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Well, in Dubai the GW guys were shady. As in reeeaaal, trouble-with-the-law kind of shady. They actually closed up and fled the country.

I kind of got into at first becuase I loved painting and modeling. But now I'm in it just as much for the fluff of 40k.

I saw some ads in various gaming magazines and saw a huge multi table game of it during a gaming convention in 1988. A couple of buddies of mine were immediately hooked and were playing it constantly at their houses. I held out until 1989 and picked up my first hard plastic case of 10 Tactical Marines and painted the Space Wolves as I thought the color scheme was cool.

Except for a 2 1/2 year break when 3rd edition came out, I've been hooked.

I've seen some marine displays at my local store but never paid much heed to them until I saw a Leman Russ tank on display. It was love at first sight.

I first found out about it from a friend, who brought some orks to school to show off to our Magic group. I was completely enamored with them when I found out that you build and paint them yourselves, since I've always liked legos. That was in 6th grade. I went to my LGS a few days later (I had never been before) and had a look at the codices... I was immediately drawn to tyranids. "Woah! They're like Aliens!"

So I picked up a bunch, learned the rules, and here I am 9 years later. The game has never seemed weird to me... it just feel right. Like Grown-Up Legos I guess!

Got into Warhammer by reading WD back in the days when it was really random but good. I didn't have an army until 40K 2nd Edition which was 1000pts of Biel- Tann Eldar. Most of it was just undercoated, but for some reason I finished all of my Guardians.

I used to have a mate who lived around the corner we were hanging round his house just chilling and watching Predator when his brother walked in with a bag full of boxes we headed upstairs and watched him pull out tons of old Undead stuff we're talking round about circa 1989-1990 skeleton army box sets and all that jazz.

After a while me my mate and his brother would play games I would borrow some models it was rather complicated all this "you roll to hit now roll to wound hmmm whats the modifier "I was utterly hooked but very confused I bimbled home and spoke to my Dad he expressed a real interest and said "Ok we'll go to find you some of these mini's" a couple of months later I bought a Eldar phantom Titan that thing sat on my shelf for ages painted in a slap dash splat of really psychodelic spazzy colours.

My next encounter with Games Workshop related stuff would not happen for many years after.

Summer 1991-1992 me thinks last year of Primary School I found a couple of mates round the corner playing Space Crusade on the pavement THE PAVEMENT! I watched enthralled as all these Blue,Red,Yellow dudes stomped around this board shooting at aliens and a huge machine called a Dreadnought.I even played a game so my following Birthday my eleventh I got this Space Crusade set and spent hours playing through the missions both on my own with my best friend at the time or with my Dad this was Games Workshop "Uh Oh" taking over my life.

That same year I played another popular game Heroquest oh my after that I was hooked obsessed even I even started to play Rogue Trader sporadically using my Space Crusade minis and My Heroquest Minis in Warhammer Fantasy even D and D and Epic slowly crept into my life at this point but still I lacked a concise and structured army.

My first "Proper" army was a Skaven army this was first involved collecting experience my children of the horned rat would clash with High Elves,Wood Elves,Chaos,Undead and be involved in sieges and campaigns

Fast forward to 1999 after many years hiatus from playing and collecting I joined a gaming club after playing with a hotch potch Imperial Guard force 1 unit of Cadians 1 Unit of Mordians Yarrick and three Leman Russ's my eyes fell on the first army I would ever truly love that army?? ......World Eaters.

A friend of mine played a huge red corsairs army CSM,Nurgle,everyone all crammed into several thousand points worth of killing power and winged beasts with axes and whips this was first glimpse of Daemon I would later know as BLOODTHIRSTER! after a few months of getting bored of sitting back and pounding my enemies with battlecannons and lascannons and then playing a silly Eldar force which was early prototype of Swordwind I fancied a change.

At this time sixth form had finished and college (The most blessed and decadent days of my life) started and one weekend during unemployed bliss I bimbled down to Games Workshop with my £30 text book money I bought two boxes of Khornate World Eaters and proceeded to assemble them next £30 more Beserkers i must have amassed at least 120 in a year perhaps 200 added various veihicles Rhinos 2 land raiders a dreadnought some terminators a lord 5 bloodletters 30 bikes it was a really really BIG army my first consistant collecting effort.

After a while interest faded as I partied and met girls and had various emo episodes throughout my life work was thrown out of further education and forced to go to work in this time I busted my toe "oh woe me" and had several weeks off work feeling sorry for myself so one day to avoid my limbs going gangrene and circulation cutting off and mainly because id watched every video id owned I decided to go to games workshop and get a new army and in this time returned to my second love Eldar I bought the 3rd ed battleforce and some guardians and a Farseer and painted the lot in 5 days gamed with it and found that "Eldar really are fun"

The came the Hiatus I had many due to be pressured to do something constructive with my life but i always rebelled went back to wait I loved

The next time i would collect a signifcant amount minis would be with the release of the Fellowship of the Ring boxed sets at this time I had a like minded Girlfriend who collected Rohan whilst I collected Isengard Uruk Hai we amassed a huge collection then we parted I kept the minis and amassed a massive LOTRS collection but my heart always lured back to Warhammer 40k and Warhammer fantasy

2005 another Girlfriend and another army this time Plague Marines 3,500pts worth of Plague Gods pestulant minions this army was my baby but became the victim of my various mental problems as in a fit of rage i threw them against a wall dashed the lot when the mist cleared i had seen what Id done and woefully i actually began to cry I was proud of that army and i was pitaful of myself and what id done.

When this period had stopped where I had closed myself off from the hobby and forced myself or rather "lied" to myself that only "sad" people collected Miniatures in this time I argued with my Mum and things were bad but I had a small job and with the money I went out and got drunk and felt good then one day I was walking through my local Mall this was about 2006-2007 and I dropped into the GW spoke to the staff and managed to get back into the hobby I bought a Marine battleforce and painted the lot in a month over the next couple of years this army grew the Crimson Ravens were born my first army of a new clarified age the hobby in a way taught me many things about perserverance and that second chances can be a good thing.

Here I am many years later Im happily married and I own 4 armies

Space Marines>>Crimson Ravens over erm 3,500 points worth
Orks>> 2000pts
Uruk Hai>> Small War of the Ring Force
Chaos Marines (Emperors Children) WIP
FOW>> Panzergrenadier army WIP

And yes when my Children come along I hope they see the various armies and board games and become as enthralled as I was its a hope.


Boss Pimpalotz

signing off

I was at my FLGS looking for minis for my Warhammer Fantasy RPG and D&D group when my eyes fell on the second edition 40k boxed set. Hate on the marines all you want, but damn the second I saw that box I was hooked. Still love my Space Marines!

Shellfishguy wrote:I was at my FLGS looking for minis for my Warhammer Fantasy RPG and D&D group when my eyes fell on the second edition 40k boxed set. Hate on the marines all you want, but damn the second I saw that box I was hooked. Still love my Space Marines!

F**king A brother

When my gaming group failed to assemble for our bi-monthly RPG, the two friends that did show up asked me if I wanted to play a new game.

They had brought a bunch of Space Wolf miniatures along with the codex and the Rogue Trader rule book. 2nd ed had been in circulation for a while (this was around '94) but they hadn't been bothered to pick it up. We played a brief skirmish involving 5 blood claws facing around 20 fantasy orcs - the blood claws got saved by a pair of wolf guard swinging thunder hammer and lightning claws - I was totally hooked.

I went to the only FLGS that carried GW items and bought the 2nd ed 40k box set with cardboard ork dred and figured that if I was in for a penny I was in for a pound so I picked up Dark Millenium, a Landspeeder, a Librarian, the Angels of Death codex, the Eldar codex, the Ork Codex, and the Tyranid Codex. Ahhh, the wonder and joys of your first credit card!

I started making my own Blood Angels successor chapter, buying up used marine armies, stripping, and repainting them. My buddies and I played for about a year until lives and RPGs took precedence and the 40K got boxed up.

After moving away, moving back, getting married, having a son, moving some more, and finally unpacking a box full of miniatures, I began thinking about how much I enjoyed painting them even if I didn't play the game. My son and I played Heroscape and he desperately wanted to use the Space Marine models in it. After using them in a few games of HS, I figured that he was old enough to learn 40k. I found the eldar I had used as allies in my old games and decided to start painting them. A year later and I'm sitting on 5k worth of eldar, 2k necrons, and who knows how much RT/2nd ed marines and orks... and loving it.

Redbeard wrote:
So, SparkeyG drags me into the local GW store, circa 2004,

I'm sure that I so much as drug as said 'Hey, I'm into this 40k thing now, I know you have your concerns. But they're oh so shiney'


I saw warhammer back in the late '80's early '90's and was tempted by Blood Bowl, but I kept to my BattleTech. Fast fwd 15 years and GW opens a store in my local mall and I was helpless to resist.

The first game I ever played, I proxied an Imperial Guard force with plastic army men. Set up real close to a bunch of SM who then got 1st turn and...well, I lost horribly, but I was hooked - I love ALL board games, and have spent a long time reaching a game that a lot of people play AND has a sufficient level of complexity with the rules beyond say, Axis and Allies. I've since expanded into BFG, as my posts on Dakka show - another extremely satisfying board game with gorgeous models and lots of action and strategy involved.

Two years later, I'm still on IG, working on the Sisters, with a SM here and there - I admit that having codexes updated regularly and with a decent amount of playable variety has helped keep me in. I've always been obsessed with the "good" guys, or maybe just the incumbents in a dying galaxy....

In the Seventies my brothers were gamers. D&D, Empire of the Petal Throne, Civil War Minis, Star Fleet Battles, Avalon Hill, etc. You get the point. I always loved the miniatures my eldest painted for civil war and D&D. They didn't look that good and they were super soft lead, always breaking it seemed but I loved that they could be customized through painting.

As I got older and joined them in gaming, miniatures fell by the wayside. Fast-forward to living in Germany circa 1988. A friend introduced me to Warhammer 40K. I loved the Crimson Fists on the cover and the photos inside, it reminded me of my brothers old miniature games. At the time we only called it Rogue Trader (those of us that played in that small group). I was pretty good at speaking Deustch but not reading it so I had to mail order my books from Britain. All of my first models I bought in Deustchland and we used to play squad sized games over and over. I was hooked.

When I came back to the US I really didn't think the game would be over here. I was surprised and happy to see the shelves in my LGS stocked with WH40K/Fantasy goodness.

I still have my WH40K-RT Rulebook and Compendium. I wish I would have kept one of my old Space Marine boxes in German just for nostalgia.

From my new blog...

I'll start with some history. I started playing Warhammer 40K back in 1988 when it was known as Rogue Trader. The earliest games were spent refighting the Battle at the Farm and seeing how many shuriken catapults I could roll up for my marine squads. The games were nicely chaotic and very strange things could happen. High school came around and created the first break in the hobby.

This one lasted several years and it wasn't until college that I got back in the game. By this point, Games Workshop had released several more games and I dabbled a bit with a few of them. What really caught on was Space Marine - later EPIC - later EPIC 40K. I got into Space Marine right about when the web was beginning so I made the game the focus of my first website. The site is long gone, but while it was up it was the home of battle reports, tactics articles and random game tidbits from the Space Marine gaming group that I was a part of. The site was also an online repository of Huck's Hopefully Helpful Hints which was written by "Tyranid" Tim Huckleberry and distributed to the GW Mailing List each month. Alas, medical issues and graduation turned into my second big break with the hobby. This was the major one. I sold off all my EPIC models and most of my Warhammer 40K armies. I had dabbled in Warhammer Fantasy but those went away too. I only retained a small Marine force of some favorite models.

Third Edition Warhammer 40K brought me back - along with finding a regular opponent. I turned the core marine force into a much larger army and scrambled to restore much of what I had given up. So now I find myself with several rebuilt armies with very little paint on them.

My dad made a game called "Princess Ryan's Space Marines" back before I was born. GW got in a big legal battle with him over the term "Space Marine" which previously was just a common term for sci-fi. That's how I was introduced to 40k and GW's brutal copyright policies.

Because my dad has been playing miniatures games for decades, I was brought up playing them too. I liked sci-fi, and played with a lot of Kryomek and Future Wars models using homebrew rules that I came up with. My godfather (another miniatures gamer) heard this and sent me some 40k models - the old 3rd ed metal Terminator Librarian, Space Marine commander, a Chaos Havoc with an autocannon, and a single biker. These got incorporated into my games along with some Terminators from Space Hulk, that my dad got for legal reasons. Slowly I got more models at the Historicon flea markets, and incorporated them into my homebrew system. My friends did the same, and we eventually moved on to regular 40k.

Long story short: Legal battle, I played homebrew, I got 40k models, I played 40k.

The neighbours kid, a guy I grew up with 4 years older than me, bought some chaosmarines, and from the very beginning (being 8 years old) I was amazed of the game. (Because he was like an older brother).

So I skimmed through the rulebook and digged the Darkeldar and Eldarstuff, and was hellbent on getting them, because I thought they were the cooles of the cool.

Visiting a local Gamestore (that was the name, btw xD), I looked for eldar and found... marines.

So I got talked into buying marines and got a marines battleforce, a space wolves battleforce and some extra marines.


Looking back I feel scammed xD I was an 8 years old kid walking into a modeling store, wanting to buy eldar, and got talked into buying a butload of marines.




Anyways I greatly enjoyed puting the miniatures together, and after being confident to be able to buy Eldar this time I went back and got Eldar. Some time later a friend of my friends came by, bringing his eldar army, and leaving it to me with a comment like "I'll pick it up sometime."
He proceeded to graduate from Gymnasium and went to University and I never ever saw him again. Instead I now had a pretty decent almost all metal Eldar army with alot of old models (like: original firedragons, darkreapers, banshees etc pp).


Eleven years later I am still stuck with Eldar and Darkeldar and got rid of all these useless marines.




Btw Luna: Are you from Vancouver? I just went there and the Motortown GW is just next to a Toys R Us inside the mall xD

BrookM wrote:I've seen some marine displays at my local store but never paid much heed to them until I saw a Leman Russ tank on display. It was love at first sight.

sniff...Yep, that's how I got hooked on 40k. My dad and I were always putting together spitfires, mishismitts and B-52s and he was apprehensive until he saw that leman russ.

My dark path to gamerdom began in the heady days of the early 90s, and Shadowrun for the SEGA Genesis. One trip to an FLGS later and I started my journey on the Path of the Nerd. We'd go and hang out at my buddy Craig's place and his brother John was our nerd guru. Older, in college while we were still high school scrubs. He had shelves of books with games I'd never seen before, knew goddamn every rule. We were playing a game of Shadowrun and he introduced us to an honest to God gamer girl on his arm.

And it was on the family's long abandoned dinner table I saw them. Old school metal Cadians and a goddamn Leman Russ. Eldar and even some Dark Angels. I read his books, I went Guard, Catachans to be specific. They hit me facsination with the Vietnam War buttons and the plastic ones were rumoured to be on the way. Later financial problems and rules dissatisfaction in my nerd clique led me to hock the fether on eBay. But now I'm older, and have money, and I like a few things they've done with 5th ed. I now play Orks, they go so much better with my personality.

Ahhh, I remember my entrance into the hobby with fond memories and tons of nostalgia.

It probably started when I was 6, (Yes, 6) and I noticed this strange store called Games Workshop at the mall. I had no idea what was going on, but every time I looked around, everything seemed really cool (Probably because I played Starcraft at the time and was absolutely in love with the idea of Sci-Fi). Plus, I always loved toys, and toy soldiers with rules seemed so cool at the time that I almost begged my mother for a Test-Game (we never had the time, it wasn't her fault of course)


Fast Forward into 6th Grade. I noticed my friend was on some kind of LOTR website, and I asked him about it. He explained that it was a strategy game for LOTR. I went onto the site and started exploring. I then instantly fell in love with WHFB Orcs and Goblins. I remember sitting on my couch looking at the (Old) website and thinking about what models looked cool and started picking out things that I would purchase eventually. But I found out that my friend played Space Marines and I bought Macragge instead of Skull Pass, plus a Hobby kit. Holding that Macragge box in my hand was like holding the key to another world in my hand. I was so excited that it wasn't even funny. I even brought the assembled box game to my school and got into some gaming on the last day (Laugh all you want, I got 5 girls to play AND about 12 other guys. Plus I got a teacher interested.) The best days of my life right there.

me well i was looking for a pokemon book so i walked into a small cramped shop came out 2 months later battle for skull pass

First encounter was 1990, first year of high school (boarding school) and the guy in the bed across from me in our cubicle had WHFB and 40k.

I started with Dwarfs (from Grenadier first) and GW Empire. Back then we didn't know you played across the table and used to spend 5 turns walking the length of the table to fight in the last turn.
Then started 40k later that year with SMs and painted them up as BAs.

Well back in 3rd grade one of my friends in my apartment complex introduced me to a game called d&d I played a dwarf it was fun.
In 6th and 7th I was introduced to battletec oh the fun of battletec.
Then in high school I met a guy who played car wars and he went to this war gaming club and invited me to go, one day one of the guys was doing the battle at the farm and I was hooked on gw.
First it was space hulk then adeptis mechanicus then 2nd ed 3rd ed gorkamorka the list grows to this day.

I just got Warcraft II, and I was playing it at home. Somehow, while my family and I were walking around a mall, I stumbled across a bright, neon yellow sign called "Games Workshop". Thinking it was another video game store, I walked in to find a lot of old men pushing around toy monsters and rolling lots of dice. Seeing as I had just started playing Warcraft, I naturally looked for as man Orc things as possible. I just pointed to stuff and told my dad, "I want this! and this! and this!". A couple of weeks later I came back and got the rundown of the hobby. And then a couple of weeks later (back when Games Workshop actually had discount SALES), I bought my first starter set and first Orc and Goblin models.

Ever since then I've been hooked!

punkisntdeadyet wrote:I just got Warcraft II, and I was playing it at home. Somehow, while my family and I were walking around a mall, I stumbled across a bright, neon yellow sign called "Games Workshop". Thinking it was another video game store, I walked in to find a lot of old men pushing around toy monsters and rolling lots of dice. Seeing as I had just started playing Warcraft, I naturally looked for as man Orc things as possible. I just pointed to stuff and told my dad, "I want this! and this! and this!". A couple of weeks later I came back and got the rundown of the hobby. And then a couple of weeks later (back when Games Workshop actually had discount SALES), I bought my first starter set and first Orc and Goblin models.

Ever since then I've been hooked!

Discount sales? GW? NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's not possible!

...

Picked up the 3rd edition HE vs. OG starter set, the paint set (complete with space marine, that was supposed to have a bolter but instead had a flamer, and a knight of chaos), and Imrik on Dragon.

Painted the knight, the marine, and then Imrik. Imrik took a week to finish as the brushes were small. A little too small.

This was back when there were several indendependent retailers to choose from and only the GW HQ up the street.

Saw a warhammer demo at GenCon in 85. I had already been a big fan of citadel minis for my dnd game so I jumped on the warhammer game. First army was dwarves I think. Bought rogue trader in 87 or 88. Hard to remember exactly because I was in college and drunk most of the time =)

Back in the mid 90s I was living in a little town in BFE. We had was a sports card shop that sold magic and a hobby shop across the street that had a shelf full of RPGs. One day my buddy came home with a warhammer boxed set. After watching them play a game and looking through the book I realized that the battlemaster board game used the same pieces. I made a chaos army out of those. I made bases for them out of cardboard. We played a couple of times and quickly got bored of it.

Years later while in the military I walked into a game store looking for people who played magic. It turned out that 40k and Battletech were what most people were playing.

It was such a long time ago that I started playing (feels like it anyway) that I can honestly say I don't remember the exact details. I just remember my friends all playing so I guess it was one of them who got me into it. And I was unable to contain myself with just one race. In the 5-6 years that I originally collected I went through nids, marines, eldar and chaos. I don't think I ever collected very much of anything, just bought random bits and pieces...except chaos. I do remember buying the brand new abaddon and kharn and rampaging across the board.

I'm actually still on my first army; about 4500 points of Orks and still going.

My first intro to 40K was on the computer via the old Final Liberation game. After that, I didn't do much until Dawn of War came out and my friend and I played that for a long time, it was just one of those really great games. Fast forward a couple of years and I'd been promoted and changed cities and hired a chap who'd played 40K for a while. At any rate, Nic and I became fast friends and he sold me on giving the table top a go. A few weeks later, I launched some business up in Sault Ste. Marie and wandered into a game shop which was clearing out GW stuff. I bought most of their Ork bilsters at that point and gave them to my girlfriend to paint. From there, I got more stuff, started painting and playing more and that's that. I actually found that I liked the painting more than the gaming side of things, which rather surprised me, but there you have it.

I've probably told this story before on these boards, as this is not the first thread of the type to come up here, but I like the story so I'll tell it again.

I believe that my interest in models and miniatures began when my parents took me to Rock City when I was four years old or so. Rock City is a well known attraction in Tennessee, just outside of Chattanooga. Well, amongst the rock gardens and what not they also have a display of dioramas depicting scenes from various fairy tales and nursery rhymes. I remember that for whatever reason I was immediately fascinated, and I firmly believe that is what pretty much established my interest in both miniatures and gaming.

A few years later I was in elementary school. Well, the school I attended had to some extent been influenced by the D&D/roleplaying game hysteria in the 80's, and was trying to discourage the kids from experimenting with fantasy games. Well, when some of us expressed doubt that a product being sold shrink wrapped at your local toy store was *really* involved in weird rituals and making teenagers insane, one of our classmates regaled us with stories about how some of his friends' older brothers were playing the game, and that they found "secret magic rituals" at the "higher levels" after you play a while. Of course, this is the same guy who had the story about the desecrated indian graveyard in his backyard with associated hauntings, the ouija board tales, and the story about how you could summon the Bell Witch on halloween. With some people, the tale gets better with the telling, but regardless, some of us just HAD to find out about *that*. I had also had an introduction to fantasy via C.S. Lewis ( Ironically one of the most well known Christian writers of the 20th century), so all of that is how I probably got into the gaming part of it.

After being introudeced to miniatures for RPGs and games like HeroQuest, I had an idea that there were miniatures used in gaming. Well, I walked in to the FLGS one day for some reason, and I asked about the GW product on their shelves. That lead to them explaining the hobby. I didn't have any money on me at the time, so I told them it was something I might like to try at a later time. I was in a bookstore sometime later that week where they had some 40k 2nd ed. box sets, so I asked my father to pick one up and call it a christmas present. This had to be some time in the mid 90s I suppose, as 2nd edition was out but a lot of people at the store were still playing with the old RT figs. My first army was BA space marines, and I recall that the first marine I painted was done with Testor's model paints, because I was not aware that they had water soluble paints designed specifically for the miniatures hobby. I ended up selling by BA army and picking up guard, which I played until I took a break for five years or so.

I ended up back in to miniatures starting a little over two years ago by trying out WHFB empire. Now I mostly have gone back to 40k with Eldar. The long and short of it is that I was one of the 2nd edition crowd, brought in when GW started marketing to a younger ( at the time) audience.

I started taking an interest in Warhammer about the time I stopped collecting White Dwarf, this was in the 80's.

My first foray into the hobby was actually back in the early 90's. I was 6 years old or so and my dad and his shipmates were playing a game called Hero Quest, i asked if i could join (expecting a no, they were all adults playing) and they said yes! for the next few years my family and friends would play Hero Quest frequently, making our own campaigns, custom table boards, expansion sets, painting the minis, etc.
In the mid 90's we had all stopped playing, and my dad was away in the south pacific, he would often mail us packages with interesting things he would find, and I got a White Dwarf magazine and a Games Workshop catalog. Being a young lad with no money my friends and I just used our imagination and pretended to be Space Marines, or Eldar Phoenix Lords etc. In the Christmas season of 95' i started saving my money to get the 2nd edition starter box, I was tired of imagining these minis. by feb of 96' i had about $600 saved up so i took the plunge, I got the starter box, a bunch of paint, Bjorn the fell handed, an eldar falcon grav tank, a squad of scouts, some guardians, and a few other models that I cant remember at this time.


been playing on and off ever since.