3D Printing, Pirate Bay and the future of gaming

3D printing has been thrust front and center with the incredible advances in technology over the last couple of years. Add to this the intellectual property fights that Games Workshop has undertaken, and the ability to "print" out models from 3D files and it spells out a coming storm that may well change the face of gaming.

If you don't know about 3D printing, make sure you read our previous articles on the matter.

From 40K Nation member Doran Bouchard:

The Pirate Bay is offering users the chance to download and print out real objects using 3D printers in what the pirate site is hailing as 'the future. Among the new "physibles" uploaded to the Pirate Bay are plans for a Warhammer 40k dreadnought that got taken down in December with a DMCA request by Games Workshop"

ThePirateBay.org announced via its blog, first reported by GigaOM, that users can now search in a new category called "Physibles". Physibles, as the blog explains, are mock-up files that allow a 3D printer to create a physical object.

"We believe that the next step in copying will be made from digital form into physical form. It will be physical objects. Or as we decided to call them: Physibles. Data objects that are able (and feasible) to become physical. We believe that things like three dimensional printers, scanners and such are just the first step. We believe that in the nearby future you will print your spare sparts for your vehicles. You will download your sneakers within 20 years."

Just think, in the nearby future, you will be able to print out a whole army of models.  Or even dice to play 40k with.

The Pirate Bay, a site well known due to accusations of it aiding and abetting copyright infringement, took a philanthropic approach to the announcement, saying that it would likely change the world in a matter of years. I am sure that as the materials and scanning tech come into maturity it will have not only the power to revolutionize the world, but also to change the way this hobby is fundamentally structured in a business sense.

A wide range of 3D printers were shown off at this year's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, including one from MakerBot Industries — the MakerBot Replicator — available for US$1749.

http://store.makerbot.com/replicator-404.html

https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6978241/Tabletop_Wargaming_Robot_Model

Ork Blasta Bomma Scratchbuild

If you have been following my blog, you know San Diego resident Greg Teeuwen is becoming a legend when it comes to Orc scratch-building.  He has really been focusing on planes lately, thanks to a couple of clients who want massive air forces.  You can see the results in the number of Ork flyers in The Big Game.  Here Greg talks about his latest creation:

From Greg:

Thanks to the Big Game, the planes I've built got a lot of attention. One particular person wanted a Blasta Bomma along with some fighta-bomma escorts. The bomma took me about three weeks and is a close replica of my own. Of particular note, I put more effort into making the nose cannon different- in fact, I think his cannons are quite a bit more beefier than my own.

I also asked the client if there was anything "special" he wanted about the plane. He wanted the wings to look more "incomplete" or scrappy, and he wanted a ball turret. For one wing in particular, I left a huge hole exposing the ribbing and some cabling. As for the ball turret, I couldn't help but use grots, crowded in there. In typical grot fashion, one of them is hanging out the side plinking away with a hand gun.

As with my other commissioned planes, the client has requested a bare model, so he can prime and paint to his desire.

40K Video - Space Hulk Suicide Mission

SPACE HULK: SUICIDE MISSION

This is a great video about the Games Workshop game Space Hulk.  Quite funny and worth the 7 minutes it takes.  Hats off to the animator as the visuals are quite good. Terminators, Tyranids, Librarians, all the good stuff.  And humor too!

Enjoy!

Alec

Chaos Rumors - Hot off the Press!

Stickmonkey over on Warseer, passed these rumors along on a thread you can read here.

So my snitches have passed along a few bits.

Up next for 40k sounds like may timeframe for a chaos codex. Rumored to expand upon 4 major legions.

New plastics

Chaos dread.

New plastic raptors

New plastic plague bearers

New character sculpts, not sure if abaddon is included...

I think most if not all of this has been mentioned before.

On top of this, I'm hearing there will be a few blister releases for other armies between now and summer. Even with WFB likely to take the spotlight in April, I'm being told to expect 2-3 blisters for 40k.

Likely candidates include missing characters for Nids, Necrons, DE. All of which have sculpts ready.

He then reported, after being asked which of the four major Legions would be included:

Emperors children
Death guard
World eaters
Thousand sons

But that's not all that's in the book from what I hear. And the conflict in what I've heard is that they expanded upon the 4 chaos gods, or they expanded upon the 4 legions devoted to those specific gods, so I'm not certain which is true right now, if either.

I have heard from many sources traitor guard and others are in the book, but nothing close enough for me to have a lot of faith yet there. 

And:

...as Abaddon is in the dex, I expect all 9 legions to be covered somehow.  

And:

 

I'm also confirming a 6e winging it's way our direction. 

As always sprinkle liberally with:

 

Quantum Gothic back in business - New Release too!

Well, Quantum Gothic is back in action after having their website down for several months.  These guys are my favorite resin after-market terrain maker.  Their stuff is brilliantly designed and well executed.  I highly recommend you check out their web store and order some cool terrain.

Missile Launcher

Armoured Bunker & Gun

Communication Dish

Sentry Gun

Their new release.  The Gothic Power Generator:

Games Workshop vs. Chapterhouse Studios Lawsuit Update

The lawsuit by Games Workshop against Chapterhouse Studios and Paulson Games has been news for over a year now.  For those of you who are new to this news, Games Workshop sued Chapterhouse Studios, and Jon Paulson.  No one seems to know why they sued Jon Paulson since he didn't have anything to do with Chapterhouse, though he did do resin casting.   GW claims that both Chapterhouse and Paulson Games violated GW copyrights.

You can download the original legal filing by Games Workshop here. 

Games Workshop last month announced that they had settled with Jon Paulson.  They made the announcement on their Investor Relations page.  My guess is they just dropped him from teh suit since there was no connection with Chapterhouse.  Nice going GW, suing someone for no reason. 

Copyright Litigation Settlement

January 6, 2012

Games Workshop and Paulson Games are pleased to announce the settlement of the copyright litigation commenced by Games Workshop in federal court in Chicago.  Paulson Games and Games Workshop have agreed on the range of products Paulson Games is permitted to sell without violating Games Workshop’s claimed rights in its Warhammer 40,000 characters and have agreed to terminate the litigation between them.  Games Workshop’s case against Chapterhouse Studios continues.

So with Paulson out of the lawsuit, Chapterhouse is now front and center. 

StraightSilver from Warseer posted the latest news (or rumors) about the GW lawsuit.  As an attorney myself, I find always find this stuff interesting. Certainly the timing of the the new Nid and Space Wolves releases has caused a lot of speculation about how this may be tied into the lawsuit. None the less, here is what StraightSilver had to say:

Concerning the Chapterhouse lawsuit, I would be the person concerned who first bought it to light.
Unfortunately my original comments were cut and pasted from DakkaDakka and spread like wildfire, and in many cases I was misquoted.
Essentially I was told over a year ago, by a very, very reliable source (who shall remain unnamed) that certain kits were being held back by GW as there were concerns regarding the Chapterhouse lawsuit.
GW had been advised that because they had not released physical representations of Thunderwolves, Tervigon, Tyrannofex, Doom etc that third parties who already had could contest ownership.
GW have never released a Thunderwolf model, they have released Canis Wolfborn, and as such own the rights to a model caleed Canis Wolfborn, but had not yet released Thunderwolves.
There was a fear that releasing these models after other third party manufacturers (not just CHS) would weaken their case against Chapterhouse.
The most contentious of these models being the Doom of Malantai, Tervigon and Thunderwolves.
However it is no coincidence that several months ago GW hired a new IP lawyer, who now advises them on exactly these kind of issues, and it is obvious that their legal advisors have said it's ok to release these models.
It's not a coincidence that Thunderwolves and the Tervigon have been released simultaneously just before the case against Chapterhouse goes to trial. 




So there is a summary of where we are at he moment.  I will continue to keep my ear to the ground and have contacted both Nick at Chapterhouse and Jon Paulson for comments if they care, though Nick of course, doesn't want to say too much for now.

Necron Vehicle Conversions

Joedrache on the Apocalypse40K forum is a big Necron collector and posted these photos of his recent Necron vehicle conversions.   Here are his comments on his vehicles:
 

Triarch Stalker

For the stalker, I tried to make it look like the picture in the book (but found out later it has 3! legs in the fluff) I think 6 are much better than 3.  I started with the cockpit of the ghost ark, adding part of the fenders and the mount for the grav motors to be the joints for the legs. Each leg had to be notched to fit on there with some strength. I added an extra bi segment for the front legs to give it a more crabby appearance, and adding two arches beside the driver, I think intimates the quantum shielding it has. For the heat ray I fused 4 synaptic guns in a chevron formation. This model is definitely one of my favorite conversions.

Ghost Ark

The Ghost Ark would be my 2nd favorite. The profile shots show how you could cut each arch to make it fit with the gun underslung. First thing I had to do was toss that lousy flying base in the trash. Is there any way that could ever support this model?  Have you seen the DE flying bases?  WTF! I digress. I wanted it to have a more organic, bug, ribcage feel than the viking longboat look it did have. The odd heads in there are from Puppetswar. I could never quite capture the progression of damaged warriors at the rear, being repaired as they come up to the front. there was no room for the flayer attachments, so I just stuck them on individually, giving them a nice transitional arch throughout the sets

Catacomb Command / Annihilation Barge 1

My Catacomb Command / Annihilation Barge serves double duty of course, though its usually the sweep attack variety. The main thing to do was get that Overlord to hang off the side for lopping off marine heads. I use a heat gun extensively in my modeling.  It cost me a $ 100 at Sears.  Its pricey, but so worth it, especially for Nids or other organics.  But in this case, I just had to slightly bend legs and ankles, and the scythe arm to get the right pose. I wanted it to be even more drastic, but had to compromise. if you bend too much they start to look boneless!

Catacomb Command / Annihilation Barge 2

Catcom2 The Headless Horseman! The tricky part here was building it upside down. There is a sweet ball underneath that will never be seen. had to cut the male part off of the crescent upright to get it to work, and you can see, my angle was not quite right, but that's okay. I just love the way this Overlord looks while he's prowling the sleepy hollows of 40k. He did have a BA helmet, but it fell off so now he's hunting grey knight paladins.

I wanted a big Necrony crystal out there. This is a quartz pendulum, and it was very hard to get the paint to stick. The uv paint i'm using is pretty chalky, and generally bad paint, but it glows. I wanted the Doom Ark to look like its got a spinning matrix that charges up for the shot. Plus it seems the normal way you're supposed to build it (which I almost never do) just obscures the cool gun barrel, so I wanted to show that off. Then I wanted a more servitor feel for the driver.

Much thanks to Joe.

Loken

40K Boxed Transports Sets Released. PHOTOS

 

New Boxed sets are out already from Games Workshop.  They consist of a transport and a squad of troops.  Here is what has been released:

Space Marines & Drop Pod
Imperial Guard Cadians & Chimera
Chaos Space Marines & Chaos Rhino
Ork Boyz & Trukk

They are priced at $ 56 each.  Interestingly these are not up at the Games Workshop website, nor are they in the local GW Battle Bunker.

And here are photos of the front and back of three of them:

Sorry, no photo of the Space MarineDrop Pod and Tactical Squad set.  They were sold out by the time Son of Dorn, a regular reader, went back to take a photo of each set!  But thanks to him for his work here.

Loken

Games Workshop Nid/Wolves New Release Videos

Well, the music is a bit over-dramatic, but the views of the new releases on these two videos are better than the photos on the GW site.  This was posted on the What's New Today blog that has really been elevated within Games Workshop and on their webiste.  Seems that GW finally is starting to get the value of making your site compelling by adding new content daily. 

 

From Dan Harden at Games Workshop on the What's New Today blog:

 

Check out these videos to see all the new Space Wolf and Tyranid units, including the mighty Thunderwolf Cavalry, the Wolf Lord on Thunderwolf, the critter-spawning Tervigon and the formidable new Hive Tyrant. If, like me, you're one of those people that needs to see every detail of every miniature, then this is the best way to do it; from the platted beards of the Space Wolves to the ichor dripping from the underside of the Tervigon there's plenty to look at.

Many of the new models are also plastic kits, which means there are loads of different options included in the box, from guns and claws to heads and tails. You get to see a lot of the parts in these videos, a useful resource if you want to find out how to equip your new units. Put it this way, the Hive Tyrant can now be geared up for total war with wings, a Heavy Venom Cannon, Bone Sword, Lash Whip... well, everything really. You can even build the Swarmlord from the kit. Check out the videos and see for yourself.

Space Wolves New Release Video

Tyranid New Release Video

Space Wolves and Tyranids Advance orders up!

 A total of 26 new Space Wolve and Tyranid models went up on the GW Advance Order page.  

There are a total of 10 Tyranid models and 16 Space Wolves.  Two major issues I have:

1.  A single 40mm base of Tyranid RIpper Swarms is $ 13.25?  That seems a tad high.  Actually VERY high considering how many of these you need.

2.  Ragnar Blackmane is absolutely the WORST model in the 40K range.  It is clearly from 20 years ago.  Can we get a new model for him and Njall Stormcaller?  They are totally 2 dimensional and so very 2nd edition they look totally out of place on the table.

Here is a preview:

Tyranid Tyrannofex / Tervigon

Tyranid Hive Tyrant / The Swarmlord

Tyranid Boneswords and Lash Whips

And for he Space Puppies:

Thunderwolf Calvary

Ferensian Wolf Pack

Arjac Rockfist (Finecast)