I donât really remember how it happened for me because it was organic. I had an older brother growing up, and he was the cause of copies of white dwarf and a vague sense of what warhammer was developing in my mind, but he was 5 years my senior. I suppose I must have been about 6 years old. I know I didnât really have a game plan or think it through very much. Those plastic boxes did exactly what Ansell wanted - provided an affordable first step for kids.
As an 11yr old i gave a guy at school money to get me models from games workshop. This is what he came back with. Sadly i must have swapped him away long ago. Its a nice model.
I then went down the heroquest route and rogue trader plastic beaky marines (which i butchered).
Are we counting HeroQuest here? Growing up on a small-ish Island in the 80s with only a couple of comic book stores on the whole island and no model companies or wargaming of any kind I was pretty sheltered. We had no exposure to any of model hobby world there at the time so when I thought I wanted to paint my HeroQuest models to make them better my friends thought I was nuts until I actually did it, then we only played with my painted set. Heck, I didnât even know wargames existed until traveling to the mainland and going into one of their massive âcomic bookâ stores and seeing metal GW Chaos Warriors and thinking they looked like the HeroQuest ones. Those metal models were stupidly expensive and looked like they needed cleaning so I walked on by How little did I know!
~N
For me I was in the computer lab at my elementary school (where my Mom worked), after school creating Star Wars art and stories in Hyperstudio on Macs that look like thisâŚ
Sadly all the Hyperstudio creations my friends and I made were lost when the computer lab upgraded to new computers and they didnât⌠give anyone⌠warning⌠a tragedy I will never truly recover from. Nanosaur got replaced by Bugdom and Nanosaur 2⌠also a tragedy that even Cro Mag Rally couldnât salve.
Alas one day my friend walked in and told me prophetically that we need to get into Warhammer⌠Now this friend had a lot of wayward obsessions I didnât follow⌠but this one I certainly did. Behold metal Ushabti blister, back when you got a random head and a random weapon. I definitely had bird head with the halberd variant. This model served Tomb Kings, then badly converted Tyranids, and now has its final resting place as a mangled statue on a TK terrain piece. My first Warhammer self purchase was a pack of TK Skeleton Warriors with this box art.
Now if we rewind further my first wargaming miniatures were Mage Knights bought at a local smoke filled sketchy store out of a glass cabinet. I think I bought these two straight from the cabinet and later bought random blisters frequently⌠I would trade with friends to collect Necropolis Sect (undead) and Black Powder Rebels (steampunk dwarfs) (big surprise).
In 7th grade Latin the guy I sat next to brought in a Tau Fire Warrior. I thought it was the coolest thing so a couple weeks later I drug my mom to Air Traffic and bought the Tyranid starter box, thus sealing my fate.
Those 3rd edition battleforces were iconic. Absolute peak of the genre. I think part of why they - and the old battalions and even the old regiments - were so beautiful is the full art box fronts. The actual minis were on the back. Those boxes sold a beautiful painting to you and showed you what it meant on the back. I can see why some people prefer to more âhonestâ heres-the-minis boxes, but we lost something with that change.
Oh I never understood why they got away from it. Board games donât have pictures of their components on the front, video games donât have a picture of the disk. Sell me on it baby!
Look at that. Only the vaguest connection to whatâs in the box. But youâre buying the faction dammit, youâre buying the role-play, the concepts, the aesthetic. And that art will stay with you. This is the shit I would buy premium prints of, not fourth edition codex covers.
Like Ihsan, I started with the 5th edition starter box. Must have been my birthday or Christmas 1996. As I had already decided to play Dwarfs, I also got two boxes of the classic monopose Warriors and a command unit
It started with my oldest friend from Kindergarten, who was introduced into the hobby by some guy from school (we were one year apart so not in the same grade). My pal collected Orcs & Goblins and we poured through the iconic 4th ed army book. I think it were the pictures of the Slayers in that book which made me fall for Dwarfs.
Now I also had a copy of Battle Masters (was called Claymore Saga in German and I think thatâs a way cooler name) and another mate had HeroQuest, but I didnât connect the dots to see those all belonged together. My copy of Battle Masters actually sat for years and years in my parents basement, and right around the time when I reentered the hobby I gave it to my sister to support her with stuff to sell on the flea market. It was her best sale and immediately got her 50 bucks. Probably should have held on to it to fetch a higher value myself or even keep it I guess, but it is what it is and in a way itâs good thatâs itâs gone and someone at least had a good day for it.
Was this box your first minis?
Because it were mine, now I donât need to look it up, thx. ^^
I still have the box in the cupboard, used for (a part of) Eldar bits and unassembled sprues.
Artwork on the front and contents on the backs seems pretty usual to me, though.
How little did I know!
