USA
Strangely enough all the US licensed producers of Games Workshop copyrighted models were located within 4 hours of each other in Northern California.
At first, Warhammer 40K players had no vehicles as there were only 2 Games Workshop models and those were only for one race – the Marines.
Along came Mike Biasi – the “Master” Mike is a very talented artist and sculptor and he produced a 40K scale Titan modeled on the early Games Workshop Plastic and metal Epic models for Adeptus Titanicus. Games Workshop gave Mike a copyright license to produce 40K scale models of Epic vehicles; Mike named his company Mike Biasi Studios. Word soon got around about these wonderful models and Tim DuPertuis started publishing Inquisitor magazine (June of 1991) with rules for these models in it. The first Titan rules were published in Inquisitor #3 in January of 1992.
At about the same time that Inquisitor started, Tim DuPertuis, with GW's permission, started casting and selling a Thundercannon for converting a Rhino into a Vindicator. (June 1991).
Nick Tompkins saw Mike’s models, made some models and sent them to GW who gave him a copyright license too. Nick's company is Epicast USA.
Mike’s association with Games Workshop ended and John Richardson of Modesto, California and some other friends approached Games Workshop with a proposition. They asked GW for the right to reproduce Mike’s models and other new ones on a large scale production basis. GW agreed and gave them a licence. They formed Forge World Models
Tim DuPertuis approached GW and asked for the same rights and contract and got Mike to agree to work with him to refine and update the models. Tim formed a company called
Armorcast.
So the companies in USA which received copyright licenses from GW were Mike Biasi Studios, Epicast, Forge World Models, Armorcast.
In addition there were some unlicensed aftermarket pieces made by Merlyn in Michigan.
Around 2002, a 40K scale resin Warp Hunter was produced. It was sculpted by Michael Bard and produced by an amateur fan project calling themselves Deep Strike Miniatures as an "Alien Tank Hunter".
Also around 2002, Dragons Den Armoury produced a single 40K scale “Gabriel” Knight Titan that looked remarkably identical to the GW Epic Paladin Knight. These were only sold on ebay at US$250 and were only available for a couple of months until they were closed down for breach of GW intellectual property.
Around 2004, the same group started Dreamforge Designs and created two Titans which stand about 4 times as tall as an Armorcast Warhound. Two versions were produced using rapid prototyping [very expensive! ] from CADD drawings. Initial price was $750.00 per model. 6 models were sold before they were closed down for breach of GW intellectual property. It seems only one variant of the two was sold and the prototype casting of the second Leviathan model may be the only one in existence.
From 2007, after market heads for the Armorcast Reaver Titan started to appear on ebay from sellers "chrono38" and "westland48".
UK
Steve Mussared of Monolith produced a small range of resin vehicles and titans in both 40K and Epic scales. With the exception of the Ork Gargant, most of these models were only every produced in small runs of 30 on a trial basis to test the market. These seem to have been made available at a few trade shows only and so were never available to the general wargaming community.
