Discovering Games workshop

[kingfig]

Hi all I’m back again with a new poll for you, this one is nice and simple… How did you discover Games workshop. Please select the one that best applies to you


Thanks to all in advance kennyk

[gutsmaka]

my dad showed it to me way back when I was 11. had used to play napoleonic wars and as I showed an intrest in that he showed me a store he found with things like napoleonic. cue the start of a hobby

[Monk813]

My first encounter was at a local gaming shop. I was there to play some card games and saw a 40k match (CSM vs Eldar) going on while I was waiting for my friends to show up. I didn't actually get into the game until a few years after that when I moved away for college. One of my room mates got excited about DOW1 and couldn't wait for the release. After I expressed interest he explained some of the factions and took me to the local gaming store where I was torn between Space Wolves and Imperial Guard. For some reason I really liked the heavy weapons teams the IG had and the rest is history.

[Spell_of_Destruction]

Ah, memories. Depends on whether you mean (a) my first encounters with the hobby or (b) what actually prompted me to start collecting an army and play the game.

My first encounter was with the old citadel combat cards around '93. 'Top Trumps' style card games were popular among kids my age and I bought the 'Chaos' deck from Woolworths in Aberdeen before going on holiday to Greece in the summer. I was heavily into Fighting Fantasy game books at this stage so I was highly receptive to anything fantasy/sci-fi.

I remember being fasicnated by the miniatures depicted in the cards and I would end up visiting the local GW to buy the rest of the decks. I used to play with the guys in my class during rainy lunch breaks. We also had a 'bring in your toys/games' day and someone brought in the Legend of Zagor board game - it wasn't a GW game but I was fascinated by the concept of a miniature board game.

My memory is a bit hazy but I also remember seeing an ad for the 2nd ed boxed set in a video games magazine and thinking 'that looks amazing!' so I asked my mum if I could have it as a b-day/x-mas present. She said no (maybe she realised what a money pit the hobby is!).

Fast forward to early 1997 and I'm living in Jakarta, Indonesia. A new kid at my school who I had just befriended phoned me up and asked me if I was interested in getting into the hobby as a new store was opening up in Jakarta.

I remembered my initial dalliances with the hobby and digged out all the combat cards which I still owned. I said that I was definitely interested and he had phoned a few of my other friends to gauge interest. I was given a choice of playing Eldar, IG, Tyranids or...Squats (I don't think he realised that all of their models were OOP by this stage)! Space Marines, Chaos and Orks had already been taken.

I wavered between Eldar and IG (I liked the look of their tanks on the Titan Legions combat card set) but eventually settled on Eldar. I can't remember the exact reasons but they had some kind of esoteric appeal to me. It's funny that I settled on them in quite a naive manner because they are still my favourite faction by some considerable margin.

A group of us went along to the new gaming store. My first purchases were the Eldar Codex (2nd edition), an Eldar Dreadnought (Wraithlord) and blisters containing 4 Fire Dragons, 5 Scouts, 4 Swooping Hawks and 3 Dark Reapers and the Craftworld Eldar paint set. With the benefit of hindsight I should have ditched the Hawks and Scouts and bought a couple of boxes of Guardians instead to take advantage of 2nd editions 'must shoot at closest target' rule.

My first game was later that afternoon although I didn't use my Eldar. I used around half the Orks in the 2nd ed boxed set and my friend took a squad of Blood Angels. The mission was to take the bastion which the Blood Angels were defending. I was doing pretty well until a large group of my Orks reached the upper levels of the bastion. The marine armed with the flamer popped out and most of the Boyz who weren't killed by the initial burst of flames were set alight and leaped off the bastion to their deaths. There was one lone Ork left who was quickly dealt with by the marine sergeant. It went downhill from there.

Thanks for giving me the opportunity to reminisce. :)

[meltaskelta]

I saw a White Dwarf in the newsagent, and something just struck me about it. I bought it, and just stared at the photos for weeks -- little rat-man models and orks with awesome black-and-yellow stripes on their ridiculously-proportioned guns. Just the idea that products like this actually existed completely engrossed me. Knowing that such imagination existed, and took physical form, made me feel better about the world. It wasn't until a good few years later that I saw my first GW store... and my wallet has never felt the same.

[Spell_of_Destruction]

Just the idea that products like this actually existed completely engrossed me. Knowing that such imagination existed, and took physical form, made me feel better about the world.

I can completely identify with this. I was already deeply into sci fi and fantasy novels/comics when I first started getting into GW but there was something about the world depicted and the physical representation of that world in the form of the models that I found incredibly exciting on a whole new level and it just gripped me. It was almost like discovering an alternative reality.

[zoggin-eck]

Hi all I’m back again with a new poll for you

That is in the wrong section, sadly.

[Beppo1234]

First time I saw GW it was at a Trek convention when I was 8 or 9... but too expensive and my parent wouldn't bite. I while later, I came across the, then new, 2nd edition ultramarines tactical squad box at GW in Toronto. From there it's grown into a life long hobby.

[TheDoctor]

I originally played the Dawn of War game, and my favorite faction were the eldar. I have always liked wizards in fantasy settings, video games, and stuff, and I really liked the idea of a dying race with advanced technology and magic, fighting to preserve their race. I also really liked the aesthetic, cause compared to humans, it looks... alien. I didn't even realize that it was a tabletop game until a year later, when I read some random article on the internet about the expansion pack. My first purchase was a squad of Eldar rangers, and because I liked the color scheme, I picked Alaitoc.

[DYoung]

It was quite a long time ago so I can't clearly remember but I think when I was 5 or so I saw some Warhammer that belonged to the son of one of my mum's friends. Either that or my grandma who used to take me to a lot of hobby stores took me into a Games Workshop one day, after which I was hooked.

I know that I had been interested in Warhammer long before actually getting my first piece at the grand old age of 8.

[Grimbad]

I'll be the first to vote for a GW store. GW Metreon in San Francisco, strategically placed opposite the video games arcade so that kids out of tokens and bored would wander in.

[still-young]

I went to a model railway exibition with my grandad, and there was a stand set up in the cafe (conveniently) with a small demonhunters army against a small dark eldar army. I was fascinated by the models, and the codicies which the guy had taken along, and spent the whole time chatting to him about it. My grandad took me to a GW store on the way home, and as it was near christmas, he got me to pick what i wanted. I decided to go for fantasy, and got a box of lizardmen and a box of dark elves. He also got me the white dwarf (it waas the 300th issue one) and he made me a little work table, with a set of mini drawers on it and a clamp. After that i basically cycled through every army, getting one or two models and moving on, because i could never decide. (even now im struggling to decide which army to start).

[Lockjaw]

played the old PS1 game, Shadow of the Horned Rat, then found out there was a miniatures game it was based on, no clue what a miniatures game was at the time, thought it was a board game, eventually got the 6th ed (or 5th? forgot) boxed set of WFB, split it with my brother, i took brettonians, he took lizard men, eventually branched to skaven and vampire counts while he focused more on beastmen and goblins,
got into w40k around 1999 during the hunt for the fallen battle tour after that, and the rest is history

[xxRavenxx]

I'd be very interested to know how people's friends got into the game.

The chain of events is much more interesting than the end result.

[Asensur]

Hero Quest.

[Orrinocco]

Heroquest for me too.
Can't understand why GW don't still do something similar, on sale through other shops.
NOTE: Dreadfleet doesn't count - I'm talking a cheap game avaliable everywhere, not an expensive game only available for a limited time in the normal GW shops (and FLGS)

[Born Again]

Through my older brother, who came home from school one day having been introduced to it by a friend. They were introduced to it by another friend, and they were... well, I don't know how they got in to it, so sadly the tale stops there.

Previous to this we had Heroquest, played it quite avidly and enjoyed it, though never realized it was made by a company responsible for a much bigger, in depth wargame, and didn't even realize until a little while after getting in to Warhammer/ 40k, so without my brother's friend it's quite possible Heroquest would have been the be all and end all of it. I'm quite glad it wasn't though.

Just the idea that products like this actually existed completely engrossed me. Knowing that such imagination existed, and took physical form, made me feel better about the world.

Cheers to this. For all the cynicism and hate that can be leveled at GW around here, it's nice to see some sentiment like this now and again and recognise what they have done. Goodness knows they've given me an unmeasurable amount of joy throughout the years, especially through a childhood where I was never the popular kid with loads of friends (granted, this may be because I was playing with model soldiers) and as an outlet that helps me relax and ground myself before my often over-productive head explodes, Weirdboy-style.

[Carlosophy]

The whole story?

Space Crusade!

My best friend Dave used to play Heroquest and we both got more in to Space Crusade after I got it in the christmas of 1993. I was Blood Angels, he was Imperial Fists and my dad was the Alien/Chaos player. Eventually we expanded Space Crusade by getting the Eldar Attack supplement and buying some extra models from the GW in my town and playing the WD campaign.
Come christmas 1994 40k was the next logical step and so I went with Blood Angels from the 2E boxset, my dad continued his villainous chaos army and Dave went with Dark Angels. Come christmas 1995 my dad bought me a 1500pts Eldar army being sold second hand in the local paper and from then on we just expanded and expanded. Around the mid-'90's Dave bought Necromunda and my brother (who had started playing Guard) got Warhammer Quest and 40k kind of went on the backburner whilst we adventured around the old world for several years.

3E renewed out interest in 40k but Dave had packed his bags and in came my friends Danny (comrade from WHQ) and Scott (Friend of a Friend) who played as Space Wolves and Blood Angels respectively.

Nowadays the old gang has gone it's seperate ways but I still play 40k every few months with my Dad (who still has his chaos horde) and my sister who inherited my brother's Guard and has started a Sisters army too. I have gone from Eldar to Tau and I'm now back at Blood Angels. Me and Dave occasionally get Necromunda out for a few games and he has started his own Necromunda club at the school he teaches at.

[tuebor]

I saw an advertisement with a picture of a Space Marine in the back of a friend's copy of Wizard magazine, probably back around '94. Being 12 at the time I couldn't afford anything and my family was very poor so they couldn't afford to buy me anything either. I called GW and got them to send me the mail order catalogue along with a complimentary Space Marine (he had a missile launcher) and I spent hours looking over the few pictures that were in it.

I was always interested but sort of forgot about the whole thing until 2002 when I was walking through a mall in Germany and saw this gigantic statue of a Space Marine. I didn't really know where to start with models but I bought ever Black Library novel that they had in English and went to town. A couple of years later, after I got out of the military I found a game store where I lived at the time and bought my first army, which oddly enough was Imperial Guard rather than Space Marines.

[AlexHolker]

Space Crusade for me, too. Years later I saw a Warhammer 40,000 poster in the window of a bookstore, went inside and found a whole lot of Space Crusade models.

Unfortunately, my first purchase was an $18 box of Epic Space Marines.