minis I had left in the attic, and was totally fascinated. 

 

Now I'm playing BB online regularly on FUMBBL and gradually painting up a CSM Khornate army and a few BB teams. I reckon I'll have painted all the minis I currently have by...err...2021.

[Mendi Warrior]

If I remember correctly it must have been around 1992 - 1993. During my second year at university, I met a friend's cousin who was deep into D&D, miniatures painting, sci-fi, fantasy, ... and he played Epic Space Marines. I accompanied him to a convention where there was a small Games Workshop stand with a few guys, including Andy Chambers and/or Jervis Johnson, I remember speaking with one of them, he had a beard and long hair, and showing him really atrocious quite blurred pictures of a game of Epic Space Marines we had a couple of weeks before, mentioning the terrain we used (Aztec and Mayan style pyramids in polystirene I made and jungle trees done by my brother to go with Esci Vietnam toy soldiers) and how cool the game was. They were selling various models, including some metal Epic knights and vehicles. They were sold based on weight. I ended up going back home with a load of them and so I started …

[Burni]

Brilliant thread!

 

When I was around 12, I went to stay with my Aunt and Uncle and my older cousin had a box of RTB01 - They just looked amazing. So for Christmas I got a box plus a copy of the 40K compendium. I painted those up with my dad, using Humbrol enamel of course. Got a few other bits following that (landspeeder and heavy weapons) but never actually played. I wasn't allowed to go and hang out at the GW on my own and mum didn't want to spend the day there. All the kids in school cared about was footy (that's growing up in Liverpool for you) so I never found anyone to game with and eventually dropped the hobby, despite the desire to get into Epic (the tiny SM drop pods are about my favourite models ever).

 

Picked it up again in the early 2000's when I spotted something online which lead me to the Forge World website. Full size titans! I gradually collected and painted things I liked the look of, tried to get gaming but never had a full army to do it properly and sold everything again around 2011. But I kept an eye on things and got brought back by the hype around Gathering Storm. The idea of an evolving story, the more appealing (to me) 8th ed rules and the increased output of releases dragged me back but I vowed to build and paint a full army first.

 

So now with my Admech, I'm finally playing the game properly for the first time, after getting into the hobby in the late 80's... And you thought it took you a long time to build an army!

[Greenz]

Awesome stories in here!

 

Myself, I got into the hobby mid 90s, so I was around 10-11. My buddies and I were big into D&D, heroquest, all that sort of stuff, though I tended to favour more sci-fi like Star Wars, etc.

 

My one friends older brother had a pretty decent sized Ork army, full of buggies and bikes. I thought they were the coolest things ever! Unfortunately, he was always a complete jerk, and never cared to talk to his annoying little brothers annoying little friend about the hobby.

 

Fast forward a few months, I went down to my local comic/ hobby shop with all my Xmas money burning a hole in my pocket. I started talking to the owner about miniatures, and an hour later I walked out the proud owner of the 2nd edition core box and the old DA/BA Angels of Death codex. 20+ years later, warhammer is still my main hobby, and largely has shaped who I am. I’ve tried other hobbies over the years, and aside from working out, no hobby has ever kept my interest for more than a couple months. Now my little ones are starting to show interest, so it won’t be long before I get at least my son hooked ;)

[Gederas]

2008, my Freshman year of High School (yes, I'm a young'in compared to the rest of you all :lol:), someone either lost/forgot their copy of Ciaphas Cain: Hero of the Imperium underneath their desk in Algebra that I happened to sit at. So I picked it up and started reading it.

 

After that, I went out and bought Ciaphas Cain: Defender of the Imperium, and proceeded to keep buying the books until I could actually afford the proper plastic :lol:

[The Unseen]

I got into in early, and almost entirely by accident.

Was early teens, and was basically being nosy and digging though some of my dad's old stuff at the back of the closet at his parents house. (His old room became the guest room I stayed in while I was over there) and buried in the back corner, rather than the cliched dirty magazines, I found the Codex Imperialis from 2nd edition. Hooked on the Grim Dark of the 41st Millennium since then.

(And thinking about it, my mother probably wishes I had instead found some old playboy magazines rather than 40k, been a lot cheaper that way)