Is More Ever Too Much?

[rampantlion]

My favorite battle of the middle ages is Bouvines 1214.  In the past there has never really been a dedicated range to the exact armor type and I would scour various manufacturers and order a few figs from each company to put my armies together.  I wanted to have every knight fig from every company that worked for what I was envisioning as the "perfect" knight figure for the battle. Lately both with the release of the Baron's Wars figs and the explosion of 3d printed files out there, I can no longer keep up or find these hidden gems.  It is great, but some how it feels weird.  I know that I am thinking about (not even really complaining) about a good thing, but I'm not sure that it is as fun as it used to be because I can get whatever I want whenever I want it.  Does anyone else feel this way?

[Wiegraf]

There’s a certain pride to putting together an army or unit that nobody else has done or is hard to come by, so I get that aspect - but ultimately i think it’s going to change now and be better - especially with 3D printing and the continual advances being made. I’m sure it’ll get to a point where there’s StL out there for virtually anything historical you can imagine. Surely there’s going to be some eras that are not so mainstream while others might even become mainstream or popular , like barons war recently. 

[WorkShy]

As someone who has come back to historical minis after 15y+, I'm somewhat disappointed with the lack of progress in terms of customization. 

On the positive side, my era (late antiquity to early medieval) has far more choice in terms of metal and plastic figures from different manufacturers. The negative is that they are all quite similar with clear gaps in the ranges. Plenty of spear armed heavy cavalry or cataphracts but very little in the way of armoured horse archers or armoured foot archers etc. The plastic sets from GB and WA are fairly average. Their aim (a good aim) is clearly to provide a cheaper way to put a mass of minis on the table but the actual amount of customization in the plastic sets is fairly modest. Victrix is meant to be producing late Romans but they have had them as an "upcoming release" for about 15 months and precisely zero has turned up. 

Having come from modding Total war and using 3dsmax to easily produce a far better quality troops than the actual vanilla game, I'd hoped that something similar would be available. I've found nothing in terms of STL files etc. Except for the usual vast number of Vikings!

Clearly it's going in the right direction with digital rendering but, seemingly, will still be a while before it gets to my era.

[ithoriel]

As someone who games in 2mm - 20mm I look at the profusion of 3D printed stuff available to collectors of 28mm - 32mm scale figures and weep.

I have found one outfit who were willing to rescale some 28mm stuff to Gaslands size, hats off to 3D Kingdoms. Find them on EBay or their own website.

Project Wargaming's 2mm Ancients have been a godsend for my Strength and Honour collection.

[Norm]

Yer ne'er had it so good! why, in my day we had no option but to do head and torso swaps with soft poly Airfix figures .... and it ne'er did me any harm! :-)

I'm pretty sure that 3D files will quickly consolidate the 'main topics' for the faster money and then as the market matures, figure diversity will become significantly supported. In 2008 Perry Miniatures took us into Hard plastic historicals and all the pundits thought that was going nowhere. Five years later the technology was much more embedded and cheaper. Now, 14 years on, considering the print runs and volume sales needed to break even on a single £15K - £20K sprue, there is massive company support, touching most of the popular periods. Now you have Victrix going to 12mm and Warlord Games 13.5mm, for the 3D designers / suppliers, it's Open Season.