how did you get into this hobby, your hobby history

[jesseye]

ok lately weve been discussing how we settled on iron warriors as our army of choice. this has gotten me thinking back to how i started this hobby to begin with. im also curios to hear about your beginnings as well. ill start.

back when i was child, mainly in the early eighties, my toy of choice were plastic army men. i liked getting large armies and at this time it was the heyday of simple toys. you could find play sets and buy tanks and trucks and whatever you wanted. kids went out and played in the dirt. we were poor and this was cheaper to video games which were just starting up. i also collected marx figures. still do today. marx to those who know made the best army men and cowboys and indians playsets and were advertised in sears cataloges from the fifties to the late seventies as well as those were the army sets advertised in comic books in the seventies and eighties. however they went out of buisness in 76 or so. my dream at that time was to make my own battlefeild on an old table out of dirt because of a picture i saw or somthing. around 83 me and my brother got the d&d red box from hills department store and later around this time we also got tsr's dungeon board game. we started adding rules at this time to our army men. rules were crude at best and usually just involved setting up and throwing a red rubber ball.
this went on for several years, my next step of evolution was an accidental present. my grandmother gave me a p51 mustang model. when i opened it it was in peices and needed to be glued. my first model. and i was furious lmao! my older brother around this time stared building model cars and id watch him paint, oh how interested i was!!!
when my brother left id get his paints and paint my army men. i went through the next few years up until i graduated painting models and anything else i got my hands on. but i graduated. things change
skip to say 93. i was drunk. i was stumbling around town leaving the bar and stumbled into a comic store. i looked around but these little metal men stuck in my head. later me and my freinds were drinking and playing d&d i remembered the figures. we decided hey we will get some to use to represent us! drunk, great idea. around this time my brother bought me battle masters and hero quest for my brthday. i was hooked. after i found the lost and the damned book chaos it was and since i loved fantasy for some reason i decided iron warriors. i cant remember why but thinking back i was probably drunk lol.

in a nut shell theres my story. i later apprenticed to a model railroad enthusiast who ran a fairly large club that got some magazine publication. never much for that hobby but i learned all i could bout model and terrain building from some of the greats in that hobby. which i dont think is amazing but hey i took some valuable lessons with me. i probably could have gone on to model railroader or somthing but i was only 21, time for trains in 40 years lmao.as said elsewhere i learned to make weathering powder but never learned to use it. now i wish i had.

[blackcell8]

Peer pressure! I had about 5 or 6 friends at school who were into 40K, and pestered me to join in. Got given some Space Wolves to play around with, and within a week I was hounding my Dad to buy me the 3rd Edition box set. And the rest, as they say, is history. 8 Chaos Space Marine armies, 2 Space Marine armies, a Tyranid army, Ork army, Tau, Daemon, Daemon Hunter, Battlefleet Gothic, Mordheim, Bloodbowl, Fantasy, Inquisitor, Lord of the Rings, have all led to now.

[Ulfast]

for me it was int he end of the 80:s. My parents moved and I of course had to follow them. When I got to my new scholl I meet some friends there that played warhammer fantasy. Soon we all started 40k and the rest is as you say history. I took a long break from the hobby (10+ years) and made a comeback 2003 and has seens been active Play a lot of diffrent games but 40k si favorit.

[Dreachon]

For me getting into chaos was actually purely an accident or as some might call it and act of destiny.
I had started playing the tyranids while a buddy I met at the LGS has just started a LatD army, this was all just mere months before the EoT campaign would be unleashed upon us.
Following another match we had in which the nids won we had to pack our stuff in a hurry as his pick up was just arriving.

The next day when I had nothing to do I deceided to do some mroe reading in my codex to better combat his chaos horde, to my surprise my nids codex was missing and instead I was looking at his CSM codex (3.5).
After phoninng him and the store to make sure everybody knew were what was I gave the book a read, knowledge is power after all.

And then I hit the page with the IW and I was stoked, everything that I would value in battle they had, lots and lots of firepower.
It was at that time also the defielr kit was released and I was hooked.

The next month saw me starting on the path to chaos.

[Drake Malice]

I started 40k at (i do not remember) some age with Tau Fire Warrior and DoW dark Crusade since then dug up everything i could get from the internetz. Then when Space Marine came out i looked into the backgrounds of all the 1st founding chapters and soon found myself torn between the Iron Warriors, Alpha Legion, and Word Bearers...so now i build em all. AL are still my all time fav but when i feel like being a super-soldier it is IW time, but sometimes you wanna be subtle and stealthy=that is AL, and when you are feeling fanatical about something then you gotta bear the Word of Lorgar! (I wrote this in a hyper "fast-forward" kind of thought process after watching lots of "Bro Team Pill" reviews on youtube)

[jesseye]

peer pressure!! yea that will get you haha. nice to see all of you on to. dreachon that is the strangest story on how somone got into chaos ive heard in awhile. not the strangest though, there are some sick puppies out there. ulfast drake as always i love hearing from you guys. we need to get together one day and ill make chicken hehe. drake you could be here in around six hours. ulfast, well aint you in sweden?

[Loki]

How I got into this Hobby? Pure coincidence. eight-nine years ago, I was a pipsqueek "outsider" at high school (aka, a nerd), and I had just finished shopping some new clothes when I thought about visiting a friend of mine who worked at a combined toy/hobby store. We talked for a bit, and suddenly he came with a boxed set of marines and a dreadnought, and upon seeing the Mk. V dread, I was sold.. a month later, I had 500-ish points worth of Ultramarines years went by, my space marine grew in numbers, and for some odd reason, turned more and more to the dark side.. I repainted my Ultramarines to Black Templars, and when I began reading dead sky, black sun, the Iron Warrior in me came forth and demanded an army. So, armed with Chaos Black spray and heaploads of Boltgun Metal paintpots, I repainted my army to the colours of the Iron Warriors legion, and have been adding troops ever since.

Funny thing, how one model can turn the tide and makes one want to collect an army..

[jesseye]

ahem. nerd and dork are not acceptable terms here. they are hurtful and mean and racist to us social retarded people. the acceptable term socially special should be used.

lol my girlfriend calls me a dork. she can but those who dont know me gets the jesseye that worked security at bike rallies lol. well im not gonna pick on you for starting with smurfs. personally i think thats really why there there is to give a starter for new people in the hobby. i get irritated by people who continue using them for years. im working on a generic space marine chaptor, but the smurfs are the generic one in my book.
man im glad loki you had that fateful visit to your friend. this board would not have been the same if you hadnt

[blackcell8]

When it comes to Marines, I have nothing against Ultramarines as such, more that they break the Code more than anyone else really. Honour Guard? Not in the Codex, and yet, baring Blood Angels, they had them first. Even now, they have more Honour Guard than any other Chapter, against the Codex.

As it stands, I have a full Battle Company (the 5th Company, to be exact) of the Hammers of Dorn (heresy! I know!). Why them? Because I bought the Art of Clint Langley book, and he did the artwork for, among many other things, the Sabertooth 40K card game. And what Chapter did he depict? His own creation, the Hammers of Dorn. Clad in black armour with gold trim, the army really struck me as very ornate. This is mostly down to Clint's art style, but I've always pictured them as extremely arrogant, they decorate their armour with gold trim to show rank, and their superiority among their fellow Chapters. And my army is more Codex than pretty much any Marine army you're likely to face. I have 6 Tactical Squads, 2 Assault Squads, 2 Devastator Squads, a Captain with Command Squad and an attached Chaplain. The only thing I'm missing are Rhinos. In the Armoury section, I have a Land Raider Crusader, Vindicator and Predator. I have a Librarian, and the Chapter Master to include as needed. I can also call upon some Scouts from the 10th Company, and a small portion of the 1st Company, should I need some Veterans.

I really liked the order and structure I had imposed upon myself. It was refreshing, considering I had just stopped working on an Ork army...

But that's one thing I do love about the hobby, you are free to do whatever you want. Like my Tyranids, they are only at 1000 points, but the way I work out what to get next could not be more Tyranid. I play a few games with what I have, then plan my next 500 points based on what I needed. For example, my first 500 points were Warriors with a Warrior Prime, and while it did good, I knew what I lacked. So my next 500 points was made up of Genestealers for numbers, and Venomthropes for cover for the Warriors. Now I've played a few games with that, I know what I lack. Anti-tank! With that in mind, I'm looking at some Zoanthropes and a Carnifex or so. The army is being built based on what I've faced. It adapts. It grows in a rather organic fashion, and I love doing that.

[jesseye]

its not heresy. i use iron warriors as such when not painting i play my bass watch tv and talk to people who mostly never even heard of the hobby. its a game with great history and story but a game. i do not even take my beliefs in a game to that extremes. whats more why not use them. look at space crusade and the chapters that were used at that time. somwhere along the way dark angels, whos original colors was black not green read rt, became one of the most popular armies replacing dorns chapter of yellow. reason being is white dwarf and the armies the staff used and wrote battle reports with. for years the hobby revolved around the white dwarf staff and what they used as opposed to gw's present model of business. now on the other side why not use his chapter if you make a loyalist army? you spend so much time playing the seige card why not make fortifications for a change? get new views on what you will do with one army with what you build with the other. as such my loyalist army as well as my orks and imperial guard are not even built for me to use but for friends who have no army so i can teach them to play. in my oppinion it gives them a fair idea of a good rounded FAIR army and not one built to raise the cosmos just because the army list will allow it. plus when im tired of painting iron warriors i have loads of alternatives to paint. im honoured you read the thread, but im still wondering what got you into the hobby hmmm lmao. thank you for commenting SIR!! hehe

[blackcell8]

Simply put, the fluff.

I enjoy all aspects of the hobby, but one thing I love the most is converting and painting. And 40K has such a background to it that there are endless ideas for me to try to model. I loved the imagery of the whole game. The whole idea that there is no 'good guy' at all. It's a game where anything is possible. I want an army of Satan-worshipping Marines with guitars? Done it! and backed it all up in the fluff, because there is room for it. Wanted to have a focus on Obliterators in my Iron Warriors? Easily explained! Reading Black Library novels is also a treat. I'll never forget reading my first BL novel, Execution Hour, for the first time. It was that book that has made me a fan, got me hooked eleven years later.

Without such amazing fluff, I'd have lost interest in the hobby a long time ago. Peer pressure got me to start, but the fantastic mythos GW has created has kept me hooked.

[jesseye]

i can respect that. however i got involved for love of the toy soldier. i played fantasy when i started and for me the fantasy model is still my love. i build my armies for fantasy however to play any game. warhammer is fun but im also a fan of fantasy warrior? you remember that game? grenadier made it and you can still find the pdf everywhere. i luckly still have all the original counters and rules. guess what im saying is once you build a fantasy army you can pretty much use it with any fantasy system. my empire and ork armies are made up of minis from any company that catch my eyes especially my empire army. ill find a mini design i like and if theres enough poses then that becomes a new unit for it. i worry about its use after the fact. im thinking about a squat army for rogue trader, mantic have a line of space dwarfs and space orks to add some variety to my orks as well. they also have there version of imperial gaurd with i think 3 man heavy weapon sqauds coming out. wargames factory have cheap minis for about anything as well. i dont know what all the ranting is about but i get Passionate bout the hobby.

[Warsmith Gorrched]

Lets see...about 12 years ago now I was going through the mall with my family when I came across a kiosk that was selling GW stuff. They did a demo game with me (they just used the boxed sets for fantasy and 40k) and handed me one of those simple 20 or so page magazines that had a glimps of what they were doing. I fell in love instantly. I must have spent hours looking over that damned mag imagining all of the armies I would build. My first purchase was a 2nd (or maybe 3rd?) edition Skaven book (the red one) and a rat ogre soon followed it.

Well 12 years later I have gone through a Dark Angles army that turned into a DIY chapter. Moved on to Deathwing version of the DIY chapter, finally gave marines up. Spent a small amount of time on Nids until finally I settled on Chaos and the beloved IW. I had at some point during my chaos time built a armoured company and played them for a year or so before going back to my IW. Since I started them I've also started a traitor guard army that I've slowly been working on.

And thus leaves me where I am now. I have a large collection of Black Library books and have been slowly hunting down the old codexs because its fun to look back at what used to be the fluff and how things went down.

[jesseye]

man of my own heart. i collect old codexs and army books as well as rules and bout anything. when we first started my buddy started skaven and i love the old brown shaded skaven armies of the day. retro gaming is where its at at the moment

[Drake Malice]

Actually Jesseye Nerd is a badge of honor. It just really means that you obsess with something so much that you have random piles of information stored in your mind that nobody but you has any use for...now a Dork is just somebody who is not "cool". A nerd can be a dork and a dork can be a nerd but they are not the same person exactly... SEE that is my inner-nerd breaking free