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So what was your 1st WHFB/AoS army? Why that one? What edition did you start playing it in? And do you still play it?

Mine was Chaos (mostly warriors, but with a splash of Khorne demons) waaay back in the late summer/early fall of '89 with WHFB 3rd ed.
What I wanted to play was Skaven. But, as I was just becoming your typically poor college student, the vast # of ratmen needed was well out of my budget. Chaos however....
Chaos had several advantages.
1) Most of the units/models were pretty expensive pts wise. Meeting the typical pts played at the local shop could be done without breaking the bank.
2) Virtually every miniatures company made heavily armoured knights, warriors, monsters, etc. And for cheaper than GW stuff. Plus nobody cared what the source of your minis were. So practically anything was fair game.
3) Chaos was a very forgiving army to learn the game with.

So for the first year I played a relatively low model count mixed manufacturer Chaos army built around knights on chaos steeds, warriors & thugs on foot, & some monsters/Khorne demons.

And yes, I still play Chaos (among many other forces) here in AoS 2.0.
Today though the army has evolved into:
Demons of Khorne - featuring all of my original demons (+ many more/newer) & still led by my now tiny Bloodthirster.
Slaves to Darkness - featuring all of my remaining original GW Chaos knights/warriors/thugs.

Down the rabbit hole:
During '89/90 as I was playing my Chaos, & planning my Skaven, I discovered Dwarves. And Dwarven artillery. And life on the WHFB was good.
So as my finances improved I moved on to making a moderately sized Dwarf army model count wise. And, once again, I discovered that everyone made Dwarves. Though the core/bulk of this army has always been GW.
And it's because of building the bulk of my dwarves using multiples of this set: http://solegends.com/citboxes2/pbs3whfbregs/index.htm that I went on to build out small allied forces for my Chaos/Dwarves of Wood Elves, Orcs, & Goblins. And of course those Skaven became the seed of of their own army. The Dark Elves? I traded those guys for more Skaven/Dwarves.
Sadly it wouldn't be until 4th ed that I finally got an actual Skaven army onto the table though.
Oh, & because GW just can't stop making cool models, we all know what happens when you make "just a small allied force"....

My first army was High Elves in 5th edition. I made the super well informed 12 year old decision to get the following to start out.

Imrik
Tyrion
Teclis
Everqueen and Handmaidens

Luckily a friend of the guys I started playing with was getting out and sold me a ton of the starter plastics from the 4th boxset.

Technically I am still playing them within my City of Sigmar. I sold the bulk of them but still have all those heroes other than Tyrion.

Just rebased Imrik actually. Solid investment these dolls ( Look at the absurd base he was originally on! )

First real army for me was 2nd edition tyranids.
My brother got me into collecting models after buying me a hive tyrant for my birthday.

Hooked ever since that.

Used to use my money from a paper round to build up my nids as it was possible back then.
Still got them all somewhere and I added to them over the years, stopped more recently though as eBay prices for 2nd edition metal nids went nuts for a while.

Orks, tailend 3rd. Then switched to CSM and finally to my passion R&H. For 40k

I attempted multiple times to get into WHFB.
Started with Ogres, then Chaos warriors.
Never really worked out.

my first army was hordes of chaos

I started in 5th edition WHFB I think back in 1995 or 1996. The one with the Bretonnia vs. Lizardmen box (funny story I was going to buy the previous box with High Elves vs. Goblins but waited a week or two and then the new box came out). I picked Dark Elves, and later tried the then-new Vampire Counts. Switched to 40k a year or two later because it was more popular and really didn't get back into a fantasy game until AOS came out

Orcs from the 6th Edition WHFB starter set. My dad who played napoleonics wanted to get my brother and I interested in Wargaming and decided that fantasy would probably be more interesting for two pre-teen boys. I still have both of those armies. My brother stopped playing several years ago and gave me his collection.

My first and only fantasy army is my Slaves to Darkness one I started in November 2019. Outside a few metal D&D miniatures I bought some 25 years ago they are the only fantasy miniatures I have. I started it because I like my Black Legion Chaos Space Marines, but had become a little bored playing them in Kill Team as CSM don't have a lot to work with. I also was a little frustrated in full 40k as they don't play all that well in that game.

A few of the players in my Kill Team group said that their was an Escalation League starting up for AoS and Slaves to Darkness were getting a new Battletome soon. I always wanted to try an Escalation League more as a hobby challege than getting in games. So I bought a couple of Start Collecting boxes (the old one). The Spoiler below was my first game of AoS:



Yeah, OSR vs. S2D. I was also using the Warscrolls that were printed on the build instructions. It was a seal clubbing. I only removed 3 Mortek Guard all game and even they came back. And that set the tone for the Escalation League. Half my games didn't happen, and the ones that did played like a tournament game but my opponents didn't really know the rules. You ever play a tournament level of competitive game against an opponent that doesn't really know the rules? It was both surreal and frustrating in equal measures as I and point out basic rules to my opponent like not multi-charging. So I won't be joining any escalation leagues anytime soon. Also because of my experience from it, I declined playing in a Path to Glory campaign as I off participating in organized play for a while especially AoS at my FLGS.

However, my experience did force me to 'git gud' to some degree. I really thought about how best to play my army which isn't the best, but I figured out how to get it work okay. Spoiler below is one of last pictures of my collection I have taken.



I have been doing a lot better playing AoS. I actually win more often than I lose, though; I think that will change as I think my opponent's haven't quite figured out how to use their armies which I think are more powerful. Once they do, I imagine wins are going to be few and far between. Still, I do enjoy playing AoS far more than playing 40k with the exception of Kill Team. I still like Kill Team the best.

I started out with dwarfs and absolutely loved them throughout Fantasy. I was planning to start Brets when End Times finished but we know how that went.
I tried Sigmar when it first came out but it was awful and I sort of drop in and out nowadays.

Jackal90 wrote:
First real army for me was 2nd edition tyranids.
My brother got me into collecting models after buying me a hive tyrant for my birthday.

Hooked ever since that.

Used to use my money from a paper round to build up my nids as it was possible back then.
Still got them all somewhere and I added to them over the years, stopped more recently though as eBay prices for 2nd edition metal nids went nuts for a while.

While interesting, this is an Age of Sigmar/Warhammer Fantasy Battle thread.... So what was your 1st WHFB/AoS army?

Sylvaneth, just before AoS 2.0 Started to churn up and releasing it's new army books and rules.

They were the closest army I could get to an Elf Army that wasn't crazy half-naked witches, that was also a functional army. Because at the time, what remained of the gutted High Elf and Dark Elf lines had poop-tastic rules and were barely functional altogether. While I loved how they looked, how they played and sucked was too much for me.

Sylvaneth were a nice balance of deadly infantry, some solid shooting/artillery with Kurnoth Hunter archers, and glass-cannon fast units with some scary monsters. Grew to love Sylvaneth for what they are and their differences from a classic elf army.

So, who can guess how excited I am for Lumineth?

I saw Beastmen 4th Editon and i wanted them SO BADLY, so i bought (mail order at the time) a "Hordes of chaos" army box, the book and Army box for Beastmen, the GW rep didn't tell me it was the new 5th edition stuff that just come out. OH BOY was i fething mad. I want pretty young at this point still living with my parents and it took me 8 months to save up my money for it.

Luckily for me i still loved the models, after calling and complaining demanding my money be used for the other Beastmen, he told me they no longer sell it and it was an older edition. I cried for a sec (1 lonely chaos blood tear) and said F it, i still like the models, lets do this!

I've been playing them ever sense, i even have sold and rebought the army between End times and AoS lol.

My first army was warhammer fantasy undead (5th edition). That was one of my primary tournament armies for years (becoming Vampire Counts and Tomb kings).

A year after vampire counts I started into my mortal chaos addiction, on the tail end of 5th edition.

I had the starter set with the orcs and empire so i guess that was mine! I kept both, and never played any games except against myself and my dad, but i had them.

Hm, when I FIRST started I pinged around a lot without ever really building an army. I was young, always jumping to the cool new thing without really committing. The first army I actually built out and ran as an army was daemons of Nurgle (I ran mono-DoN even with the mixed army book).

My story doesn't fit in the confines of one starting army!




So my first army that I bought models for in Old World was Wood Elves. They appealed to me with their elfy ways and their animal companions, though being mostly just dryads and eagles back then. However I never really got past building a few dryads and riders before progress ground to a halt. As a result my WE never saw the battlefield. I got a rekindled interest when GW revamped them with the new deer riders and ancient treekin kit, but almost as soon as I got into them then to start building again; GW went and killed the Old World in the fires of destruction. As a result all enthusiasm from me died.


Now my second collected, but first army to see the battlefield was Demons. I'd planned to make most on round bases and use movement trays so that they'd count as a 40K/Old World army all in one. The bulk of my starting forced was focused around Slaanesh - Deamonettes, chariots and fiends of Slaanesh. This was before The End Times, but after the arrival of finecast so I spent a good while hunting down a load of metal fiends.
However progress again ground to a halt, mostly because converting was proving more of a pain than I'd anticipated.

That said this army did see some battlefield time, not a vast amount, but they DID see the battlefield.





Moving onto AoS and my first army was - Daughters of Khaine. Motivation for them was far in excess of the others and construction has gone really well with them. For me it was the joint aspect of an army which has an element of classic fantasy creatures including gorgons and harpies (with their own names of course); but also the idea of a lithe army that basically dances into the battlefield with inhuman skill and precision. Then there was the epic reveal of Morathi - a massive monster that I've still yet to purchase.



I have to say my biggest problems have always been the same two factors:
1) Wanting too, but never really putting the time into being good at painting to get a quality I like.

2) Being located in a Bubble whereby wherever I end up living tends to end up being either in a deadzone of fans. Typically one where there "was" a community that then died off before I got there; or where getting there takes nearly an hour of travel time or more.

A joint issue that I've never the quality to display for pride; nor the casual reinforcement of my time investment being "worth it" with easy to reach games and a club environment.

I bounced around just buying Warhams kits haphazardly at a local Hobbytown USA, then I discovered that GW had a series of retail locations and that GW's US headquarters was 10 minutes from house(back when it was in The People's Republic of Glen Burnie).

Once there, I was given a demo of the Bretonnia v Lizardmen starter boxed set. I still continued to buy gak in a scattershot manner, then the store had a slow grow league and I decided to focus on Bretonnia for a summer or so, making them my first "army". After that I think it was a slew of metal dwarves, then Chaos when they came out with that first multi-part plastic kit.

My first WHFB model was the Ork and Gobbo that came with the Warhammer Age of Reckoning Collector's Edition (I can't remember the name). I sold him as I didn't feel the desire to collect Greenskins.

The next kit I got was Chaos Warhounds to act as Kroot Hounds (was collecting Tau at the time).

I never really collected an army, though. I had a hard time deciding between Beastmen (first hooked when you could take humans and demons in the army), Lizardmen, Bretonnians, and Tomb Kings. If I do get started, I will probably go with Beastmen.

Undead. Before thing got split up. 5th edition, mid 90’s.

In an era of herohammer, they had rock solid characters and magic. The army largely was immune to psychology, so did what you wanted it to. Fear and terror let you exploit the psych rules on others.

As the rules changed, so did my army. Mostly played the. As undead bretonians, Nevelon the Betrayer (vampire lord) and the wights of the realm. Carved a bloody swath across the local tables.

Still technically active. Although my last game was the AoS 2.0 launch. Slowly adding new units, mostly nighthaunt.

I always like armies that are weard, so obviusly it was tomb kings. I miss them having full support in AoS. Although the favt they stil have suport is just love letter.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Hm, when I FIRST started I pinged around a lot without ever really building an army. I was young, always jumping to the cool new thing without really committing. The first army I actually built out and ran as an army was daemons of Nurgle (I ran mono-DoN even with the mixed army book).

I kind of did that too. Well, more than kind of. I remember i had a dwarf box and a lizardmen box (probably saurus?) and... rather shamefully tried to combine the two into my own "unique" monsters

Daemons of Slaanesh; I bought them because it was them or Daughters of Khaine and my wife picked Daemons of Slaanesh since I couldn't decide.

WHFB - 5th edition Brettonia. Started from the boxed set with Brets v Lizards, and now have a 2000-2500 painted army, plus about 60 metal MAA to paint, tons of archers, characters, and hordes of the old plastic knights in the pile of shame. My only upgrades were the Treb, Battle Standard Bearer, and a unit of MAA in plastics. Everything else is the old school stuff.

AOS? Brets. Using the Index/Warscrolls. Still plenty fun :-)

I attempted to get into warhammer fantasy for a long time (I was introduced to it at the age of 5 so there was no chance I was going to get away).

After several false-starts, I finally got a 'proppa' army going when I was around 17-18 and that was Orcs and Goblins.

I loved that army and it grew to a ponderous size, until I felt compelled to sell it for money and lack of use (after the End Times).

For AOS I had a huge Slaanesh Army until recently, but there isn't much action near me at the moment. However I may get back into AOS in the future, though I really want to see some Bret-equivalents first. As I recall, Harry on Warseer said Brets were done (and his rumours were nearly always spot on) around the End Times, but I wonder if they were put on hold/shelved until an AOS-themed series of alterations could be done and released for that.

Or maybe for the (new ) Old World that has been announced. However I'm not massively hopeful.

I'm resigned to Brets being permanently retired. I guess there is a chance with the new Old World setting, but I think that the Brets are too tied to historical France/Chivalric Knights, that to make it less "historical" and more "AOS/Old World reboot" would basically remove everything that made them what they were.

My son is 10, so we still get out the old models and play 6th ed, mostly skirmish, and other third party games. Some day I'll get around to finishing the hundreds of old school models still rolling around the boxes.

And I can still find pretty close approximations from Foundry, and other manufacturers.

I don't have a huge army of them, but I have loved Orcs since their redesign in the late 90s, when they became what they look like now. I have a bunch of the old starter set plastics that had two choppas and arrer boyz.

Heres a bunch of mine with an old Black Orc warlord leading them.

High Elves and Brets simultaneously at the tail end of 5th Ed. Transitioned to 6th Ed. and was immensely happy. 8th reinforced that I preferred 6th and after selling every WFB army I owned except for Beastmen and High Elves I went back to playing 6th against my brother's Dogs of War and Lizardmen. We've already started expanding to other armies, so it looks like we'll be playing 6th with eventually every force that had rules.

I had always wanted to play WFB from reading battle reports in White Dwarf. One of the staff told me about the new edition (5th), Lizardmen and Bretonnians. That was enough to make me jump in, the idea of Lizardmen was too much to resist.

So come store launch there was a deal, buy the box set and get an army book for half price. Not bad... due to limited funds at the time, I only had enough for the Chaos Dwarf army book (it was a collection of White Dwarf articles, so priced cheaper).

I got home and started to read about these odd dwarfs... I was hooked. A few months later I had roughly 1,500pys of them, including a 30 men blunderbuss unit.

I did eventually make it over to the Lizardmen, bit my heart will always belong to the Chaos Dwarves.

Now I play Kings of War and intend to recollect a Chaos Dwarf (Abyssal Dwarfs) force to relive my youth.

Undead during 4th, got a bunch of the characters and a small smattering of units without any sort of coherent plan after reading the story of Nagash. First planned out army was DoW in 5th (I think, edition they were released in first).

Lizardmen when WHFB 5E launched. So many mountains got moved, so many suicidal skink heroes with frost blades got apotheosized, so many saurus stood around and took up core tax while the slann went to work

I always flirted with playing Skaven or Tzeentch, and picked up random minis for both when I was in middle school, but it would be 15-20 years before I finally got to them. Talk about the long game.