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Tuned 40 this year. Officially started gaming when I was. . . 11? with Battletech. 40K took over when I was about 14 or 15. Me and my 3 gaming friends got together and bought the 2nd Ed boxed set for one of my birthdays. I took Marines, my friends took Orks, Eldar and Chaos to start. My brothers joined soon afterwards with more Chaos and Space Wolves. It's been 40K pretty much ever since.

Prior to actually having the Battletech rulebook and with only a vague idea of how it worked, I remember building lego robots and making rules for them. My two brothers and I would choose a robot and then battle it out on the carpet. Naturally damage was recorded by knocking arms/legs off our robots. Good times!

I'm 43 Now, got into GW in 1988 with Blood Bow and I even have some of my white dwarf magazines from then also, had a couple of long breaks, as most do and now into AOS, Blood bowl, 40k and Underworlds.

I started gaming with WW2 in 1/72 in 1987.
I was 18. Yeah, I started late.
(I was an electronics and chem nerd at school.)
Later in 1987, 40k got released. So I got into it.
Then I found battletech (2nd ed box) and it's been a downward spiral ( ) ever since.

I'm 51 this year. So 33 years

41 here. My brother and I got both Hero Quest and Space Crusade around the time they launched, and then went down the rabbit hole with Advanced Hero Quest, D&D, Warhammer Fantasy Battle (the first starter set with plastic models - high elves vs goblins I think? 4th edition maybe?).

Interest petered out for a while, before getting back into doing some painting in my mid 20s.

Kept up with other geeky things, pen and paper RPGs mainly - Vampire: The Masquerade, Shadowrun, Call of Cthulhu...

Then about half a dozen years ago my friend and I took the plunge into 40K and split Dark Vengeance between us, and have been at it ever since.

Man I loved that Hero Quest commercial. Really takes me back. I remember seeing Battle Masters on the shelf at Wal-Mart in October and asking for it for Xmas. Every time between then and December we would go shopping, I would run to the eisle and marvel at its awesomeness.

Got my first Space Wolves in 97. Never stopped since.

It looks like everyone started extremely young. 9-14 or so

Some of you are making me feel old. Turn 46 this year and I guess you can say I started my geekdom in 1983 with a red box with a cool looking dragon on it. My friends and I at that age made a mash of the rules, but it was cool. Was also a bit of a dice collector at that time too.

From D&D, got into Car Wars and Battletech (with the unseen mechs). A friend clued me into something call Warhammer 40,000 Rogue Trader in 1988 not too long after it came out. Dabled with it (so much metal....) but eventually I gave my soul to PC games (and girls) for most of my high school days and only returned to 40k (and WFB) when 2nd edition came out and my local comic shop had the starter box. Though my hobby has waxed and waned, it is pretty unbroken since then as I still have some 2nd edition models. What I regret is throwing away all of my Rogue Trader stuff.

Hard to imagine almost 35 years have gone by.

A kid at school gave me a copy of the Rogue Trader rulebook with some RBT01 plastics. I didn't really try to actually learn the rules, just painted them up like Crimson Fists and called it a day. That was sometime around 91-93 when that happened.



Flash to tail end '97, possibly VERY early '98 and I spot the 3rd Ed. codex with the Crimson Fists on the cover. Bought it on the spot. After reading it I realized I needed the rulebook, and decided to snag the boxed set. My little brother was also a fan of the RT book when it was given to me, so he said he'd play the Dark Eldar if I was going to paint up some Fists. Well, a second boxed set later and we had opposing forces ready to go, and ready built opponents.

The good news? We still game together to this day. Ironically, his distaste of modern 40K and the train wreck that we found 8th WFB to be led us to sell most of our armies. At the lasts minute we decided to stick with a couple armies each, and to then go back to 3rd Ed. 40K and 6th Ed. WFB specifically. Neat part of this is that our classichammer group is slowly expanding as we speak.

Happy (belated) Birthday!!

I agree with most that it was getting introduced to a game that just spun the creative gears. My boys got me into WHFB 15 years ago. And, since I was the creative one, I ended up assembling and painting each of my three boys' latest army desire along with my own.

After all was done (well, we do keep it going a bit) I had done 9 GW armies and 5 Mantic.

So, what to do with all these minis? I developed and have on Kickstarter right now Cavern Quest Warriors, a massive RPG dungeon crawl game: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mdsw/cavern-quest-warriors-ii

Happy Birthday Mad Doc.

I was just like you - HeroQuest for Xmas in 89, then Space Crusade in 90 and various expansions for both. From there the spiral into the vast money pit of 40k. I have had various hiatuses (hiatii?), but still have all my 40k models and HeroQuest.

I've introduced various people to 40k over the years and I'm just about to start playing HeroQuest at lunch at work (with some rule tweaks - we're not 9 years old anymore!!).

GW certainly got their money's worth out of that HeroQuest TV ad!!

Oh god, this thread's made me realise I first played 40K 28 years ago...

Sigh heavily and scratch your gut if you feel old all of a sudden.

 Stevefamine wrote:
It looks like everyone started extremely young. 9-14 or so

13 for me I think at an after school club. 40K RT and Space Hulk

I was about 13 or 14 when the first edition of Warhammer came out. A few years later and I was working for GW, in the warehouse and then painting for the Derby & Nottingham shops back when they paid piece work for display models. I have scored a half century this year and I still love GW stuff.

Although I would love it even more if we got the old world back...no?...oh well, I tried.

Mine probably started with crossbows and catapults circa 1984.
I used to take the blocks and towers and combine them with my WW2 army men and tanks (plus some of dads airfix kits) and fight it out.
No dice were harmed then however.

Progressed to a combo of Space Crusade, Heroquest and Battlemasters and then onto 40k circa 1994.

Still have the boxed game for C&C, battlemasters, heroquest and my early 40k figures. Space Crusade went awol though

Happy memories.