I always wanted to collect and play Warhammer 40,000. However, I never invested time to it. True is, I never entered a Games Workshop store. I always stopped in front of the store to admire the minis well painted and the spectacular scenarios, but it felt way too complicated and expensive. Too many books, rules, different factions (chapters) and I already had too many hobbies… this was before the lockdown…
Due to the imposed lockdown and hence, with more time idle at home. I decided it was time to add a new indoor hobby to my uncountable list of hobbies. The chosen one was Warhammer 40k.
After a long week of calculations, price comparison, and information gathering, I decided to start with the Command Edition (cad$ 195.00). For those that don’t know cad$ is Canadian Dollar.
If you want to know more about what is inside each starter set, follow this link: Command, Elite and Recruit sets
The Command Edition box is aimed at, of course, beginners like me. It comes with almost everything you need to start feeling the game. I said almost and I’ll explain later. You have plenty of minis from two opposing armies (Space Marines and Necrons). It is a lot of minis to assemble and paint. You also get obstacles and a nice rigid two sides cardboard terrain. For the rules, you get a mini version of the full new core rules 9th edition and a command manual. The latter provides assembly guides and missions you can start playing right away. The missions are very simple and the difficulty grows slowly. In conclusion, it is a good way to start in the W40K universe.
My first feeling when I opened the box was: Wow, so many sprues… so many microscopic parts. Nah, not going to start with that, I thought, let’s start with the reading part.
I took the rules book and manual out and closed the box. I thought, why did I buy this? The YouTube videos I watched didn’t really give me the size of the minis. Yes, they mentioned the size, but my brain didn’t visualize it. When you watch the videos you don’t think the minis are that little, but you are wrong, they are super tiny.
The calm came back when I started reading the manual and I understood how simple it was to assemble the models. It looks insane when you open the box for the first time, but when you realize that the models are easy to assemble, it starts to be fun. Before I continue, let’s talk about the “almost” I mentioned before. The Command Edition has almost everything. I said almost because you need tools. You can’t take the model parts from the sprue without a sprue cutter. This tool is fundamental to avoid breaking parts or having terrible unnecessary bits of plastic on your model. So you need a cutter ASAP. Since I knew this beforehand, with my Command Edition, I also ordered the Warhammer 40K Paints + Tools box (cad$ 55.00) below.
The above box comes with 13 paints, a sprue cutter, a brush and a mouldline scraper. As you can calculate, I was already over C$250.00… I thought, I could have bought so many books with that cash… Anyways, now I had to assemble and play this game.
It took me a couple of days to assemble all the models. Keep in mind I still have other hobbies, real life responsibilities, work, family, etc… but if your life is not that busy (lucky you), you can easily assemble everything in a couple of hours. Of course it depends if you just want to assemble, or if you want to “professionally” assemble by cleaning all the little bits of plastic with your mouldline scraper and X-Acto knife (yes, the knife is another tool I recommend).
After you finished assembling your armies and spent some time admiring the beauty and perfection of your brand new minis, you are ready to try the game. Remember that you don’t need to have all your minis painted right away. You don’t need to paint them at all to try the game (I said try and not compete. You can’t come to a competition with a grey army of plastic. Your army deserves some colors, they need to be “alive and proud”!). I would recommend you to first play, then paint. At least you will know if W40K is something that you will enjoy playing or maybe just painting… why not just assemble and collect. Who knows…
Now the caveat. I said I started W40K due to the lockdown. Yes, I am stuck at home. But W40K is supposed to be played against someone else! The solo game, as I read somewhere, is like playing chest against yourself. You can do it, but it’s not really playing the game as it should. Fortunately, I have a wife (that’s the easy part). The hard part was to convince her to play with me. I was hoping she would love to play, because I was excited to try the game, and since I was excited, she should be too, no? It turns out, she wasn’t excited. To be fair, she really liked the minis and my paint job, but the first missions are very slow. I explained: “Yes, it is supposed to be slow since it’s a beginner set, it gets better moving forward”. She answered, “nah…”. This summarize my first try playing W40K. I played two missions from the beginner set…
As you can see, the lockdown made me start a new hobby, but also blocked me to play it. I could try with the kids… but the first time one of them held a mini… minutes later I was gluing some broken parts. Maybe not a good idea, I thought.
Therefore, I decided to spend the rest of the lockdown collecting ($$$), painting the minis and learning how to play. I am “sure” after everything will be painted, I will try to convince my wife to play again… or maybe when I am done with the painting phase, covid will be a thing of the past, the kids will be older…
Some thoughts: remember that what you see on the cover of the box are professionally painted minis. When you open the box… you see thousands of grey parts connected to sprues. So remember that in order to have an amazing army, you will have to spend a lot of time painting. Thankfully, I enjoy painting them. So before jumping into W40K and investing over C$250.00 like me, think if you would like to stay hours painting minis and I meant hours, days, months, etc! And if you are not a professional artist, don’t expect your minis to be like the models on the box… you will need time to improve, as any other hobby.
Finally, if you like the minis and if you like to paint them, be prepared to have your credit cards close to you, because you will use it a lot! After over a month in this amazing new hobby, I already bought a multitude of Citadel paints, I got another box (Indomitus), I read three books from the Horus Heresy saga (two more on the way) and I visit my local online store every day to see what I should buy next. And… I only painted 3 Space Marines Intercessors so far… :0)
In summary: W40K is an amazing hobby where you can have fun assembling, painting, playing and collecting. Some people only like to paint, others to paint and play, and others to collect boxes with unpainted armies. I strongly recommend you read the lore. It looks confusing at first, but after you dive in the W40K universe, you really want to devour everything you can.
This was my first post related to Warhammer 40,000. As I advance on my new hobby, I will share more information, thoughts and lore. So if you are a beginner or just interested in starting this hobby, don’t forget to bookmark this blog and don’t hesitate to shoot me a message.