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Now I'm writing this just to get a feel for what is going on. I'm an old school gamer. Back when GW would offer plans for it's vehicles and terrain to make it yourself. Personally as long as someone has put some effort into it and not just plunked a tissue box with a towel roll on it claiming it's their Baneblade then I think it's grand. This is a hobby after all. I know some of us in this hobby are 'purists' and that scratch built vehicles are not allowed in Tournaments but when I look at getting a new Landraider at £45.00 each the only thing I can think of is a) I could purchase two box sets of figures for that or b) that is half a weeks grocery bill for my family of six.

So now if I want to continue playing the way I want I need to build my own vehicles so I can use my spare £££ for figures.





Also I get more enjoyment out of building them from scratch!

I hate papercraft vehicles for the most part. I understand gaming on a budget - I did it extensively during 3rd edition. In fact, all of 3rd edition. My army stayed pretty much the same for the whole edition, due to me being a student.

I never resorted to papercrafting stuff. It rarely ends up looking like it should. Reasonably close, sure, but you can still tell, simply at a glance, that you're playing against a cardboard land raider.

My brother does it extensively, and it annoys the crap out of me. I've seen him turn up to an Apocalypse game with 4 papercraft Baneblades, then brag about how easily he won. It's just not something I'll ever support.

I appreciate and respect papercraft, but I do not enjoy playing against it.

Extreme example but one of my first experiences at a games store was playing against a guy whose IG army had 4 cardboard Leman Russ, and at least 20 saggy, limp silicone crappily casted guardsmen. Not even close to the quality in the OP, but it turned me off pretty bad to DIY. The store was full of guys who didn't have any if much more money than him, and they were playing smaller games with what they could afford. They lovingly assembled and painted what they had, and this kid callously walked in bragging about having 2k (of trash) and it was just uncool.

Ah, but there is good papercraft and there is cheap papercraft.
The OP is of the former.
I'd allow those. You can tell what they are. Looks like enough effort has gone into them (and more effort than the plastic kits take to assemble)..

Theres a massive difference between putting time and effort into pieces than there is gluing some card together and calling it a day. I will refuse to play a papercraft army, strictly on principle. It's just not fair to people who've put effort, time, and more importantly, money into painting and modelling their armies to play something that has just walked it's way out of Staples via a printer. By all means convert something out of a toy or whatever, because to make a good job that takes skill. But this is wargaming, not origami.

I'd rather play against a well made and colored papercraft tank like the ones in the first post than play against a badly painted real model any day of the week. It's no different than the people who scratchbuild their own thunderhawks and titans with plasticard, cardboard, and extra bits. And for those who think it takes no time and effort to build a paper model, it took me nearly an hour just to cut, fold, glue, and tape together just the feet for a Warhound titan. I gave up after that point, too much work to finish the project.

Realise that my post might have come across a little harshly there. The above post is correct. As long as genuine time and effort has gone into making it, then fair play. Otherwise it's just a cheap crap alternative surely?

Well, I'd rather play against the OP's paper tanks than against a guy who glues a bunch of sprues to the top of a (cheap) toy tank and calls it a battlewagon.

Rule of cool.

I find scratch build models cool.

I do not find printed out papercraft cool.

I have seen amazing papercraft with real details, real 3 dimensions which show effort to make it a 'model made out of paper' and not just a papercraft stand-in.

Plasticard and PVC plastic rivets and a paintjob go a long way to showing 'cool' over a taped-up paper box.

I would probably find something better to do than to play with the OP and his models. I don't find them cool and my time is better spent chatting painting with guys at a painting table and declining the game than playing against papercraft.

Absolutely, if the models look the part and had effort put into them. First of all, printer ink ain't cheap, and I can almost guarantee something like that landraider above took longer than actually painting a plastic landraider to that quality.

Sneering at models like what most of use proponents are envisioning is incredibly snobby to those of use who have been around since the early days- days when you couldn't even buy things like a Wave Serpent at all, because even Forgeworld didn't exist yet! There was even a photographic guide in White Dwarf once about how to make the turret for one out of a plastic spoon and two shuriken cannons from the Vyper kit to go on top of a Falcon!

I have found several PDF's on sharing sites that would allow me to make a papercraft model to the detail of that Landraider in the OP- possibly even from the same source. One is for an entire Thunderhawk, and I am sorely tempted, I'm telling you!

(sarcastic) Anyone telling me that I have to buy a Forgeworld Tunderhawk before they will play me can bite it hard.

It depends on the model.

If the quality of your scratchbuilt model is at least as good as the official model and you built it because you wanted to have something that isn't the standard model, great. I'd love to play against it.

If you want to use a scratchbuilt model because it's easier and/or cheaper than buying a real one, no.

I would say that if the scratchbuilt model was easier to make then buying and assembling the actual model, then not enough effort went into it, because nearly every scratchbuild model I've seen (that looks good, obviously) took a great deal more effort than using the original model.

Go for it. I have no problem at all with papercraft models any more than I have problems with plasticard models. They are usually more trouble than they're really worth in my opinion.

It seems to me that some people are under the impression that papercraft models are easier to put together and paint than plastic models, and this is FAR from the truth. I've put hours and hours of time putting together a couple of paper rhinos and in the end it would have been much fast to simply have bought the models and put the plastic kits together. There's nothing fast about paper modeling. It may be cheaper at first glance, but if you compare the extra time you spend putting them together to how much you might have earned working at your job in that same amount of time it result is usually that it's about the same amount of money.

If you want to make an army of paper tanks, fine. I tried it and I probably won't try again. I'd rather work three extra hours at my job and buy the kit with that. However, if you find a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction in putting paper models together and painting them, then have at it mate! This is a hobby and my little plastic army men will happily do battle against your paper tanks.

 UselesswizarD wrote:
It seems to me that some people are under the impression that papercraft models are easier to put together and paint than plastic models, and this is FAR from the truth. I've put hours and hours of time putting together a couple of paper rhinos and in the end it would have been much fast to simply have bought the models and put the plastic kits together. There's nothing fast about paper modeling. It may be cheaper at first glance, but if you compare the extra time you spend putting them together to how much you might have earned working at your job in that same amount of time it result is usually that it's about the same amount of money.

That depends on what you want your end result to be. In my case, my brother threw down 4 plasticard boxes in the vague shape of Baneblades with a few hatches thrown on for 'detail'. That is still a paper/plasticard-craft model. That's what turns me off about it. Like Zygrot24, I respect the amount of time put into making a good one, but it doesn't make me enjoy playing against them.

It's your hobby do what you want and what you enjoy. Papercraft is way harder and more expensive than it looks having done some of it for buildings. I would rather play someone with papercraft vehicles than someone who hasn't painted their army.

It depends on the visuals. Your tank looks absolutely amazing and I'd enjoy playing against it.

Depends on the look. If it's valid like yours, I'd play a game with you.
I have to ask you though, since you are spending much time and effort. Why don't you use plasticcard?
It's easy to work with, far more resilient than paper and it can be painted with acrylics.

So if it's no cheaper, and takes exactly the same amount of time, why not just buy the real thing?

The OP has models that look amazing, more importantly they look exactly like what he wants to play them as.

A lot of comments seem to resent papercraft because they didnt buy models, I would rather play someone that put effort into his army.

Two scenarios that drive me nuts, guy has a full 1500 point IG army, everything is glued together primed black, he considers this as "finished" I cant tell what squat is.

scenario 2, guy has 50 bolter tac marines, painted ok. then he explains his army "these 5 are devastators with missiles, these 5 are devastators with lascannon, these 10 are assault marines with jumppacks, this is a 10 man tac squad with melta multi melta...etc etc. completely maddening.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 WaaaaghLord wrote:
So if it's no cheaper, and takes exactly the same amount of time, why not just buy the real thing?

Papercraft seems to be the extreme hobby dilemma of time vs money. the raw materials are cheap, but to do it well, you need to spend much more of your time.

Its like buying used models, popping them apart, stripping them and rebuilding them. you save money but it takes more time than if you grabbed a kit to start with.

with both there is a certain amount of hobbyist pride when the items turn out well.

Mecha_buddha wrote:
A lot of comments seem to resent papercraft because they didnt buy models, I would rather play someone that put effort into his army.

That's how it seems to me too. I'd rather play against someone who made some effort than someone who is trying to buy their way to success. As long as I can see what it is (the OP's examples are great) then I can't see the issue. I cannot grasp how the money they spent is relevant to the game, do you frown on people buying 2nd hand or converting?

 WaaaaghLord wrote:
So if it's no cheaper, and takes exactly the same amount of time, why not just buy the real thing?

Sometimes it's not about the cost but the DIY aspect and pushing yourself to do something.
Nothing beats the satisfaction of building something from the ground up - anyone who has worked with their hands on something, like a boat or car or whatever, will tell you the same. It's a more individual thing.

 Enzephalon wrote:
Depends on the look. If it's valid like yours, I'd play a game with you.
I have to ask you though, since you are spending much time and effort. Why don't you use plasticcard?
It's easy to work with, far more resilient than paper and it can be painted with acrylics.

Plasticard is too expensive. At £0.40 to £1.50 per A4 sheet then I might as well purchase the GW model. I can get 500 sheets of 200 gsm paper for £5.00, cereal box for essentially free, and 2mm A1 mat board 2 for £2.50. I purchase my ink through a secondary ink company rather than the brand name so I can get three of each cartridge for only £20.00 that will last months.

At this moment I'd rather spend my hobby budget on figures and then replace my scratch built when I have the figures I want.

I come down on the side of, its a luxury and if you can't afford it you shouldn't do it. I will grudgingly play against them, but I'd rather play against real models and will take a game against a primer army vs a paper craft army any day of the week. I feel this twice as much for forgeworld. I dropped the cash on it, and then seeing paper versions of them galls me.

As long as they are done well, like in the case of the vehies the OP posted then I have zero problem with them.

 Forbino wrote:
its a luxury and if you can't afford it you shouldn't do it.

Elitist much? It's a hobby, and if you're inventive and crafty enough to pull something like this off you most certainly should do it.

I don't mind scratchbuild vehicules, or even miniatures (I can't remember where, but is saw a fantastic tau battlesuit that was completely scratchbuilt)
however, papercraft is something else. It looks... cartoonish, and simply doesn't feel the same on the gaming boards.
On the other hand, if the papercrafted vehicule looks good and is similar in dimensions, I would definitevely allow it

Elitist much? It's a hobby, and if you're inventive and crafty enough to pull something like this off you most certainly should do it.

I'll cop to it. Its an opinion thread, and I have as valid an opinion of how I want to experience my hobby as anyone else. I'll applaud the level of detail the OP put into it, but would be more impressed if that effort were put into scratch builds of cool stuff you can't buy (There is a scratch build leviathan on the web I completely applaud) but your mileage clearly varies.

But at the end of the day, if you can't afford the hobby, yadda yadda yadda as previously stated. I also think that goes towards ANY hobby though. If you can't afford to play golf, but are determined to, you shouldn't expect people to want to play against you if all you have is a crooked stick you've gotten good with.

It being an opinion doesn't make it sound less dickish.

Your papercraft looks better than most of the unpainted, half put together, proxy-laden armies I play outside of tournaments.

I'd have no problem with it.

Mecha_buddha wrote:
The OP has models that look amazing, more importantly they look exactly like what he wants to play them as.

Exactly, I agree. As long as they look good I am cool with them, because the alternatives are worse:

Two scenarios that drive me nuts, guy has a full 1500 point IG army, everything is glued together primed black, he considers this as "finished" I cant tell what squat is.

scenario 2, guy has 50 bolter tac marines, painted ok. then he explains his army "these 5 are devastators with missiles, these 5 are devastators with lascannon, these 10 are assault marines with jumppacks, this is a 10 man tac squad with melta multi melta...etc etc. completely maddening.

I built my own Crassus with $4 worth of plasticard and about 16 hours of work (yes, I am in need of an airbrush for the camo...) and, frankly, I can't wait to use it. The gang at my FLGS thinks it's pretty sharp.