When will 3d printing finally kill GW?

When will 3d printing finally kill GW?

Schizophrenic Conspiracy Theorist Shirt $21.68

Homeless People Are Sexy Shirt $21.68

Schizophrenic Conspiracy Theorist Shirt $21.68

  1. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    When it is as normal to get a shop to print something in resin as it is to get one to do it on paper.
    Most people aren't going to get 3D printers because they have no use for it. Only dedicated hobbyists will get one specifically for printing miniatures no matter how cheap and simple it becomes. Most of the market is not those dedicated hobbyists.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      This will be the game changer, as easy as Resin printing is nobody can be bothered with it. I'm surprised WOTC isn't pushing some subscription where you can get official D&D STL files every month, shops would start setting up printers quick for people and the pressure would then be applied to GW if they don't want to fall behind other War Games who jump at this new thing first

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      How does this work when most 3D STLs are published under licenses that disallow you from selling them? I suppose legally you're not selling the print, just time on the printer and not stocking anything. I feel like some artists would want you to pay a license fee to print their work though. But I'm just spitballing. Has there been anything on this front?

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        Most of the bigger modelers now offer buisness licenses for retailers as far as i have seen or collaborate with printing services.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      the problem is the miniatures are also too expensive now to be accessible to anyone who isn't a dedicated hobbyist. And anyone looking at the price of putting together an army of space marines will compare that to the price of a printer, and the printer is cheaper. Then add that people who have printers can then sell prints cheaper than the store bought miniatures.

      The only reason shops having 3d printers isn't common is because there isn't high enough local demand. So anyone offering 3d printing services is better off with an online service, which there are many of. You can get things printed relatively cheaply through many online services with a 1-2 week turnaround.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      You're already a dedicated hobbyist by playing tabletop, dummy. And it's not a cheap hobby either which lends credibility for more people getting into making their own miniatures if GW doesn't manage to lower their price.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      How does this work when most 3D STLs are published under licenses that disallow you from selling them? I suppose legally you're not selling the print, just time on the printer and not stocking anything. I feel like some artists would want you to pay a license fee to print their work though. But I'm just spitballing. Has there been anything on this front?

      Most of the big ones already sell shop licenses and GW will only be in trouble when every LGS has their own print room where they make minis on demand.

      The average nerd fiddling around with his 3D printer at home, hauling tons of resin and putting in countless hours into just getting the shit to work will not make a dent into GW.
      The average hobbyist has no time for another hobby to juggle, nor the room to constantly stink up their house with resin fumes.
      It's only when tabletop shops start selling this stuff that it will be a threat to GW.
      Lowkey wondering why that isnt the case yet by now.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >Lowkey wondering why that isnt the case yet by now.

        Because the RoI isn't going to be better than just selling the models they already sell.

        3-D printing is easy, but it also takes a long time, much longer than casting. So you gotta pay someone to sit there and babysit it and then you have to try to make a profit on top of that which really cuts into the point of it being cheaper than buying a model of the shelf.

        Also most stores don't just have a big empty rooms they aren't using for anything else. So if you wanted to set up a print shop you'd likely need to buy extra space or move to a new location.

        Couple all this with the fact a lot of LGS owners don't necessarily make the best decisions financially.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          >Couple all this with the fact a lot of LGS owners don't necessarily make the best decisions financially.
          But that's a reason for them to do it!

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      It's enough for a machine to appear within a friend network and now 5-10 people have access to it without having it in their homes. There are also thousands of print on demand outfits already sprung up and more every day. 3D printing isn't just going to eat GW, it's going to eat EVERYBODY.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        I forgot how kinko's destroyed barnes and noble

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Cope all you want, it's simply a fact. It's the most disruptive innovation the industry has ever experienced and it's going to bring down a whack of companies. What you think about it doesn't matter, it is simply inevitable.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            I'm sure people said that about the home printer. Or ebooks. And yet books still exist and are sold.
            People are willing to pay for the convenience of just being able to GET something.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      From personal experience, 3D printers are a lot like airbrushes. Hobbyists get one thinking it will be a game changer to help them get stuff done only for them to gather dust in a closet somewhere. For airbrushes, it is a bit of fine tuning, learning all the ins and outs of thinning properly and keeping the nozzle clean as you use it. This tends to turn off a lot of people from it as they're used to paining for 30 minutes at a time swishing their brushes in a cup of water for a few seconds for cleanup. A 3D printer, even as simple as they are to operate now requires the user to fill and clean the resin tank, troubleshoot the settings or failed calibration prints and rinse and cure the prints properly in addition to learning enough of the software to generate supports and rotate and position the printed parts on the build. You should also realize that the average IQ is only around 85 to 90 and the idea of a mass marketed item is more appealing than having to work for something original.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Pretty much this. It's surreal how little progress there's been in the last few years towards this goal, too. There's like a hundred easy ways to make your printer more convenient to use that take less than 5 minutes and no cost to set up, yet companies don't seem to be taking notes. Baffling.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        >There's like a hundred easy ways to make your printer more convenient to use that take less than 5 minutes and no cost to set up
        Elaborate

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      > midwit paypigs subsidize your hobby while you crank out cheap miniatures because you can run printstuff.exe
      Feels good

  2. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Surely by next week when you make this thread again.

  3. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    no

    A lot of GW's income comes from paint sales and IP royalties, which will not be affected by 3d printing any time soon.

    3d printing is also a lot of effort and a skill unto itself with a not insignificant up-front time and cost investment. For the cost of a printer, resin, UV lamp, buckets, ultrasonic cleaner, alcohol, PPE, etc, a person could buy an entire army. Printing with good detail takes a long time and there is a lot of cleaning up that needs to be done carefully because it involves hazardous waste. Prints can and will fail if the person doing them hasn't calibrating their settings properly or doesn't know how to properly set up supports, or gets impatient and overcrowds the print area / fricks up slice settings to make it go faster. It is a very long way away from the ease of 2d printing, and 2d printers hardly make books and art obsolete besides. It really can't be understated just how much learning and work is required for a new owner of a 3d printer to get successful prints.

    Getting decent STLs is another problem because while there are lots and lots out there, most are either shit, cost money, or are pretty much impossible to successfully print without a lot of preprocessing and/or cutting the model up.

    On the other hand, the level of detail of even low end resin printers these days is very good. Having recently bought one, I was extremely impressed once I had some successful prints.

    I think where 3d printers will be a major industrial threat is for smaller miniature manufacturers who sell specialist skirmish games like Infinity or Frostgrave. Reaper has nothing to fear on the other hand, because for the average painter or TTRPG player who wants only a single figure, 3d printing makes zero sense compared to visiting their FLGS and picking one off the shelf.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >IP royalties
      They publish their finances and they actually don't make very much at all from this. It's less than 10% of their revenue. It's almost all paints, books, and minis.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        But anon once on a particularly good year with multiple high profile releases it was 18%!

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      It won't. It will however kill off many little places and one and two person businesses.

      These. Corpos always survive everything and nothing good ever happens. Printing will kill off competition and not GW. GW won't even notice few less people buying their stuff and those people will be prohibited from playing on their tournaments and in their shops. But people will also print historical minis and fantasy ones instead of paying for them to those smaller developers. And that will hurt those smaller guys a lot.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        I find that most STL artists just copy GW. Half the time I have no interest in stuff because it's just "not 40k" stuff. Maybe it's where I'm looking, but I've been pretty disappointed with a lot of the stuff I see.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          You're not wrong.
          There are very few minis that could be recycled in Infinity or used in Old Games like Confrontation (except for Wolfen people like Big Furry Wolf apparently). Most of the stuff is either DnD oriented (Tiefling, Dragonborn, Warforged, and all that stuff) or Not!GW miniatures are meant to be played with OnePageRules and similar Not!Warhammer games.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          Don't know for what games other than 40k you want to have a 3d printer for. TTRPGs don't demand that many minis and most skirmish stuff is not too expensive to get going in terms of miniatures.
          There is only so much "not 40k" stuff because alot of people enjoy the setting and the scale of the games, but don't enjoy getting fricked by GW.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Strictly for painting cool minis. I'm not interested in playing any particular game. I'm just tired of seeing everything be riffed off of GW's art style and concepts.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              There are, and its not hard to find good artists/studios. Most of them either sell their files on MyMiniFactory, Cults3d or have a patreon. But good free files are also available.

              Just avoid the search terms that 40k printers use to search for their stuff and you should find some well made models.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            Even just in the GW circle of games, all the old Specialist games line stuff they stopped supporting but that people still play is well served by 3d printing. Especially stuff like Epic, Battlefleet Gothic and Warmaster.

            Outside of GW, there's a lot of stuff that benefits from it like Battletech, or a lot of historicals, particularly if you want niche stuff that might not even be possible to get in conventional miniatures form because they'd never sell enough to be worth casting. Also models for settings that don't get licensed out any more for wargames like Star Tre, Battlestar Galactica or Babylon 5 for some some battle stuff.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              How are people able to get rules for those games, legally? Or is it one of those wink and nod type things where GW doesn't care if you pirate the rules?

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                more the latter, communities writing inofficial revised editions of the original rules or just straight up scanning and sharing the old rulebooks. GW would only lose money if they go after these rather niche communities, because there is no revenue made from sale for games they discontinued decades ago

              • 1 year ago
                Anonymous

                For the specialist games stuff, the rulebooks all went to a 'living rulebook' state way back when GW stopped bothering, and were basically handed off to the community for further development, so they're entirely legally freely available.

                As for other things there's so god damn many wargame rulesets out there, and a lot of them are freely available. There's also a lot of stuff that's clearly designed for a particular setting but with the names changed. Or just a particular style that aligns with.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >A lot of GW's income comes from paint sales and IP royalties,
      >IP royalties,
      Lol.

      You're already a dedicated hobbyist by playing tabletop, dummy. And it's not a cheap hobby either which lends credibility for more people getting into making their own miniatures if GW doesn't manage to lower their price.

      This. If 3D printing becomes as easy as 123, people will flock to it like seagulls because customizing existing minis will be easier than ever.

  4. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    At that point they'll just sell an app where you can equip and pose your models and export stl files. It will have microtransactions for unlocking new model files.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Depending on how expensive the models are, it would be pretty cool.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        I think it would be worth a decent chunk of money per model pack as long as both the rigging of the models and the posing interface are absolute S-tier.

        • 1 year ago
          Anonymous

          It would be cool to have a Heroforge tier app for 40k to where you could pose your model and equip it with wargear options there.

          • 1 year ago
            Anonymous

            And then there could be a print-on-demand order option for normies or stl export for people with printers. Shit, they could do a partnership with a printer brand and release a limited edition mechanicus 3D printer. And sell resin through their Citadel brand.

            • 1 year ago
              Anonymous

              >stl export
              You honestly believe GW will give anyone the ability to get a digital file that can be copied and shared all across the internet at no additional cost and can be printed infinitely? How naive can you get?

  5. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It won't.
    Printer's do offer easy access to cheaper models and more customisation options and thus lower the entry barriers into the hobby as a whole. It might even cut into GWs market share but it will never kill GW or its games. If anything it keeps more people interested in GW games as it offers the ability to procure models for long time abandoned games like BFG and epic.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      The problem is 3d printing could easily be more accessible than GW games so people wanting to play Warhammer will play a cheaper alternative like OPR. Games with better gameplay have a chance to become more popular, if Warhammer was actually good people would constantly be playing and trying out different armies like this or you would see a lot of unpainted armies like you used to in the past

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        GW makes the most money from new players or whales that constantly chase the meta, there is also a smaller faction of hobbyists that don't actually play but enjoy the painting and building aspects and of course the casual beer and pretzel gamers. Out of them only the last two are drawn to 3d printing and they don't spend much money on gw products anyways except for the occasional box set or centerpiece model. I'm firmly in the last two categories and I have maybe spent 1k on GW products over the course of 20 years. Ppl like me don't make gw fat stacks of cash either way. Printing is certainly a disruptive technology and smaller companies will feel more pressure than gw but overall it will be a net positive for everyone involved if they make the right decisions.
        Thanks to printing I picked up several other games and in the instance of Bolt Action o FoW for instance the pricing of their models is competetive enough that buying the original product is often more convenient than printing. It's not worth it to spend the time supporting, printing and cleaning 100+ infantry models when you can buy a box of them for around 60 bucks when they are on sale.

  6. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    GW will kill GW and nothing else

  7. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    You would need the price of everything involved in printing the figures to be less than 25% of the cost of a full army at the very least

    You would need the service to be available in a shop as well, much like regular printers are now.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Both are already true for the most part.
      2 out of 3 lgs in my area already offer such a service and you can get a printer and enough resin for around 250$

  8. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It won't. It will however kill off many little places and one and two person businesses.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      And piracy harms the bottom line

  9. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Never because there will always be more morons that can't figure it out than there will be 3D printers.

  10. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    When recasting does

  11. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Never, you're a homosexual and the End Times are canon.

  12. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It's going to kill skirmish games that make money selling minis first.

  13. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    It won't in the same way that printers didn't kill books.

    The thing that impacts the profitability of GW is the popularity of miniatures games as a form of entertainment. The thing that would harm them is forms of entertainment that replace miniatures wargames and they already exist in a post video game market.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      People thought quartz killed the luxury wristwatch.

  14. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    test

  15. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I doubt that even a complete leak of GW's repository of stl files could kill them.
    People are already scanning and selling their models, both oop and new. You will just get another way of sidestepping GW without dealing with chinamen.

  16. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    even in a world where everyone have a 3d printer they will sell schematics, rules and lore shit...if anything their public will only grow

  17. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Who cares if it kills GW. My group and I got as far away from GamesWorkshop, while stil being able to play the futuristic grim pew-pew spaceman tabletop.
    We 3d print all of our models, we all pitch in for material and STL costs. Also started to look into other wargaming rulesets like the ones released by OnePageRules because I'm not dumping 80$ every 3-6 years just so that my rules are up to date (I'd just use Wahapedia anyway)

    Very likely the best decision we could've made, because GW prices are ubsurd, and anybody saying otherwise is just coping with the fact that they sunk a mortgage into some toy soldiers.
    The initial financial barrier of entry is higher with a 3d printer and it is a hobby in it of it self, but minis become ubsurdly cheap, once you have everything set up and running. And there are enough ressources and communities that help you guide through your first prints.
    Now I'm printing a 10-man squad of Night Lords, that don't look like dogshit and are around 6-8 bucks in resin.

    Decentrilize the fricking hobby.
    We don't need big companies, but too many idiots still enjoy getting pissed on the face by GW, WotC, etc. and thanking them for doing so.

  18. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Never Anon. Not everyone has space in their home for a chemical machine releasing toxic fumes just because a corporation making shitty plastic model need to be fricked.

  19. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    when resin don't fricking explode when bumped?

  20. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    >3D printing
    The tech isn’t there yet. Until print resolution-to-cost comes the point that prints look the same as commercial sculpts it will stay an unsuccessful niche.

    Also it could very, VERY well be that resolution in consumer-priced and sized printers will never reach that point.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      >Until print resolution-to-cost comes the point that prints look the same as commercial sculpts it will stay an unsuccessful niche.
      I dunno, anon, they're pretty close. Now obviously this is a youtube video but the close ups on these prints are pretty fantastic. https://youtu.be/Ykur5e_PmlI
      Now obviously the printer he is using is roughly $650, but give it a couple years and it'll probably be considerably cheaper. You could get a 2K printer for around $350 just three years ago, and there are 4K and 6K printers for around that price now days.

  21. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Probably not, what's more likely to happen is that 3D printers end up requiring a license in the future to operate because everyone printed 3D untraceable guns instead.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      You can legally mill AR lowers with no serial numbers. You just can't sell them.

      • 1 year ago
        Anonymous

        In the US. But that's because you live a country where the receiver is a key regulated component, and not the pressure-bearing, harder to manufacture bits.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Every single machine shop in the planet can mass produce guns if they so felt like it. None of the machines used to make mechanical parts from metal blocks are restricted.

  22. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    You know what's really been keeping GW more alive than other mini wargames?
    Back when they had posable kits with options
    Frick monopose shit.

  23. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    When I can print resin minis in my room without worrying about dying from toxic fumes

    Also when a decent 3d printer with wash station and curing chamber is going for 200 bucks and you only need to push a button and not do anything else. Making shit idiot proof is the best way to get mainstream appeal

  24. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    The FLGS I play at has their own printers and sells both 3D printed stuff and actual GW kits. I think that the two will coexist as there are pros to both.

  25. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    torrents didn't kill anything neither will 3d printers they appeal to different markets.

  26. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    So, what resolution would be close enough to replicating modern GW sculpts?

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      You can do pretty well with a 4K printer, especially with anti aliasing. I wouldn't recommend anything lower.

  27. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Same thread's been posted the last decade. probably not anytime soon.

  28. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    june 19th 2027 precisely, approximately 3pm "british" summertime but it won't be called that anymore

  29. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    I would need a better reason than "making little toy soldiers" before I buy a 3d printer

  30. 1 year ago
    Anonymous

    Anyone know where you can get high-resolution and CURRENT Warhammer models? Doing a Google search came up with zero; probably due to GW. But since at least one of you guys sound like you know of a source I thought I’d ask.

    That 8k printer might be good in spite of its very high price….but if there’s quality models for it out there it might still be worth the expense.

    • 1 year ago
      Anonymous

      Cults and MyMiniFactory are the main places you'd go. Some sculptors like Lost Kingdom and Gearguts have their own sites. I love the emang models which are all free. Their Daemons and Skaven are real gnarly and there are a lot of different poses.

Leave a Reply to Anonymous Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *