Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Both of them take the exact same money away from GW. Scratch builds or completely non-GW conversions are often way less thematic than, you know, the actual mode just recast and sold by someone else. So whats the difference?

I'm interested in hearing all reasoning however the only one I don't want to hear is the reason "because scratch builds/conversion take more effort to model than recasts" which is the most arbitrary thing ever. My Tyranid army took a gakload more time to build than my hypothetical friend's Pacific Rim Tau, I got a lot more models and they are much harder to paint. But my army pales into comparison of some pro painters masterpiece, or anything in between. And my friend's Tau took a lot model to build than Ronald McDonald Marines and they took a lot longer to model than the Greytide of completely non-WYSIWG Necrons. And the least amount of effort at all, buying a prepainted army online with my million dollar inheritance from my rich parents (also extremely hypothetical - unfortunately :[). So where do you draw the line? It never matters in any other sense, and its also a fact that painted army of recasts took a lot more effort than a lot of people's armies out there even including their conversions. And sure, some of this might get complained about but NONE of it gets people as hot and heavy as the topic of recasts do. So I just want to shut down this inevitable answer before it starts, so that we can actually get to the root of this.



Where does it stem from? It doesn't take away any more money from GW than a non GW conversion - and even a subpar conversion might net you points for creativity in the modelling category at a tourney, while even just hinting that your models are recast will likely get you kicked out of the venue.

I've been playing for a long time, but my friend who is much newer to the game and its online community said to me that he'd made the observation almost immediately that there seems to be a very "if you don't match my purchase you shouldn't be allowed to play" mentality expressed, even going as far as hating on Tabletop Simulator, which makes no sense - its an excellent tool to practice with and against different builds or models, before splurging an EXTREMELY high premium for a 40K unit or list just to find that it actually sucks, or isn't what you were looking for, as such its an amazing tool for high level players (and all players really) for gearing up for tourneys. The complaints would make sense to me if TTS became the new standard and our model investments were invalidated to pretty paperweights, but thats obviously never going to happen as such a massive part of 40k is the models and modelling itself, more so than any other tabletops as well, and the fact that so many people already have their army.

So is my friend's observations correct? I couldn't find any plausible way to deny it. Is this really what its about? A part deep inside of us that knows that recasts would have been a wiser investment of money, so to validate our own purchase we try to make it so that nobody can use recasts? Just because someone else is getting a better deal? We had a lengthy discussion on the matter, and it's literally the only thing we could come to that makes sense, and its proven human nature - its not something everyone does, but its something so commonly done by many, finding ways to need to justify their money spent, even if they are hurting themselves to do so.





Please try to keep all discussion civil. I understand its a portion of the community that does this and not all. I'm also not saying this is definitely the reason that they do it, and if I was sure on it, I wouldn't make a thread just to say so. I genuinely want to see if there is something else driving this anti-recast/TTS mentality, and just have a gentle, reasonable discussion around the topic, I'm not interested in pointing fingers or trying to offend anyone. Also, please do take note of the fact that I have not once used the argument "GW is a terrible overpricing company that doesn't deserve our funds" because it's extremely subjective and quite thoroughly countered by "well I DO think it's a good company and does deserve our money" or "that still doesn't justify taking money away from them", so let's not go down this path on either side please as it does absolutely nothing to further discussion. And any version of "GW does deserve our money which is why recasts are bad" doesn't make any sense anyway, as scratch builds also take away the same amount of money, and thats the only comparison here, not whether or not GW's pricing is fair. Hell, scratch builds possibly even take away more money than recasts, as while recasts actually do advertise the GW model and someone might notice it, see how cool it is an fall in love and buy one, while a cool scratch build often encourages the opposite, I want to make that same scratch build and I'm going to buy the pieces for that rather than the GW model.

Anyway - discuss!

Recast can be comparable to scratch build only if the user of the recast mini is the same person that made such recast. In that way, we could consider the recast a "personal use" and veeeeeeery unoriginal "scratch build". I could be fine with that.

If a person buys a recast from a 3rd party, you are giving money to such third party and damaging te artists and other creative people that contributed to the creation of such mini. The re-caster did not have to pay the concept artists, the sculptors and or the autocad users.

Is stealing the work of these creative people before stealing money to a company that attracts no sympathy from a customer, that could feel in this way "justified" to use the recast.

The problem is not using a model without giving the money to the original company: the problem lies in endorsing people that shortcut the investment into creating a valuable intellectual property, stealing that property.

Such re-caster behaves like the company (creates a business selling minis) without investing into creative people. On the long way, creative people are damaged and with time, less and less people invest their career into being creative. Finally, the overall quality of sculpts or whatever, drops.

This is a wall of text so i'm just going to go off your tittle.

Scratch building has some real hobbying and creativity involved. Recasts is just buying or making a cheap knock-off

"A part deep inside of us that knows that recasts would have been a wiser investment of money"

Except there is an obvious problem if everyone does that.

Your cheap recast models only exist because other people are paying more for the original models.

Their money pays for these models to exist and you suggest that they're stupid for doing that. That's why people will resent you.

Using a copy recast from any producer that looks exactly the way the original does is just plain stealing. its the very same as using priate copies of games and such.

On the other side if someone makes a scratchbuild this involves its own creativity skills and such. so its not stealing.


The fact that GW Miniatures are totaly over prized does not chance the truth that a recast from china or so is stealing.

Recasts are not looked down upon here purely because the price of original is way too high for us.

Scratch Building is a hobby in its own right. You're not stealing money from GW, because GW doesn't make the thing you're scratch building. It's like the modelling equivalent of fanfiction.

Buying recasts is stealing. GW makes the thing, you just aren't buying it from them. It's the modelling equivalent of putting your own covers on a book and claiming authorship (plagiarism).

Kaiyanwang wrote:Recast can be comparable to scratch build only if the user of the recast mini is the same person that made such recast. In that way, we could consider the recast a "personal use" and veeeeeeery unoriginal "scratch build". I could be fine with that.

If a person buys a recast from a 3rd party, you are giving money to such third party and damaging te artists and other creative people that contributed to the creation of such mini. The re-caster did not have to pay the concept artists, the sculptors and or the autocad users.

Is stealing the work of these creative people before stealing money to a company that attracts no sympathy from a customer, that could feel in this way "justified" to use the recast.

The problem is not using a model without giving the money to the original company: the problem lies in endorsing people that shortcut the investment into creating a valuable intellectual property, stealing that property.

Such re-caster behaves like the company (creates a business selling minis) without investing into creative people. On the long way, creative people are damaged and with time, less and less people invest their career into being creative. Finally, the overall quality of sculpts or whatever, drops.

This is the part I don't understand - how does giving money to one set of people hurt the pockets of the original model/rules designers any more so than giving that money to a different set of people for scratch build materials, and still not giving any money to the the original model/rules designers?

CrownAxe wrote:This is a wall of text so i'm just going to go off your tittle.

Scratch building has some real hobbying and creativity involved. Recasts is just buying or making a cheap knock-off

Well, PLEASE next time take a minute to read even the opening sentence of the opening paragaph of said wall of text before posting, because I specifically requested and explained why I'd rather that this post doesn't get made. Quoting you to reinstate this to anyone else thinking of posting - please read first.

_ghost_ wrote:Using a copy recast from any producer that looks exactly the way the original does is just plain stealing. its the very same as using priate copies of games and such.

On the other side if someone makes a scratchbuild this involves its own creativity skills and such. so its not stealing.

Ok, I feel that you also didn't read, but I'll clarfiy - aside from what technical definition we give the two, what is the actual difference in terms of impact? A painted and converted army of recasts has plenty more creativity than my friends army of quickly glued together greymarines, so lets drop this perspective immediately, creativity clearing isn't why we are hating/banning recasts. And as far as impacting the sales of GW - the scratch build of entirely non GW parts does this equally if not MORE SO than recasts. So other than some technical legal definition, which doesn't even apply in certain countries, and looking strictly at the impact of both choices - how is scratch building better than recasting?

_ghost_ wrote:The fact that GW Miniatures are totaly over prized does not chance the truth that a recast from china or so is stealing.

I never said it did. In fact, I made an extremely specific note to make it unmistakeably clear that this is an argument I have not used once, while providing the counter to this argument, and explaining how it's completely off topic and requesting that we please don't go down this path. Thanks. SIDENOTE: completely offtopic, but you are actually wrong, as it is completely legal business in China.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Scott-S6 wrote:
"A part deep inside of us that knows that recasts would have been a wiser investment of money"

Except there is an obvious problem if everyone does that.

Your cheap recast models only exist because other people are paying more for the original models.

Their money pays for these models to exist and you suggest that they're stupid for doing that. That's why people will resent you.

And if everyone composed their army of scratch builds, the exact same thing would happen. So whats the freaking difference?

Since you're not scratch building models presumably you like being able to buy nice models? I don't want to have to scratch build models and presumably neither do you. That's being paid for by the people who buy originals that you are suggesting are stupid.

You are deriving a benefit that they pay for.

The guy who scratch builds does not derive that benefit.

A scratch built model took time, creativity and skills to make. Some are better than the real model ....

A re cast is a pirate.

I'm going to use my own experiences as an example to answer your question.
Recasting lowers the value of the original item if it is OOP.

I have an original Aquila Lander. It would originally have cost about £90 in store.
At the time I bought it, an unbuilt original would cost £190-£250 to replace.
I insured it as such, because I game with it. I had several links and auctions proving this cost.
Then China recasters started pumping them out and the second hand value for primed, recast Aquilas flooded eBay and value hit about £90 or so. People attempting to sell their originals were having to drop prices to compete, and I haven't seen a real one listed in nearly a year.
To an insurance company, a recast is much the same thing. My insurance claim if I lost my Aquila, would now not cover the cost of buying an original to replace it. If I could even find one.

And having handled recasts, despite FW's legendarily variable quality in the 201Xs, they are not passable.

 Scott-S6 wrote:
Since you're not scratch building models presumably you like being able to buy nice models? I don't want to have to scratch build models and presumably neither do you. That's being paid for by the people who buy originals that you are suggesting are stupid.

You are deriving a benefit that they pay for.

The guy who scratch builds does not derive that benefit.

I'm not suggesting anyone is stupid. My entire army is legit cast models, and I'm entirely happy with my purchase, much happier than I would have been with recasts because I simply do not trust the quality of recasts

However I have no qualms with people using a recast army, and I'm simply trying to get behind the mentality of the people who do.




I don't understand the first half of your statement though. "Since you're not scratch building models presumably you like being able to buy nice models?" I am scratch building models, and converting them from non GW minatures as well ... and I very much enjoy it, I save a gakload of money and I have a very unique model afterwards. However, I don't see how this is an less harmful to GW than just buying a recast of the same model, which has the benefit of at least advertising GW's models once people see it, seems less harmful to me.

The principle reasons are that recasts are illegal, and more importantly, that most people admire the amount of thought, effort, enthusiasm and skill that goes into conversions and scratch builds.

However since you have already said you don't want to hear this, there isn't any point in continuing the thread.