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A topic on the boards seems to be about starting communities of wargamers.

Before you try to start a community or gamign space, it is a good idea to have an idea of why people even start the hobby to begin with. Hopefully, this thread can help answer that question.

I was on the typical late 80's nerd path. I played D&D and one day I saw a nice four color ad i Dragon magazine featuring Warhammer 40K some lore bits and glossy, cool painted Rogue Trader era models, all metal. They caught my eye and I showed it to various people in my school and gaming group to get a like minded group of people together to try it. I ventured to the local FLGS a long, long way from my home and picked up some used, pre-painted Eldar Pirate minis.

The reasons I did this were:
1. The visual elements of wargaming, the spectacle, really appealed to my tween brain!
2. It was a tangible hobby in a way D&D was not. You could touch it and feel it, rather than just imagine it.
3. It tapped into my historical and sci-fi brain in a new and interesting way. I liked the abusdism, pastiche and dystopia of it all.
4. It was clearly made by gamers and for gamers back then, with an evolving world with plenty of space for you to build your own corner of it. It was therefore a bit punk and rebellious.
5. It was early days so there was still a lot of DIY, Toy-bashing, and Make-Believe that I enjoyed a lot.

How about you?

I grew up on a steady diet of ww2 spy/commando movies, and when I saw the Schaeffer's Last Chancers box that would allow me to play with a small crew versus an army I fell in love with the idea.

I had no idea what warhammer was, or how it was played, I just knew this would be fun.

D&D was seen as a very anti-christian activity (and the only RPGs I was allowed to play were West End's Star Wars and a superhero game whose name I can't remember).

I remember having to avoid certain details like Daemons, Chaos, and things like that at home.

I think that's why I eventually just kept playing the heroes* of the 40k universe like the Holy Inquisition (Witch Hunters, Daemonhunters, etc) or Imperial Guard tanks... glorious tanks!

I was never interested in Warhammer Fantasy until I discovered two things.

There were very interesting creatures at the game store: women... and they only played Warhammer Fantasy.

My hormone driven brain told me that if I played Fantasy, that I could hang out with the near mythical "girl gamer."

Thus, Bretonnians.



*

Alll the GIRLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
but seriously, i cant remember, i think i saw a friend in HS with a warhammer book and thought it was cool

I was born into it. My dad and uncle are miniature wargamers. I remember their 6' x 8' table in our attic with modern fat the time) microarmor. My dad even made a battlefield from cardboard for my younger brother and me. It had a square grid and terrain drawn on it. He made up some simple rules for us to fight battles with 1/72 scale ACW figures.

We later got Battlemasters and into Warzone 1st ed.

I’ve been literally playing D&D as long as I can remember. My dad read The Hobbit to me and my brother when we were small as a bedtime story.

My gaming group when we moved to KY were primarily wargamers, who also did some RPGs. Pushing paper chits around in Car Wars, Ogre, or SFB, tokens in Axis, cardboard standies in Battletech.

My friend Dave was the first one to bring in actual minis, for D&D. This opened the door, and I started painting them as well. At this point we were not miniature wargaming, but wargaming with minis. Still hexmaps and chits for things we didn’t own minis for.

Around this time we started in with GW, but it was RT as an RPG, or games like spacehulk.

At some point in the late 80s, early 90s some of these games came out with full min rules ditching the hex maps. At that point I’d say we were fully mini wargaming.

In college I got caught in the start of CCGs with M:tG and others. My FLGS branched out into WHFB 5th, and later 3rd ed 40k. I was a core regular at that point and helped grow the community.

My gaming group at the time were mostly roleplayers, not wargamers, although most halfheartedly put an army together, with various levels of skill.

Most of my games were pick ups at the store, or once that shut down a few times a year with my friend Phil and his cousins, 40k or Silent Death.

These days I try to occasionally get in pick up games at the local GW, but am not a regular anywhere.

LotR, simple as.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
LotR, simple as.

This. My best friend got the D'agostini magazines with lotr minis in them, we played a couple of rounds and I was hooked.

A good question, since if you saw me IRL I'd probably not fit the wargamer stereotype very well.

Truth is, it was almost all my older brother. He's 2 years older and we have no other siblings, so I ended up following along with him in a lot of what he did.

He was the one who got the 2004 & 2005 Games Workshop catalogues. He got the ball rolling. He was the one who painted, and sort of just dragged me along.

He quit Warhammer at some point around age 18, and I began drifting off too (though not before introducing Warhammer to the nerd circle in school). Then years passed without any wargaming.

Back in Jan 2021 I decided to finally return to Warhammer, and it's been good times since.

My wargaming has not solely been Warhammer, mind you. In the last few years a friend has tried to get me into Battletech with mixed results, for example. But I suppose GW got their talons in me deep.

This is an interesting question.
As I was writing my initial response, I realized how all my influences and choices led me to wargaming and miniatures well before I discovered Warhammer existed!

Fantasy & Mythology fascinated me very early.
I was reading Norse mythology books when I was around 8yo.
One of my earliest reading memories is the Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander. Indian in the Cupboard hooked me as well.
Also around this time, my Dad introduced me to the plastic model cars & aircraft hobby.
I had the big army men set with green & gray soldiers from the Sears catalog.
This inspired me to make castles with LEGO. But this was the 80's so the Castle kits didn't exist yet.
We had free HBO because the neighbor beat up the cable box outside and I guess that worked. I watched things like Conan the Barbarian, Sword & the Sorcerer, Beastmaster and more.
Around 10, I "graduated" to a full train set layout in my bedroom. It was a 4'x8' sheet of plywood with the green felt stapled on.
Dad loved slot cars, so it was a natural progression from that.
Nearly simultaneously, my mom gave me the Hobbit/LotR box set paperbacks and the D&D Red Box.

So there I was with an extremely active imagination, the massive lore-sink that is LotR, newly exposed to D&D, and the skills to make & paint models.

It wasn't until around Freshman year that I learned of the existence of plastic model soldiers and that there were game rules for such things.
Looking back now, my descent into wargaming was inevitable.

A few friends & I split the Space Marine box RBT01 around 1992. I got 5 marines from it.
I painted them with Testor's gloss paints.
We discovered the Rogue Trader book & played some of that before stepping into it fully when the 2nd edition box set came out.

For me, it kind of wraps up a lot of my interests in a single place.

I was definitely a toy kid and collecting figures and learning about their story has always had a lot of appeal. Not really an artist, but I like to draw and color. Board games were also something I enjoyed, but I was definitely more into videogames of all types, but in particular I've always loved fighting games in the arcade which for me minis scratch a similar itch.

In terms of getting in, I actually tried Battletech after playing a whole lot of Mechwarrior 2 but found myself in over my head. I did definitely see the appeal and the idea of something like a physical version of Final Fantasy Tactics was hugely on my radar.

I actually started with Heroscape after college. I was looking to change jobs and move to a new town and had some friends that insisted we spend a few months on something tabletop. Heroscape just provided what I was looking for out of the box. Loved the game and got some friends playing after I moved, but as it started to die off I looked to other pre-paints like MonPoc and WoW before realizing that the whole style of game wasn't viable anymore.

Locally, the board game renaissance was really kicking off and a lot of my friends were very into it. I still tended towards stuff with minis and one of my friends got me a little set of craft paints to spruce up my games. Later that turned into giving the MonPoc devs OTHER game a try and we dove into Warmachine right as Mk2 was building steam.

So yeah, it really kind of ties a lot of interests into one place. My wife was really the one to point out that what's driven it over a lot of those other things is that videogames in particularly have gotten ironically a lot less social as they've gotten increasingly online. I never really thought of it that way, but videogames were always something I played with friends on the couch or in arcades or something. Even single player stuff passing the controller and the like. It's really the friends and community that have pushed it to the top of my hobby pile.

Not much to tell. I got Heroquest as a young'in when it was released, then someone brought a Citadel Catalog to school. I wanted to play pretend with the little lizard people and daemons.

I had Heroquest, Dragonstrike (the one with the terribly kickass VHS) Battletech and Battlemasters as a kid in the 90s but kinda fell out of it through my teens and college years, it wasn't until I was married and realizing that my wife was a late sleeper on weekends and I liked to get up at dawn and I found myself with a a good 5-6 hours of quiet alone time and decided I needed some kind of hobby. I was vaguely aware of warhammer fantasy and 40k because of heroquest and the dawn of war games but had never played but thought it would be fun to paint a handful of figures now and then. I walked in to my local game store that I had never actually been in before and bought the battle for skull pass starter box and ive never really stopped since.

My parents made the mistake of giving me 2 WHFB goblin bolt throwers as a birthday present when I was 10.

Not really sure why but it sure cost them when I wanted the rest of the army.

All my friends were doing it.

I didn't like miniatures. I played with army men when I was little, and on one memorable Christmas, told all grandparents and divorced parents I wanted army men, and there was some consternation when I got so many, but that was by design. I wanted battalion-level battles!

Then I discovered tabletop wargames, with hex sheets and stuff. That was what I liked. I had zero interest in miniatures which were fussy and needed painting. Why fight a mere battle when one could contend for continents?

The problem was finding players, and by the mid-1990s boardgames were in a bad way, but miniatures were taking off. GW was hitting its stride and if I wanted to play, I had to adapt, and so I did, first with WHFB, and then 40k.

And so here I am.

It's fun. 'Nough said.

People I know were playing, so I joined in. It was fun, so I kept doing it. I didn’t live near any game stores, so had to go to a club. They even had a website at that stage. Crazy !

When I was about 8 or 9 a neighbour invited us to play Heroquest a couple of times. I was totally enraptured with it and really wanted to do it again but he never invited us to do it again sadly!

I was massively into fantasy and monsters and so on as a child. I loved mythology and I had just read the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings which changed my entire worldview.

Later, a friend of my older brothers gave us the rulebooks for second edition 40k when he'd talked to my brother about the Vengeance of the Blood Angels game for the Playstation.

He wasn't as interested as I was - I was blown away by the idea that you could make a miniature world set in a sci fi setting. And that setting seemed to me like the 2000AD world set in space, with tolkienian fantasy races. Incredibly cool!

I found out then that a proper fantasy version of this existed.

I was drawn in by the idea of making, like actually physically making, my own miniature fantasy worlds to inhabit.

I hadn't ever heard of Dungeons and Dragons so I didn't even know that roleplaying existed, but that is basically what we did with our games of warhammer.

I never stopped or "took a break" like lots of people do, I've been playing ever since. I love painting the figures, I love making scenery, I love reading the background and I love playing the games. The only part of the hobby I don't totally love is assembling the miniatures, but that's fine too.

Because I've always loved toys & games.
And as an adult? I can keep playing with toys (sometimes literally) right up to the day I die & call it a hobby.

I suppose you could say my journey into minis gaming started when I was about 6 or 7 back in the 70s.

My brother & I could spend hours playing with all of Dads old Marx figures from the 50s in my Grandmas basement. Dad had all sorts of these - classic green army men, American Revolution (both Colonials & British), American Civil war (both sides), cowboys & Indians, an Alamo set, some pirates, a farm set... Tin buildings too. The Alamo & walls, a couple of log cabins, a Stone House (we always assumed it was meant to be historical (AM Rev?), but it doesn't quite look like any pics we could ever find), a modern (1950s) barn. And trees, fences, hedge lines, wells, haystacks, etc etc etc and about 1 trees worth of Lincoln Logs.
Then add in our own army guy sets - mostly WWII US vs Germans. Some Astronauts & "space aliens" as well & a giant rocket. We had some Knights as well.
Everything a pair of kids needed to set up huge epic battles on the basement floor.

Eventually we added some rules so as to avoid the endless arguments over :I shot him, he's dead. No you didn't, no he's NOT!"
It was simple & basic. We took the d6s out of some board games. You got x # of shots per turn. Pick your targets wisely... Each guy rolls a D6. Winner (highest roll) determined if the guy was dead or not.
Each cannon (or equivalent - tank, alien laser thingy, or such) got 1 shot - represented by tossing the heftiest fishing weights in Grandpas tackle box at targets! If the target(s) fell over (or were flipped over - tanks) they were destroyed. We did NOT throw them at the actual buildings so as not to damage them.
Last guy with pieces left standing was the winner.
We also had to come up with some basic movement rules - so that some of the Indians & the Knights could actually fight. CC rules were the same as shooting. Both roll a d6, high roll wins.
This was when we were about 8 years old.
we had no idea about miniature wargaming.

Flash forward to the early 80s.
We've discovered Dungeons & Dragons. And about two years in we'd started adding miniatures into our games. Still not miniature wargamers.
The quest for more D&D stuff led us into the hobby stores (there weren't any FLGs as we know them now in my area at the time) in the area.
This brought us into contact with things like Star Fleet Battles, Car Wars, maybe a bit of Micro Armor, etc. Nope, still not miniature wargamers, but getting closer...
And then we came across a little game called Battledroids (now known as BattleTech) - this was awesome! We could duke it out using the various Mechs from the various Mecha animes of the time. And all of the mechs were available in metal minis that we could paint up to match the shows. Or in any other scheme we liked.
Now we had set foot upon the miniture wargaming path!

Another time jump. Now it's the summer of '89 - and there's 1 local hobby shop hosting games as well as selling them.
This guy did it all - models (cars/planes, military, etc), RC stuff, Slot Cars (his actual passion), trains, & thanks to his manager a section for RPGs & minis games.
Apparently they'd been doing the gaming stuff for about a year/year & half - but the people I gamed with? Well, we were all busy with late High school stuff/College prep.
We came for the D&D + BattleTech stuff.
We found it.
We ALSO found Warhammer. (this is NOT what a bunch of underfunded college/soon-to-be-college kids need to find. )

And over the years WH has led to everything else minis wise.

And now here we are in 2026 & I have played every genre & scale of minis game out there, built & painted a crazy amount of forces, & introduced 1000s of players to games of all types.

As for why I do this? Like I said, I love playing with toys. Especially toy soldiers (or tanks, or boats, or planes, cars, or giant robots, or monsters/dinosaurs...)

I think it was the natural extension of the LEGO, toy soldiers, model trains and GI Joe action figures I loved and l as a kid. Even then, as much or more than "Playing" I enjoyed setting up the spectacle of a massive layout with buildings, forts, scenery, etc.

It's a straight through line from these toys through Battlemasters to wargaming.

I was interested and dabbled in other games and RPGs(not enough toys) but it was always the spectacle of a table of soldiers (toys) on great terrain that was most appealing.

I still love spectacle and view my wargaming as playing with toy soldiers and it's led to my preferences of very simple rules, painted minis only and extensive terrain setups.

1990 and first year of high school (boarding school regional Queensland) and one of the other boarders had Rogue Trader and some space marines.

Had done plastic airplane kits before but no other exposure to models or gaming.

Played some games, then dove in with my own army for 40K and WHFB.

D&D at lunch times 4 days a week for the whole of high school with a different group.

Weekends painting and playing games in one of the classrooms with other guys, usually with paper cut outs or proxy models or terrain as we didn't have a lot of money.

Fun times.

For fun...?

To make a sort of level playing field?

Started with WW2 1/72 Airfix figures. Pew! pew! and yes - even throwing pebbles - a hit is a kill. Played with friends then decided between us - use a die instead of a pebble - bazooka needed a lower score .. 10-15 years later discovered wargames clubs and actual typed rules....

It was probably inevitable after spending a childhood fascinated by Lego and Airfix kits, military history, and Fighting Fantasy books (and the RPG offshoot). What actually got me interested was on one of my weekly trips to the local library as a kid and finding a copy of "Wargaming" by P. Barker. It was part of a series of books on sports/games called "Know The Game" and was written in conjunction with the Wargames Research Group. I ended up buying my own copy not long afterwards.

I was hooked on the idea of miniatures wargaming from that book, although didn't know anyone else interested and this was pre-Internet so couldn't find out if there were clubs or whatever locally. I bought a load of metal 25mm Minifigs Napoleonics figures and painted them using my Humbrol enamels after some advice from a friend of the family who used to build military dioramas. My friends thought I was weird, although did admit I had some very cool games "with guns".

When I started secondary school, we had a Wargaming society that used to run on Wednesdays after school. I signed up hoping someone there would also be interested in the Napoleonic wars, but they weren't. However, a couple of kids would play a battle each week with some "Space Ork" and "Space Marine" figures for something new called "Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader" which was by a company called Games Workshop that I was aware of through some board games I'd bought in the past. And it all took off from there...

I was at school and already got into doing model battleships and then I saw this




Titanic war machines; companies of tanks; huge crazy war engines; swarms of infantry!! And thus began my decent into the madness of models.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:

My hormone driven brain told me that if I played Fantasy, that I could hang out with the near mythical "girl gamer."

Thus, Bretonnians.



*

That's got to be the first and only time I've ever heard of someone getting into Warhammer for the girls. If it even remotely worked for you, fair bloody play!

For me, it was those famous/infamous UK TV ads for Hero Quest / Space Crusade. They could have been custom designed to appeal specifically to nerdy little 10ish-year-old me.

I think for me, at first, it was aesthetics. I found out about 40k first, through TV Tropes of all things, then began browsing its Fandom wiki and (poorly) drawing stuff I saw. It wasn't until years later I actually 'got into' things.

Was on trip to Germany, saw Adeptus Titanicus, was hooked. Later got Space crusade and that was the end. Fate was cemented by starting to go to a wargames club.

Blame Lord of the Rings. No doubts.
Cool fantasy armies, epic battles and colorful banners over a tabletop full of scenery. You do not need anything else.

Sounds like many of us were attracted to the spectacle and tactile nature of it all.

Therefore, it sounds like to get people into gaming you need good visuals where people can put eyeballs on it.

 Easy E wrote:
Sounds like many of us were attracted to the spectacle and tactile nature of it all.

Therefore, it sounds like to get people into gaming you need good visuals where people can put eyeballs on it.

That's always been my approach. Have easy rules, great terrain and enough painted minis to share with newbies and guests.

Other folks have their own approaches -often with an enviable commitment to a low bar to entry-, but my way has always been full-on spectacle at every game.

Was shopping in the mall with my Mom, she was taking forever and I checked out a game store. The Dark elf had me at knight riding a dinosaur.