The NEW Future of Wargaming

0:00 in this video I'll tell you about where the future of wargaming is going and what steps toward that future we're already seeing today making games is hard especially Miniatures war games besides all the design stuff right like coming up with the ideas writing and testing the rule system and crafting the story getting cool art and all that kind of stuff getting miniature sculpted you know if you decide that you're going to go down that road then there's also the logistics of it so you can actually get the finished product out the door to the people that want it this is a thing that players and sometimes even firsttime designers don't really think about the shipping the warehousing the all that kind of stuff but a game isn't successful if no one can get it in my opinion role playing games have it the easiest in this day and age RPGs are generally just a book you know or maybe a digital approximation of a book right you know PDF so Logistics is pretty simple you either get books printed someplace and then ship them to customers who purchase them or you work with a company like drive-through RPG and get the books printed on demand as people purchase them and then shipped to those customers and and so on and even easier and quicker still if the book is just a PDF then the customer gets to download it seconds after the transaction is finalized instant

1:30 gratification this is considerably more difficult in games that rely on physical components right collectible card games board games and Miniatures games there are print OnDemand card games but not print on demand collectible card games that I have seen you know like with Rarity and then the the opening the random packs and the secondary market and all that stuff that people enjoy in their Magics the Gatherings and their Pokemon and the rest of those the print on demand board games they're they're also out there too but they're certainly kind of limited in scope to what the you know print on demand manufacturer has available for tokens and pieces and things like that and they can also be kind of expensive but what about Miniatures War Games well the books that hold the rules for these games can be printed just like role playing game books for the most part so that's not so bad they can also be print on demand Andor PDF files right that's how Vince ventell and I produ our Miniatures games for snarling Badger Studios we use a service called War Game Vault which is a subsidiary of drive-through RPG basically the same stuff we make our games in a miniature agnostic style meaning that you can use whatever Miniatures you want so we don't have to worry about Miniatures Miniatures can be their own hassle to be sure there's so much that goes into producing them for a peak into this process go check out goobertown Hobbies his excellent new recent video about how Miniatures are are manufactured pachow just to kind of

3:02 get a glimpse at how our little toy soldiers get made from concept art to sculpting to testing to sprew layout to manufacturing and shipping and all that kind of stuff there's an incredible amount of work that goes into making Miniatures which many people just don't realize now yes I can hear you but what about 3D printing you say unless you've been living under a rock you've probably heard of 3D printing 3D printing miniatures from digital STL files is kind of like printing rulebook pages on your paper printer at home from your PDF files right you get a very quick download of a file and then you manifest the digital information into a physical object a printed rulebook in a three- ring binder for example or you know a cool piece of terrain or an interesting miniature for you to paint near instant gratification these STL files are generally designed and sold by people who are you know good at digital sculpting you find them at places like my minifactory and others some sculptors use platforms like patreon to make money from their you know digital output these folks are rarely ever game designers though they're generally just making models sometimes with a specific game in mind like Warhammer or Dungeons and Dragons but frequently not frequently they just make cool models that you can use in whatever war game you'd like especially Miniatures agnostic games there's a a bit bit of an issue however most companies that make war games don't

4:34 make too many STL files for you to print now sure there are some that produce a game like with manufactured Miniatures and they maybe sell some stls for specific terrain and such but most of the game companies out there especially the biggest one uh seem to kind of avoid the 3D print printing space completely they make the majority of their money on selling you plastic and already have the logistics set up to produce and ship that plastic or resin or metal around the world the problem is small War Games companies or new war games companies which are generally kind of small as well can't really get the same logistics thing set up as easily it's expensive to get started and small companies and new companies don't have that kind of coin but because of the internet and Technology specifically 3D printer technology we're starting to see a new kind of war game emerging one where the company that's making the rules is the same one that's making the stls for printing to be honest it's actually been happening kind of quietly for a while now I suspect you've probably heard of onepage rules they started years ago as a a single game designer making a simpler version of the Warhammer 40,000 rules and it all fit on one page hence the name Through The Years they've developed multiple games all available online as PDFs that you could purchase for cheap and use whatever models you

6:06 wanted to play true miniature agnostic then they started selling STL files for people who wanted to print Miniatures to play their games if they didn't have Miniatures already or if they wanted to find something different right you could still use whatever models that you want but they wanted to offer you options not everyone has a 3D printer though or maybe even a friend who has a 3D printer so over the years as they grown onepage rules has been working to find ways to produce physical Miniatures for people who don't have access to 3D printing now the plastic Miniatures on sprew that we're used to from Big names you know like like Games Workshop and stuff like that are incredibly expensive to make the steel molds they go like this uh for those things can cost anywhere from 5 to 10 to $50,000 alone but there are other cheaper options out there like Coast uh and PVC and even print on demand 3D printing and you're seeing more small companies heading in this Direction look at the trench Crusade Kickstarter that made $3.3 million recently I made a video about it pachow shortly after the kickstarter ended a few weeks back now the late pledge manager is available until mid December so if you missed the kickstarter and you're sad about it you can still get in on it just go to their website and you'll be able to find it there uh just type trench Crusade into Google and you'll figure it out that said they're producing all of their models for their game for six different factions as it turns out all as STL

7:36 files for people to 3D print so the kickstarter backers will get them shortly right after the new year however they're also selling them as pre-printed minis as well print on demand for 3D printing is a relatively new option for war Gamers but you're seeing companies crop up like only games in the UK and other smaller ones that honestly I don't know of really yet uh drop some names of other print on demand 3D printers in the comments down below so we can all find them they allow games like trench Crusade and others to offer STL files for folks with access to 3D printers and to 3D print the requested models and ship them to the folks who don't have access to 3D printers it's a great Boon for small game companies but when we're talking about 3D printing Miniatures in most situations we're talking about resin printing that is the type of printing that uses a light sensitive liid resin and then the printer hardens the fluid kind of layer by layer with ultraviolet lights to produce a very very finely detailed miniature it's kind of messy and can have some sort of nasty fumes but it makes the best Miniatures as far as detail goes then there's also the other kind of 3D printing fused deposition modeling or fdm that's the kind where you use a big spool of plastic and a heat nozzle and all that kind of stuff generally fdm is what you use for printing ter brain and resin printing is for Miniatures again resin printing is much higher detail than fdm but usually for terrain you don't need

9:08 as much detail right so all that said fdm printing is usually less messy and doesn't have the dangerous fumes except for a couple specific types of filament like abs and maybe some other ones but in comparison you know to resin printing it's cleaner and a little bit easier in many situations but fdm printers are getting better and more detailed finder detail all that kind of stuff and some game companies are focusing on that audience and I'm really looking forward to it here's a case in point Battlefront Valkyrie from fat dragon games I first learned about them by seeing them at the top of the besteller list on War Game Vault it's a space combat game with spaceships which look a little Star Trek is you know but legally distinct and also flat right the shapes were really compelling and and when I saw them and and really made me kind of click to go through and read more about the game and as I read through the listing I found out that it was a self-contained game which included the rules and the stls for the ships but also stls for the tokens and the game components and all that kind of stuff and it was optimized for fdm printing I was intrigued as I actually have a bamboo lab A1 fdm printer and have been using it for printing terrain a lot lately so I bought the base game file and all that kind of stuff and immediately printed out the ships with my stock A1 printer they printed but they were more

10:39 kind of liny right than what I expected from seeing the pictures and the instructions and all that kind of stuff then I actually read the instructions versus just kind of skimming them and found out that you get the best results if you use a 2 mm nozzle or hot end as they call them as opposed to the 4 mm that stock on that thing so you know I bought a new2 MM nozzle uh it was like 12 bucks and it was incredibly easy to install very simple and then I just followed the instructions a little bit more that they put out there to kind of tweak some settings in the printer software stuff I did all that and then the difference was night and day the second batch printed a lot slower with the tiny nozzle which kind of makes sense but I mean like three to four times slower right but the detail was considerably higher I really looked forward to painting them once they were done so I primed them up with my airbrush and then painted them with my Army painter air paints to approximate the look that they had on the ones that they showed in the instructions and in the thumbnail for the you know the cover of the game and all that kind of stuff you could of course paint them however you'd like but I was originally kind of drawn to the look of the models on the cover so that's what I went with I really like how they turned out but they're not done yet yet Beyond just selling you the game and the 3D models fat dragon games is also including the tokens and the counter that tracks like the ship Hull and energy and all that

12:10 kind of stuff as well these components will with a little bit of work allow you to have a tabletop gaming experience like the fancier board games and Miniatures Gateway games like say Star Wars X-Wing X-Wing was especially known for the maneuvering wheels and the tokens lots and lots of different tokens all that kind of cool stuff which really sort of enhanced the game for a lot of people and within this digital package you'll be given the files to make all that stuff on your printer as well what this is doing is it is selling you a more complete package than just a wargaming rule book or just some random Miniatures to use in whatever rule set you decide on as this industry goes forward you will begin to see smaller Indie developers releasing more kind of complete package games like Battlefront Valkyrie and since October which is when this game was first released they've launched two more expansions one's got like new ships and stuff like that and the other one's got some cool terrain they are like ruined bits of a space station and there's new scenarios as well and eventually they might even be able to sell print on demand 3D printed versions of their game as well for folks without access to a 3D printer this concept of these kind of complete package games is very interesting to me ESP especially as an indie game publisher myself right now this video wasn't sponsored by fat dragon games or trench Crusade or any of these folks I just really think that where we're

13:41 heading right now in wargaming is a very interesting Direction so I've been buying and trying out these games so I can check them out and spread the word if I like them do you have access to a 3D printer either one you own or maybe a friend who has one perhaps do these types of games seem interesting to you or do you think that this is all some kind of fad do you stay away from 3D printing and if so why and lastly is there a complete package 3D printer game that you like that I haven't mentioned put all that stuff down there in the comments down below so we can all learn if you liked this video then I'd appreciate a depress mation of the like button down there as well it helps more people learn about the future of wargaming and and it helps the channel too subscribe to see more videos every single Friday and thanks for watching