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I have recently moved house, and it turns out that there is a big wargaming centre next to my flat that has lots of tables and terrain already setup, and give players a chance to rent out a table for the day, but the players must bring their own stuff.

I've been thinking of getting into 40k a bit more, and would like to know if it's legal to rent out armies or not to customers; because if it is, and the hobby centre manager is happy to let me, id be happy to allow people to play with my miniatures and strike him a deal. If it's not legal though, then id rather not ask in the first place.

What's the story there? Legal? Illegal?

Thanks

Xander

Why would it be illegal?

 pretre wrote:
Why would it be illegal?

Maybe some British law or something?

Wrong forum.

As long as you file for whatever appropriate licenses you have in your neck of the woods as a business and keep the appropriate records for taxes, I don't see why it wouldn't be "legal". That said... I'm not sure it is worth the effort to make it 100% "legal".

 warboss wrote:
As long as you file for whatever appropriate licenses you have in your neck of the woods as a business and keep the appropriate records for taxes, I don't see why it wouldn't be "legal". That said... I'm not sure it is worth the effort to make it 100% "legal".

Yeah. Seems like more trouble than it is worth.

Also, I am not sure if the store owner would want to deal with the hassle of having to maintain your army. What happens if a renter breaks a piece (or walks off with a model)? Store shop terrain is often in a rough state because players are less concerned about property that is not their own, so your army would likely suffer the same fate.

Do you mean like some kind of copyright abuse? In the same way that charging people to watch a DVD violates your license?

A bigger concern I think would be theft/damage. Armies are very expensive. How do you make sure that you get it back? What do you do if it comes back with parts missing or damaged?

I can't see many people would be willing to turn up and casually hand over a £200 deposit, or their credit card details. So you'd really be out on a limb with something like this.

It's certainly legal in the sense that you are entitled to make contracts with people about them using your army in return for cash.

To some extent you ought to declare the cash on your tax return, but unless you're making a huge amount of money it isn't worth the hassle and the Inland Revenue won't care.

I would suggest keeping it on an informal basis.

The main difficulty is the possibility of damage. You might like to take a small deposit, say £20, to discourage carelessness. In the unlikely even that someone trashed an army, they would presumably be barred from the wargame centre.

You can expect a bit of wear and tear to models that are being used, even if it is just the matt varnish getting "polished" by fingers. It's your call whether to accept that in return for the rental fees.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It's certainly legal in the sense that you are entitled to make contracts with people about them using your army in return for cash.

To some extent you ought to declare the cash on your tax return, but unless you're making a huge amount of money it isn't worth the hassle and the Inland Revenue won't care.

I would suggest keeping it on an informal basis.

The main difficulty is the possibility of damage. You might like to take a small deposit, say £20, to discourage carelessness. In the unlikely even that someone trashed an army, they would presumably be barred from the wargame centre.

You can expect a bit of wear and tear to models that are being used, even if it is just the matt varnish getting "polished" by fingers. It's your call whether to accept that in return for the rental fees.

Well, there might technically be some copyright issues, and at Krazy says, some tax issues. But this is firmly in the realm of 'who bloody cares?'

There's some special exceptions when it comes to recorded media in terms of loaning, displaying, viewing, etc. under certain circumstances, but I'm struggling to see why renting the use of one's legally purchased copies of a toy would violate the rights of the copyright owner. Anyway, I sincerely doubt anyone would fuss about it even if there were a case to be made.

Just to note though, if you do it on an informal basis, you'll have little recourse if something goes awry. But then it would be a huge hassle to get restitution from damage or theft no matter how you papered yourself up.

First sale doctrine indicates that once you bought it you can do what you like, but in this case it's very much not the hassle except on an informal basis; even checking figures in/out will be such a hassle as to no longer make it worth doing before you even consider breakages.

Having just read the Ts and Cs in the front of the Tyranid Codec there would be nothing GW could do to stop you renting it.
I'd assume that there would be nothing they could do about models either.
So yeah, the act of hiring out armies seems 100% legal.

In terms of protecting yourself there would be all sorts of things to consider that probably make the project unviable.

You'd need some kind of personal liability insurance, just incase someone lost an eye or choked to death on a goblin spearman.
In order to get this you'd need to set up a business, another monetary cost unless you already have one?
The models would want to be insured, a deposit of the full army cost + painting taken or the borrower is contractual liable for all losses or damages.

Basically, do some maths, see what your outlay would be.
Set a price for the hire.
Decide how many people would hire from you and how often, perhaps add a poll to this post to get a yes no % then work out the possible number of gamers in your area and extrapolate.
My gut feeling says that numbers won't add up to do things legally but without doing so you leave yourself exposed. What a conundrum.

Also, before you do any of this work ask the store owner, he sells toy soldiers for a living.
Chances are he just wants people to buy them off him hoping that they will perform as expected on the battlefield, a try before you buy system probably isn't in his favour unless you give him a healthy commission % ie another bite out if your rapidly decreasing £%.

Hope this doesn't sound too negative and I'd like to see you crunch some numbers on this and prove me wrong.

I think a lot of people are over thinking it, but they make some great points. It's hardly going to be a money spinner, and might cost you more for upkeep and repairs.

Personally I wouldn't bother, but if the venue is licensed and you get the nod form the owner, I'd trade my army for beer tokens, redeemable at the bar. You get to keep an eye on your gear too.

it would be legal - not problem there.

Seems like a strange business proposition though. Are people actually interested in renting your armies?

Herzlos wrote:
First sale doctrine indicates that once you bought it you can do what you like, but in this case it's very much not the hassle except on an informal basis; even checking figures in/out will be such a hassle as to no longer make it worth doing before you even consider breakages.

First sale doctrine does not say that you can "do what you like." You still can't violate the exclusive rights of the copyright owner.

The only "legal" shenanigans that might occur is if the guy you lent the army to nicked it. It'd be a pain to prove it's actually yours, unless you drafted up some kind of contract, but I'm not sure if that'd be binding or even possible to do.

I think the potential issue, if any, is if the store manager would let you do it and, if he knew about it, I very much doubt he'd let you (or rather, let the players who've borrowed from you play at his store). Those players who're borrowing for you are not buying models, potentially depriving him of income. That said, it does sound like it's more of a book-to-play area, than an actually shop, in which case I don't think there'd be an issue, since they're still paying and he's not losing anything.

After doing some demos for Warlord as a Sarge, all I'll say is that if you're going to loan models out to people, prepare for them to get broken. It doesn't matter how careful you think they are, things happen. Models get dropped, the player doesn't realize that picking a guy up by the super skinny spear is a bad idea, etc.

Honestly I don't think it would be worth the time or effort. You either charge enough to cover potential damages and price yourself out of the "market", or you do it cheap and never manage to replace losses without eating up your meager profits. Unless you're cutting the store owner a deal, he has no incentive to allow or promote it either, as it could remove a customer's need to buy an army.

but that's my two cents. I was taught by my parents to NEVER loan out things you cared about unless you were 100% ok with the idea that you could never see it again.

It would be perfectly legal, same as renting power tools or furniture to people.

just charge a large base fee, say $30 to rent the army for a day, and refund them like half or whatever when you get it back if it is undamaged.

 AntomanElven wrote:
It would be perfectly legal, same as renting power tools or furniture to people.

just charge a large base fee, say $30 to rent the army for a day, and refund them like half or whatever when you get it back if it is undamaged.

Problematic if the damage is more than $30..... and with some of the price points these days that isn't hard to imagine without factoring in your time to fix something. I think it is an interesting idea just not if you want to actually try and make money at it. Think about it for a second. Let's say you do "make" $15.00 for renting out your army just for a game. That game could easily take 3 hours and you would be making a whopping $5.00 an hour not including any damage that needs to be repaired. Even if you can rent out 6 armies at a time 3 times a day you would only bring in $100 per day and that would only be feasible on weekends.