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More of a general question than me asking for help specifically! Many of us have the experience of being intensely involved in wargaming for a period of our lives and then dropping out for a while before trying to pick it back up again.

For myself, I was really involved from 1996 to 2012ish, when I moved country. Being in a new country where I didn't speak the language was obviously a big barrier and although I kept collecting and painting my stuff, my games dried up.

I've been to a couple of events since and everyone was SUPER nice and tolerant of my poor German (I really should be better but I work through English and my wife and I are used to communicating in English so I've been slow to improve).

But for regular games my solution was to find a co-worker who would be interested and basically arrange everything for him. I painted two armies, made some sets of scenery for some boards and made cards for the units so he could quickly and easily grasp the rules. We play Grimdark Future so it's super simple to learn.

We meet every few months for a game and generally get a solid, fun time playing. It's a great motivation for me to paint stuff and make scenery. And as a gaming experience since I pick everything, it's always something I'm interested in. If I lose, my guys still won so I feel really good about it.

But my method is obviously really labour intensive, and relies on the fact that I have a near 30 year collection to draw on for minis. So I was curious - how have others gotten back in after time out? Is anyone struggling with it and wants to share their experience? And do you think 40K as it stands is easy to "get back into" if you've been away?

I am starting from scratch. I haven't bought a model since 5th Edition was being played.

I printed off the rulebook, the two Custodes Combat Patrol sheets and borrowed a copy of The Codex.

Since then I picked up Valoris (my first and only model) and plan on buying hobby supplies this week.

My roommate has been helpful in letting me borrow his Imperial Knights to play with at the house (vs his Imperial Knights), so I can learn the rules.

Beyond that, it's a slog. I don't own enough to join an Escalation League, nor am I the target audience for the Warhammer Store, since I haven't spent that much money, and let it slip that I used to play a long time ago.

My issue now is selecting what I want, buying models, and figuring out how to paint them.

(I do get frustrated when people tell me to test out a paint scheme on an extra marine model, and when I tell them I don't have any, they assume I'm joking.)

Overall, I want to play, but its not as easy as it used to be. I'm glad that you have a support network, and you are helping your friend, that is what the game should encourage.

One thing important to note that makes the wargaming landscape much different over recent years - pre-pandemic, the indie wargaming scene was already starting to flourish thanks to digital distributors like Wargame Vault making it much easier to self-publish. Thanks to the popularity of board gaming accommodating 1+ players with solo/co-op rules with simple-AI driven NPCs, we were also seeing that trend coming to wargaming. Then lockdown came along, and suddenly a keen interest in solo wargaming pushed indie developers to develop more solo/co-op wargames. We've been feasting well on such rulesets ever since.

So, if you're wanting to take small steps towards getting back into the hobby, don't look at the big games that require massive investment of time, money, and other resources before you're ready to find someone else to play with (and hope they're fun to play with). Look into smaller, skirmish rulesets that let you use whatever minis you like - and I highly recommend starting with something solo/co-op so you can get your feet wet playing with yourself (hurr hurr) so you can play at your own pace and leisure.

My recommendations would include Five Leagues from the Borderlands, Sword Weirdos, Sellswords & Spellslingers, and/or Rangers of Shadow Deep for fantasy; and Five Parsecs from Home or Space Weirdos for sci-fi. The Frostgrave/Stargrave series are solid vs. skirmishes with solo-friendly rules and supplements. For other genres, there's When Nightmares Come or Fear of the Dark for mythos horror, Perilous Tales for any horror, Fallout Wasteland Warfare, Zona Alfa (with the Kontraband supplement), or Five Kliks from the Zone for post-apocalypse, Pulp Alley for...uh...pulp of any flavor, and Fistful of Lead for pretty much any genre albeit with more of a cinematic "Hollywood flair". Pulp Alley and Fistful of Lead have solo add-ons to a generally vs. system. There's many, many, MANY more - these are just one's I've read.

If you're coming back to wargaming, don't feel you have to rush out and buy a Warhammer 40K army because "that's what people play". It's not necessarily true anymore, and even if it is your local scene, it's still a lot easier to paint up to 5-man teams and either introduce someone to a simple rule set like Fistful of Lead, or just forgo the other people limitation and play solo games with yourself and lure others in with co-op play.

If I was getting back to GW games, I'd start with either Blood Bowl, Warcry, Underworlds, or Kill Team. The large army games are an almost endless money pit, not to mention they require a lot more time to build and paint.

I follow your approach and would do the same if I was starting over. However, I would probably start with a smaller system and then work my way up.

I.e. an Ancient skirmish game, to a small unit-vs-unit game, to a big army game. Rules and manufacturers would vary.

I often also write the rules myself for any new game genre I want to play.

Psycho gives excellent advice, with a list of games I'd recommend for solo play.

Major advantage of solo play is that you can take your time playing, take breaks whenever you want, and play whenever you have some random free time. Or just look at the diorama you set up!

I find solo a great motivator for painting, as I don't like painting. Only paint the figures that the game calls for, taking a sometimes long break from the game to paint. This includes standee-only games which I proxy.

Here's a session for Lasting Tales, another solo generic fantasy miniatures game. fyi, Wildspire Miniatures has a GameFound campaign for the mini's shown in the pics!
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3496983/the-sorcerors-tower-in-which-we-kick-glass-cannon

I went to a couple of local GWs and flgs.. chatted... found a couple of gaming spaces in reach... chatted to people until I found a pickup game.. took it from there...

It very much depends on what motivates you, but my hobby went from 12 years of periodic dabbling to a more engaged activity once I was able to connect in 2010 with gamers who shared my interests (Fast play, miniature agnostic games) and whom I enjoyed playing with.

As for taking a break and returning, I did step away for a few years to pursue another hobby but about the time things were opening up post COVID I realized how much I missed the guys and the hobby. I rebooted the club and we've been going strong since, including some members s from the early club years 10-15 years ago.

It entirely depends on what about "the hobby" that you miss.

If you miss playing with people, but don't want to spend a lot of time and money with miniatures, I'd just stick to Tabletop Simulator. If you love painting and building models, but don't have a playgroup, either find one on Discord or choose a game geared more towards solo play or co-op play. If you miss the lore of 40k or another franchise, then just read books on it.

As said it can depend what part of the hobby you are getting back into or getting into. Eg you might have been a big lore reader and now you're actually wanting to get into the model side.

Or perhaps you only want to get into gaming or painting or making models. Each one has its own traps and pitfalls and its own upsides and tricks to get the best result.



Myself I've never had a problem taking a pause then getting back into building models - just buy kit and build. The biggest risk is buying more than I build.

Gaming has always been trickier for me because I've never really been able to game at home (either not the space and/or no one actually nearby to play); and gaming away has always involved a 30-60min drive to get there and back.

Throw winter on top with some dark foggy/icy nights and that can easily have me not wanting to game for weeks just because I don't want that drive back since most game nights are always going to be wrapping up very late. Crawling home on ice/in thick fog is not fun.


I think another thing is time. Playing, building and painting all take time and whilst playing is 100% focused time; even the other two often require long periods of focus to really get into them and don't benefit lots of interruptions or very short spans always ( but the ycan be more practically done in short bits).

It's very easy to not engage with a hobby for ages then come back to it and find its hard to find the actual blocks of time. You have to sacifice something else; shift things around and make sure you don't miss too many sessions early on otherwise you can easily find the original stuff you were doing suddenly fills that time right back up and before you know it you've missed 3 months of gaming time.

For me, the hobby is a whole package - reading about it, painting the figures, making terrain and playing the game. It's what makes it such a great hobby for me - there's a breadth of linked activities that I can do that all link together nicely. It's not just warhammer though, I do similar stuff for historical periods I'm interested in or fantasy worlds of my own devising.

I find solo games really interesting - I have Rangers of Shadowdeep and the Frostgrave Solo stuff, as well as Five Parsecs and Five Leagues. I enjoyed reading all of them. But I find it hard to motivate myself to make warbands and scenery for those games. McCullough in particular always has really weirdly specific terrain for his scenarios and I know his attitude is "just use blocks and your imagination!" which I respect but it's not my style!

But I think having someone to play against and share my work with is really important to me, just someone who will see the stuff I made and go "oh, cool!" is a big reward. But solo games are a definite avenue and I have thought since I had a small kid that I could get a game in in the small wee hours while she's asleep when I'm in a particular dry spell. I'll have to give it a go!

Five Leagues and Five Parsecs are much more agnostic, and they are interesting, though the actual game part seems at times secondary to the world generation part. But that's alright, that's quite cool actually.

As to scale, I just really like mass battle games. What was important to me was becoming comfortable with painting to a "good enough" standard. I'd been working on improving my painting and was happy to see that I had managed it, but then I got into some painting youtubers and it sort of lead to me spending a LOT of time per miniature and getting a bit stressed out. Then I noticed how a lot of these guys talk about having a finished army like it was some distant goal, when I have a bunch of finished armies and I realised that their style of painting was unsustainable for a big army guy like me. It was still good though because the skills I refined made my army level painting better, but I don't sweat it too much any more and I find painting much more enjoyable that way.

Time is the real issue though. I've essentially cut out watching films or TV shows entirely to use what limited free time I get while my kid is asleep and I don't have to do housework or work-work to work on hobby stuff. It's pretty much the only leisure activity I do now, but it's by far my favourite one I've found so it's all good.

Find a gang.

For me it was through colleagues. Find someone you work with who already has an established group and barge your way in!

I think the key part of this hobby is the social aspect. Having this forum is really lovely. Dropping pics into the group chat and showing off your new models is also a great aspect of the hobby that gets overlooked.

While not the same as in-person, you can get some social hobby time online. Painting comps, blogs, discords, etc. and that’s global, and not location dependent.

This is something I’m also struggling with.

As a kid, I found my gaming group via the local GW. Proper neutral ground, everyone around the same level of gaming knowledge. And over the years, that store remained my hub.

Now I live in a different town, and although we have a FLGS, it’s really bad at promoting play and events and that. Not even a message board.

There are clubs, but I don’t feel socially comfortable in those due to anxiety. Absolutely a Me problem there.

I’m just going to have to bite the bullet and go pick a fight at one of the clubs, I guess. The old anxiety doesn’t hold out for long, but puts up a helluva fight initially.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
This is something I’m also struggling with.

As a kid, I found my gaming group via the local GW. Proper neutral ground, everyone around the same level of gaming knowledge. And over the years, that store remained my hub.

Now I live in a different town, and although we have a FLGS, it’s really bad at promoting play and events and that. Not even a message board.

There are clubs, but I don’t feel socially comfortable in those due to anxiety. Absolutely a Me problem there.

I’m just going to have to bite the bullet and go pick a fight at one of the clubs, I guess. The old anxiety doesn’t hold out for long, but puts up a helluva fight initially.

Yeah, you gotta go show off those HH Mechanicum IRL!

> McCullough in particular always has really weirdly specific terrain for his scenarios and I know his attitude is "just use blocks and your imagination!" which I respect but it's not my style!

Same ditto. I've written off his games b/c of that. Also, his solo supplement for Frostgrave is more design notes, his overspecific scenarios, and a "okayish" random dungeon generator. By now, he really should have fans and contacts who'd be willing to write expansions for Frostgrave for target audience interests that McC isn't interested in.

Anyway, for solo terrain, try playing multiple different systems on the same terrain board! With the same generic fantasy setup, I played Lasting Tales and Sellswords and Spellslingers. You can also try out house rules and scenarios for solo or are otherwise not ready to play with others.

Yeah I have pretty decent "generic" terrain by now, certainly for fantasy the only thing I'm missing is some decent modular ruins and maybe some more cottages and the like. Sci Fi is more open and I've got a fair few things I'd like to do there, but it's all on the back burner atm because scenery takes a lot of space and time that I don't have.

Mad Doc: Sorry to hear about the anxiety. My wife suffered terribly with this before, during and after Covid. She's recently made a lot of progress through some therapy at the hospital and building a very consistent routine of leaving the house and regular structured social engagements. It was really hard at first but it's okay to maintain it now from what I can see. Sometimes she has rough days when it's a bit harder on her but the improvement is huge.

I hope you can do likewise! I hope that if you do overcome it, a wargaming club or something could become a routine to help manage your anxiety. Best of luck!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
There are clubs, but I don’t feel socially comfortable in those due to anxiety. Absolutely a Me problem there.

I’m just going to have to bite the bullet and go pick a fight at one of the clubs, I guess. The old anxiety doesn’t hold out for long, but puts up a helluva fight initially.

As someone with a dash of social anxiety from time to time, I can understand this. I looked up gaming clubs in my area, found a few which looked cool. But never made the leap. It felt like jumping in at the deep end and as I'd been out of the hobby for a while, I didn't even feel like I had a good starting point.

But you're right! That feeling will only last for so long. I'm sure if you went along, without an army even, just to say hi and hang out for an hour, I bet people would be welcoming and friendly. I'm South West UK (Bristol). If you're nearby, you could always jog along to one of our events

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

There are clubs, but I don’t feel socially comfortable in those due to anxiety. Absolutely a Me problem there.

I’m just going to have to bite the bullet and go pick a fight at one of the clubs, I guess. The old anxiety doesn’t hold out for long, but puts up a helluva fight initially.

So, legitimately, the best way to handle this.

1. Get access to the club's social media. In the states you can usually do this by going to the shop they play at on a non game night, buy a paint or something and ask the attendant if anyone plays X and how to get in contact with them. I assume something similar works for clubs.

2. Say you're new and request a demo. There's usually someone who is the PR for the group that does this sort of thing and its pretty easy to schedule a game where you get to focus on them 1v1 instead of having to approach the group. It'll also let you assess the group itself.

3. Demo guy will likely have a good read on people. Ping them directly and ask if they can set you up with a game and they'll likely curate your opponents for a while. Meet more people in the 1v1 context of a game and build a group of people you're comfortable with.

I usually start a squad and a commander. Then build on it as you learn the rules., First, You buy the rulebook, have a sit down and make a list, then you can get to work with little fuss, and get to the meat and potatoes.

Cheap and efficient.\\1 Squad is the test case to decide if you want to commit.

> I’m just going to have to bite the bullet and go pick a fight at one of the clubs, I guess.

I'm nearly 60 and take care of two 88 year old parents, so, thanks to Covid, I avoid public areas nowadays. During Covid, solo gaming exploded, especially since coop was already becoming popular with boardgaming (eg. Arkham Horror, Zombicide, Gloomhaven). Hope you have some area of the house you can set up a gaming table for solo play, or at least interest in some sort of solo gaming. I'm seeing articles how to play 40K solo (and same for RPGs), although even setting up your game can be a disincentive to gaming (much easier to get on the computer for some).

I forgot to mention that getting around to creating that game you've wanted to design is another way to get into the hobby. I'm sick and tired of yet another game where you throw dice and try to beat a target number, so am messing around with a diceless generic fantasy solo dungeoncrawler / miniatures skirmish game that avoids numbers, and you get to draw cubes from a bag!