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Do your girlfriends/significant others play 40k? How did you convince them to start?

Yes. In a limited capacity. She started painting Orks and enjoys Kill Team and Execution Force.

My wife began playing, gathered a good sized tyranid army, was painstakingly learning the rules... and then 6th ed happened and not only was she so disheartened that she put the lot down and now only occasionally picks up a mini to just enjoy painting, but it's effect on her significantly reduced my interest in 40k, which was then further stomped on by 7th ed and the totally awful ork codex.

We have, however, picked up some Star Trek Attack Wing ships and put some faction pure fleets together along with friends, and she loves it... and kicks my butt on a regular basis with her 'tons of dakka' Dominion warfleet.

My wife will gladly help assemble and paint.

When I get the new MEdge box, she was super excited to build some models. Then she lost one of the arms for my Karist heavy in our new thick rug.

Nope - it was a close run thing.

Dark Eldar Codex, loved the Kabalites and Wyches

Venoms, Trueborn, Wyches in raiders and so on all bought and built. She was designing paint schemes and had already constructed a list based around the Duke Sliscus and Lady Malys.


Then the new codex dropped, tore the arse out of the Dark Eldar, crapped up her army list completely and mean't that if she wasn't playing with all the ugly Haemunculous Coven stuff which she hates the look of, then she was severely handicapped.


It's all boxed awaiting to go on eBay at some point



Now SAGA and Frostgrave, she LOVES those games. Tomahawk Games and Osprey have a habbit of making balanced, fun games that don't stuff-over the fan base,

My GF likes to paint up her Eldar (she's quite skilled too), and sometimes we throw around some dices with Kill Team HoR rules, though she's the most skilled person when it comes to roll only 1s XD

My wife loves wargaming, hates that all the GW female minis look like men.

My GF collects random fantasy minis and paints them. I tried to recruit her for 40k, but she doesn't like the image of 3 hours of pushing models and reading rules.

It's be nice to get my wife in on it, but it's hard enough to get my step-sons to pay attention long enough to finish a 700pt game with simplified rules. And they actually want to play it!

English also isn't her first language, so I imagine it would be difficult to get her started.

One day, though, one day

I wish! My wife thinks its too complex but she does love the Sisters of Battle. I have gotten her to play Xwing and while she dosent follow the intricacies of the rules or run any complex ships or upgrades she flies them better than anyone I know.

I find this thread interesting, and I made one a while ago myself. There were some good responses.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/683217.page

My kinda-ex boyfriend is too busy (understandably) raging over Age of Sigmar!

We share AoS laments together but that is as far as his Warhammer interests now stretch.

Poor guy, he invested so much in his Dark Elves only to have GW discontinue them.

 Swabby wrote:
all the GW female minis

good joke lol

My wife enjoys painting miniatures but doesn't play any TT games. She just sits at my painting desk and paints two miniatures a night to relax after work. She has in the past played a game or two of x wing with me but she pretty much has zero intrest in gaming

Mine tried it had little interest in the game but loves to paint. This works perfectly since that's probably the aspect of the hobby I find the least enjoyable, though only by a bit.

The guy who's closest to being my SO is into 40k, but he doesn't really play. It's an online relationship and we've never met face-to-face (which we're both okay with), so we've never been able to play the tabletop game together. He also unfortunately hasn't been able to find a place to play in real life, so he never really got into the tabletop game. We have played Dawn of War together a couple of times (we keep having issues staying connected; often one or the other gets disconnected and we've had even worse issues trying to use mods in multiplayer), and I plan to make a Space Marine character in Eternal Crusade so I can play that game with him when it comes out.

Nope, never going to happen!

My wife thinks it's silly (she's correct of course), but she doesn't care one bit that I'm into it.

She won't buy me hobby stuff anymore though She said last time she went to the flgs to buy me a gift she was ogled and hit on pretty bad, and didn't feel safe. I told the store owner about it, but alas the damage is done.

 jasper76 wrote:
My wife thinks it's silly (she's correct of course), but she doesn't care one bit that I'm into it.

She won't buy me hobby stuff anymore though She said last time she went to the flgs to buy me a gift she was ogled and hit on pretty bad, and didn't feel safe. I told the store owner about it, but alas the damage is done.

Ah the glory of Amazon. Or any online retailer for that matter. Spend all the money you want on discounted hobby supplies, without the sweaty, cramped atmosphere of the LGS. And free shipping to boot.

my wife has tried a few times, but just does not like it as much as playing a strategy game on PC

 bocatt wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
My wife thinks it's silly (she's correct of course), but she doesn't care one bit that I'm into it.

She won't buy me hobby stuff anymore though She said last time she went to the flgs to buy me a gift she was ogled and hit on pretty bad, and didn't feel safe. I told the store owner about it, but alas the damage is done.

Ah the glory of Amazon. Or any online retailer for that matter. Spend all the money you want on discounted hobby supplies, without the sweaty, cramped atmosphere of the LGS. And free shipping to boot.

Unfortunately, Amazon and online retailers don't come with an awesome store owner who knows exactly what armies I play, and has a good idea of what I don't already have. We like to surprise eachother with gifts, so I don't like to tell her exactly what I want.

Anyway, I already buy too many hobby presents for myself, no special occasion required, so its not a big deal.

Wargaming just doesn't appeal to most women and you shouldn't try to force it on them.

It's okay for us to have different tastes from them, and while it'd be nice to share your hobby with a loved one there will just be some things you'll never have in common.

hobojebus wrote:
Wargaming just doesn't appeal to most women and you shouldn't try to force it on them.

You never know. When I was growing up with the introduction of video games, they never really were much of a 'girl hobby' at the time, and now I think there are more and more female video gamers.

MtG certainly seems to have alot of female players; different game but same solar system.

I can imagine the models themselves don't help out. In order to be a girl in 40k you have to be a crazed religious lunatic, and other model-makers over-sexualize their models in cartoonish ways.

 jasper76 wrote:

hobojebus wrote:
Wargaming just doesn't appeal to most women and you shouldn't try to force it on them.

You never know. When I was growing up with the introduction of video games, they never really were much of a 'girl hobby' at the time, and now I think there are more and more female video gamers.

MtG certainly seems to have alot of female players; different game but same solar system.

I can imagine the models themselves don't help out. In order to be a girl in 40k you have to be a crazed religious lunatic, and other model-makers over-sexualize their models in cartoonish ways.

I've heard Final Fantasy XIV has more female players than male players.

No, my wife doesn't partake of the hobby. She does enjoy boardgames and computer games, but when it comes to my toy soldiers, well, this picture says it best:

My group actually has a number of female players. This began last year when one of the people I play Pathfinder and LARP with mentioned buying an IG army and playing 40K against his brother. I mentioned having played 40K since 3rd edition. A couple of our female Pathfinder/LARPing buddies became interested in our conversation, so we arranged a sample game, which got people more interested.

In order to encourage the new players, I pulled together all the minis I've had kicking around and not done anything with and made them available to these budding newbies. I mentioned this to one of my other nerd friend groups, and one of them gave me a metric motherlode of stuff, because he used to be a big time player but doesn't anymore. This resulted in the newbies having access to small-but-functional Eldar and SoB armies, plus about a hojillion points of Tau (3rd-4th ed vintage stuff).

So, the GM of our Pathfinder group said she wasn't interested in getting involved in all these shenanigans, but I left the Sisters of Battle kicking around in our shared space, and she really liked the aesthetic of them, and fell in love with the background, so she started playing them. She started playing hard-core - one week she played 6 games in 7 days.

I sold some of the non-40K stuff my other friend gave me to fund fleshing out the donated 40K armies. I ran a campaign and came up with some house rules to prevent the worst excesses of 6th/7th edition 40K. My generous friend recently donated all his Chaos stuff, so now there's a gargantuan amount of CSM stuff for people to play.

One of the unique things about this experience is that we have an exclusive space to play in. One of our Pathfinder/LARP buddies has access to an unused store space in a small commercial property her family owns. So, that is our group's personal crafting/gaming space. That gave our female players a convenient and safe environment to play and develop without putting up with the drek women can be exposed to when they stumble into the boys-club environment of tabletop wargaming. I like to think the tone I set with the house rules and the campaign helped too, and getting started with hundreds of dollars worth of stuff for free certainly didn't hurt, but I suspect the safe environment free of harassment was the biggest reason 40K stuck, plus there being more than one female player picking it up at the same time, so none of them felt like the odd duck out.

 jasper76 wrote:

hobojebus wrote:
Wargaming just doesn't appeal to most women and you shouldn't try to force it on them.

You never know. When I was growing up with the introduction of video games, they never really were much of a 'girl hobby' at the time, and now I think there are more and more female video gamers.

MtG certainly seems to have alot of female players; different game but same solar system.

I can imagine the models themselves don't help out. In order to be a girl in 40k you have to be a crazed religious lunatic, and other model-makers over-sexualize their models in cartoonish ways.

Half my wow raid groups female and are some of our best players, but none of them are into wargaming.

Computer games are different from playing with toy soldiers or model trains or making dioramas, you should never put women off from playing but just don't try and force it because in general not many are interested.

I am a significant other and JUST started investing in the game. I started by painting my SO's models. In all honesty, I'm glad he wants me to play because I was getting tired of painting his Eldar HIS way. But, in terms of being excited for the game play...I'm not. Not at all. I'm a pc gamer and enjoy the speed and ease of games with the rules already programmed in for me. I see 40k as an ancient form of Starcraft and the thought of playing Starcraft in slow motion kills me... That's okay. I'm hoping with some patience and time, I will be able to semi-function on the field and push through a low point match...

My biggest fear is that I will invest hours and hours into understanding the rules, just for the codex to change before I get a handle on it. But no matter what, I'll still have some awesome models to paint, which is relaxing and fun.

God no.

The last thing I want is a girlfriend I have to take to game day. It's nice to have something to myself. Besides, my type of women don't play these types of games, lol. I dated a woman for two and a half years who had no idea I even play them, let alone have a fairly well-trafficked blog about it, lol. She always just thought I was going to barbecue with "my married buddies who don't get out of the house much". I guess it wasn't a lie.

Not that I don't like women being around when we game. We have a few women who play with us from time to time, but usually when we are playing board games or the one who really loves Star Wars and X-Wing.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Poor guy, he invested so much in his Dark Elves only to have GW discontinue them.

I was upset over the demise of the Dark Elves because they make such a good bits source. I hadn't played WHFB in years, but Age of Sigmar made me mad for that reason, lol. All the cool fantasy bits that disappeared.

Never had a girlfriend who wanted to play miniature games (had a few who roleplayed, though. They'd rather play D&D than 40k).

Wife paints the models, still doesn't play - or want to play miniatures. She just sends me on my way with a "go and have nerd fun" and gets to spend the rest of the afternoon catching up on her stuff. For couples, "alone time" is just as important as "together time" and so is having separate interests.