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Sorry for the slightly suspect title, but it just struck me as amusing. You may disagree. And you're probably right to.

Anyways.

We often have discussion about how people started out in the Hobby, first armies etc, and well we should because it always makes for interesting reading. So interesting, I'd like to take it one step further and enquire as to your memories and experiences of your earliest days in Wargaming (not just GW).

So, if you're up for it, put on your rose tinted specs, Waynes World 'doodlelydoo' hand movements, and off we go into the mists of the past.

Although my first experience was Heroquest, my first real taste of GW was a bit of a classic, namely, Adeptus Titanicus. Those were the days, when at the tender age of 11, the models were cool (if fragile. None of my Titan's ankles survived long) the rules were complicated, and not being a beardy little cheesemonger was positively unheard of (I was 11 after all!). This was pretty much the birth of 40k as well, and for those who don't know, the game was pretty much set during the Horus Heresy (as was Rogue Trader if memory serves?).

There was something about giant walkers knocking seven bells out of each other which really appealed. To be honest, I blame Transformers. But the rules man. Sooooo complicated! Lots of charts, tables, confusion, dice rolling, disputes, the odd punch (11 at the time, remember!) and of course, bizarre games of tennis involing Warp Missiles and Relay systems. Oh, and Chameleoline and Jump Packs on Warlord Class Titans.

And my powergaming streak continued into 2nd Edition, where I collected a Genestealer cult army. Which, despite being a beardy little rules lawyer at the time (I was around 13/14 by now. We were all as bad as each other!) I never, EVER, managed to win with.

In between these two, I owned and played pretty much every boardgame GW produced. Tyranid Attack, Space Hulk, Space Marine, Titan Legions, loads of them!

And in a slightly masochistic way, I still reminisce about looking at White Dwarf pages, drooling over the little bits of metal (and occasional plastic) which on my £5 a week pocket money I could never really afford, and only got for Birthdays and Christmas! First one I ever picked up was...133 if memory serves? It had a yellow border, Blood Angels on the cover with the Golden Armoured Captain (who later became Tycho I believe) and featured the first appearance of the Ork Shokk Attak Gun, a model which still rocks big nads today.

I've come quite some way. Gone are the power gaming days of yore. Now I prefer slightly daft and eccentric armies to test my brainbox with. Perhaps my spending pattern in GW is coloured as much as the days of have not, as the days when I enjoyed the Staff Discount.

God, now I really want to lay my hands on Adeptus Titanicus again! Ebay time I think!

So, your turn now!

I'll join the old fogey party!

At about the same age (and time probably) as Mad Dok I was a hardcore RPG gamer. I got started very young with red box/blue box D&D that I played with some older kids in the neighborhood.

This is cliche, but entirely true: my gang of friends and I were riding our bikes to the FLGS we frequented and along the way there were two older kids watching us ride up shifty-eyed and opening his backpack while his buddy set his on the ground and opened it as well.

As we get close, he says, "Hey kids, check this out..." It's the mid-late 80's and Ronnie Reagan has had us in the full swing of the war on drugs and Just Say No! so we're thinking they're gonna pull out coccaine or pot. My buddies are looking to bolt any second, but I'm a curious kid and get them wait around to see what these older boys had.

He pulled out a long floppy book and a Crown Royal bag. The bag didn't bother me - my mom appreciated a Crown & Coke from time to time and let me have them for dice bags. "Here look at this," he said, handing me the book while he opened the bag. I ventured a look at the book.

A giant robot on the front, more giant robots on the inside... HEY! Giant robots that I had seen before! Valkyries and Gunsuits and Mecha! Whoa! With numbers and the names of guns and armor points. His buddy was pulling out a binder filled with what I thought were character sheets but were blank mech sheets they had filled in along with a slew of cardboard maps and a pair of box sets. He finally finished unknotting the bag and pulled out miniatures of the mechs from the book. He had dozens of them...

"Look, I used to play this game all the time, but I got a girlfriend now and she doesn't like it so I just want to get rid of it. If you've got $20, I'll give you and your friends everything." My friends started looking through their pockets and we were shy by $5 or so. He shared a look with his buddy and they must have figured that was the best they were going to get so he took what we had.

We forgot all about visiting the FLGS (it didn't have a gaming area back then) and rode home as fast as we could, read through the books and box sets, filled out some blank sheets and played Battletech for the entire weekend. It became a regular thing to field a lance or two and see how much flaming, death-from-above, PPC action we could get in before sunset. RPG's eventually settled back into our routine, but Battletech was my first wargame love...

I didn't get into 40K until MUCH later, but I did (and still do) play Talisman - 1st and 2nd edition. I picked up all but the Dragon's Tower set and after hmmmm.... 15 years? I'm finally painting them!

Gavin Thorne wrote:

"Look, I used to play this game all the time, but I got a girlfriend now and she doesn't like it so I just want to get rid of it."

I wonder if, after the girlfriend broke up with him, he ever regretted his decision?

My first wargame was second edition D&D Battlesystem. It was made so that you could play out big battles as part of a roleplay campaign. Anybody who's ever tried to play out a battle of six PC's and a couple of hundred NPC soldiers against an entire Orc tribe reinforced with Goblin wolf riders, Ogres and Hill Giants knows how long it can take.

We eventually started playing Battlesystem on its own, as it works just fine as a stand-alone wargame. The points values are similar to Warhammer. The main difference is that multiple dice sizes are used. The last battle we played before we got tired of it was 12,000 points on a side, Undead and Demons against assorted Subhumans and monsters. It took three days and a 8' x 12' table.

It was a year later that I got into warhammer, and later 40K. I've also played epic, but only the original edition. Epic 40,000 and Epic Armageddon are nowhere near as interesting. Sometimes streamlining is a bad thing.

My house has been a house of board games as long as I can remember. I remember Heroquest (with all 4 expansions) and Battlemasters wasting a LOT of my time when I was younger. Then came Space Hulk and Battletech 3rd Edition. I have been Battleteching for more than 15 years now, and still go strong with almost 1000 units I could throw down (if I felt like playing a several month game).

40K and Fantasy are just side games for me. They just aren't good enough games to get me away from Battletech.

I still throw down a lot of D&D and Shadowrun, too.

I cut my teeth on the old Standard skirmish games (Cry Havoc, Samurai Blades etc). Playing sprawling, historically-dubious scenarios using all the maps and units (ninjas versus Crusaders!) really hit my teenage spot.

I also really, really enjoyed Eastern Front Tank Leader (Western Front and Desert were good too, but not so much). Fun times.

After D&D, Heroquest and Space Crusade, I bought myself a few White Dwarfs, Rogue Trader and went from there. After jumping from one game to the next, including an enjoyable foray into Blood Bowl at one stage, I settled on 40K and built up my first 1000pt army (which as I've mentioned in similar threads was Biel Tann Eldar).

I started with old school Avalon Hill and SPI board wargames, tried using figures with them, moved on to role-playing (RuneQuest and Chivalry and Sorcery) and started 'proper' figure wargaming at the university wargames club. Ancients was quickly followed by ACW, Battletech, Napoleonics, and various naval genres.

As good a place as any for an intro post I reckon!

I started out playing a made up dungeon bash that my friend and older brother came up with using citadel floor plans (the black and white ones with about two other colours on top!) and using the first edition blood bowl rules, passing for shooting, attacking for ....well attacking. I seem to remember this being suprisingly entertaining way to spend the afternoon and the models were pretty cool as well (the original slotta base dwarfs - the rambo looking one with the crossbow remains my favourite to this day), I decided I really must find out more.

This lead to a long bike ride (for an 10-11 year old) to the newsagent and the expenditure of my remaining pocket money on the September issue of something called White Dwarf (number 93 I believe)? A watermark date as it turned out also coincided with the release of a new product called Rogue Trader, you might of heard of it?

If I had missed this magazine then I am sure I would have saved myself many thousands of pounds and inmerable hours hunched over modelling stations, games tables and the internet!

Following this introductary hit White Dwarf then progressively introduced me to bigger and better things, Dwarf & Chaos dwarf lords of legend, RT rule book, JD RPG, the RT1 Beaky Marines, Space Orks, Warhammer 3rd Edition, Free flexi disc singles, Chaos Dwarf Bazooka and Petard, Squats, Adeptus Titanicus, Chaos Toilet, Space Marine, Necromunda, Trolls in the Pantry a proverbial pantheon of greats! Of course once I was additced then GW turned on us

I'm glad i got that off of my chest, ah well back to work!

notprop wrote:

This lead to a long bike ride (for an 10-11 year old) to the newsagent and the expenditure of my remaining pocket money on the September issue of something called White Dwarf

Hah, I used to do this too. I was always so gutted if I got there and the magazine wasn't out yet.

I'll second the White Dwarf buying. For yonks I bought it intermittently (excuse the spelling) before convincing the parents to add it to the Paper Boys bag for our house. Several times a month, every month, for a round 4 years, I'd be badgering the staff of the local Forbuoys (Paper Shop chain in the UK) to see if it had come in.

That was probably when I passed the point of no return! Monthly injections of hobby goodness does tend to get you hooked.

A particular memory was Apocalypse 100. I'd just started my own paper round (jammy enough to get my own house on it as well) and had saved up two pay packets, when the White Dwarf was in the bag. Having given up trying to read it whilst riding my bike around the streets, I was in the downstairs gakker giving it a read, when I read about Apocalypse 100. That day. So finished up my business, straight to Mum and Dad harassing them into driving me to Maidstone that I might partake. Now bearing in mind I had £30 on me, I will never, ever know why I passed up the chance of buying that Legion Of The Damned bloke :(

Hmmm... September, 2003. For some time now, my dad had been showing me what was left of his old Dungeons and Dragons rules. Then, I went to Cubscouts. One of my friends was aiming for his collectors badge. He pulls out a big box, that is just full of all these fantasy models. I remember that I though the Dragon was just the coolest thing. I ask him "Is that Dungeons and Dragons?" He tells me no, its's Mage Knights. Later that evening, He gives me a *Orc Slasher, and my adventure down the dark road of Fantasy and Wargameing has begun.

Back in the very distant past, say around 1969, I got Meccano Magazine every month. As well as lots of articles about Meccano (a steel construction and engineering kit) it had a regular table top wargaming article. At the time Airfix were selling boxes of plastic soldiers for 2 shillings each which were a basic introduction to painting figures, making terrain, and the war gaming rules worked well enough for our simple needs. Later, around the 1980s, I remember visiting the original Games workshop outlet in Hammersmith, west London (I think they only had the one shop at the time) and buying cast metal miniatures to play Runequest and Call of Cuthulu. Warhammer was out at this time but I didn't start to play it untill I introduced my son to my old miniatures and he persauded me to buy the "new" 4th edition rules. We both now collect and play, only problem being that it gets a bit "emotional" at times when one of us gets thrashed by the other.
Nowadays I am more nuts about collecting, painting and playing than ever, waiting with bated breath for my next fix via a big order of Planet Strike. So that would be about 40 years of this hobby, on and off. Looking forward to the next 40.