Quote Originally Posted by Cheesegear View Post
My point is that there are second-party (the consumer) reprintings - and of course, recastings - of GW's actual miniatures currently on the market and in use.

If you can paint well enough, nobody can tell with photos. Of course it can become pretty obvious once you touch them and/or pick them up, and they're not the right weight that you thought they would be. It's just sad funny awkward shameful reality, that there are people right now, playing games with a single 'real' model, and then four or five more (total six) models that are not 'real'. What? You going to catch them out when you see photos of tournament tables? Of course you aren't. You can't tell anything.

As long as the pilot paints a marking that they understand onto the 'real' model, they can present that model to people IRL, and not allow people to touch - and especially pick up - the others. Which isn't unreasonable because not picking up other peoples' models is very much social etiquette 101.

The cat is currently peeking its head of the bag. GW knows it, and is trying to keep the cat in the bag for as long as it can. But the cat has been seen. It's only so long before the cat wants out, and is willing to rip apart the bag from the inside to get out.
I read Saturnine long before it was available for sale.

It still sold out when it released as HB. So did the special edition.

You act like piracy is anything new. 3D printing is piracy, its just proxies all the way, same as using oyoumaru to clone bits or even whole models or making your own from greenstuff. Its just more in vogue / easier / more convenient.

Can GW sustain its numbers purely out of people who scoff at piracy? Dunno. Between stinking up a room for a whole night or picking up a 40$ box of models, 'convenience' falls on either side for people due to many reasons. But if .pdfs being available before official street date haven't killed dead tree sales, I doubt 3D printing will kill plastic toys.

Tangentially, people getting 3rd party bits / recasts / 3D printed clones then whining about WYSIWYG as if it were a sacred part of the hobby are hypocrites.