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How has the miniatures business been doing, post-pandemic?
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<blockquote data-quote="Wofano Wotanto" data-source="post: 9334636" data-attributes="member: 7044704"><p>I'm several years out of date on being as up to date on the minis industry the way I once was, but the pandemic lockdown counterintuitively did a lot of favors for many companies. Painting figures is something you can do just fine solo, production wasn't badly impacted for smaller casting companies (the ones who relied on direct sales anyway) and even the GW elephant in the room managed to turn a profit consistently while WizKids continued to make mint on 5e related sales. Probably the hardest hit major company was Privateer Press, whose focus on tourney gaming wound up hurting them pretty badly when there were no tourneys - something that theoretically should also have crippled GW but as it turns out they apparently have a larger percentage of casual players than PP did.</p><p></p><p>Compensating for that we've had a lot of new-ish skirmish games that took off very well, and not just GW's Warcry, Kill Team, Necromunda, etc. Osprey and Northstar have both done very well with Frostgrave/Stargrave/Rangers of Shadowdeep/Silver Bayonet, etc., Gaslands was a bit of a flash in the pan but built a large enough demand that several casters (and STL farms) started making Matchbox-car-compatible conversion bit ranges specifically for it, and the Lion/Dragon/Xenos Rampant family of games is doing well and really encourages a "buy you want, you can use it here" mentality that helps casting companies no end. There's also RPG-adjacent stuff that's proved popular - the "5 Units of Distance From Someplace" game line, Rangers of Shadow Deep, Two-Hour Wargames' 5150 system, Four-Color Figures numerous rules, etc.</p><p></p><p>All that said, traditional casting is probably doomed in the foreseeable future as 3D printing tech improves and home printing/printing services become ever more common. There's just no way to compete with the costs on that stuff in the long run, and companies (even GW) that aren't preparing to transition to new business models are going to be relegated to niche specialty roles sooner or later. It's already getting hard to convince distributors and retailers to handle metal figs at all, and even "cheap" plastics like Reaper Bones aren't actually cheap anymore - especially compared to home-printed figs.</p><p></p><p>The RPG end of the minis hobby was never my specialty, so I'm less confident about how that's doing - but WizKids certainly seems to be selling okay locally, FWIW. The decline of metal casting makes it more expensive to get dedicated figs made for smaller games (by 5e D&D standards) but 3D STL files will probably wind up re-opening that market again in a big way soon.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Wofano Wotanto, post: 9334636, member: 7044704"] I'm several years out of date on being as up to date on the minis industry the way I once was, but the pandemic lockdown counterintuitively did a lot of favors for many companies. Painting figures is something you can do just fine solo, production wasn't badly impacted for smaller casting companies (the ones who relied on direct sales anyway) and even the GW elephant in the room managed to turn a profit consistently while WizKids continued to make mint on 5e related sales. Probably the hardest hit major company was Privateer Press, whose focus on tourney gaming wound up hurting them pretty badly when there were no tourneys - something that theoretically should also have crippled GW but as it turns out they apparently have a larger percentage of casual players than PP did. Compensating for that we've had a lot of new-ish skirmish games that took off very well, and not just GW's Warcry, Kill Team, Necromunda, etc. Osprey and Northstar have both done very well with Frostgrave/Stargrave/Rangers of Shadowdeep/Silver Bayonet, etc., Gaslands was a bit of a flash in the pan but built a large enough demand that several casters (and STL farms) started making Matchbox-car-compatible conversion bit ranges specifically for it, and the Lion/Dragon/Xenos Rampant family of games is doing well and really encourages a "buy you want, you can use it here" mentality that helps casting companies no end. There's also RPG-adjacent stuff that's proved popular - the "5 Units of Distance From Someplace" game line, Rangers of Shadow Deep, Two-Hour Wargames' 5150 system, Four-Color Figures numerous rules, etc. All that said, traditional casting is probably doomed in the foreseeable future as 3D printing tech improves and home printing/printing services become ever more common. There's just no way to compete with the costs on that stuff in the long run, and companies (even GW) that aren't preparing to transition to new business models are going to be relegated to niche specialty roles sooner or later. It's already getting hard to convince distributors and retailers to handle metal figs at all, and even "cheap" plastics like Reaper Bones aren't actually cheap anymore - especially compared to home-printed figs. The RPG end of the minis hobby was never my specialty, so I'm less confident about how that's doing - but WizKids certainly seems to be selling okay locally, FWIW. The decline of metal casting makes it more expensive to get dedicated figs made for smaller games (by 5e D&D standards) but 3D STL files will probably wind up re-opening that market again in a big way soon. [/QUOTE]
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How has the miniatures business been doing, post-pandemic?
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