Would you play against a 3D printed army ?

[Hive Bahamut]

Oh apparently they are "war dogs" file schematic if that helps anyone who is interested.

Their heads look like hound helmets with gas masks. Very unique idea.

I think I am more excited about 3d terrain than models. Terrain is what the game lacks.

[yoritomo]

Aug 23, 2020 17:24:11 GMT infornography said:

I feel I should point out again that 3D printing an army is WAY MORE time investment than assembling GW kits. If your objection is that they are quickly and cheaply just printing what they want to field at any given point you are probably way off base. It isn't quick and it isn't cheap. It just is spending the time and money differently.

I can see objecting if they have an entire poorly printed army or a 3D printed army that is just scans of GW models, but I doubt you would ever run into this hypothetical beast.
Anyone 3D printing an entire army is putting in a tremendous amount of time and money and they are probably doing it in large part to get a unique looking army. A few centerpiece units and vehicles/terrain can end up being substantially cheaper than GW, but smaller more detailed vehicles and infantry are INCREDIBLY difficult to get to come out well, even with a relatively good 3D printer. Just calibrate your expectations accordingly.

You can point out whatever you want, you're not going to change the perception that printing anything is quick and easy.

[hivefleetkerrigan]

Aug 23, 2020 17:47:11 GMT Hive Bahamut said:

Oh apparently they are "war dogs" file schematic if that helps anyone who is interested.

Their heads look like hound helmets with gas masks. Very unique idea.

I think I am more excited about 3d terrain than models. Terrain is what the game lacks.

A friend is doing lots of 3d printing of terrain for themed boards. He's doing Mars style terrain for his ad mech and Mars style + necron ruins for his necrons.

For me, I'd probably play against a 3d printed army. I'd really like it to be themed though (custom models or custom bits/conversions, etc.). If it's a GW knock off, it feels really sleezy and I'd ask my opponent why they did that rather than getting the models themselves.

As for time for printing vs building, once you get the models figured out, printing can be done in the background whereas building your own is more time intensive.

[gigasnail]

i can see a lot of people have some strong feelings about this, but it's not really based on facts. people are both overstating the issue, and underselling the platform at the same time.

again, you will never seen 'scanned' models that are exact copies of GW products. the scanners capable of this cost as much as a small to medium sized new car. i have not once, ever, seen a scan of an exact model as an STL file. and i looked, extensively. got into an argument at work with one of the guys i used to game with, who wanted to know why i was struggling with the bad STL files and trying to find time to learn sculpting on my own and why i didn't just scan what i wanted. this path, for now, is going to be out of reach.

yes, there are some (please do not swear) tier filament printed vehicles running around. some jackass last year took a bunch of knock off custodes vehicles to some tournament last year and ended up on stream with his unpainted multicolor garbage as one shining example. and yes, if someone shows up at the local store on friday night with that trash you could probably expect to reasonably give them the hairy eyeball. this sort of printer doesn't work well for 29/32mm scale models (even for large vehicles, there is simply too much work that goes into smoothing with acetone and then sanding the surface finish down), but it can build some decent terrain for pennies.

that's not really what i'm talking about though. modern SLA resin printing is a couple orders of magnitude better than that. there are some excellent hobbyist-level printers (elgoo, anycubic, and that other that the name always escapes me) are great entry level printers that will print at a usable resolution and surface finish so that you don't embarrass yourself putting the model on the table when it's done and these printers are generally $250 (sometimes lower) at this point. the next gen units are starting to show up with improvements to the LCD and UV LEDs significantly extending life and increasing screen resolution, and they only cost what those other printers did a couple of years ago. larger build area printers (the elegoo saturn, and soon the venus, for instance) are here now, letting you create parts that are more then 4X3X6" and the price point is only a couple hundred dollars more than the elegoo mars.

if you want the real high quality stuff, like what many modeling companies print their masters on before resin casting, you're still looking at a couple of thousand minimum just for the printer. but, oh, the things that are out there. it's exciting.

the two things holding hobby level printers back are the quality of the files available and the process itself.

the process itself requires picking up an entire new skillset, learning how to add supports to a model is the difference between wasting 18 hours printing and getting a usable test print. post processing involves washing in 90% alcohol and then curing in a UV chamber as well as removing the significant support rafts. guys this is not like removing sprue lol, we are talking sometimes hundreds of support arms. afterwards you have to clean up the surface and fill in any holes from pulling the supports off and you are still dealing with resin and all that that entails. there are a hundred things that can go wrong and i had roughly 90% of what i was trying to print fail, and ran out of time to mess with it. i'm maybe going to give it another shot this week, i'm at home pending test results so after monday i'll have some time.

but if you think that 3d printing in any way saves you time or effort, you are sadly, hilariously mistaken. i cannot stress this enough.

the real kicker for me at least are the quality of the files available. most of them are simply garbage, and look like you sort of described what they were trying to print but ehhhhh it's missing the details and character that make it 40k. there are some nice guard vehicles around that are easy to find though, if that's what you're into those are easy to find. there are some decent custodes vehicles, but these are right in that uncanny valley area. i'd have to print one and see what it looks like on the table to be sure of it. i have seen a lot of bad prints of those things, even if the files look pretty slick. and hang it up if you want tyranid stuff that actually looks like tyranid stuff. there simply isn't a lot. those biovores were some of the nicer things i've seen, and the details on them are very soft. folks don't seem to do well with organic structures.

if you want the files to look right, you're going to have to put some serious time into learning to do it yourself. it's simply something i don't have time to do.

tl;dr: yes there are some trashy filament prints there. don't be that guy, this isn't 5 years ago and SLA printers for the hobbyist don't cost $5000 anymore. there are plenty of printers out there that will do perfectly acceptable work, especially in the bits department (check out pop goes the monkey for conversion kits for smash captains, and any astartes shoulder pad you could ever want, for instance).

[mattblowers]

Aug 23, 2020 19:33:43 GMT gigasnail said:

the real kicker for me at least are the quality of the files available. most of them are simply garbage, and look like you sort of described what they were trying to print but ehhhhh it's missing the details and character that make it 40k.

That was kinda my point. IF you can do it to a high level no one will bat an eye if they can't tell. However most attempts I have seen are trying to skirt GW costs and throw (please do not swear) models on the table as 'counts as'. I play in a highly competitive environment and I hate it when I roll up to a table and there are some ass hat models on the table 'because they couldn't get them from GW in time' and they are playing the latest broken list. Happens way more often than you would think. End of 8th I say tons of printed thunderfire cannons, scorpio turrets, and assault centurions (these were remarkably good but about 15% too big). I personally hate it when it's to game the system. Like I said, it's like buying a fake Rolex: a real collector can spot the fake even if it's good.

Bits on the other hand: no issue at all.

For me personally: on moral grounds I won't knowingly buy a fake as it cheats the company (in this case GW) out of their IP. Not that I haven't been caught on ebay used models from time to time.

[gigasnail]

/shrug you can take your toys and go home if that's what you want to do. i don't really understand the attitude. do you want to get a game, or do you want to pick over the models the other guy has? bad FDM low effort prints aside, what is the issue? what possible difference would it make to you if your opponent dropped $1500 extra on FW resin or $100 and twice the time and effort for effectively the same thing? or just got chinacast, which generally you can't tell the difference on once it's painted? that's muuuuuuuch less effort and a fraction of the cost and unless your opponent does a little jig and cackles about it, you'll never have any idea.

it smacks of sour grapes and bad gatekeeping to me. i'd play someone with cardboard cutouts on bases if they wanted to get a game.

[hunk]

This has been kinda of interesting seeing what all you people are saying.
I understand some of your views and Opinions but at the end of the day 3D printed models are just alternatives models. if you use or think alternatives models are fine then it should be the same for 3D printing if you only like kosher gw minis then you won’t like 3D printing. I was really asking this to see how people would react to me playing a 3D printed army when ever I decide to take my Minotaur army out of the small battles with my friends. I’m quite honestly shocked with how well they are coming out and I absolutely love the look of my minis.

If you get upset over 3D printing and 3D sculpting then you should be upset about people sculpting their own minis and making them out of green stuff and other tools is about the same only the people who made the custom 3D sculpt let their designs be used by most anyone. this all a very strange line to be crossing honestly and I think people give 3D printing a bad rap. It takes time to learn time to print time to fix prints and then time to find and sometimes even buy stls to get the results you may want . you might even have to load up blender and Frankenstein parts together sculpt your own stls from others to get a desired look or feel You were trying to accomplish. I think it’s something that will continue to become a part of the wargaming scene for a while especially with how the technology is getting better.

I hope you guys can at least look at it with an open mind and try to work with people thank you for your time

[yoritomo]

I don't think you understand people's problems with 3D printed/alternate minis.

First off, nobody sculpts an entire army out of green stuff. You can sculpt 10, maybe 15 models in an army. Anything more than that and I'm willing to bet they are casting models and not sculpting new ones. Even if you do apply green stuff to a whole army, you're looking at putting accents on existing models. People are okay with altering existing models because at the end of the day there was still a base model.

But let's say you do "sculpt" a model on the computer for your 3D printer. That's one model, but you have the option of hitting the print button a hundred times. There is a reason to think that this is the same as casting models. And I know you're going to point out that every time you move an arm your leg it's a new sculpt, but do you really think that people are going to buy a slightly different arm position is the same as building a model from scratch? Perception vs. Reality is not always kind.

Now we are in the realm of what people's opinion of casting models is. I can tell you right now that I believe casting models is wrong. But some people don't share that view, and that's fine, it's their choice.

I'd love to go into more depth, but I've got to get off to work. Maybe I'll revisit this later.

[mattblowers]

Aug 24, 2020 3:33:56 GMT gigasnail said:

/shrug you can take your toys and go home if that's what you want to do. i don't really understand the attitude. do you want to get a game, or do you want to pick over the models the other guy has? bad FDM low effort prints aside, what is the issue? what possible difference would it make to you if your opponent dropped $1500 extra on FW resin or $100 and twice the time and effort for effectively the same thing? or just got chinacast, which generally you can't tell the difference on once it's painted? that's muuuuuuuch less effort and a fraction of the cost and unless your opponent does a little jig and cackles about it, you'll never have any idea.

it smacks of sour grapes and bad gatekeeping to me. i'd play someone with cardboard cutouts on bases if they wanted to get a game.

I think that response is unwarranted. So not only are you demanding I play them (which I do in tournaments) but you insist I like it. Sorry, not the way I roll. And you generally CAN tell Chinacast. What do I care? 40K is still my first love and I want them to be successful. A 3D print of a kickass custom build? Kudos. A club mass printing a model to game the system and you wind up playing variations of the same list all day that are sold out at GW? Made me cut way back on my local tournament scene.” Wah, boo-hoo, grow a pair” I know, I know. Just hate my enjoyment of the game being diminished from others (please do not swear). Plenty of model agnostic games out there so maybe play one of those if 3-D printing is your thing. I have plenty of 3D printed terrain, Bolt Action vehicles, and customization bits. Mass producing FW models because FW is too expensive or you can’t be asked to wait is a bridge too far for me. The work for 1 model may be high but the economics of scale means you dial the model in and mass reproduce for pennies when printing for a larger group. Not that I expect you to care but the OP was asking reaction. That’s mine, you don’t have to like it, it’s still my reaction. I’m way to old to care what others think of my opinion of something.

[yoritomo]

I’ve got a few minutes over lunch, so let’s talk about the perception of 3D printing when it comes to Warhammer.

I’m going to to go out on a limb here and say that everyone here has built a Games Workshop model. I would also think that most of us here have done at least some light conversion work, even if it is just gap filling with green stuff. Based on our experience with the hobby I think it’s fair to say that we have a rough idea how long it would take to sculpt a model.

I’m also going to go out on a limb and say that everyone here has used a computer printer before. I’m sure that most people know how to print out of Word, Excell, etc... and have a good idea how long it will take for our printer to spit out a page. So based on our experience with a normal printer I think it’s fair to say we have a rough idea how long it will take to print a 3D model.


After reading both of those statement, I’m sure that many of you agree with one and don’t necessarily agree with the other. Here’s the thing, they are both incorrect statements. You have no idea how long it takes to sculpt a model from scratch unless you’ve actually attempted it. Just like you have no idea how to print a 3D model for unless you’ve actually done it.

So why do we think we know what it takes to sculpt a model when we haven’t tried it? Because that’s how our brain works. It takes skills that are similar and kind of fills in the blanks. It’s an unconscious thing we do.

No let’s apply that to 3D printing. I think everyone knows that 3D printing is different from regular printing. That doesn’t stop our brains from filling in the blanks of 3D printing with what we know of regular printing. When we want another copy of our term paper, all we do is go over to the computer and hit print again. When we want another 3D model we could hit the print button again, but it isn’t as easy as printing out another term paper. And even if it was it certainly isn’t the most efficient way to go about it, not when you could print 2, or 4 or however many minis your printer will allow.

But in the end people will think printing out 3D models is as easy as printing out a term paper, because that’s their perception on printing in general.

The worst part about it is that the perception on 3D printing becomes the same as casting models. If the perception is that it is no more difficult to print a model than a sheet of paper, then why not just hit the print button 50 times and have an army?

In the end the question isn’t so much about whether or not people will play a 3D army, but how do you change people’s perception on what 3D printing is. Thankfully that’s not my problem as I don’t plan on picking up a 3D printer any time soon.

[gigasnail]

Aug 24, 2020 17:45:08 GMT mattblowers said:

Aug 24, 2020 3:33:56 GMT gigasnail said:

/shrug you can take your toys and go home if that's what you want to do. i don't really understand the attitude. do you want to get a game, or do you want to pick over the models the other guy has? bad FDM low effort prints aside, what is the issue? what possible difference would it make to you if your opponent dropped $1500 extra on FW resin or $100 and twice the time and effort for effectively the same thing? or just got chinacast, which generally you can't tell the difference on once it's painted? that's muuuuuuuch less effort and a fraction of the cost and unless your opponent does a little jig and cackles about it, you'll never have any idea.

it smacks of sour grapes and bad gatekeeping to me. i'd play someone with cardboard cutouts on bases if they wanted to get a game.

I think that response is unwarranted. So not only are you demanding I play them (which I do in tournaments) but you insist I like it. Sorry, not the way I roll. And you generally CAN tell Chinacast. What do I care? 40K is still my first love and I want them to be successful. A 3D print of a kickass custom build? Kudos. A club mass printing a model to game the system and you wind up playing variations of the same list all day that are sold out at GW? Made me cut way back on my local tournament scene.” Wah, boo-hoo, grow a pair” I know, I know. Just hate my enjoyment of the game being diminished from others (please do not swear). Plenty of model agnostic games out there so maybe play one of those if 3-D printing is your thing. I have plenty of 3D printed terrain, Bolt Action vehicles, and customization bits. Mass producing FW models because FW is too expensive or you can’t be asked to wait is a bridge too far for me. The work for 1 model may be high but the economics of scale means you dial the model in and mass reproduce for pennies when printing for a larger group. Not that I expect you to care but the OP was asking reaction. That’s mine, you don’t have to like it, it’s still my reaction. I’m way to old to care what others think of my opinion of something.

i have a chinacast flyrant based on the new plastics. you 100% cannot tell it apart from my regular, bog standard plastic GW flyrants. on the other hand, my be'lakor is a piece of (please do not swear). that happens when you pay $7 for ancient recast. my resin trygons are cherry though.

your stance is dumb because your problem is that someone might not have paid hundreds (or thousands, let's be honest) of extra dollars, and not that 'gee this game is reaaaaaaallly poorly balanced.' again, sour grapes and gatekeeping.

'it's just my opinion' doesn't mean you get a pass from someone pointing out your opinion is bad. if you were too old to care what others thought of your opinion, you wouldn't have doubled down when challenged over it.

[yoritomo]

Easy now folks. Let’s not get carried away and say something we’ll regret.

[mattblowers]

Aug 24, 2020 18:20:45 GMT gigasnail said:

your stance is dumb because your problem is that someone might not have paid hundreds (or thousands, let's be honest) of extra dollars, and not that 'gee this game is reaaaaaaallly poorly balanced.' again, sour grapes and gatekeeping.

Sour grapes? No. Gatekeeping? Yes indeed. It sucks the fun right out of the room for knock-offs/prints to flood the tables with the latest hotness when you might have only encountered 1-2 lists with them otherwise at the 20-25 man RTT. Should GW do a better job of balancing? Sure. Big difference between rocking a custom model for the rule of cool and exploiting the imbalance to simply up your ITC score even if it screws over your FLGS that is supporting the tourney or GW that supports the game. Different things entirely from my viewpoint.

I can't force you to have the correct opinion on this.

[gigasnail]

but it's ok for the whales to do it. got it.

[killercroc]

I'm curious how many people are against 3D printed models because deep down there is a "Well I bought my overpriced plastic toys so you should have to buy them too! It's not fair you made your own!" Like I'm seriously curious just how many people are against it because they're bitter/uneducated rather than there is a real reason. If the models and bits look good and they're painted and it's clear you can tell what the parts/models are where is the downside? So, I can get the logic of "If we want 40k to be around buy 40k products so the company does go under" that makes sense, but if you want people to pay and play for the hobby and they do where is your cut off for them making additional things? Like for example if someone buys 50 Space Marines and 3D prints all the heavy/special/melee weapons is that acceptable? They bought the models they just didn't spend double the cost of basic troops to get heavy and special weapons and quite frankly GW doesn't make it easy to gain access to a lot of wargear. For example, you get 2x of each heavy weapon in a Marine Devastator box meaning you have to buy multiples of that box to get enough of the same heavy weapons you want. If you just want Lascannons and Plasma cannons and don't care about the other 3 times of heavy weapons you're gonna pay out the nose for them. Not just printing but recasts for example, if they are legit 1:1 PERFECT copies of a FW model and you couldn't tell they were cast without being told about it and then you choose not to play against them then I don't think there can be any solid, logical agreeable reason you could have besides "Well you didn't buy the over-costed versions so it's not fair"

Here is an interesting point, what if you print something GW/FW hasn't made a model for but has rules for, surely that's acceptable. But what if GW/FW then later creates kits for them, does that player then have to get rid of all his old minis they printed to get the official ones? I mention this because I have a friend who is big into 30k and has printed a lot of helmets, weapons, upgrades and even models because when it came down to it FW never bothered to make them. And you cannot buy what doesn't exist. When you look at the 3D printed stuff you can't even tell it apart from the FW stuff unless it's pointed out because he has one of those high end $5000 printers he uses to make minis and design 3D models as a side job. Stuff looks legit good.

Lets face it GW does 3D modeling for their designs now, none of their new stuff is hand sculpted. Difference is GW designs it, splits it and makes plastic molds and jacks the price up higher than the Burj Khalifa and you better be damn grateful you have the privilege of buying their products.

Currently I have no 3D printed models in my armies but I do split in 3rd part models and bits because, heck I like them. Sometimes it's conversions and sometimes it's full models. I dislike GWs noise marine arms and they refuse to make plastic kit for them, so I bought normal plastic CSM and then got lots of bits from lots of 3rd part companies and made Noise marines out of 4 different companies. It's not about the price for me, it's about having fun and cool models and GW just doesn't always offer that. I've found places like Anvil Industries and Wargame Exclusive can sculpt models that blow the pants off of what GW makes, and they're still resin and done by 1 person companies. Why GW/FW still have ugly outdated miscast kits from lowest-bidder resin I don't know. Why still with how poor t heir products are people defend them tooth and nail I don't know even more. I'm sorry but the multi-million dollar companies don't need their fans to defend them. The fans should old the companies to task so they continue to make quality products that are worth our hard earned dollars.

[EDIT]
Just one thing to add does it matter if its a tournament or a pick up game? I constantly hear from people the lie of "It's a hobby do what you want" but then really toxic comments about how you're not hobbying right because whatever BS reasons they have. If it's a hobby then it should be fine to do things that you want. Convert, Reacast, Print whatever. But now in the situation of events I have another question. If you're ok with printed models in normal games but against it in legit games why is that? Why is it ok to make your own models up until the point where we put our big-boy pants on. Spending $50 to build/model/print your own kit is unacceptable but buying the official $100 kit is, even though the thing is warped, cracked, miscast and uncured. Is there a legit reason you don't want people to use models they made or are you just bitter they got a work around and you didn't and you spent more money than them and you just want to throw a fit because of it.