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I started in the table top gaming world around about the age of 9 or 10 years old with Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition. I was obsessed with books like The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien and films like Willow as a small child. My mother seeing such a passion developing within me decided to ask a friend from work, whose husband was for lack of a better term a true “80’s” geek, for more things I could do with my developing interests. He ran a Dungeons and Dragons game with; his two kids, his brother and a colleague from work. I was truly enchanted by the world of magic, fantastical creatures and most importantly how I could play a part in this fascinating world of the Forgotten Realms. We sat down one day after school to create my first ever role playing character. My first ever chance to be something new, something beyond my child limitations. He advised me the party needed a character called a rogue to help out with their adventures, so with my devotion to the orc race from the stories of Tolkien, Renok was born. The stories I lived through my half-orc rogue Renok, I think played a great deal in my younger life, well I guess he must of as I wouldn’t be talking about him right now. I’ll always remember the time I jumped from a cliff top in a deep underground lair on to the back of a young dragon, to be flung into the abyss and somehow survive thanks to the generosity of the dungeon master.

From here I dipped my toe into the realms of Warhammer Fantasy during the 6th edition and then later to 40k 5th edition. My first love was for those greenskins, again from the days of reading Tolkien I had this great interest in these villains. So I collected legions of Orcs and Goblins for Warhammer Fantasy and a couple of Space Orks to pretend to play 40k with my primary school friend. I was engrossed in the act of creating and painting these models not really playing the war games themselves. It was about creating a world in which my imagination could run free in. From here I spent several years of my early days of high school running Dungeons and Dragons games with friends and painting up models and scenes to tell my stories.

I eventually drifted away from the hobby during my later teenage years, as am sure many of us did. Video games, music, amongst other things became the more focal of my time. Until I started college, here I was sparked back into the hobby by a friend and the arrival of Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition. From here my gaming group of friends grew bigger, we played multiple of different systems. Warhammer 40k, Privateer Press’s Warmachine and Hordes. I even had the chance to play another table top role playing game Iron Kingdoms from Privateer Press. Eventually these days of gaming every other evening came to an end as one of our closer gaming comrades moved abroad and us remaining went to different universities. I still continued to be interested in the hobby but it became more of a creative outlet for me rather than a gaming experience due to my rather antisocial tendencies, so I ended up focusing more on painting and creating scenic dioramas to fill that desire.

I attended University and received a B.A in the study of religion. With my academic interests I found a new area of passion with war gaming. Historical. Contrary to the stigma surrounding my degree, I was not actually training to be a vicar or a theologian. The study of religion explores a multitude of different beliefs, cultural structures from many parts of the world and time. I was greatly interested in two main areas; pre-Christian England and Feudal Japan. This lead me to discover systems like Hail Caesar, Dux Bellorum, Lion Rampant and Ronin. Also companies like Warlord games, Griping Beast and Perry Minatures for all my new toys. This gave me the chance to recreate moments in English history like the battle of Stamford bridge, to explore the ancient Celtic traditions of Britain or the period of the waring states in ancient Japan. So this is where I am now with my hobby today; I have a great interest in historical settings but I still hold an interest in certain science fiction and of course a good few medieval fantasy based games.

I know that was kind of a self-indulgent speech but I just wanted to delve into how, when why I got into the hobby. More importantly I really want to know your stories, I’d love to know how someone else got into this amazing hobby. I would love to hear anyone else’ tales of dice and paint! So please feel free to comment below and I look forward to hearing from you! Happy gaming!

I started with Magic: the Gathering. My uncle played, let me use his old Arabian Nights (and earlier) cards against him, then when my local friends started, I jumped right in with my own cards (it was 5th edition). When I was 15, four of my friends started Warhammer fantasy. One had high elves (the arrogant guy in the group, what a shock), one picked up Dwarves, one had Dark Elves and one had Empire. I told my friends “no way am I getting into that”. 18 years later, I’m the only one still seriously into it. The others all gave up mostly or completely. I started with Empire, then went O&G, Chaos, Space Marines, then sold the Empire, O&G and Space Marines and I’m pretty much just a heavy Chaos collector now. I read the books, am semi-vocal on forums (for a married guy who focuses more on my family than here, these days), and paint whenever I can (my wife paints with me and has a fairly solid collection of AoS order models). So I’ve kept up with the hobby, got my wife into the hobby, and I’ll eventually get our kids into the hobby. Plus trying to rope my friends back in.

First thing that sparked an interest in me was when I was living in Sweden when I was about 10 years old - so about 1988. They had some range of fantasy miniatures in the toy shops that you actually had to cast at home. They sold two part rubber moulds, blocks of metal and a little frying pan style crucible to melt it in. Never got any myself but was fascinated.

Fast forward a few years, we were back home in the UK and Hero Quest and Space Crusade launched. It's been on and off ever since then...

Two brothers who lived at the top of my road got into 40k around 1995. I followed and eventually moved onto WHFB with some other friends. I gave that up probably around 2000 or so, then last year I downloaded a Gaunts Ghosts book when browsing the kindle store. It got me back in full steam.

I started with D&D in ‘79, when NBC news did a blurb on the Egbert disappearance. They had some pictures from I think Gencon of some of the dungeon setups with miniature models and everything. I asked for the game for Christmas and actually got it, despite the “bad” press.

Many years later, my 3rd D&D group also did Battletech on the side, and one day one of the gamers brought over a just-released copy of Rogue Trader and two boxes of RT-01 miniatures. We split the models up between our group, and since it that version “required” a referee, I was roped into supervising/running the games - until we quickly realized we could just do vs. battles.

The rest of the group started investing in the game, but being a poor college student at the time, the meager funds I did have went to my main hobby at that time - D&D. Though I did manage to pick up a Land Raider (but it was “too broken” back then that no one would let me field it; that was okay, I was a modeler more so anyways). I played irregularly until some time in 2E. I stopped when my small group of RT-01 models got curbstomped (by my brother, no less) by a chaos lord/sorcerer on a Juggernaut who turned all my meager troops into pink horrors. And they still wouldn’t let me field the Land Raider...

I had D&D, so I put 40K on the back burner. When Tau came out I considered getting back in and bought an army for it, but I realized that if I tried playing with the veterans around me, I’d just get curbstomped again, so I just collected quietly and didn’t play.

When Mechwarrior: Dark Age came out, I gave that game a go and got quite involved with the competitive scene - a little too much. When that game finally wound down I swore to myself I’d stay away away from the tournament scene thereafter; I didn’t like what it did to my wallet or mentality.

My eldest son got interested in Dawn of War near the tail end of 5th edition. When I showed him my 40K collection, he showed interest in playing, so I broke down and got him a CSM army (with Pink Horror flashbacks still in the back of my mind), and I picked up the newly released Necrons. We played a few games together and then tried to branch out to play with the local FLGS crowd, but it quickly became apparent our play style didn’t mesh with the local group and we went back to playing alone.

Once my son discovered Shadow War: Armageddon, though, we haven’t played a proper game of 40K since. His CSM with an autocannon has been a beast, until I managed to turn the tables with an AdMech force laden with Plasma guns . Things have sorta scaled back down since then.

Mostly nowadays though, we just play D&D 5E.

When I was in 3rd grade, I was at a friend's house and his older brother (6th grade) was playing D&D with his own friends. They were having the most fun I had ever seen a group of kids have, so I wanted to know what they were doing. I can still remember that they were fighting a pack of albino apes in some caves.

So I started pestering them a bit at school, and they wouldn't let me play D&D with them, but they did teach me BattleTech. My local library had the three core D&D books, so I read them over and over, and I started buying and painting (poorly) individual D&D and BattleTech miniatures from the local hobby shop.

Then when I was in 6th grade, the cool 8th grader at the end of the block got his hands on the original Warhammer: Rogue Trader book, and gave me a single unpainted Space Marine built out of the RTB01 box. That got me into the world of wargaming. Once I got internet access, I quickly found the old Direwolf mailing list, which led me to Portent, and then eventually to Dakka - and here I am!

Hi!

It would have to be Space Crusade back in 1990, but I also remember MB's Thunder Road just before that, which was good fun too.

I think it was the pull of painting cool miniatures and coming up with back stories for the various armies I collected over the years. Playing the games was really an after thought...

My maternal grandfather played napoleonics when I was a child (so I knew about toy soldiers from a young age). Unlike many of my peers, though, I didn't START gaming until AFTER high School.

My first actual experience with people my age doing it happened around 1987 - I was 18. A friend asked me to meet him at a games con held at a local college campus (during break).

There I beheld the wonders of Battletech and 40k and a bunch of other games. 40k was still in its infancy, no plastic kits yet (the metal lawn chair landspeeder was about the biggest piece they made), so people used other kits from other ranges for certain things. I saw several "Crusher Joe" walkers used as 40k walkers (1/144 scale, I think) - the old "unseen" Battletech 'locust'.

I was helping the friends out with a 20mm WW2 demo game.

A new kid joined our class and he had an Oldmunda (Van Saar) gang. My friends and I got into it big time, then I and a few of them moved into 2nd Ed. 40k as well. Gave it all up a year later and sold everything.

Fast-forward fourteen years...

In my first year at law school, I lived with a guy who was still into 40K. I resisted, at first, but then I started playing Dawn of War. It was a short jump from that into a 5th Ed. Blood Angels army ('cause they were the new hotness then).

Now I spend my weekends drawing maps for fake battles that my fake soldats' ancestors fake-fought.

Far as I recall I started building model ships by Airfix. I was never outstanding, but had good fun building big ships and generally using too much glue.

However one day I saw this



It wasn't just tanks and troops, it was a vast WALKING CASTLE! Complete with more guns weapons that one could count! And alongside it came legions (well it felt like legions) of tanks and troops.

Little did I realise how big an impact that Imperator was going to have on me over the following years. I still greatly miss Epic and still think its a scale that gets far too overlooked (although I'm somewhat glad I never bought into Warmaster as that also died a death - though I can dream that one day GW might bring an AoS Warmaster).


Suffice it to say that after years of shifting from Imperial Titans to Tyranids to Legion of Everblight to a long period of bits of armies and nothing concrete to today where things hve somewhat exploded.

I'm very excited for Adepticus Titanicus and really really hope they build an Imperator, Though it might be years off now I really hope to see one in AT scale and detail

Well, gather around kids, it's time for Dr. Mills to tell the totally uninteresting story of getting into this tabletop miniature madness!

In 1997 my best friend and I were emptying his older brothers room to swap it with his (as he was joining the Army) and we discovered a certain box in his wardrobe :



So began my journey that took me to 40k, a break from 2001 to 2017 and still fun as hell!

For me, it was Advanced Heroquest, at the age of 10. A friend in Primary school had it (as well as 2nd edition Blood Bowl, Adeptus Titanicus and Space Hulk and a selection of minis), and we played this in the corner of the living room floor at his house after school one day. I've been hooked ever since.

When I was 12, my Mum gave my brother and me a tenner or so to spend on something. He went with stationery or a puppet or some-such, but I ended up in an RPG shop.
The D&D box was just the right amount, and that was that.
It had nothing to be with the son of my Mum's mate being a couple of years older, and into D&D. Not at all
A while after that, and a few D&D sets later, she brought home a box set of D&D heros, made by Citadel. Guess who was into painting D&D minis

Dragon magazine was going on about Warhammer, Chainmail and other wargamey stuff, and I dived into Rogue Trader when it came along.

In 1992 I borrowed My Friends copy of Hero Quest. That is when I was introduced to Model Miniature combat games.

I was told about War Hammer 40'000 while playing a game of Hero Quest with buddies. The main thing I remember when first hearing about 40K is "Don't play War Hammer 40'000 because the models are ridiculously expensive."

I played Battle Tech and enjoyed building and painting the Battle Mechs.

Playing Hero Quest and Battle Tech was great! When I was told I was too poor to afford War Hammer 40'000 I felt like I was missing out big time.

So I saved up money for a while and got the 40K Second Edition Boxed set.

Now I have stupid amounts of 40K Models.

The first game I bought was 1st edition Space Marine. I steered clear of Warhammer 40,000 not because of cost but because the WFB 3rd edition rulebook was rather complicated-looking for me as a callow 11-year-old.

Didn't last ling, though. I got the Rogue Trader rulebook and a box of RTB01 Marines and used the restricted 1991 Warhammer 40,000 League army list (only Marines allowed, and all you could have were Tactrical, Devastator and Assault Squads led by a Captain) until the Space Wolves army list appeared. The 2nd edition box set turned up not long after, and then it gets a bit hazy ...

Started when I was about 10 or so with games like Dark World and Legend of Zagor. Then myself and my brother found a prepainted game by the name of Havok made by Bluebird toys ('member them?). One day we went out looking for more Havok minis in Woolworths and as per usual the shelves were empty and one of the members of staff suggest we go to a shop down the road called "Games Workshop" to see if they sell them (so, in reality it's all your fault anonymous Woolworths lady!). They didn't obviously, but they invited us back for sunday beginners after having a demo of 40k 2nd ed.

And the rest is history as they say. My brother dropped out shortly after but I'm still in the game.

 Overread wrote:
Far as I recall I started building model ships by Airfix. I was never outstanding, but had good fun building big ships and generally using too much glue.

However one day I saw this



It wasn't just tanks and troops, it was a vast WALKING CASTLE! Complete with more guns weapons that one could count! And alongside it came legions (well it felt like legions) of tanks and troops.

Little did I realise how big an impact that Imperator was going to have on me over the following years. I still greatly miss Epic and still think its a scale that gets far too overlooked (although I'm somewhat glad I never bought into Warmaster as that also died a death - though I can dream that one day GW might bring an AoS Warmaster).


Suffice it to say that after years of shifting from Imperial Titans to Tyranids to Legion of Everblight to a long period of bits of armies and nothing concrete to today where things hve somewhat exploded.

I'm very excited for Adepticus Titanicus and really really hope they build an Imperator, Though it might be years off now I really hope to see one in AT scale and detail

Want to see a WIP imperator at 40k scale?
Blew my mind.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Then myself and my brother found a prepainted game by the name of Havok made by Bluebird toys ('member them?).

Yep; I had an entire Imperial Guard infantry platoon for a tenner using those minis, awful though they were.

Started with Battletech and just moved to playing 40K when Rogue Trader came out. Replaced the Mechs with Space Marines, Imperial Guard and Space Orks.

Cheers,

CB

D&D red box, various supplements, Battletech, and then some RP minis (the Ral Partha boxed sets for D&D) followed by a just a couple Citadel miniatures on a trip to England as well as Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness.

Came back to the States the following year, and found Rogue Trader in a not-so-local comic shop. Everything more or less snowballed from there. Yep, had Slaves to Darkness before Rogue Trader or even the Warhammer Fantasy rules. I think I picked up the WHFRPG at more or less the same time as StD, I was honestly fascinated by the multi-page ads for it that ran in Dragon magazine.

Back when I was in middle school, I got my hands on a White Dwarf (108). I was rather entranced by it, but Games Workshop was not available in my neck of the woods and wasn't something a middle schooler could afford to import. I don't even think I even saw another White Dwarf for at least a decade. So my interest in miniature games was piqued, but it just wasn't possible.

I guess I started started in my mid-twenties when I got a demo of Warmachine at a convention (the game hadn't really launched yet but you could get the starter boxes from them). Painted all my miniatures, though not well. I stopped when I had my first kid not long after. My brother-in-law kept playing Warmachine and eventually joined a group, but I didn't ever really go back.

Maybe a decade later, once my two kids were in school, they released Age of Sigmar. Now, I'm no stranger to gaming. I have MANY video games and board games of every stripe, but I was completely unfamiliar with miniature games apart from my brief fling with Warmachine back in the day. I saw AoS as a way to get in on the ground floor (a nu start), without any of the baggage, that I could grow with, as it were. Turns out, AoS had a LOT of baggage, and was a terrible first miniature game because of that, but it was too late. My foot was in the door.

I REALLY liked some stuff that AoS was doing, which was REALLY not liked by... well, you guys (I had joined Dakka at this point). I came at it from a different perspective. I didn't need it to be a replacement for anything. In fact, what I wanted most was something I had never seen before, among literally thousands of games that I have and have played. That's what I got and what I initially loved about it. All that is basically gone now (by popular demand), but AoS's sort of unique origins still has a special place in my heart.

I started by looking for a RTS to play - and found a game called Dawn of War (the third one, of the original series - I forget what the subtitle was).

I got into it - and started checking out forums for it - and one I liked in particular had a "painting and modeling" subforum which I eventually stumbled into. I had no idea the game was based on a tabletop game, (or really, what a tabletop game even was).

But I saw the minis that people had painted and was blown away. Since reaching adulthood I had lacked any sort of outlet for my desire to "build things" and was frustrated because of it.

Anyways - after hemming and hawing about it for a few weeks, I eventually tracked down a hobby shop in a neighboring city and bought a space marine starter kit. I pretty quickly jumped ship to fantasy though and bought a Skull Pass started kit on Ebay. This was 2009-ish,

Used to be in Air cadets in 99, and they were cleaning the hobby room out (if no one claimed it, take it) and grabbed some very very old chaos marines and eldar.

I had a next-door-neighbour a couple of years older than me who was into rogue trader around the same time that Heroquest was a thing - I can’t remember which one came first for me, though. I was definitely at the tail-end of Primary school in the UK, so around 10 years old.

When I went to secondary school, there was an after-school games club (mostly D&D but it was where all the warhammer players ended up meeting) and my friend group played Warhammer 40k (2ed), original Necromunda and WHFB (4ed) all the way through the 90s, serviced by a small hobby shop on out local high street.

It all died down for a while while I went to university and then, a year or two after uni, a few friends started regularly meeting up in London, which turned into us digging out our models and trying 3ed for the first time and playing semi-regularly at the Bromley GW store for a while. Since then, I haven’t really stopped. A couple of years later, some people from my local pub all turned out to play or have played in the past so we would play each other, then we started going to the Overlords club in Essex (when they ran their podcast) and finally to the HATE club, when it started up at Electroworkz in Islington.

 jimbolina25 wrote:
Used to be in Air cadets in 99, and they were cleaning the hobby room out (if no one claimed it, take it) and grabbed some very very old chaos marines and eldar.

That's the same way I got into the Lone Wolf books by Joe Dever. Found one in our Scout hut when we had a clearout.

I liked board games well enough in the late 80's and early 90's but primarily focused on videogames. I did really liked Mechwarrior and when I found out there was a physical version I tried to get into it but didn't really know what I was doing or have the funds for it. I mostly stuck to videogames but really enjoyed things like Final Fantasy Tactics and the like. I mostly stayed away from the table top stuff due to not really knowing how to hobby and not caring for blind purchase pre-paints.

I had a job where the whole team basically decided to walk out together shortly before I planned to move away to live with my fiance. With about a month before I left, they decided we should get some kind of tabletop thing and while I initially resisted, I eventually compromised with Heroscape and fell in love with it hard. My bride to be (and thankfully, still) was pretty shocked when I showed up with a big crate of figures and terrain.

Heroscape eventually crumbled and I jumped around looking for a replacement. I also got into board games more and one of my friends lent me a paint set to do the Last Night on Earth stuff. The next game I fell for hard though was MonPoc right around the release of its final wave. With that disappointing turn of events, the friend who lent me the paint set mentioned that Privateer Press made another game and I haven't really looked back since.

Made a new friend at school when I was 10 or 11 and the first time I went over to his house he was painting Epic Eldar when I got there (tiny Falcons and the original Phantom mini). He got me into it, and eventually the first thing I got was the Tyranid Attack box.

2nd Ed 40K came about soon after, and that's when we jumped in (never got into Epic). Took a break during high school (missed the start of 3rd Ed) but got back into it in 2002 when the 3.5 Chaos Codex came out.

It's been a long, long time since then.

The Battletech 3rd Edition box set.

Got into Fantasy when a guy offloaded $500 worth of Lizards for about $100.

GOt into 40k when I inherited some Tyranids, and the Tyranid Swarm box came out.

I was kind of having a tough time after dealing with a big family ruckus going on with mom and dad... it lead me to re-examining my 'activities' and such... (I mostly played videogames, read sci-fi/fantasy, read comicbooks, and watched movies)... I felt I needed to change things up a bit... so for birthday, I decided to go to a different kind of store rather than Electronic Boutique... I looked for a tabletop gaming shop... I don't remember what I looked up exactly... because it wasn't the words 'tabletop'...

Anyway... I came in on a Friday night which was their Star Wars Miniatures night (the Wizards of the Coast version)... It was pretty fething cool to watch... the following Sunday, I came back to check out this other game... Warmachine... It was just as cool... I mean it wasn't Star Wars but it you could work on the models yourself!

And then I mistakenly thought ..."hey this seems cheaper than videogames and stuff... I'll get into it"... fast forward 11 or so years and here we are lol

Since then, asides from those 2 games, I got into Hordes (of course), Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures (played similar to the Star Wars game), Settlers of Catan, World of Warcraft Adventure Game, Warhammer 40,000 (tail end of 4th up to 7th), Warhammer Fantasy Battles (tail end of 7th into 8th), Infinity, Godslayer (not Ascension but a miniatures game that was kind of fun), and Dark Ages... there might have been other games... I don't remember... but those I played the most.

Oh wait and DND 3.5... and 'almost' Shadowrun 4th ed.

I painted model cars and planes though when I was like 8. My uncle had tens of thousands of Napoleonic flats that I would just marvel at when I went over to his house. He was a big old school wargamer.

I had played D&D for a few years. 3.0 and 3.5

Then in 2000, Then I hit highschool, got a part time job that paid cash, about 2x min wage, and Peter Jacksons Lord of the Rings Movies came out. Saw a GW at the mall, went in, bought some LotR stuff. Then got into 40k, then fantasy, now mainly 40k.