Editing Casting (section)

=== 3rd Party Modellers ===
While Games Workshop may waffle back and forth regarding what is and isn't "tournament legal" and "''legal'' legal", one thing that hasn't wavered since the early 2000's are the 3rd party model sellers. In fact, they've grown in quality and quantity over recent years! These guys operate in the dubious legal grey area surrounding knock-off models, and will sell "Warhammer-inspired", "27/28/29/30mm-scale", or "totally-not-Warhammer" models designed from the ground up to fit in with the rest of GW's product lines.

These 3rd-party kits often come in the form of body parts or bits blister packs, an area where GW has been found wanting for literal decades, which are not-too-shockingly compatible with extant Warhammer Fantasy and Warhammer 40,000 models. These can take the form of whole packs of off-brand future-soldiers, or just sprues of disembodied limbs or weapons. Some 3rd party model shops specialize in filling gaps in GW's product line, making models that strongly resemble units or armies that get no official love. Almost every one of these retailers have their own game system for their models, which ''everyone who buys their models plays.'' Some of these sellers specialize in one-model showpiece kits, to "count as" various Independent Characters on the tabletop. These full models can be as good as GW one-model kits, but not all of them are, so buyers beware ('''not that 1d4chan endorses buying these models for use outside of their original games'''). The 3rd party model makers generally operate above-board, until they overstep their legal bounds and GW kills them good and hard.

The casting techniques used by these guys varies widely, since none of them are as high-volume as Games Workshop or as high-quality (varying mileage) as Forge World. Some make metal models, some do resin, others use plastics. They will use any technique under the sun, or whatever is easiest.