Talk Fantasy Football

I'm on CAD everyday of my life, and we have used 3D printing in the past to do models of buildings. More as a show piece than anything else. The product was decent, similar to Finecast, however, I'm not sure if the way the current technology is that the mini's would hold up to a game of BB?

Would be interesting though, since I could get into the "sculpting" business if it was all done in CAD.

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FUMBBL Coach name: tchatter
Ex-Commish of REBBL

#193

Not to single Ken out, as this critique is repeatedly made everywhere: I think this is a crummy argument to level against GW (and God knows I'm not a GW apologist or even fan). When metal gaming miniatures first came out did the player-base demand each model come with super glue and a hobby knife to clean up the flashes and metal burs? What about putty to fix the gaps? Of course not. The modern day gamer is certainly more entitled than ever before, but in fairness this could simply be true of the modern day westerner or consumer in general.


People act like Liquid Greenstuff is a huge and costly burden. It's cheaper than most other standard things that go into the hobbyist's arsenal (hobby tools, solid greenstuff, glues, cutting mat, paint, flock, primer, sealer, etc.) and I assume wouldn't require frequent repurchasing.

That being said, Finecast is messed up in other ways. I don't mind little imperfections here and there -- models have never been perfected be they metal, plastic, resin, or finecast. Many often require touch-up or clean-up in one form or another. My biggest issue with Finecast is that the price is completely insane, and I have no idea how anyone can justify buying minis at that price point.

Well I for one am not about to buy inferior products at £10 a pop.

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HERALD OF TRUTH
Heff...Keeping the Dwarf (and lego) hate alive
If you cannot stall out for an 8 turn drive to score with dwarves then really you need to go and play canasta with your dad...if you can find him.

Agreed, though even if the Finecast minis were exquisite and amazing (and many of them are, in fairness), I still couldn't justify the price point for a Finecast blister or boxed set.

Me and a friend talked about how much a "WH40K" box would be if it was all finecast, the one they have now with the orks and spacemarines. $300 US?

I bet we find out soon enough. Aren't they slated to be releasing the next boxed set for 40k next year? I may be wrong on that. Someone please correct me if I am.

Seeing as it's been at least 5 weeks since they last released a new edition, you sir, are correct.

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Fundamentalist for the BB Illuminati
Galak 3:16 says "There is a point in time that a player really should read the rulebook."
Home of the ARBBL - We lose, so you don't have to.
#24 in the "24 club"

prices of bb/ff figures are at the insane point right now, imo.
i was playing bb when all you had were the card standups that came with the box(and the teams you could get in white dwarf). then when the teams came out, i paid(and i still have one of the plastic boxes with the tag to prove it) $19.99 for a 16 man team. when the 3rd ed teams were released, i paid $32 for a set of 12. i paid $49.99 for the newer teams(vamps and pro elfs), again for 12. i can't remember what i payed for the 16 man human team...
now look at the current prices out there there are still some great deals. black scorpion teams are great value for money. i have the humans and orcs in pewter, and i hav'nt seen their resin dwarfs yet, but i'll buy them. impact! has some great team deals, too(the valks, desert dogs). but after those few, it gets expensive. the days of telling a newb "all you need is a team. its cheap! are over. are the figures better than 1989? hell yes! but close to $100 FOR A TEAM? thats a tough one to sell. and not many people want to stick to just one(or 2) teams. the fun of the game is trying out those other teams. its fun to paint. conversions are a cheaper option, i guess.

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come join us--greg graffin

everything is costing more these days, you seen the price of kit kats?
Still figures seem to be about £5+ each at the moment and I stopped complaining about GW prices when I realised that the cheapest metal team I have had in an age was the elf harlequins who cost me £56 for 18 figs. Then they brought out finecast and hiked the price of plastics by another whatever it was and normal service was resumed. The harlequins are now £23 for 6 and are failcast so my team is now £69 with a million little edges to break off and loads of casting bubbles...I think not.

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HERALD OF TRUTH
Heff...Keeping the Dwarf (and lego) hate alive
If you cannot stall out for an 8 turn drive to score with dwarves then really you need to go and play canasta with your dad...if you can find him.

Well I was mostly concerned with miniatures for exactly your points about hammers, coffee cups etc. The material qualities required in miniatures are reasonably simple, it has to be paintable, be safe (ie non-toxic), have a reasonably high melting point and not be too fragile. Miniatures also have an advantage in that they only need to be made from 1 type of material and are expensive for the amount of material you use.
3D printing is slow as well so doesn’t really suit mass production, I doubt you could 3D print a coffee mug cheaper than the 50p you can get them from Tescos.

You make another good point with the comparison with books and CD’s, but there is a key difference. Most of the time people don’t buy a CD or book for the object they get it for the music or the words, so downloading it to a MP3 or kindle has the same effect but takes up less space. Of course the difficulty for the manufacturer is that once the book or album is made the distribution costs are much less so they will find it harder to justify charging the same price.
However for models the aesthetics a far more important, some just want to play the game so would happily use the 2nd edition mono-pose plastics with coloured bases to depict position and numbers to differentiate players. But for the majority the look of the models is far more important, so if they can get models cheaper, more unique or for the same kind of price by bypassing some evil money grabbing corporation then I think it will change the industry.
Going back to the CD, film and book analogy it will depend how companies react to this change, it could be an opportunity to sell design packages for 3D printers in addition to traditional models.

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Incredibly off topic;
Society would suffer a paradigm shift. I refer to The Diamond Age by Neal Stevenson. Everything changes. The "Feed" is powered by nanotech, but the way the end result is an example of 3d printing. Incidently a very good book, I highly recomend it.

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Continuing off topic...



Funnily enough, I was reading an article online a couple of months ago about someone who was working on "printable food" or something. Apparently, using a modified 3d printer he could form turkey paste into shapes of regular food. I can't find that article now, but here's one with the same theme that goes into much less detail

So, Greggs still sounding safe in the future?

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Everything in moderation (except possibly moderation)

3D printing a hammer or a coffee cup is very different from using additive manufacturing to create GW figures.

The minitures have to look pretty and not disintigrate when touched. A hammer needs to be significantly more durable and a coffee cup needs to be non-toxic and relatively watertight. Even if you could print a viable coffee cup my guess is that it would feel more like a plastic childrens cup than a satisfying ceramic device.

Hammers and coffee cups are also cheaper to produce relative to their material cost. They have a wider appeal and less design overhead.

3-D printing will definately change some areas of our lives but we are a long way off of the vast social changes some of you are imagining

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Victim of the Colonel's car boot smash. First person to use Glynn's bath.
Update: the Hartlepool family Glynn now has a virgin bath.

Barney is a clever dog.

I want Star Trek-style replicators - then we'll see some social changes.

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Fundamentalist for the BB Illuminati
Galak 3:16 says "There is a point in time that a player really should read the rulebook."
Home of the ARBBL - We lose, so you don't have to.
#24 in the "24 club"

Don't Greggs already take something that's a bit like meat paste, and shape it into something that's similar to food?

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