This was a very enjoyable read for me. I’ve never played 40K but have always been impressed with the craftsmanship and dedication of the community.
I remember a lot of the early hype around 3D printing, most of which hasn’t panned out where the consumer-hobbyist-level machines are concerned. My local game shop makes a lot of cool 3D printed stuff and sells it online or at cons, but even Etsy is now cracking down on prints of “commodity” STLs. IIRC under their new policy, you can’t sell a print you didn’t design yourself. This is ostensibly to cut down on the huge quantity of identical articulated toys.
But the bigger takeaway (i.e., the kit car Ferrari analogy), is similar to how I’ve been thinking about AI image generation lately. You can walk down the streets of New York and buy a counterfeit Birkin bag or Rolex from a street vendor. Are knockoffs “disrupting” the market? I guess, in a way. But I think they also make the authentic item _more_ valuable by being so cheap and fake by comparison. AI-generated “Ghibli” pictures are the same.
This was a great read. It reminds me slightly of the book Alchemy by Rory Sutherland. I used to play Warhammer (Fantasy, not 40k) so it was really nice to reminisce.
This was a great read, and perfectly conveyed the combination of passion and anger of every WH player I’ve ever met has had.
Given the time, it’s hard not to view this same argument through the lens of AI. People who love crafting their creative works will still do it, even when AI can do it. They will still inspire others because they demonstrate what humans can do, and what we can aspire to.
His description of resin printing, especially the meth lab comparison and
> At one point, he said the phrase "you really don't want to get this on your skin" with the casual tone of someone who had definitely gotten it on his skin.
are spot on.
There are currently 10 3d printers in my household and there have been maybe 30 unique ones in total over the past 2 years but after the first 3-4 months of resin printing that was given to a friend and never revisited.
I felt like it couldn’t be done casually and even moderately safe at home but needed some sort of lab with good ventilation. We Jerry rigged a hood using a portable enclosure meant to grow weed in while routing the smell out of your dorm through a window and wore proper PPE the whole time but I still felt sketched out
3D printed miniatures are best printed not on FDM machines (the kind most hobbiest have) but on SLA machines. I'm not a gamer, but for Model Railroading, FDM 3D printing has changed the way a lot of modeling of architecture is done. For printing little HO scale people, SLA is a must -- and it's too messy/smelly/dangerous for me to deal with.
I don't know Warhammer that well, but I see a lot of 3D printing for historical wargames. Seems popular for naval wargames for instance, but I saw many printed tanks as well. Not so much small scale infantry perhaps. There are so many very specific models that can be needed for historical scenarios that mass-production can't provide everything. Some companies of course print models on demand now, but others sell STL files.
I'm one of those small sculptors in this space, and I chuckled at the comparison to a Meth lab. Honestly though, my own printer is more like a grow-op. It's all contained in a half size grow tent in order to contain the mess, and easily vent the vapors. It definitely looks sus, and I'm probably on a watchlist for all the gear I've bought.
Look, 3d printing is almost a psychological thing. You almost nailed it but skipped right past it.
The term proxy used to delineate between wysiwyg and non-wysiwyg. "I am using this chess piece as a marine" The Deoderant Bottle Gravtank from White Dwarf - Not a proxy. They made it custom rules. It was a miniature, and it was furnished with love and care. This culture is now only found in like, airfix or custom scifi modelling.
Modern GW has waged a psychological war on these things, encouraging game stores to do the same.
Proxy is now used, as you have demonstrated, to cover anything not GW. Even if its wysiwyg, its looked down upon, otherised. GW stores have even gone as far as preventing people from playing official GW minis that are end of life in their stores. Soon these will be referred to as like "official proxies" or something.
I have 2 local non GW stores.
Store 1: Owner does not permit unofficial minis in the store at all. Will rant about this policy to anyone who listens. He says there's no way he makes money on printed minis so screw them (I was in the store to purchase paints and brushes and so on for my printed minis when I caught this rant)
Store 2: Has 3 3d printers, sells printing services, sells resin. Doesnt give a crap.
But it doesn't matter in either case, because 40k players are policing each other. GW has shifted the language to otherise armies that even have converted 3d printed bits, let alone full prints.
Not to mention: 3d print resin isnt that bad. The 3d printer business makes a lot of money selling filters and tents and housings and gloves and what not at inflated prices. Some of these things are worthy, others are not. But I was using UV resins for SFX before printers caught on, and guess what, resin fx are smellier and less able to be hidden in a dark corner of your house. Not really a huge impediment. The terror about UV resin seems to be coming both from the people slinging the extra gear, and the people concerned largely with these evil "proxies".
Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but GW mostly makes money from new players. Old grizzled angry veterans arent their bread and butter anyway.
Give it 10 years, let more stores embrace 3d printing, let some more permissive games take hold, and then you might have a chance at killing gee dubs. But they will still be selling huge expensive kits to 12 year olds using mums credit card.
I think his main point, and what can’t be overcome without a cultural shift is on these paragraphs:
> For those in the 3D printing crowd who weren't big into playing, just painting, part of the point is showing off your incredible work to everyone else. Except nobody wants to see a 3D-printed forgery of an official model. It's like showing up to a car show with a kit car that looks like a Ferrari. Sure, it's impressive in its own way, but it's not really a Ferrari, and everyone knows it, and now we're all standing around pretending we don't know it, and it's uncomfortable for everyone.
> Once someone figured out one of your minis was 3D printed, shops generally wouldn't feature it in their display cases. So there was no reason for people who were going to put in 10+ hours per model to skip paying for the official real models. If you're going to invest that much time, you want the real thing. You want the little Games Workshop logo on the base. You want to be able to say "yes, I paid $60 for this single figure" with the quiet dignity of someone who has made peace with their choices
They want the “real thing”. I.e. the overpriced chunk of plastic a company managed to inflate the price of.
It is about the ritual. They want all the love, skill and time they put into this craft to be poured on this talisman. They don’t want it to be wasted on the cheap unofficial knockoffs.
It’s interesting how companies in consumerist societies manage to create artificial value by engaging communities in these type of branded religions (the article used that word, and I think is apt)
>I think his main point, and what can’t be overcome without a cultural shift is on these paragraphs:
GW isnt a ferrari in this scenario. They have come a long way, but third party providers like Scibor, who preexist 3d printing, are still leagues better. Not to mention all of the third party support for their less supported lines, like Warhammer Fantasy. You would 100% put a scibor mini in your display case.
Its not that the 3d print isnt a ferrari, its that it specifically does everything GW's minis do, often better. So the culture has been designed to hate on it.
>If you're going to invest that much time, you want the real thing.
I mean this would tend to exclude even conversions. And people put 100s of hours into those.
>You want to be able to say "yes, I paid $60 for this single figure" with the quiet dignity of someone who has made peace with their choices
This seems like he is trying to enforce the culture, not defend it. I dont care what I paid as long as the result is good.
>It is about the ritual. They want all the love, skill and time they put into this craft to be poured on this talisman. They don’t want it to be wasted on the cheap unofficial knockoffs.
Thats the thing, lots of these miniatures arent knockoffs. Many are. But many exceed, or provide alternatives to GW. This is mostly just a confession note about being addicted to a single company rather than participating in a hobby. GW loves and cultivates this mindset.
Great essay! I have never played WH40k but have been quite into Magic the Gathering at times.
Before I started playing I asked a friend what was to stop me just printing or photocopying cards (even in the 90s this would have been possible)
I understood how silly that question was when I felt the pleasure of actually owning a high quality product. Sure, I could spend the time to make my own cards but playing the game is only part of the fun.
Warhammer and MtG get mocked for being expensive but in reality they are comparable to cars, sports, fashion, and all the other things humans spend their disposable income on.
I 3D print items that aren't mass produced, either because I'm one of few people who wants them so there's no market or I'm the only person who wants them because they're customized for me.
Most reasonable 3D printer users don't believe they'll replace mass production. They use them for parts you can't buy.
I fully agree with the article, and I have experienced the exact same pain with resin printing, which has been collecting dust since my first printing streak.
But I have to say that the comparison between the time investment in resin printing and preparing official Warhammer models for painting is very incomplete.
Ultimately, if everything goes well with the printing (and it usually does), the whole process will take around an hour of active time (preparing + post-processing) a plate of 20-30 models (however many you can fit). It will DEFINITELY take longer than this to get the same level of quality from plastic sprues. Removing the pieces from the sprues, removing the mold lines, filling the worst ones, etc. is extremely time consuming, and it is really the most boring part of the hobby.
It took me at least 20 hours to prepare around 100 models (small ones), when it would take only 4 or 5 when printing them. This time saving is time you can reinvest in painting.
I also still believe that at some point, with advancements in printers (which happen consistently year over year), but especially in resin formulations, we will reach a state where it will be safe (or at least much safer than it is now) to 3D print models using resin, at which point it will indeed have a large impact on Games Workshop's business.
Some people play warhammer to get outreache to sell their 3D printed components, which probably started out as a "hey look at me" but like all side gigs can, has become foundational in who they are, and now occupies them more than cameraderie or winning.
This game and Shadowrun where always meant to be either fully simulated in software or at least calculated turn by turn even on table top. It would eat up too much time otherwise.
I am a new initiate into the world of 3d printing for minis. I decided a resin printer does not suit my small apartment lifestyle, and got an Elegoo Centauri Carbon FDM printer. It's pretty plug-and-play, there was very little setup required.
www.reddit.com/r/FDMminiatures/ will give you an idea of the level of quality you can reach. With the smallest 0.2mm nozzle, will it reach resin levels? Close but not really. Is it good enough for me to screw around with, improve my painting skills, and play casual games? Certainly.
Also I subbed to the OnePageRules patreon, they offer alternative minis and rulebooks that are very similar to GW, with an alternate for fantasy and 40K, as well as fleet battles and other stuff.
I'm part mechanical engineer and I 3D print things on a near daily basis. My job would be a lot slower and more cumbersome without it. Mind you this is all FDM.
I only played with resin printers briefly, and not only do they produce extremely brittle and off-dimenension parts, they are extremely messy and use chemicals that you really should think twice or three times or four times about having under the same roof as the one you sleep in.
With how useful FDM is to me, it seems really strange that resin printing's killer app has been "miniatures", like it's the niche it fell into after everyone bought one and discovered they aren't great for much else. I am in disbelief that people would willingly deal with resin printers just to do miniatures, like there's no way it could possibly be worth it even if you really like that hobby. It feels wrong even to refer to both under the same umbrella of 3D printing.
That said, if you're not regularly designing parts you need made and/or aren't a CAD user, I don't see much use in the average person having a 3D printer (I have 5 btw)
I've actually never heard a prediction for a "self driving car in every drive way within 5 years" and I can't think of a single context where that claim wouldn't be immediately ridiculed.
They are in some people's driveway. That's the remarkable part anyway
> For those who had friends in high school—and I'm not being glib here, this is a genuine demographic distinction—40k is a game where two or more players invest roughly $1,000 to build an army of small plastic figures. You then trim excess plastic with a craft knife (cutting yourself at least twice, this is mandatory), prime them, paint them over the course of several months, and then carefully transport them to an LGS (local game shop) in foam-lined cases that cost more than some people's luggage.
> Another fellow dork will then play you on a game board roughly the size of a door, covered in fake terrain that someone spent 40 hours making to look like a bombed-out cathedral. You will both have rulebooks with you containing as many pages as the Bible and roughly as open to interpretation. Wars have been started over less contentious texts.
54 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 53.9 ms ] threadI remember a lot of the early hype around 3D printing, most of which hasn’t panned out where the consumer-hobbyist-level machines are concerned. My local game shop makes a lot of cool 3D printed stuff and sells it online or at cons, but even Etsy is now cracking down on prints of “commodity” STLs. IIRC under their new policy, you can’t sell a print you didn’t design yourself. This is ostensibly to cut down on the huge quantity of identical articulated toys.
But the bigger takeaway (i.e., the kit car Ferrari analogy), is similar to how I’ve been thinking about AI image generation lately. You can walk down the streets of New York and buy a counterfeit Birkin bag or Rolex from a street vendor. Are knockoffs “disrupting” the market? I guess, in a way. But I think they also make the authentic item _more_ valuable by being so cheap and fake by comparison. AI-generated “Ghibli” pictures are the same.
Given the time, it’s hard not to view this same argument through the lens of AI. People who love crafting their creative works will still do it, even when AI can do it. They will still inspire others because they demonstrate what humans can do, and what we can aspire to.
> At one point, he said the phrase "you really don't want to get this on your skin" with the casual tone of someone who had definitely gotten it on his skin.
are spot on.
There are currently 10 3d printers in my household and there have been maybe 30 unique ones in total over the past 2 years but after the first 3-4 months of resin printing that was given to a friend and never revisited.
I felt like it couldn’t be done casually and even moderately safe at home but needed some sort of lab with good ventilation. We Jerry rigged a hood using a portable enclosure meant to grow weed in while routing the smell out of your dorm through a window and wore proper PPE the whole time but I still felt sketched out
There's a long way to go.
Look, 3d printing is almost a psychological thing. You almost nailed it but skipped right past it.
The term proxy used to delineate between wysiwyg and non-wysiwyg. "I am using this chess piece as a marine" The Deoderant Bottle Gravtank from White Dwarf - Not a proxy. They made it custom rules. It was a miniature, and it was furnished with love and care. This culture is now only found in like, airfix or custom scifi modelling.
Modern GW has waged a psychological war on these things, encouraging game stores to do the same.
Proxy is now used, as you have demonstrated, to cover anything not GW. Even if its wysiwyg, its looked down upon, otherised. GW stores have even gone as far as preventing people from playing official GW minis that are end of life in their stores. Soon these will be referred to as like "official proxies" or something.
I have 2 local non GW stores.
Store 1: Owner does not permit unofficial minis in the store at all. Will rant about this policy to anyone who listens. He says there's no way he makes money on printed minis so screw them (I was in the store to purchase paints and brushes and so on for my printed minis when I caught this rant)
Store 2: Has 3 3d printers, sells printing services, sells resin. Doesnt give a crap.
But it doesn't matter in either case, because 40k players are policing each other. GW has shifted the language to otherise armies that even have converted 3d printed bits, let alone full prints.
Not to mention: 3d print resin isnt that bad. The 3d printer business makes a lot of money selling filters and tents and housings and gloves and what not at inflated prices. Some of these things are worthy, others are not. But I was using UV resins for SFX before printers caught on, and guess what, resin fx are smellier and less able to be hidden in a dark corner of your house. Not really a huge impediment. The terror about UV resin seems to be coming both from the people slinging the extra gear, and the people concerned largely with these evil "proxies".
Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but GW mostly makes money from new players. Old grizzled angry veterans arent their bread and butter anyway.
Give it 10 years, let more stores embrace 3d printing, let some more permissive games take hold, and then you might have a chance at killing gee dubs. But they will still be selling huge expensive kits to 12 year olds using mums credit card.
> For those in the 3D printing crowd who weren't big into playing, just painting, part of the point is showing off your incredible work to everyone else. Except nobody wants to see a 3D-printed forgery of an official model. It's like showing up to a car show with a kit car that looks like a Ferrari. Sure, it's impressive in its own way, but it's not really a Ferrari, and everyone knows it, and now we're all standing around pretending we don't know it, and it's uncomfortable for everyone.
> Once someone figured out one of your minis was 3D printed, shops generally wouldn't feature it in their display cases. So there was no reason for people who were going to put in 10+ hours per model to skip paying for the official real models. If you're going to invest that much time, you want the real thing. You want the little Games Workshop logo on the base. You want to be able to say "yes, I paid $60 for this single figure" with the quiet dignity of someone who has made peace with their choices
They want the “real thing”. I.e. the overpriced chunk of plastic a company managed to inflate the price of.
It is about the ritual. They want all the love, skill and time they put into this craft to be poured on this talisman. They don’t want it to be wasted on the cheap unofficial knockoffs.
It’s interesting how companies in consumerist societies manage to create artificial value by engaging communities in these type of branded religions (the article used that word, and I think is apt)
GW isnt a ferrari in this scenario. They have come a long way, but third party providers like Scibor, who preexist 3d printing, are still leagues better. Not to mention all of the third party support for their less supported lines, like Warhammer Fantasy. You would 100% put a scibor mini in your display case.
Its not that the 3d print isnt a ferrari, its that it specifically does everything GW's minis do, often better. So the culture has been designed to hate on it.
>If you're going to invest that much time, you want the real thing.
I mean this would tend to exclude even conversions. And people put 100s of hours into those.
>You want to be able to say "yes, I paid $60 for this single figure" with the quiet dignity of someone who has made peace with their choices
This seems like he is trying to enforce the culture, not defend it. I dont care what I paid as long as the result is good.
>It is about the ritual. They want all the love, skill and time they put into this craft to be poured on this talisman. They don’t want it to be wasted on the cheap unofficial knockoffs.
Thats the thing, lots of these miniatures arent knockoffs. Many are. But many exceed, or provide alternatives to GW. This is mostly just a confession note about being addicted to a single company rather than participating in a hobby. GW loves and cultivates this mindset.
Before I started playing I asked a friend what was to stop me just printing or photocopying cards (even in the 90s this would have been possible)
I understood how silly that question was when I felt the pleasure of actually owning a high quality product. Sure, I could spend the time to make my own cards but playing the game is only part of the fun.
Warhammer and MtG get mocked for being expensive but in reality they are comparable to cars, sports, fashion, and all the other things humans spend their disposable income on.
But I have to say that the comparison between the time investment in resin printing and preparing official Warhammer models for painting is very incomplete.
Ultimately, if everything goes well with the printing (and it usually does), the whole process will take around an hour of active time (preparing + post-processing) a plate of 20-30 models (however many you can fit). It will DEFINITELY take longer than this to get the same level of quality from plastic sprues. Removing the pieces from the sprues, removing the mold lines, filling the worst ones, etc. is extremely time consuming, and it is really the most boring part of the hobby.
It took me at least 20 hours to prepare around 100 models (small ones), when it would take only 4 or 5 when printing them. This time saving is time you can reinvest in painting.
I also still believe that at some point, with advancements in printers (which happen consistently year over year), but especially in resin formulations, we will reach a state where it will be safe (or at least much safer than it is now) to 3D print models using resin, at which point it will indeed have a large impact on Games Workshop's business.
Some people play warhammer for the cameraderie.
Some people play warhammer to get outreache to sell their 3D printed components, which probably started out as a "hey look at me" but like all side gigs can, has become foundational in who they are, and now occupies them more than cameraderie or winning.
www.reddit.com/r/FDMminiatures/ will give you an idea of the level of quality you can reach. With the smallest 0.2mm nozzle, will it reach resin levels? Close but not really. Is it good enough for me to screw around with, improve my painting skills, and play casual games? Certainly.
Also I subbed to the OnePageRules patreon, they offer alternative minis and rulebooks that are very similar to GW, with an alternate for fantasy and 40K, as well as fleet battles and other stuff.
I only played with resin printers briefly, and not only do they produce extremely brittle and off-dimenension parts, they are extremely messy and use chemicals that you really should think twice or three times or four times about having under the same roof as the one you sleep in.
With how useful FDM is to me, it seems really strange that resin printing's killer app has been "miniatures", like it's the niche it fell into after everyone bought one and discovered they aren't great for much else. I am in disbelief that people would willingly deal with resin printers just to do miniatures, like there's no way it could possibly be worth it even if you really like that hobby. It feels wrong even to refer to both under the same umbrella of 3D printing.
That said, if you're not regularly designing parts you need made and/or aren't a CAD user, I don't see much use in the average person having a 3D printer (I have 5 btw)
They are in some people's driveway. That's the remarkable part anyway
> Another fellow dork will then play you on a game board roughly the size of a door, covered in fake terrain that someone spent 40 hours making to look like a bombed-out cathedral. You will both have rulebooks with you containing as many pages as the Bible and roughly as open to interpretation. Wars have been started over less contentious texts.