I bought a case on release day. The first one I opened was Jacqueline Tadaka in her Legionnaire That same day I also opened Kendrick Fetladral in his Mad Cat III, Meghann Tenclay in her Catapult, and finally William "Pyro" Peterson in his Firestarter. Those were the only unique figures I opened from Dark Age. I was 17 years old at the time. I had saved up my money in anticipation for the set to come out and couldn't afford to buy more than a booster here or there until Fire for Effect to come out.
The first scenario that came out was Steel Wolves vs Swordsworn. I brought an army for each faction depending on which side I was assigned. One led by Kendrick Fetladral, and the other by Jacqueline Tadaka. Not because I felt those would be the best possible builds for the scenario, but because I wanted to use my unique figures and built armies around them.
The game wasn't very popular where I was living. At the Scenario were only three other players. I ended up winning because Jacqueline Tadaka was too much for the other players who had only bought the starter and a few boosters with some combination the those yellow construction/agriculture/mining/forestry mechs. The next time around only one person showed up and there was no event. The store didn't even try to hold a third one.
I ended up just playing casual games with my buddies. We actually ended up playing many 4 way battles on my friend's large kitchen table with my figures. I printed out black & white terrain pieces and then used packing tape to cover them so they wouldn't tear from use.
I sold my collection back in 2005 or so. It turns out some of the uniques still had some value and I got heavily into Magic: the Gathering, which was crazy popular in California and still is. "If you can't beat them, join them." Now that I am 30, I have been bitten by the nostalgia bug and found this forum. I am looking online to buy some figures. I think I am going to focus on Swordsworn and Dragon's Fury as enemy factions to fight against each other. I miss that first unique, Jacqueline Tadaka. I don't know how good she was in competitive play, but 10 speed with 5 Armor Piercing damage was nothing to sneeze at, all in a pretty cheap cost. In one turn she could run 20 inches (nearly two feet) and then spend the next turn shooting that big gun. After two points of heat, she was in trouble, but not as much trouble as my opponents were in. I often supported her with battle armor and my VV1 ranger rounded the points out. The VV1 was terrible, but it was used to drive around the map and spend time in deployment zones collecting VC3 points.