Topic: Your first Empire/WHFB memories?

[Maza]

I'd love to hear about other gamers' first experiences of the Empire and/or WHFB!

This is how I remember it (don't know if it is entirely correct of course): Me and my friends had been painting and collecting 40K and Blood Bowl. Mostly we just painted and talked about it. We seldom actually played! Then me and two other guys bought the WHFB box, with 10 high elves and 10 goblins. This was the early 90's and I think that at the time I had already began to collect some Empire models. Anyway, my first game was some time later against my friend who had kept collecting High elves. The third guy who was in on the box was also present and he was supposed to act like a Games master or something (I don't know if there were rules for GM's then, but we were Role playing gamers, so it felt natural). In that battle, I fielded something like this:

5 KotWW
12 halbs
8 handgunners
Some halfling archers (BS 4!)
Great cannon
Grey wizard
I think Kurt Helborg was my general, or the model at least.

Most of my stuff was actually painted (I think, at least I had made an effort). I was just trying to copy the official GW paint jobs. No particular theme or province colours or anything. The High elves had a (relatively) large block of spearmen, a chariot and some other stuff (bolt thrower?). It took us forever to get anywhere in that game because we had to check the rules all the time. I think we had to break it up after 2 turns and several hours. But before that, I remember my GC shot his chariot, and as a result it had to do a random move (scatter?) and ended up in a terrain piece representing water. Our "GM" decided it had sunk and was out of the game! Even if we had to break it up, I felt victorious because of that!

We never had a solid WHFB gaming routine. There were plenty of distractions that age (mid teens). I guess we tried to play a few more times after that, but I don't remember aything in particular, like that one glorious cannon shot!

How did you start to play? In what spirit? Memories? Painting? Etc! Please, share your stories!

/Maza

[TheElectorCount43]

I started last april, I'm clearly a veteran.

My first game was against a Lizardmen player, using the old codex because he didn't want to buy the new one when he knew some day in the future they would release a hard-back copy.
It was supposed to be a 1500pt battle, but he got the wrong end of the stick and brought his 2000pt tourny list with a well upgraded slann.
He went on to win, but not by much because of his number superiority.

That was a great game which saw me charge 8 normal knights with captain (i bought the battleforce) into the front of a 20 man saurus unit, lead by one of their hero combat characters (don't know the name).

That went well...

[yoy1zoz2mom3]

Winning against HE with a all-night-goblin force 

[Syn Ace]

1st game was in 4th edition -- played against my friend's high elves and didn't have the $$ for a helblaster, so he told me to use a piece of foam from a blister pack as a proxy. So we're battling it out and his infantry walk out of a woods, triumphantly into my armies flank -- and right in front of the foam helblaster that he'd forgotten about. The foam helblaster annihilated the unit and went down into local lore.

[jakehunter52]

Forfeiting to a nurgle army back in 7th ed.....in the 2nd turn. Never liked demons since.....

[Stolzeuhu]

Wow! While reading this I was struck with my first WFB memory - 8 or 9 years old, my brother painting his skaven and other stuff (comission painter at that time) - It was like 15 or 16 years ago? And my first game ever - splited brother's army and made small skaven vs skaven battle, I was happy with my hidden assassin, I remember screaming bell model and metal rat ogres - so much better than pre-Island of Blood plastics.

Don't remember even what was the result, It was miniatures more that attracted me than the game itself - everything painted, today It won't be the best standard, but still good tabletop. I remember that I didn't like that all skaven was so colourfull (green bases era), and that I tried to convience my brother that each regiment should have it's own distinct colour. True imperial at that time

I remember also that my brother tried to teach me painting, but I was angry at my paint that it was too thin and it didn't cover the surface good. Actually it was the best consistency to paint, but I had to wait another few years to discover it again.

Then I had loooong break, started mordheim when I was 17, as it was closer to warhammer fantasy role play, and also much cheaper... First band was lizardmen, as my brother had some leftover minis as payment from comission. He made my heroes (blue saurus and albino skink priest, I painted green skinks and sauruses. It was difficult, but they weren't that bad. I played then witchhunters, reiklanders and tried to start dwarves, but mordheim wasn't enough.

Three years later and I was sitting in a hobby store with a veteran player friend trying to choose an army for me. All elves was out,  Chaos? meh, Bretonnians? too colourful... Hmm, empire... I remember that I was finishing high school when I started to plan what to buy. At one of the final exams, after finishing writing I calculated on a margin of one page how much I would save If I'd win a bidding on polish e-bay 

[Daymz]

My first Warhammer memory(ies)... date back a good eleven years. 6th was just out when I started playing.

A friend of mine got me into it, he was playing O&G and got me to buy my first unit (19 State Troops) and my first general: An Elector Count Blister (that just so happened to be Kurt Helborg, 4th Ed model!). Well, I didn't know much anything about the game at the time and I didn't even own the Army Book, so my first State Troops actually turned out to become a command unit, and the rest evenly split between halberdiers and swordsmen. 

Those were the days... I quickly got further friends of mine into the hobby too, and my then best friend and I used to have many a battle, Dwarves vs. Empire. I don't know if either of us even owned a rulebook in the very beginning... So what we could make out of our armybooks I guess was the best we could do. And sometimes, we'd take a single painted model to school and would make challenges between characters with dice we brought with us 

It didn't take all that long until I did start understanding more of the game, largely thanks to more experienced players in my area. The hobby was always important to me since, and I am turning 25 soon, so it was almost half my life that it accompanied me. I started out with the Empire and I never stepped back from it or towards any other army. And in the meantime, I am presiding a small WHFB club and am regularly playing tournaments 

And Kurt Helborg still is my favourite to-be-used general on the field. I painted him my own style, not necessarily caring for him to be Reiksguard, so he does fit into my own knightly order nicely enough. It's still the same paint job this guy has, and I painted him... 10 years ago?... I still like him! 

Oh yeah, and of course, the store that has been sporting my hobby for all the time past is a smallish independent store in my hometown, where we don't even have a GW in any vicinity (if I'm not mistaken, there are no official GamesWorkshop stores in all of Switzerland). And before I started with Warhammer, I used to play Pokémon Trading Card Game in that store. Was part of the League, too. 

Thanks, Maza, for making me remember!

[Delthos]

My first memories of the Empire are from about 3 and a half years ago and me getting my butt handed to me every game I played against my friends' Dark Elves, Wood Elves, and High Elves. We hadn't played any games in about 2 years; 40k, Fantasy, or RPGs. We had decided to get back into gaming again and as I hadn't really enjoyed my Bretonnians or Tomb Kinds that last time I played them I decided on a new army as I had a few of the 6th edition troops. I also a metal Helblaster that I had picked up for some reason.

Of course I got better and I don't know that I'd lose quite so much against the two of them now. I wish I had purchased more of the 6th edition style state troops as they were still available in lots of the stores around here at that time. I just didn't realize how much I like them at the time. I'm surprised I'm still an Empire player with as much as I lost at the time. If I wasn't so short on cash at the time, I think I just may have given up on them as I hadn't invested a lot in them. Oh yeah, I also had made gentlemen's bet with my friend that I could assemble and paint a 2,000 point Empire army before he could assemble and paint a 2,000 point Orc and Goblin army. That could have been the main reason I stuck with them, just to finish my army before he did.  I stuck with them though and now I'm an Empire diehard.

[Orcslayer]

My first experience with warhammer fantasy was back when 7th ed was new. I had been playing a high level AD&D campaign and I wanted to start an army, so I was looking for a large scale wargame to represent my characters taking over the world. After a trip to my local games store my mate and I settled on battle for scull pass, and we spent the evening playing through all the little scenarios in the booklet, he took goblins and I took dwarves. I played with the stunties for about a year then tried my hand at Brettonia. That failed miserably, and my local store manager suggested I look into empire. If I remember correctly, the Renforcement battalion had just been released, so I took that home and was hooked. Empire wasn't the best army in 7th ed, but I still managed to win a local tournament, and ever since then it has been Empire for me with no end in sight. The funny part about my experience with Warhammer is that I started playing it to supplement my D&D campaign, but since I have started Warhammer I haven't played nearly as much D&D.

[Raulmichile]

My first experience with Warhammer was in 1992, it was 4th Ed and I collected HE back then. Those times....  I later decided to sell my army in 5th Ed and come back in 6th with a Chaos army.  I then realized that I really missed shooting, Ld problems, skirmishers, etc.  and decided that WH was more than muscle, another arm or head and close combat fests and here I am, after leaning towards the army that has it all (in average): The Empire.  It's been a long road. 

[Eighty]

the memory i remember the most is one i am sure all of us have done at one time.

i had a giant block of 8 knights on my flank. Oh no! here comes my vampire count opponents bats to take my cannon.. better reform to face his bats... oh wait he moved, reform again! and again!

never every chase fast cav or flyers 

lesson learnt! and its one i enjoy watching new players learn too

[MrAbyssal]

My earliest WFB memory would be around 1996, not too long after 5th Ed had just come out. I had already got into 40k thanks to some friends in school and hadn't really looked at Fantasy though I did play Battlemasters a fair bit at one point with my brother. My brother took an interest in it Bretonians as he was really into knights though and after playing the demo game (Lizards vs Brets) in the local GW store my interest was piqued. From there I found other school friends who played it. They all pretty much played Chaos or other evil armies so I fell back on my old favourite from Battlemasters with the Empire. Love the Warhammer versions of the models and was hooked not long after.

[satch]

a small 500 point battle agasint my best friend, we were the first in our area to start WHF.

he had DE with xbowmen and a chariot and i had 1 vampire 1 necro and the rest was small units of zombies, The kicker is that i felt the zombies were too pathetic to house a vamp and so i left my general in the open and he promptly got shot to death

[Maza]

Thanks for all the interesting replies! 

At one of the final exams, after finishing writing I calculated on a margin of one page how much I would save If I'd win a bidding on polish e-bay 

Ha ha! I can relate to this - being so totally consumed by something that it overshadows everything.

And sometimes, we'd take a single painted model to school and would make challenges between characters with dice we brought with us 

Wow! Did you get away with this? The cool kids at school didn't beat you up and break your minis? 

[mr chumley warner]

i played 40K back in 1990,91 ,

Although right back in 87-90 I used to buy Warhammer models!

In fact I had most of the Marauder range of Orcs , Dark Elves and Empire,

no idea what happened to them!

[Siberius]

First WH memories were games that took us a week to get through and included those cardboard cut out characters.

What got me into it was that Chaos Dwarf front cover, they were my first proper army.

It is only relatively recently that I started to collect the Empire army I had been dreaming of for years...

[Michael W]

My first WHFB game was 6th Edition, in 2003.  I had about a thousand points of Empire, mostly unpainted, and one of the guys at the local store agreed to give me a game, pulling out orcs and goblins.  About four turns later my forces were pretty thoroughly crushed and I was wondering if I picked the wrong army.  Needless to say, I stuck with them a bit longer and soon learned the fun of defeating a host of plate-clad, demon-allied superwarriors with nothing but men in tights and feathers. 

[TheElectorCount43]

i played 40K back in 1990,91 ,

Although right back in 87-90 I used to buy Warhammer models!

In fact I had most of the Marauder range of Orcs , Dark Elves and Empire,

no idea what happened to them!

That's why you want to get those marauder empire...

[NPC_Dave]

The year was 1996 and a  new roomate moved into the house where I was living. Soon after he purchased Warhammer Fantasy Battle and started working on a dwarf army. Seeing all these cool figures lying around the kitchen table in half painted batches started to pique my interest. I read through the 5th edition rulebook and eventually decided to try out this wargaming hobby. I fell in love with all the options of the Empire army book and proceeded to build a hodge podge of units that I thought all looked cool and interesting.

On the tabletop I discovered that my cavalry was slower than everyone else's cavalry, my men were slower and did not fight as well as the forces in other armies, and that my Battle Magic was hopelessly outgunned by the vast powers wielded by Necromancers, Vampires, Dark and High Elf mages, Chaos sorcerers, Slann and Skaven grey seers. Still I persevered on.

My early tactics eventually settled on
 1) cowering in the back of my deployment zone trying to forestall the whooping I would soon be receiving,
 2) attempting to damage my opponent as much as possible with my artillery
 3) have the Steam Tank run over something important
 4) and praying for the Drain Magic card

My attempts to convince my friends and local tournament organizers that Empire should at least get a chance to try out the color magics in the back of the Warhammer Magic box set was met with the reply, "That would be unbalanced." Still I thought I detected a trace of sympathy in the eyes of one or two individuals.

I was making friends with the local hobbyists and learning, eventually building up to an average of one victory per six games. Usually it was because the hellblaster performed way above average, or my opponent badly misjudged the 2-4 inch charge advantage he had. But once in awhile it was because of some awesome tactic I devised on the spur of the moment, like the time my ogres got the drop on a huge unit of witch elves and bitch slapped the frenzy out of them, broke them, then charged them a second time and repeated the process. Or when my heroic general realized he could keep up with the Vermin Lord in a huge multi-unit combat by killing skaven slaves, thereby managing to eke out a very close draw.

I even managed to play out the full Empire-Skaven scenario set that was published in Citadel Journal and much of the Empire-Orc/Goblin scenario box set from that era.

Eventually I took a break for awhile and then rejoined. In preparation for my first tournament I purchased the new 6th edition Empire army book and rules and my eyes were opened to the great wonders of an actual competitive list. I spent that whole first tournament seeking to unlearn my old habits. My first opponent was confused when a small ordinary goblin unit(with no fanatics) he put out on the far flank hoping to divert my knight unit caused my knights to turn completely around and head back to the relative safety of their deployment zone.

Old habits die hard.

But that is a story for another day.

[Robert Klemic]

One of my first empire memories, which almost became my last empire memories.  Quake City Rumble 2006.  I'm an utter noob at this point having started collecting WFB a couple months before so my army isn't fully painted and the like.  At the time it was VERY late 6e so things like the Steam Tank and Special Characters were banned on principle but I didn't know that.  I had recently bought a steam tank model because i thought it looked cool.  In the rules packet for the tournament it stated that the tank was legal so I figured I'd give it a shot even though I had never used it before. 

That being said.  That choice and a bunch of others I did in army construction bit me big time during the tournament.  The first thing was with Judge scored comp and first round pairings.  Lists had to be in a couple weeks beforehand so the judges could score comp (0-3 points per judge and 5 judges scored your list).  These judge comp scores also factored into round 1 pairings.  My list was judged so broken I got a 1 out of 15 for Judge Comp.  THIS was my first opponent for round 1.  Note.  2250 point tournament.

Level 4 TZ Sorceror on a Chaos Dragon.  Golden Eye of Tzeentch,  Staff of Change.

Demon Chariot of TZ
Demon Chariot of TZ
Demon Chariot of TZ
Demon Chariot of Tz
5 Chosen TZ Knights
Dragon Ogre Shaggoth
Dragon Ogre Shaggoth

Plus with the scenario issues (each one screwed with a different aspect of the army,  this game reducing the str of all models with a 3+ or better armor save) almost had me quitting warhammer fantasy after that weekend.  The only thing that really kept me in the game was the fact that I left California about 2 weeks after that tournament to go to grad school.

[Maza]

NPC_Dave: I remember choosing the Empire knowing well that I would get my a** kicked. Elves always seemed to be superior (cheesy?) in all kinds of games systems. I didn't really like them because of that.

Chumley: I also lost my old minis in the general haze that was life around 20. I left them somewhere when I moved around. However, I divided my collection at some point, and I still have a few unpainted ones from that time. I would love to see my old paint jobs...

By the way, can I get confirmation on two things from my first post, if someone knows?

1. Were there rules for Games masters in WHFB or did we just make that up?
2. The random chariot move from getting hit by a cannon, was that covered by rules (or did we just make that up too)?

[commandant]

My first game was using the models from the Empire v Orc starter kit back in 6th ed minus the chariot and the cannon.   I can remember playing empire and nothing much happening as my handgunners and his archer boys inched closer together.   It was quite fun really.   Then the handgunners unleashed a volley and the archer boys fled.   Those were the days.   of course his orcs then cut down my spearmen only to get flank charged by the handgunners and run away and be cut down.   I think I like handgunners from that game

[NPC_Dave]

1. Were there rules for Games masters in WHFB or did we just make that up?
2. The random chariot move from getting hit by a cannon, was that covered by rules (or did we just make that up too)?

There is a Game master or judge rule for 3rd edition WHFB and I believe it was there for 2nd edition as well. I have the old scenarios boxes from way back in that day and in addition to allocating forces for the two players, there would be a few rules in the scenarios that only the Game master could play. The only example I could think of off the bat is one of those sets had a (halfling?) minor character attachment to the general of one of the sides, and that character could end up betraying his side under certain circumstances. The Game master would determine when those circumstances were met and then take over and control the character's actions.

I recall the 1st edition of the AD&D Battlesystem rules also anticipated a 3rd party judge.

Can't help on the chariot rule, except that it definitely wasn't there in 5th edition. I recall shooting my cannon and tracing the line through the chariot to see which animals and crew I would need to roll to wound in addition to the chariot structure itself. It wouldn't move after the strike.

That does remind me of the 5th edition game I played where I was in desperate straits against a Bretonnian army and loaded up on the steam points to try and have my tank run over as much as possible. I failed my check and had to roll on the stream tank failure table, got the result where the steam tank moves in completely random directions, and proceeded to turn 90 degrees on the bridge it was sitting on, ram through the retainer wall and plunge into the river terrain. The tournament judge ruled it was destroyed.

Good times!!!

[Maza]

Thanks, Dave! We probably had some rules coverage/inspiration for the GM then. But the box with elves and goblins I'm rambling about must have been 4th ed (Wikipedia). But I may very well be mixing things up. 

Nice anecdotes, too. 

[Daymz]

And sometimes, we'd take a single painted model to school and would make challenges between characters with dice we brought with us 

Wow! Did you get away with this? The cool kids at school didn't beat you up and break your minis? 

Haha, no, luckily enough, one of the "coolest" among that group was a Warhammer player himself, so we didn't have to fear him! And another guy who first made fun of us soon picked up O&G too  so we kind of got away with it pretty easily!

You could say that, for all that I was beaten up for around that time, Warhammer was not a reason.