Do you collect the books as well then?
My friend has also been playing for several years. I was thinking of getting into it and building a Dark Elf army but never got round to it. One really good thing about warhammer as opposed to stuff like YGO and Pokemon TCGs is that Games Workshop is everywhere. There's one in every major city and in most towns too, so finding likeminded people to interact with is simple. My friend spent a fair bit of time painting his armies and they look really good because of it. I imagine it takes a good few hours to paint a whole army properly.