How did you get into the hobby?

[Shinespider]

When I was like... 10ish? I went to a friend's house to play video games and watch anime on Toonami. We were very cool kids. 

 

His... older cousin, or something? Was there, and had a bunch of models. He tried to teach us how to play. In hindsight, he had no idea what he was doing. The armies started like eight feet apart from each-other on a carpeted floor. When I complained that it would take an eternity for them to get close to each-other moving at 6" per turn, he said we could have them move at "Double Force-March" which would allow them to move 24" in a single turn, but then they couldn't do anything at all for the next two turns. 

 

Anyway, so obviously that was all nonsense, but when it was done I Asked Jeeves for some pictures of warhammer stuff and he showed me some pretty cool stuff. I think it was the Basilisk that really stuck with me - probably because my only game at that point had been at absurdly long range, the idea of a huge screw-you artillery piece that could have won the fight without having to advance seemed like the coolest thing in the world.

 

I bugged my Mom into getting me the rulebook - Third Edition at the time, and was totally entranced by the setting. 

[Marshal Rohr]

My friend got me into it.

[Deafbok]

Nice thread!

 

So, how did a kid on the Southern tip of Africa find the hobby?

 

Back in 2005,when I was 15,my family went to Cape Town on holiday. All of us are voracious readers, and we ended up in one of the biggest 2nd-hand bookstores I've ever seen.

 

My younger brother found a copy of White Dwarf in a jumble of random magazines - the one with the "Fire Warrior" cover and the special trench scenario where Kais had to get to a chaos portal.

 

We were hooked, but all 3 of us (dad included) realised very quickly that this would be a very, very hard thing to find - the handful of stores in South Africa listed in the back of the magazine were in Cape Town or Joburg rather than our native Durban, but we started looking around anyway. Dad found the Durban Wargames Club, and we got involved in historicals first before being introduced to the Warhammer guys.

 

The Rand being what it is compared to the dollar and the pound, we looked for every avenue to plan and build up forces cheaply and effectively. Maelstrom Games was an absolute boon during those early years, as were eBay bitz sellers and then Battlewagon Bitz. We also discovered, to our absolute delight, just how good GW's customer service was when we ordered some stuff we couldn't get off the usual sites - I ended up with a free rhino because my dad wanted just the turret for a Leman Russ conversion, but someone duffed up and the initial kit was delivered sans turret!

 

The hobby has grown in leaps and bounds here since then, and my wife now complains about my 6000+ point marine collection! (with not a single actual oldmarine character ever bought - every one of my HQs is a converted tactical marine!)

[Magos Takatus]

My hobby journey started in 1994. I was about 10-11 years old and my friend showed me some interesting magazines showing some rogue trader era models and it got me curious. My group of friends saved our pocket money and paid for mail order starter sets. At the time the set offered a plastic goblin, a plastic elf and one or two plastic space marines and a handful of paints. One of my friends collected Space Wolves, one started Dark Angels and I began to collect Blood Angels. I was given the recently released space marine Whirlwind for my birthday (for the original Rhino) and my brother got me the 2nd edition 40k boxed set.

 

However, my mind had been primed before that when my brother assembled historical aircraft models and he left his Tamiya catalogues laying about and I was facinated by the scale models. It probably helped that at the time the BBC was re-broadcasting Thunderbirds heavily on TV and the scale models that appeared on that and the Captain Scarlet series really got me interested in sci-fi models.

 

I've never really had a break from 40k, though I've dropped out of playing the game for years at a time to paint models instead.

[The Yncarne]

GenCon 16 got me into historical minis (the hobby). In 1989 I was introduced to Rogue Trader. The rest is almost 30 years of painting and playing.

[Happy-inquisitor]

A long long time ago I used to build and collect airfix models, like this

 

 

Then some of the people in my chess club got into roleplaying which took me into a game store where I found rules for playing tabletop games with my tanks and soldiers. That was my obsession until I had to leave to go to university, the whole of WWII happened on various bedroom floors with home-made terrain just about as bad as you would imagine it was but we did not care.

 

Several decades of playing historical games pass. Along the way I see Warhammer and 40K games sometimes but I never caught the bug - I distinctly remember watching a game where lots of spiky red marines and other red marines all got into a huge mosh-pit with chainswords in the middle of the table and thinking "nah, I'll stick to my Carthaginians if I want to play big melee games". Just unlucky which game I saw when people were trying to get me interested.

 

Along the way I have a family.

 

My son gets into GW games. I give 40K another look and decide that actually it is just as goofy as I always thought but also that it is a lot of fun - and nobody gives you *&%^ for painting the buttons on your greatcoats the wrong colour.

 

And that was me done, my shelf-space slowly eaten up and my long-suffering wife giving me looks when i want to go play toy soldiers for a weekend.

[Wassa]

 

Anyway, so obviously that was all nonsense, but when it was done I Asked Jeeves for some pictures of warhammer stuff and he showed me some pretty cool stuff. I think it was the Basilisk that really stuck with me - probably because my only game at that point had been at absurdly long range, the idea of a huge screw-you artillery piece that could have won the fight without having to advance seemed like the coolest thing in the world.

 

I bugged my Mom into getting me the rulebook - Third Edition at the time, and was totally entranced by the setting. 

 

This was my reason for starting guard back in 3rd. Huge carpet battles with 6-8 armies of "bring everything you have". I think I was the only one shooting for most of the game with my Basilisks at the back!

[CMDR_Welles]

1982-83, I was about 10. I was in the toy isle looking at some paint by numbers busts from The Hobbit. Mom came to find me and thought I was looking at the Dungeons and Dragons toys on the shelf above what I was looking at. She of course flipped out and drug me away from the store. My parents had bought into the whole Satanic Panic... I was looking at the paint by numbers busts, because I'd been doing model planes and tanks already, and I loved the movie so much. I didnt know what Dungeons and Dragons was at the time, but I was VERY curious as to why my mom threw such a fit. This curiosity had blossomed when a friend of mine introduced me to the Marvel Superheroes RPG basic box set in 1984. I'd also started getting the Robotech Defenders Revell model kits, and so when I saw one of the giant robots on the cover a game called Battledroids (not yet Battletech), I knew I had to have it. Thus began my love of RPGs and Battletech. 

 

Around 1990, I made friends with a pair of brothers who were into gaming as I was. They had been playing Rogue Trader and Warhammer Fantasy 3e. I was introduced to miniatures gaming in full at the time. Before then, Miniatures gaming was just Napoleonics or Civil War era to me. 40k and Warhammer opened it to Science Fiction and Fantasy that I wasnt really aware of. Miniatures was a joining of my two favorite things: Modeling and Gaming.

So yes, my mother is to thank for my lifelong passion in gaming. Much to her chagrin I'm sure. Had she not thrown that fit in a Zayre's Toy isle, I'd probably never been interested in the first place. ;)

[GrinNfool]

Haha my first introduction to this was heroquest via MB, though at the time I had no idea it was about warhammer or even that warhammer existed.  After that though my first knowing introduction to the universe was Dawn of War, fell in love with that game and followed it into DoW 2 which I played competitively.  Got me interested enough I looked into the hobby, but being a starving college student I didn't have the money so I just put it in the back of my mind to check into later.  About 8-10 years later I was married had a house and disposable income and the DoW 3 gets announced (it ended so poorly!) and the subject re-enters my mind, and my wife finds it interesting as well, so we both started into the hobby.  Long strange road from being a 7 year old with heroquest not knowing it was warhammer to actually getting into the hobby.

[Daimyo-Phaeron Lenoch]

I was taking a bus ride with several other people I knew but was not particularly good friends with, by virtue of being new to the organization. One of the older ones was playing an RP (self-made) with a few of his friends, and as I’d seen him reading out of this cool book for most of the week, I asked if I could borrow it on the 2 or so hour bus ride.

 

He said sure, handed it to me, and then turned back to his RP.

 

He’d given to me to read the 4th/5th edition rulebook for 40k.

 

I dearly recall the missions described, the lore within, and the rocking pictures of the ‘Eavy Metal team that I think was a large rewason I decided to jump in (that, and, well, wargame!

 

My first purchases were a land raider redeemer, a singular bike, and some paints and supplies.

 

The tank took a year to get built, in which time I acquired black reach, the most recent tactical squad box (back when they had 25mm’s) and a couple of other things.

 

It was not, however, until a year or two later that my creative drive kicked off in terms of lore and customization, when another friend introduced me to the Leviathan series, and also the world of Fanfiction. That kickstarted my own drive to do that, which led naturally to writing lore for 40k.

 

A year or two later I joined the BnC, along the way accumulating many more marines and a sizable Necron army, bringing me to this post here.

 

And now I’m recruiting, as we all must.

God help my targets. :P

[Zebulon]

I think I posted on a similar thread to this before, but the short and sweet version is:

1) early 90s teenager fell totally for Space Crusade; also had interests in historical models (was a big Tamiya junkie). Then discovers girls, booze, university etc.

2) skip forward to 2010 and a personal tragedy

3) chance cheer-me-up conversation with a friend leads to 9 years of fairly obsessive collecting and fairly basic painting, my mind aflame and my bank balance suffering! But, I am lucky my wife is good about it all. She understands it’s fairly healthy escapism. Also, bizarrely she suggested I buy the 40k Mortarion model the other day! :tu:

[CommodusXIII]

A friend showed up at school with the 3rd Edition Big Black Book. The lot of us each picked a Chapter and we never lived normal lives again.

[USNCenturion]

Friend in middle school asked if I wanted to split a box of models with him when his dad returned from a business trip. “You build them, you paint them, you play with them”. He took the lizardmen and I got the Bretonnians from the 5 edition fantasy box and I’ve been spending all my money on GW stuff ever since.

 

Got into 40k soon after right at the start of 3rd.

[Panzer]

1982-83, I was about 10. I was in the toy isle looking at some paint by numbers busts from The Hobbit. Mom came to find me and thought I was looking at the Dungeons and Dragons toys on the shelf above what I was looking at. She of course flipped out and drug me away from the store. My parents had bought into the whole Satanic Panic... I was looking at the paint by numbers busts, because I'd been doing model planes and tanks already, and I loved the movie so much. I didnt know what Dungeons and Dragons was at the time, but I was VERY curious as to why my mom threw such a fit. This curiosity had blossomed when a friend of mine introduced me to the Marvel Superheroes RPG basic box set in 1984. I'd also started getting the Robotech Defenders Revell model kits, and so when I saw one of the giant robots on the cover a game called Battledroids (not yet Battletech), I knew I had to have it. Thus began my love of RPGs and Battletech. 

 

Around 1990, I made friends with a pair of brothers who were into gaming as I was. They had been playing Rogue Trader and Warhammer Fantasy 3e. I was introduced to miniatures gaming in full at the time. Before then, Miniatures gaming was just Napoleonics or Civil War era to me. 40k and Warhammer opened it to Science Fiction and Fantasy that I wasnt really aware of. Miniatures was a joining of my two favorite things: Modeling and Gaming.

 

So yes, my mother is to thank for my lifelong passion in gaming. Much to her chagrin I'm sure. Had she not thrown that fit in a Zayre's Toy isle, I'd probably never been interested in the first place.

Getting dragged away from a D&D shelf because of some unreasonable satanic cult fears just to eventually end up with 40k ... oh the irony. :D

[RobWrath]

Seems a lot of people got dragged into the hobby by accident in their teenage years; how was gaming regarded for you, like, at school and such?

 

I know for me and my little gaming group it was NOT cool at all. We basically kept it a secret and I remember getting teased about it when other kids found out we played with toy soldiers at the weekends. But we didn't care. 

[Deafbok]

Seems a lot of people got dragged into the hobby by accident in their teenage years; how was gaming regarded for you, like, at school and such?

 

I know for me and my little gaming group it was NOT cool at all. We basically kept it a secret and I remember getting teased about it when other kids found out we played with toy soldiers at the weekends. But we didn't care.

A good proportion of the group I played with during high school were, like me, 1st XV rugby players.

 

That may have contributed to our group never getting ragged about it, but there was always a pretty healthy "nerd" culture at the school as a whole - there was always someone to talk RPs and Star Wars and LOTR and anime and stuff with around.

[Midlight]

I didn't get into the hobby until about 3-4 years ago. I was 31 and getting my life back together after a bout of depression. I had just changed positions at work which came with a nice pay rise and my wife encouraged me to look for a hobby.

One day we got a small magazine through the door that had articles, events calendars and adverts for local things. One of the adverts in there was for a games club about 5 mins from my house. The wife saw that and said why don't I pop down one week, get out the house, meet new people etc..

So, that week I went and there I met an old school friend. He showed me round at a few of the games that were going on, introduced me to some of the people, even got me set up with a couple of small intro games of various things to help me out deciding which game was for me.

After a second game at 40k I decided that was the one for me and now my wife does occasionally regret her initial choice to push me in this direction, but I just remind her its her fault

[Ishagu]

The year was 1997. I walked into a Games Workshop, was just a child back then. I had never seen anything as wondrous as those little painted men and the game they could be used in.

 

22 years later I'm still invested in the hobby. Many women have come and gone in that time but my loyalty to the Emperor remains :-P

[Halfpint100]

The Lord of the rings magazines -> fantasy 5th edition -> 40k -> never stopped

[Tymell]

For me, it was when I spotted this bad boy back around 1995:

 

 

 

My 8 year old self had never seen anything cooler, and I knew I wanted it. I remember my dad repeatedly telling me that it would cost -all- my pocket money at the time, and it wasn't like a book, there was no story or anything, just a catalogue of models. I didn't care.

 

It got me hooked, and I still have it on the shelf. My next birthday after that, my parents got me the 4th edition Warhammer Fantasy box, and it all went from there.

[Cian]

Through my other hobby, fishkeeping and breeding. In the dark days before t'internet I went round to a fish breeding mate's house and saw a "Hobbit " diorama and asked where he'd bought it. He introduced me to an independent  comic/model store  that stocked GW models and I became hooked. 

[Bryan Blaire]

I was introduced to the hobby through Heroquest and Space Crusade, then a friend and I split a 2nd Edition starter box (sadly, box is gone, but I still have the books and my parents oddly enough still have my Marines miniatures from it). It’s been down-pocket-book ever since.

[Brother Tyler]

Growing up, I loved art and models. I'd grown up playing wargames, and I loved the chess family - European chess for the figures and Shogi for the rules. I'd also grown up on old chit and hex wargames from Avalon Hill, such as Outdoor Survival (not a wargame, per se), Feudal (not chit and hex, but more like someone tried to expand upon European Chess), Richthofen's War, and Starship Troopers (especially Starship Troopers!). I tried my hand at roleplaying games when I was younger, but found that the thing I liked most about them was the combat and the miniatures (I just couldn't get into the roleplaying). Then in 1987/88 I was roaming through my local comics/games store and saw the Rogue Trader book and a bunch of interesting miniatures and I was hooked - here was a hobby that encompassed art and gaming and tactics, wrapped up in a weird and fantastic (and horrifying) setting.

[Race Bannon]

My turn!

 

Back in 1989, a casual friend stopped me in the hallways of High School and pulled out a plastic RT marine to show me.  He said it was for a new wargame from the local comic shop.  Intrigued, I went to the comic shop and saw the box of Rhinos.  Rushing to the White Dwarf on the rack was an article on the Spartan Land Raider conversion.

 

The rest, as they say, is history.

[Aqui]

Firstly, I've always been interested in science fiction. My first experience of gaming in anyway outside of a home computer (Spectrum 48k+) was the "Choose your own adventure" and the "Fighting fantasy" books. A friend had got Hero Quest one Christmas and we played every possible mission in it. A while later, he got the Rogue Trader rule book and some models. He had Imperial Guard (30 in a box) and the RTB01 box. Whilst he went away on holiday, he lent me the rule book and by the time I returned it, I'd memorized the whole thing. I got some RTB01 models myself, created the first incarnation of my Steel Wings, along with some Space Wolves and started playing. I also moved in to EPIC scale and had the entire Space Wolves chapter in that scale. By that time though, most of my friends who played got jobs, went to college and University and we all ended up not playing any more. That was around Second edition. Whilst I was out in the "Wilderness" as it were, I did keep an eye out once in a while, but took no interest in it.

 

Then at the end of what I found out was fifth edition, I found Dawn of War in a supermarket bargain bin and thought I'd get it for nostalgia. Bitten, I got Soulstorm and eventually wound up back in. That was when I found out about this site.

 

That cemented it. My Steel Wings are now in their fifth incarnation (I think), no longer the missing XI legion (whose Primarch was called...well, I'll let you guess ;) ) and now are an Iron Hands successor. 31 or so years old...