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Realised I'd not posted in the intro section so thought I better do so!

Hi there,

Firstly I'll get the elephant in the room out of the way, I'm a Age of Sigmar player. If that immediately puts you off conversing with me or reading the waffle below then fair enough, but I think it's best to lay those cards on the table!

I originally played GW games over 20 years, back when 40K was Rogue Trader and when Games Workshop sold other companies miniatures. I had both a dwarf and Undead fantasy army, recall picking up the Undead box set for £10 that contained 30 skeletons, 8 cavalry and a chariot, don;t think that's in GW's price plans nowadays. 40K wise I had an Eldar army that was immense for the time, biggest models then were Dreadnoughts and Warwalkers but I still had a force that points wise could have been fielded in Epic. Bloodbowl though was my fave, the polystyrene pitch of 2nd? edition with the rules of the following edition in particular. At the age of 16 I was running a club that regularly had over 60 players a week in attendance, having to hire a local hall to cram them all in. But eventually I drifted away from the hobby, I discovered Magic the Gathering and that became my hobby drug of choice, most weekends I'd journey from one tournament on a Saturday to another the other end of the country on the Sunday, the sale of the miniatures helping fund both the card purchases and the travel until eventually it had all gone.

Fast forward to the present day, I'm a dad of two boys aged 10 & 8, both intelligent lads and following their father into the den of geekery. They've dabbled in ccgs but none really struck a chord so back in October I decided to take them both along to the local Games Workshop store, the manager was free and offered to give them a demo game of their choice of 40K or AoS. They chose the fantasy option and for the next 3 hours they played the game and then sat quiet as mouses painting their own sample Stormcast Eternal Liberator. They were hooked, and something inside me sparked alive once more too.

A week later we collectively opened the starter box set, the youngest picking the Stormcast, the older brother picking the Khorne as they had for their demo game and again we sat as a family with no other distractions for several hours around the kitchen table making the models and having a game. Over the coming weeks they saved their pocket money every week and would get one of the hero models to add to their forces whilst I'd be picking up a selection of paints on every trip to the store, we attended a warboot nearby where my eldest managed to pick up an additional set of the Khorne that was in the starter box and a unit of Skullreapers, the youngest meanwhile branched out and got a Lord Kroak and a Frostheart Phoenix for a combined price of £10 (he can sniff out a bargain!).

Christmas arrives and there's one thing on their list, Age of Sigmar models. The eldest's birthday is only 3 days after Christmas so he's wanting even more. They branch out their armies further still and decide to both start on another force that'll compliment their original one, one picks Skaven, the other Seraphon. Between them they got enough forces to make 2 decent armies and 2 skirmish sized forces.

Since then we've mainly been concentrating on painting up the Khorne forces as tomorrow we go to war in hell , well more specifically, a tournament in Stockport though it has been twinned with Hell I've heard. We imagine it's going to be a learning curve and expect nothing more than the wooden spoon but we look at it that we're all still on the first leg of a journey and let's enjoy the ride!

Hi and welcome to Dakka!

I love your story; I have two very young kids of my own and I can't wait to see if they are as nerdy as their dad

The eldest is only just four, so they probably have a way to go until they start showing a real interest in wargaming, but they have already painted a few of my old figs and are always asking about my various Ork projects.

As a fellow father, I really appreciate what you say about your boys sitting down for a few hours and concentrating on something creative. I think there are all too few kids these days (and, perhaps, too few parents) who have the concentration span to really commit to a time-consuming hobby like ours.

All the best and may your boys' adventure into wargaming be a long and exciting one!

PS A nudge in the direction of the Greenskins probably wouldn't hurt, somewhere down the line...

Cheers, we did strike lucky actually a couple of weeks ago when a work colleague kindly gave me 3 boxes of unopened Ork 40k units so when we do decide to have a try at 40k then Orks will probably be the one we go for!

Cool! By the way, is the tournament you're going to at Element Games? I'm from Manchester originally and, even though I've never been there, I buy all my stuff through them! It seems like a great place.

Yes it is and Element has a great set up there, we went along about 6 weeks ago to watch a few games at the last tournament and one of the blokes there kindly let my eldest son be the dice general (with agreement from the opponent) and he rolled the dice for all his moves and attacks. Wasn't much help though, my eldest has the worst dice rolls I've seen, the youngest meanwhile has taken down someone's Skarbrand with a single unit of Liberators.

Hi and welcome, and good luck for the tournament!

My eldest son is 7 and he's desperate to get involved in Warhammer / 40K. He's been painting a few 'practice' models with me of a Sunday afternoon and loves it so far.

How we do it painting wise is that they both apply the base coats and initial washes and then I do the neatening up and highlighting. As long as they're remembering to water down the paints then I can sort out most of their out of the lines painting. All three of us have come on amazingly in the two-three months we've been doing it.

Here's one that we're currently finishing off!

Wow, that's better than my painting, let alone my son's!

On that the eldest did the initial Khorne Red and Retributor Gold base coats and then followed it up with a wash of Agrax on both. He then did some light drybrushing on the wings with Ulthuan Grey and Khorne Red again on the skin. At that point I then took over to neaten it up and continue the highlighting.

Welcome to Dakka, and to the hobby!

Nicely painted models there mate; congrats to your boy on picking it up so quickly, I still shiver at the thought of my first attempts.

As another dad I really like your story of how you guys got (back) into wargaming, I think I have a few years of ambivalence until mine show an interest. Good luck and I hope that you continue to enjoy AoS.

Welcome to Dakka! You could maybe try starting a P and M blog on the site here detailing your projects to help keep you motivated! (and so we have nice models to look at)

Hi,

Welcome to Dakka