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Reply To: [unofficial weekender] There she blows!

September 5, 2021 at 12:38 pm #1675143

limburger

21711xp

@sundancer : GW can’t do it because they make a living selling minis … the rules are a means to sell those minis.

However I think that healthy competition would work in our favour.
One needs to look at historicals to see what can be done.
I’ve got early war Dutch troops for WW 2 … because I didn’t have to wait for Warlord to produce them for Bolt-action.
I’ve got several sources for early war German paratroopers and can pick the ones I like best, because I don’t have to wait for a manufacturer of rules to make them.
We get lots of niche troops because there’s someone out there that can make a product that fits a specific niche and be profitable enough for them.

It kind of sucks that we don’t see a copy-left approach to miniature design as we’ve seen with rules.
As such even if I want to use stormtroopers in something other than Legion I am forced to buy them from a company that can’t even produce enough for their own system, because there is no legal alternative.

fun fact

EA had to deal with Boeing and other manufacturers of military hardware to be allowed to use representations of the vehicles and weapons in their games.
I don’t know if any modern era wargames have had similar issues … maybe it’s a matter of scale and size of the market?
Battlefield/Call of Duty selling more than even GW can dream of and thus rules change ?