Resin 3D printing is a bit like magic. You send a design to the machine, watch the build platform sink into a puddle of slime, and then, hours later, a model appears seemingly out of nowhere. Even after countless prints, the dizzying excitement of this revelation doesn’t let up. This is something I always dreamed of when I was a little kid: being able to literally print out toys.
But these days, the D&D community has continued that dream: instead of just making individual miniatures, they’re creating whole ones worlds for us. Cast ‘n’ Play (opens in new tab) is one of the groups leading this charge, and it has grown from a single person dealing with the best 3D printers to a company creating entire universes of content.
DIY realities
However, things didn’t go well at first. Alex Zaragoza’s first 3D printer arrived broken. As a used machine, which he bought on eBay in 2015, it was, in his own words, “very bad” – the parts didn’t fit together properly and he had to glue them down. But still, he was blown away by what it could do. Although it died less than a year later, Alex (then a 3D artist in the video game industry) had been bitten by the virus. When a friend offered him a resin printer they didn’t have space for, he jumped at the opportunity. Fast forward a few years, and Alex is now responsible for well over a dozen employees and a company that pulls in monthly subscribers for about 40 fantasy miniatures every four weeks. They’re also completing their latest – and judging by the over $156,000 raised so far, successful – crowdfunding campaign, Terrain Essentials Vol II: Interiors (opens in new tab)‘ with numerous props for your gaming table.
There are clearly people looking for something like this because I don’t know how else they would find this store I did last night
Alex Zaragoza, co-founder and director
However, it wasn’t the ability to design great setups that got him on the path to Cast n Play – it was cost and practicality.
“We’re new to Warhammer,” Alex tells me as we catch up on a video call. “And I’m like, ‘This is too expensive. I’m sure we can print things [instead]. If you don’t care, I don’t care. Even if they look like shit, we can play. And if we like the game then we can buy stuff’. So we started downloading things from Thingiverse [a community 3D design website]. And it was pretty hard to get things. For example for D&D I would make lists of all the miniatures I would need to run the whole book and I search the internet for ‘I need three goblins one dragon four spiders’ whatever. And it was so hard to get her.”
Of course, for a professional 3D artist like Alex, there was only one solution: he had to make these miniatures himself.
Though he only intended to sculpt “a shitty leprechaun” just so he could start using it in his home games, he began to wonder if anyone was selling such models for other players in a similar position. So he opened a low-key Shopify store to test the waters.
“It even started selling with no ads or anything like that,” explains Alex. “I was just uploading a few models and every now and then we’d have a few dollars on sale, then $10, then a dollar here and there. And I think wow people are finding these even though I’m not promoting there so clearly there are people looking for something like this because I don’t know how else they would find this store that I did last night.
From there it went like a snowball.
full-time dreamer
Around that time, model subscriptions through Patreon had started to gain traction. As you’ve probably guessed, Alex decided to create his own (opens in new tab) in a “What’s the worst that can happen?” attack of spontaneity. And while that might not come as a surprise, what happened next might.
“We started a Patreon and were still uploading things to make sure the text looked good. And before we even shared it with my parents and friends, a few people signed up. I mean that was it [only] $1. But they just jumped in without even having any pictures. It just said “Cast n Play 3D Printable Miniatures” and maybe a crappy description. And that was it. People were willing to pay a dollar just to see if there were better models out there.”
A domino effect followed. Alex made more models, and these won Cast n Play more subscribers. He then hired another sculptor and concept artist for additional miniatures, which encouraged more subscribers to sign up and – well, that escalation took four years for the team to reach its current total of 31. These days, the group produces a few crowdfunding projects a year, a model-independent wargame, and full adventures compatible with the best Dungeons and Dragons books, in keeping with their original Patreon campaign.
We want something you can print at home that feels like an official quality product
Alex Zaragoza, co-founder and director
It’s a good example of the appetite people have for this idea. At a time when costs continue to rise, value propositions like Cast n Play’s are more than a little alluring. First of all, paying around $9 a month to get 40 or so detailed models that can be used in most of the best tabletop RPGs is much better – even if you have to print them yourself – a heck of a lot better than the $30 to $50 you would have to spend on pre-made miniatures from regular brick and mortar stores. It finishes at pennies per model, which is pretty absurd considering you could be lucky enough to get more than five minis for your $9 if you go the old fashioned route of blister packs or box sets.
However, players no longer have to choose as much as they did when Alex began his journey. Loot Studios (opens in new tab)Broken Anvil (opens in new tab), and countless more are offering huge packs of models every month now. What sets Cast n Play apart in a now much more crowded environment? For Alex, it’s still about relaxing; Instead of having to pay for models, dungeon tiles, and terrain separately, you get everything you need to play a session in a single package.
And there is much more to come.
“We’re trying to get into the board game room,” reveals Alex. “We try to design something that is specifically designed and well thought out for 3D printing. We don’t want to go physical, we want something you can print at home that feels like an official quality product.”
With 3D printers now becoming more affordable than ever (as opposed to the late 2010s when they cost thousands of dollars, you can now get a respectable resin 3D printer for around $200), Alex believes that this kind of experimental approach is the future. Actually, he’s comparing it to the situation YouTube was in about a decade ago.
“The fact that people [could] Making videos and releasing them yourself with very little equipment, that’s where I think we’re at with 3D printing right now,” he says. “Now we have amazing quality YouTube channels. And I think eventually with 3D printing we will get to where small teams can put out very high quality products.”
Basically? Check out this space – 3D printing just keeps getting more impressive over time. Considering where it is at the moment, that’s more than a little exciting.
You can login Cast n Play Monthly Subscription can be found here (opens in new tab)and free sample minis are available through the Cast n Play Gumroad site (opens in new tab). For more tabletop shenanigans, don’t forget to check out our must-haves guide board gamesthe summit Board games for adultsand this essential Board games for 2 players.