Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

How do!

Ooh, look at that! A two part question! A bit unusual, but I like it. And the two parts are in the thread title. But a little clarification, as then “when” is more about which edition you started with.

For me? I got started at the beginning of 2nd Ed with 40K, but via HeroQuest, Space Crusade, Space Hulk and Epic, I’d been farting around the periphery for a few years. I would’ve started with Rogue Trader, but when we went to buy it in Brighton, it was off the shelves due to impending 2nd Ed.

What got me hooked was a mix of the artwork and stories. Even just little page filler text drove my tiny mind, primed as it was by years of getting my hair cut from a Barbers that always had 2000AD in the waiting area. To me, I wouldn’t describe it as edgy as such. But definitely it felt kind of mature, very rebellious, and like it should perhaps be forbidden. Which I guess can be described as Edgy, but I’d say more Thrilling.

And once I got going? New releases and regular gaming just drove me on and on and on. And I’m still here well over 30 years later, currently cluttering up your eyes and your brain with my wimbriling,

I’m interested to see what hooked others, and the when is about looking if there’s perhaps a change in what attracts people. I’ve no conclusion in mind, and frankly I don’t expect to come even close to one. Just interested.

My brother brought home a Playstation game called Space Hulk: Vengeance of the Blood Angels in I think 1996. We thought the game was really interesting - it implied this big mad world beyond the game, reminded me a bit of the Mechwarrior game I'd played around the same time but seemed even cooler because there were aliens and the voice lines in the game made the marines seem like knights but in space.

My brother talking about it in school lead to a friend of his lending us the Rulebook, Wargear and Codex Imperialis over the Easter holidays that year.

My mind was blown. The major hook were all the colour pictures of the miniatures on the terrain. It was just amazing to me, so cool, I'd never seen anything like it. And then the concept that you could play out games with these guys on these tiny worlds you created, and it made a kind of story. All these amazing miniatures.

And then the background and art reminded me of all the cool stuff in 2000AD - Nemesis, Johnny Alpha, Judge Dredd, ABC Warriors, Rogue Trooper and so on. But it was even cooler than that, layered with medieval history and smushed together with Tolkien, who I was (and still am) obsessed with.

Orks in Space!? With Motorbikes with huge guns on them??! SIGN ME UP.

I've never stopped collecting and reading about Warhammer since then. I've had a period where I didn't get any games in, but I kept my collection and kept painting stuff for that dark time. Back to playing as regularly as my life allows now, though I play with Grimdark Future before the 2.50 rules update mostly. Having a blast just relaxing and building what I want.

Orky Warbikes and the Shokk Attak Gun definitely played a significant role for me.

I didn’t understand the rules then, and remember fearing I’d never remember what each stat represented.

But the Warbikes having a chance of skidding out of control, because auto-cannon should never be mounted on such a small thing, and the result tables for sending Snotlings through the Warp and hopefully into the target?

Just a level of anarchy that really appealed to me.

And still do.

Especially materialising Snotlings inside the enemy’s suit of armour.

Start of 8th ed. 30+ people from my school started at the same time. I was just after confirmation, otherwise I would have never had the money to start, and even then I only managed to pull it off, because one of the guys at the store had a Grey Knight army for sell. No need to paint and it was on the nose how much I had saved up. The lure of "they are going to be updated soon" was strong too, and they were updated very fast I think like 3ed or 4th codex in 8th ed.

I really avoided 40k for quite a while. I was probably first introduced to it via the FFG RPGs. Bought a few models for it, but didn't really understand the world very well and didn't love the D100 combat engine. This was right around the time I was just getting into to painting minis and looked into 40k, but found myself vastly preferring Warmachine.

My next main introduction was the original Space Marine game. I was starting to get very bored of all the shooters of the era and it definitely stood out as something more oldschool and fun, but I still wasn't wild about the tabletop game itself when I tried it out again.

Over the next 5 years I wanted to try all the cool games coming out and started just picking up little armies for games that caught my attention. Guild Ball, Malifaux, Infinity and around that time Deathwatch got their own army which seemed like fate, so I decided to pick up a few units... but still didn't really enjoy the game.

The launch of 8th edition was probably where I started to actually enjoy the game. Strategems and the cleaner rules got me a lot more interested. Still not my favorite game, but the edition started a significantly more public community. Deathwatch wasn't exactly the most fun faction to own at the time so I only played occassionally, but it was improving. I mostly sat out 9th though. What with the whole pandemic thing and gaming being a lot more scheduled and secluded I focused on games I'm generally more into. It was also just kind of a bloated mess.

So to answer the second question I guess the answer is 10th? I actually just really like 10th edition in general. It feels like a game with properly thought-out mechanics, flexible rules that make it a lot easier to adjust to errata and a good cadence of balance adjustments to keep things fresh. I don't think its still my favorite game, but its gone from something I kept an army around for to participate in big game days to something I look forward to playing in the same range as stuff like MCP, Warmachine, and the like. I finally felt like it was worth owning a 2nd army and maybe a 3rd.

9th edition also brought in a great new crowd that has really added to the community and 10th was a great way for them to get back to playing in public. Space Marine 2's release really showed how much more invested I've become since the original. All of the little details just mean something to me now in a way they didn't before.

Dawn of War I played a big part. And we were already playing lotr at the time and 40Ks models slowly started to look nice in the WD, too. For my army specifically (Death Guard) it was also the kitbashing aspect. Lotr had monoposes, while 40K came with multipose models and you even had loads of 3rd party producers doing nurgle stuff, even nurgle bases. So I bought minis and bits from all of them and a lot of Green stuff to create something that wasn't possible in lotr. I still like them more than what GW did with DG in 8th, but I have no problem to mix the two.

It was at the end of 5th Edition when we started and the rules turned out to be pretty much rubbish compared to lotr. But we took up with them until 9th edition when GWs churn just became too silly for us and we moved to OPR.

THIS is what got me hooked. Around that time I'd been building (badly) model Airfix ships, but this cover to a boxed set just blew my mind away. I have NO idea where I saw it, though it might well have been back in the days when GW shared the top floor of a department store with all the boring parent stuff and video games; or it was seeing a white Dwarf magazine -- or something.

Whatever it was I wanted that set - I wanted massive tank armies; huge titanic castles on legs; massive guns blasting stuff and all.

I still fondly recall getting the set, sitting in the sitting room and happily building model after model whilst watching something on the TV with the family (I think we were watching Gordy, but don't hold me to that it could just be memories getting mashed randomly together).



Sadly I rarely got to game - far from the store; limited childs budget and at school most of my generation weren't interested. The few who did play (in the older generations) were into this 40K stuff whatever that was. I did in the end break down and get a few 40K models - some Tyranid Warriors back when they had spike tails and exposed guts under their rib cages. Mostly because they were the most alien in 40K.

Honestly whilst I got models over the years I was always more a builder than painter; and playing games were rare. I collected bits here and there but it wasn't until Uni that I really had disposable money for and actual proper army.


I guess in some ways part of the adult fun in the hobby is getting to live those childish dreams out. The older I've become the more I've dipped into it (though I hasten to add not in isolation of other things or hobbies); but as someone who is quite happy with my own company just sitting down and working through models and having a wonderful looking model at the end is a joy (would be more so if I ever push myself to properly learn to paint)

I started in RT. Played it as an RPG.

The why is a hard question. I don’t know if I could pin it down to a single thing.

The minis at the time were amazing. Many games were cardboard chits or standies. Most of my minis at the time were Grenadier, with a few Ral Partha. Some of the old lead just lacked the quality, or character of GW’s offerings. We had recently started using minis for out D&D game, and it was a huge leap. And once the door was opened to collecting and painting minis, the hook was in.

But it was also the raw creativity in the old GW. The world was a giant chaotic sandbox. Sure you had the official minis, but kitbashing everything from zoids or deodorant bottles was the word of the day. Have a cool idea, make it happen.

And ideas were everywhere. You read the RT book and it is cram packed with stuff. And not just full of lore, but throwaway plot hooks, mysteries alluded to, but not described. names and references. Let your imagination go wild. The galaxy is a huge place.

Without Space Crusade I'd never have got into 40K.

When I was younger I wanted to play, buy my Mom was against spending that much money on toys.

One of my friends who worked at a comic shop gave me an opened Last Chancers box that someone had returned.

There were rules that would allow you to play your 285 points against any sized enemy army.

I was hooked and played my 40k Dirty Dozen army until they took away their rules.

And then I bought tanks... and more tanks... and then more... and more..

Until they made big walking Tanks...
And now my army has less models than my original army.

5th edition - Having beautifully painted armies on beautifully painted terrain experiencing every kind of tactical situation I could imagine on every kind of battlefield. All biomes on earth and alien ones, even an asteroid would be my spaces to create fun and balanced table to fight on. The goal being a game worthy of pictures and laughs, as the dice be fickle.

I played two games of Rogue Trader, probably in '89 or '90. I had a couple units of marines, who were called the Order of the Phoenix. The idea was that all of them had been declared dead in battle, but somehow miraculously survived. They kept some of their old colours, but painted at least some of their armour in Phoenix colours to honour their "rebirth."

My opponent had some Orks with scratch-built pompadours and painted to look like they wearing Elvis style rhinestone jumpsuits; they rode in the back of a looted pick-up truck. But even though I liked those Rogue Trader games, they didn't really hook me...

And then Space Hulk happened. We played usually 4-6 player games on a homemade 3d board. That set the hook DEEP. I bought additional Marines so that I could use both termies and scouts in Hulk, but then I started buying up 'Stealers. And when 2nd dropped and the GSC got published as part of the Nid dex, I had a decent GSC army, and the versatility of 2nd ed 40k vs. the streamlined, simplified rules of Hulk pulled me into 40k.

I played the heck out of 2nd and 3rd; I played a bit of 4th and a lot of 5th. By then I was playing Sisters (Since Gw had scrapped GSC), so when 6th dropped and I saw how Sisters were being treated, it looked like they were about to share the same fate as GSC, so I rage quit, and sat out 7th too. I was done with 40k. And then I saw a 7th ed GSC dex and impulse bought it. Before I could spring for the BRB, they announced Gathering Storm and said that 8th would not only see the continuing presence of GSC, but also the restoration of sisters.

I bought in to 8th HARD. And I loved it. When they announced 9th, I was furious, but Crusade convinced me to try it... And Crusade was the best 40k I'd ever played.

I first bought stuff for 40k at the end of 6th edition (2014), but didn't play until after 7th dropped. I've always loved painting models, and I do like miniatures games. 40k was not my first GW game; I already had a small collection of The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game (now the Middle-Earth SBG), and enjoyed painting those. I got into 40k because there was a lot more of a playerbase for it locally (nobody was playing Middle-Earth). The thing that really got me hooked was our local tournaments; we had a great group of guys, the people running it were awesome, and it was just so much fun hanging out with fellow hobbyists and checking out each other's models. I got my ass handed to me in my first few tournaments but once I got the hang of the game (and Dark Angels got their 7th edition codex to replace their garbage 6th edition one) I started to at least win some individual games in tournaments more regularly. Sadly most of that group has moved on, either moving to other towns/states, quitting playing the game, or in a couple of cases sadly, passing away. But we've still got a good local scene with a bunch of newer, younger players, and there's a few of the old guard around besides me, so the future looks bright!

What got me hooked? That's easy. The models.
It's always been about the models for me. Playing games with cool models.... Good - great artwork & interesting lore are merely a bonus.

When?
For 40k specifically it was the closing days of Rogue Trader. When the Space Wolves list debuted in the pages of WD.
I built the most ridiculously overpowered SW army possible for the sole purpose of entering a local tourney & crushing 1 particular opponent. I succeeded in my goal + placed very highly in the event.
And I've been building & playing 40k ever since.

But I was already a veteran miniature wargamer at that point.
I had several WHFB 3e armies, had been playing BattleTech since it launched as BattleDroids, Star Fleet Battles, Mustangs & Messerschmidt's, and my brother & I had been using a copy of some Historical/Napoleonic system (I forget the title) combined with my Dads huge collection of Marxs plastic Revolutionary War figures (he had hundreds of them - infantry, cav, cannon, etc).
40k was merely the next minis game for me. And it's definitely not been the last....

I was a typical way in for a lad of my age (vintage), hero quest first, then advanced hero quest got me into gw proper, after that bloodbowl. First foray into the 40K setting was via Adeptus titanicus and 1st edition epic.

After that got ere we go and was hooked on 40K ORKS ever since. 10 editions of 40K played and I have still got some of my old 1st and second edition models in my ORK army.

What really got me hooked on ORKS was the Paul bonner art work, it was just so evocative and full of character. I’ve spoken to Paul a few times and love that he stills loves ORKS and seems to feel the same way about that art work.

And as mad doc said in a previous thread, ORK fluff form that era still stands up, it is still current and true, ORKS are the true gognards army.

I got my start in 1989. I'd played RPGs up until that point and had purchased some Citadel minis for D&D.

Then, one of my friends brought home Rogue Trader. The art, miniatures, and stories drew me in. Everything was cobbled together back then but we all had fun.

It felt so different to everything else that was out back then. It was both a creative outlet and allowed for friendly competition.

I really enjoy the game and it has introduced me to so many people. I made friendships that lasted over 30 years in which some I still get to hang out with. No other activity has afforded me this to which I am grateful for.

I had just moved from a smaller town into the contry's capital, and the only people who hung out with me after school took me to a LGS, just to look at the stuff they had for sale there. I got hooked to miniatures from the very first exposure, and there on out, if I got a bit of money, I ran to the LGS as fast as I could and picked up some random blister which tickled my fancy. I had no idea about tabletop games, that only came later when I realized I was most intrigued about the stuff Citadel was releasing, their fantasy and scifi blisters seemed to have a better bang for the buck than the competition. Little by little I got to know there were also games for these Citadel miniatures, and little by little, it snowballed from there..

The first GW game I ever bought was Epic Space Marine, which introduced me to the whole GW thing in more depth. Pretty soon, I had convinced my cousin that Space Hulk, Blood Bowl etc were the games to get into, he was better off financially so he bought a lot of stuff, which we then painted and played with until he finished secondary school and realized he prefers booze and chicks over "childish" things.. I followed suit a couple years later, and only got back to wargaming, and 40K proper, around the late noughties (2006-2011).. been off and on since then.

The main appeal for me have always been the miniatures themselves. I was particularly keen on the plastic models, never liked working with metal, so feel quite at home with the modern prevalence of almost exclusively plastic kits

I started wargaming when I was about 6.... I started 40k when my son was 6 and third edition dark eldar space marines starter set got us started.

First hook: a Sunday morning teaching game of newbies (about 6 on each side of the table, self included) when I realised I could complete the mission in turn 2 by turbo thrusting my dark eldar raiders to take them off the enemy board edge... a sudden awareness of how the rules WORKED I suppose....

Second hook: Space Hulk. Balanced, fun, great miniatures great game. Oh and finding 10 Italian sets in The Works (remainders bookstore) for £10 each....

Oh boy, I have such a special start. When I was 11 (somewhere in the range of 2012 -2013, there was a hobby store in my town that sold a number of things MTG, Warmachines, Horde, GoGos, ETC but of course, in particular, Warhammer 40k. I have pretty much always been really interested in models in general, and I was a pretty damn avid collector (or as much as an 11 year old could be avid) of Bionicle. So imagine my delight when I found some cool highly detailed models! I was with my dad at the time, and pretty much all the models were far outside what he was willing to drop on a single model on a random Tuesday EXCPET for one particular boxed set: Space Marine assault.

8 genestealers and 5 marines go head to head with a custom rulebook, paints, a brush, a die, and a ruler all for like 15 dollars. I still have the models, I wish I still had the box.

GW stuff - HeroQuest & Space Crusade (like many others), then I got a stack of WD's from a friend's brother - including 101 with the Badab War colour schemes that got me hooked! I then found out there was a GW store next town over I could get to on the bus.

For miniatures in general there was a video games store in town (Chips!) that also had racks of blisters from multiple companies - I had no idea what most of them were, just that they were cool!

Back in '93 or '94 a couple of friends tried to get me into 40k by introducing me to the Dark Angels, talking about how they were going to fight some Tyranids ("basically Aliens"). They knew I liked to paint fantasy stuff by Ral Partha and other fantasy minis for my RPG games. Sadly, it wasn't until late '96 that I delved into the game. Either way, it was in the latter throes of 2nd edition, and we played a LOT.

For me it was the conflict of Space Marines and Imperial Guard vs Chaos, and I often found myself on the Chaos side (although I did collect Space Wolves early in 3rd edition too). I really enjoyed the thought of 10,000 year old grizzled veterans of the long war who remembered things that their loyalist cousins had only read about. I love history, especially the Ancient Greco-Roman era, and how much of what really happened is lost to time - most of what we know stems from people writing about it hundreds of years later and the modern interpretations of the scant primary sources we do have. I saw that play out on a galactic scale. (While I really appreciate the Horus Heresy book line, I am also sad there is far less speculation on what might have happened now - its a solved-for thing).

What solidified me in this hobby was the kitbashing... it was expected that many models have some sort of originality to them that wasn't just paint. Taking small horns and gluing them to the sides of helmets and weapon swaps. I chopped a screaming flamer of tzeentch head off and used it as the head of a terminator, and gave it some tentacles from a metal epic tyranid instead of a trophy rack. He was just the heavy flamer dude in the squad.

I started because my friend got me into it. Shocking, I know.

We started as youngsters, and he had Khorne Marines. This was mid-6th, I think. Tail end of 6th, I start buying Codecs and getting into the lore, and I eventually start some Nurgle Marines in the beginning of 7th. Why those Chaos Marines?

He had red Marines. I'd have green. Christmas colors!

For how silly a start that was, I absolutely loved the lore and the gameplay and throwing down on the tabletop...

My first real game was an Apocalypse game too. The organizer of the whole event loaned me 1,500 points of Black Templars to play with, since I owned literally no models at that point, and I had so much fun.
Had a Dreadnought take the last Hull Point off a Baneblade and watched it go boom, had some Hammernators survive hundreds of shots from a Punisher Cannon fortification...
Holy crap it was a blast.

Dawn of war, like so many others. Then in late 2013 a friend learned it was derivated from a mni game and we said, you know what, let's give it a try! Then the mix of fantsay and sci fi sand box hooked me as I started making my own custom lore in my part of the sandbox

SamusDrake wrote:
Without Space Crusade I'd never have got into 40K.

Same. My brother dabbled a bit with Epic that piqued my interest, but it was getting Space Crusade when I was about 9 that really nailed me in

I saw Rogue Trader coming, as I was reading White Dwarf from '85. So, I was there when 1st ed happened.
I'd been intriduced via the D&D basic set, through Dungeon mag, to WD. 40k was teased for some months before release.

I had blister packs from all over the initial range, so games were very messy, as RT was at the time. Using string to mark out a battlefield on the bedroom floor, and piles of books for hills.
The variety was probably the main reason for diving in. That, and the imagery around the game.

Encountered Adeptus Titanicus in a shop and was hooked, then got Space Marine, then Space crusade and white dwarf.

Early 1994, I saw someone I kinda knew on the school bus with some lead Space Marine models. Got to talking, went back to their house after school one day and painted one (badly) with them. For my birthday I convinced my parents to buy me the 2ed starter box, and the Space Marines Paint set, and it spiraled out of control from there.

Before I moved to the states (and sold it all) in 2006, I had a company and a half of ultramarines, plus tanks, many IG squads and all the tanks, a few squads of Arbites, a few squads of Sisters, and a plethora of other Imperial stuff. Somewhat regret getting rid of it all, fair few classic models in that collection; but I've started back up and the joy or assembling and painting is still there - haven't got into playing yet though.

I had a friend who played D&D with me, he was kinda into 40k, and was trying to get me into it, and he showed me the white dwarf magazine where BFG was introduced and I loved that game more than 40k, so I started with BFG, and then when I was looking for people to play BFG at the local game store I decided to get into 40k too.

So... when they killed my baby boy BFG I got really upset, but I still had 40k, but then 6th was just kinda meh and I was annoyed that not as many people were into space navy type games so I quit for a long while.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I got started at the beginning of 2nd Ed with 40K, .

That's me too. A friend loaned me his RT Compilation. Was hooked from the first cover with the Blood Angels. Bought a blister and then the 2nd Edition box set (also featured Blood Angels) and the "Angels of Death" Codex (you see where this is going) and I was hooked. As mentioned elsewhere I haven't played a game of 40k in several editions, but my armies live on, are occasionally expanded and still see play in Grimdark Future.

Okay Sherman, set the Wayback Machine for the late 80s, where we find I got into Warhammer by... well, peer pressure, but the positive sort. Talisman was big at school; I recall one school camp (not band camp, calm down) a six player game started that went the whole day and had the rest of the class, and the teachers, clustered around the players watching like it was the Melbourne Cup. I had one friend in particular who owned Rogue Trader and I'm pretty sure he was first into painting miniatures; during holidays he'd stay with me at my grandparents' place up on the central coast where there wasn't a whole hell of a lot to do because it was the central coast, so we'd have bugged our parents for some miniatures beforehand and just spend the whole time swapping them and painting them. We both loved the book too, but without a nice simple board and pieces to move around it the rules were a bit beyond us (we were the age where transforming Wheeljack from robot to car was a significant expenditure of brainpower). I never got a Rogue Trader of my own (until much later from a second hand bookshop, in pretty poor shape, a number of pages were missing and about twenty pages of the creature list had evidently fallen out and got glued back in backwards, page order reversed and page numbers facing the spine - I'm glad they did that reissue not long ago), but I did get an issue of White Dwarf from the newsagent, 105, which I read cover to cover many times - our various miniatures were a random selection of 'whatever was on the pegs when we got taken shopping' but my friend had the RTB01 box and liked his space marines, after WD105 I immediately glommed onto the Harlequins and ended up collecting several blister packs, along with some other Eldar since they had elements of the same not-macho-centric energy as my homicidal theatre kids (I also do to this day kind of wish Dark Future would make a comeback). I ended up getting Space Hulk as well, and actually played it (badly), and that packaged the lore of 40k in a much more easy-to-digest way (given our ages) than Rogue Trader so that was really the start of me being a proper 40k hobbyist; I also wound up getting Realm of Chaos: The Lost and the Damned, which again, the rules were kind of opaque, but the lore (40k and WFB) really got me, as well as those glorious colour pages of miniatures.

I did drift away for a while, as other pursuits drew my attention, like Star Trek and just what is it about how Xena and Gabrielle are into each other that I feel is somehow really relevant, until a Games Workshop opened in Sydney - I wasn't there opening day or anything, but eventually I became away of it and wandered in for a game of Space Hulk, and despite being very disappointed that flamers didn't have a self-destruct anymore came away with the new version of the game, and the current White Dwarf (196 I believe, so Space Hulk v2 would've been a new release just then, explains why they had a table set up for it), and kept coming back; I assume the staffers get special training in tolerating enthusiastic adolescents. In any case nature took its course and I saved up my pocket money for the 40k 2nd edition box, and started thinking about miniatures as 'collecting an army' rather than just 'buy the cool ones' - since I had the 2nd ed Tacticals and all those Terminators, I kind of defaulted into having to set aside my beloved Eldar spandex war gals and become a space marine player (so I made my space marines power armoured war gals, ha - this was a bit before Sororitas were a thing, although you better believe I was all over them when they made their debut). I even won the Necromunda box: the store ran a one-day 'last man standing' event where a staffer took an Arbitrator, every kid in the store got a ganger from the store's painted stock, and we all squared off to gun down the hated lawman then immediately start betraying each other once the threat was dealt with - I had the Escher with a shotgun and I like to remember it as being too pretty to shoot but basically I just got lucky.

What got me properly hooked - this is going on a while, but I'm like that - was the coming of 3rd edition, from a number of angles. Naturally there was being around for the hype of the new edition releasing, all that looking forward to it and wondering, devouring every snippet of previews, the White Dwarf with the free Dark Eldar on the cover (I got the lady with the Bride of Frankenstein hair, which was... that was a choice by the sculptors, but I'd take whatever I could get), and then finally going home a lot poorer but with a big box of new toys. The streamlined rules - I never fully got to grips with 2nd edition, and while in hindsight 3rd may have simplified and abstracted a bit too much at times, I loved the feeling that what mattered wasn't whether or not my army contained an all-slaying ubercharacter geared up with invincibility trinkets and handheld nukes, but the Tactical marine and his (or her) boltgun and what I chose to do with them during the game. Speaking of, those Tactical marines - obviously I loved the Dark Eldar (back to war gals), and after Land Speeders being all-metal and out of my reach just getting a plastic one in the starter set was awesome, but if I had to narrow it down to just one thing that got me cemented in 40k, it'd be the 3rd ed Tacticals. Sure they're not really 'freeform', but being able to adjust the angle of the arms, the tilt of the waist, which way the head's looking, being able to easily snip and swap the plastic parts, those little accessories they came with, every marine I assembled felt mine, even just the regular squaddies with their bolters. On top of that, support from the GW shop - they were very active in keeping us kids busy with Warhammer-related activities - and finding a place in an online community as well (remember when mailing lists were a thing?) really centralised 40k in my fandomsphere.

So teal dear I got into it because of war gals and got hooked when I could make my own.