My children are aged 5 and 10 - and a few weeks ago I brought my Warhammer stuff down from the loft.
They loved Heroquest - the little one was glued to it for the duration, counting the squares to move, rolling the dice. Brought a tear to the eyes.
But what they prefer is Space Crusade without the board. The board and the missions are very limiting.
So this is I guess like kiddified
WH40k - a skirmish game using the space crusade dice.
(The picture shows the end of a fight where they have advanced under cover, used the buildings to make a killzone, ambushed a dreadnought, and brought their heavy weapons to bear on a Chaos guard post)
Although I can recommend Warhammer to younger children, they must absolutely not be allowed to paint them.
Especially not with old pots of Humbrol and car paint and gloss enamel that their parents happened to have in the garage. As I did.
It's taken about 2 weeks to strip the paint from the Space Crusade models (of which there are about 100 as I added to them as White Dwarf added to the rules).
The worst ones had an "undercoat" of white Dulux woodwork gloss, followed by copious Humbrol, followed by Citadel spray primer, followed by patches of Dark Angel Green where I'd hoped to repurpose the collection as a small
WH40k army.
I bathed the minis in isopropyl alcohol for ~2 hours: the citadel paint dissolved nicely; some of the enamel and gloss came off with a toothbrush; some of the enamel and gloss turned rubbery and could be picked off with a sewing-needle (about 15-30 minutes per figure, done under a magnifying glass); and a little of it seemed to be mysteriously bonded to the plastic. It seems to depend on the paint colour, the plastic, and perhaps even the consistency of the paint when it was applied.
They are pretty complete: with even things like a missing tyranid claw and a red space marine assault cannon, and the end of a gretchin's gun turning up in the bottom of another box.
Space Marines
Terminators + Chaos
Orks + Tyranids
Unless anyone has urgent advice, I plan to zenithal prime them all today with citadel spray cans. And then gradually get them to - not an expert's or a youtube restorer's paint job - but the paint job that I should have been able to do if I'd had parental help, brushes that didn't come from paint-by-numbers sets, electric light in the garage (etc).