It’s common knowledge, but still kind of a secret. Everyone knows about them. We are talking about recasts: illegal copies of miniatures. No well known miniature company is safe from this practice. These illegal copies are either found in the second hand market or directly by those looking for a 70% discount or more. Copies from recasters, most of the time from China, are at first glance an option to acquire otherwise expensive miniatures at affordable prices. However, by doing so we are ignoring the damage that this does to the industry behind this hobby of ours. Believe it or not, this industry grows out of passion and love, the same we pour on every project on our workbench.
It’s not difficult to find recasts, or at least, know where to look for them. Famous search engines of Chinese products show easily references of companies like Andrea Miniatures, Nocturna Models, Young Miniatures, Knight Models, and many others. Even so, I think this issue began with Chinese copies of Forgeworld references. Here in Spain we call it ‘Chinoforge’, the one that pretty much everyone has heard of.
They were available on the ebay site of the Chinese network named ‘Taobao’. Without remorse, there was a supplier that recasted the catalog of Games Workshop and Forgeworld reselling it at a ridiculous price. It didn’t take long for GW to take action, and after a while it became nearly impossible to find these copies online.
Despite every measure taken, with the evolution of websites and social networks, recasting has become nearly unstoppable. Illegal sellers proliferate on second-hand portals, ebay, e-mail contacts and even mobile aplications for peer to peer trading. It’s come to a point that, as I said before, this damage can only be prevented by us, the consumers.
It’s very easy to make an illegal copy of a miniature, especially if the country where it’s made has bad labour policies. The difficult thing is to develop a miniature from scratch, starting with an idea that begins with just a few pencil strokes on paper. All that artistic work, ranging from concept, development, sculpting, marketing or quality control, has a price. That is the price of any original model.
We basically pay to perpetuate the work of each and every one of the artists involved in the birth of this miniature. We pay for quality in finishes and materials, and the most important of all:
We pay so that the company we like so much is able to surprise us again in the future with yet another piece to continue enjoying our hobby.
COMPARISON
There is no better way to understand the lousy quality of these recasts than by putting them in front of their originals. For the sake of this report, we have acquired a couple of Chinese illegal recasts as well as their respective originals, and we are going to show you in detail why there is no point at all in buying these pieces of bad plastic.
The models chosen are both from Forgeworld, the ‘Elysian Tauros Venator’ and the classic ‘Lietpold the Black’.
Although you will see the very evident differences, during this comparison you will find the original piece on the left pictures and the recast to the right.
For a better comparison, I have cleaned all the copies of excess resin and plastic. This had to be done because it was nearly impossible to identify many of the pieces that came attached to large blobs of resin. Also, the resin used for the recasts is a very smelly material, with a very weak and brittle body, and you have to be careful with it at all times. In addition, as you will see later, the casting is not good and irregular surfaces of material are very evident. There are sticky areas and others that are shiny showing where the resin has not properly cured because of a bad preparation mixture.
LIETPOLD THE BLACK
As expected, the pieces to assemble are the same as the original. They are very complicated to clean, and with a lot of burrs. Obviously, as you will see now, the original copy has very good quality in every detail. It’s material has still some margin for manipulation, as opposed to the one in the recast copy.
At a glance, recasts appear quite similar, but when looked at closely, important flaws become evident. The surfaces are very rough, have lots of pores and bubbles, there are important burr steps or details covered by extra resin. A lot of resin has to be removed, rectified and even replaced with putty. Even so, this work is not enough to come even close to the original. Judge yourselves.
ELYSIAN TAUROS VENATOR
In the case of this piece, originally from Forgeworld, I had a small problem with the recasters. Despite asking them to send me the fake ‘Venator’ model, they sent me the normal fake ‘Tauros’ model, a shorter version than the one I requested. However, basically it’s the same piece, without any add-ons, so it works to do the comparison. Both have exactly the same parts.
Just as with Lietpold, the amount of resin and burrs it has is endless, making it especially difficult to find out what belongs to the model and what is left over. In addition to this, the flat parts are not flat by any (ANY) means. They are bent or folded, transparent and rough surfaced.
As you see, this is nightmarish no matter how you look at it. Also, these fake copies come without any instructions (as opposed to, of course, the original Forgeworld copy).
CONCLUSIONS
After evaluating each and every aspect that could lead us to look for a cheaper product, we see that getting the original product will undoubtedly make our experience with the miniature hobby much better. We see three key points to avoid these false copies:
- Mainly because it is ILLEGAL. These ‘companies’ do not pay any IP rights. Salaries of their ’employees’ are probably atrocious and, above all, they undermine the business of proper companies endangering their countinuity.
- For the good health of our hobby. Because without these proper companies, our industry would never evolve and improve, and we would probably go back to painting flat detail-less DIY miniature soldiers (with all my respects towards them).
- Because even considering the amount of money saved, it does not make up for the atrocious quality received. Seriously, if you received the package and looked at it carefully, you would understand what we are talking about. And we wouldn’t want you to go through that.
And if after reading this article you want to do something positive about this, it’s quite easy actually. If you happen to know of any second hand recast seller, or on-line store selling these fake products, we encourage you to contact the corresponding company affected so they can take proper measures against it. Only we can act effectively against miniature recasting!
You’re obviously not using a good recaster, also you haven’t mentioned the cheap cost of resin and how much profit is made on resin models.
Recasting is a side effect of greedy companies or individuals that take hobby members for granted.
All of my recasts are better quality that forgeworkd or other manufacturers.
I’ll never buy legitimate versions now with the re casts being so good from where I get them from.
Greedy company?
You have not idea about, a totally ignorant. Try to pay a good concept designer, a good sculptor, a good painter for box art, than doing promotion, pay tax, location, bills and what else and don’t forget you need to have profit for time and risk you took. The cost of your model is not only resin, but a sum of the voice, buy from a recaster and you are a thief like the recaster itself. A model is too expensive in your opinion and don’t worth the money? OK, rightful, don’t buy it, but if you buy from a recast is like steal the model.
I perfectly understood is time wasted, but something in me hope you understood the type of scum you and your friend are.
Totally agree with you, it’s morons like them who are putting a nail in the coffin of our hobby, I bought a recast by mistake off eBay, I thought I was buying a genuine Pegaso figure, when it arrived I knew instantly of the mistake I’d made, everything that is bad in a casting was plain to see, the main thing being it should have been cast in white metal and was instead a poor resin cast instead, thankfully eBay took action and swiftly booted this pirate off.
The people who are buying the recasts are ruining the hobby for the simple reason they are are robbing the people who bring these sculptures to life for us, without out these creative people this hobby won’t survive, so are slowly killing it, why would companies carry on if someone is going to rip them off, a lot of these companies are small industries they can not take the financial hit, they are entitled to make an honest living by buying off the pirates, you are steeling money from the people you admire, else why would you be buying the figure in the first place, no doubt the scum who buy these are the same who don’t pay for their music and probably have a stash of rip off DVDs too, stop being cheap skates support the talent or loose it.
Well said!
Wait how is this killing the hobby ? is it going to cause the game to completely vanish if the company were to shut down ? the books are out there the rules are out there, it would be like if Monopoly was suddenly no longer made every one knows the rules and can build their own board … quit being GW fan boys they don’t give a shit about you
Some companies sell their original 28mm figures for less than £1.50 yet other companies sell theirs for £8. The first company produces models that are far better sculpts and casts than the second. How can anyone claim the second company is not greedy, and yes the second company gets targeted by pirates and the first doesn’t. I dont buy recasts, and I don’t buy from companies that charge more than I think is reasonable.
Exactly so. Recasting gives these filthy companies a taste of their own medicine. “They’re entitled to make a profit’ sure and I’m entitled to shop around. There wouldn’t BE re-castes is the prices were reasonable in the first place. The elitism of GW is a prime example; They go so far as not allowing official models in their store tourneys, even when a reasonable counts-as. Reap what you sow. If you plan on punishing players (and I mean PUNISH them) when you compare what you offer for what other reasonable vendors offer, you find re-castes are a result of your own actions.
Un official
You are absolutely right and I agree with you (but I like, and buying, many expensive figures)
YES greedy company,
or have you forgotten about the atrocious quality that was Citadel Finecast, here despite the shit quality we still saw an increase in price.
Yes. GW’s greed and extortionate prices. See yourself for historical games, for the Warlord Games company. After all, they also pay the same fees and have lots of competition. Their prices are so small that nobody in the world could copy their figurines. Games workshop not only wants lots of money for its live figures (5 euros for guardsman from krieg !, more than for metal ones!). Unfortunately, the quality of their products leaves much to be desired. There was a demand so the pirates appeared – they sell cheaper and often better quality. I do not buy such copies for moral reasons, but I will not buy original figurines. Too draconian prices. As a result, everyone is losing – I, the Chinese, Games Workshop.
I mean even though it’s hella shady it’s much easier to just buy a cheaper version of the model even if it’s a knockoff. I need some of the bigger suits for my tau and they are pretty expensive so I would most likely turn to a recast
And it came out that GW’s cost for all of those things including packaging and advertsiing, on a $45 Marine Squad box came to $5, including materials. So, no, that’s straight up greed, and while morally not as bad as 700% increase on the cost of pharmaceuticals, it’s the same mindset.
to produce a 45 dollar marine squad it cost 5 bucks, sure. But what about the giant press they had to design and manufacture. The models they had to sculpt digitally and then cast in a way they would both fit in the box, and be easy to mass produce. They spend hundreds of thousands of dollars creating their cast presses for the units. You think they magically pump out miniatures at just the cost of supplies you are an idiot.
You retard, that was already included in the measurement.
Its about supporting companies that support your interests by creating models and figures you enjoy.
Now, companies like Games Workshop are a ethical grey-area for myself, because their business practices/efforts are not in consideration of the gamer (in my opinion). But, from my experience, smaller manufactures like Andrea, and Pegaso, and Scibor, and Blacksmith, etc. are doing this with the intention to create a well costed, and quality product. Their heart is closer to their craft, and I could not justify owning their product while paying someone else for it. That’s despicable. I say choose wisely and ALWAYS go with the origin of the art if possible.
Gregg
Eat shit
What companies are u using for recasts? I’m having to search now forgeworld has stop so many horus heresy models. Cheers
@ Greg Smith: That attitude is killing the hobby. On average every 30 recasts bought is one less miniature to the market.
With those numbers the hobby will never die, that’s amazing!
Adding on to what Shane Rozzell have said and more direct. that is a crap attitude, and glad I don’t know you and have anything to do with you. But good way to name and shame yourself, although I doubt there is any shame there. as you seem to be proud of the fact you steal form these companies.
Just out of curiosity, what about recasts of long out of print miniatures, or miniatures from defunct companies? Many RPG fans turn a blind eye to PDFs from defunct publishers, but studiously pay for legitimate PDFs from current publishers seeing the former as “preserving the history of the hobby.” As in “I’d pay the IP holder for this if a legit copy was available, but since the company is gone/author is dead/etc. I’ll just download the PDF for free…”
Greg Smith, omg, really ? clearly you have no idea about running a business… you think that when you buy a model you pay just for resin ? What about sculptors that, due to their skill got pay really good money, what about shopfloor operatives, what about other staff, customer service bills etc. Man, either you are some kid, troll or just an idiot with no capacity to think logically.
@Greg. You aren’t using a recaster, he is using you.
The cheap cost of resin you mention would only be associated with recasters. For legit business there is high quality resin, concept art, sculpting fees, box art, advertising and labour, please don’t minimise this with a flipant statement.
Recasting isn’t a side effect of greedy companies, I have known some companies unable to meet rent and worse still some have gone out of business. They take all the financial risk to give a miniature its origin, why shouldnt they be entitled to make an honest living?
If you are honestly trying to peddle such nonsense as recast being better than originals you are either seriously deluded or an outright liar!
Finally, are you sure you aren’t a recaster?
I´m not into recasting but what I find ridiculous is Games Workshop’s prices. Many other companies offer products as good as theirs or even better for a lower price.
@Greg smith : Everyone before me has already said what is correct. You are stealing. Plain and simple. You’ll argue “but I haven’t taken anything and the owner of the IP still has their product.” But here’s the kicker…
(tldr; THIEF!)
You stole the right to use that miniature in your games, to paint it and to present it to your friends IRL or on social media. You stole it. You’re a thief. You stole the rights to that model. You stole the profits from a miniature company that puts food on their table, heats their homes, takes their kids to sports events/cinema (more on this in a min)/etc. I bet you steal music and movies. You give that profit to someone that doesn’t pay tax in this country. Did you complain about the Starbucks/Amazons/other tax dodgers?
This really rips ma knitting this! It is the same, in my opinion, as downloading movies and music that you haven’t paid for the right to see. You know what happens? Prices go up. The price of the cinema these days is ridiculous. It’s partly to do with inflation, but mostly due to the declining numbers of people going. And people have stopped going because why spend £20 on a family trip to the cinema (10 years ago) when you can get the movie for free. Now we have to spend £40 on a family trip to the cinema. DVD prices haven’t gone down. We haven’t got a global Netflix style service with all movies available. And I firmly put the blame into the hands of piracy aka stealing. Things like Kodi make it seem harmless – oh you clicked a few buttons and bingo it is there without any effort, so it must be harmless. No it is killing the cinema. And it’s not Hollywood that is getting killed. (and here I come back the argument) it’s the small independent places that can no longer get the movies into big cinema chains because they won’t bring in the numbers to cover the costs.
And that’s what will happen if recasts become a thing.
Games Workshop won’t disappear. But some of our niche names might disappear over night. Look at Rackham from 10 years ago. They had major financial crisis, had to take crazy decisions… Gone! They were producing beautiful miniatures (crazy complicated game) but they were cut the margins too thinly. Because there truly is no real money in the miniatures business. It’s all for love. So recast companies will push this margin further and further. Recast companies will be making more profit than the small indies as they don’t have any other costs. Soon they will be 3D scanning and 3D printing and mass producing making more profit.
So the person being greedy here is you. Not the original miniature companies.
They stole the right to complain about re-castes when they demand unreasonable prices, and thus stealing the joy of the hobby. Like any economic entity, they need to obey the law of supply and demand ACROSS their customer base. GW seldom does. If we demand fairer prices and go outside their control, it is because they are not catering to the majority of their customers. LET THEM sink. Somone else will reinvent a more reasonable wheel. Case in point: One miniature, slightly more detailed than a normal marine: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Games-Workshop-Warhammer-40k-Space-Marine-Commander/107298737?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=1239&adid=22222222227000000000&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=c&wl3=42423897272&wl4=pla-51320962143&wl5=1019313&wl6=&wl7=&wl8=&wl9=pla&wl10=113137378&wl11=online&wl12=107298737&wl13=&veh=sem Who’s being the thief?
Another person trying to justify theft plain and simple if you don’t like the prices don’t play the game there are plenty of other great options out there at the moment. Your supporting a criminal enterprise plain and simple which is slowly killing the hobby will these re casters spend time and money designing rule books and fluff? will they invest in all the new technology? hell do they even pay their staff a decent wage. the whole they charge too much so stuff them attitude is scummy and weak they are a business and need to make a profit if they start to lose market share because people are turning to other games then they might re think their prices.
So what Jag is saying is if something is more expensive than he wants to pay, he is justified in stealing it. I look forward to you trying that defence in court.
“The person being greedy here is you. Not the original miniature companies.”
GW can produce, package, sculpt, advertise etc a box of Cadian Shock Troops for £20. They’re decent sculpts, decent quality minis. Why, then, does FW (who run a much smaller operation, fewer employees, use silicon moulds rather than the hundred thousand pound plastic ones) charge £40 for a box of 10 Krieg Troopers? Sure, they’re making each box manually. That’ll add on the time it takes to pour the resin, and remove it. But they’re not paying hundreds of thousands of pounds for a plastic mould.
I’ve never bought from a recaster, but I know many who do. Their miniatures are good-quality. The above article is, quite frankly, scaremongering. I have no problem doing a massive company like GW out of 40 quid.
@Italeri Games Workshop prices are high, but they are not massively greater than companies like Knight Models. GW also has a massive network of stores. How many of us would not be hobbyists if it wasn’t for our local GW?
Not me. My FLGS is not GW. My FLGS has 20 tables filled with terrain whereas the GW has two tables in a tiny store away from any major shopping areas. The assumption that any money spent on recasts would have gone to GW is incorrect. When GW sells the same models in Australia for 60-90% more than the US for no good reason it is hard to feel sorry for them. Yes recasts are stealing IP but until GW treats us in a respectable manner, they garner no respect from us and therefore I couldn’t care less about their IP. This is exacerbated by them constantly suing companies for IP infringement like the Spot the Spacemarine case.
Ive loved games workshops products for over 20 years now but im finding it harder and harder to justify spending so much on their products…especially after they tried so hard to stop us here in australia finding cheaper prices overseas, ill continue to support gw by buying genuine products but im not going to pay the crazy prices they want is to pay here
Big mistake to highlight just one country for recasting. This scourge of the hobby is a worldwide problem.
Anyone reading this would be excused from thinking that any cheap kits from a country other than china are OK.
Recasting can come out of any country, I can think of at least seven countries from which recasters regularly produce illegal copies.
I completely agree with your statement. 🙂
I’ve never bought a re-cast and never will. It is wrong but it is also stupid. The resin used is crap, brittle, with a lot of detail being lost and probably it is even toxic. I wouldn’t take a recast even if someone gives it to me for free.
The above is, again, scare-mongering. The resin *can* be toxic, but buying from larger recasters is safe. Detail is not lost when buying from larger recasters. FW’s resin is also crap and brittle, not sure what your point is there.
I hope the author never watches streaming movies or mp3’s. This would be paradoxal.
Umm…. No? There are MANY legitimate streaming options that are legal and same for MP3s. Try again.
Finecast is so good, I really don’t understand recast buyers !
hahahahaha
It looks all of you here have enough money to afford 300 pounds a month to spend on models. Sorry, I do not. And I do not buy the excuse ” hey, this is an expensive hobby”. Bollocks. I have been here buying from my local store from the past 25 years.
After what number model those artists are paid ? I mean, yes, you have to pay sculpting, designing, producing…But after a certain amount of models sold, the rest is profit.
If I had to choose between paying my electricity bill or having a dread saurian , its crystal clear. That does not mean I only buy from a recast seller , but expensive and big models worth of the discount .
If you don’t have the money to afford models, don’t buy them. You’re not automatically entitled to them.
Ah yes, I’m so sorry messer, I apologize that the serfs are becoming so uppity as to assume that they might be able to afford some enjoyment in their pitiful lives. Ought I go back to whipping them, or should they be permitted to return to working in the fields?
Shall I summon the serf dedicated to worshiping the shavings from your glorious toenails, milord?
Fuck the zuck. Im down with mao.
I have no remorse whatsoever for GW. Those are the nice guys who brought us age of sigmar, which made great armys obsolete and huge investmenst of time and money into them void. And don’t forget about the spacedwarfs aka squats. Another army made unplayable. They should suffer! Suffer in the worst way possible.
Age of Sigmar is more popular than WFB was.
Squats went 20 years ago because no one was buying them.
You’re an idiot.
Really you are the idiots here supporting such a corporation. Alecs is really right for all that fantasy models he refers were sculpted by artists and then casted to mass production, usually in metal and made of thick components. While actual models are 3D printed from a computer file done by a minimun wage payed designer and then casted the most hollow and thin possible to minimize costs and reduce durability.
Nice article, only preaching to converted. As evidenced with comments, for a lot of folk price is the issue and they will choose alternative, albeit poor quality. Right now, a few companies simply stopped selling to Russia as their figures instantly get listed on pirated stores. There are precedents in Russia where local manufacturers took re casters to court and won damages, so it isn’t an issue of legal vacuum in those countries, its inability or non willingness to pursue action. Ok fair enough, our companies are small and action costs. But if they got a fund together and I am sure there are enough lawyers between hobbyists that can support it pro bono. If that was to happen then there is a chance of changing something. Appealing to modelers if futile in my opinion, there is not enough power in that argument to change buying habits. And when issues of copyright are at stake, it fascinates me how Nuts planets are ripping off HBO with game of thrones piracy, yet they are the most in vogue celebrated manufacturer. Cant have it both ways, either strict on piracy or not.
[…] a subject which rears its head quite regularly. Nor over on Volomir talked about some of the reasons why miniature copies need to be […]
Quality of some recasters is much higher than Forgeworld. Just saying, this argument is fail.
And what about the companies (from small to big) that produce miniatures based on comics/movies/books/games/characters/… without paying for a license? Spain (for example) has been famous for doing this for a while. This also amounts to stealing somebody else’s work. And it’s not more acceptable if it’s one of your friends or idols who did it (remember a particular “space wolf” bust?). I don’t want to be pointing finger, but we cannot choose to ignore part of IP basic principles, and focus on some others.
You are completely right about this. I would say though that what you talk about is a different topic to what we are discussing in this post. We are actually preparing another post about that specific issue you are mentioning… because that is a topic that will also lead to a huge discussion! And a very recent case of IP theft in Spain as you mention has brought this into the spotlight, but we haven’t found the time yet to properly talk about this very important matter. Thank you for your inputs Rusty! 🙂
My pleasure. 🙂
It’s nice to see such “mature” topics being treated with depth. You guys do a great job on this site/blog.
I totally understand how the purchasing of recasts of existing stock is hurting miniature companies, but what do you think about the recasting of long out of production (10 years plus) miniatures? There are so many classic wfb models I’d love to buy, but the second hand market is just crazy since aos happened and some models are just near impossible to find, even if you have the money. Tbh I wish there was a quality metal recaster of late 90’s early 2000’s WFB, or that gw would just sell the moulds/ip so I could get the models I want. I now rely on trade forums to find slightly reasonably priced models. e.g. a 6th edition metal dwarf throne of power’s market price on ebay is now around £160, that’s way beyond the reach of most hobbyists, definitely out of the reach of kids. The manufacturer isn’t benefiting from this situation either.
The other aspect is quality of product, I know a lot of LoTR players would rather buy metal recasts from ebay rather than finecast versions of originally metal models from gw (basically all the elite troops were switched from metal to finecast when finecast first came out, so it’s not even the improved finecast). Quality and durability is a real issue with their resin, I’ve had several LoTR finecast models break on me while gaming far too easily, usually on fine detail or blades that’s near impossible to effectively fix. It’s even happened with the newer hobbit resin models that are supposedly of better quality (it’s nowhere near forgeworld quality).
I totally understand the problem with stolen IP and that the problem must be addressed, but I would also say that in regards to out of production miniatures that in economic terms GW are not providing what the market wants, so the market is finding alternative ways to provide it, unfortunately these aren’t legal, but on the other hand this is an avoidable situation for GW. One must ask what’s in the customer’s best interest? The current situation especially benefits those people who kept their stuff in boxes rather than paint/assemble/game with them, essentially those who buy the product but don’t take part in the hobby.
western companies sell out their own customers and citizens with foreign labor then cry about IP, its a joke. u go to china to get the product made why do you deserve protection from western copy right laws ?
produce in the country you sell in and not in china….. then we can talk until then you get what you deserve!
there was articular about how GW buys there cast from Chinese companys and they over order and then decide not to pay for amount they decide they no longer need.
then those models end up being resold to people on ebay and those are usally ones you see in bulk packages on ebay with out the boxes and sheets.
Great article, it is a fair fight and I am seriously pleased to see this being taken seriously, even in the comments section.
But there is a thing I’d wish to point out, it’s the Chinese stigmatisation… I am french living in China for about ten years now, and Chinese bashing is just a constant thing I hear from most of westerners and is absolutely not right either. Especially when taken out of context or without a clue of what’s going on here… Sure there are Chinese recasters, unfortunately… I hate to break it to you, but all of the biggest and well known recasts world wide produced here are made by westerners… Bummer…
Now it raise an other thing literally pissing me off if I may, due to that misinformation, we legit hobbyist/painters in China are also punished with blatant racism by most of the European brands (especially those from Spain…sorry guys).
When you create a community of over 200 players/painters from occident and another 300 mainlanders, manage to make an order form for let say greenstuff world for those 500 lads to get legit stuff, and you are being told : you guys are thief so no we won’t deliver in China because we do not want to get copied… While saying that to a European…. It leaves you a very salty taste.
After that no surprise if some brands get copied in the first place, that kind of behavior and answer has no place in a world where international trades are a thing.
Since GW is in China, they are rocking hard, privateer press and corvus belli also understood that, so instead of making your products unavailable for some countries like this one, you should learn to work with them instead, because like it or not, they always find a way in, and as said earlier, it’s not from the one you think…
I think theres one thing that need to be said here… regardless of ip. why is it that if I spend £70 on a primarch from forgeworld, I have to send at least 3 or 4 of those parts back to be exchanged because of mould slips or just general terrible casting and I will likely have to return one of the replacements they send me too. But I can spend £25-30 on a recast and its perfect first time. even once all my returns have been replaced by forgeworld the model is still of a lower quality than the recast.
I thought he was describing forge world quality there for a second.
If you order anything that is not titan sized you get all the same issues the recasts have.
Forge world is horribly over priced and shit quality. Recast popularity reflects that or they would not keep popping up.
Blaming the pirates did not work for the music or film industries, it will not work here either
I am relatively new to the hobby maybe 4 years now and get the argument from each side. I myself am very pro recast, that being said maybe 5-10% of my models are recast. Some of the casts I have bought would struggle to be used as scenery they are that bad. I have also had some which are close if not flawless.
My issue is the price, these limited edition models ie: Eisenhorn, Sly, some of the Primaris models are just crazy expensive in comparison. Take these smaller companies making stunning models for half the price or even less, how is that possible? I get that its not just the model, the companies have huge overheads prior to selling a model. But imo GW are flogging it’s customers for all it’s worth while things are good. Tripling the quarterly profits isn’t exactly telling me that they are covering costs and slowly expanding. Imo it tells me that they severely overprice their products for maximum GP.
Maybe it will work for them but I think they are pushing away many potential newcomers to the hobby which is the future.
Enjoy the hobby, dislike the business practices.
GW rant incoming: I agree with buying recasts only when it is GW. As a former game store employee I will say this: the amount of players that get discouraged from even trying to enter the hobby because of GW’s prices makes me sad (it is a lot). Their pricing model hurts the growth of the hobby, it doesn’t promote it. You can call people that buy recasts “thieves”… I hope you enjoy your elitist hobby with the few people that can afford to play it. Personally I would like to see new players pick it up and have the hobby flourish. Also, if you think this is going to destroy GW, check out their profit margins in their annual business reports.
I haven’t bought any GW recasts yet but I support it because if it eventually hurts GW enough that they reevaluate their business practices and lower their prices, that will bring more people into the hobby and overall gaming will be better.
It leaked that it costs Games Workshop about $5-$7 per a box of Marine Tac squad. That’s the total cost for them, packaging, payroll, the lot.
They sell that box at $45 last I looked.
The vast, vast majority of the models I buy are genuine GW products, but there gets a point where I’m not going to spend £30 for each and every additional model in an army, which become often unusable in game as rules get re-released with almost each passing year. I will always buy the original product when I can, but I’m also going to buy high quality recasts for models that I need multiples of. Games workshop has an extremely bad ethic towards its pricing, I saw a comparison of two kits, with a near identical amount of plastic used for the construction and both were released in the same time frame and likely designed side by side. The one kit, the producers knew was a more elite unit and that people were likely to buy one or two of at most, the other a basic infantry squad and that people were more likely to need a decent handful of. This is no reason to price them with a disparity of £15-£20 that’s just a poor outlook. As Alchemy said, they drive more new hobbyists away by doing it in this and inevitably lose out of profit in the long run.
20+ years of Warhammer and I only found out about recasts a few months ago.
I have about 400 original models and tons of scenery stuff etc so ive spent a fortune.
Now im buying tons of big recasted models. The quality is just as good as forgeworld, sometimes you need to add a little greenstuff though but the same goes with forgeworld models.
Im now buying models that Id never buy because they are crazy expensive, for example forgeworld knights.
I dont agree with that it is stealing, its models I would never buy anyway.
I also dont really care that much, GW killed warhammer fantasy so I dont mind if they get whats coming to them.
Warhammer fantasy was half my life and then they did this to me.. fuck them.
You say illegal a lot. What’s the actual law being broken when purchasing a recast? What’s the actual law being broken when trading for a recast model?
GW going out of business would be the best thing in the world for the hobby. It’s inevitable anyways in the next 5 years with 3D printing.
I love the crocodile tears about the indie companies. No one has put more indie model firms out of business than GW. Not because GW has a better product, but because GW will sue the crap out of anyone who makes a model that looks similar to a GW model.
The 9th Edition of 40k is going to be open and crowd sourced by the players, for the players, for the betterment of the game instead of lining GW’s pockets.
After games workshops 150 million EXTRA prophit in 2018 I’m not sure that recasting is harming the hobby in the slightest. The recasts I buy are better quality and for what I would 80 quid for from forge world I can buy from China for 20 dollars including delivery. Game workshops prophit have been that big that instead of making their models cheaper for their customers they gave their staff a 2 thousand pounds bonus ( tax purposes) so boo hoo if the greedy fuckers are losing in the grand scale of things pocket change.
GW greed and agressive copyright protection has no sympathy in my hart, not to mention rule changing every year and leaving youngsters out of hobby due to pricing. GW copycat ideas from sourses like Terminator,Alien, Dungeons and Dragons and what not. I have original models, but only because I discovered only recently about recast and I will definitely go this way.
Thanks for the guys who give chance for better value and access to minis that I will never otherwice will be able to buy.
I have a motto – I live by it.regarding others – if you lie,you can cheat,cheat you can steal, steal you can….let’s just say there’s many cases of some folks needing something bad ,don’t have the money and try and steal for it…things escalate and then murder becomes involved. Just saying individuals like that who do that have no moral compass. Prisons are filled with thieves.
BloodASmedium
John Margiotta.
I would agree with most of the points expressed in the comments, that the moral analysis of recasting begins and ends at theft. However, I bring up a different point – the recasters, who are using what amounts to slave labor in the sweatshops working with toxic resins? Who does GW employ? Do they make, from BEGINNING to END, an entirely domestic, clean, and non-toxic product? Do they, as a British company, utilize only products designed, produced, and bought within British home-island territory? Or rather, do they produce miniatures with base polystyrene produced in highly toxic factories in China and Vietnam? Do they source their injection molds from Australian materials and Mexican labor? When Games Workshop uses ONLY domestic materials and employees, that’s when I’ll stop augmenting my official purchases with personal recasts.
Seriously, those copies are better quality than originals – looking only on those pictures.
I wonder If anybody writing that ever have ever hold Forge World model. It is very bad quality, hard plastic etc. … GW has serious plastic and great details, FW does not.
I just bought Dreadnought with 2 sets of weapons and I paid > 100 EUR. That is crazy for such a quality.
They should be 30% of that and maybe nobody would copy that.
As it goes for GW story is different as plastic is better, quality great and models in box sets are not so expensive.
I have to necro a bit here. Someone mentioned ‘looked at Rackham games’ as if recasts are why they went out of business. What a bad argument. Rackham died because they didn’t know how to run a business. They tried to grow way too fast and their main game had waaay to many units and thus huge costs to cover it. They tried to go public to get quick capitol and ended up eating it.
The arguments here are simple white knighting and emotional, there is no one actually willing to discuss anything or addressing recasting. Speaking strictly GW, it is hard to say what effect recasting is having. If you say because of the recent boom of recasting being available you would expect GW to be affected in some way? But in the past 2 years their stock has sky rocketed. Hell, 5 years ago they were barely with 10 dollars a share.
People who use recast try to paint GW as the bad guy and the others that protect GW don’t want to have a conversation or rationalize their thoughts. The analogies used are baseless. Let’s look at Netflix, people didn’t think streaming would have as big of an effect as it did as before that everyone blamed everything on pirating. But Netflix absorbed a lot of people, including the extremely low population of pirates, who just wanted a reasonable price for what they wanted.
We can’t do anything but have thought experiments because unlike other companies, GW won’t discuss the affects of recasting and no one has published any kind of reasonable peer reviewed study. We just make claims. Instead of looking into the business that are in the climate (and possibly are the reason for the climate being the way it is) we try to cancel culture those in the hobby.
There was a study by the EU relating to video games that piracy helped games sell better. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/09/eu-study-finds-piracy-doesnt-hurt-game-sales-may-actually-help/
This sort of effect makes even more sense in model games, particularly WH. Let’s say I want a cheap 1k starting army, but I’m a college kid who can’t justify the outrageous cost ($250 minimum, plus the hobby equipment and paint for at least $300 min). Now let’s say in this situation I have a friend who plays WH and he’s a recaster, and he can get me that same army for $50. 33% of the original, and with a positive experience in my pocket I’m more likely to stick into the hobby, which means more long term profits.
Is it okay to create my own miniatures if they are not a product that Games Workshop creates or has any copyrights on?
people who don’t play a game ultimately kill the game/hobby.
The more people there are who are anticipating the reveal of new stuff are there because there is an established community and it only gets better the bigger the community is.
So if people in the third world can’t pay western prices having recasts means more of a hobby presence that pushes those who value original source into an ongoing if not growing stream of business.
But if we want to talk about greed; innefficient capital structures like the massive litigious company games workshop has become can’t talk and the average human animal forced into a capitalistic system also can’t be blamed. We exploit our environment by our very nature and capitals need for constant continual acceleration in exploitation was never sustainable to start with. So as far as I’m concerned welcome to freakin reality; where everything is as shodily made as they can get away with and consumers will seek in the inevitable tug of war to get the most value for the very sacrifice of their lives for the slim hope that they might spend some of it in enjoyable repast.