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Ok this topic was started by me being at work and its very late. I read somebodies sig and I thought it was actually not that true. Heres the qoute

As bizarre as it seems, GW simply does not believe it is in the business of making games. It sees itself as a model-maker only. The top brass, the guys making all the business decisions, and even the games designers themselves, have all openly said that the games exist only as a means to push the models. (Why they refuse to see how the game can push the models is beyond me. It's what worked on me.)"
-Number6


Now you see on forums alot of the time people rubbish GW's Rules and codex's etc with cries of cheese and imbalance etc. Why this is a problem for some i dont know as GW always have said they make cool models first and formeost and then they make some rpainst and stuff for us to paint and build them. As a bonus they even give us some rules to play with them.

now the above statement says they should use the game as a meens for pushing the models? My queestion is what got you intio the hobby?? For me it was always the models. Hell I built and painted the models for many years before I went anywhere near the game aspect. That just seemed nerdy seing all the guys in the local GW playing with dice and stuff. Its the same for most of my friend. some still dont play the game but collect the mini's and some just buy the BL books to read and nothing else?

What is the opinion of my fellow Dakka posters? Am i wrong/right or just dilusional due to how late at night (or early in the morning) i am posting this?

I really like to paint. that is probably what has kept me in the hobby.

I'm here to play a good game. If the models came fully assembled and painted that would make it even easier for me to go out and buy more armies so that I can play the game from all angles. Unfortuneately I can't because I have to spend so much time just trying to get my armies put together and painted to a respectable quality. I do enjoy making my own models and conversions. The painting holds no fun for me though.

So over all I am here for a good game and may move on to something better now that some real alternatives have poped up in the gaming scene in my area.

I have about 2000 more points of 40k stuff for my current 40k army(that is already at 3000+ points full finished) unassembled/unpainted and laying around as well as about 5000 points of dwarves and lizardmen yet to be painted for warhammer as my first two armies. The dwarves I play semi painted, the lizardmen I do not play at all because I haven't even had time to put them together and won't start until the dwarf army is completely ready to go. All of this could be avoided if the armies were ready made and allow me to buy even more armies to play.

When I first saw GW figures, I was a RPer who liked painting. I was used to Grenadier and Ral Partha figures, and I refused to buy GW figs because, at the time, you got single-pose static guys. Good for gaming, but awful for painting. We're talking late 80's-early 90's.

The first GW figures I actually liked were the Harlequins. My brother had bought some, and they actually looked dynamic, and proportioned.

GW figures have come a long way. I got into the gaming side of 40k in 2004. GW had just opened a store in a mall near me. I wandered in, curious more than anything else, and wow, I was amazed at how much better the minis were than they were 15 years ago. So, that's when I started picking it up.

Good models will influence my choice of army more than good rules. My general belief is that most armies can find a way to work with a good general, and so I pick armies based on models. I can get into any strategy, or any fluff as long as I like the models.

Redbeard wrote:
Good models will influence my choice of army more than good rules. My general belief is that most armies can find a way to work with a good general, and so I pick armies based on models. I can get into any strategy, or any fluff as long as I like the models.

I totally agree with this. When i first saw the Ragnar and ulrick models way back in the early 90's I fell in love with them. Then i read about the SW and the fluff clinched the deal. I only took interest in the game very rarely. For me painting those mini's like they were in "evey metal" was the ultimate challenge. I was not bothered about rules/balance or winning games.

Even if the new SW codex is nerfed I will still stick to sw as long as they dont make the mini's look like crap

I do like to throwing buckets of dice around, but I spend a lot more time building and painting. And if for some reason I could no longer find some one to game with I would continue to build and paint models.

Actually you missed out friends I was drawn into the hobby by them.

I think it was a combination of all of them excluding the rules option. I started because it was mainly a social thing.

Definately the social thing. I work with computers - so the last thing I want to do for my "entertainment" is play video games or what have you.

I keep buying the models.

My friends grew up playing sports. Warhammer didn't
become social for me until last few years (unless you count
Dakka Dakka).

There was about a year when because of school and work I didn't play 40k at all- but I still kept buying and painting models.

As much as I enjoy playing, it was the models that took my money and time, and still do.

The models, but not painting, so I can't vote.

BYE

For me it was the point that 40K is so widely played you can find a game easily, and I liked the Tau.

If I was in a wargame club I might not have picked up 40K because I would have been playing historicals or something else.

I could count the number of 40k games I have played on one hand, but I regularly get white dwarf (or i did until they made it so unpersonal) and take part in lots of online forums. I actually started GW with the LOTR magazine they did where they gave you a couple of paints and about 4 plastic figs in each issue. i then went onto 40k because of the far better models and more detailed fluff, although I do like to think I could avoid embarassing myself in a game.

For 40k.

The models brought me in.

The game got me going.

The fluff has kept me for 18 years.

I no longer play 40k (haven't for over a year)
I've still got more models to paint than I ever have hope to.
Still love the models but lay out money on WHFB models instead.

WHFB was started at the same time.

But it was the game that got me in and the game has kept me going, although the last couple of army books have become way OTT and alot lazier in editing.

Fluff. Straight up, it was the fluff.

The ONLY reason I entertained the idea of going with my friend to the FLGS to play 40k is that he started talking about the fluff. I already KNEW all the fluff, because all the codex at the local bookstore were right beside the battletech tech readout books. I played battletech, and one day I decided to pick up the Angels of Darkness book, just to see what the heck it was. I then ended up picking up ALL the 2nd edition codex... for just the fluff. I never even entertained the thought of playing the game (as I played battletech exclusively).

So it was the confluence of battletech tanking in the 90's and that I already knew all the background that I even entertained the idea of playing 40k. After that one time... I was hooked. 8 years later, I still carry around a codex with me almost everywhere I go.

Well, Battletech is back Kim...

It all happened with a friend of mine told me about these ultra tough soldiers called Deathwing who had an oral tradition of storytelling and recording history. Then he gave me a story to read about how they come to thier home world and how 30 of them freed it from a cult of genestealers. I was hooked so bad it was not even funny.

Too late. Now I'm hooked on plastic crack.

Dark Green dress wearing plastic krak.

I found an issue of White Dwarf in my bookstore. It was that or a special effects magazine, but because the White Dwarf came with free decals (which I don't think I ever used) I picked that up instead. That was like 1991? A few months later I found another issue, and read the battle report featuring Ghazghull Thraka vs. Ragnar Blackmane, Njal Stormcaller, and Ulrik the Wolf Priest. It was AWESOME (and later featured in the first SW codex). It was definitely pictures of the models though that first captured me, then the fluff. I wish they still wrote battle reports like that. It was more story than tactics and dice rolls.

I clicked fluff. But that includes the artwork. I've been hooked since 1989 (with a short hiatus for college in the mid-90's). It's still the conceptual design and texture that keeps me interested.

If GW folded, it's probable that I wouldn't buy another wargame or figure for the rest of my life. Not in mourning or out of spite. There is great stuff out there besides GW in the field of wargaming. But I'm not much of a wargamer. I'm here for universe.

"Fluff" (note: not what that insipid mongrel Thorpe was picking out of his belly button.)

I got into this "hobby" for the background and the story.

Unfortunately the story took a back seat to the legions of drooling, slowed howler monkeys that make up the new target audience as championed by "Lil Jervis".*

* for anyone offended by my continued use of "Lil Jervis": do yourself a favor before your overreactor melts down and get bent. I don't care about your tender sensibilities.

I loved building models of airplanes when I was a kid, so when my friends in college showed me this game where you could make a ton of cool models, I was hooked!

The models mostly, I was given a White Dwarf at the age of 8 and a "HOw to make Wargames Terrain" by my nanny so I could build stuff for my little green army men.

After seeing those black templars on the pile of skulls I was pretty much hooked....

My reasons are similar to Waaagh_Gonads. I first got in for the models. I thought they looked cool, but once I started reading the background in my codex I got hooked. About a week after I bought my first set I went on a fluff binge and pretty much haven't stopped. So though I started for the models, the fluff is what has kept me into it. For instance when I began to get bored with my army a few months ago repainting it to a fluffy Imperial Fist theme turned out to be just what the doctor ordered.

Fluff.

Rogue trader was an outstanding piece of fluff work. The rules stunk to high heavebn and were nigh unplayable, but you cannot deny that the fluff and the art in rogue trader was something quite extraordinary for its time.

I only later got into it for the social dynamic. I was a roleplayer just getting into other aspects of gaming.

Collected the models for far too long, but didnt really play with them for wargaming until 3rd ed. The models were used for games of Gammaworld and such until then.

models firstly. I found some minis in a toy store called Beatties when I was about 9 (I'm now 32). A lad at school told me there was a store that sold nothing but these called "Games Workshop", I went along and was hooked.

Started playing RT, Space Marine and Blood Bowl. Eventually got into WFB (3rd).

These days I have the odd game of WFB, never play 40k yet collect and build full armies for both.

So now its all about the minis and I love the fluff (HH being the best I've read yet).

GW have a really good thing going here: a multifacted intellectual property that has at least 4 or 5 different modes of interaction/appeal for their audience. Folks are rarely into one, and often shift their use between modes with lifestyle changes (or temporary exhaustion of the offerings of another mode). For example, my own case:

Historical/lifestyle changes:

I voted models (because I saw the models when I was a wee kiddo, and was fascinated by them bigtime), but then I realized that I actually started _playing_ when I got ahold of Rogue Trader and liked the background. As teens with tons of free time, we started using RT for skirmish with a roleplay background. Then I took a break... and as an adult years later, fell in love with the Goodwin plastic Eldar, and I was done for. Hooked. bought tons of 40K and WHFB, and played both games a lot, but left the fluff alone. This was before the Bl explosion of recent years.

These days, I read every BL 40K book I can get my hands on (well, I won't touch any more of Gav or Ian Watson's crud, but everything else, especially anything Abnett or Counter write). Because I have less time and travel a bit, I play less, and read and paint more. Of course, i won't touch WHFB since Alessio put his foul hands upon it and started breaking what used to be a very good ruleset. And the fluff bites too, compared with 40K. But I hear the call of that new MMO...

Ayways, Case in point. Very few players maintain the hobby for just one aspect, although they may have gotten in for just one part that first caught their eye.

Speaking of which, I agree with HBMC: The appeal of the models and the appeal of painting should be separate choices. Many who love the models think painting is a total chore.

A friend got us into Necromunda as a break from our usual RPG night. I bought and painted my Ratskins and then picked up some Sisters as a painting experience. Got my Tyranids as Sisters were in the 3rd edition Weird Rules Territory at the time. I suck at finishing armies, and have the core of the sisters, with ImpGuard assistance ready to go but just can't get motivated to build and finish the specialist teams. If I fielded my completed units I think I have something like 3 squads of sisters, an ImpGuard platoon, a single Seraphim unit, and something like 3-4 HQs counting the Living Saint special character and an Inquisitor and his drinking buddies.