How did you get into the hobby and when?

[Brother Tyler]

It was 1987. I was in my local comic/games store, saw a wall of Warhammer/Warhammer 40,000 miniatures, and was hooked. "Rogue Trader" was such a cool name. I had no idea what it was about, but the name alone sold me. I had collected and painted many of the WHFB minis for other games, but the Space Elves and Space Marines sucked me into the sci-fantasy tabletop miniature wargame hobby. My previous wargaming hobbies had involved painted army men (using rubber bands to duke it out), chit and hex wargames from Avalon Hill, and the cardstock counters/standees of the original Car Wars and original Battledroids/Battletech games. I loved the lead miniatures and the gothic weirdness of the 41st millennium. My "hobbying" during the 1st and 2nd editions of the game was mostly limited to painting miniatures and reading lore, with full corruption occurring during the 3rd edition of the game when my living conditions allowed me to collect full armies and play the game (albeit poorly).

[Interrogator Stobz]

Much like many old digs I was playing D&D loosly with minis and cardboard slot BattleTech in and around '87.

I was getting into mini painting as a result.

Around then a good mate Nathan acquired a book called Rogue Trader, after a very short period I had my own copy and my First Legion addiction was born.

[dbrollsdice]

I was about 11-12 and some boys in school were sat at the back of the bus pouring over an Ork codex. I had absolutely no idea what it was but one of my mates said something about it being like chess but with more rules and painted pieces.

 

My dear cousin who is a bastion of anything slightly obscure and nerdy and I had a great relationship playing games like Command and Conquer together. I figured he’d know the score so asked him if he’d heard of it. He produced the third Ed dark angels codex and a painted mini from his draw and I was really curious. Managed to pop into the Cardiff store with my parents and they said they’d pick me up the 3rd Ed starter box for Christmas. Couldn’t wait that long so my first mini was one of the pewter chaplains and I think even to this day it would hold up as one of my favourite chaplain sculpts.

 

Got the box set and decided to go slightly different to my cousin and started to paint the marines up as blood angels. I can remember being terrified sat at the kitchen table and spilling a pot of Chaos black on my parents kitchen tiles but managed to clear the floor before the Christmas party they were at had finished.

 

Had a real love affair with the sons of sanguinius and the hobby over all for most of my teenage years. The GW store in Cardiff was great with the Thursday night games and in the summer running campaigns. Met some good friends there that sadly lost touch with. I can vaguely remember a B&C meet up at one of the last games days I went to but couldn’t say a year. I dabbled with other armies a bit some tau that never made it to the table, some 13th company Wulfen. I did make a foray into WHFB when they released some new chaos warriors painted them up as slaanesh wish I’d got more use out of them now.

 

Anyways a same old story got more interested in girls, guitars, drinking etc as I hit my later teen years. I half heartedly kept up with lore through some HH books etc but completely lost touch with the wider hobby.

 

Probably a very familiar story but during the pandemic I work got pretty stressful, I’d decided to stay away from my partner to protect her from infection etc and had nothing to do. Had a browse and fell in love with the blackstone fortress stuff picked a load up and got back into painting minis. I’ve fully got the bug again now and am trying to get a black legion force on the table before spring.

 

Wish me luck.

[Slave to Darkness]

Technically the Womble marine wasnt my first exposure to the hobby, I was reading the Fighting Fantasy books before I found the miniature side of the hobby, the first one I read was Citadel of Chaos (would explain my Chaos obsession actually). 

[ArielRSA]

Dawn of War got me into the universe and I started with Daemonhunters because I preferred the Grey Knight helmets to the ones on the marines in DoW. Unfortunately I didn't know how little they had in terms of rules and models and eventually fell off (just before the 5th ed update!) and got into WHFB until that was taken to the woodshed.

 

I came back in 2017 since the new primaris designs just spoke to me in a way the original marines didn't.

[The Yncarne]

I got into the hobby painting D&D figs in 1982. By 1984 I was playing historicals, mostly USCW and Napoleonics in 25mm, although also did some dark ages and WW I biplane games. Then in 1989 while in college I was introduced to Rogue Trader. 

[Heraclite]

It was in 1999 I think, my neighbor had some eldar guardians and chaos space marines. He gifted me a paintset with a few dried out paints and a worn out starter brush, and pointed me to the local shop where I could get some minis.

 

I bought a tactical squad and was hooked! It was soon followed by a squad of metal scouts, and the metal command squad.

 

I had a group of like minded friends at school, and we all had different armies so that was pretty nice. One had nids and guard, another had orks, one had tau and chaos space marines. Good times !

 

I drifted out of it as I grew older but kept all my minis in my old room at my parents', and kept checking the new releases regularly.

 

My father being an adept of flea markets got me quite a lot of second hand stuff as well. At some point I had some dark eldar, the plastic necromunda box and an uncle also gave me his copy of space crusade.

 

Sadly they almost all burned with my parents' house... only a handful of minis survived.

 

I came back to it with the launch of conquest in France and am slowly growing a primaris space marine army, with a deathguard army coming next as soon as all the marines are painted!

Edited January 11, 2022 by Heraclite

[Dr. Clock]

In summer of '94 (judging literally by the covers of the GW annuals), I was nine years old and on holiday at a family friends' cottage. He had brought along another friend, unknown to me since I had moved away from the City several years earlier. So there at the cottage these two started chatting about the hobby and all the different races' backgrounds, completely absent any miniatures or even books to look at, since they had brought nothing with them.

 

As it turned out my friend was painting Ulthwé Eldar, and I idolized him (he was a bit older than me) so when I finally got my first minis that Xmas from my brother (20 plastic mono-pose Eldar guardians), I of course decided black and yellow was good enough for me too. I don't think my friend really appreciated the imitation (though indeed it was the sincerest form of flattery), and I don't think he carried the hobby too much into highschool, whereas I never gave it up.

 

The first book I got was the 2nd Ed. Eldar Codex, and that volume alone cemented a lifelong grimdark journey.

 

Having grown up in a very small rural village in Canada, getting miniatures and White Dwarf in the post was a real lifeline connecting me to the worlds of the mind, and a community built thereon. On principle, my parents had really limited us kids' access to things like television, video games and 'violent toys' of any kind. Somehow because of the craft involved and the engagement with text rather than screens, the whole 40k thing allowed me to fully engage with a 'fandom' for the first time, really.

 

In school people always discussed tv, sports, or video games, and I had access to none of those, really, nor even much in the way of nearby friends given my rural location. So having felt for a long time that I was 'deprived' of the kind of toys (action figures), films or games that other kids took for granted, getting to 40k made me feel like I had finally 'found my thing'.

 

Over the next few years, I did successfully 'recruit' a few friends into the hobby, but pretty much everyone left by highschool, except one friend, again as it happened a friend of the family and older than me, picked up one of my White Dwarfs and was converted. To this day we are together perhaps the only collectors in a County where I have to drive at least an hour to find any kind of minis... and beyond a brief stint in a club when I lived in the city, we just play each other in over 95% of games.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.