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The year was 1996 and Goldeneye and Fargo were everywhere.

We got a new kid in my class, he had a Van Saar gang, I got a Goliath gang, things escalated and I ended up with a 1,500pt 2nd Ed. Dark Angels 'army' that was mostly Independent Characters, Dreadnoughts and Deathwing.

Sold it all for £15 two years later when I discovered girls. Got roped back in by Dark Crusade in 2009-ish.

1993 or 4 maybe? My best friends and I had been playing Battletech for a few years by then, but we knew of 40K and the general awareness of it came to a head at some point. Myself and a friend split the 2nd Ed boxed set for my birthday. I took Space Marines, he took Orks, and my other two pals took up Eldar and Chaos, respectively. Never looked back after that.

Friend had shown me WFB and then the new Rogue Trader book. Dark sci fi, i was hooked.
Didnt like the space marines, friend 1 did orcs, friend 2 space elves. Since i had recently joined the army i bought into the Imperial Army.
I still have 70 or so old Imp Army figs making up my main army.

It was like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ERmUzs1O5E

"PHASMA GUN!"

"DREDNAWWT!"

This was the golden age of the hobby. You saw the costumes in the commercial? That´s true dedication to sell a product and nowadays GW just shows blurry pics of their models. How uninspiring! A few months later and I purchased the chaos codex for 2nd and painted the CSM as Night Lords because they had and still have the best paint scheme of all the traitor legions.

So....

Back in about 3rd grade, I was introduced to the board game Panzer Leader. I would say it was probably my favorite board game I ever got my hands on.

Some time around the same time, I was also introduced to plastic models. My brother and I would play with them across the floor like fancy green army men. Given a background in both wargaming and miniatures, it was logical I would eventually wind up in the intersection of my two hobbies.


Later on, my friend was given some Tau and some mixed imperial models from one of his friends. We spent an evening looking through the pictures in the 5e rulebook; the baneblade and vindicator models pictured really captured my attention. Eventually he ended up giving the guardsmen to me in exchange for some thing else, and I bought the codex and a second-hand Leman Russ [which was in a really bad way, and I vaguely rehabilitated]. That was how I started my first 40k army. Now I play Guard, Sisters, Space Wolves, and Custodes.

My first mini wargame was 40k, and my army was Dark Eldar- near the middle of 4th edition. I was in my late teens and most of my RPG friends had an army already.
The manager of the local game store suggested that I buy D.E. because they were "really good". What he meant was "I can't sell these models, so I'm going to pawn them off on a stupid kid".
I don't think that I ever won a game with them..
The bright side of that experience is that I am wiser because of it, and I think that although 8th edition is far from perfect, GW is doing a LOT better with game balance.The ITC also helps a lot where the parent company's efforts fall short with competitive tournament play.

Since 1997 I have had the following armies: Dark Eldar, Craftworld Eldar, Tyranids, Genestealer Cult, Chaos Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Feral Orks, Speed Freaks, and one Lizardman (WHFB) army.
My current build up is an imperial soup list featuring the Deathwatch. My very first loyalist marine list ever in all these years.

In miniatures wargaming? I had been painting miniatures for Mansions of Madness in which I really enjoyed doing. I had also been watching the Mansions of Madness play through on WatchItPlayed. They also had Dust Warfare series on the channel so I watched that and it seemed like fun. Since the miniatures were pre-built and primed, it also seemed like I would have a much easier time learning to paint better with.

So, I went to my FLGS and asked the owner if there was a group playing Dust. Turns out there was, so I bought a bunch of models, painted them up (I thought they had to be painted to play) and showed up one day with my helicopter heavy SSU list. The group was really good and a lot of fun to play with so I kept playing transferring from Dust Warfare to Dust Battlefield. The group sort of dissolved after the Battlefront vs. Dust Studios thing.

As for 40k, I won a box of Dark Vengeance and found them a lot of fun to paint up. Played through the campaign with a friend and found the rules okay enough to continue. Bought some more old boxed sets like the Crimson Slaughter box and also had fun painting them up. Ultimately, I found GW miniatures much easier to look good than a lot of the other games I had been playing. Up until 8th, I was mostly playing Heralds of Ruin Kill Team. Which I will maintain that the basis of a skirmish game 7th edition was decent to good. There are still a bunch of things from HoR Kill Team I miss in the current Kill Team.

I had been playing Laserburn for years and when I started working in the GW warehouse between college and university I got introduced to some rather sketchy WHFB based sci fi rules. We played with 15mm Tabletop Games figures to start with but by the time the first Space Marines and Orks came out I was painting for a couple of shops so I ended up painting dozens and spending the money on loads more.

Seems like I'm the newest starter here

Good 5 years ago, mates in my primary school (year 5 I think) class took in the codexes for reading time and I fell in love with the concept. Started out with necrons because cool robot skeletons. Painted nothing because all I cared about was gaming. It was awesome.

I started in 1998 when my friend's brother sold me his squad of Salamanders space marines, I swapped to Orks when I realised that everyone collected space marines, but I still have my old marines knocking around in the bottom of the old Ork battleforce box! (It's looking pretty tatty now...)

Back in '96 my mom was on a work trip to England. She saw a GW store somewhere, went in, and picked up the Bretonnia vs Lizardmen boxed set along with a subscription to White Dwarf, as a surprise gift for me. I was into model planes, so she thought I'd like it. Spent that summer home alone assembling and painting (11 yrs old). First real army was Dark Elves later that year, and High Elves shortly after.

Discovered 40k through White Dwarf. Started a CSM Khorne Army in '97 or '98, and Dark Angels just after that. I'm an only child, so I needed 2 armies at a time so I could play against myself. (Also lived in rural Pennsylvania, no game store/civilization nearby).

Went back to fantasy and started an Empire army. Fell in love with the humans, so then started an IG army (the old metal Valhallans).

Off to college, no time for little army men. Joined the military, even less time.

Since my return to being a civilian I've started fantasy Orcs and Goblins, Tyranids, and added a Deathwing army to my Dark Angels.

Recap:
Bretonnia and Lizardmen boxed game
Dark Elves
High Elves
World Eaters
Dark Angels
Fantasy Empire
Imperial Guard Valhallans
Orcs and Goblins
Tyranids
Deathwing

Space Crusade. Followed by an encounter with White Dwarf 138 (June 1991) in WH Smiths, and being utterly entranced by the back cover photo (you'll need to crane your neck a bit):

 McMagnus Mindbullets wrote:
Seems like I'm the newest starter here

Good 5 years ago, mates in my primary school (year 5 I think) class took in the codexes for reading time and I fell in love with the concept. Started out with necrons because cool robot skeletons. Painted nothing because all I cared about was gaming. It was awesome.

Not by that much! I'm going on 9 years, I think, now; which is way less than the people who've been playing since '91. [I've been modelling and wargaming separately for much longer than 9 years, though]

I collected WHFB Dwarves back in High School, Circa 96-97 ish,

Then started Guard about 10 years ago, but never build a playable army.

I've always been in love with the 40k universe, and the lore is all encompassing, i bought a Miltarium and an Admech, and have started buying Admech, but the more I read the more I am second guessing my decisions, but I think I will stick with the Admech with the new transport Im wanting to build a CC based army (Priests, Dragoons, and Punchy Robots) just to rock the boat a little.

I started in mid 4th Editon but had an interest in it earlier thanks to the Warhammer 40k Fire Warrior game(bought pre-owned a few years after release). Had no idea it was a tabletop game until I got bored and removed the manual and found a small advertising pullout for the miniatures. I got an issue of white dwarf and got obsessed with Eldar but ended up with the pushfit marines set. Started as vaguely ultramarines (couldn’t use transfers and my gold paint dried up when I left the top off) but drifted into my own chapter, called the white skulls, yeah I know.

Carried on with them for a few years but the school I moved to didn’t have a warhammer club so I collected a different army(Orks) and tried to play at the nearest GW but with the hour long travel time I lost interest. Then started again in early 5th with IG but I moved into traditional scale modelling for a few years. That was it until I got back into 40k two years ago and went with Black Templars!

I watched a video on 40k about 1.5 years ago. Thought “Neat.”
Found Imperial Guard. Meat grinder ordinary men and women fighting is pretty cool next to super soldiers. Got the 8th edition codex. Flipped through and found Scions, thinking “who are these Sam Fishers in space?”
Now I’m slowly building a Militarum Tempestus force and Killteam.

I think it was 1990 and I had been playing d&d for a few years when a new friend joined the school and joined our RPG club. I think I started with fantasy using a lot of proxying with general fantasy miniatures.
Then we started up 40k using rogue trader and I collected eldar while he took space orks.
I do miss the old eldar pirates aesthetic but I remember when the white dwarf dropped with the aspect warriors and it blew my mind!

Someone at school gave me a copy of Rogue Trader along with a handful of the old Beaky plastics. That was pretty much the start, but I didn't really dive in wholesale until 3rd Ed.

I'll dive in, too!

Like a lot of kids in the UK, I grew up faintly aware of the contents of the murky, red-and-yellow emblazoned Games Workshops. It was never something I super knew about in primary school, esp as I went to a pretty hardline Catholic school, but that, coupled with having much geekier mates in secondary, and being a child of the 90s, and thus growing up with the Peter Jackson LOTR boom, my curiosity was piqued. One time, furtively in the school library, I stole away a copy of white dwarf. I saw some painting guide where they like painted Aragorn's face green or something first and decided that I much preferred listening to skate punk and trying to talk to girls. This is not where our story starts.

A few years later, in 6th form, my good friend Trephines got back into the hobby. He enthusiastically showed my an array of half-painted Imperial Guard, lamented the advent of finecast, and pestered me to use my ebay account to get him random OOP commissars and sargeants. I did what any right-thinking 17 year old boy would do in such a situation, and relentlessly made fun my friend for it. This is also not where our story starts. Though it nearly is. While I'd gotten pretty good at the whole punk thing, talking to girls had gone a bit awry, and, filling the gap, slipped bizzarre 90s anime - freaky existential stuff like Eva, Lain, and Akira. Out of curiosty, I picked up a gundam...

...fast forward a few more years, and I was in University. For the better part of a year, I barely spoke to anyone, and spent a significant amount of time just hiding from the world. About a year later, I decided to kill myself. That was a bit of a turning point. I went to get help. One of the first things the doctor suggested was that I get a new hobby - any hobby - that would get me out of my room, and talking to other people. At least make me think about stuff other than how much I hated myself, and wanted to die. It was slow, and it wasn't the only thing, but it helped much more than I realized. The excitement of first perusing the GW website. Curiosity about lore, learning how to model, paint, play. I dived in and bough a bunch of stuff online, to pickup instore. At the time, I lived in Hull. Intrepidly, and not without a fair bit of embarrassment, I made the hourlong walk to the store. When I showed up, I was met with overbearing friendliness. The owner (who's name escapes me, but he was a lovely guy, from NZ I think? Doesn't work there anymore afaik) sat me down, showed me how to paint. I still have that first, nervous marine, still on a 25mm base, with a commemorative lil servo skull. As I first stepped into that store, my hair was plastered to my forehead with sweat, and I frantically tried to stop myself having what I'd recently been informed was a panic attack. I left grinning like a kid, peeking into my jacket pocket with glee at the Black Templar nestled in my curled up fingers.

Months went by. I learned that it was okay to occasionally be nice to myself, to reward myself for getting tough stuff done. I looked forward to the long walk into the town center and back, even if to pick up a single pot of paint, and have a chat. Little by little, I became less anxious about talking to new people, being seen by strangers, about being myself a bit more. I've never been much of a player, and only ever won a single game, but I've loved every second of the hobby, and really enjoy painting and modelling. 40k didn't save my life, but it helped. The punk kid painting a box of space marines in a gakky attic room in Hull never got completely fixed, but he's a lot better now, with a steady, rewarding job, that's taken him around the world, and let him live out all kinds of wild dreams. I'm not sure I could have made it here, and started living the life I do if it weren't for my silly little space men. I still make time to hobby, and find it a massive comfort when I've got something bothering me. I took a year out when I first moved to Korea, and starting up the hobby again was one of the best decisions I ever made. I'm not quite as long in the tooth as some of you veterans, and kinda wish I'd been about for the goofier-proportioned early days, but I'm glad I've spent the last 5-ish years in the grimdarkness of the 41st milennium, and I hope to spend much more time there!

...and I even got the talking to girls bit down, in the end.

That's a great story mate, have an exalt :-)

Around the lead up to 8th editions launch, one of DnD players was getting super excited. I didn't understand the fuss so he taught me to play 7th edition. He played his Fallen, and I played his Tau. I liked the feel of the Tau of the Space marines in how they played. Plus, with his local group of players, they already had a necrons, space marine, chaos space marine, Admech, and eldar player. I had this weird hang-up about not wanting to double up. So went with the Tau.

Then 8th edition launched the Tau played nothing like they did in 7th. I'm still enjoying them, but I can't help but feel like if I knew then what I know now, I probably would have picked a different army.

Late 80’s, played RT more as an RPG. Started with BA, as those were the transfers that came in the first RTB01 box. I think my friend Dave was the one who brought 40k to the group.

Didn’t play much during early 2nd. Group kinda scattered to college, but I kept painting. Still nothing that looked a lot like an army, but enough red marines to make a shot at one. I painted a squad of Ultramarines just to take a break from the red, and add an alternative force for multi-sided scenarios in game. Towards the end of 2nd, the FLGS was trying to get people into 40k from fantasy, and asked me to help demo. As I suckered my friends and bystanders in, I worked up my Ultras into a more coherent force. I feel that they probably were the first faction that crossed the line from “scattered squads and characters” to “army” About this time I started Eldar as a secondary army, but that project stalled out once 3rd dropped, and didn’t restart until 6th.


Some of these guys were painted by my friend Dave, others have since been stripped.


Early Ultras


Ultras circa 2000. Bad pic with a primitive camera.

Loving this thread and the warm fuzzy nostalgia :-)

Played Fantasy from 5th onwards. Played an intro game of 40k with friends as Iyanden and loved it. Couldn't afford the almost all metal force at that time so started with the starter set Dark Eldar.

Funnily enough I've played every army except Iyanden since.

All I remember date wise was it was either early or mid 5th edition.

My younger brother and his friends would get me to drive them to the local hobbystore to play 40k (I was more interested with video games at home). Over time I noticed a few of the tanks and things. Learned of the lore and got interested.

Bought my first Leman Russ tank (who is still around and used in battle). Tore apart a bunch of model kits that were already missing pieces like a F-14 Tomcat and a few other airplane models. Built the little Russ into a scrap covered beasty.

It looked like an Ork creation (and still does) but I love him either way. Been playing ever since. Mostly building a legion of tanks via kitbashing/scratch building and generally not following instructions.
Been IG all the way, added Ad mech and a handful of SM. Same army, just constantly getting bigger.

I have slowed down if not outright stopped building due to college work but hope to eventually resume.

I have plenty of tanks and things that need finishing in some way. either Painting, Basing, modifying or just assembly in general .

My brother was 11 years older than me and collected airfix models. In the 80s and 90s he started getting some of the GW things and bought games like Space Crusade and Adventure Quest.

I was of course interested in all these awesome pictures and "toys" and basically ruined his copy of Rogue Trader by going through it so many times (the pages fell out). When 2nd edition came out he bought me the box set (with the space marines, orks and that cardboard terrain and cardboard ork dreadnought). I then started with the blood angels and tried painting them. Some of the kids at school also had older brothers so had some of their collections and were inspired the same way, we found each other and then started a lunchtime club playing in the hour or so that we had.
I eventually stripped all of the metal models I had with Trichloroethylyne from someone's dad who worked at a factory and started repainting them as white scars... which turned out very hard for a 13 year old as white is hard! After about age 16 I didn't bother picking it up again until 8th edition came out although always played the video games.

The common motif here is that older brothers introduced people to Warhammer. So the real question is how did all these older brothers find out about Warhammer, and how many bungs did they get from the Warhammer inc slush fund to get all their little brothers into the game?

I tried to get my little brother into the game, I found it from my dad who played it when he was younger. He used to play CSM, he got a new box of them (Sadly right before the new ones came out). My brother got into marines and I got into Tau, but we can't really afford 40k to a reasonable extent so we've given up trying to buy into it until we have more money. (Read: Jobs)

My Mum.

Her mate's son was into D&D, so I got given a box of Citadel heroes bought after a couple of years after the D&D Basic Rules.
Many copies of Dragon later, GW was announcing 40k RT, coming soon.
Lots of blister packs later, back before army lists and codexes and such, we just played lots of 3-man squads of whatever came in those blisters.
Uni came along some time later, and it all got sold off.

Then, many years, a couple of marriages and lots of computer-game-time later, I got dragged by my wife into Hobbycraft to find something else to do. They still sold GW stufff back in '11, so I got back into the Hobby.

 Kroem wrote:
...So the real question is how did all these older brothers find out about Warhammer, and how many bungs did they get from the Warhammer inc slush fund to get all their little brothers into the game?

Hah! You will never learn the secrets of the Honourable and Ancient Lodge of Elder Brothers and the secret handshake to get 50% off in store.

I am an older brother and my sister plays Eldar.