Reply To: [unofficial weekender] There she blows!

[limburger 21949xp 0]

@crazyredcoat I’d go even one step further … games that say ‘you can only use our minis’ only ever do it because it is good for business. It is never any good for the players.

It never happens in historical games (even though some may attempt it), because it is impossible to enforce and the communities haven’t accepted it as a feature of their games.

With any fictional setting such limitations get sold as ‘features’ and somehow the fans accept it. There’s also laws that makes enforcing such limitations practical as you’re dealing with copyright and IP. As a result a company can claim that only their products are allowed to  be called speesj merines(tm) and anything else is not.

However such claims can’t stop anyone from using alternate sources or scratch-build designs, because all you really need for the game to be playable is a figure of similar size that is different enough from the other troops in an army so the opponent (and yourself) don’t get confused as to what is what.

There is some wiggle room though for small / independent manufacturers. A game like Moonstone can be played without their minis, but it would practically defeat their reason for making those rules if the profit margins are low and they can’t possibly compete with a big company that could make similar figures at a lower cost.

I think GW could use a bit more competition to force them to make more fun miniatures (and keep all of their factions up to date). The potential for cheaper minis would be another benefit, but I doubt there is much that can be won unless someone with the same mass production capability as GW steps up.

It would become more difficult for new gamers to understand what game is being played though.
Especially if there’s a Starwars tournament and everyone is using spacemarines as proxies for Stormtroopers and WW2/modern war era troops for rebels …

OTOH … it would be very cool and may start people think about the quality of rules too.