Bloody hell, I finally decide to leave the Lolcow section of the forums and find a nice little thread devoted to 40k.
I love the fuck out of this franchise, even with how badly GW has mishandled it in the past. It's a damn fine universe where the bad guys are militant fascist religious zealots who have no qualms about torturing or murdering you and the good guys are too!
(Slight :powerlevel: here)
First time I ever played was when I was 9. My uncle and his friend were playing a game in his den (Which was my grandmother's basement, at the time he was living with her having gotten out of jail after getting popped for trying to sell pot to a cop) and I was instantly fascinated. I was rather keen on playing chess at the time, and this looked like an obsessively detailed themed chess game.
Well, after a week of watching few of their battles I finally asked if I could play. They both agreed that I could and my uncle put me in command of a squad of 4 Ultramarines.
Long story short, my uncle's friend underestimated my understanding of the game and the tactics involved. I did some pretty severe damage with those 4 Ultrasmurfs, despite losing 3 of them in the battle. My uncle won.
Instantly hooked. All my allowance was then spend on miniatures that I spent hours painting, only to strip the paint and paint them again once I didn't fucking suck at it.
Eventually I started putting together my own custom army that was basically the Lost 2nd Legion. I even managed to lorefuck the whole thing and start including altered miniatures from other franchises like Battletech due to the backstory of my legion. Even went so far as to make an Ork Space Marine (He wasn't really an Ork, just a very mindfucked 2nd Legion Astartes Terminator who was utterly convinced of his Orkiness)
Fuck I miss this game, but I really don't like the prices GW currently sells a lot of individual models for. But with the advances in affordable 3D printing I may well decide to get into it again.