I’ve been into Warhammer pretty much all my life on and off. I remember getting my first box of Warhammer from a toy store in my local village.
Going in and looking at the box of Eldar Guardians (Thinking it was pre-built), my first impression was “wow – where has this been all my life?!” … until I got home and opened the box and saw the piece of unbuilt plastic. Luckily this didn’t deter me. I got some super glue and some of my dad’s cutters and sat at the dining room table and built my first models. I’m not sure whether the rush came from building, or from the superglue fumes, but I was hooked!
After they were built and sat on the table, my addiction started. I got my dad to take me back to get some Dire Avengers (my first metal models, well, the heads at least). Then one thing led to another and over the next few years, I eventually had a big Eldar army, enough to battle with.
I remember my first game – I had no idea what I was doing, hadn’t read any rules, didn’t even have a tape measure. I played a lad who had Necrons, we just made stuff up and just played “toy soldiers” until I was getting battered and tried to call in a huge ship destroyer. At this point another player overheard me and lectured me for at least 20 mins saying how I can’t do that and I need x and y and z. This was when I realised I didn’t like the “battling” so I collected and painted.
After a few years my collection got bigger. I started collecting the old Lord of the Rings Middle Earth magazines and just played soldiers with myself and “play battles”. Then eventually I just got bored and they ended up in the loft (or bin, as my parents got sick of them being everywhere. bye-bye Eldar!)
Fast-forward about 10 years, I bought Thunder and Blood Age of Sigmar Starter and got back into the hobby, but this time a different side Age of Sigmar, not 40k. I built these up and pained them (awfully).
As you can imagine, the addiction kicked in again and out of the loft came all of my old Middle Earth figures. I really just looked at them on my shelves and painted now and again (still no battles).
Mortal realms! This was the start of something beautiful. I started up the Mortal Realms magazines and Warhammer was pouring in weekly, starting my love of the ghostly Nighthaunt. One thing led to another and before I knew it, I had a few armies.
Present-day, at the time of writing this I have currently
4-5k of Nighthaunt
- 4-5k of Nighthaunt
- 2-3k of Kruleboyz
- 2kish of Tzeentch
- 925 Lumineth
- 2k Thousand Sons
- Archaon
- Nagash
- Plus pretty much all the Warhammer quests
Bit of a jump in 3 years?
I’ve been playing Age of Sigmar with friends for about 2 years now and absolutely love it. After dabbling with 40k before I got into the Mortal Realms (as I bought some Thousand Sons) I realised the AoS rules are far superior in every way, much easier to learn and just so much more streamlined.
With having so many armies you can imagine playing them all is hard, especially when I always gravitate back to Nighthaunt. I’ve barely played Tzeentch because when I had them they were meta and I didn’t want to take a meta army to play my friends, so they got shelved. I bought Kruleboyz because they looked utterly amazing and I’ve played them quite a few times but due to their mechanics, they are very hard to play.
So, for years I mainly played my close friend (shout out to Kieron Webber), he mains Stormcast and Sylvaneth which (unfortunately for me) are both absolute beasts against Nighthaunt. So for a long time, I pretty much lost every match I had, it even got to one point where I spat out my dummy and said I’m not playing Sylvaneth (bloody Kurnoths!)
We played many games of Nighthaunt vs Stormcast. These were fun close matches and really got into the late rounds, and both of us honed our craft and became better players.
Then AoS 3.0 hit, and all new rules to learn! This took some getting used to but we got there, still mainly playing different lists from night haunt and Stormcast both really enjoying it. Then the Stormcast tome hit.
My win rate became none existent and Nighthaunt just crumbled, so I changed to Kruleboyz for a bit, I absolute love-hate the army but they are so hard to play. I’ve won quite a few games and lost quite a few – I’ve found that if you don’t do mega damage first turn you are going to struggle.
I’m going to speed up a little now because if you’ve kept up this far you’re better than me, I fell asleep 20 mins back.
Kieron, his partner, my brother and I went to Warhammer one beautiful Friday for Kieron’s birthday. Best day I’ve had for years, I felt like a little boy going into Toys R Us for the first time. I was giddy all day, then I spotted Lumineth and fell in love and went home and bought a small army.
Which brings me to now! As a thank you for sticking with me this long, you can take a look at some of my ugly paintings. You’ll be seeing more of me soon, drop me a comment below if there’s anything you want to hear about!
