Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I'm trying to get my girlfriend to play 40k with me. She doesn't like the whole "grim darkness of the future" thing, so I'm trying to make it more appealing.
She's really into pink sparkly things and Hello Kitty and all that other cutesy girl stuff, so I decided to create a custom chapter of Space Marines for her.

BEHOLD: Princess Michelle's Sparkle Squad!




It's definitely a work in progress, and I'm not taking it too seriously.

This made me wonder though: has anyone else gotten their girlfriend/wife (or boyfriend/husband) to start playing 40k? How did you do it?

I would say its not worth trying you may meet a wall of hostility.

It really depends on the person. My fiancee is super competitive, probably why she doesn't want to play against me

My friend got his wife an Ork army, but said most games boil down to her watching TV and telling him to move her stuff for her, which is basically playing against yourself.

I got my wife playing. It started off with her just painting a few models here and there and wacthing me play. Now she has her own space marine army and our kitchen table almost always has a game ready or in progress on it. She loves playing now and she is practicing for her first tournament prolly in a few months.

I just cant see girlfriend and Warhammer in the same sentance and take it sereously. sisters of battle might have been gw trying to attract a female market.

No chance. She hates it.

I've had girls interested in it, but none of them were my girlfriend....

My girlfriend plays Tyranids, because they are 'cute'. Really not sure what is cute about a horde of gribbly creatures determined to eat anything and everything in sight... but hey, means I get to play 40k at home, so who cares?

I think it all just depends on the person

My wife started a skaven army for that same reason.

Beregond wrote:My girlfriend plays Tyranids, because they are 'cute'. Really not sure what is cute about a horde of gribbly creatures determined to eat anything and everything in sight... but hey, means I get to play 40k at home, so who cares?

This is why.

I have neither a girlfriend nor boyfriend - nor husband nor wife for that matter - but a very, very close online friend of mine is into the fluff, and I've gotten him to test his toes in the waters of the tabletop game itself recently. He's taking his time with it, and so far as I know he has yet to finish building his AoBR set several months after purchasing it, let alone play his first game. He seems to like it, and he's decently good at the painting part - at least from what I could tell from his photos.

It's not quite the same, but I got my mom to play with me. She's a gamer herself - it may even have been how she and my dad got together - who used to play Dungeons and Dragons, Axis and Allies, and all manner of other strategy games in college. So when I was venting - as I do - one night a couple of years ago about what the point of painting all my minis was since I had no one to play with - social anxiety makes prolonged interaction with the general public a frightening prospect - she chimed in and offered to play with me. She ended up really liking the game. ^^

1.) It is usually a competitive play. Do you want to always win (or lose) against your girlfriend. Or does she?
2.) Some girls like painting. They might like to paint your army (maybe not advisable if she is a Hello Kitty fan , see below!)
3.) Most popular among girls are indeed Sororitas and Tyranids. And Fantasy.

Convert the bolters to flower launchers.

Kroothawk wrote:1.) It is usually a competitive play. Do you want to always win (or lose) against your girlfriend. Or does she?
2.) Some girls like painting. They might like to paint your army (maybe not advisable if she is a Hello Kitty fan , see below!)
3.) Most popular among girls are indeed Sororitas and Tyranids. And Fantasy.

Oooh! A Land Raider made from cotton candy! : D

:: noms the Land Raider ::

I want one of those pink fluffy land raiders.

My girlfriedn likes to paint a little. She has a couple of models in progress. Playing? No.

gaovinni wrote:I want one of those pink fluffy land raiders.

My girlfriedn likes to paint a little. She has a couple of models in progress. Playing? No.

Same here. She doesn't like the competitive nature of it, much prefering things like D&D with a shard victory/loss, and she doesn't like the idea of painting loads of the same miniature.

Does that pink fluff on the Raider represent extra armour or smoke launchers? Or both? I have a beautiful image in my head of a genestealer trying to rend through it and getting all caught up. Poor, sad little genestealer!

Careful of getting your girlfriend/wife into actually playing warhammer..

IT'S A TRAP

Snrk snrk snrk

Speaking from experience.....been surrounded by wargaming since I was a teenager and never interested.

Two years ago my boyfriend ran Rogue Trader rpg.

....now I do more 40k than he does.

One of my mates let his girlfriend paint one of his orks. He has lavender skin and a pink midriff top. His name is Mr Sparkles.

htj wrote:

gaovinni wrote:I want one of those pink fluffy land raiders.

My girlfriedn likes to paint a little. She has a couple of models in progress. Playing? No.

Same here. She doesn't like the competitive nature of it, much prefering things like D&D with a shard victory/loss, and she doesn't like the idea of painting loads of the same miniature.

Does that pink fluff on the Raider represent extra armour or smoke launchers? Or both? I have a beautiful image in my head of a genestealer trying to rend through it and getting all caught up. Poor, sad little genestealer!

And then all the other genestealers try to help him out and instead get caught up also. After the battle they just need to go and shoot all the genestealers and scrape them off the tank. A splendid plan!

My fiancée actually paints and plays, she's still getting the grasp of the rules but she paints her slaanesh daemons quite well!

Getting mine to play was really easy TBH. I started playing and she was curious what I was doing on my weekends. I logged on to GWs site and let her look around for about an hour and she feel in love with the Sisters of Battle models and it just went from there. We played a few friendly home games proxying her units/learning the rules and she was hooked. Now she has more armies than I do.

One trap I avoided was just throwing her into the fray with seasoned gamers who were fully committed to the game. I did not want to overwhelm/discourage her since there was curiousity/interest.

Obligatory, "oh it's this thread again" comment.

There, now that that's out of the way, I have to ask, why? Why get her to play it with you? First off, it's obviously something she doesn't want to do, but she knows you do it, so she obviously doesn't care about the game one way or the other than you do the hours she spends at the mall (or doing that other thing you're indifferent to). Second off, if you force her to play it with you, she'll probably just grow resentful. You can't trick someone into liking something. Last but not least, you probably wouldn't like what you ended up with. People in a relationship need differences. Different views, different hobbies, et cetera. If you're both the same people, then it would get boring quick.

Personal anecdote: I've started dating a girl who's whole idea of gaming is basically Farmville. I've told her about my nerdier persuits. She actually finds it entertaining that I'm into those things, but she has zero interest in doing them herself. Contrast that with a previous girlfriend who was SO desperate to monopolize my attention that she had to be into everything I did. There was no moment I could get away from her, because there was nothing I could do without her. That might sound cold of me to say, but sometimes you need to be able to say "I'm going to go do this", with "this" being something that your 'other' can't do.

Havok210 wrote:Getting mine to play was really easy TBH. I started playing and she was curious what I was doing on my weekends. I logged on to GWs site and let her look around for about an hour and she feel in love with the Sisters of Battle models and it just went from there. We played a few friendly home games proxying her units/learning the rules and she was hooked. Now she has more armies than I do.

One trap I avoided was just throwing her into the fray with seasoned gamers who were fully committed to the game. I did not want to overwhelm/discourage her since there was curiousity/interest.

Haha, that's something to avoid! Definitely don't want to discourage anyone from the game! My fiancée beat me with her Chaos Daemons army the 2 times we played so far. It was brutal, my poor dakka orks...

My wife is very supportive of my hobby, but has absolutely no interest in it herself. I don't really see the need to try to suck her in, I figure if it intrigues her enough she will make that decision on her own.

I just asked her. She played a game with me, enjoyed it, looked at the Eldar, loved the look. She thoroughly enjoys the painting part and will play smaller games on occasion but doesn't mind hanging out with me and my friends if we're playing.

Ive Given up trying to get my wife to play any games with me. And I mean any. Ive tried everything from video games, to board games, andTabletop games.

At this point im just trying to get her to find a hobby of her own so she stops sleeping all the damn time.

I just showed my wife the GW army page and said have a look at the armies. She did, and ended up thinking a couple of the armies looked really cool. That was how it started. Just need to get her to like ONE of those armies, even if its just because they look cool, and go from there. She wanted to start with DE, but that was before anyone knew anything about the update, so she picked the Nids, because at least we knew the Nids would continue to get updates. So shes got a decent sized Nid force and its steadily growing.

Kroothawk wrote:

That Land Raider...



Fits into the fluff...


YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

My tries so far have been unsuccessful, she isn't a very competitive person, and two armies slugging it out just isn't very compelling for her.

Going to try out Dark Heresy pretty soon and see if she likes that at all.

keisukekun wrote:Ive Given up trying to get my wife to play any games with me. And I mean any. Ive tried everything from video games, to board games, andTabletop games.

At this point im just trying to get her to find a hobby of her own so she stops sleeping all the damn time.

Not even video games? Wow. I managed to get my girlfriend to play a number of different (and violent) video games in coop mode. Tabletop gaming is still a no.