I've been playing Dungeons and Dragons most of my life, and when the 4th edition rules came out, I found I suddenly needed miniatures, since it had gone battle-map. So I went to my local game store to pick some up. I wasn't a big fan of many of the Reaper line of figures my store had, but the friendly LGS salesman asked if I was interested in Malifaux. I said, "What's that?" He said, "A tabletop skirmish game that uses cards instead of dice." To which I said, "Like Warhammer, but without dice? Meh. I can't afford the Warhammer game, and if I wanted to play cards, I'd play Magic." He said, "Just check out the mini's."
As a precursor: In 2007, I started playing D&D Online. World of Warcraft was everywhere, and I like to go against the grain. At this time, I had been listening to a lot of the violin/cello band Rasputina, so I named my first character (wizard/rogue) Rasputina. BTW, I still have that toon.
So then, when I saw her box; a woman in an animated pose, wearing a furry top hat and goggles, followed around by ice mephits and a golem (this was when metal was still predominant), with the name Rasputina, I HAD to have her! She was my RPG sorcerer mini for awhile, but then I decided to check out the rules for this game she was from. I bought the rules only guide, talked my friend into getting Perdita, and we started teaching ourselves the game. (I actually gave another friend Rasputina's crew a while later to get him to play. Which worked. Only, I had to grab Seamus to make up for it.)
Since then, I've collected a "modest" collection of models, learned to paint (poorly), listen to all the podcasts, think about the game all the time, and get mad if I can't play Malifaux at least once a week.