Warhammer

Hi do any of you play warhammer fantasy ?
A friend has the island of blood set and asked me to have a go, she is new to it too, I have always wanted to play and I now have some spare time 🙂 so if im going to have a go what do I need to know ? we will be going to gamesworkshop for some lessons and I have looked at some info on the tinterweb ( what websites should I be looking for/at )
How do you go about picking an army apart from it looking nice ( I have borrowed her set of high elves for now ) ?
Hope someone can point me in the right direction 🙂
Vic

How do you go about picking an army apart from it looking nice

That’s probably the best option. If you’re really serious about it I’m sure that there are types that have a slight edge over others. Dark Elves seemed to be hard to beat when I played.

Going to Games Workshop is probably the right way to go to start though.

Caveat – I haven’t played for over 20 years but having recently sold all my figures and looked into it a bit, it hasn’t fundamentally changed.

How do you go about picking an army apart from it looking nice ( I have borrowed her set of high elves for now ) ?

My 12 year old self would say you can stop looking as you’ve already found the best – I haven’t played since I discovered booze and girls a few years later.

I chose them at the time because someone offered me a shoebox full unpainted for a tenner.

I dabbled in my teens, but never collected an army. I much preferred the painting.

My eldest plays Warhammer 40K. It’s the collecting and painting he is more interested in. He is very good at the painting too.

Games Workshop store would be a good starter for the basics of game play, but be very prepared for the hard sell. EVERYTHING is extra. As a hobby it’s second only to hard drug addiction in terms of cost.

Also be prepared to be surrounded by nerdy geeky teenage boys / men who will have trouble speaking to girls. You are a girl, right? Have fun.

She wants to play with your fantasy warhammer? Sounds like a keeper.

I used to love almost everything about Warhammer/40k when I was little – collecting the figures, painting, reading the rulebooks and all the extra blurb – except actually playing the games. Which are terrible.

Some people enjoy rolling endless dice and consulting tables and charts but there are so many better wargames out there now, which are much simpler/more fun/more strategic/etc. Games Workshop games have always been like an introduction course for bookkeeping! Which is a shame, because the figures are great – especially Island of Blood, they look awesome.

Basically if you like collecting/modelling/painting/spending huge amounts of money then fair enough, if you want to play a decent board/war game then definitely look somewhere else.

If it’s just a way of getting into her knickers though, game on!

An excuse to post one of my favourite Viz cartoons:

Took my lad into Games Workshop in Leeds this weekend because we had 10 minutes to kill. We were staggered at both the poor personal hygiene of the denizens, and the price of the kit. I thought Lego was expensive, but this is something else!

Yes I am a girl bigblackshed 🙂 and I know what you mean about the hard sell ! and we did get some chaps having trouble speaking to us which was quite funny 🙂 I do like painting the figures (not very well but good enough for me )

Yep, BBT came straight to my mind too 🙂

OP, I admire your bravery…

Made me chuckle CaptainFlashheart 🙂

Been selling my stuff on ebay (which reminds me – got more to sell), but got through to the finals of the Golden Demon Awards back in 19XX with a Skaven standard bearer.

Had a Skaven army for a while, but preferred 40k because it had guns. 🙂 The original Chaos had some wicked figures, but then they introduced Nurgle, Slannesh etc. etc. I guess Khorne is the nearest to the original ‘Chaos’ of old.

Caveat +1 – I haven’t played for over 20 years but having recently sold all my figures and looked into it a bit, it hasn’t fundamentally changed.

Edit: Flasheart, you are a bad, bad man. 😆

I suspect you’re going to find a lot to laugh about if you get into WH and meet other players 😉

I was in Forbiden Planet in Bristol on Saturday and there were about 7 guys playing what looked like a My Little Pony top trumps game 😯

I used to do a lot of warhammer stuff (and the better, less cost-intensive games like Necromunda and Blood Bowl), I still like to drop into a GW shop and see what’s what, take in the… heady atmosphere… Never likely to get back into it, not got the time or the money but I miss it.

Gaming can have a brilliant scene though, it’s not all fatbeards and wolf shirts. I think mtb gearheads are one step away from miniature gamers tbh, there’s definitely a crossover. We like tables of facts, this bike has a head angle of 66 and a ballistic skill of 4. And we are consumed by tiny yet mindboggling expensive bits of metal and plastic. MTB is the warhammer of sport.

Quite possibly the best thing to come out of GW / White Dwarf: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrud_the_Barbarian

And we are consumed by tiny yet mindboggling expensive bits of metal and plastic.

Having just sold two very old Land Raiders on ebay for £70, this pleases me. 🙂

Played Blood Bowl a bit as a kid with mates that were into it but could never get into the full-on Warhammer stuff. I’d agree with NW there’s a kind of spoddy crossover with MTB nerds though.

I liked Bloodbowl, amazing game.
Loved Space Hulk too, but the cost and arsing about put me off the huge tabletop stuff.

Still play AD&D occaisionally, all you need are a load of hideously expensive books and an imagination. 🙂
Same characters for 30 years too. 😯

PMJ, have you only just realised? 😀

Incidentally, What paintstripper for citadel acrylics on lead figs? (or plastic for that matter?) I must have a ton of money in a cardboard box in my parents’ attic, but mostly half-painted or badly painted, if I could chuck them all in a tin of thinners for a week that’d be grand…

My son used to be heavily into this, less so now – the thing that cracked me up was when you could hear him and his mates arguing over which rule (and special exception to said rule) applied in each case, which rule book was in force, it TBH sounded as if they just made the rules up as they went along (or so it seemed)..

he did get quite good at the painting of the figures, as above, which was re-assuring, as I have a collection of well painted wargaming (as in WW2 war gaming) models somewhere in my folks’ house, Tiger II tanks, rail guns, that sort of stuff.).

Happy days, never did warhammer, GW was too scene for me love my role-playing and live action stuff
Battletech took all my paper round money!

did try and get into a weekly role playing game a few years back, but I dont have the time these days, especially with kids

MTBing is a definite substitute for me though, same level of geekery relative expense and time commitments required!

What paintstripper for citadel acrylics on lead figs?

I used to use Acetone pretty successfully. Still requires a bit of scrubbing though.

I liked Bloodbowl, amazing game.

Genuinely fun and reasonably well thought out game, probably the cheapest to get into and quickest playing GW game; certainly the best.

Still play it every now and then when I can drum up some interest!

Northwind – Member
Incidentally, What paintstripper for citadel acrylics on lead figs? (or plastic for that matter?) I must have a ton of money in a cardboard box in my parents’ attic, but mostly half-painted or badly painted, if I could chuck them all in a tin of thinners for a week that’d be grand…

Not worth as much as you might expect unfortunately. I got about £70 for my lot (pretty big WH Fantasy Orc army) on ebay.

Happy with that tbh! (my battletech stuff otoh paid for my Soul frame and a pair of used Revelations… Quite happy with that!)

Well that’s ok – actually I was quite pleased too though I have seen some armies go for hundreds – really well painted though so that seems to be the big difference.

I was gutted though that my carefully preserved 2000AD collection is apparently worth sweet FA. 🙁

MTB is the warhammer of sport

+1 😉

I loved a bit of WH40K and BloodBowl when I was a nipper – unknown to me my Dad kept the lot and now FuzzheadJr#1 is developing an interest!

Space Marines FTW 😉

I was into this a while back, still have some WH40K stuff, not enough for a full game though, quite enjoyed the painting side, not very good at it though.

I thought my son would like it, hence why I kept hold of it all, but we actually enjoy playing boardgames like Severn Wonders and Carcassonne etc more, easier, quicker, more varied and basically more fun.

GW have lost over 25% in share values since friday. they’re on their way out. hold onto your stuff and sell it for a small fortune on ebay.

@Pimpmaster Jazz one of those landraiders may have made its way to me

This brings back some memories!
I cleared out my parents loft last year and found a big box of mint condition White Dwarf mags… will get round to looking through them one day which will be fun.

@Pimpmaster_Jazz – I have a vague memory of some epic battles round at Gareth’s house… 🙂

greeble – Member

GW have lost over 25% in share values since friday. they’re on their way out.

Not the first time they’ve taken a dive tbh but they’re still up over the last few years.

Northwind.

Nitromors for stripping all metal figures. Obviously anything plastic will melt.

I’ve tried dettol or the supermarket own version for removing paint from plastic figures. You have to cover them completely and add a small amount of very hot water. Carefully, because the water can melt or distort the plastic. Takes ages and is a bit hit and miss.

I found this out when my eldest first started painting. He got a lot better and then wanted to repaint all of those figures.

I’m now in the process of teaching Boy2 how to paint lizard men. Dinosaurs on dinosaurs. 🙄

Played a bit of 40K when I was at school (ie. 20y ago).

No-one’s mentioned the power gaming that turned large swathes of the gaming table into a killing zone for anything that was moved into them, and the rampant, uh, ‘liberal’ interpretation of the rules that I remember.

ratherbeintobago – sounds familiar.

Me – Eldar army. Fast, lightly armoured, minimal long-range heavy weapons, deadly up-close.

Mate – Space Marines. Slow, heavily-armoured, loads of long-range heavy weapons.

We played at his house. He set up the table in advance. Row of buildings along each edge with a huge empty space in the middle every time.

Stevo – was your mate’s army entirely composed of devastator squads too? Artillery FTW 😛

I’d like to contribute to this thread, but there are people that I work, ride and generally associate with that frequent the forum who know me in Real Life © outside of STW – so I’ll leave it at that. Needless to say I have an inner geek* that has raged inside me since I was 12 (40) – a side of me that my wife finds hugely unappealing, taking the pi55 whenever it boils to the surface!

*I do draw the line at LARP’ing, however.

Used to play AD&D, with a bunch of mates, that used to involve pitching up at one mates place, who was DM, with a bag full of stat sheets, painstakingly painted figures, rule and reference books, and beer.
After two or three bottles, the standard of game playing and competent decision making usually entered a sort of death-spiral, although generally not leading to the actual death of a favourite character.
That we left for Call of Cthulhu… 😀