Why are you here?

[deumosd]

Mine was quite simple- couple of years ago- my then 6 year old and me walked past a GW store, and he loved the window and asked to go in. We went it and it all looked awesome- he is a Halloween massive fan and instantly fell in love with the death faction. He wanted to buy stuff, but I made home wait. After about 3 weeks of no stop talking about it we went and go a starter set and some paints. He really enjoyed it. Then I started painting and playing against him and I loved it as well. 
Now I am hooked- just need to find some people to regularly play against and enter my first big 5 game tournament!

[Televiper11]

I'm here because at middle age, I finally decided to take the plunge. 

[Greyshadow]

I wrote a short story for English about the origins of dragons when I was 12 that got a perfect score. My teacher lent me a series of three books called Lord of the Rings. I recall having to sit up to read through the battle of helms deep because I was that enthralled. Around the same time, I dropped around to my mates house and they were playing this game called Heroquest, you may have heard of it!  I just watched them play. The evil wizard player was an older kid who was an experienced D&D games master. Wow, I thought that game was the best thing since sliced bread. My little brother got Heroquest for Christmas and the rest, as they say, is history.  

[awcamawn]

Total War: Warhammer: Realm of the Wood Elves DLC. It was love at first battle. Love for the aesthetic of the army, love for the playstyle. Bought a bunch of Wardancer and Waywatcher models (back when they were still 'Wanderers,' RIP) within weeks of the DLC's release. Total War: Warhammer was a game I had played and enjoyed for most of a year at that point but it wasn't until I met the noble, ferocious, and mercurial denizens of Athel Loren that I fell in love and had to figure out what this Warhammer thing really was.

Funny thing is Total War had a mechanic that made the player choose between Orion or Durthu at the start of a campaign, a choice which would then severely limit your access to either the forest spirit or aelven sides, respectively, of the old Wood Elf army list. It was like the video game was already training me for the Wanderer/Sylvaneth split of the army in AoS, and the ally system!

It was the aelven side of the army I had fallen in love with though, and so I quickly assembled a collection of Wanderer models and never looked back. It's hard to believe I've already been in the hobby almost 3 years now, and with the awesome new Cities of Sigmar/Living City allegiance my beloved 'aelves of the wood' are here to stay (and better than ever - now Wild Riders can actually do damage, like I remember them doing in Total War).

For Alarielle, for Ghyran, and for the memory of Athel Loren!

[SquigHoarder]

What a great collection of memories.

 

I too have been a long time in the hobby (1982ish) and only playing AoS since last winter 

I had an old,ll large Warhammer OG army I started in 2001 and only played  with 3 times.  When they announced gloomspite I decided to rebase my minis for AoS and build out my units.   

My son turned 11 and wanted to pick up a start collecting box of beastclaw raiders.   So we dropped out first game last Xmas at 600pts or so.  Fumbled through it but had a ton of fun.  So we've built his painted army 1500 pts and he's working on his next 500 to get to 2000.   

 

It is a fabulous time to share painting and gaming with the kid (and my girls).  We also play a lot of underworlds too which got me into painting my first AoS only figs in the first two seasons. 

[Whitefang]

Because I survived the End Time, lucky me

[Fisren]

It's been a whirlwind of a year since I began my venture into AoS. A bit of a background, I grew up in China for most of my younger years, and was more of a console/computer gamer (loved fantasy RPGs), so never heard of wargaming or RPG's till much later. Sadly, I didn't come into contact into wargaming while in the US (7 year), and it wasn't until I moved back to Asia that I'd started getting into hobby modeling. A little over a year ago, I started glimpsing pictures of Age of Sigmar armies (I had only assumed they were themed models at this point) in some of the hobby modeler's blogs I frequented, and thought it would be a cool little project. 

I began looking into AoS, and then realized they were the same themes as Total War: Warhammer, which was neat. I then realized they had rules and could be played as a tabletop game, although there weren't any local retailers (at least not listed  on GW's site). After a trip back to US where I picked up some Ironjawz (and CABBAGE)! as well as the tempest souls painting box, I was contentthat at least I could play by myself with some models. After some more net searches, I realized that there was in fact a local store that sold GW stuffs, and I've pretty much been hooked since (in the past year I've assembled around 5 armies up to 2,000+ points, though only one is fully painted, and two others at tabletop). 

The AoS community here has been great (only a handful played WHFB, while the most of us just started in the last two years), and it's been a blast playing some of the other GW games as well (I play necromunda, blood bowl, underworlds, and occasionally 40k). 

[Naem]

Oh I started out quite young, I think I was around 13 when I bought my first minis. I think they were Chaos Space Marines. Later I switched to Fantasy because I felt it was more "epic" with all the magic and the huge regiments. But problem was that it was just too expensive. I had not enough money to get a real army in any reasonable amount of time and didnt have to patience to wait for years until I had a force large enough to play. I would be able to buy like one box of units per month but would then have no money for anything else ( I think I got like 50 Euros a month from my parents and a box of Chaos Warriors costed like 40 Euros ). 

I still painted and played with the little forces I had until WoW and girls happened and I kinda lost interest and sold all my stuff for money.  But I never lost the fascination for the painting and just admiring beautiful minis whenever I passed by a GW. Plus being 15 or 16, when being "cool" is the most important thing ever, I felt like wargaming was not a cool enough hobby to impress girls

Scroll forward like 15 years later. I am in my early 30s and have a decent job plus girlfriend who I don't need to impress  I walk by the local GW and see this amazing minis that look like medieval Space Marines. I fall in love. I get two starter boxes and all the colors I could ever wish for and just go for it. Best decision ever and I hope that I never quit again.

On a side note: its funny how much all the tutorials, youtube guides, apps and forums help. My very first mini after more then 15 years was waaaay better then my best mini when I was 15. Just because I adapted basic techniques like thinning the paint and had the right material. So thanks to everybody who contributes to the community in that way. 

[Horseburner]

My friend got me into Blood Bowl at my LGS and from there I transitioned into AoS. I still play ALOT of Blood Bowl.

 

I feel kinda cheated though since I now own about 3k of Nighthaunt.

[AaronWilson]

For me it amazing despite how silly Age of Sigmar, it produces some really tight, deep thinking fascinating games and game states. On top that the world is so with lore and the game looks SO good, as well as all the amazing content that gets produced around the game (podcasts, twitch streams, etc)

[Forrix]

I learned about Warhammer through Dawn of War (which I literally brought because it reminded me of StarCraft) and got caught up in the lore and thought the models were super cool. I didn't start playing though since I was in college and broke. Years later, a friend of mine wanted to get into fantasy and I decided to jump in with him. Played that until the End Times then switched to 40k but didn't like that as much. Quit playing for years but kept painting minis off and on as I really liked that aspect, mostly painting Malifaux minis and playing the rare game of that. When I the new Nurgle models came out with the Maggotkin release I decided to look back into AoS (I played Nurgle Daemons/Warriors of Chaos in 8th edition) and found the community had come back (and was bigger than fantasy ever was in my area) and the game played pretty well now too.  

[Overread]

@Forrix fun thing. Warcraft the game (the very first one) was originally going to be Warhammer. GW and Blizzard were making it and then for some reason the contract/agreement fell apart. Blizzard had done a lot of work by then and didn't want to scrap it. So they adjusted the models and made their own lore and made Warcraft. 

When they did Starcraft they basically did the same thing GW did. Took the fantasy game and made it in space - though that time around Bliz did pinch a few more ideas and concepts. Interestingly the first generation of Raveners looked very much like they'd taken the idea of hydralisks from Blizzard. So there's always been a bit of quiet/inspirational back and forth.