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Went out the back of the Castlecourt shopping centre in Belfast, looking for the elusive Talisman comic shop. (Now a branch of Forbidden Planet, in another street) I discovered a bunch of wee shops that I'd never seen, tucked round that end, including one that sold a bunch of toy soldiers and games to go with them. This was the source of those weird White Dwarf magazines I'd seen in newsagents, and those weird genestealer things from the Space Hulk console games. (I got into GW from computer games before it was cool )
After that, and looking round the racks and shelves, the cabinets with conversions (I distinctly remember what I now know were CSM raptors, with Warmaster HE dragon heads), and the open WD with a cityfight board article, and having built a few model kits beforehand, I figured it was a hobby I'd enjoy. Not just building personal armies, but little landscapes for them to battle over, and using a set of rules to tell the story of that battle. Brilliant.

I've said before that if I hadn't discovered GW, I'd probably be into model railways. Sometimes I wonder if I made the wrong decision. I'm sure there are people out there who think I did.

Talisman Comics helped me discover wargaming outside GW too. I still have that copy of Thrud the Barbarian #1, with the ad for Heresy Miniatures in the back.

I was in 7th grade, about 12 years old (in the mid 90's), and a new friend that moved to town from Norwich, England got myself, and several other friends playing Necromunda and Warhammer Quest with him at a local shop.

I bought a Delaque gang and a Quest Witch-hunter as my first models (which at the time cost me under $50). We would spend every Friday night duking it out in a massive hive city, and every Saturday dungeon crawling. It was a blast.

Those two games served as gateway drugs and within a couple of years we were all playing 40k for the tail end of 2nd edition into 3rd, and WHFB when Bretonnia and Lizardmen were both introduced in the boxed game.

For me it was Battletech at my comic book store at the time. I saw this Warhammer (the real one. ) on the cover picked it up and read that I could make my own robots.

Bought it and got hooked ever since. Then I collected Star Trek from Fasa as well. Loved the minis. Making my own starship was so much fun.

For me, it started with those LOTR magazines that gave you a few models, a paint brush and tiny paint pots and because I loved the movies, I naturally started buying the magazines. I built the models badly and painted them badly trying my best to copy the studio models, I even gloss varnished some of them for some bizarre reason.
It was only until a few years later that my friend introduced me to WHFB and WH40K where I really got into the hobby and I started a Lizardmen and CSM army.

kb_lock wrote:
I think it was 3rd edition (Black Templars VS Dark Eldar)

I remember painting the trees that came with it by simply washing them in the old Green Ink hex pots (over the unprimed green plastic).

I dropped that pot of green ink on the (cream coloured) carpet

Hahahahaha- Hope you passed your feel no pain roll when your parents saw the big stain.

-

My dad's always been into miniatures and models, so I guess it was a genetic thing - heh.

Ended up playing with sailing ships, tank battles, pre-dreadnought, dreadnought, WWI/WWII naval - everything basically as a kid. 40k eventually popped up once I started going to the FLGS to get paint.

And...that's how the world ended for my credit cards.

My Mum had a mate who's son was into D&D. So, I was bought the basic D&D box.
Later on, he bought minis to use in D&D, so I was bought the Citadel adventurers box.
A few White Dwarfs and some monster minis later, and 40k was announced.

I had a friend who played this game called "Mageknights", who gave me a * Orc Slasher. That gave me the bug.

Funny thing is, last summer I found a place that was selling Mage Knight Packs for pennies on the dollar, and decided to pick up some (because it is always nice to have models for RPG's), and guess what model was at the bottom of the last pack? Another * Orc Slasher.

Those free A4 booklets you could get during second edition with in it a quick show of how the game was played, plenty of pictures of the armies out at that time and of course, showing off that awesome second edition starter.

I've poured over those way too many times until I finally purchased White Dwarf 220, which is still my favourite issue ever.

 Bottle wrote:
I have some very old memories of my dad buying model aeroplane kits and assembling them for me, and then later buying me WWII airfix miniatures - my first two sets were the US marines (which included a dingy) and the German Infantry.

HOLY CRAP! Those are the exact ones me and my cousin were playing with that night (see my story on the other page). What an amazing coincidence!

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

My first memory of miniature gaming was buying a book / marine box set combo at the local Walden books, but the only one having figures and rules in a small rural town made it difficult to play. A few years later I moved to a city to go to college and was visiting a local con. I was there to play Marvel Super Heroes RPG and the table set up besides us was a game of Space hulk and I was amazed at it. Even back then it had a very nice presentation and the models for the time addicted me immediately. Picked up Space Hulk the next week and found it went to the 40k book that I already bought years before.

Funny thing is my first purchase of a RPG was the "Time Trap" module for Marvel Super Heroes RPG, Not realizing till after what I had done.Then I had to save my allowance again, return the book store to buy the base game to play it.

I know exactly what you mean about growing up in a rural town! I was first introduced to the Warhammer 40K universe by the Dawn of War PC game and when I looked into it deeper I found out it was a tabletop game as well! I was amazed and excited so I tried to find some place near me that played and the closest place was over an hour and a half away so I just said forget it. Later on (8 months ago actually) I said the hell with it, I want the models for something to do even if I cant play the tabletop game. I still havent ever played or seen a game played in person with my own eyes LMAO

Originally, one of my buddies in middle school was on vacation, and ended up buying the starter box of D&D 3.5, we played a little, but got tired of having our dungeon crawls and being murder hobos, so we went to the local FLGS, or "Nerd Store" in our young vocabulary to try and find out another outlet for our High Fantasy adventures.

The first thing we saw, when we walked in, was the Mage Knight shelving being set up inside the shop, we asked what it was, and after a few minutes of talking to the clerk, we all left with a few boosters and a pair of starter sets to split between us. After a few months of this, we had a huge amount of figures between all of us.

Then, the same friend who got us all into D&D heard about a new game based on Lord of the Rings, He and another friend bought up a ton of stuff for it, and we all thought about it. There was a Games Workshop a little further out then our local nerd store, so we went over there. The two of them were totally set in the idea that we would all play the Lord of the Rings game, but I was going through a phase of rejecting all the fantasy stuff, as I had grown bored with the whole thing. That's when the four of us saw the 40K shelves.

We played 40K for most of middle school, The Daemon Hunter's book game out, so I ended up with an Inquisitor and two squads of Grey Knights, A buddy grabbed orks, another Chaos, and the fourth got Necrons. We all ended up with two or three armies by 4th edition, where we added a few more of our friends. Then we all got girlfriends in highschool, started bands, and the hobby died off for us. I sold my Tau, my Kroot Mercs, My Space Wolves and most of my guard army to buy guitar equipment.

In College, Dark Heresy came out, and I started GMing a game for a few friends who were interested in 40K, but didn't want to drop money in on it yet. After a few sessions, and over winter break, their local hobby shop started to carry Warhammer and started to have Friday Night Fight Night to supplement the FNM events. I dusted off the left overs of my Guard, sold some guitar equipment, and got back into the hobby full swing for a few years, took a break, and I'm getting back into it now!

I was on a camping trip about age 12 or 13. I hadnt remembered to bring a book and asked one of the older guys I was camping with (a bookish kind of guy) if he had any books I could borrow.

He handed me a copy of Mitchel Scanlon's Fifteen Hours.

I devoured the violence, brutality and bloodshed and I was addicted. Many more 40k books were to follow.

I tried to read the fantasy ones too but they just didn't scratch that bolter porn itch.

I messed around with starter sets and RPGs and trading and bartertown but never seemed to be able to play the games. Or paint the miniatures.

Now I have a gaming club that I regularly go to that normally plays X Wing or newer, less hardcore board/card games and RPGs. But I'm hoping other wargames like 40k and Maelstrom's Edge will make a comeback. And I've gotten much better about collecting and painting in measured strides

I still have that well-worn copy of Fifteen Hours. I tried to give it back to the bloke but he told me to keep it. I dont mind, I've grown rather fond of having it around as a keepsake.

I got Battle Masters for Christmas 1992. While I don't remember asking for it, I must have seen a commercial for it or seen it at a store and asked for it. The memory of opening the box and seeing all the sprues still sticks with me.

Eventually, years later, for some reason I don't recall, I gave painting the minis a shot with some Testors enamel paint I had that I'd never used. That lead to picking up some minis from the local comic book store (Showcase Comics in the Granite Run Mall) to try to paint. I had no idea what I was doing and bough a box of Epic Knight Paladins. Christmas 1996 is probably when I picked up the Warhammer 40k 2nd ed, boxed set and from them on I was hooked on minis.

With marriage, work and kids I've barely had time to do anything for about a decade, but I hope to get in on a Warmachine slow grow league at my FLGS in February.

-

I'd been aware of Warhammer from a very young age, having seen it on the shelves in a model railway shop in the UK. I was only ever in there to buy 1:72 size army men (Afrika Korps are one set I loved that spring to mind) but I remember being fascinated by the box cover art (this is probably mid 90s, so think: mound of Space Marines encircled by ferocious aliens). Unfortunately for me at the time, £50 was an unthinkable amount to pay for what seemed to amount to a big box of toy soldiers, so I abstained.

Fast forward to the early 2000s, and my best mate had started hanging around with a mysterious group of guys in town who all seemed to congregate at this one store. From what I could gather, they would go there early on a Saturday and stay there pretty much all day. When I asked him what kind of a store it was, he was pretty coy about explaining, so one day I just tagged along. It turned out the store was a big, bustling Games Workshop, and I was enchanted from the second I walked in.

I remember the feeling of leaving all my real world problems at the door and entering into a fantasy haven that was just intoxicating. The display cases had the most amazing toy soldiers I'd ever seen and, what's more, there were groups of guys playing with their own models on a large, sculpted gaming board. They looked like they were having an absolute ball.

As I perused the dozens of display cabinets there was one that struck a chord: Orks. Multitudes of snarling greenskins with all manner of robotic enhancements, snivelling assistants and enormous war machines. The conversions I saw that day have stayed with me for almost fifteen years, and still inspire many of my own projects.

That day I bought the softcover 3rd edition Ork codex, a box of boys and the metal Ork Warboss with a big choppa. I still have all of them in my collection, though thankfully the paint my 13 year-old self inflicted on them is long gone (thank you, Fairy power spray!).

The Battle for Maccrage. I remember it keenly when my friend brought that over and said I could have the tyranids. So began the slippery slope....

I first got into D&D and a few other rpgs when I was a wee lad in the early 80s (and would eternally lament that I had no one to play them with but that didn't stop me from spending what little money I could get on them!)
After I started reading 'Dragon' magazine I became enamoured with a lot of the miniatures advertised in it and, before I knew it, I had a pretty decent collection of poorly put together dragons and whatnot and it's just continued from there.

Friend of mine back 2001 brought the latest copy of White Dwarf over to my house and asked if I had heard of this cool game called Warhammer.

One thing led to another, and now I've a half-built Reaver Titan in my bedroom. It's a drug, I tell you.

Kill-Team and finally the video game Space marine made me order some secondhand cruddy minis.

 TheEyeOfNight wrote:

One thing led to another, and now I've a half-built Reaver Titan in my bedroom. It's a drug, I tell you.

Basically, it was White Dwarf and Chill?

Space Crusade.

Mine was in High School and seeing the Adeptus Titanicus box set. I didnt know anything about it, and it was too expensive for me, and I wasnt into table top gaming, but it left an impression. Then I found art of beakie Space Marines in a few of my friend's Dragon Magazines and loved them. For a couple of years, all I did was draw beakie marines fighting each other without having any idea who they were and what they did.

Then a friend gave me 2 metal marines, one shooting a bolter, the other waving a power ax. I wasn't that impressed with them, but they gave us some ideas on a home-brewed Aliens RPG we were making.

Then I moved and about this time the second edition of Space Marine had come out, and I saw the display for it at a comic store I would go to. I actually bought the Armies box set that contained Space Marine Land Raiders, Rhinos, infantry, as well as Orks and Eldar. You Epic players will know what I am talkign about. Anyway, I tried making my own game using some old Battletech maps (a game a friend gave me but I didnt like), but failed horribly.

So I went in one day to buy it, and the guy behind the counter offered to sell me his collection, but didnt tell me he had the earlier version of the game. He gave me a good deal, and I was stunned with the amount of miniatures, rules, white dwarf magazine articles and so on. It was actually kind of a mess and took me a few days to sort out, but by the time I was done, I was blown away. I was fascinated with the Horus Heresy, and loved the fluff in the SM1 rulebook. I introduced everything to my friends who also fell in love with it, and during the winter the next two years we painted and battled in my friends basement. Awesome times.

When I realized we had an older version of the game, and that there weren't rules for the newer and exotic minis we would see in the stores, I sat down to try to develop a way to convert a new mini's SM2 rules into SM1s. We had all sorts of charts and modifiers and so on, and for the most part, it worked well enough that everyone was satisfied. But once Titan Legions came out, we said screw it and moved on to SM2 and TL.

I miss those days. I could walk into our local gaming store and see games of Epic being played with tons of titans, vehicles, and infantry running about. I remember one game that involved 6 Ork Gargants just on one side. Glorious times, and I miss them.

I eventually got into 40k 2nd edition and the rest of GW's games and others, but that AT/SM1 era just gives me goosebumps. Still love it today.

 JoshInJapan wrote:
I started with Grenadier and Ral Partha models for D&D around 1980 or so. I still have a lot of them.

My best friend and i lived down the road from grenadier. We would ride our bikes over and show andy(?) our painted D&D figures. He was a nice man. this was in 1977, i think. From time to time he would give us a few free figures.

I was playing a airfix soldiers game we made up that used 6sided dice. That was in 1974.

My first exposure to table-top war gaming (not counting DnD) was in my final year of secondary school. I'd gone to the local mall with a couple of buddies, and we'd happened upon a GW store. I'd already at that point spent most of my teen years painting planes, boats, gundams, and was fascinated by the idea of painting tiny objects, as well as fielding (someday) whole armies of soldiers. The three of us bought the paint sets that came with 5x 2-piece "snap together" marines, and we spent the next couple of hours back at my friend's pad painting and exploring the rulebook one of us had purchased.

I wandered into a GW store on a family trip to Vancouver, BC when I was like 9. I must have spent hours just staring at the minis, my parents left me and then came back and bought me a box of six Space Marines (like 3rd ed I think?), but there wasn't much of a place to play them in my little mountain town. Fourteen years later I overhear a friend talking about 40k to someone else at work, and I went full swing into the game.

I came across this book at the game store:



and I spent some time paging through it. I was fascinated, but rather confused about how to make a game and a go of it.

So I picked up this book at the time:



as I was more of an RPGer back then.

Of course, soon thereafter, this was released:



and I never looked back.

But sadly, I don't actually play any GW games anymore...

 BrookM wrote:

I've poured over those way too many times until I finally purchased White Dwarf 220, which is still my favourite issue ever.

My first copy as well Tsaragrad is awesome. I also seemed to be collecting my way through the Tale of Four Gamers Armies!

My Dad's into Model Railways I enjoyed Airfix kits and a mate at school introduced me to warhammer and 40k then another gave me a coupe of copies of White Dwarf........WD212 & 213 which he had spare. I'm currently planning to follow the terrain making article in WD 212 and have an Epic Ork army bigger than any of those showcased!

D&D red box when I was 7, trips to the FLGS to buy dice and old Ral Partha and Mithril MERP figs, Heroquest, then Battlemasters.

My mom bought the D&D box set for my brother because she wanted to encourage our imagination. My dad was a classic "mid 80's hobbyist" so we had a TI-99/4A home computer (how I started writing programs), he had a shelf of Avalon Hill games (first chit-based wargame was Tactics II), and assembled/painted scale models, so it was only a matter of time.