Hello

[W.A.Rorie]

So I am W.A.Rorie and I am (Step) Dad to 6 boys.  My wife has one biological (adult) son with her ex husband and they adopted the other 6. I will going to be starting the process of legally adopting them shortly as their adopted father has passed away. I have no kids of my own. 

 

My sons are:

 

• 12 years old (Eldar originally Genestealer cult but did not want to pursue it and was given an Eldar army from one of Gaming clubmates)
• 11 Years old (Blood Angels)
• 11 Years old (Ultramarines originally wanted Deathguard but decided against it ) 
• 10 years old (Necrons)
• The other 2 boys are 7 and still too young. 

[Rusted Boltgun]

Hello!

I am Rusted Boltgun, father to one Junior Boltgun, aged 11. We play

 

Space Hulk v.1

Kill Team '21 

40k 10ed (or at least we will when we get there)

 

Jr is developing his own homebrew Astartes chapter - a slow grow project, it develops when he picks up the brushes every couple of months.

 

For Kill Team we have Ork Kommandos, Phobos Marines, Scouts and Vespids painted up. Plenty more squads and terrain left to paint.

 

For Big 40K I am slowly growing Astartes and Ork armies (with smaller GSC, Tyranid and Votann forces in future).

[Grotsmasha]

Hi, I'm Grotz (Jono), and my lad is 14, and has a casual interest in the hobby.

He will predominantly only participate in shorter boardgame play, and has zero interest in the creative side of the hobby. He has a bit of the 'tism and since hitting double digits is largely only interested in non-fictional things, and a particular interest in modern historical war infantry weaponry.

 

Of all the board games, he prefers Blackstone Fortress as the "bad guys" and making it as hard as possible for his mother and I.

[Bouargh]

Hi, I am bouargh and my girl is 8 y.o. or almost. She has been hooked by the painting part of the hobby. And even if she is not exactly that precise and clean, she has determination.

Long time has been spent wondering about trying a game or not. Which we did last weekend. Yet not with 40k but with WFB (6th Ed). My purpose was to get first something she manifested interrest for on the table. Yet my 40k miniatures are equally painted and might be used sooner or latter (and I have more nice scenery too). But the setting of WFB is also more kid friendly that space opera  warefare that reminds a lot about news and modern era horrors (from a 8y.o. girl perspective).

 

Most learning can be be extended to any gaming introduction attempt though:

1. Use of painted miniatures only (she is fond of dwarves) that she mostly selected herself because she like them
2. An equally fully painted antagonist army but that will leave enough random actions and uncertainity so that I will be penalized while she will play her units as she feels like. Night Gobs + snots were perfect. It is important that the game leave room for the youngster to win without giving the feelign that the tutor is loosing on purpose
3. Get a full table with scenery (again the outlook matters)
4. Start with a small game with simple units but not too small - 1000 pts, 40"x40"
5. Set an army selection with limited types of units so that rules are kept simple and introduced one by one. take time to explain main features of units and trun sequences prior to start. Go in the details live. First round will be long.
6. Proceed to a cleaning of all unnecessary advanced rules - for example no General/Army Standard leadership, no magic, no flyers, no army rule selection restriction (for her side at least)...
7. Keep it short - 2 h max inc. chocolate and snacking pause

Victory was hers. I even hadn't to force myself. I made some stupid deployment decision, animosity blocked half of my army all the time and randomized impacts were on the 1s side of the dice rather than of the 6s. Her dwarves were quite resilients and her guessing of distance poor but largely compensated by lucky artillery dice results.

 

Now it will be important to set the next step. My initial though is: it is key to consolidate the base cas. Maybe repeating the game again with the same armies but changing deployment zones. Now that she saw the dirty Night Gobs tricks in action, she might start including anticipation in her play. Key I guess is to set a kind of regularity into the learning pace: Not too much but enough to allow the seed to grow.

 

PS1: Other side benefit: WFB is in inches while my metering is in cm: it helps stimulating her with mental calculation exercises. Quick wins...

PS2: I might anyway make an attempt with 40k, but probably not before 6 months or so; Big tanks are appealing too; but too much info might be nefastious, so it is better to wait a little bit for a while.

 

Edited December 15, 2025 by Bouargh

[Bouargh]

Second game has allowed testing my strategy of progressive introduction of rules with increased complexity.

Yet, to be fair, I had to chaage some settings in significative ways to achieve this.

 

First game focussed on simple movement and shooting.

Second game tried to introduce HtH and some psychology rules; which meant that units should reach close combat situation at least. As a consequence I have changed part of the army lists too, which caused some small trouble while trying to explain that fairness was not affected. 

 

But even there, gods of dice made the thing hard to comply with: indeed, by selecting a highly unreliable army (mine) as an opponent to a highly reliable army (hers), I have forced the omens toward an almost garanteed victory for the learner. But it also hinders my chances to create a situation that allows introducing the new targeted rule as my units barely reached a position suitable to make use of thir toothpikes or fearsome shouts and screams. 

 

This is a tough learning: it is better to bet on reliable enough forces to generate the situation you wish teaching, otherwise you miss the goal. I will probbaly have to change again my attack angle and set a force that can lead to the plot setting needed.

Another alternative option is to go through a scenario that will chaage the scope of the fight: getting her army ambushed might be an idea worth being explored when I will introduce characters' rules for example...

 

Yet I feel like this step may require a change of approach and get a scenery workshop first: participating in the building her own hills and cliffs may favour a better acceptation of such a different setting.

[Rusted Boltgun]

That's great work @Bouargh, you obviously put a lot of effort into that, even if it didn't quite work out the way it was intended.

I think terrain could be a great way to go - Jr was gifted some Mechanicum terrain which he has loved painting up and we made some scratch built tree trunks a while back too. It all adds to the immersion of the game, the world building. And, of course, it is a lot of fun!