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Hello,

I'm reading wiki as part of my entertainment and I often see mentions that people are not allowing models of Forge World to be played. It can take any form. I heard that 3D printed models are also iffy. THis kind of behavior seems so alien to me. I'm more than happy just to play this game and in nowadays one night stand type of format, I can't imagine that someone would go as far as to object you playing some fancy model or something scrappy. If you meet a player to play with, you refuse his model. He refuses to play with you. You just wasted your evening.


I do see the point if someone refuses to play my Imperial Knights from Adeptus Titanicus in 28-32 mm W40k game. If they are unofficial or conversions, the only consideration should be their scale. I can imagine tournaments ran by GW having those restrictions. Tournaments in my hobby store? I don't think they would wish to upset me. Regional tournament? I also don't think that anyone would even notice before hand due to sheer scale and if those rules are not specified, they can't just throw you out without you having a chance to make a huge scene!


I know that people playing those games tend to have..interesting social skills. There is a guy who complained that I putted light stands on a street unrealistically. Then he proceeded to put them unrealistically next to street's edge instead of having those double street lights in a middle of a street. Then this Infinity player proceeded to put bunch of boxes on a street and he had managed to land entire reinforced military wall there. He did not have issues with realism there. Other than that, what I had encountered there was a lot of body odors, some guys have low EQ, gets upset at losing. You can see them being nerds with their iffy sense of humour, I had met some closet nazies (in terms of their humor). Other than that, there was nothing bad. People are more than friendly to show their game to new guys. Everyone seems united and enthusiastic about game they are playing. I find it hard to imagine that nature of your models would even be a problem, more than that, I bet that vast majority of people won't even notice if they are not wildly different.


So, did you ever encountered this issue where people are unhappy or unwilling to play with you just because you bought a centerpiece from ForgeWorld or something akin to that?

I honestly don't understand the hate on Forge World stuff. It's generally underpowered/over-pointed - there are exceptions - and it's cool just to see the rarer stuff on the table.

I generally peg this down to people not knowing what a FW model can do, so they make mistakes fighting them, so they regard them as 'overpowered'. Some units require repeat experience to really get a grip on.

That, and as you mention a lot of gaming nerds have garbage social skills and are just jealous that you have shinier toys then they do because you were willing to work with something other than nice, easy plastic miniatures.

OK, you've got a couple of different points here so in no particular order:

Forge World is mostly due to perceived OP-ness from previous editions, plus availability of the models & rules. 40k FW rules are now done by the main studio and the points are in CA so these issues are going away.

Most players I know have no problem with 3D printed models that aren't direct copies of GW miniatures. The problem is similar to recasting where they're simply copying.

Terrain is complicated - a good looking or realistically laid out table isn't always the best to play on. For example I love the GW Sector Mechanicus stuff, but having worked on industrial & chemical plants I often get hung-up on making things look right.

Only time I'd have a problem is if the model was obscene or weird-fetish in some manner. Otherwise I welcome anyone to use a Garden Gnome as a Warhound titan if they fancy a game.

Might oblige someone if they find a given unit frustrating to play against, but only if its reasonable(they hate playing the same models everytime) and I have an alternative unit to hand.

Nitpicking over brands, modelling methods, painting skill and very small details would be met with "This is a game, not an art show. "

But thats just me, and others will no doubt think differently.

Back in the old days the most expensive GW model was something like a dragon or dreadnought at around the £30-5 price point. The internet was also, for a long time, not even a thing and when it was it was not all that heavily used for trading by many people.

Mail order was still the order of the day and even mail or internet you'd have "please wait at least 14 days for delivery".

At the same time FW prices were starting at the £30 if you were lucky and many (esp the big impressive ones people talked about) where well into the £100 bracket.



As a result FW was somewhat exclusive. It wasn't sold in shops; wasn't marketed all that much (this hasn't actually changed much, GW still don't do enough, in my view, to market pure FW stuff - esp anything that isn'ta brand new release); cost a LOT LOT more than normal models or even battleforces or big two player starter sets.

So even before you hit the power of things, there was a bit of an exclusive club aspect to it. In general it wasn't affordable or marketed to the general population, which was the idea. However it also bred the concept that FW, because it was so exclusive, must be equally as powerful.



It didn't help that back then things ilke super-heavies weren't part of regular 40K so many of those were almost untouchable (or very hard to kill) for regular 40K armies (esp for random meet-up matches).




Today its somewhat all changed and GW central has reduced the price difference dramatically.

I guess it depends on the person. I personally like 3D printing some models and accessories and have yet to meet someone that doesn't let me use them.

There was a recent issue a while back where someone won a big Games Workshop event with blatantly 3D printed models and it soured everyone on the concept. The models were unpainted, uncleaned (still with FDM printing marks), and very bare minimum in terms of parts.

Personally, when I proxy or print, I ensure I spent a decent amount of effort to make sure the whole presentation looks nice. I also 3D print little labels on my models so there is no mistake what is what. A good example is that I have old metal 1st Edition Malifaux models, and some of those models are unidentifiable by those that play 3rd Edition. I use the occasional proxy and 3D printed models because simply the model didn't exist at the time I bought my models. Or I don't like the official model (Malifaux is very hit-or-miss with mostly hits but some very bad misses).

I understand the sentiment that if someone spent a lot of money and effort getting the official models, they feel cheapened by their rando opponent playing with cheap knockoffs. I at least alleviate that with my models looking like I spent a decent amount of effort on them and/or being proxy models I bought because they look cool rather than them being a cheap knockoff.

I had people unwilling to play against my entirely scratchbuilt from cardstock Imperial Armored Company using a Chapter Approved list. It was a legal list, was completely WYSIWYG, fully painted, and was really easy to beat. They didn't like that I built it from templates myself and did not buy the models.

I also had some issues playing a Feral Ork army list from WD using Liazardmen. They were WYSIWYG and fully painted. This army was not min-maxed (for example, with 3 Squiggoths) and was also easy to beat.

However, I typically got static when I wanted to play them. It was one of the impetus for me to really get my own group together and convert to home-based gaming rather than store based gaming.

 Absolutionis wrote:
I guess it depends on the person. I personally like 3D printing some models and accessories and have yet to meet someone that doesn't let me use them.

There was a recent issue a while back where someone won a big Games Workshop event with blatantly 3D printed models and it soured everyone on the concept. The models were unpainted, uncleaned (still with FDM printing marks), and very bare minimum in terms of parts.

How did a 'big GW event' allow obvious, unpainted 3D prints to be played? GW has banned non-GW stuff from their tournaments since the beginning.

This is only a problem for people that want to play the game with random strangers. If you're playing with friends all the background and context-work of organizing a game and how you want to play gets solved. With one-off games with strangers you need to be more explicit about what models are okay, either with your opponents or the TO. I have an army of proxy-nurgle stuff I bought (Cthulhu Wars Hastur, Shadows of Brimstone tentacles with skaven bells and chaos marauder standards, Anvil Industry Cultists) and painted to play in a tournament and to my irritation it got nixed by the TOs. I'd made the mistake of assuming they'd be okay with it, but they had been talking about getting on the ITC circuit and that meant official models. No worries, as I own lots of armies, and I should have known better, but irksome at the time nonetheless.

 John Prins wrote:

 Absolutionis wrote:
I guess it depends on the person. I personally like 3D printing some models and accessories and have yet to meet someone that doesn't let me use them.

There was a recent issue a while back where someone won a big Games Workshop event with blatantly 3D printed models and it soured everyone on the concept. The models were unpainted, uncleaned (still with FDM printing marks), and very bare minimum in terms of parts.

How did a 'big GW event' allow obvious, unpainted 3D prints to be played? GW has banned non-GW stuff from their tournaments since the beginning.

To be fair, that one was a case of Spikeybits intentionally misleading people to grab the wrong end of the stick big time. A guy won an indy tournament with several FW Custodes tanks that were blatantly unpainted and 3D printed (the plastic was orange so they stood out a bit). Here's the rub- that wasn't the whole story. A guy on Reddit who was in attendance at said tourney cleared everything up. The guy had bought some of those tanks from FW but they did not arrive in time. He got permission from the organisers and everyone involved ahead of time to 3D print some replacements. That's it.

The rest of the army was painted to a high standard and they were just subs for the event. It was Spikeybits and BoLS that wanted to try and get everyone's panties in a twist about it.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 John Prins wrote:

 Absolutionis wrote:
I guess it depends on the person. I personally like 3D printing some models and accessories and have yet to meet someone that doesn't let me use them.

There was a recent issue a while back where someone won a big Games Workshop event with blatantly 3D printed models and it soured everyone on the concept. The models were unpainted, uncleaned (still with FDM printing marks), and very bare minimum in terms of parts.

How did a 'big GW event' allow obvious, unpainted 3D prints to be played? GW has banned non-GW stuff from their tournaments since the beginning.

To be fair, that one was a case of Spikeybits intentionally misleading people to grab the wrong end of the stick big time. A guy won an indy tournament with several FW Custodes tanks that were blatantly unpainted and 3D printed (the plastic was orange so they stood out a bit). Here's the rub- that wasn't the whole story. A guy on Reddit who was in attendance at said tourney cleared everything up. The guy had bought some of those tanks from FW but they did not arrive in time. He got permission from the organisers and everyone involved ahead of time to 3D print some replacements. That's it.

The rest of the army was painted to a high standard and they were just subs for the event. It was Spikeybits and BoLS that wanted to try and get everyone's panties in a twist about it.

Thanks for taking the time to explain that. Seems like a totally reasonable thing for the organizers to allow.

SamusDrake wrote:
Only time I'd have a problem is if the model was obscene or weird-fetish in some manner.

There's a guy at my FLGS who won't let me field my version of Zarakynel. He insisted that it was because She was FW and therefore OP, but turns out the (very mild) bondage I put Her in made him "uncomfortable".

I don't get it, personally.

I've never refused a mini and I have a hard time imagining a realistic scenario where I would.

 John Prins wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 John Prins wrote:

 Absolutionis wrote:
I guess it depends on the person. I personally like 3D printing some models and accessories and have yet to meet someone that doesn't let me use them.

There was a recent issue a while back where someone won a big Games Workshop event with blatantly 3D printed models and it soured everyone on the concept. The models were unpainted, uncleaned (still with FDM printing marks), and very bare minimum in terms of parts.

How did a 'big GW event' allow obvious, unpainted 3D prints to be played? GW has banned non-GW stuff from their tournaments since the beginning.

To be fair, that one was a case of Spikeybits intentionally misleading people to grab the wrong end of the stick big time. A guy won an indy tournament with several FW Custodes tanks that were blatantly unpainted and 3D printed (the plastic was orange so they stood out a bit). Here's the rub- that wasn't the whole story. A guy on Reddit who was in attendance at said tourney cleared everything up. The guy had bought some of those tanks from FW but they did not arrive in time. He got permission from the organisers and everyone involved ahead of time to 3D print some replacements. That's it.

The rest of the army was painted to a high standard and they were just subs for the event. It was Spikeybits and BoLS that wanted to try and get everyone's panties in a twist about it.

Thanks for taking the time to explain that. Seems like a totally reasonable thing for the organizers to allow.

No problem. I'll try and find the link (should be in my browser history somewhere), Reddit dude was seriously annoyed at Spikeybits blatantly trying to rile up the community when they clearly did not have the whole story and just a couple of pictures of 3D printed tanks.

 Excommunicatus wrote:

SamusDrake wrote:
Only time I'd have a problem is if the model was obscene or weird-fetish in some manner.

There's a guy at my FLGS who won't let me field my version of Zarakynel. He insisted that it was because She was FW and therefore OP, but turns out the (very mild) bondage I put Her in made him "uncomfortable".

I don't get it, personally.

I've never refused a mini and I have a hard time imagining a realistic scenario where I would.

I can see arachnophobes having problems with some goblin armies. Phobias aren't reasonable responses, they're phobias.

No doubt, but I've never heard of anyone being phobic to shibari.

Honestly, he had some ideas about women that you would describe, kindly, as "old-fashioned" and Herself is an overt celebration of sex and violence.

I think that was more to do with it.

I’ve known some people who are phobic about Shibari. In my experience, the ones with seemingly the most reasons to dislike Shibari are the most into it, and vice versa.

Anyway, I’ll second the call to gaming at home with a curated group of likeminded friends. None of my minis are built to WYSIWYG standards, so that’s the only way I’ll play.

I can understand intolerance toward people who put no effort into building or painting their minis.

I cannot understand intolerance toward people who put EXTRA effort into building or painting their minis. The opportunity to be expressive is what sets this hobby apart from others. Hating on conversions, home brews, or even FW is silly.

Which is why I am wary of how GW is encroaching into ITC events and applying their purity tests, especially on stream. ITC is supposed to be independent. It's literally in the name. (I've been thinking a lot of about streaming since that BoLS article yesterday. Also because apparently, conversions are not allowed on stream and thus, armies like mine pretty much automatically lose once they start doing well?)

Not a person who has had this happen to, BUT was present at a local FLGS when the following happened..

Open 40k day, bring an army, play some games. NOT a tournament, just a dedicated day for 40k.

Dude shows up with a LOVINGLY converted Slaaneshi force (yes, I am using that word intentionally).

Diaz demonettes, and riders, Boobworm General.. MOST of his Chaos marines were chaos marauder plastics with Shoulderpads and packs added.. BUT each and every marine had bare mammary enhancements crafted onto the bare torsos of the marauders.

His Dreadnaughts were equipped with large male appendeges with testes, Predator tanks with penile guns on the turrets, all greenstuff and sculpted.. no "commercially bought" parts.

and, it was all FULLY painted .. so, he had spent some LARGE amount of time on this force.

It was WELL done, on a craftmanship and artistic level, but, LORDY no one would play against him, and the shop owner did end up having to ask him to leave, because well, it was making most of the other players uncomfortable with the accuracy of his conversions. Plus kids and families wandering around.

I could see he was crushed.. he really was proud of his work (and I think he should be) but he had no social skills to realize that this force was NOT something to take to a public all comers meetup..

Different strokes for different folks. I think it is funny that people get so uncomfortable about nudity or sexualised things but are fine with blood, gore, decapitated heads and corpses all over the miniatures, not to mention sixty squintillion skulls on every mini.

But I guess if you are in a prudish country, you gotta be aware of it. People get freaked out at the attitudes to nudity in Germany sometimes, and they gotta get with the program too.

 Da Boss wrote:
Different strokes for different folks. I think it is funny that people get so uncomfortable about nudity or sexualised things but are fine with blood, gore, decapitated heads and corpses all over the miniatures, not to mention sixty squintillion skulls on every mini.

But I guess if you are in a prudish country, you gotta be aware of it. People get freaked out at the attitudes to nudity in Germany sometimes, and they gotta get with the program too.

Well, as an American, that's what you get with this country.

 Da Boss wrote:
Different strokes for different folks. I think it is funny that people get so uncomfortable about nudity or sexualised things but are fine with blood, gore, decapitated heads and corpses all over the miniatures, not to mention sixty squintillion skulls on every mini.

But I guess if you are in a prudish country, you gotta be aware of it. People get freaked out at the attitudes to nudity in Germany sometimes, and they gotta get with the program too.

George R.R. Martin wrote:“I can describe an axe entering a human skull in great explicit detail and no one will blink twice at it. I provide a similar description, just as detailed, of a penis entering a vagina, and I get letters about it and people swearing off. To my mind this is kind of frustrating, it’s madness. Ultimately, in the history of [the] world, penises entering vaginas have given a lot of people a lot of pleasure; axes entering skulls, well, not so much.”

Ah man that's a shame, the worlds not ready for nudist Slanesh!

On the flipside i have played with nicely build papercraft models (mostly non-GW games) and have no problem with them. Cool looking models are cool looking models, regardless of their material.

A steam tank model of mine, which is all made from printed cardstock:

Nice steam tank!

We have a few rules where we play

1) The place we play is a store, don't do anything that is basically an insult to the person who is trying to make money. Pretty much any small conversions or third party models are just something that nobody would ever notice, but some kind of action figure or trash as a model, the owner of the store will notice you are using coke cans instead of drop pods. Kind of a fuzzy rule, but it's the distinction between sneaking in some candy in to a movie theater, and bringing your own hibachi grill and making yourself a few fajitas.

2) no conversions/third party sculpts that aren't kid friendly. We have parents taking their young kids through the store all the time, I don't want to see any of those alternate sculpt "what if a techpriest but with tiddys".

3) no models that are intentionally or unintentionally extremely confusing for your opponent from a game sense. We had to implement this one after a few cases of people mass-proxying stuff as just super weird things. One guy had an army where space marines with boltguns were genestealers, terminators were hive guards, armless dreadnought torsos were carnifexes, and rhinos were flying hive tyrants (all this stuff was obviously shittily painted stuff he'd got from ebay).

Basically, both rules are just a token of respect for the person trying to do business who is not affiliated with us. He offers us a great place to play with a dozen tables and a discount - the least we can do is not actively disrespect him or drive off customers by appearing to be a bunch of satanic sex weirdos.

the_scotsman wrote:

1) The place we play is a store, don't do anything that is basically an insult to the person who is trying to make money. Pretty much any small conversions or third party models are just something that nobody would ever notice, but some kind of action figure or trash as a model, the owner of the store will notice you are using coke cans instead of drop pods. Kind of a fuzzy rule, but it's the distinction between sneaking in some candy in to a movie theater, and bringing your own hibachi grill and making yourself a few fajitas.

I may be misunderstanding, but this seems like too much of a grey area for me. Scratchbuilding is a core tenet of this hobby and I've seen excellent scratchbuilds and kitbashes from toys such as some excellent ones on this very site like a Dr Manhattan figure used to make a massive C'tan, or The Brave's entire plog or (to toot one's own horn...) my own kitbashed PBC made from a core of a plasticard and a dinosaur skeleton. Now, there is a distinct difference between what you describe above and what I describe, but are you saying this:

is not allowed at your FLGS, despite being 100% WYSIWYG by virtue of it being built from, essentially; junk? What about scratchbuilt terrain? I'm curious to know what your FLGS's policy is on that. Do they have any or is it all off the shelf?

the_scotsman wrote:

1) The place we play is a store, don't do anything that is basically an insult to the person who is trying to make money. Pretty much any small conversions or third party models are just something that nobody would ever notice, but some kind of action figure or trash as a model, the owner of the store will notice you are using coke cans instead of drop pods. Kind of a fuzzy rule, but it's the distinction between sneaking in some candy in to a movie theater, and bringing your own hibachi grill and making yourself a few fajitas.

That sounds a bit confusing and like its two rules in one. One part you're talking about only small conversions or 3rd party bits and suggesting its basically a rule of "don't use stuff you didn't get from the store" whilst the latter sounds more like "converions and non-store stuff is fine as long as its not stupid" and then your last example again sounds like its the "don't use stuff that isn't store bought".

If its that aspect of not using stuff that you didn't buy from the store then I'd say its a bad thing to have as a policy for the store itself. Because you're going to have people turn up who have 20 year old collections who never ever bought a single thing from the store and they might never buy another model again; but they'll still come to play. I think the best analogy is MOBA and online free to play. Don't stop people bringing other stuff at all, because if Dave turns up with his whole army bought from another store, he's still providing games, entertainment, socialising etc... for all the other paying customers.

The store should instead work toward encouraging customers to buy from them, whilst the community can, on its own, have the informal aim to support their local store. In theory if the prices are sensible (ergo not higher than RRP) and if the store provides good facilities and service then people will buy locally. Plus there's a lot a store manager can do to encourage casual 3rd party support even of lines that they dn't normally carry.

the_scotsman wrote:
the least we can do is not actively disrespect him or drive off customers by appearing to be a bunch of satanic sex weirdos.

You're not my Supervisor.

 Overread wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

1) The place we play is a store, don't do anything that is basically an insult to the person who is trying to make money. Pretty much any small conversions or third party models are just something that nobody would ever notice, but some kind of action figure or trash as a model, the owner of the store will notice you are using coke cans instead of drop pods. Kind of a fuzzy rule, but it's the distinction between sneaking in some candy in to a movie theater, and bringing your own hibachi grill and making yourself a few fajitas.

That sounds a bit confusing and like its two rules in one. One part you're talking about only small conversions or 3rd party bits and suggesting its basically a rule of "don't use stuff you didn't get from the store" whilst the latter sounds more like "converions and non-store stuff is fine as long as its not stupid" and then your last example again sounds like its the "don't use stuff that isn't store bought".

If its that aspect of not using stuff that you didn't buy from the store then I'd say its a bad thing to have as a policy for the store itself. Because you're going to have people turn up who have 20 year old collections who never ever bought a single thing from the store and they might never buy another model again; but they'll still come to play. I think the best analogy is MOBA and online free to play. Don't stop people bringing other stuff at all, because if Dave turns up with his whole army bought from another store, he's still providing games, entertainment, socialising etc... for all the other paying customers.

The store should instead work toward encouraging customers to buy from them, whilst the community can, on its own, have the informal aim to support their local store. In theory if the prices are sensible (ergo not higher than RRP) and if the store provides good facilities and service then people will buy locally. Plus there's a lot a store manager can do to encourage casual 3rd party support even of lines that they dn't normally carry.

Yeah it's funny actually, we get a better discount than like, 90% of discount retailers online. People are just really, fundamentally bamboozled by ebay into thinking they're like this cool-cat deal hunter.

"Joke's on you, THE MAN, why would I buy a 10-man intercessor squad for 50 bucks with a measley 20% discount when I can go on ebay and buy 10 bases for 7.99, 10 intercessor torsos for 12.99, 10 intercessor rifle arms of the build that I want for 8.99, 10 intercessor backpacks for 5.99 and 10 intercessor heads for 4.99, all with only a couple bucks of shipping????!?"

And yeah, I know the rule is vague. And I know every time this comes up someone goes "b-but what about this museum-quality scratchbuild thing someone made with a slinky and a taxidermied weasel, this is the most amazing St. Celestine I've ever seen!!!" but like...the reality of managing a group of players kicks in after a while. The store manager is never going to pull someone aside to complain about the dude who majored in sculpture in college who bought 1 Great Unclean one kit and made 3 GUOs out of it with the help of clay. (we have that, and they are amazing). He's never gonna notice that, much less care. Heck, the store isn't even an official warhammer store or anything like that, if someone made something out of a model tank they probably bought the tank here.

it's the guy playing with completely unmodified red solo cups with spare bits stuck on them to represent extra tanks, or the guy using Mountain Dew cans as Forgeworld Terrax drills.

Like you say - people do drive business even if they don't make purchases, but they don't do it by playing with trash, or smelling like BO, or acting like a bunch of stereotypical basement-dwelling gamer nerds.

It's entirely a "is this a sandwich?" problem. Most people have pretty reasonable expectations for models and are pretty willing to go with conversions and proxies that aren't obviously lazy or confusing. The problem is writing a rule for it, because once the rule is written, all you can find is loopholes.

Ultimately, the reason everyone wants it as a rule is simply because it gives everyone the power they want. It gives people something to go on when there's something that pushes things too far and probably shouldn't be allowed. It also gives people who want to convert the protection of a rule to say their model fits the rules. Most of the stigma just lies in the grey between. Someone asks "is this legal?" and people answer no, even if they would answer yes to "would you play against this?". Likewise, there's an asterix to every thumbs up because its impossible to guarantee international approval and the internet doesn't work regionally.

Personally, I'm generally willing to go with whatever. It's not like I haven't played against my share of unpainted or poorly painted armies and the occasional bad conversion is just part of that pile. I do hold a bit of judgement for intentions though and a lot of how I feel about a conversion has to do with how its presented. Every time I see "look how much I saved making my own rather than buying from the company whose game consumes all my time" I'm a little more cynical as opposed to a conversion primarily motivated by a desire to create something unique. No, its not something I can put in a rule.... and yes, that's entirely the problem.