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In my local mall , there is this Toys R Us in one end of the mall. And next to it was games workshop.
I have walked pass it for months just thinking it was a video game shop and the display models were just people's hobby display items to brighten the store.

Till one day i couldn't find a game i wanted , so i decided to give games workshop a try... then the confusion starts.
I walked in , saw nothing but boxes on the wall , looked at the pics on the back and thought they were like 3d CG render of the games lol
After awhile of checking out every box i was confused , the staff asked me what was i looking for , i asked if they have video game.

They laughed and thought i was joking , then realized i wasnt. they tried explaining to me what warhammer is.
So i asked if they were models (as i point to the display case) They replied no , its actually a game.
Even more confused i asked , are the models like special edition items for video games? ( at this time i had NO IDEA that people play games with models )

Eventually the staff explained it from the basic + rules , then i thought wow... thats so weird but i understood. They asked if i want to give a game a try ,
its still weird to me but i do like painting things.

So that day + my first army / GW purchase = GW paint set ( comes with extra marines to practice ) , a tactical marine box , and a white dwarf (staff said i can understand the hobby more )

I still remember as i paint the sergent 's bald head , thats the first time i think GW makes stupid looking things -_-

My First army was a Genestealer Cult. Which always got it's head kicked in. Except that one time I used the Shotgun knockback rule, 10 Hybrids, and my mates own Vortex grenade to chin his Librarian.

God knows where all the Hybrids went. I found 6 a while back and sold them there and then. Bro and I have loads of the critters, all now long lost :(

My RPG group got into Space Marine in a big way. I bought an Ork force that had an awesome (original) Great Gargant painted Bad Moonz. Then I moved into 40k. To this day I think that the Bad Moonz are the best color scheme for Orks.

When I was at primary school all my friends talked about was Warhammer, and it irked me as I had no Idea what it was. I, too, thought Games Workshop was a branch of a video game shop. In my frustration I mocked them for their love of warhammer, until I started to listen to them one day. Turns out, It is my cup of tea, and the rest is history.
Now most of them have stopped except for me, who started out calling it "warhammer techno crap", which still shames me to this day
True, if boring.

My first army was Lizardmen, when they came out the time before this one...

I was introduced by my schoolmate and i was immediatly charmed lol

I have been collecting ever since

My first was the Empire from WH. I remember walking into this awesome looking new store at our local mall and playing a demo. I did not know what the hell I was doing or how the rules worked. I read the whole rulebook and codex over and over and eventually was bored and overwhelmed with rules causing me to leave the hobby world behind for about a year and a half.

It was one day while walking around the mall bored out of my mind that I decided to re enter the store and was introduced to 40k. Looking through the armies I discovered IG and knew what I wanted to play

My oldest brother and his friends used to play 40k games in the basement all the time. Im talking at times there was hundreds and hundreds of minis on the floor, just blowing craters everywhere. I always thought it was cool, and watched the games alot. One night my brother wanted to play when on one was around to test some new army list he had made. So I was the guinea pig. I ended up beating him, and it was a great feeling.
My first army was Chaos and loved them until 5th edition lol

surprisingly enough I saw an ad for Rogue Trader along with a selection of the original metal beakie marines in Dragon Magazine. Some of you weren't even born yet it was like 1987-88. I bought the Rogue Trader book a year or so later and a box of the original plastic space marines, painted them up as Dark Angels in black armor with red insignia because that's what they looked like then. I'd added some metal assault marines, devastators and chaplains/librarians... which used to come 3 to a blister. The army itself was just a couple of troop squads plus characters, vehicles were not readily available yet. Only played it for a few months as most of my friends weren't really that into it. At about the same time I got heavily into Blood Bowl, bought a goblin team and took them to a painting class that a LGS was running. At that point I was much more into painting than playing games and would buy tons of figs just to paint them.

It wasn't until 3rd edition that I got back into 40k but in the interim I had played tons of Battletech, and 1st ed. Warzone.

I had mistakenly walked into a GW store once, looked around, and then kinda forgot about it.

Then about 2 months later I was at my local wizards of the coast store playing magic (dont ask, I prefer to forgot those times), and they just got a shipment of warhammer stuff in. One of the WotC staff people explained it to me what it was, and I was hooked from then on. I got the old starter set with the space marines and dark eldar, a paint starter (more SM), and the SM codex. I must have read the rule book and codex a hundred times, absorbing all the info I could before I even played a game. When it came time to pick an army, I went with the Dark Angels, loving their back story and their whole knight feel. Dark Angels had some great rules that made them unique from the other SM armies. Even though I had a random as hell paint scheme (right half was red, left half was green, looked like a damn Christmas army), I loved my armies look and feel, and bought the metal robed dark angels exclusively from then on.

I lost. ALOT. But the main point was that I had fun assembling, painting, and playing the army.

I dropped out of the hobby for about 4 years, but never gave up on the fluff. The universe to this day is my all time fav, and probably what will keep me coming back.

My first experiance with the game was finding an old white dwarf in my basement in 1st grade. My journey to the dark side had begun...

My second encounter was at a St. Paddies day parade. We parked right outside a comic shop, way back when I was into some stupid card game or another, and I went in to see if they had any. I bought a couple packs, and went back outside. As I openede the door, I saw what appeared to be a diorama. I walked over to investigate and saw they were playing a game. They asked if I wanted to join, so I did, and they tought me the basic rules. It was Space Marine vs. Dark Eldar. My Marines got pwned so hard. But I liked the way things of the game looked, and my dad started picking up white dwarves on his way back from work. Several years later for christmas, my dad presented me with the 3rd ed. starter set. I read the rul;e book, but was having alot of trouble understanding the rules, and let the set sit in my basement for a few years. After a few more years of surviving on just white dwarf, I wnet back into that same shop, and saw they had battle for macragge. It was a pretty good pricce, so I picked it up, and immediatly began building my marines and nids. I read the stripped down version of the rulebook they provided, and still had a lot of troble understanding them, so I began playing using the ready made scenarios to understand. I soon became enlightened. I haven't played a game in a few years though, and have drifted to being more interseted in the fluff of the game, but I still build and have ordered AOBR. Ill see if my Dad wants to be Orks or Marines... I'm back baby.

I'd been playing a few other tabletop miniature games. I don't really remember what games they were, I know one had sea-dragon-turtles, and the other was a napoleonic era game when some friends invited me over to try out a "new" game.

I still remember the huge table, I think it was an empty frame for a waterbed with a bottom put on it and a ton of sand emptied into it. Before each game we would mould hills and such out of the sand to play.

First army was black legion out of the Slaves to Darkness book, back when black legion was cool. I just remember reading how they had figured out how to allow daemonic possession but not die after the daemons leaving, their anger towards the other chaos legions when they tried to clone the war master. The lightning raid to destroy the clone and then them painting their armor black in shame. The retreat to their only surviving space hulk as the other chaos chapters turned on them. And the flash to the present day when no one knows what they are doing but their iconography is found all over the place.

SCREW ABADDON!!!! and his bullcrap revisionist history!

Back when I was in high school, around my Junior and Senior years, when I was playing a lot of Magic The Gathering, I remember going to the LGS that we had in Vallejo and seeing White Dwarf Magazine on the store's counter. I never did peak into it but I asked what it was for and the store owner pointed out to me the wall of Warhammer/Warhammer 40k stuff. The things that interested me the most were 40k items. I don't remember what specifically... I believe it was the vehicles that had me interested or it could have been some of the heavier infantry. I never did get into it.

Some years later, while with my first wife in Pleasanton, we tried our hand at modeling...it was a small, small attempt. We made our purchase at a GW at the Sunvalley Mall in Concord. I don't remember my experience with the employees other than asking if the game was like StarCraft/WarCraft... My wife and I ended up buying a painting set that came with some lizard men. We tried unsuccessfully to paint them and I still might have a couple of them some where.

Fast forward to 2007, I'm long since divorced, with no lizardmen, and back in Vallejo . The previous fall, I purchased my first miniatures game, Star Wars Miniatures, and decided to start going to the store to watch how things were played. I completely fell in love with SWM and decided to come to one of the Warmachine League days to check out what that was about. At first I thought it was Warhammer... the folks attending told me very much so that it wasn't. I got into Warmachine after that and have been playing it on and off ever since.

A year after playing SWM and WM/Hordes, some months before 5th edition came out, I got into Warhammer 40,000. My first army was a hodge podge. I had no real focus. At one point I was buying models so I could fill out every possible option of a tactical squad... I would work towards the max number of boltguns or plasmaguns that could be had while still staying within FOC. Then I start buying models just to have had them... "hmmm I don't have a land speeder yet... I'll buy that". I never did get around to finishing up my number of tactical squad models nor did I get the army painted other than a few boltgun and heavy weapons guys. I was going for the Ultramarines but prior to that had ideas of doing Space Wolves and then maybe something with a green color scheme, kind of like the DA.

I got introduced by a friend a few years ago when he brought in a white dwarf. Guard had just been released (before the new one) and the second I saw the new cadian plastics I was hooked. After about a year of losing ALOT I finally got a decent grasp of the game and started to win.

After about 4 years in started my marines army, of which I have yet to make a name, i'm proud I got them to 4000 points. Now I collect fantasy as well, have three 40k armies and i'm starting to dabble with necromunda.

First encounter was a long time ago, when a friend at school had a shoe-box of random minis, most of them RT-era Marines.

A while later I made a new friend and school and the first time I was over at his house he was painting Epic Eldar. After playing a few random games with Epic models I decided to make the plunge to normal 40K, and bought Tyranid Attack - my first GW purchase - at the grand opening of one of the major Sydney stores.

And when people say the 'old' starter set included Dark Eldar, that makes me feel very old. My first 'starter set' had 20 Marines, 20 Orks and 40 Gretchin!

I used to play magic at our local store and would walk by the minis and never think to stop and look at them. One day my girlfriend and I take a trip to the mall. I see a little kiosk with boxes of little soldiers and painted miniatures being manned by a tall skinny dude with no tan. I stop and ask him what he is selling. He informs me that the stuff on the kiosk is for a game called Warhammer 40k. I'm thinking, "ok this dude sells little soldiers big deal". He asks if I want to try it. Sure why not. He has a little table next to the kiosk and he places 10 little black and white spaze marieenz and 10 little purple and silve Dark Eldar. He says I can play the black and white guys. We roll dice, I kill 10 little elfs and I am instantly addicted. It must be like the first time somebody shoots up heroine. He says that he has a store that I am welcome to visit any time, or just stop by the kiosk. A week later I purchase the 3rd edition 40k box set, some paints, a brush, and a WD. I then remember that the store I play magic at sells GW product as well. A month or two later I am hopelessly addicted to the game.

My first army were red and gold (latered to be christened the Brazen Claws). My space marines were led by a commander in terminator armor, a couple of tact squads, a land speeder, and some terminators. I later added a rhino, razorback, and eventually assault marines and a LR Crusader. They were very poorly painted, but it worked for the time being. We played 2-3 times a week for several months. It was a great time and I spent way too much time with my nose either in the rulebook or drooling over my copy of wd. I miss those days, but I appreciate them for what they were.

Ah I had a friend that lived across the road from me, one day he got all of his brothers old minis (he'd moved on to fantasy).

He came over with all these Space Marines and Orks of course I immideatly picked marines purely because they reminded me of Iron Man (this was back when the Marvel Action Hour was still on BBC1).

A week later I went into Workshop in Birmingham and left with....1 Paint set, 1 Tactical Squad, Rhino, Space Marine Captain and THE IMPERIAL FIREBASE!!

Fun times such such fun times.

I first started; as such, quite a few years back, as a lot of other people, in school, started to play it and I had to get involved, everyone was playing 40k at the time and I was drawn to the Chaos Space Marines, not really sure quite why. Got the megaforce bought for me and undercoated it, added on extras and such, never actually painted the army. But, yeah, for me it was friends that got me into it, but when their interst diwndled, mine did too unfortunately.

Until a few months ago when I had a ressurection in the form of a friend and I somehow talkign about it, but he was a LOTR player, I decided to try it again, this time with LOTR at his house. Got hooked again and now have finally started painting an actual couple of armies, and about a month ago I decided to dabble back into 40k, but with Imperial Guard this time, as I'm more into painting and am just a sucker for the concept.

I was with my dad, going to his mate's railway shop and they had a rack of weird little packages with names like 'orc warrior' and 'the watcher from beneath' or some such. I'd loved Tolkein when I was younger and this all seemed too cool. Found out later that they were for something called 'Dungeons and Dragons', bought some, painted them in Humbrol... then found a magazine with a guy called Thrud in it, so cool. Who are this Games Workshop? This John Blanche rocks. Met other people into this, and started playing anything I could get my hands on, Warhammer Fantasy Battle, DnD, WFRP. then something called 40k, which wasn't as good as BLOOD BOWL! or Space Hulk. I don't play anymore, though I'm getting back into painting, and hanging about on boards like this. Nothing wiill ever replace that first time, though. A real WTF moment, up there with all the other firsts in life.

LunaHound wrote:
In my local mall , there is this Toys R Us in one end of the mall. And next to it was games workshop.
I have walked pass it for months just thinking it was a video game shop and the display models were just people's hobby display items to brighten the store.

Till one day i couldn't find a game i wanted , so i decided to give games workshop a try... then the confusion starts.
I walked in , saw nothing but boxes on the wall , looked at the pics on the back and thought they were like 3d CG render of the games lol
After awhile of checking out every box i was confused , the staff asked me what was i looking for , i asked if they have video game.

They laughed and thought i was joking , then realized i wasnt. they tried explaining to me what warhammer is.
So i asked if they were models (as i point to the display case) They replied no , its actually a game.
Even more confused i asked , are the models like special edition items for video games? ( at this time i had NO IDEA that people play games with models )

Eventually the staff explained it from the basic + rules , then i thought wow... thats so weird but i understood. They asked if i want to give a game a try ,
its still weird to me but i do like painting things.

So that day + my first army / GW purchase = GW paint set ( comes with extra marines to practice ) , a tactical marine box , and a white dwarf (staff said i can understand the hobby more )

I still remember as i paint the sergent 's bald head , thats the first time i think GW makes stupid looking things -_-

In the time when Atari ruled, and GW was in its infancy, OUR LGS sold RPG's, table tops, and plenty of hobby stuff. The first minies from GW I saw were the basic Marine box of 30, and Ork box with the mob and the game was the farm defense thing from the rogue trader book.

The first fantasy model I ever saw was the Ent with the platform on it, and the wood elf army.

The Old school Rogue trader guys were the dogs when it came to minis at the time. You had Grenader, Ral Partha, and Cidetal (GW).

The plastic vehicles were neat because you actually got something for the money, and they sold 3 per box in them.

My first game was defense of the farm. Rogue trader played like Necromunda does now, and there were tables for everything.

I ended up adding a couple of gang members to my army of 5 or 6 marines, and a robot looking thing with legs. I think it was a sentinal, but it was a long time ago, and the army was the stores, not mine.

I ended up getting a couple of boxes of squats and some mole morters and thudd guns after that game, and eventually we had a pretty good showing for the games.

My first encounter with 40k came when visiting a friends home many years ago (95),and noticed his armies (SM & CSM),talked with him a bit about the game,thought it sounded cool,but at the time I did not have a lot of money to spare.
Skip ahead a few years and my girlfriend at the times younger brother purchased the 3rd ed starter box (the one with SM & Darl Eldar),he didn't want the DE so he gave them to me,later when he bought a second starter box I was given those DE as well.
Now with 40 Dark Eldar warriors I had the beginings of my first 40K army,I added some Incubi,a Lord,some Raiders and Ravengers along with some wytch sqauds and off I went,gaming against anyone I could and loosing almost every game,but it was great.

Friend sold me his WHF 4thed Dark Elves. Played a while, liked the system, bought more DE. Had original Mengle Manhides, dragon, etc. Stayed with DE through 5thed (new minis!)

40k first army was CSM - Nurgle right as 3rd ed came out.

Finished playing with Necrons, sold it all - starting over for both.

Good times.

My first army was in early-mid 2nd ed.

A friend brought a GW catalog and some Marine scouts to school and we all thought they were the coolest things ever. We started playing in the tiny library there using what he had(basically a squad per person for the 4-5 people interested). After a week or so of this, I stopped by the FLGS and picked up some Eldar Guardians and a jetbike, which were eventually joined by some Aspect Warriors(Scorpions and Reapers), a Falcon(when released), and the Armorcast Revenant Titan(I still regret trading it for a rather large amount of Eldar stuff to make a legal 3rd ed army).

My first army was witchhunters. I've been painting minis for 25 years, but for a long time, I thought the GW figures were too cartoony, and went for Ral Partha and Grenadier and the like.

So, SparkeyG drags me into the local GW store, circa 2004, and, wow, the models don't look anything like the cartoons from the 90s. Witchhunters was the new army at the time, and I liked the creepy inquisition stuff, so there it was.

I recently posted pictures of that army, click the inquisition icon in my sig if you want to see.

My wife, also a gamer, demanded that if I was to play Witchhunters, she'd play witches, and so began the Slaanesh collection as well.

In high school, 1996 I think, there was a kid I was friends with who had just moved over from Wales. He convinced me to try this game called Warhammer, I took the orks & gretchin (& cardboard dreadnaught) against his 20 marines. Shortly thereafter a Games Workshop store opened up in Adelaide. I bought some Eldar and was hooked. (Good old "full squad in a blister pack" aspect warriors!)

I remember my dad buying me and my brothers HeroQuest for Christmas one year, '90 if i recall correctly. I loved playing the game, much more so than my brothers who, being a few years younger, were more likely to eat the models rather than play with them. My dad used to build and paint model aircraft and, one day, i 'borrowed' some of his enamel paints and created quite possibly the ugliest chaos warrior to have ever existed (I think even Nurgle would have told him where to go). My parents seemed glad that i'd found a hobby that didn't involve a computer and bought me the second edition box set for my birthday the following year.

At the time, i wasn't even aware of GW's existence. I just painted some orks and marines and played a few games with my dad and a couple of friends. Around '93 was the first time i went into a LGS where i was suitably staggered by what was on offer. I'd read about other races in the fluff, but figured that that was all that they were! The first competitive army i put together was Eldar, if you can call a guardian army competitive that is. There was a pretty good balance of armies at the GW store in those days, apart from three or four marine players everyone had something different making for fun games. The manager at the time was a guy called Will, who used to let us do pretty much whatever we wanted but would always keep a tight reign over how many tables could be used for each game and, properly, encouraged us to welcome newcomers.

My interest was nearly killed in '95 when we had a change of manager at the store. A git called Richard replaced Will, promptly banned 90% of the regulars for 'not buying enough stuff in the store' (we all used mail order), turned five of the six boards into intro games and, most annoying of all, removed the 14+ age limit on thursdays' game nights. The place turned from a friendly, fun place into a creche (complete with seven year olds yelling Waaagh! every time they rolled a dice) almost overnight. Bah.

Fast forward to '08 when one of my uncles asked me to help my cousin paint his army (yep, ultrasmurfs). I had taken a few models into the local GW store (mainly to avoid having to buy 10 paints that i wouldn't need again) to finish off and the chap sat next to me compliments my painting and asks if i do comissions. I end up saying yes, then yes to a couple more people and all of a sudden, i'm sat at home, pieceing together my first army in thirteen years.

Unlike a great many players these days, my parents never bought me any of my warhammers toys.

That's because I was already 19 when it came out, and earning my own money in a job. It was 1987.

I read WD back then semi-regularly (it had articles for other games back then), so I was aware of the new game coming out. I was already a wargamer.

Some mates and I had played several WW2 games (using 1/72 infantry and HO tanks) and modern games in the preceding years, and found a set of SF rules that let us do things like have powered armour troopers fighting alien bugs (this was Combat 3000).

Then I got the Rt rulebook. It combined many of my favourite SF tropes. There were elements of Dune, Foundation, Starship Troopers, Judge Dredd, Nemesis and Torquemada and Termight. It was brilliant.

My first force was 30-odd marines, painted badly in enamels. All named after characters in Starship Troopers.
Then I moved onto eldar (space elves). I had a small pirate force with a skimmer (grav-attack tank)and I'd fight with my mate's orks (with his panzers).

This was all before we had a single GW store in this country. We had nothing but independant stores back then, some of which are still around. We had gaming clubs, though.

They may have started out as ancients players, but they soon opened their arms to their newer brethren.

I learned to play properly at a club. I gained many new friends and a regular place to play, where beer was plentiful and cheap.

Of course, back then there was more competition in the SF minis game. Ral Partha, Grenadier, Fantasy Forge, Mithril, Alternate armies as well as citadel. If Citadel didn't make the minis you liked for your army, you used someone else's.

I chose brettonians...

C'mon! They looked cool! I didn't even know what the damn game was back then.
...so...knightlyish...

Mine was similar to LunaHounds.

My family was walking around Chatswood shopping centre and while they were in a shop me and my brother had to wait outside. While I was waiting, I noticed a shop named Games Workshop. I assumed it was a video game shop. So me and my bro bolted and to my surprise, it turned out to be something else.

One of the employies must of noticed that I had never seen this stuff before. He explained to me and my bro how it all works. The employie suggested that we should start with LOTR. He even gave us a Moria Goblin each.

I then managed to convince my dad to buy me the Mines of Moria set. My life revolves alot around GW products now.

my DM for AD&D had random models he would use for figs when were would map out our games on a large marker board. i was 12 or so and could only play a few hours a week.

most of his models were legit TSR models, but he had a few ork models with guns, and i asked about them once. he said there is a tabletop game that uses them.

around the same time my LGS (one in my small town of bangor actually) had the old skaven army book, i used to look at it from time to time, as well as the old citadel miniture catalogs. i saw for the first time the epic imperator titan, with the guardsmen spilling out of it's leg bastions.

i was hooked.

my DM said her played eldar, kinda like space elves he told me, he also told me he hates orks with a a passion. so i started buying orks whenever i could afford them. blister by blister, second hand sometimes i started building an ork horde. this was around 1994-1995 timeframe.

my orks were ragtag from the getgo, i went total freeboota, painting my boyz like flamboyant pirates, modeling trukks to look like pirate ships. it was good times. later i got into chaos. over the years i tried many armies, but always went back to the orks.

I started out doing Warhammer Role Playing, somewhere around 1990. I thoroughly enjoyed roleplaying, but it became a bit of a drag always being the gamesmaster.

From there it was a natural progression to tabletop gaming.
My first army was a motley crew of Wood Elves, Dwarves and some Imperial dudes.
I had the RT book, but only started playing once 2nd Ed came out. Space Marines and Imperial Guard.
When the first Bretonnian army list was released, I set out to make a Bretonnian army. Unfortunately, life got in the way, and I got rid of all my Warhammer stuff, except for some books and a couple of unpainted models..

Around Easter this year, I walked into a GW store. My girlfriend and me played an introductory game and she was sold. Naturally, I had to follow

So now she's painting up an Ork Waagh, and I'm back to my old forces, SM and IG.