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HeroQuest also started my wargaming.
My older brother played it with his friends and, at the age of 5, I was fascinated by it.
Soon, we started a family round with HeroQuest and I loved it.

With the various expansion packs came ads for WHFB and 40k. I looked at them for hours and hours. When I found out about the prices and you had to assemble the miniatures, I was put off though. I was 6 or 7 then.

With 11, I finally jumped into it with the 3rd editon 40k starter box. Loved it.

After a few years, I stopped playing and collecting for about 10 years, but it came back to me in the end.

I remember getting WD issue 133 from the newsagent and it was so interesting. I never had any idea as to what it was actually for but it certainly looked cool! After that I got Space Crusade and Mission Dreadnought for a Christmas present. I never got into it as didn't have anyone to sit down and play it with, it was pretty complicated. I think my parents thought it was just some kind of play set.

I think my first foray into the world of 40k was in year 8 at school. There was a warhammer club that started up and it looked like fun. I bought my friends ork army off of his brother and haven't looked back. I think that was in '93.

Space Crusade for me, I think I was 9 or 10 years old. I remember painting the figures with Humbrol enamel paints, I was quite proud of them at the time!

I then graduated to Advanced Heroquest, then Rogue Trader, then Epic (which was known as "Space Marine" at the time).

Early Airfix kits would have started it off for me. Always enjoyed assembling them and painting them up and then would play different scenarios (very basic kids stuff with no dice - more like toy soldier fights).
After that it was a progression of Heroquest and Space Crusade into 40k.
My friend had picked up the 2nd ed box late 1993 and said it was like a more complex game of Space Crusade and that we should try it. I picked up a copy that xmas and away we went.

Also a big shout out to crossbows and catapults. Whilst not technically wargaming it was such an atmospheric, fun and involving game it sparked off the interest in armies clashing, fantasy ideas and general mayhem.

 brizbraz wrote:


.

I can look to my right from where I am sitting right now and see my box of them

 Ratius wrote:

Also a big shout out to crossbows and catapults. Whilst not technically wargaming it was such an atmospheric, fun and involving game it sparked off the interest in armies clashing, fantasy ideas and general mayhem.

That was clearly wargaming. We used to double the elastic bands and aim for the face.

My Dad got us DBA (De Bellis Antiquitas) and we cut out little strips of cardboard to represent the units. Later we got some 1:72 plastics from different armies to put on the bases. Years later I got into Warhammer 6th ed.

We used to double the elastic bands and aim for the face.

Eeek
Occupational hazards?

 Ratius wrote:

We used to double the elastic bands and aim for the face.

Eeek
Occupational hazards?

I also doubled the bands. Might have gone higher; I know we actually snapped the plastic on one due to increasing tension.

I’ll never admit to actively trying to shoot my brother in the head, but it sure was great when it happened...

Box o metal ultramarine starter set that came with paint and stuff.

Also the old ultramarine blue spray paint that got me high as a kite...

then everything gets fuzzy after that :/

Battletech the Crescent Hawks Revenge... it may have been Inception but I think it was Revenge. It came with a Phoenix Hawk LAM pewter miniature. It was the first real miniature I got.

From there I started to collect Battletech, WH40K and start to get into making miniatures. Unfortunately I wasn't a good painter and that caused me to pull away from miniatures for awhile. I got heavily into RPGs and LARP at that point.

It wasn't until quite a few years later I learned some simple tricks of just prime, base color and wash and you didn't need to be a grade A painter to create some good looking miniatures. Had I known that, had better examples I probably would of stuck with it instead of pulling away. The internet wasn't big so there wasn't a lot of support unlike what you can find now. But since then I started back into collecting and painting again.

Now if I could just have someone clean and assemble my miniatures for me... I might not have such a back log and shelves of unassembled miniatures.

Wandered into a local shop called Tabletop games in nottingham and walked out with some metal war planes cast in house, back in about 88.

 Genoside07 wrote:
Just wondering what everyone first memory of what started their collecting miniature games..

Sitting in a giant tent with the rest of my company in Kuwait, waiting for a ride up north to Iraq. My buddy was about the only one prepared for the prolonged wait with a gak load of 40k books.... So I borrowed the Soul Drinkers Omnibus, then read the 1st Ultramarines Omnibus... a few months later, I had the rule book in Iraq, as well as a sizable pile of books (Double Eagle, Brothers of the Snake, the Space Wolves series, HH to that point, etc. etc.)

When I was a young one, I was into building model airplanes and tanks, like many of you, I'm sure. My parents both served in the Air Force, and so my father and I would work on our model planes together. Here was where I first learned the joy of building a model.

My first exposure to wargaming itself was in the old InQuest magazine. I was into D&D and MtG at the time, so I would pick up the magazine pretty regularly, and they'd feature 40k stuff from time to time. I still remember seeing the ork Dreadnoughts in there and thinking they were pretty cool looking, and I remember one where they made a big deal about the new Dark Eldar faction, so it must have been circa 97-98, while I was in junior high. I probably still have those magazines somewhere in a box.

Anyhow, fast forward a few years, and my buddy John and I were on the WotC site, checking out the new D&D stuff, and downloading all the old material they had on there (they had TONS of old AD&D books available for free download on there) and we saw the new Chainmail game they were coming out with. I thought it looked pretty cool (not knowing that it was a standalone game, thinking it was some minis to play D&D with) so I bought the starter set, plus another box of D&D monsters, and my grandmother (who is a semi-professional artist) got me my first set of paints. I wish I could remember what brand they were, but I remember they were in glass jars with screw tops on them.

So, I suppose it was 2002 when I got my first real exposure to wargaming, outside of pictures in a magazine. The game was a fair amount of fun too, from what I recall. Shortly after that, college and girls and partying entered my life, and I stepped out of the hobby (and D&D, which I still miss playing) until I was browsing one of my forums one day in the year 2013, and caught mention of the words "Blood for the Blood God". This sparked something inside me and I had to know where the quote came from. Which got me to delve into Warhammer. So, here I am a few years after that, fully bought back into the hobby.

Thank you random internet person, for helping me rediscover a hobby (painting models and playing with them) that I'd long lost. I didn't know how much I'd missed it, until I ordered my DV set and embarked on a journey into the year 40,000.

Thinking about this, and looking back in time, has made me realize two things. One, I'm starting to get old, and two, my memory must be really good to remember such minute details from so long ago.

Going to my mates house for tea when I was 10/11 and asking what the on earth all the building plans on the table were. Turns out they were floorplans from GW and we played a RPG of sorts, me using a heroic party of GW dwarves being attacked by some Prince August wolf riders using 1st edition Bloodbowl as the ruleset.

First encountered WD there too and then spent weeks riding to newsagents throughout my town trying to find a copy, when I did it was WD93 which just so happened to be the issue that WH40k: Rogue Trader was released in!

There was no stopping me from there.

I bought this CD and when i saw the artwork, i was hooked

When Concord Mills opened up and I stepped into GW for the first time, played a demo of Warhammer with some Brets against Lizardmen. (from the starter at the time I think?) and was given this black brochure, with the 3rd ed. 40k rulebook art on it. I still have it to this day, but it's a bit worn out.

Not my photo but this should give you an idea where I started.
As long as I can remember there have been toy soldiers around here.
Didn't start to play a proper game until I got Avalon Hill's Gettysburg for
Christmas back in 1970. Didn't take long to figure out it would look better with toy
soldiers on the board instead of the cardboard chips.

Back in 88/89 I bought a brandnew Marauder/Citadel blister (something with crossbows). Gave it to a class mate to paint, forgot about it, started with WHFRP (school project!), class mate moved, never saw my minis again.

Fast forward 9 years (?) and while in a game store I notice (a very well painted) Confrontation "Le Veuilleur" in a cabinet. It was also the beginning of the modern internet, so that helped getting infos about the game. From there it escalated quickly, came to a halt in between, when girls, travelling and exams became more important again, and got a big push again, when I became a sarariman.

Space crusade for christmas, must've been '90 or '91:

Playing a small game of 40k with my friends models at his house 10 years ago

Went to the shop with my parents to get some for myself (I was about 12 years old?), and GW staff did that whole thing where they refuse to sell to you by saying "we don't recommend you get this product blah blah".

I lived in Sweden for 2 years as a child (aged around 8-10, approx 1986-88) and used to see miniatures in toy shops there. Can't remember what they were, but they used to even do DIY casting. You could buy blocks of lead and little frying pan things to melt it in, and moulds to cast your own models. Never did it myself but some older boys I knew at the time did. Thought it all looked awesome.

When we returned home to the UK, it wasn't long before Hero Quest and Space Crusade came out, and that was that really...

When I was 4 my older Brother got the Warhammer Fantasy starter set, the one with Brettonians and Lizard Men. He wanted the Brettonians so I played as the Lizardmen. My first memory is beating him in a game. I was 4 and a half at the time

I got into modelling when my dad used to buy me model aircraft as a kid and one year I got a goblin bolt thrower as a present so after we moved to the Uk I went to check out a GW store.

Picked up a pack of MageKnight on a whim while playing the Pokemon card game one night as a kid at my FLGS. This prompted me getting into Warhammer 40k after having a great time with Dawn of War.

I've been interested in miniature gaming ever since I saw a starter set of the old Star Wars miniatures game (the really old one, I think made by West End Games or something). I never got them as I was a little too young and my family didn't have much money at the time, but I thought they were cool. Not long after I got my first glimpse of Warhammer Fantasy stuff, and a little later than that I noticed some similar looking stuff in a space theme that said "Warhammer 40000" on the boxes. Fast forward a couple of years to a late night at my grandparents' house. Me and my cousin found a couple of old boxes of 1/72 soldiers (U.S. Marines and German Infantry). We decided to play a little game with them, no real rules, just fun. That night is probably when I caught the wargaming bug, although it took a few more years before it really took. In 2004 I was browsing some of the Star Wars stuff at a movie store in my local mall when I saw a starter set for Wizards of the Coast's Star Wars Miniatures game. I bought that starter, and a couple of weeks later bought two boosters. Me and my brother had a blast playing the game, and in 2005 when Revenge of the Sith came out I got the starter for the corresponding miniatures game set and a couple of boosters of it as well. I was well and truly hooked. Over the next several years, I got a lot more of those Star Wars minis (I still have them, over 2000 of them!), and also picked up the Mines of Moria starter set for GW's Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. That was the first time I ever had minis that I painted myself, and I loved it, although to this day I've never had a game of LotR. In 2013 I finally, so many years after discovering the game at that hobby shop in the mall, got some 40k stuff (including a paint set that had 5 Dark Angels Tactical Marines in it). I've been loving 40k ever since.

I saw The Hobbit movie, and then went to a Star Trek Convention at the Northpark Hilton in Dallas Texas, where I signed a mailing list.

The mailing list got me on the SPI Mailing list, and I soon was getting games in the mail.

Then one day, I discovered in Strategy & Tactics (SPI's magazine), an add for some starship miniatures. The store was in Dallas (The Royal Guardsman), and I went to go buy some spaceships (Valiant's line), and discovered all manner of other miniatures as well. This was about 2 years before Tom Meier's explosive debut at Ral Partha in 1978/79, but the Archive Hobgoblins stood out.

I was not able to buy any that day, but got two a year later from a store in a Mall (Valley View in Dallas), and I painted them with homemade paint (I actually had to find stuff to grind up and mix with a small bottle of white paint I had). Needless to say, the colors were rather pale, bordering upon pastel.

But it was good enough to impress another customer at the store, who then began to pay me 25¢ a figure to paint miniatures for him (which would later become $1, until the owner of Heritage Miniatures told me I should be charging at least $5).

I miss that Hobgoblin, and I pray it isn't in a landfill some where.

MB

My first memory is roughly in the lines of:

"Well, feth MTG, this is what I want to play!"

I will never forget when I first discovered a GW shop and started to play WFB. I was like eleven, just the good age to be dragged into GWs games,I was in holidays with my parents in Strasbourg. The store was in the city's old center which has a typical medieval atmosphere. A big game was played, with a huge medieval fortress on a huge table. I was amazed. At the end of the week, I picked up a elves lancers box and started with my father's old oil paints.
This was the good times, when fluff was a real thing for GW and the White dwarf not just a spam that pop every week in front of you.

I was at my FLGS and I didn't know much about miniature painting and it looked like fun so I bought some old 2nd or 3rd edition fantasy orcs off the shelf (everything was blisters)

And I enjoyed painting them. Up until then I had done mostly model planes.

So Eventually I got a grimgore Ironhide on a boar I think and painted up a box of plastic black orcs and a few more metal savage orcs and some warmaster goblins on wolfback and had a fantasy army.

I had been collecting rogue trader orks after that and when gorkamorka and 3rd edition 40k hit, I got full steam ahead with the Armageddon campaign.