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.

Well, I started when the new DE codex (2002) came out. It was a nice army to play at that time (and it still is). My second army was BT due to (very) different play style.

I started Tyranids about a week after starting my first army.
I got roped into playing against another newbie who had way more points to field than I did. A friend loaned me his nids - absolutely gorgeous paint jobs, monstrous models and stupidly powerful against a newbie with no real form of mobile power. Being a newbie myself I thought my victory was because the Nids were awesome rather than because my opponent was terrible. I got a Flyrant, Harpies and both breeds of Gaunts before I got TWC - I was still convinced SW Jump Guard were amazing.
Anyway...Tau.
I still collect the Nids and use them to convince newbies that 40k is fun (or at least hunting big nasty monsters is).

Picked up Chaos Daemons when I wanted something totally different from my main, DA, and something no one at my LGS played

The order of armies I built in 40k were...

Space Marines (Blood Angels)
Space Marines (Grey Knights -- back then they weren't their own faction)
Eldar
Imperial Guard
Orks
Add Eldar Harlequins (old metal ones)
Tyranid
Dark Eldar (old metal ones)
Space Marines (Ultramarines)
Grey Knights
Dark Angels (incomplete)
Dark Eldar (plastic)
Blood Angels

With some exceptions, most of the factions were at least 60+ models, with some of them (like Imperial Guard) way more.

I started off collecting Craftworld Eldar (Biel Tan) because I loved the fluff, the models, and the wide variety of paint schemes the aspect warriors offered. Kept collecting steadily until I was at about 10,000 points worth of CWE and would have happily continued with that as my only army until GW broke Harlequins out as a separate faction.

Bought the codex and a number of the new plastic models the day they dropped. It has never really felt like a new army to me since I had some of the models already, but I will admit that it clearly is although it is mostly intended as an allied force. I like the movement in the Harlequin models, and the insanity of their color scheme has always been a big draw.

I am planning on starting my third as a Corsair allied force relatively shortly because of, amusingly enough, Raging Heroes' Void Elves models. It got me looking at Dark Eldar, but I have never really liked their fluff, so it was a bit of a toss up until one of the threads on this forum turned me towards Corsairs. I like the fluff better, I like the variety of options better, I like that I can use Dark Eldar models for them (I think FW's corsairs are ugly), and I find their rules amusing.

1988 I started my first "army" - in the sense that "proper" army lists as you know them now didn't really exist at the beginning of 40k.

Those were my "Eldritch Raiders".

My second army were Crimson Fists, using the several boxes of RTB001 plastic space marines that I'd amassed until that point. This was around late 1989/early 1990.
Third was my Wood elves in 1992 or so.