Age when you started Wargaming

[Overread]

Totally informal poll just for pure interest and getting an idea how old we all were when we did (or roughly) started miniature wargames. This might is going right back to your first interactions. So it might be when you started building models for the first time (for most of us); or perhaps you didn't build at first, but you did play with a friend/family/store set of models for a while etc... 

 

This is just a pure exercise in sharing our early memories and suchlike. 

 

Myself I started way back in the 90s with Titan Legions, moving onto Epic 40K until GW killed it all off. Sadly I didn't get many games back then, but I certainly collected some models including the awesome Imperator Titans (I seriously hope GW remakes these at some stage for their new AT game). So sometime between 1994 and 7 when Titan Legions was still out. So was probably around 10 or so. 

[Gareth 🍄]

When I was 11, back in 1995! Started with Orcs and Goblins in Fantasy, then as time went on I  got into 40K with the old metal Necrons, as well as Gorkamorka, Mordheim and Battlefleet Gothic (bring it back please GW!).

[Alexonian]

started in 1996 at the age of 8 after my father purchased a large army of high elves for me at a yard sale

Edited October 14, 2019 by Alexonian

[FallenSerf]

I started at age 50 with Shadespire. I needed a hobby that didn't involve video screens that helped improve my eye-hand coordination. I love board games and this hobby seemed like a natural evolution.

[EccentricCircle]

I dabbled for a while around the turn of the millennium, when I was in my early teens, I really got going with Battle games in Middle Eart h magazine in 2002 though. Before that i'd just git a small amount of 40k stuff, but lord of the rings was much more up my street.

[Moldek]

I remember around 96-97 my friends would play pretend space marines in the school yard. I decided to draw one and did some kind of goofy astronaut with a laser pistol. My friend was like : « THAT’S not a space marine !», and that’s how I discovered the hobby.

I was really into fantasy at first, and went with my dad to a GW store expecting to walk out with a complete wood elves army. I realized I could only afford a squad of 8 identical plastic archers 😂

But then I saw a poster for Gorkamorka and decided that’s what I wanted. And that’s how I became a hobby butterfly!

[El Syf]

Early 1999, saw some Night Lords Chaos space marines at an independent shop and was hooked from there. Then not really having a great understanding of the lore I spent my pocket money on this chap and painted him as an ultramarine!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CHAOS-SPACE-MARINE-LORD-CHAMPION-METAL-Warhammer-40k-Games-Workshop/223705431681?epid=1508010509&hash=item3415e1fe81:g:6SUAAOSwQApdpGEy

That is still one of my favourite models ever! Sorry for the 40K vibes.

[JPjr]

Funnily enough I can be remarkably precise about this as just last week, in a ridiculous fit of nostalgia, I re-bought my first ever White Dwarf off eBay.

Issue 81, Sept 1986. Aged 9, we were playing fantasy board games, Talisman, Sorcerer’s Cave etc etc, by then but my next door neighbour had just got the 2nd edition boxset of WHFB and bought a copy of this issue of WD. Fair to say my tiny pre-pubescent mind was well & truly blown.

1st edition of WFRP dropped a month later, and then Rogue Trader & Battle 3rd edition the year after. Good times.

The hardback of 3rd was the first one I personally owned though, as I’m sure I’ve said before, despite Being obsessed with it & devouring it cover to cover hundreds of times I’m pretty sure we only ever managed about 2 actual games.

Still that’s probably about average for most people, it always seemed a lot easier back then to spend all your non playing time thinking about it a lot & then when you did get together with mates end up playing Blood Bowl, Dark Future or Adeptus Titanicus...

 

 

[Overread]

Darn that's a fine cover on the WD! Makes me sad that we lost the eagle riders. Now there's a model I'd love to see come back with GW's new plastic sculpting methods! 

[JPjr]

Also, lest we forget, the days when Citadel busied themselves making models of Dwarves taking a ******.

maybe they should recreate that in glorious plastic. it would honestly be worth it just to witness the hilariously apoplectic rage of Dispossessed players.

[zilberfrid]

18 minutes ago, JPjr said:

Also, lest we forget, the days when Citadel busied themselves making models of Dwarves taking a ******.

maybe they should recreate that in glorious plastic. it would honestly be worth it just to witness the hilariously apoplectic rage of Dispossessed players.

Perfect for making dwarf cav.

[Kamose]

49 minutes ago, JPjr said:

Also, lest we forget, the days when Citadel busied themselves making models of Dwarves taking a ******.

maybe they should recreate that in glorious plastic. it would honestly be worth it just to witness the hilariously apoplectic rage of Dispossessed players.

Oooh!  Its limited edition!  Keepin' it classy!

As for me, I remember buying my first 40k minis in Feb, 2003.  I was 22 at the time and a senior in college.  A friend of mine was waxing nostalgic about playing Warhammer in high school and he wanted to start again.  I went with Tyranids, he got Space Marines, and another friend played Eldar.  We played 5 games before we graduated and moved away...😥 

Anyway it would be another decade of on-again, off-again Warhammer before I found a stable group to play 40k.  I played a bit of Fantasy in 8th edition but once AoS dropped, I was completely hooked.  Yes, I loved AoS when the game was released and really enjoy Open Play to this day.  I'm one of thoooose people... 

😉

[Overread]

11 hours ago, FallenSerf said:

I started at age 50 with Shadespire. I needed a hobby that didn't involve video screens that helped improve my eye-hand coordination. I love board games and this hobby seemed like a natural evolution.

@FallenSerf great to hear of someone older picking up the hobby! I often feel that not enough attention is paid to more mature people taking up the hobby in the same way as it might be for things like historical wargames (which appear to have a broadly older generation picking them up). It would be great to hear of your experiences in picking up the game and what you've enjoyed, struggled, challenged and overcome with it! 

[Rogue Explorator]

I can pinpoint that quite precisely, I was nine by a few months when my brother came in with the very first White Dwarf in german pretty much as soon as it hit the shelves in December 1994. He discarded it onto me since he was into RPGs, not miniatures and I was hooked. Got the 40k starter that Christmas and the pictures and lore in there, particularly the Codex Imperialis, was unlike anything else I knew. It pretty much was my world for the rest of my childhood.

I didn't play until much later and never played much, but I collected miniatures and read the books like crazy since then. My older sister had friends and aquaintaces who used to be into the hobby, one actually lend out the Realms of Chaos Tomes to me for some time and I treated those almost like holy books. It must have been at least at least a decade until I'd get to see what's in there again, but I think I read those so intensely they where edged into my brain.

I fell out of the hobby around 16/17, with tabletop RPGs and Videogames pretty much having absorbed its space in my life, but I think its no understatement to say it shaped me and helped me get through a less than stellar childhood.

I kept following developements and looking into rejoining the hobby, but it was AoS that actually did the trick, even though I only looked into it because I actually wanted to get back into 40k with Admech having finally hit the table.

[Lucur]

I'm actually amazed at the age most of the guys on here started. Even when i dove in (age 17 or 18), i hardly had the money to get stuff i wanted, despite having a small job and all. Most people i know got in way later, some about 16 years, but most at 20+ !

[Maxi99]

Started at about 7/8 with a bunch of 40k bits and pieces, mainly dark eldar I think and a few space marines. 

I Then got really into the lord of the rings stuff, but this was mainly just modelling and painting, which then moved onto fantasy after the films had finished. 

Like so many others I fell out of the hobby at about age 14.

I was then helping clear out some of my mums loft and found a case of old tomb kings a couple of years ago, remembered enjoying painting and thought why not get a couple of new models to paint up as a form of relaxation. 

Suffice to say, I am now very much enjoying being back in the hobby! And much more involved than I ever was, painting most days and getting a game in most weeks. 

[Rogue Explorator]

18 minutes ago, Lucur said:

I'm actually amazed at the age most of the guys on here started. Even when i dove in (age 17 or 18), i hardly had the money to get stuff i wanted, despite having a small job and all. Most people i know got in way later, some about 16 years, but most at 20+ !

Well, it was much cheaper to play in the nineties.

And its not like me (and I guess a lot of others who started so young) started by getting a cohesive army right awy, more like bits and pieces from all over the place and devouring gaming books.

Just look how many adult hobbyists struggle to stick to their plans collecting and building. When I was a kid, I changed what army I actually wanted multipler times a day, but it never mattered that I didn't actually build any.

[EccentricCircle]

2 hours ago, JPjr said:

Also, lest we forget, the days when Citadel busied themselves making models of Dwarves taking a ******.

maybe they should recreate that in glorious plastic. it would honestly be worth it just to witness the hilariously apoplectic rage of Dispossessed players.

The dwarf is all well and good, but I'm more intrigued by that Romulan Scout ship. I've seen a lot of non canon ship designs from that era, but didn't know that GW was at it too!

I wish we still had prices like those though...

[JPjr]

@EccentricCircle they did quite a few... I think this is probably most of them.

[EccentricCircle]

3 minutes ago, JPjr said:

@EccentricCircle they did quite a few... I think this is probably most of them.

Nice! I guess back then there was no way to know what direction the Klingon and Romulan fleets would go in! I'm intrigued that they did Gorn ships, but again, if you are in the days before Next Generation then there's every reason to keep the Gorn and the Tholians as the major powers they were depicted as in the Original series!

[Absolution black]

I first started way back in the 80's (but don't really remember exactly when).  I remember going into a department store of all places and in the toys and games section were the old blister packs of citadel miniatures.  I recall buying a pack of the classic dwarf villagers and using airfix enamel paints to paint them (not very well either)!

I was hooked anyway and I spent most of my pocket money back then on these dwarf blisters but thankfully discovered acrylic paints.  My brother was big into the orc range too so it was inevitable we purchased Warhammer 3rd edition on its release.  I still have a lot (if not most) of those early dwarfs waiting to see the table once again.

My hobby interest spread over the next ten years discovering classics such as Heroquest (and Advanced Heroquest), Space Crusade and the Astrogranite pitch version of Blood Bowl.

I had a break until the early '00s when my then girlfriends younger brother began to show an interest (via the middle earth magazine).  That was that and I have been entrenched in the hobby ever since!  Though with family, money and time are at a low so I only really concentrate on a few 'systems' - Aos (Stormcast), 40k (Raven Guard), Blood Bowl and now War Cry.

I hope to get my daughters involved over the next few years though they currently roll their eyes when I get the copy of White Dwarf out!

[PraetorDragoon]

I started collecting when during the Innistrad prerelease I saw a box of hordes everblight sharkdragons on the lgs shelf and decided to grab them. Eventually I had to grab some paints and stuff, and I ended at the gw store whose salesman sold me the island of blood starter. (he was good)

And thus here we are. 

[Televiper11]

When I was 39, about to turn 40, I finally throw my lot in with AoS 2.0

I'd read a lot of Warhammer Fantasy novels but had never played the game because I didn't know anyone else who did and I couldn't really afford to. But here, now, at mid-life, I finally said "F*#k it" and dove in and love it.

[Sleboda]

I was 14, in 1985. The players in my D&D campaign had gotten so powerful that they ruled nations. I wanted to have them fight wars, so I bought Battlesystem from TSR. 

I moved on to 3rd edition Warhammer when it released, but Battlesystem was the start for me.

[Arkhanist]

I'm a bit fuzzy on when exactly I started, as I first took part in a WFRP campaign for a while, then got into Space Hulk (1st edition) when I saw it in the local hobby shop while looking for a new miniature for my dwarf character, so that would have to have been in 1989. I do remember my first white dwarf vividly though (no 117, Sept 89) as I had them sorted chronologically for years.

I did take a break for a few years and donated my old WD collection to the local GW shop to clear some space; they handed them out to the local kid players.

So I started around 1988, when I was 12ish.