How much do you think it costs to make a pair of Nike shoes in Asia?

> Games Workshop brings in > 0.5 billion in revenue (!!)

I had no idea that Warhammer was such a huge industry - they must sell almost 600 sets a quarter.

This is either a joke that flies over my head or there are a few zeroes missing. Which is it?

Look up the price of a single small unpainted figure. You'll be shocked.

The joke is that Warhammer sets are expensive.

Warhammer is expensive

It's priced in a similar way to Lego.

I don't find Lego especially expensive. And Lego is way more difficult to manufacture, has very exacting functional requirements and extremely good QA.

I don’t know a great deal about injection moulding but I’d assume GW kits are more detailed than lego, having seen some sprues.

The stuff they’re putting out these days is really quite good.

It's a very expensive hobby. My kids are not allowed to look at the models in the window in case they get any ideas.

I've read, that now GW have more than 50% of revenue from licensing IP, not selling books & plastic.

I bought a Warhammer set during Covid and was amazed at the detail, compared to the 1990s stuff I had as a kid.

I can't say what's more difficult to manufacture - millions of identical bricks that snap together, or a huge range of different, detailed designs which fit snugly together but don't lock.

Just the first thing on the home page: https://www.warhammer.com/en-GB/shop/Deathlords-Mortarchs-Ma...

> millions of identical bricks

Clearly you are not aware of the extraordinary range of Lego pieces.

Proportionate to the size of each company and the amount of toys they produce, I'll bet there's significantly more variety in Warhammer.

Just from a quick search, within a year Games Workshop offer about 3000 different model kits, each of which will contain ~1-4 unique moulded sprues. There seem to be at least 50 new kits each year, possibly 100, otherwise what's available rotates around the older kits.

Lego have produced about 15,000 different sets since 1950, and a huge number of the parts are shared between sets. (That's the whole point of the toy, no?)

Yeah I tried to look up the number of different Lego partszbut it gets hard to define what a Lego part is. And are we counting different colours, different designs printed on them, etc. Somewhere between 5k and 60k.

Lego is pure IP (both from LEGO itself, and then e.g. Disney or whoever is behind the theme of a given set). If you get sets designed in China and made at the same factories that make Lego bricks, they're like 1/3 the cost. If you get sets designed in not-China but obviously ripped off ("Star World" sets that are 1:1 copies of Star Wars legos), also in the same factories, it's like 1/10 the cost.

The manufacturing isn't easy, sure, but it's more or less a solved problem and not at all reflected in the cost.

So when GP says priced like Lego, they just mean that - priced based on something completely different from the cost of materials, manufacturing, etc.

A single Warhammer plastic miniature around the size of a child's toy car, unassembled and unpainted, can cost around $30.

I'm kinda surprised people aren't just buying a 3D printer. I print stuff all the time. I'm not into this kind of game but if I were I wouldn't pay that much for a piece of plastic I can print at home for 3 bucks.

False. Lego is some of the most precise injection molding in the world. The tolerances are insane and they nail them every time. Compare with offbrand building blocks and you'll feel the difference.

Micromolding is very hard, and Lego is the best at it.

My group is 3D printing most of our stuff for beer and pretzels games. But official tournaments have a rule where your miniatures have to be official products.

Note that a standard printer won't be anywhere near as nice quality as official models. You need a resin printer for that, which requires ventilation, some basic PPE, and additional labor to clean and cure the prints correctly. Not something you want to do with small children or pets in the house.

We resin print most of our models. We use FDM for blocky things like tanks and buildings, though. And some complex or very large models can't be printed (although we sometimes use alternatives for those).

Warhammer is an unusually expensive game, too. Other games like One Page Rules will sell you STLs to self-print, or charge very reasonable prices for pro-printed minis. You can buy a 2-player starter kit for OPR for about the same money as one WH40K unit.

> If you get sets designed in China and made at the same factories that make Lego bricks, they're like 1/3 the cost.

Lego does not outsource brick making. They tried it out back in 2005 with Flextronics in Hungary and got a painful lesson. Lego runs all their factories themselves now.

Also you have to take in account that Lego frequently stops certain parts and also that they more and more create complex parts and comparatively less "classic" bricks.

Which is an issue because it makes the sets way more difficult to reuse than 30 years ago. Go figure what to build with a random ninjago set except the official model. But that’s another ~~rant~~story.

I've FDM printed models for friends, and the quality isn't there. It's not good enough to spend the time carefully painting it.

It's fine as a token for the game, but people enjoy the painting etc too.

A resin printer isn't safe for use in an apartment, otherwise that would probably be more common.

Licensing is about 10%, nowhere near 50.

https://assets.ctfassets.net/ost7hseic9hc/1alE9DriNd0GJq1SYK...

Lego may run the factories, but the factory will run extra and sell the excess off books. Maybe less so nowadays that (1) they can charge a 20-30% premium over US Lego prices in China, and (2) competitor off-brand Lego have caught up in quality

I don't think the official Lego China factory products get sold to the US, only Asia?

10-20 years ago, sure. Nowadays you can get basically the same product from LEGO compatible competitors for way cheaper. Dunno how many modern sets of the variety of competitor stuff you've assembled recently, there's huge variance. Some of it definitely has crap QC. Some of it is really, really good now. My wife put together some knockoff 8000+ piece set the other year and the pieces were basically flawless.

Exactly. I bought 3 or 4 China Lego clones to try and the parts were slightly different in size and in color. Some blocks way too big, so building was not good experience. For original Lego you don’t need sanding paper on the table.

Yeah, and way much too! I wanted this so bad for my kid but it’s breathtakingly expensive (while still being quite an underwhelming set).

https://www.lego.com/nl-nl/product/lego-education-spike-prim...

I just Googled for "resin printer at home". There are loads of Reddit discussions and YouTube videos about it. Yes, precautions and a careful setup are required, but "isn't safe" does not look true anymore.

It's possible, you have to put in some effort. Active ventilation to outside, working with PPE on, washing in isopropyl alcohol, curing with UV light. At least that is what I would do in smaller apartments.

they own their factories. Contrary to what you're thinking, they actually only have 3-4 factories across the world.

Resin is nasty stuff

* Avoid placing a 3D printer over carpeted areas

That rules out most apartments in countries like the USA and UK.

* Do not locate dedicated work/personal spaces in close proximity to the printers if odors are a concern

That rules out all small apartments, where there isn't a room that can be dedicated to the printer.

* 3D Printers and uncured, open resin vats should be stored and operated in a well ventilated area or with local exhaust

That rules out all apartments in northern countries (like here in Denmark) with lots of insulation

https://radtech.org/safe-handling-of-3d-printing-resins/

Resin prints are production quality, but a messy/toxic process.

We need a resin printer tuned for mass production of tiny pieces, just like belt FDM printers are tuned for mass production.

FDM prints are either slow or have obvious layer lines or both. If you're painting it maybe that doesn't matter.

Where I've seen the difference is in the quality of the instructions (which matters) and the packaging (which arguably doesn't). The bricks themselves are, as you say, basically flawless.

I live in northern county and can vent my 3d printers exhaust to the outside. Friend of mine from CPH did the same with his resin printer.

And if you actively went it outside carpet and close proximity should ok ok'ish health wise. It's just effort and noise that a lot of people don't like to put in.

Yes I know, resin printing is not great, I don't like it myself either. But FDM printing has gotten a lot better, especially with the bambulab material switcher where you can use water-dissolvable support material.

But cool to hear you're printing them. I can imagine they don't want to allow it at official tournament to protect the golden goose :)

Resin is also slow (probably slower per mm^3 than FDM depending on nozzle size), but speed doesn't really matter IMO. But yeah with a high detail 0.2mm nozzle (0.1mm extrusions size) it does tend to get pretty slow. Layer lines are a factor of orientation a lot (you want to have steep angles, not very shallow ones).

I have several printers and I ususually have something "in the oven" while I WFH (my job is not related to 3D printing sadly)

Oh, thank you, I should not trust videobloggers when it is possible to check primary documentation.

Yeah, we have a couple of Bambus, but the detail on these miniatures is physically smaller than the extruder. So print resolution holds us back a bit.

One advantage of resin is that it takes a fixed amount of time per layer no matter the size of the layer. FDM time obviously increases linearly depending on the amount of material to deposit. So a resin printer will take the same amount of time to produce a single figure or as many figures will fit into its print area.

Other interesting bit, they now have recurring revenue from 207k subs

Additionally: If you want to _mass_ mass produce these things, an injection molding setup is going to be your goal. You can sort of hack one together for plastic molding using a pneumatic/hydraulic cylinder and some mold plates that are either cast metal (lost-PLA, lost-wax), cured plaster, or CNC'd. The stuff that will give you five million units a day costs as much as a house, but there is a middle ground that is competitive with FDM on quality but significantly faster for more like $300-$3000.

The limitation with injection molding is typically the cost and complexity of having mold plates made when you don't have a demand for all that many units.

Right and I'm talking about the one in China (that opened like 10 years ago), selling stuff to people in China (and presumably elsewhere in Asia).

Nowadays it's kinda irrelevant to the greater point anyways, because some of the knock off factories make parts that are just as good. (Some knock off factories push out terrible QC)

A lot of those people on Reddit and YouTube are doing dangerous things like handling liquid resin without gloves or eye protection, or not ventilating/filtering resin fumes that cause cancer. There are horror stories of people who splashed a bit of resin in their eye and went blind.

It's no more dangerous than a craft like woodworking or spray painting when you follow very basic safety protocols, but the safety culture is near nonexistent in the community.

Hmm it depends on your sensitivity also. I know some people at our makerspace who have serious allergies to the stuff, even a minor trace and their skin gets all red.

Not everyone is as careful with the stuff so that doesn't really help.

> That rules out most apartments in countries like the USA and UK

Yes I've always wondered why they love carpets so much. When I lived in such an apartment it was terrible. Always dirty and dusty. I'd much rather have a plastic, wooden or tile floor (the latter not ideal due to breakage though).

But you can ventilate, especially if you blow the air outside through an active blower.

And finally, makerspaces are a great way to do these things anyway. A community that can support and help you when you run into issues, friendly people around to borrow equiment and materials from, and they're usually pretty cheap if you don't get a fixed desks.

My friend did this with a pretty large amount of success. You can find prefabs online and even designs for mini warhammer models to save space/mats.

Even with the 0.2mm nozzle? With that you can go pretty detailed because the maximum it can do with that is 0.1mm (how they pull that off with a 0.2mm nozzle I don't know, but all their nozzles do half the nozzle size in layer height).

Of course it's not the resolution of a good laser resin printer but resin is also much more expensive and it's a PITA to work with as discussed here.

Works fine for a tank, but something like Imperial Guardsman, Sisters of Battle or a Necron Tomb Blade all have features that are too small for FDM. Look up the "Celestine the Living Saint" model - the entire sculpt is small enough to fit inside your hand.

The extra cost of resin is negligible at this scale, it's mostly the safety requirements and extra labor that makes it harder.

Ahhh yes ok I didn't realise that. I'm not into this kind of game at all but a friend who was into it showed me his big flying tanks so I thought they were all that big.