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I'm planning to start a 40k club at my school and I'm wondering if its a good idea to have people buy 3rd party miniatures and vehicles to get them started until they have enough money for the GW stuff; I plan to have most of the games on my campus or perhaps a non GW FLGS

Third Party companies I have in mind(feel free to suggest more)
Defiance Games
Wargames Factory
Mantic

No. If you're going to play 40k, buy 40k stuff. Buying third-party models "for now" probably just means that you buy the real models soon after wasting your money on the third-party stuff, if you can even find third-party equivalents for the 40k model. If money is an issue, just play with smaller armies.

PresidentOfAsia wrote:
I'm planning to start a 40k club at my school and I'm wondering if its a good idea to have people buy 3rd party miniatures and vehicles to get them started until they have enough money for the GW stuff; I plan to have most of the games on my campus or perhaps a non GW FLGS

Third Party companies I have in mind(feel free to suggest more)
Defiance Games
Wargames Factory
Mantic

I suggest you reconsider (this is epic bad idea on nuclear steroids).

That can be a slippery slippery slope with nerd newbs. Mark my words, you'll be playing Lego 40k in about a month if you do this, and no one will want to stop following the crazy lead lemming who went home and made the Robogear Ork horde. Go to ebay (after building some solid lists), get some really horribly painted minis, put them in garage degreaser (the purple stuff, look around the painting and modeling section for the name, it works), and play with your 80% off retail metal and gray plastic armies for awhile.

I run a fairly large school/summer league (16 members IF everyone shows) and have been running it for 5 years. We have summer events at the FLGS, and I'll tell you right now, its much better to run 750 point games of ebay figs and team battles than to head down the 3rd party slope with newbs. Let everyone learn the game and sip the kool-aid, then when its time to expand to 1K, 1.5K and 2k games, you can tread down the crazy third party road (DON'T)... but its rarely a pretty sight... be warned.

 Lobukia wrote:

PresidentOfAsia wrote:
I'm planning to start a 40k club at my school and I'm wondering if its a good idea to have people buy 3rd party miniatures and vehicles to get them started until they have enough money for the GW stuff; I plan to have most of the games on my campus or perhaps a non GW FLGS

Third Party companies I have in mind(feel free to suggest more)
Defiance Games
Wargames Factory
Mantic

I suggest you reconsider (this is epic bad idea on nuclear steroids).

That can be a slippery slippery slope with nerd newbs. Mark my words, you'll be playing Lego 40k in about a month if you do this, and no one will want to stop following the crazy lead lemming who went home and made the Robogear Ork horde. Go to ebay (after building some solid lists), get some really horribly painted minis, put them in garage degreaser (the purple stuff, look around the painting and modeling section for the name, it works), and play with your 80% off retail metal and gray plastic armies for awhile.

I run a fairly large school/summer league (16 members IF everyone shows) and have been running it for 5 years. We have summer events at the FLGS, and I'll tell you right now, its much better to run 750 point games of ebay figs and team battles than to head down the 3rd party slope with newbs. Let everyone learn the game and sip the kool-aid, then when its time to expand to 1K, 1.5K and 2k games, you can tread down the crazy third party road (DON'T)... but its rarely a pretty sight... be warned.

Well unlike legos, you still have to paint and assemble them. In addition, Mantic miniatures were made specifically to be an alternative to GW miniatures and to be usable with the codices(look at their Oryx, Corporation soldiers etc)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Peregrine wrote:
No. If you're going to play 40k, buy 40k stuff. Buying third-party models "for now" probably just means that you buy the real models soon after wasting your money on the third-party stuff, if you can even find third-party equivalents for the 40k model. If money is an issue, just play with smaller armies.

Mantic was meant to be a GW equivlanet

I'm not talking about using some random toy cars as tanks either, I'm talking about companies that were meant to be equivalents to GW miniatures or companies that make something very close

PresidentOfAsia wrote:
Mantic was meant to be a GW equivlanet

So what? If they buy Mantic they can't play in GW stores, they can't play in non-GW stores that don't like the idea of "buy cheap proxy models online, never buy stuff in my store", and they can't play against anyone that dislikes the idea of playing against cheap low-quality proxy models when they've invested the time and effort into the real thing. End result: if they want to take the hobby beyond your club they're going to have to buy the GW models anyway, so all the money they spent on "cheap" alternatives is now wasted.

I'm not talking about using some random toy cars as tanks either, I'm talking about companies that were meant to be equivalents to GW miniatures or companies that make something very close

And the point is that once you cross the cheap proxy line it's hard to avoid eventually getting to the point of cardboard box Rhinos. The third-party models in question aren't awesome looking alternatives, their sole purpose is to be cheap proxies for GW games. So if my opponent can bring cheap proxies, why can't I bring even cheaper proxies?

 Peregrine wrote:
.

I'm not talking about using some random toy cars as tanks either, I'm talking about companies that were meant to be equivalents to GW miniatures or companies that make something very close

And the point is that once you cross the cheap proxy line it's hard to avoid eventually getting to the point of cardboard box Rhinos. The third-party models in question aren't awesome looking alternatives, their sole purpose is to be cheap proxies for GW games. So if my opponent can bring cheap proxies, why can't I bring even cheaper proxies?

O.0 using alternate models is the same as card box rhinos , well saying that I have seen some great scratch built tanks that looked better than the GW ones. And looking at the mantic models I think a lot of them are better looking anyway :p

Realy as to the OP it's realy up to the person what thay buy, i have been getting lots of alternate models of late for the simple reason that I can get female models for in my army's in other places for less than half the price to GW :p

That said I try and keep to the 95% is GW models (trying is hard when GW army costs a fortune), I would suggest getting into other games if you have a group that are all shying away from war hammer just based on the price, it's not a perfect game and other systems are just as fun .

Proxies.. Theres times that i'm all for it. Like if you wanna try out an army before actually buying the models (coz... $50 for 10boyz in au? lolno)
But only if you buy the model, and dont proxy all the time.

Like my friend has built things from other toys, like optimus prime, and an obliterator from mechano parts. Sure, they look cool, but if ive spent my money on models, and spent my time assembling and painting, it seems fair that they do too if they wanna play..

Dragonzord wrote:
Proxies.. Theres times that i'm all for it. Like if you wanna try out an army before actually buying the models (coz... $50 for 10boyz in au? lolno)
But only if you buy the model, and dont proxy all the time.

Like my friend has built things from other toys, like optimus prime, and an obliterator from mechano parts. Sure, they look cool, but if ive spent my money on models, and spent my time assembling and painting, it seems fair that they do too if they wanna play..

I don't think he means that, I think he means alternate orcs and elves from other company's. Paint em up just the same

Apple fox wrote:

Dragonzord wrote:
Proxies.. Theres times that i'm all for it. Like if you wanna try out an army before actually buying the models (coz... $50 for 10boyz in au? lolno)
But only if you buy the model, and dont proxy all the time.

Like my friend has built things from other toys, like optimus prime, and an obliterator from mechano parts. Sure, they look cool, but if ive spent my money on models, and spent my time assembling and painting, it seems fair that they do too if they wanna play..

I don't think he means that, I think he means alternate orcs and elves from other company's. Paint em up just the same

I get what he's saying... but what we're saying is that IF you decided to use models that are 70-80% the cost of new GW models any way its a bad idea for 2 reasons:

1a) Now that money's gone, and its not in usable GW stuff (should the new guys like the game).
1b) Better to get ebay trashed models, buy $3 in degreaser and have budget GW models that look like (are) the real deal, all for minimal effort.

2a) It is a slippery slope (see entire previous post). Like Peregrine is saying: once you open the door to using alternative models, its a really tough one to close.
2b) might I add, you've also made the game much less appealing and much tougher to learn when you start the guessing game of what is what... your players won't even know what the real things look like.

@PresidentOfAsia: Look, if you're sold on Mantic Enforcers, Wargames Alien Suns, and Defiance Alien Wars, then why ask us? Its a bad idea. If you came here to tap into our experience and to get our advice, there it is up above.

If you're already justified in your own mind and you think you know better, well then go for it. I'd recommend you check out DreamForge for some great stuff (too bad you missed their kickstarter, lots of good stuff cheap). IMO, Alien Suns stuff is crap compared to GW, Mantic is ok (at best, kind of a knock off of Infinity), and Alien Wars isn't much better. Better stuff like Privateer Press and DreamForge is more competitive in looks, but at that point the used GW/Ebay market is a way better deal (if you're patient and don't get caught up in "winning" auctions).

 Lobukia wrote:
2a) It is a slippery slope (see entire previous post). Like Peregrine is saying: once you open the door to using alternative models, its a really tough one to close.

This is especially true when the motivation is just "this is really cheap". Alternative models are fine when they're used because they look cool and there's clearly a lot of effort put into building a unique army, but it's a much bigger problem when the only reason a player is using them is to save money over buying the real thing. At that point, why not sacrifice even more quality to save money? How can you justify drawing the line at one particular proxy model?

 Peregrine wrote:

 Lobukia wrote:
2a) It is a slippery slope (see entire previous post). Like Peregrine is saying: once you open the door to using alternative models, its a really tough one to close.

This is especially true when the motivation is just "this is really cheap". Alternative models are fine when they're used because they look cool and there's clearly a lot of effort put into building a unique army, but it's a much bigger problem when the only reason a player is using them is to save money over buying the real thing. At that point, why not sacrifice even more quality to save money? How can you justify drawing the line at one particular proxy model?

Ah I get you now, and I do agree to that. Why I don't think it would get that extreme, at least I have never seen it get that bad :0, guess somepeople take everything to extreme

I for one do only use 100% GW(Forge World); I guess I could tell people to take advantage of ebay sellers and their 20-25% NIB deals

and most 3rd party miniatures actually aren't that good anyways

Take a step back. You're runnning a club, not a shop. Let players - particularly new players - buy what models they want. I sat on the committee of my university's wargaming society for a few years when I was an undergraduate, and we would never have dreamed of telling people what models to use, any more than we would have tried to dictate to them what games or editions to play.

If you want to spend time and effort doing anything other than arranging room bookings and publicity, spend it encouraging and teaching people to paint; I'd far rather see an army of painted Mantic "Guard" than the "real thing" in plastic grey.