How long have I played Warhammer?

I suppose I can count myself as an experienced collector of Warhammer, although like many people, I probably spend more time making and painting the models than actually playing.

Last year I turned 40, but as a teenager back in the Eighties, as well as my ZX Spectrum, I was into Dungeons and Dragons and other RPGs.  Eventually Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay came along, which I remember mainly for the vast range of careers you could follow, as well as the most imaginative injury table this side of the Casualty Script Department.  I painted up a few figures for these games with Airfix enamels, and even remember buying one Space Marine figure when 40K first came out, but never got into the Warhammer games.  Indeed, I used to buy White Dwarf when it actually covered non-GW products, including D+D, but stopped getting it as the GW wargames took over and it became something of a monthly GW catalogue.

Then I went off to university and lost interest in RPGs.  I still continued with games on various computers, with Elite and later Civilization I and II particular favourites, and even got into CCGs, like Magic.  Then  came the wife and kids and time for games seemed to decrease, until about 10 years ago I picked up a copy of White Dwarf (issue 274) and couldn't put it down.  One article that particularly got me interested, was Lure of the Gods for Warhammer Fantasy, where the editor was gradually creating a Chaos army for Fantasy.  The whole idea of assembling, then painting and playing with your own personal army was the hook.  Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers encouraged me even more, so that Christmas I put the Warhammer Fantasy box set on my list.

I assembled all the Orcs as quickly as I could and my wife even started making and painting some of the Empire figures, but she lost patience with them quite soon.  Once I had made and painted the Orcs in the box set, I got some goblin wolf riders too for the army and then decided I needed to collect a different army, so I could get my gamer friend Ian over to play some games.  (I was still hopeful that my wife would continue with the Empire figures.)  WD 274 had included a battle report with Dark Elves vs Chaos, which the Dark Elves won.  So I decided on the Druchii.  After what seemed a long time planning, I invited Ian over for the evening to play a game.  Unfortunately, Ian got put off as soon as I mentioned the word 'magic', as he is more into more authetnic, historical games, like Risk.

Undeterred, I got chatting with a pupil at the school where I teach, and between us we came up with the idea of setting up a school club every Tuesday for an hour and a half.  I soon had a fairly regular range of opponents all playing Warhammer Fantasy against my Dark Elves.  The Club is still going today, but now almost entirely with 40K players.  There has been a resurgence in LOTR recently, but there have been no Fantasy games for a while.  Quinn has even visited the Club to help encourage the players even more.