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As a teenager buying magazines for D&D articles, I picked up a White Dwarf (they used to have D&D articles). While looking through it, I saw pictures of really cool looking modelsand thought they would be great to use with D&D. Then, after reading the &D articles, I went ahead and read through the other articles as well and got a taste of the background and storyline of 40k and fantasy.

Then, I got a few more magazines and started learning more. I remember one of my buddies and i trying to send in an order telling our parents how cheap the models were and this is when I learned what the symbol for the English pound was and discovered it wasnt as cheap as we had thought it was. lol Still, we sent in the order (it just wasnt for as much as we had hoped for) and then waited for the UPS truck to bring it to us.
After getting the first models, it didnt take us long to order the rulebooks and start on the road towardsthe hobby.

This was GW in it's golden years when it was run by gamers for gamers (unlike today but thats a different topic), We were showed how to make cool conversions and encouraged to experiment with the game.

So you could say that
1. The models caught my eye
2. The fluff ept my attention
3. The company supported me as a gamer.
I feel #3 has gone away but numbers 1 and 2 remain.

Whats your story?

When I was quite young, I admired pewter figures of fantasy creatures. Then one day I went into a comic book shop and what's this? Pewter soldiers from space. Loved it immediately. Still do!

A girl that I liked was into the 40k fluff and mentioned it frequently. She specifically was into the DoW games (2 hadn't come out yet), so I torrented them starting with vanilla DoW1 and played through to Dark Crusade.

I was pretty enthralled by those games. StarCraft 1/BW was the only rts I'd played at that point and the superior graphical detail and general aesthetic of the DoW games blew me away. My interest in the fluff started growing and I started spending time reading up on the various factions via Lexicanum.

I played my first match of tabletop with a friend over Vassal- it was a few months before the 5E necron codex came out, and I played as Black Templars against his Dark Angels.

My interest in 40K blew up after that. I spent about 100 bucks on BL books and read the entirety of the Gaunt's Ghost books, Eisenhorn/Ravenor books, most of the Cain books and all of the Horus Heresy novels (at the time, Know No Fear was the latest one).

Fast forward 5 years to now, I've become somewhat jaded/ambivalent with the fluff, but I still play the TT online frequently, as well as Soulstorm mods.

Funnily enough, the girl and I parted ways shortly before my first 40k match- my love for the setting outlasted my love for her, heh. Such is the life of horny teenagers.

My Story
I encountered a random Steel Legion on my basement floor.
I tried to put it back in it's box, labeled "Model Soldiers". I had never seen the box before.
I picked up the box. An entire painted all-metal IG army made up of 3rd edition Cadians, Mordians, and Steel Legion spread before me.
Underneath this, I found an ancient 3rd and 4th ed rulebook.
I showed my parents what I found and asked what it was.
Random stuff.
I looked up Warhammer 40,000 on Amazon, and saw the MAXIMUM GOUGING. I was crushed.
I saved up 5 weeks allowance and bought some Eldar Guardians. I built them and painted them crappily. They were painted in the Saim-Hann colors.
On Christmas I got some more Guardians, the Battleforce, a Farseer, and a Vyper. They were painted silver, white, and blue. I repainted the Guardians.
The next year, I got many metal Aspect Warriors. I painted everything in Beil-Tan colors.
I played Eldar for a long time. Eventually I got the Apoc-sized collection I have now, painted in the colors of Craftworld Fantoma.
I started Imperial Guard after seeing some Cadians. I painted them grey, brown, and bronze. The first Verviedians were formed, and the first game was played with them as proxy Dire Avengers. I wrote the fluff for them. Now I have 6 Leman Russes. 3 of them were the originals from the basement, that I inherited from my brother when he went to college.
A year later, and 2 months ago, I started my Tyranids, the first army I min/maxed and played competively. I had many losses, and a few sweet wins. They are painted sepia, with green carapces.
Today, I encountered a random Steel Legion guy on my bedroom floor. He had fallen off of my shelf. I brought him downstairs, and began to paint.

I was browsing that infernal time sink known as TV Tropes when I found an article on 40k. Inquisitive about this strange new world, and having vague memories of owning a Battle for Macragge set, I ventured forth to learn more. I discovered GW's website and perused it's pages. I read about the armies and initially Tau stood out to me. That is until I saw a Leman Russ tank. I clicked on the tank and I kind of liked it. I then clicked on a link to an article about building an Emperor's Fist tank company. I was hooked.

My friends got me into dawn of war.... Loved the game/armies a lot. Then my friend told me it was a table top game, I couldn't resist

Saw in the thread closed due to certain people spamming off topic posts and seeing it in here too, Dawn of War.
Had not even considered that as being one of the things that would get a player interested in the hobby. Goes to show players can come in from different directions. Seems I was wrong in that regard.Always willing to admit when I am wrong and in this case glad to have it shown to me as it is enlightening.

a friend on deployment got me into it.
first it was playing Dawn of War then from there him showing pictures of his models, to then reading the books that he had sent over, Ultramarines Omnibus, Storm of Iron, first three novels in the Horus Heresy series. From there the rest is history and we have been playing ever since. plus I think ive always been into that sort of thing so it was really that hard to get me into it really.

Was walking around a mall when I was younger and saw a gw, so I had to go inside. Fast forward a few years later, and I remember that store and decide to look back into it. And here I am

Well, way back in the day, my brothers both were into WHFB and WH40K. My oldest brother had/has an army of Chaos Space Marines (just found them, BTW) with all sorts of stuff like Khorne Berzerkers, Thousand Sons, Terminators, and some metal guys that I can't find anywhere else (look way more robotic than other CSM stuff). He got out of 40K a few years ago, but I always enjoyed reading the codices and watching him paint models. At the time he was into the game, I really didn't have the disposable income I do now. Initially, it was because I was too young to have a job. Then, when I did have a job, I had other hobbies that ate up more of my income (I have $1000 worth of Gundam models and several $K worth of Transformers). So I never got into it. I also was more of a tabletop RPG player over the years, and have spent a good deal of money on that, including on oodles of D&D Miniatures stuff.

My other brother, on the other hand, has always stayed into 40K to varying degrees over the years. He started out with Dark Angels, with a number of Greenwing stuff. He now has several thousand points worth of Deathwing, Ravenwing, and Greenwing. He also has lord knows how much worth of Imperial Guard stuff, as well as a smattering of Chaos Space Marines stuff. I always liked the Dark Angels fluff as well as the Blood Angels.

So here is where I came in. This summer, for one reason or another, I had decided to get into 40K. I was on vacation with my family and my DA/IG/CSM playing brother had taken a detour to meet up with us. The hotel was within walking distance of a hobby store. Initially, I had planned on checking out some D&D books and whatnot while my brother browsed WH stuff. I got bored of the RPG stuff, so I wandered over to where my bro was. There were huge display cases of painted Warhammer models, so I couldn't help but admire all of the stuff. Something about seeing all the painted models had rekindled my desire to build and paint all manner of plastic crack. I should have bought some stuff there, but I had decided not to, regrettably.

When I returned home, I still had that itch and really wanted something for stress relief, so I decided to check out the local game store for some WH stuff. What started with buying a box of the press-fit Space Marines ballooned into Wife-Pissing-Off volumes of models. Initially, I had a hard time deciding on a color scheme for my miniatures. I didn't want to get the same army that my brother had, so Dark Angels (in spite of the fact that they are my favorite army, fluffwise) were off the table. Kinda wish I hadn't let that get to me, because I would probably have a huge army of Ravenwing by now. I also really liked the Blood Angels(seriously, my username is a guy who pilots red Mobile Suits), but a little internet digging had led me to believe that they sucked in game, so they were off the table as well. This is also something I regret, since they are a really cool army in the fluff. For some god-awful reason I decided against the Space Wolves, in spite of the fact that their Battleforce would have had just about everything I needed to get an army started. Part of the reason is that all of their little wolf details looked to be a pain in the rear for a beginner to paint. So, eventually, I settled on just getting a vanilla Space Marines army. I decided I wanted to make something that was a First or Second Founding Chapter, since I didn't really want to make up my own chapter. My favorite color is blue, and I figured that if I was going to spend hours painting something, I might as well paint the army in a color I like (I do like Red and Green as well). That pretty much left me with Ultramarines, Novamarines, Eagle Warriors, and Crimson Fists. The Novamarines and Eagle Warriors had a color scheme that looked to be an anathema to beginners (I STILL wouldn't condemn myself to painting an army that requires that level of precision), which left Ultramarines and Crimson Fists. I think the collective psychic backlash of Ultramarine hate pushed me away from the Smurfs (seriously, I had not even read stuff like 1d4chan or TVtropes's 40K stuff prior to this decision), so I settled on the Crimson Fists for color scheme alone.

I ended up buying one of those little 3-man press-fit boxes, and got to work painting them. My single gallery image is of my dreadnought that was my fourth painted model. I think, for a beginner, I did a pretty bang up job on him. I need a better camera so I can show off my burgeoning army of Crimson Fists. Only after all of this did I discover that there is LITERALLY a frickin' Char Aznable character for the Tau(Casval Rem Deikun = Char Aznable's real name). I kinda feel like I am betraying my screen name for not playing him. Since then, I have picked up up some Space Wolves from the Stormclaw boxed set. They sit unpainted and half-finished (the Terminators, Krom, and half of a 10-man squad of Grey Hunters are built) as I lack the paints I would need to finish them. I want to get Bjorn, because I love the 1d4chan rendition of him. Otherwise, my Space Wolf army is probably never going to get much bigger. I will probably add a box of Grey Hunters or Blood Claws and the new model of Logan Grimnar (I will get just the mini, not the stupid sled somehow) and that is it. MAYBE some Thunderwolf Cavalry, but I think 1d4chan Bjorn and I have a bit in common since I think the Space Wolves have a bit too much wolf stuff. If a boxed set a la Stormclaw comes out with Blood Angels in it, I will probably buy it in a hot second and sell the other half on eBay. I also have thought about starting a small force of Ravenwing, since I love Space Marine bikes, and they have the coolest ones. The best part about getting small forces like this is that I could always sub out sections of my Crimson Fists and play Crimson Fists with BA/DA/SW allies, so I don't feel like I am wasting money on having armies just to paint.

Long story short, I am an addict and probably need help.

I was already collecting model planes since I was about 6 or 7. When I was about 10 my mate bought a boxed set for WHFB (the Bretonnian and Lizardmen one). So I got interested and went to an FLGS to see what it was about. Bought a box of Bretonnian archers, my friend was mainly wanting to collect the Bretonnians so I ended up looking at Lizardmen instead.

Luckily, or unluckily depending on how you look at it, the FLGS had an entire Lizardmen army assembled and primed in white. It was fortuitous as at that age I would not have had the money to buy an entire army straight off AND if I had to buy brand new models, I probably would have gotten half way through assembling them before I realised "this is stupid" and quit

So if my FLGS didn't have that 2nd hand Lizardmen army going for about half price I probably never would have actually got in to the game.

40k came a bit later, another mate a couple of years later bought a 40k boxed set (2nd edition) and got me interested in Space Wolves. I actually started Epic 40k before I started regular 40k.

I was already playing LOTR SBG and Space Marines were cool, so...

My first entry to tabletop gaming was the DeAgostini LotR magazine, which I still have every issue (bar one special edition) of. 12 minis, rules, painting guides and scenarios/batreps in each issue for £3.99 a piece, it's hard to argue with that.

A few years later, a friend introduced me to 40k, and that was it. I debated for a while between Tau, Crons and Eldar before realising the Imperial Truth, and now have many (too many?) points of the Emperor's legions.

Note to self- send friend a bill!

When I was in middle school in the late 80s, several of my friends played Warhammer Fantasy. I don't remember if it was WHFB or some kind of role-playing game, but I remember thinking the models and the fiction were really cool. My mom could never really afford to buy me much, so I never entered the hobby.

Fast forward to about 2 years ago. A good friend of mine died in a car accident. I caught up with one of his friends, who I'd met several times before, at the funeral. Later on, he gave me a call and invited me over. He'd been playing 40k for decades, and also LOTR (not as long obviously), and he had a very impressive collection of armies and miniatures.

I first got drawn into the LOTR game (which IMO is a superior ruleset to 40k), because I've been a big Tolkien fan since I was a kid. However, by this time the LOTR game had already diminished in popularity, me and him were basically the only people interested in the game locally, and he had plenty of figures to play just about anything we'd want.

So I decided to start a 40k army, because there are many 40k player locally, and Necrons were my choice, on the basis of their similarity to the Terminator (and the green gauss tubes seemed really cool to me).

My older brother purchased HeroQuest and I played it over and over again as a kid. I created own dungeons, changed the rulesets and love this game to this day. Don't know where we got them from, but we had a couple of advertisement magazines from GW and I looked through the pictures of painted miniatures again and again. We had one toy store nearby, that sold GW stuff and I remember dragging my mom along to buy some. But seeing the price tags, she refused.
When I was around 11, I had some other kid in my school class, whose brother had Warhammer stuff. So I began again looking into GW products. This time, I purchased the just released 3rd edition starter set. And from there, my Space Marine army grew pretty quickly. I abandoned the hobby for 10 years but I'm back into it since the beginning of this year.

I was first introduced to 40k universe by playing the dawn of war computer games like some of the people on here, and little by little I got more into the hobby and bought my first set of Boyz
back in 2008. I really enjoy the freedom of making unique models especially with orkz ( I love making looted Vehicles ) and I enjoy reading the massive amount of fluff involved in the universe.
but the number 1 thing I enjoy the most is putting together the models and painting them

Back in middle school I bought some easterlings for Lotr, being a huge Tolkien fan. After a while, I started looking at the 40k stuff on Gw's old website. I remember the models that really caught me were the metal chaos space marine sorcerers, they were just so cool

After a bit more looking, I saw the tau and instantly wanted to collect them. After checking eBay, I bought around 750 points of tau. I ended up getting a ton of my friends into it, and in 10th grade I starte my iron hands after a bit of lexicanum browsing, and they are still my main army to this day.

This is something else I had not considered. LoTR.
I had considered getting an army for that game but was afraid to due to it being based on movies and figured it would lose out in the long run as the movies fell behind in the box office. Never thought of it being a "gateway" into 40k. Wonder if GW planned for that as a benefitor if it was an accidental by product.

 EVIL INC wrote:
This is something else I had not considered. LoTR.
I had considered getting an army for that game but was afraid to due to it being based on movies and figured it would lose out in the long run as the movies fell behind in the box office. Never thought of it being a "gateway" into 40k. Wonder if GW planned for that as a benefitor if it was an accidental by product.

It was a total gateway for me. I don't think I would've even got into tabletop wargaming if there was no LOTR game.

On a side note, it always seemed to me that GW taking on LOTR was a curious move. It seems LOTR is a direct competitor against WHFB. They are basically the same genre...why would a company compete against itself?

 jasper76 wrote:

 EVIL INC wrote:
This is something else I had not considered. LoTR.
I had considered getting an army for that game but was afraid to due to it being based on movies and figured it would lose out in the long run as the movies fell behind in the box office. Never thought of it being a "gateway" into 40k. Wonder if GW planned for that as a benefitor if it was an accidental by product.

It was a total gateway for me. I don't think I would've even got into tabletop wargaming if there was no LOTR game.

On a side note, it always seemed to me that GW taking on LOTR was a curious move. It seems LOTR is a direct competitor against WHFB. They are basically the same genre...why would a company compete against itself?

It was only a competitor in that it was a Fantasy Wargame. The minis were in a different stlye and scale, and the rules were entirely different (skirmish-based, and when they tried to do Mass Battle for LOTR it kind of flopped). Given that in the good ol' days you could stick the LotR label on just about anything and it would sell, it probably made them mountains of cash. I'm pretty sure I've seen stats or a quote somewhere that, in the Two Towers-Return of the King period the LotR range outsold 40k and WFB combined, which I can more than believe. It was a great product in and of itself, accessible to fans of gaming, the books, the films or the genre, cheap enough to buy with pocket money and a gateway to the rest of the hobby.

Those were the days...

8~ ish years ago I found Dawn of War at Tesco's budget PC game shelf. I'd built the Robogear starter about the same time and never played a single game of it though I built and painted a bunch of the stuff. I also saw the W40K range when I browsing at a local store, the price was obviously offputting but I loved the look of the Space Marines.

Long story short, Dawn Of War and its sequels was and still is one of the best games I've ever played. I liked the story and the atmosphere, the design, the gameplay was awesome and so were the aesthetics. By the time Soulstorm came out I'd had a Christmas where I bought the Space Marine megaforce, built and painted it and sat on it with other stuff for years. I bought a lot more Space Marines, a fair amount of Orks and a single Imperial Guard Battle Force by ordering them. I built and painted everything but the Guard.

I played 2 games months before I properly got into it with a friend, though we had hilariously little idea of how the rules worked. Power fists struck at initiative, I'd built a squad of Terminators with storm bolter+lightning claw, and everything had armour saves against everything.

"what the hell is an invulnerable save? Meh."

Basically the manager told me about beginner games and I came by the next day with some stuff, played and enjoyed it. I particularly remember meltaguns as being terrible from that first match (just as was 5th launched, oh god) because the one in my Tactical Squad failed to do diddly squit against a Devil Fish at its short range.

Kept playing games at GW, then played bigger games with some new friends I'd made and went to a few tournaments, before I partnered up with my friend who played IG and got inspired to build up a 750 point Guard for a doubles tournament. That was a really fun day; it was my 2nd, 3rd and 4th game with IG and we won two of them. Got hooked on IG from there.

Why has no one mentioned the books???

I went to my local hobby store to look at model rockets once and they had a small selection of 40k and WFB models and codicies. I picked up the 5th ed Grey Knight Codex and looked through, but never bought anything. But some names caught my ear, so I googled them when I went home and spent hours reading the 40k wikia site. Then, a couple years later, I was in the book store and a whole wall of my local B&N was devoted to WFB/ 40k novels. So, without initially realizing I was buying into a 20+ book long collection, I read (and am still reading) most of the horus heresy. It took almost a year and a half for me to realize it was a table top miniatures game, but by then, I had no money, so the best I could hope for was Dark Vengeance for Christmas. I thought the codicies I read in my hobby store were companion books for an RPG or video game or something.

Fast forward to the 10th grade for me, and I got a job! "Woo Hoo!" I said. "$7.25 an hour! I can totally afford 40k now right?" I had already got Dark Vengeance the last Christmas and used that as the basis for my Chaos marines and my brother's Raven Guard. I've since gotten raises that made 40k a viable hobby, but no, you cannot afford 40k on 7.25 an hour, if anyone was wondering.

I get to play Robotech. The Tau Empire were immediately my army as soon as i saw them.

Middle school pier pressure got me and like 8 of us in

Quit through Highschool and came back after college with one of my friends

Stayed for the Fluff

 Desubot wrote:
Middle school pier pressure got me and like 8 of us in

Quit through Highschool and came back after college with one of my friends

Stayed for the Fluff

Those damned piers. Getting far too many seaside folk into wargaming...

Two things got me into 40k. A prepainted game called Havok . Myself and my brother went looking for Havok minis as Woolworths (now, I'm aging use there) was sold out. We stumbled upon a GW and it piqued our interest. Secondly a friend somewhat coincidentally invited me along to Sunday beginners and the rest is history. Which for now has resulted in a slow falling out of love with a system that I dedicated much of my life to.

Well, if I've got one thing to thank 40k for it is getting me interested in the wider world of wargaming. Around the same time, the aforementioned GW had a dickish manager that stopped games nights. So we went and formed our own club and discovered the wonderful world of Void along the way. Discovered Warmachine at Britcon a few years later and the rest there is history too.

The only thing that would get me interested in 40k again is for GW to make a proper balanced rules set and no just "forge ya narrative with randomrandomrandom!" rubbish that needs to die in a fire. Fix your rules and nature will take its course.

My brother was heavily into WHFB [played Bretonnians, coolest WHFB army ever] when Fantasy was the cash cow and 40k was just starting up. Aforementioned brother brought some beaky marines and painted them up as Rainbow Warriors, I saw them, picked up the Rogue Trader rulebook, read the fluff, and have been hooked ever since.

Shift towards GRIMDARK! and taking the background seriously [e.g. fleshing out the Horus Heresy] has thrown me a little but once you're in, you're in, whether you're gaming or not.

My stepdad was playing Dawn of War, and I would walk by the computer room and watch from the doorway. I was young and my mom didn't want me to watch because of the gore, than my mom went to beauty school at nights and my stepdad let me play Dawn of War: Dark Crusade. Eventually I was allowed to play and then I wanted to get into the hobby. This was back when Witchhunters were an army, I wanted to play them. Just how they looked caught my attention. I also wanted to play Chaos Space Marines, I would always play that faction on the DoW games. But I would just look on the website, because being 12/13ish with no money and no one to play with I didn't buy any models. Than about 4 years ago a buddy of mine stared talking about how he would go into a shop and play. I bought myself the CSM box set and built and paint my 1st squad and got in playing 5th addition.

My older brother traded some action figures for a Rogue Trader. Me and my twin poured over every word and picture of that book. We collected random models we liked. We even threw in some Battletech models to use as "combat robots."
We played the snot out of RT before really getting a grip on what this whole tabletop gaming thing was. (We were like 8, so what did we know?)

I was in Vancouver, BC with my family when I was maybe 9, I wandered into a GW and was entranced. I think I spent about two hours staring slack jawed at the various armies. My parents bought me the box of six tactical Space Marines, and later the Epic starter box. I fell out of the hobby until after college, living in Texas a couple coworkers mentioned 40k in low tones, I headed to the local games store (the awesome Battlefield Games in Killeen, TX), and started buying again in 5th Ed with Blood Angels and AOBR. Now I have a metric ton of 40k and am looking to start Fantasy too.

Pretty cool thread though, seeing how everyone got started into the hobby.

Thank you. I tried it before with a poll but certain people spammed it with off topic posts till it got closed.
Of course, not being computer literate, I screwed up the poll anyway and reading through the posts here, I see I still woulda missed a lot of options. Idiot me is so used to a few means of 40k entry that I missed out on a lot.
Another one I see I missed was the books. Good call on that.
I'm so used to people getting the books cause they were into the game, never even crossed my mind of it going the other way around.

A side note, my original 40k army (chaos), I had given to a buddy a few years ago and it has not seen action since. Another buddy moved back to town and may borrow some of them for game so looks like the old boys will get to see some mayhem after all. I cringe every time I see how bad my painting used to be.