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How do?

So today, I turned the grand old age of 39. Nice is being had, hanging around with my parents.

And this morning, it hit me. It was this day 30 years ago when a Very Smol Grotsnik got Heroquest as his main present. And what a present that was.

I remember seeing the advert. This one.


?

I even remember picking it up - yes, for once I knew what my present was.

And from that day, my Nerd Legacy unfolded. Got all the U.K. expansions, spun off into Space Crusade, again completing all the expansions. After that came Space Hulk, Epic, Warhammer and 40k. More or less in that exact order.

Heck, I even went further than most, having not one, not two, but three stints as a GW Till Monkey. Was fun as a second job!

Right the way yup to today, with no Hobby Hiatus, I’ve been suckered in.

So,I guess, here’s to the next 30 years? And how long have you been on this path?

I wandered into a Gamesworkshop during 2003 or so after coming off a few years playing Mageknight/Mechwarrior Clix binge during elementary school

I started sometime during the start of 4th edition. My first Gamesworkshop wouldnt even let you play if you have more than one squad unpainted and not based!

So I've been on this path for some odd 15 years at this point! Never worked there since I started making better money and had rent to make in my early twenties but it always sounded like a great job!

I plan to be the local old eccentric guy with 20 painted armies and a massive set of terrain tables in my house in the next 30 years

I started wargaming at 16 years old, I'm 33 now and haven't stopped. So I've officially been a gamer more than half my life. And my wife (30) has gotten into it over the past two years and has multiple army syndrome as well; Stormcast for a competitive build, and Sylvaneth for the aesthetics (plus she's a hardcore fairy fan, and Spites are fairies). Idoneth, Seraphon and DoK were all passing interests for a time too.

I assume our kids will end up being nerds as well.

I got into the hobby at age 13. I'm 32 now, turning 33 later this year, so that's almost 2 decades.

I remember walking into the Games Workshop for the first time, being run through a demo game and painting session, and then picking up a White Dwarf. I knew I wanted to get into the hobby but couldn't quite settle on which faction.



I remember there was a background/lore and hobby section in this issue by Jes Goodwin himself, and my takeaway was Vikings in Space.

I read that magazine to tatters within a week, went back, and picked up the Codex, the Starter set, and some paints, and I haven't looked back since.

Space Crusade... 1989... man that was a long time ago...

Happy b-day and stuff.

I've been a gamer-nerd for a loooong time now. Ever since my first D&D game back in summer camp between 4th and 5th grade, so since around 1980 or so, when I was like 10.

22 years and counting. Wargamed before that (mainly WW2) but took my son into GW for his 6th birthday. We're both still gaming... but he paints better than I do.

Yep, also space crusade for me (what a perfect entry drug that was). I wonder if GW will ever do it’s like again? The boxed games now are great (especially if you are already collecting), but don’t have quite the same simplicity.

It’s been an unbroken path ever since. I’m currently working on my 1000th GW mini (for such an auspicious milestone, it’s a titan, of course...)

And my son is now building his first two AOS armies. That copy of Space Crusade certainly paid off for GW!

30 years here, too (but with a big break). HeroQuest 1989. 4 of us playing all the time, we got all the expansions over the next few years and loved every minute of it. We moved onto 3rd edition WHFB, and I got the Skeleton Army box. Lovely stuff.

We dabbled in Space Crusade, Space Hulk, Space Fleet, Man O' War, Talisman... and probably others too (Never 40K, though). But it was the undead for me, though. I was so annoyed when they split into VC and TK - my army was The Undead, and the man in charge was a Necromancer Lord (or Nagash, being played by a converted Eldar Avatar because I didn't like ol' clown face).

I stopped in 1999 or thereabouts. Packed everything into boxes and didn't look at them again until mid 2016. I was playing Space Hulk on my laptop one day and just fancied digging out the old models again. I found out about Age of Sigmar and it didn't interest me at all. So I've just been restoring and painting old lead for a few years... and maybe spending too much money on ebay to fill in the gaps in my perfect Undead army with models I never picked up back in the day.

The biggest difference I noticed between my two stints in the hobby is the sheer amount of information available these days. Painting tutorials as videos on that there YouTube make good paint jobs attainable even for cack-handed art-deficient lumps like me. Much better than the 3 step 'Eavy Metal guide (Step 1: Prime, Step 2: Base, Step 3: Put the finishing touches on your Golden Demon winner).

Also, information about non-GW products. Living near Nottingham maybe had a bit of an influence here, but our mindset was hobby=GW (although we did pick up a few Ral Partha figures from a FLGS we stumbled on one day). Nowadays, I spend very little on GW products (3 bottles of Wash in 3 years) and a lot of money on other paints and tools and so on.

Anyway, the hobby in general is better now, but what I'd really like is AoS rules in an Oldhammer setting. That'd be nice.

I started in the mid 90’s when two brothers who lived at the top of the road got into 40k. I collected it with pocket money for a few years, then moved onto fantasy before giving up around 2000. Fast forward to 2017, i’m more or less done with collecting arcade and video games due to enormous price spikes and ready to take on a new hobby. Looking for a book to read on my kindle when I come across Gaunt’s Ghosts. 2 years later, I’m a few thousand quid deep, and have about 10 armies on the go.

Happy Birthday.

I literally cannot remember a time before gaming. I’m sure some of my earliest memories pre-date it, but I was playing basic D&D with my older brother way back. We also had the expert set, and some AD&D books. This would be very early 80s, possibly back into the late 70s. As I was born in ’74, this should put me in the started at 6-8 years old range.

We moved to Kentucky when I was 10, and while still playing a chunk of D&D, we branched out into other RPGs and a lot more wargames. Battletech, Car Wars, SFB, and yes, Rouge Trader (more as an RPG).

While my teen years were mostly spent wargaming, at college I fell in with a group of role players, and returned to that side of the hobby. But in the mid/late 90’s they started getting into WHFB, and to a lesser extent 40k. The FLGSs in the area were supporting them in a big way, so I used those to return to my wargaming roots.

There were some dark times after the FLGS boom in the area died down, where I only got in a game a year or so. But some new ones opened up so I’ve been sporadically gaming off and on for a while now, but never fully stopped. These days The Boy is interested and working up his army, so often we get a game in on weekends that I have him. And I make it most weekends to a RPG group.

So while I’m not quite ready for my 4 decade service stud, I’m getting close to it.

22ish years on this path. Though I dipped my toe in earlier with a not-Heroquest esq game called Legend of Zagor. Circa 1996/7 me and my bro started playing a tabletop game from Bluebird toys called Havok. They were prepainted and you’d get cheap boosters in toy shops.
One fateful day Woolworths was out of them, so the nice lady who we asked said there is a store called Games Workshop down the street and they might stock them. So my fate was sealed thanks to a well-meaning Wally World employee.

So off we trot and ask about Havok models not really knowing about 40k and we get invited to Sunday beginners and the adventure begins. My brother dropped out a while ago but I’m still on this path. I’ll always remember the model that captivated me to 40k and it wasn’t even assembled. I saw on the blister racks the “Chaos Terminator with Heavy Flamer” I had no idea what one was but 12 yo me thought that is a damn cool combination of words there.

 Flinty wrote:
Space Crusade... 1989... man that was a long time ago...

Yep, that was me, too. Space Hulk after that, then Epic (which was called Space Marine back then). 40k was inevitable after that.
My birthday yesterday, too, but I'm two years your senior Doc.

I can't even remember what exact year I got started - probably back in 1986 just before Rogue Trader came out. So 33 years painting minis.

 John Prins wrote:
I can't even remember what exact year I got started - probably back in 1986 just before Rogue Trader came out. So 33 years painting minis.

Has your painting rate always been a steady flow, or peaks and troughs? If I can manage more mine for another 31 years (which I very much doubt, if I even last that long) i’d need a new house I think.

phillv85 wrote:

 John Prins wrote:
I can't even remember what exact year I got started - probably back in 1986 just before Rogue Trader came out. So 33 years painting minis.

Has your painting rate always been a steady flow, or peaks and troughs? If I can manage more mine for another 31 years (which I very much doubt, if I even last that long) i’d need a new house I think.

Peaks and troughs. Some years I barely painted anything, some years 100+ minis, when I was doing tournaments.

 John Prins wrote:

phillv85 wrote:

 John Prins wrote:
I can't even remember what exact year I got started - probably back in 1986 just before Rogue Trader came out. So 33 years painting minis.

Has your painting rate always been a steady flow, or peaks and troughs? If I can manage more mine for another 31 years (which I very much doubt, if I even last that long) i’d need a new house I think.

Peaks and troughs. Some years I barely painted anything, some years 100+ minis, when I was doing tournaments.

One of these days I want to try to trace back what I painted when. The last 5ish years are well documented in my blog here, but it would be interesting to see how things grew. Just take stuff off the shelf for approximate year photos to see how things evolved.

I defiantly had bursts and droughts. Some were mood, some were available time, some were money based. You can trace different facets of my life on how many models I painted. I think it would be a fascinating exercise, but would take a hefty amount of space to lay things out and time and research to put together the timeline. But i’ve been painting in an unbroken line since the mid/late 80s. Just some times more prolific than others.

Yeah, I was never able to field actual armies until I was gainfully employed - after high school. Until then, I painted a model here, a model there. 5th edition 40k was when I really took off, with a Tau, Death Guard and WHFB Tzneetch daemon/beasts army, with partial Tyranid and Eldar forces. Then I sputtered out, painting other stuff here and there, though I did some Heavy Gear and Clan Wars stuff. It was a combination of Kickstarter and late 7th edition that got me back buying GW stuff.

39 years young eh? Lets both drink to that!

My first time with Heroquest was when the girl next door said "we have this game but no idea how to play it...".

"Hold my milkshake...", wipping the white tash from my upper lip!

But yeah, the commercial was awesome. Games Workshop will never top the release of HQ nor SC which the build up to Christmas and those games were out there. Miss the large kitchen in a house we once lived in decades ago...at night we just played SC on new years eve - my birthday and going into the new decade - the 90s.

ALIENS!

Space Crusade was really ALIENS the board game, and that movie blew us away. In fact - it blew you all away, too! Reading that manual at 10 years old, in that dark evening...amazing.

"TRANSMISSION...TERMINATED..."

...the Imperial Marine squad - just like the Colonial Marines were picked off one-by-one...but they all went down like champs. Holy crap - Heroquest was awesome too. The Gremlin Graphics game caused quite a stir in the home computer market too.

"Bwwwwaaaaarrrddd swwwwarrrrd!"

Took a very long hiatus from the hobby, but it was noticing a Osprey book called "Ronin" - and "Frostgrave" - in Waterstones that caught my eye. I assumed tabletop games were long dead, but...here you guys are! Still rocking those awesome miniatures...

At the age of 39...I enjoy games with my brother. Hes always up for a quick game to relive the glory days. I think I've covered this in another thread, last year, but...I love to "build worlds". board/wargames, computer'n'console games, Android and VR.

Currently I'm in crunch mode to get a digital "choose your own adventure" style game on the Android Market. It was meant to be a quick 150 page project, but got so carried away with it that it ballooned into 350, and being burnt out, abandoned it. But, hell, its that ingrained love for the old game books that just won't go away. Way of the Tiger, Fighting Fantasy, Knightmare and the Transformer game books...ah man. I suppose its like a D&D session but a test of your independence more than social skill. Putting aside the distractions( Adeptus Titanicus! ), I'm pulling the socks up and finally getting it finished.

If thats what I did for the next 30 years, digital adventures, then that would be cool. But only 200 pages at a time!

3 decades is an impressive stint and no mistake.

I started with the old LoTR partworks from just after the turn of the century. '03 or so if memory serves. A friend at school put me onto it when I saw him painting some models during an art class. I was sucked into the whole thing immediately thanks to him and i've been painting avidly every since, barring a 2 year or so break towards the end of high school.

I've spent a lot of time and money on this hobby. Never regretted any of it for a second though.

I got my NES the Christmas I turned 5 or 6. That gets me past 30 in general nerdery.... in terms of tabletop I had a run in the early 90's that never amounted to anything but an unplayed box of Battletech. I can't say I recall ever NOT being considered a nerd, but in terms of "the hobby" I'm probably just hitting my first decade this year or next.

I'm 37 a month ago, and have been playing around in the hobby since Heroquest and Battle Masters. I vaguely remember a time when Squats were available off the rack.

My first GW game was Tyranid Attack, which was a simpler version of Advanced Space Crusade. My buddy and I used to use the minis with their grid movement/shooting converted to inches to fight on the tabletop, which led to our first terrain building.

I technically started playing during 2nd edition, but not with 40k, but instead with the original Necromunda (which used 2nd edition 40k rules as it's core ruleset). My actual 40k gaming using "official" rules came with the 3rd edition starter set, but I had already been playing Necromunda, Gorkamorka, and Battlefleet Gothic (I think that came out pre-3rd edition).

In 1995, when I was thirteen, we got a new kid in our tutor group. He lived in my village, not too far from me. He had a Van Saar gang, painted with 5 or 6mm of metallic-green enamel paint.

The rest, as they say...

Parents gave me the brown small books that comprised D&D in 1977, when I was 11, cause the Grad Students at college where they taught recommended it..

They bought it under the suggestion that it will enhance your child's math skills. They were not wrong, but they have regretted it since.

Turned 23 last Friday and this September marks a decade in the hobby that is Warhammer 40k. Before that I'd played with Lego and few Airfix models.

Absolute money and time sink but I love it.

Started with Dungeons and Dragons at age nine and being more interested in the miniatures than the role-playing.

So more than 35 years.

Cheers,

CB

The earliest thing I can pin down that I got for the hobby was White Dwarf 130, October 1990, so I'll hold off on my anniversary for a few months.

However, I'd been introduced to Warhammer in various incarnations before then, so it probably is 30 years for me by now. A friend in primary school had a collection - Blood Bowl 2nd edition, Adeptus Titanicus, a few metal Warhammer models, some White Dwarfs and the first "hobby" game I ever played, Advanced Heroquest. I never bothered with the basic version, but rather jumped straight into a world of D12s, Weapon and Bow Skill, Fate Points and getting brutally slain by a million skaven in the third level of a random dungeon.

The first things I got were 1st edition Space Marine and the Space Marine Paint Set, which I painted as Space Wolves, Dark Angels, Night Lords (using the Marine Dark Blue and Ultramarine blue intended for Ultramarines) and Thousand Sons, which I did in gunmetal because there wasn't a red in that paint set.

After that, I got the old Citadel Miniatures Painting Guide by Mike McVey, and instead of the Terminator model so I could copy the process on that model, my mum got me the Space Wolves captain with a wolf-headed helmet. So, a Space Wolves army it was, then!

Turned 49 this May. Got my start down the road with D&D when I was about 9 (Christmas, 1980 - Holmes Edition). Primarily DMed.

My first encounter with GW was when a friend brought over the Rogue Trader book to “DM” it in ‘89 . D&D was still my main game, and as I was a (very) poor college student, I didn’t collect much at the time. Wasn’t until about 3rd edition that I finally had the monies to spend on 40K, and bought my first starter set - just as my friends decided to drop out with edition change. I kept what I had and collected models until the tail end of 5th, when my own son started to show interest. Been playing off and on since then, and have a surprisingly large and varied collection for as little as I actually play (having over 8 different factions and some models that go back to RT days).

As an aside, I have had an adventure for D&D published in Dungeon magazine - “The Winter Tapestry”, and tried my hand at my own D&D publishing company for a short time, during 3E.

I'd like to say Warlock of Firetop, but the more I ponder it I'm think it was actually the Starship Traveller book circa 84/85 as wee Turnip was quite the Star Wars fan

That lead to the other FF books, White Dwarf/Dragon magazines, the Red Box starter of D&D and one glorious Chrimbly when I got the 40k book, a box of beaky Marines and a box of Orks

So around 35 years

 Flinty wrote:
Space Crusade... 1989... man that was a long time ago...

Back in the day when GW had commercials in TV:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt4HwD6GKNE


Video game was also ace:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEZHUmvZutc

Man, Space Crusade also reminded me of the fact that you were badass by just wearing power armour and wielding a bolter. Nowadays you have to be a smash Cpt. or else you suck.