How did you get into all this mini madness?!

[TheGamingArtisan]

I started in the table top gaming world around about the age of 9 or 10 years old with Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition. I was obsessed with books like The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien and films like Willow as a small child. My mother seeing such a passion developing within me decided to ask a friend from work, whose husband was for lack of a better term a true "80's" geek, for more things I could do with my developing interests. He ran a Dungeons and Dragons game with; his two kids, his brother and a colleague from work. I was truly enchanted by the world of magic, fantastical creatures and most importantly how I could play a part in this fascinating world of the Forgotten Realms. We sat down one day after school to create my first ever role playing character. My first ever chance to be something new, something beyond my child limitations. He advised me the party needed a character called a rogue to help out with their adventures, so with my devotion to the orc race from the stories of Tolkien, Renok was born. The stories I lived through my half-orc rogue Renok, I think played a great deal in my younger life, well I guess he must of as I wouldn't be talking about him right now. I'll always remember the time I jumped from a cliff top in a deep underground lair on to the back of a young dragon, to be flung into the abyss and somehow survive thanks to the generosity of the dungeon master.

From here I dipped my toe into the realms of Warhammer Fantasy during the 6th edition and then later to 40k 5th edition. My first love was for those greenskins, again from the days of reading Tolkien I had this great interest in these villains. So I collected legions of Orcs and Goblins for Warhammer Fantasy and a couple of Space Orks to pretend to play 40k with my primary school friend. I was engrossed in the act of creating and painting these models not really playing the war games themselves. It was about creating a world in which my imagination could run free in. From here I spent several years of my early days of high school running Dungeons and Dragons games with friends and painting up models and scenes to tell my stories.

I eventually drifted away from the hobby during my later teenage years, as am sure many of us did. Video games, music, amongst other things became the more focal of my time. Until I started college, here I was sparked back into the hobby by a friend and the arrival of Warhammer Fantasy 8th edition. From here my gaming group of friends grew bigger, we played multiple of different systems. Warhammer 40k, Privateer Press's Warmachine and Hordes. I even had the chance to play another table top role playing game Iron Kingdoms from Privateer Press. Eventually these days of gaming every other evening came to an end as one of our closer gaming comrades moved abroad and us remaining went to different universities. I still continued to be interested in the hobby but it became more of a creative outlet for me rather than a gaming experience due to my rather antisocial tendencies, so I ended up focusing more on painting and creating scenic dioramas to fill that desire.

I attended University and received a B.A in the study of religion. With my academic interests I found a new area of passion with war gaming. Historical. Contrary to the stigma surrounding my degree, I was not actually training to be a vicar or a theologian. The study of religion explores a multitude of different beliefs, cultural structures from many parts of the world and time. I was greatly interested in two main areas; pre-Christian England and Feudal Japan. This lead me to discover systems like Hail Caesar, Dux Bellorum, Lion Rampant and Ronin. Also companies like Warlord games, Griping Beast and Perry Minatures for all my new toys. This gave me the chance to recreate moments in English history like the battle of Stamford bridge, to explore the ancient Celtic traditions of Britain or the period of the waring states in ancient Japan. So this is where I am now with my hobby today; I have a great interest in historical settings but I still hold an interest in certain science fiction and of course a good few medieval fantasy based games.

I know that was kind of a self-indulgent speech but I just wanted to delve into how, when why I got into the hobby. More importantly I really want to know your stories, I'd love to know how someone else got into this amazing hobby. I would love to hear anyone else' tales of dice and paint! So please feel free to comment below and I look forward to hearing from you! Happy gaming!

[Nirnman]

I got into wargaming through being given a box of Airfix plastic soldiers each week by my Father as my allowance.
through collecting these it was the ACW figures that first sparked an effort to recreate any actual battles. painted in Humbrol enamels
my little armies fought on the table top until I made a battlefield from a sheet of hardboard (framed) and terrain made papier-mache that filled it.
My first "proper" wargames came along much later when I purchased a model figure (54mm plastic that had to be assembled using acetone as the adhesive) from
Model figures and Hobbies and being invited to a game by the owner.it has never stopped since then and I still have the ruleset used (one A5 sheet of paper)used with Pete Laing 15mm WSS figures. I have since used various scales but still have a love of the smaller scales  including now 10mmpendraken figures

[Sunray]

Have a look at the "Three things thread" - the Airfix addiction  runs deep. 

[sunjester]

From the age of about 5 or 6 I was taken every Saturday to the model shop to spend my pocket money on a box of "little men" (Airfix plastics). Interestingly I visited Eastbourne (where I spend my childhood) again earlier this year and the model shop is still there, that's after 50 years!

Then when I was 10/11 my mother saw an advert in the local paper that the Eastbourne Wargames Club were hosting an open day. She saw it as the opportunity to get me out from under her feet for a day so gave me and my friend the bus fare to go. I never looked back from then on!

[fsn]

I think I've written this before, but when I was a child my father was in the RAF. For reasons I won't go into, I needed to be in hospital quite a lot, and my dad bought a Triumph Herald so we could travel up to the RAF hospital at Wegberg.  We pootled up the autobahn, and frequently saw long convoys of military vehicles including Centurions on tank transporters.

I was quite smitten, and for Xmas asked for some soldiers. I got the Airfix Beach Defence set, with British paratroops, original German infantry and (IIRC) a DUKW, M110, M48 and a Centurion.  

It was all go from there. There was a little model ship in the local town, and in the window was a diorama of WWI (using Airfix figures) liberally covered in red blood. When we moved back to the UK, I found a copy of Wargames by the Blessed Featherstone. I could recreate the Action on the St James Road, and the ACW Platt Valley, but drooled over the Ancient Battle of Trimsos as there were no ancients to be had.

A bit later I found Peter Laing miniatures, and soldiered on with 20mm and 15mm, expanding into Napoleonics (thanks to "A Near Run Thing" by David Howarth), and ECW, Marlborough and Ancients. Even dabbled with some Heroics & Ros micro armour (Centurions again).

Things died down a bit when I got married, but I carried on at a low level. I got divorced and decided that I needed to revamp my hobby. I disposed of most of my collection, and set about finding a new lease on life. I decided upon 10mm, 'cos 6mm is too small and 15mm is dead - it just doesn't know it yet. I sampled a number of manufacturers and Pendraken turned out to be the best.

Since then I've got myself into a number of Pendraken ranges: Ancients (Greek, Republican Roman), Dark Age (Norman & now Saracen), Medieval (Matilda & Stephen), Marlburian, Napoleonics, ACW,  1920s in the desert, lots of WWII, Korean War, 1956, SF, Zombie and most recently WWI in East Africa. I've also a few air fleets for WWII in 1:600 (1917, Battle of France/Britain, Mediterranean, Battle of Germany,  Pacific 1941 & 1944,  Korea, 1960, Yom Kippur) and a couple of fleets (1:600 Narrow Seas, 1:3000 Mediterranean 1940).

[Westmarcher]

I attended University and received a B.A in the study of religion. With my academic interests I found a new area of passion with war gaming. Historical.

Your Road to Damascus moment! 
Only Fantasy game I've ever played is War of the Ring, an (enjoyable) LOTR boardgame (and which I still have ... somewhere).
Otherwise, always preferred Historical. In my early teens, I progressed from bang, bang / throw the marble / fire the rubber dart gun games with my Airfix figures, by writing my own rudimentary rules. Then I discovered Don Featherstone's Naval Wargames and played all sorts of naval games using ships cut from cardboard or fashioned from ice lolly sticks or balsa wood. A pal bought Featherstone's ACW rules and we played many a battle and campaign using Airfix figures. Never written my own rules since. Then had the 'growing into adulthood' break that many of us had - gave my Airfix collection away to my cousin and spent the next part of my life working, studying, chasing young women, meeting the current Mrs Westie (celebrating our Ruby wedding this year), paying a mortgage and raising a family but it was always in the blood and so I 'kept in touch' buying mags, books, historical board games, wargame rules and going to shows. PC strategy games also helped to satisfy my wargaming urges to some extent. Finally, finding myself able to justify the time and expenditure required to get back into the figure collection side of the hobby, I started collecting Heroics & Ros and Irregular Miniatures 6mm Napoleonic and ECW armies and gaming mainly using Shako and DBR rules. I later sold these (yes, it would have been good not to) but, now that I am retired, have both 10mm (99% Pendraken) and 15mm armies, covering SYW, ACW and ECW. I have dozens of war-games rules; my favourites are Field of Battle, Honours of War and Black Powder but hope to try Bloody Big Battles (which I've had for about a year) and The Pikeman's Lament soon. Currently re-vamping a stone bridge model and basing some ECW cavalry.

WTID.* 

* Wargamer Til I Die.

[Ithoriel]

In 1965, recently relocated to Yorkshire, aged 12, I discovered Don Featherstone's "Naval War Games" in my local library.

Fascinated by Fletcher Pratt's WW2 rules, I dragged my cousin out onto the back lawn with a collection of Airfix 1:1200 ships, tape measures and some plant markers filched from the garage for direction indicators. Max range was 6ft because that was the length of the tape measures!

A year later my mother apparently voiced some concern about the time I spent painting, playing and reading but my father assured her it was a phase I'd grow out of. He's still waiting

[Nick the Lemming]

1) A massive collection of Airfix soldiers (HO scale) when I was a wee nipper.
2) Finding books on wargaming at the local library (this was late 70s, so can't remember who they were by, but presumably the usual suspects), coupled with uniform books (again, not sure whose).
3) Playing D&D (1st ed) in the early to mid 80s, which introduced me to...
4) RPG and wargames club in Rotherham at the library, where I became more interested in the wargaming going on (by this time I was probably around 13 or 14, again early to mid 80s.

[toxicpixie]

I was a quiet and bookish child, loved fantasy & sci-fi, and played with model soldiers and air fix kits. I think my Dad decided I should be more sociable so he got the history teacher from his school to run a d&d game with us and a couple of friends and I was hooked!

That went from thenthen brand new Basic d&d set onwards, with actual wargaming going wild with GW's rapid 80s takeover of the minds of  teenage boys (thanks Phil ) with some ad libbing around made up historical gaming. Which is what I really fancied doing but just didn't exist on the high street... whereas Warhammer, D&D and especially Battletech did!

Historical gaming really had to wait till Uni for me. And it's continued ever since with all sorts of periods and genres.

[Dr Dave]

Airfix 1/72 and 1/35 figure. My Dad eventually decided I wasn't going to play golf with him (I still hate it) so he found the local wargames club. That was 40 years ago. I still game in the same room with a few of the same people. Now it's crossed over into work as well. Love it.

[Steve J]

Airfix figures too, as well as articles in Military Modelling & Airfix magazines. This led onto to Thane Tostig, Dungeons & Dragons and the Airifx WWII rules. The rest, as they say, is history.

[Norm]

A chance discovery in a bookshop, Tunstall's Discovering Wargames (Shire Books) and Featherstone's Battles with Model Soldiers. Marvellous!

[FierceKitty]

An article in a Cape Town newspaper by a chap who wanted to start a club. Things moved fast after that.

[capthugeca]

My first memory is me being bathed by my mum when my dad came into the bathroom and showed me a mounted Airfix cowboy waving his hat in the air which he had painted.

My dad made a small board for my older brother and I and gave us a set of Union and Confederate infantry that he had painted. He taught us a basic set of rules so that we could have an occasional battle. I fell in love with the concept, though my brother was not so interested. Then for Christmas my parents gave me a motte and bailey castle (working drawbridge, etc) that my dad had made out of wooden

Then when I reached secondary school, my dad bought me Issue 1 of Military Modelling and he signed me up for a subscription. That featured a set of WW2 wargame rules and so I started collecting Airfix WW2 figures and building their kits. I then went to the Model Engineer Exhibition in London and bought a copy of Battle wargame rules (can't remember the autor – Tony Bath?)

All went well with my friends and I regularly playing rather basic but fun WW2 games until most of my collection got nicked by a young relative of mine and lost.

That could have been the end of things but then Miniature Figurines brought out their Mythical Earth range and WRG included a fantasy appendix in their Ancient Rules.

Since then I have done fantasy wargaming with a wide variety of rules (my favourite being the first edition of Richard Halliwell's "Reaper").

[Leman]

I remember always playing with toy soldiers - my first memory was of metal Britains medieval knights, with moveable visors. I saw these again in the film Hope and Glory. Play continued through my childhood with Britains and Timpo plastics - US cavalry and Indians, Swoppetts Wars of the Roses, Napoleonic figures, and some WWII troops, artillery and AFVS. My very first Airfix figures were the Guards marching band, quickly followed by ACW figures. At 10 I moved from the Wirral to Llandudno and the toy soldiers went on hold as I got into board games. At 12 I came across someone who had built their own battlefield, using papier mache hills and ACW Airfix figures. This impressed me and I built my own and tried fighting ACW, Napoleonic and WWI, then also tried Romans and Britons and medieval using Airfix again. The following year, as I turned fourteen I got into conversation with a boy in the youth club I had just joined. He showed me his wargames sand table in the family garage and lent me a copy of Donald Featherstone's Wargaming. Never looked back after that.