ENDLESS HORDE - 3D print your miniatures

[hennabob]

Hey All,

I'm investigating an idea for kick-starter based on the following successes:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/printrbot/printrbot-your-first-3d-printer
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2087444096/dwarven-adventurers-box-set?ref=live
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coolminiornot/zombicide?ref=live
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1744629938/kings-of-war?ref=live
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coolminiornot/sedition-wars-battle-for-alabaster?ref=search

If you haven't put it together Endless Horde is a table top miniatures war-game where you download your miniatures models and print your army out using a 3d printer.

If you have a sec I would love to get some feedback on:

1. How much you would pay (would you have paid when you were an active gamer)?

2. How developed would the rules/concept/theme/miniatures need to be for you to cough up $500 for the game(includes the printer)?

3. Considering the affordable printers don't have the greatest resolution, the best theme for the game would be heavily armoured/spacesuited or exaggerated comical miniatures; with this in mind what would you recommend for the game setting?

4. If you were asked to come up with written rules for Endless Horde what would you charge?

5. Would 2 army types with 5 different soldiers and 5 hero miniatures each army be enough to start off with?

6. If you were asked to design a miniature how much would you charge for each one?

7. How much materials cost would you be happy with for each miniature?

8. Would you be comfortable assembling the 3d printer ?

9. How much more would you be willing to pay to have the printer come preassembled?

General thoughts ?

[clockworkjoe]

i have no intention of paying $500 for any game nor I would want a 3d printer at this point.

[hennabob]

Thanks for the feedback Joe,

At what pricepoint would you invest in this concept ( assuming the rules and miniatures are at a sufficient quality) or is it more about the perceived quality of 3d printers?

[Gorkamorka]

Hey HennaBob
I would not take part in a 500$ minimum kickstarter.

But I might be interested in kickstarter with a small entry fee that would give me a PDF of a well written miniature war-game.
You could then ramp up the prices until you reach 500$ for a printer plus all the trimmings.  Please don't try to throw together a second class game system to sell access to the minies.  Games Workshop already does that and I can't accept the crappy system enough to buy their cool minies.

If on the other hand you are more interested in the miniture sales aspect.  Then your other option is to kickstart a miniature line for 3D printers with a printer plus the trimmings at the higher end of the entry level.  I'm sure there are miniature gamers out there that would be willing to buy drafts of good minies and a 3D printer in stead of the expensive minies from GW for example.

Just my 2c.

[hennabob]

Thanks Gorkamorka,

Was thinking of a few stops on the kick starter up to the printer and full games system;
Rules
Rules with minis
Rules with minis and access to online resources (living rulebook & future minis)
+ hardcover rules minis artwork etc
Unassembled printer
Assembled printer
The lot

Love to start the miniatures range idea but I'm not sure the quality of the print at this stage would come close to GW standard, we have a range of suppliers sending samples now so I'll post the results.

I haven't played for a while & it was all GW when I did, is there any stand out minis systems that we should be looking at for a good example of how to put a rule book together ?

[Cyan]

$500 seems awfully cheap for a 3D printer.  I know they've been getting cheaper lately, but I don't think a $500 one could be very good.

We have a printer at work.  I use it to make prototypes.  As a prototype fabricator, it's pretty decent.  It produces parts quickly and at reasonable tolerances.  The parts it produces, however, are ugly.  The material is really soft, and the surface of the plastic looks very dull.  The texture doesn't feel very good on your fingers.  The parts will melt if you leave them sitting in sunlight.  I've never tried painting anything I've made on the printer.

At a certain point, you have to ask yourself what you get for $500.  It sounds to me like the value proposition of your game is that you get a machine that will make minis that are uglier than the minis that you could buy for cheaper.

From the name "Endless Hordes" the impression I get is that you plan for players to build up huge armies on these printers, so that the cost of the $500 printer could be spread out over a huge number of minis that they'd make, but the resin that these printers use isn't cheap, either.  What's the cost-per-mini of the resin?

If you are going to use a 3D printer, why stick to the fixed minis model?  Why not take advantage of the fact that it can produce any kind of geometry and let users design their own models?  You could give users software to modify "base" units by giving them special features and armor and weapons and poses and whatever they want, and then generate the mesh for the printer.    That way, users would really be designing their own units, which would be a distinct advantage over minis games.

Why even stick to a 3D printer?  You could sell papercraft models that print out on conventional printers.  Full-color card stock space ships would be cheaper and look better than anything coming out of a $500 3D printer.

If you're married to the idea of users making their own minis, there are cheaper ways to do it than with a 3D printer.  Example:  http://www.amazon.com/Creepy-Crawler-18643-Bug-Maker/dp/B00499UKKS