Your First Miniature?

[Azamar]

Easy enough to remember for me as I still have have them (complete with golden demon worthy paint jobs by the 10 year old me)! The space marine and the chaos warrior were from a starter paint set. The dwarf was from a set that seems to be really old, but somehow we managed to pick up in store in the mid 90s anyway- complete with a mix of wood and dark elves, goblins orcs and skaven (not my picture of the box)

[Painbringer]

These were my first two minis that I bought and painted: 

There's also a story about these two minis, so here it goes in case that you want to read. 

I bought these minis (and a few other ones) from a man who was visiting illustration & comic book workshop that I was attending at the time (I think it was 2000 or 2001). That workshop was a magical place where (besides learning how to draw comics), I met a lot of interesting people and learned about many cool games (including Warhammer). So, this person was selling recasts and he mentioned that these miniatures are used in a game called Warhammer (and basically, that's how I found out about the game). He also agreed to show us how the game is played.

So, next week he brought a fully painted 6th edition starter set (the one with empire and Orcs) and a bunch of us played a battle on one of the tables in the studio, with artbooks and comics used as hills and obstacles I really liked the game, but at that time, it was very hard to find Warhammer miniatures in Serbia and they were really expensive (and the country was recovering from economic sanctions and bombing campaign, so the whole economic situation was not very good). So, I bought a dozen of recasts - I understood they were not the "real" miniatures, but they were cheap and it was a first step, anyway. At that time I also learned that there was a set of fan-made rules in Serbian, called "Sword & sorcery". These rules were used for playing small skirmish games with just a handful of miniatures (much like Age of Sigmar Skirmish or Warcry rulesets). I managed to find copy of those rules as well and played a few battles with my brother using these miniatures. 

Some time later, I learned about the "White Dwarf" magazine - also from a guy that visited the studio from time to time. As far as I remember, he was not collecting Warhammer miniatures, but he liked the miniatures in general and he liked the magazine as well. So, I borrowed a few issues from him - one issue every week. I would look at the pictures of miniatures and battlefields for hours and I started reading lore articles, rules articles and painting articles. I carried the WD to school as well, and read it with a firend of mine during the breaks between the classes. 

By reading painting articles in the magazine, I actually learned the basics of miniature painting. I found a bunch of oil paints that my mother used while she was painting and decided to paint a few miniatures using them. Both of these miniatures on the picture above were painted with oil paints, using some god-awful brushes (and I did not wash the brushes properly, so I destroyed a few of them while painting these Orcs :D). I remember that I tried to make my own washes by diluting paint with water and applying it in the same way as wash (actually, it somewhat worked) and I also used tea and sand as a flock for the base. 

Edited July 28, 2023 by Painbringer

[SilentSentinel]

My first ever minis were the current tyranid gargoyles that I grabbed back in 2014, It's sorta crazy to think that it's almost been a full decade since I started in the hobby because it doesn't even feel like it was that long ago. It's a bit sad that they're not receiving an update in the new nid release but I understand that they're probably not as high of a priority for updating compared to some of the other kits. 

[Gorthor21]

I began back in 2003 with some of the hugely disproportionate clanrats and a warlord that was my first horribly painted model which I broke the tail of on my first attempt to assemble it lol.  The terrible lighting of my dad’s hotel room is likely to blame and not my shaky untested hands lol.  Years later my childhood friend surprised me with the warlord and some of my original skaven army that inspired me to collect 9k points back in 7th-8th ed.  Another friend and I ‘isle of blood’ed it so hard we played a 13 hour 9k high elf/lizard men vs skaven madness that left us both delirious.  By the end of it 3 turns had gone by and we still had hundreds of models on the table though my rat men were outnumbered 2-1 lol