My first taste of Warhammer came while I was in primary school, when my older brother and I walked into a Games Workshop on a day off. I have always loved the medieval theme, especially Knights. Anything with Knights gets +1 in my book. So naturally the Warhammer Fantasy table they had set up caught my attention and the GW employee, no doubt seeing the crazed gleam in my eyes, offered to show us how to play. We agreed and I immediately chose to play the side with Knights – Bretonnia.
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| Image by Games Workshop |
Now this was some time ago and the memory is a little foggy but I'm fairly sure my brother got stuck with Orcs and Goblins. I don't really remember much from the game itself other than my Knights charging gloriously across the table into a bunch of little green dudes riding spiders and slaughtering them to a man (or goblin).
Unfortunately for me (and probably Games Workshop as well) I was a little too young to afford the miniatures and was just a little daunted by the prospect of painting my own guys, so the dream died there.
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| Image by Games Workshop |
Fast forward several years. Myself and a couple of friends decided to get into Warhammer 40k. One chose Tyranids, the other chose Necrons and I chose Dark Angels (they're pretty much space knights). I already had a Devestator box that my sister got me for my birthday a few years back and I bought a bunch of dodgy models off eBay. Fairly standard beginnings I should think.
Like most newbies I fumbled my way through the building process, not helped at all by the horrible Games Workshop glue. I took me a long while to build. When I do things I haven't done before, I generally take a slow, measured approach that involves researching it for ages (and I mean ages) until I'm confident I have almost all the theory down pat.
After all that, they pretty much went into a box somewhere in my room and sat there for about two years, lonely and unpainted. Not exactly a great accomplishment but hey. My friend with the Tyranids ended up selling them because I was too slow in getting my models done and our Necron buddy didn't like to play for fear of losing. Needless to say, our interest in 40k stagnated somewhat.
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| Check out the number of kills :) |
I think in the end, it was the PC game franchise Dawn of War that got us interested in the tabletop game again. Dark Crusade was very good and I played it a lot. That, and one of my best friends decided to throw his lot into the ring and collect a Chaos Space Marine army. This was probably the biggest decider for me. We have always played computer games together, both testing our skill against each other in RTS and FPS games. Plus he's just a really great bloke.
And that was it really. I had a perfectly themed nemesis and my own Dark Angels with their awesome fluff. We've played a few games so far, doing our best to fumble our way through the rules and missions. Our first few games were unlimited-turn, annihilation missions simply because we didn't know that 'missions' were even a thing. I guess always going for the kill in the PC game may have had something to do with that assumption.
That's pretty much the whole grand tale. I'd love to hear other people's stories of how they got into the hobby or their first games. Feel free to add it in the comments below.
- Dugatron