While 3D printing doesn’t look to be undermining what GW has worked for right now, that doesn’t mean they may not have a plan to deal with it in the future…
Jstove let us know in his last post- check it out here, about his experience with 3D printing, as he laid out the specifics on why it printing CAN’T undermine GW at its current state.
But now he breaks down his ideas about what could very well be the Games Workshop plan to combat 3D printing in the near term.
The GW Plan To Deal With 3D Printing?
ANYCUBIC Photon UV LCD 3D Printer (left) and Photon S (right). Image theSLAchannel
Well, it’s all about the value proposition. GW’s plan may be to sell you, the consumer, two kinds of models. Cheap goons, and big badasses.
The cheap goon proposition is simple. You need troops. You need lots of troops. The crappier they are, like cultists and guardsmen, the more of them you need. And GW is willing to give them to you. When you look at the starter boxes over the years for Fantasy, AOS, and 40k, the value proposition gets better and better. They keep cramming more models into the same box and making the deal more and more attractive. The other issue with cheap goons is that the more you need them, the harder they are for the counterfeiter to sell.
Nobody actually wants 5 cultists, guardsmen, or termagants. They want 50 of them at a time. Is a counterfeiter going to run his 3D printer for a week just to sell you an army of baby bugs? Not likely. It uses up valuable print time so he probably won’t do it. The enemy of his wallet is print time.
Want to Play 40k? Buy a Starter Box
What’s the next thing you should buy? Another starter box. After that? Probably another starter box. You keep buying starter boxes until you have more marines than you’ll ever need. Because the starter boxes are full of cheap goons and it doesn’t make sense for you to counterfeit cheap goon models. Because they’re so cheap it doesn’t make any sense to waste time printing them. So would you 3D print cheap goons? Probably not. You’d want to use your 3D printer to make something meatier, more valuable.
Which brings us to big badasses. Giant tanks and monsters, daemon primarchs, dragons, big bugs, greater demons, all that stuff. For Games Workshop, the proposition on big-ticket items is simple. Make the model so big, so cool, so sophisticated and detailed, that no amateur hour garage printer at home will ever be able to replicate the model. Sure, you could probably 3d print a Mortarion knock off if you tried really hard, but with what you’d spend on design, materials, and printing, you probably could have just bought a legit one easier.
If it Doesn’t Make Sense to Print Big Badasses or Goons, What do you Print?
The answer is simple. You print the midline units (hypothetically, of course). The chubby elites that aren’t cheap goons, but they also aren’t gigantic big badass models. Those are the ideal models to print because they’re interesting and strong enough to be worth counterfeiting. But their model count is low enough that printing them isn’t a bad deal for the owner of the printer.
There’s just one little problem…
Most of them suck. This is a happy accident on the part of the game designers. Rest assured, they aren’t doing it intentionally. If Games Workshop knew anything about designing units to drive sales, then the best unit in the game at the end of 8th Edition wouldn’t be a Forge World chaplain dreadnought that’s been out of print for years.
The reason that midline elites aren’t good, and therefore aren’t good enough to print, is that their role in the game is minimal. Models like terminators have been on a downward spiral with no end in sight for 5 Editions and the latest changes to the game haven’t helped them out.
Value Propositions For GW Miniatures:
There are basically 3 factors in the game that determine the model’s effectiveness. The first is value. How much dumb stuff the model can kill, or how hard it is to kill, for its cost. Big badasses tend to be good at this, or at least they want you to think they’re good at it. (mileage may vary, they may just be big targets.)
The second proposition is real estate. You need to grab up as much of the table as you can because whatever you don’t use to box your opponent in, your opponent will use to box you in. Cheap goons are good for that.
The final factor is synergy. When you go to spend your command points, special abilities, and wombo combos to kill your opponent, you’re going to use them on the units that are going to benefit the most. The unit that benefits the most is usually either a big badass that has the biggest, spiciest gun in your army or a giant flock of cheap goons that can drown your opponent in dice with. The guys in the middle of the road? Well, that’s where they are, the middle of the road. Not a lot of units in the game are better than a pile of bodies or one big gun with a lot of shots when it’s time to roll the dice. When it comes to GW and game design, more is always more, and less usually isn’t.
So what’s the value proposition you’re left with? Well, it could make sense to print things like Custodians, Grey Knights, Terminators, fancy flashy boys. Except as a general rule, nobody wants them. So it doesn’t make sense to counterfeit them (you know if you were into that in the first place…)
So if I can’t print a big badass, goons are too cheap, and nobody wants terminators, what’s the point in having a 3D printer? How can I use it to ruin the entire industry? (kidding of course…)
3D Printing To Keep Options & Cosmetics Open
We’ve finally arrived at the one thing the 3D printer actually does for you, and that’s options- aka BITS BABY. That’s what it’s for. That’s what makes sense to print. Do you want custom chapter shoulder pads? Do you want plasma guns? Do you want to print out a new arm for your giant robot that has a cool claw on it? That’s when it makes sense to 3D print.
Also, as a general rule, printing accessories and conversion bits isn’t exactly a counterfeit issue. You’re not looking at an entire Space Marine. You’re looking at a stock space marine with some new gadget or doodad glued to him. That’s not exactly a massive threat to your hobby or someone undercutting the business of your favorite game store.
Are there professionals with powerful computers, high tech software, massive production capability, and the talent to create badass models? Yes, there are. But nobody with any talent or access to production is going to use those assets to make perfect counterfeit knockoff Thunderhawks.
They’re going to use it to create their own business.
The guy in his garage with his $200 printer and his first weekend on Thingiverse? Yeah, I’m not worried about his garage Thunderhawk. He’s not gonna start flipping those overnight and putting Forge World out of business.
What do you think about how far 3D printing has come? Do you know anybody that bought a 3D printer to sell on the secondary market?
