Topic: POLL: Which Was Your 1st Warhammer Fantasy Rules?

[GamesPoet]

Decided to give a go to doing some hobby "polls".

This first one is an experiment, and what better way to kick it off than to ask about when you first started with Warhammer Fantasy.

For the moment, this is being allowed to run indefinitely, and will see how that goes.

Which Was Your 1st Warhammer Fantasy Rules?

And two related questions ...

1. How did you get involved with Warhammer Fantasy?

2. What year did you start?

For me ... Gary Gygax passed away, and after about 18 years of not playing miniature games, went into some local hobby shops to see what was happening.  I found Warhammer Fantasy Battle being played, and almost started with Bretonnians.  However, I chose the Empire because it seemed to have a wider range of different units that needed a mixed force of arms approach.  And I started in 2008 by buying a 6th Edition starter set.

[Michael W]

I'll play!

1.  I had a girlfriend who said, "Hey, I know of this thing that I think you'd like." We went to a local hobby shop that day and I picked up an Elector Count (the 6E Marius Leitdorf), and a week later we drove about 30 minutes to the nearest GW store, where I learned what army he belonged to.  Being a poor college student, I certainly wasn't going to change after I was already invested in the army!  And now it's 20,000 points later, or whatever it is these days.

2.  And that was near the end of 2001.  Geez, I'm going on 20 years in this thing?

[Artobans Ghost]

6th ed for me. June 2005 (sons 12th birthday) wanted a starter set to play with his friends and I got hooked. Never gave it a second look till that moment. 40 k followed 5th ed and was far more popular with him and his friends. I was locked into wfb. Played 2-3 times a week wfb/40k/ and every local tournament (within 6 hours drive) that could be arranged for 6 years. Reluctantly went on a forced sabbatical till 2016 and started again. Had to take most of 2019 off as I had no place for it but got started again last fall.

[Fidelis von Sigmaringen]

I started with 6th edition - at the insistence of my nephew. I bought the BRB and some Empire units at a discount, because (which neither of us knew), the 7th edition was just a few weeks away.

[Gankom]

I like these games!

1. There were a couple of hobby stores in the area, and at some point I picked up the promo magazine they had. Carried that everywhere, showed all my friends the neat toys. At some point around my 8th birthday (or possibly later in the spring) I spent some newspaper carrier savings to buy the painting starter set that was a few paint bots and some Brett Archers, and got a box of dwarf warriors to go with it.

2. Early 1998 give or take. I remember getting the 5th edition dwarf army book, but that was just for lore really. All the numbers were just gibberish. I got the 6th edition dwarf army book around when it first came out, and the lore was waaaay more impactful. Fairly soon after that got the empire vs orcs starter set and rulebook so that's when I first started to play beyond "pew pew" or dioramas.

[Warlord]

I started collecting models during 5th edition. Heroquest got me into miniatures, and then I found the 5th edition unipose plastic halberdier, bought an old White Dwarf with a 3rd edition 3000 point battle between and Empire and Wood Elves/Dwarves, and the. Empire became my thing.

First started playing games during the Ravening Hordes era of 6th edition. Year 2000 I guess?

[Zygmund]

The first rules I read & played myself were 6th ed, in 2008. It very soon blended into 7th ed.

1. Through friends, very piecemeal from around 1990 onwards. 3rd ed Fantasy, (Rogue Trader,) 5th ed Fantasy, (Necromunda,) Mordheim. I participated somewhat, and bought a fistful of models, but I was more a role-player and was more into historical models.

Was very interested in the game systems, though, and you can say Warhammer got me interested in the D&D/Ral Partha Battleystem rules and Grenadier's Fantasy Warriors. I even based some 1/72 minis for those. So from early on I've thought of Warhammer Fantasy as one in a bigger family of fantasy battles rules. But I found the idea of buying & painting an army daunting, and consciously didn't pursuit it. Bought instead some 15mm historicals.

2. 2008 is the year when I started the Warhammer hobby for real: got Warhammer Fantasy books & bought first GW minis with the goal of actually painting them to play the game & fit the setting.

-Z

[Padre]

2. I started at the beginning in 1983. Remember my name is Padre. 

1. I got the rules because we had been using Traveller the role-playing game as a basis for every kind of role-playing and wargaming we were doing. They were the only rules I had so I used them for everything, modifying accordingly and sometimes liberally. Somehow, we used the Traveller rules for sci-fi, post apocalypse, World War II, James Bond, and for Fantasy. And other genres.

When Warhammer came out I snapped it up because it was designed for fantasy gaming. Insanely, it called itself the 'mass combat fantasy role-playing game' and did not really know what it was. The rules when not very good for either wargaming or role-playing. We, however, did not know any better and so dived in using the rules for both war games and role-playing and a mish mash of the two.

I bought armies of historical figures to either use as is or convert, a handful of the - what seemed to me - very expensive Citadel miniatures, and lots of moulds from Prince August to cast things like skeletons, goblins and orcs. My friends would buy ingots of lead and I would cast the figures for them.

Having armies of figures meant we could use miniatures in our role playing and have something to represent everything we needed.

I could talk for hours about the things we got up to. It would bore every single one of you.

[Dihenydd]

I'd been playing 40K since 2nd edition.  I still have a larger collection of 2nd and 3rd edition metal Orks (one day all my Madboyz will return).  I'd been reading WD for years, but fantasy just seemed too complicated for my brain.  Also, I'm an average painter on a good day so my 2nd ed orks were green for skin, camo for uniform, gunmetal for spiky bits and a couple of washes.  Fantasy seemed to require actual painting skillz. 

I don't remember how I acquired a handful of Saurus around 2003, but I liked them, and figured a paint scheme similar to my orks could work.  My wife helped me paint on nights she wasn't doing papers for University.  We painted 2500pts in about a month that looked way better on our kitchen table under the dim light in our cheap basement suite then on the battlefield, but by then I was hooked.  After a year the saurus went away and Empire came along.  Took a lot longer to paint, no shortcuts!

[Padre]

I should have said, I played 1st, 2nd and 3rd, then stuck with 3rd through 4th and 5th, then I played 6th, 7th and 8th, and now I'm sticking to 8th through AoS.

[Naitsabes]

 How did you get involved with Warhammer Fantasy?
A friend bought a WD at a train station newspaper stand. so quaint. those were the days.

We then stumbled upon another guy who was all into 3rd edition and Realm of Chaos and had been for years. We played quite a few narrative games that involved us (with our feeble little groups of dwarfs, Empire and orcs) stumbling into his chaos warbands and getting mauled.

Eventually we bought our own rule books. weird, it came in a box with goblin and elf models. weird, the cover is all different. weird, these rules are so different than the rules we had been playing. It took a while to figure out that we had entered a brave new world of 4th edition. How did the world even turn without the internet?

What year did you start?
~1993

[The Black Knight]

Like this type of posts - good call GP!

1. Went to a  mountain summer camp with one of my friends as a kid. We met with his other friend there and he had some of these incredible little miniatures - monopose black orcs, goblins and even a metal skarsnik and gobbla. I was absolutely fascinated. He gave me a headless plastic skeleton warrior, which I still produly own to this day  .  During the same trip we found out there was a tiny little shop that sold some rpg books and minis in near vicinity of where we were stationed. We went there a couple of times drooling over everything, especially over the 3 lovely dioramas they had. I was hooked!

2. The year is hard to pinpoint, but I would say that I really started playing in 1998. Rules were a problem as no-one I knew had a starter set. I doubt I ever even saw one. Luckily for me, the gaming store in my home town had some bootleg translations of the 5th ed rules they just handed out to people, so we had something to play with.

[Realjuan]

I remember once watching a movie where an old grumpy person had lead soldier army in the basement, and a kid went inside broke one and he got punish hard. I only remember that because I thought it was super cool to have a lead army. Some years after a friend of mine had the 6th edition starting set, and we paint them all black. We didn't have primer, and since it said to prime them black we just used the normal black paint.

I went on holidays that year or the next, and manage to find a GW store and get a 6th edition starter set, maybe in Florida. Sadly my friend moved out and I was left with the box and no one to play with.

Many years later, a youtube channel with batreps with empire got me interested again and I asked my parents and they still had the box. Now I am here. I had the 6th edition

[atomic]

1. Entered a strange, dusty shop in a side street of munich, selling comics and all kind of strange stuff. As i played D&D i searched for fantasy books and found Warhammer.

2. Started 1992 IV. Edition, first one with german translation.

Two years later techno musik was the next new big thing, and i was too stoned for the hobby for a while. Other distractions like working left the hobby untouched till Spring 2015. i entered the GW store in munich with the a large amount of money to buy and build up my old, secret love. The army of the empire (played Skaven, High elves back in the days). I told the GW staff to hand me over all wfb empire stuff he has in his store. He looked meaningfull and said silently "dont buy, wait, and come back next month". Next month, you guessed it, WFB got crushed by AOS.
After a year in shock i begun to collect and buy empire stuff. Now i have lots lots of models, mostly unopend. This year is my personal Year of the Empire, as i started to build them up and paint. 90 Models are finished now, about 400 to go ;=) It feels really good.

Ah, i am the new here. Greetings fellow generals! 

greetz
atomic

[Novogord]

1. Long ago (when I was 13) my friends started playing Mage Knight. Because I was intrigued I also started playing it. Then Mage Knight 2.0 came along and my collection was useless. But in the mean time I had met some other people who were playing a strange game with figures they had to paint them themselves! And so I was introduced to Warhammer. Their was no GW store in the city, only a rather large shop: The Lonely Mountain. And I played my first game on fair in Brussels (forgot the name).

2. I bought the starter set of 6th edition in 2003. I started playing with Empire, but then slowly I took the side of the Dawi's. Back then I didn't have much money spare to buy figures, but look at me now...

[GamesPoet]

It is interesting that after 22 votes, no one so far has started after 6th edition.

[Gankom]

It's an interesting point GP. I wonder if it has more to do with the demographics of our board or something. I vaguely remembered more people joining around 8th edition, and I know lots of people in real life who joined more recently, so I'm quite surprised to see the results!

[Padre]

You younglings know nothing of 'true' Warhammer in the days of myth and legend (being the mid 1980s)!

[Artobans Ghost]

You younglings know nothing of 'true' Warhammer in the days of myth and legend (being the mid 1980s)!

Yes Padrewan. True this outlook is.

[GamesPoet]

You younglings know nothing of 'true' Warhammer in the days of myth and legend (being the mid 1980s)!

Yes Padrewan. True this outlook is.

It's an interesting point GP. I wonder if it has more to do with the demographics of our board or something. I vaguely remembered more people joining around 8th edition, and I know lots of people in real life who joined more recently, so I'm quite surprised to see the results!

My guess is that folks who joined during 7th with that edition's last few army books being so out of wack, and 8th edition that in essence tried forcing folks to buy more figures to stay with the gaming that was happening, they grew disenchanted or went to W:AoS.

Disenchantment with 7th and 8th as a person's first intro into Warhammer Fantasy, that isn't going to keep ya coming back to a site where GW doesn't support the game system anymore.  And going to W:AoS ... well that system never really gave much reason for an Empire centric player base, and certainly not for coming back to W-E where there was a decent amount of anti-W:AoS flavor early on here, and it took a good while to open up a separate W:AoS area as well.  Some of this is actually GW's long running issues with the player base of the game anyway, due to the lack of respect they seemed to display in some of their decisions regarding the game.

Regardless ... it seems to show a bit of loyalty to the game anyway by those who are still coming to this site.  Let's hope GW gets the edition being hinted at by them off to a good start with what ever they put forth.

[Padre]

Ask me anything about the ancient times, and I will peer back through the mists of my memory to scry out what I can. But I will only answer in riddles, especially if your queries are rules based.

Not because I am being contrary, or even because I don't have the rules right in front of me, but because the rules were in the form of actual riddles!

[Artobans Ghost]

Ask me anything about the ancient times, and I will peer back through the mists of my memory to scry out what I can. But I will only answer in riddles, especially if your queries are rules based.

Not because I am being contrary, or even because I don't have the rules right in front of me, but because the rules were in the form of actual riddles!

Gaagh! Riddles make my head spin unpleasantly. I already have to deal with unpleasant dice gods and having the rep of being the worst general. No. No riddles please.

[GamesPoet]

I second that.  There are plenty of real life riddles that we deal with every day.  No desire for Warhammer riddles.

[Novogord]

You younglings know nothing of 'true' Warhammer in the days of myth and legend (being the mid 1980s)!

I wasn't born yet! So how could I know that the truth is out there!

[Victor]

It is interesting that after 22 votes, no one so far has started after 6th edition.

I think that says a lot about the average age of the forum members.

The younger ones probably left for Social Media ...