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I saw this image of a recast Primaris Dread, and thought it would be a useful visual aid towards the better end of the spectrum. It is not mine, and I don't know where it came from, I've merely saved it to my tablet and tagged it to this post to preserve anonymity.

Good luck telling this apart from the genuine article once assembled, cleaned and with a few layers of paint on it!

 Stevefamine wrote:

I was eBay hunting for a party of playable character models for Only War / Dark Heresy and found out I have a resin Tallarn trooper. They never came in finecast Same quality and detail; I just noticed he was light as a feather.

Depending on the model, FW put out quite a few Tallarn at one stage before HH marines took over everything.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Korinov wrote:
Your anecdotical evidence means nothing.

Then the anecdotal evidence of recasters that don't suck and sell you miscast trash is equally meaningless.

TRUST NO ONE
OBEY THE COMPUTER

AND KEEP YOUR LASER HANDY

The Auld Grump

I bought Coteaz off eBay sold as legit and got a terrible recast. I had to cut the head off and put on a new one. It looked ok after a ton of work but it didn't look like Coteaz. Just gave up and bought another one.

 crimsondave wrote:
I bought Coteaz off eBay sold as legit and got a terrible recast. I had to cut the head off and put on a new one. It looked ok after a ton of work but it didn't look like Coteaz. Just gave up and bought another one.

You sure it just wasn't the finecast one?

 mrhappyface wrote:
I was talking to a friend today and he told me about this guy he saw get kicked out of a FLGS because he was using 3d printed models. But then I started thinking: 3d printed models are pretty easy to spot because of the not quite right shape and the printing lines, but what about recasts? The sign of a recast model is double mild lines and imperfect details but once someone has cleaned up the model by removing extra mold lines and remodelled any missing details with greenstuff and then painted it all up, how can you tell it's a recast?

Anyone have any experience with finding a recast model that's been cleaned up and painted or is it an impossible task?

Meh. It doesn't bother me none. As long as they have an army and wanna have a go on the tabletop, I don't fret none. I won't be doing my best Sherlock Holmes impression on their minis.

I think the obvious answer is that the player will have a large scarlet 'R' on their chest.

Adeptus Doritos wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
As for the idea that recasting isn't theft, let's ask some people who actually deal with crimes as a profession: https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/white-collar-crime/piracy-ip-theft

I just want to see the FBI Agent that gets tasked with raiding the local FLGS for knock-off Forge World bits.

The doors smash open, like being blown by a hurricane. Task Force Authentic charged in, weapons drawn- armed like a SWAT team and led by the brave agent Stribble. He grabs one particularly nervous, looking neckbeard, slamming him over the table. Miniatures clatter and fall, and the confounded Tau player wets himself with his hands raised, backing away into the wall.

"Well, well, well. If it isn't Death Korps of Krieg... or should I say... Death Korps of Kaifeng! We been lookin' for you a long time, scumbag" Agent Stribble says, clicking together the handcuffs behind the already-sweating, unwashed wargamer.

"I..I don't know what you're talkin' about man, it's not my stuff... honest! My cousin gave these models to me!" The shackled neckbeard sputters.

"Oh, really?" Agent Stribble asks, grabbing the guy by his unwashed hair. Stribble reached for one model, expertly painted. He placed it under his nose, rubbing it against his greying mustache. "Knockoff. Chinese. About six months old. Tell me another one, scumbag. Interpol is dying to get their hands on you and the rest of your little operation."

A short while later, one sobbing neckbeard was locked inside an unmarked SUV. Agents were taking statements from witnesses. "Stribble, I don't know how you do it", Field Agent Kruger asked, her blouse unbuttoned just enough to be provocative.

"Sixteen years working the beat. Lurking in the back of these stores- breathing in the scent of Nuln Oil, gluing my fingers together, rolling the dice. You become a part of it and you go by your instincts. I don't know, it just comes natural. Kruger, maybe... maybe I just hate Chinacasters, or maybe I just care about the law."

Cue dramatic saxaphone.

Credits roll.

Zach wrote:I think the obvious answer is that the player will have a large scarlet 'R' on their chest.

Both you guys have just won ONE FREE INTERNET each for these posts.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
The better question is....why does it matter?

exactly

I buy recast for everything big and expensive I want. My recaster does such a good job. I love it. I've bought a lot of FW and sometimes my recasts come in better condition and quality and it's only a fraction of the price.

I always admit to people who ask and every single time the person is only interested so they can maybe get some themselves.

 TheAuldGrump wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Korinov wrote:
Your anecdotical evidence means nothing.

Then the anecdotal evidence of recasters that don't suck and sell you miscast trash is equally meaningless.

TRUST NO ONE
OBEY THE COMPUTER

AND KEEP YOUR LASER HANDY

The Auld Grump

That sounds amazingly ... paranoid

 Azreal13 wrote:
I saw this image of a recast Primaris Dread, and thought it would be a useful visual aid towards the better end of the spectrum. It is not mine, and I don't know where it came from, I've merely saved it to my tablet and tagged it to this post to preserve anonymity.

Good luck telling this apart from the genuine article once assembled, cleaned and with a few layers of paint on it!

Gotta say its impress they actually casted everything on the spure that way and for it to come out so well.

 TheAuldGrump wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Korinov wrote:
Your anecdotical evidence means nothing.

Then the anecdotal evidence of recasters that don't suck and sell you miscast trash is equally meaningless.

TRUST NO ONE
OBEY THE COMPUTER

AND KEEP YOUR LASER HANDY

The Auld Grump

Now I have to dust off my Paranoia books and get a crew up for a game ..such fun ,,you die he dies she dies everybody dies..
This peice of equipment is okay for you to have for your Yellow security clearnace however the manual and how to use it are classified violet...

As to the Op I really cannot tell a recast from on original if its a good paint job and i would never ask not my army...

I got a Games Day, Golden Demon 2007 Orc Boss from ebay and was seriously disappointed it was a resin recast.

It smelt terrible when I drilled into it, but detail wise it is a match for the metal one that I managed to get the following week.

I would only purposely buy recasts if I was indifferent to whether or not the company that makes them remains in business.

I think one of my 1980s epic Leman Russ tanks is a recast - poor detail and soft metal, compared to the other vehicles I have. Still, it looks OK painted, and I've not been too bothered that I've tried to replace it. Some of my Zoats are also possibly recasts, but again, trying to get replacements is difficult and expensive. Even then, I'm not sure if "soft" detail is down to recasting or due to being eroded by rattling round in a box somewhere for thirty years.

Why would anyone want to go around 'spotting' recasts? I think "What you don't know won't hurt you!" applies here.

 Azreal13 wrote:
I saw this image of a recast Primaris Dread, and thought it would be a useful visual aid towards the better end of the spectrum.

That's really impressive IMO.

I've avoided recasts of plastic models (I hate resin almost as much as I hate metal... so why would I get something I can get in plastic in resin?), but a friend of mine recently got a recast Ghostkeel. It's quality was pretty much perfect, but it did not come on a sprue like that.

That's some real recasting right there.

 mrhappyface wrote:
I was talking to a friend today and he told me about this guy he saw get kicked out of a FLGS because he was using 3d printed models.

Never mind the recasts, why on earth would someone get kicked out of a shop for using 3D prints? Does that particular shop require that everything used there are bought there as well?

Pseudomonas wrote:

 mrhappyface wrote:
I was talking to a friend today and he told me about this guy he saw get kicked out of a FLGS because he was using 3d printed models.

Never mind the recasts, why on earth would someone get kicked out of a shop for using 3D prints? Does that particular shop require that everything used there are bought there as well?

It was a 3d printed dreadnought, GW does not allow none GW 40k models in the stores.

I didn't think that a GW counted as a FLGS

 Azazelx wrote:

 Stevefamine wrote:

I was eBay hunting for a party of playable character models for Only War / Dark Heresy and found out I have a resin Tallarn trooper. They never came in finecast Same quality and detail; I just noticed he was light as a feather.

Depending on the model, FW put out quite a few Tallarn at one stage before HH marines took over everything.

No it's an ammo loader (which IS possible FW made actually)


After reading through this thread.... I just want to see PAINTED models. I don't care if you have recasted DKoK - I want to see a painted Guard army and have a great game of 40k.

Pseudomonas wrote:
I didn't think that a GW counted as a FLGS

Maybe a "F"LGS.

Recasts don't bother me, and now they are the only way to practically fill out some army lists.

For example: need anything Bretonnian then recasters are your friend, that and internet auctions.

 Azreal13 wrote:

beowulfhunter wrote:
Would rather see painted recast then another unpainted model. For the people threatening to beak people's property quit hidding behind the Internet trying to be macho.

Nobody's hidding, nobody's going to beak anything. These are what humans refer to as jokes.

I'm stone cold serious. I always test my opponents models by grabbing a random one, usually the army commander and melting it down in a lead melter. If I can then mold it and shoot it out of my old cap n ball revolver and it shoots true then it was pure lead and a fake as they haven't made pure lead minis in some time Else its ok.

Sure this takes awhile and the round scares Yankees (it was last used in the Yankee War of northern Aggression) but its the only way to be sure.

I'm actually quite surprised at how man Dakka members are very 'hand wavey' about recasts. Recasts erode OUR niche industry and ultimately hurt the people behi d these models we love to purchase, paint and collect. I guess I'm just an old fashioned person who respects IP.

Except the effects of piracy on any industry where it occurs are almost certainly exaggerated, most likely by those whose product is pirated.

You don't see Warner Bros or Gucci going down in flames any time soon any more than GW (who, incidentally, just posted record figures for their FYE and whose share price recently hit an all time high) simply because people are buying knock offs. Partially, I'm sure, due to a relatively small percentage of the customer base actually doing it but, more likely, a relatively large percentage of recast sales being for items that the customer would never have bought at RRP or is unable to obtain because they're now officially OOP.

There also seems to be a bit of a gentleman's agreement amongst recast buyers to leave the little guys alone, I once saw someone ask for Mierce recasts and the response from other users was almost unanimously "no, go buy originals." So the companies most vulnerable to recasting are also the least likely to be the victims (backed up by the solid commercial reasoning that the recasters aren't going to sell enough of a small producer's product to warrant the investment to be worth their time, so they don't bother.)

Recasting has been around since the 90s, of it was going to cause significant issues for the industry, it would have happened already.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
I saw this image of a recast Primaris Dread, and thought it would be a useful visual aid towards the better end of the spectrum.

That's really impressive IMO.

I've avoided recasts of plastic models (I hate resin almost as much as I hate metal... so why would I get something I can get in plastic in resin?), but a friend of mine recently got a recast Ghostkeel. It's quality was pretty much perfect, but it did not come on a sprue like that.

That's some real recasting right there.

Plastic kit recasts are a little questionable for other reasons too. Often the price of recast plastic GW kits isn't sufficiently low to warrant the extra hassle of not ordering the real thing, plus the different physical properties of resin often means that you have elements of plastic kits that are simply too fragile in a different medium. In fact I think the addition of swirly gak™ to every centerpiece kit GW have produced over the last couple of years could, at least in part, be a deliberate attempt to make life difficult for recasters and people who buy them.

The contortions pirates go through to justify themselves...As long as they get what they feel they deserve, anything that gets stepped on is okay.

 totalfailure wrote:
The contortions pirates go through to justify themselves...As long as they get what they feel they deserve, anything that gets stepped on is okay.

Pseudomonas wrote:

 totalfailure wrote:
The contortions pirates go through to justify themselves...As long as they get what they feel they deserve, anything that gets stepped on is okay.

Why the face palm? Hyperbole aside in terms of calling people "pirates" (yaaar!), there is truth to totalfailure's comment.

All of the justifications for buying recasts essentially comes down to what people are willing to pay for their models and the people who turn to recasters are unwilling to pay the market price for the models they desire. The justifications for turning to recasters are just obfuscating a desire to save cash.

If the models are "too expensive" (FW for example, or sometimes GW proper) then you hear the refrain of "if company X priced their models fairly I'd buy from them, but they are greedy so feth them!"

If the item is OOP and the buyer doesn't want to pay the price for a hard-to-find model they turn to a recaster, often with the refrain of "The model is OOP and I don't want to pay collectors prices to make an army, besides if company X would simply re-release this model I'd buy from them, so feth them!" It is even worse if the company is no longer around because the excuse becomes "Well who am I hurting the model is OOP and the company is defunct."

These justifications ignore the morality issue of IP abuse, as well as scarcity in the collector's market, in order to allow the buyer to acquire what they want.

No matter how you spin it, the decision to acquire recast models stems from a desire on the buyer's part to bypass the normal retail channels and get a discount, or artificially inflate the numbers of rare, OOP or hard-to-find models in order to create a quantity that is desirable for the buyer.

What of it?

People buying recasts aren't committing any piracy. Supporting it? Sure, but they're not committing it. In fact as far as I've been able to ascertain, on the level a typical hobbyist would be doing it, someone buying recasts isn't themselves committing an offense and even if they were the likelihood of being singled out for prosecution would be tiny and the further likelihood of conviction even smaller.

So essentially it then becomes a moral decision, and that's something they only need justify to themself, not to some random on the internet who has a different line in the sand, but very likely has some other dissonant line of thinking going on elsewhere in their lives of equal or greater degree.

Hi!
I'm a trader.

Generally you can tell a fake by chemical tests*; but if it's painted and looks good, who cares?
(*Solvents are present in cheaper resins, lead/tin/etc may be present in re cast metals in proportions different to the original. Not that easy to tell though, in all honesty)

I've had quite a lot of fake products come through my grubby mitts over the years, and I can honestly say that some of the fakes were better quality than the originals!

As a separate aside, if anyone would like to pirate and re-cast any of my works, go right ahead

(Not the Zinge ones though. They might not like it...!)