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I know I have "0" scars on my right hand, but the left - oh the horror...

I need a Kevlar glove for the left.

I feel like Luke Skywalker or Michael Jackson.

Hey! Maybe we now know why Michael always had that glove on! He was a closet gamer too!

I actually have looked into getting the very fine chainmail gloves fish butchers use, but they are around 90-100$. You can get fiber knit protective gloves for about 12$ a pair though on Amazon (Epica Cut Resistant Gloves). I haven't taken the plunge yet, but it might well be worth trying out if you are getting too cut up.

Perhaps my Restic Knight brothers might looketh into purchasing a thimble? It hath saved mine thumb and pointer many times.

Eh, the tips of my thumbs are already a mass of scar tissue, so they don't have many problems.The rest of my twisted meat hooks are pretty fair targets

Brothers, I must admit I have been fortunate. Like the man who was injured boarding the plane to England before D-Day, I have avoided the worst of your travails.

My first experience with Restic was with the Privateers of the great Americas. My friends had told me the material was good, the plastics were as impressive as the great polymeromancer GW could produce. But I held them in my hands, brothers, and I felt a chill in my soul. Soft detail. Mould lines that stood out sharper than any facial feature. And when I tried to cut it, IT CUT BACK.

Still, I wallowed in ignorance, but my weakness as a modeller deterred me from purchasing any more. I felt the flaw to be within myself, that I couldn't manage the material.

Later, the Great Deceivers of Mantica lured me to purchase a box of their wares. Inside were some of their "sprueless plastic" miniatures. Bent weapons. Poor detail. Uncleanable flash. It was all there. And yet, I still did not learn.

I pledged on a Kickstarter. A restic Kickstarter. My first and only.

Red Box Games had sent me miniatures before, miniatures of spectacular quality. I thought "Well, what's the harm?"

I was lucky brothers. I recieved my pledge almost on time- perhaps a month late. I know others were no so lucky, and some languish in agony to this day. The miniatures, miraculously, and perhaps as a testament to the power of the Red Box, were good. Strong detail, clear molds. But at what cost? The weapons, truescaled, were brittle as the dead leaves of autumn. They crumbled in my clumsy hands. The delays, the endless delays. Even the power of the Red Box could not cleanse the evil of this wretched material. I realised then the common enemy that stalked all my brethren- this restic, this sprueless plastic, this trollforged material. The Beast has many names. He has many faces. He is Legion. But we know his spoor now. We have seen his sign. We are ready to face the truth of his manifold nature.

By x acto, by file and by hot water bath I abjure thee, Restic.

Edit: RiTides has pointed out to me that Trollforged is not, in fact, restic (which accounts for it's excellent ability to hold detail). Apologies to all involved- though I think this is yet more confirmation of the power of Restic to cloud the minds of the weak!

 Wehrkind wrote:
Eh, the tips of my thumbs are already a mass of scar tissue, so they don't have many problems.The rest of my twisted meat hooks are pretty fair targets

You are lucky... After one restic kickstarter, I wore through my entire left thumb due to horrible sanding and blade accidents. In order for me to continue to model and game I had to undergo a risky 'toe to thumb' transplant.



I only have one more replacement big toe so I can't risk my only good thumb on any more restic KS!

Brothers, O brothers, how I have fallen.

There is a darkness beneath darkness, my brothers, and yet that is brighter than the hell in which I dwell. I have sunk to my very core into the spongy, yielding depths of perversity. I speak of that most flaccid of depravities, The Bones, but also of something ...chunkier. A rigid vessel of catchpenny sin designed to allure the most vulnerable of innocents to the dark; I speak of Board Game Plastic.

Yea, it is right you avert your eyes and fork your fingers in the symbol of clippers, the Holy Instrument of the Sprue. It is rank hubris to do otherwise.

However, be warned! For once you have experienced the thrill of an entire box of miniatures at a price that would not buy a single Knave-o'-the-War from the Privateer of the Americas, you will never again spend the tithe for metal without a worm of doubt twisting in your blemished heart. There is also a spiritual danger to Board Game Plastic beyond anything in the realm of restic, a threat matched only by the cheapest of Bones panderers: gratification in the instant. Think on it! You open the packacging in a rush of emotion. No careful seduction this, but a brutal tearing of packaging, a yielding to the basest lusts in a modeller's heart. Then you have the minis prone before you, naked. At your tender mercies. And do you pause to reflect on your passions? Do you show reverence or even respect to your conquest? Do you show the courtesy of cleaning or provide the sensual caress of the blade and files? No. You give nothing but the spray...of primer and the squirt of paint. If even that much. Perhaps you simply use the piece as it is and throw it back into the darkness until you wish to use it again.

This moral decay is contagious. It is subtle. It is pervasive. Soon, you will find that you question why you should waste time cleaning any restic models. The time it takes to get even mediocre results could be spent better at the painting table or the gaming table. Why bother working so hard for your satisfaction when you can just take a miniature and plunk it down for your immediate pleasure? Why sweat and toil on a masterpiece when you can settle for okay? Soon, you will find that even resin and metal minis don't need to be 'perfect'.

And thus the rot has set in. Restic exposure has formed a bubble in your very soul. A malformed, spongy abscess on the psyche that can never be painted over. A neckbeard that no mere iron collar can contain.

Brothers, avoid the gateway to sloth, the pit of apathy. Avoid this otherworldly invasion that attacks and mars the mind. Do not be ground in the gears, warring for your dignity against a descent into the mansion-sized depths of madness. Be no epicurean who lives as if each were the last night on earth. Do not become another board gaming zombie.

Liberate tutemet ex inferis.

 RiTides wrote:

But I urge you. Consider the cost of what you are about to embark on. You may remove that blemish which you set yourself upon... but at what cost? At what damage to your hobbying soul?

The privateer hard grey PVC has already blackened my soul. To the point that I think certain sculpts of white soft bones PVC are actually acceptable. My only warning to those who would consider Reaper's wares is that unless you see it in person, how will you know if the detail is there? For most of their figures, Reaper didn't sculpt them from scratch with extra deep details to make the best of the rubbery vinyl, but simply used sculpts meant for metal casting. What folly!

If bones are a shadow, hard grey PVC is a dark void. Spend sufficient time in the void and even a shadow will appear to be the light of the noon day sun!

How will we know you have fallen, dear brother, if your fingers are to be sacrificed? How will we know?

One of the few mercies of the softer bones PVC is that I never hold a sharpened blade when working on it. The material can be filed with good quality diamond files without marring up the surface like the hard grey excrement version of PVC.

.

You know, thinking about that, I wonder if one could use some manner of PVC cement on this still like one does with PVC piping. Granted, that isn't exactly a fun material, but now I am curious...

Welcome, Da Boss and BobtheInquisitor. I thank thee for sharing these tales of woe.

Lo, the serpent doth wear many disguises, I do not blame thee for thy confusion regarding the plastic of the troll's forge. For I, too, have stared into the void wondering from whence a substance comes. That is why we are here, brothers, we who together are stronger than any one could be alone.

Listen to the brother of the frozen wastes, my brethren, for his words are both wise and true.

Bob was born to post in this thread!

Born... or forged?

Wehrkind wrote:You know, thinking about that, I wonder if one could use some manner of PVC cement on this still like one does with PVC piping. Granted, that isn't exactly a fun material, but now I am curious...

From what I've heard it does work, Perhaps you can get a tiny squeeze tube and not have to worry about the poison gas cloud that billows from the large bottles plumbers use?

It works pretty well for peg and socket joints,

but it's not as good for flat surface joints as the solvent does not soften/met things nearly as fast as plastic cement on polystyrene so it's hard to get it to grab

(says the man with 500ml of now pretty useless PVC cement cluttering up his cupboard)

A brief history of our foe:

Over the last decade tin prices have been very volatile. Consumption for tin has drastically increased and there are actually only a few high volume tin mines in the world. Tin makes up the majority of the alloys used in most metal miniatures. Often mixes that contain lead as the base will still have tin.

So what do you do if you produce metal miniatures as your primary source of revenue like Privateer Press? You start investigating alternatives. And if you are a producer of metal miniatures, you likely don't have the sales volumes required to go all the way to styrene.

So Privateer launches a few kits in the new material. And they actually offered a reasonable discount for the new material relative to a similar sized miniature. They found they could make this work. People bought it.

And they've been both expanding it ever since and decreasing the discount with every release. The upcoming cephalyx infantry are being released in PVC for the price per figure of some of their metal kits.

Mantic also started using the material. And has made a lot of kits for their Kickstarters with the stuff. And other Kickstarters have jumped on the bandwagon. Now to the point that when you see a Kickstarter, it's best to assume it will be the hated restic until they prove otherwise.

Now on the Reaper Bones side of things, it's origins are not actually in just finding a cheaper way to produce miniatures. That came only in the last few years.

The origins of Reaper Bones is in the success of Mage Knight prepainted miniatures and then D&D prepainted miniatures. The only thing people truly hated about D&D prepainted miniatures was that if you wanted to use them for an RPG session, it could be very difficult to get say... 8 orcs with spears that you might need.

So Reaper released Legendary Encounters prepainted miniatures. Rubbery miniatures covered in gloopy vinyl paint at a price per miniature meant to compete with random D&D miniatures. And to a degree, it worked. Though not enough for Reaper to produce more than 30 figures.

There have been people who repainted prepaints like D&D miniatures. It takes some serious solvent to remove the vinyl goop paint. Others just prime over the prepaint and hope for the best.

Then an interesting conversation at ReaperCon happened. It was proposed that Reaper sell some of their Legendary Encounters figures without the prepaint vinyl goop on them.

I'm guessing at this point Reaper employees tried painting them, tried converting them and generally worked with their prepaints-without-prepaint. And they figured the product could work.

So they released the first 16 miniatures of Bones to distributors, stores and through direct retail. And they quickly came to dominate Reaper's sales. 16 miniatures made up a third of their sales volume.

So the Kickstarter happened. And now the second one is in fulfillment.

Reaper Bones is best thought of as a descendant of prepainted miniatures rather than from the restic hard grey PVC branch of the vinyl family tree.

The soft rubbery white bones material has it's own limitations:

1) Detail isn't as good. So you need sculpts that have deeper details that work with the material better.
2) Bendy. While most of the paints we use these days are flexible acrylics, There are still primers and varnishes that are a bit more rigid. And people get a toy like impression when a miniature they expect to be solid suddenly moves or bends.
3) Heat twisted parts. Like the grey hard PVC, you can still get bad twisted parts that need to be fixed with boiling water. So perhaps there's an opportunity to scald one's fingers here. I use chop sticks or tongs, but for those wishing for an excuse to plunge their hands into scalding water, this is the opportunity you have been waiting for.
4) Pre-assembly. Bones is meant to be a 'ready to go' product, so for everything but their largest kits already comes assembled. It can be annoying to paint behind a cape when the cape is already attached. And some times the parts were not pushed in as far as they could have been. And they use some sort of cement that really fuses things because pulling them apart tends to result in a tear in the miniature before the glue joint lets go. Basically you end up with some needless putty work on some of the figures where they just didn't push the parts together hard enough when assembling them for you.
5) The figures are light. It's even easier to knock them around with a shirt sleeve than metal miniatures. I've taken to weighting bases and mounting larger figures on clay poker chips or metal washers to help with the problem.
6) Mould lines can't be scraped. So you need to either slice them off or use a high quality abrasive. I use a 2x100 file. Others use rotorary tool polishing stones. Others use filing needles. Others make sanding sticks out of automotive sandpaper.

Privateer is pushing their PVC prices up to where their metal prices were. Just like GW has done with their styrene sprues. Hopefully Reaper does not have a plan to do likewise as the figures literally are prepaints without the prepaint and simply are not the equals of their metals.

Great post - very interesting heraldry

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
No careful seduction this, but a brutal tearing of packaging, a yielding to the basest lusts in a modeller's heart. Then you have the minis prone before you, naked. At your tender mercies. And do you pause to reflect on your passions? Do you show reverence or even respect to your conquest? Do you show the courtesy of cleaning or provide the sensual caress of the blade and files? No. You give nothing but the spray...of primer and the squirt of paint. If even that much. Perhaps you simply use the piece as it is and throw it back into the darkness until you wish to use it again.

Lord Inquisitor Bob, please no more. Is this a test? Do you seek to tempt us?

Already I am plagued by incessant visions and floundering rationalizations. Imagining the silken caress of fine resin where only plastic asphalt awaits does all of us disservice. The price might seem low but the cost is high! The crux of our dilemma, of my dilemma!

I find it VERY hard to believe that a lot of what the DRAKERYS campaign is offering is going to turn out well in PVC.

The lesser elementals? The human paladins? The thinner elves?

Ugh.

Be not deceived by Drakerys and their charms like the Confrontation of yore. Like a bewitching siren they call, luring you to certain damnation and despair. Steel your hearts and recite the oath!

A kickstarter gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until campaign end. I am the sword of truth in the comments. I am the watcher for the updates. I am the shield that guards the wallets of Dakka. I pledge my life and honor to the Restic Knights, for this project and all the and all the projects to come.

Well done Zond!

(And the Confrontation Vibe is VERY strong with that one - a powerful siren song indeed!)

speaking of primer, you know what is almost as bad as cleaning up restic minis?

when you think you are done and you prime it.

The primer then reveal various lengths of mold lines on the mini you missed. That happened a lot on the Strain miniatures from SedWars.

It's like a horror movie. You thought for sure you killed Jason.

But you didn't.

I had that exact experience with my Cryx stuff. And it wasn't just mould lines, but these uneven swirl formations on the larger flat surfaces. Like the PVC didn't cool evenly there. I ended up having to sand them smooth after the primer was dry, remove the mould lines as best I could and put another light coat of primer down.

And the stupid thing still has a big blemish facing right up at my opponent because they put the stupid gate for the casting on the top of the cowl on the front. This isn't a picture of mine, but from a person who didn't even bother trying to fix it:



And another


Sprueless plastic. Where we mangle your models by tearing the gates off so you don't have to!

Yea brothers and sisters, I have had a a revelation!

No, I do not test your modeller's patience by debating how many bits can be glued to the head of a pin. This is a personal story of my salvation, forged in dream and possibly the fumes of a most potent solvent.

And it came to pass last night that I dreamt of ten sickly Men at Arms devoured by 10 hale Paladins, and I was but a blind man before a stumbling block. Ronniel, the Promiser, dreaded King of War who tempts men with the lure of bigger armies, brought me to the top of the world and pointed to all four corners of the FLGS, and I saw that they were filled with teeming numbers beyond counting, restic all. Legion they were, all manner of creatures to walk upon the earth or to crawl upon their bellies because their hind legs were too slight to maintain their bipedal posture. "All this could be yours," he whispered, "If you would but turn away from the One True Polymer."

And it came to pass that I recalled the Betrayer, Tony the Ready, who sold out his friends and financial savior for thirty pieces of American silver (or approximately eighteen pounds plus exchange fees). And I saw that his works had turned to a fart in the wind. And his heart had curdled with defiance, but seriously the stench was terrible. And he piled upon the Chinese the sum of all the general rage and hate felt by his whole race from Adam down; and if his chest had been a mortar, he would burst his hot heart’s shell upon it. But really, something smells suspiciously like bad Thai food.

And it came to pass that I took the path less travelled by, and that has made all the difference.

And it came to pass that the dream shifted location and I was not the only person in the car wash to revel in nakedness. But that was another story. Moving on...

And it came to pass that I beheld the tablets of steel, and the scales fell from my eyes and I could see again. For I saw the tablets were engraved into a mould, and in the mould I saw the shapes of great rectangular wheels with spokes of a design beyond my comprehension. And I saw upon the spokes four heads in accordance with the cardinal constellations of the Wargaming Heavens: the gas-masked sci-fi Stormtrooper; the screaming man with the Peaked Cap of Authoriteh; the more or less bare head of the Conscript; and the bionic eye of the Grimdark Screaming Bionic Eye Man head. And I saw that each had six accessories: two alternative arms or hand to hold up the righteously awesome blasters; two sets of pouches to cover the body and a holster paired with a medikit to cover their legs. And I saw many, many more accessories, enough to keep a modeller in a well-ventilated area for 40 days and 40 nights. And some four-legged chariots of iron to carry the ammo or something. For veritas.

And it came to pass that I knew a freakin' sweet deal when I saw one. Now, I am a believer. Not a trace of doubt in my mind. I couldn't leave styrene if I tried.



So, I have come to testify!


All praise be to the modeller's tetragrammaton: H-I-P-S.

There is no Plastic but HIPS, and WGF is its prophet.

Hear, O Dakka, Plastic is Great! Plastic is High-Impact PolyStyrene!


Gloria in excelsis polymer!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Alpharius wrote:
Bob was born to post in this thread!

This is the internet, so I have to ask if you're being sarcastic, like my parents when they said I was born to be a surgeon, or if this is praise. I'm not good at recognizing praise. I paint spaceships.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:


All praise be to the modeller's tetragrammaton: H-I-P-S.

There is no Plastic but HIPS, and WGF is its prophet.

Hear, O Dakka, Plastic is Great! Plastic is High-Impact PolyStyrene!


Gloria in excelsis polymer!

You'll have become HIPSters!

I will not stop playing Gachapon, i need my PVC Hello Kitty Heads!
All must bow to The Japanese superior PVC figurines, but i will not lower myself to using the western infidel's PVC creations.

I stand for resin. Through its magic the darkest corner of my basement yields wonderful miniatures, crisp in detail and easily cleaned. It is an ancient, well understood arcana, serving to make fine models where metal and beloved HIPs ask too much of us.


And one of these years when I have more money than sense again, I am going to make spin casting work with it, goddamn it. There shouldn't be a good reason to use a pressure chamber instead of spining the bastards at 3000rpm or whatever.

Greetings brothers, I, MoO of England seek entrance to your hallowed halls.
My first encounter with this demon material came with my purchase of a pair of Cryx Bonejacks, my very first. At this time i was a mere innocent to this dread material, having only worked with plastic and metal. Oh how I was to be tortured. How my innocence was to be lost and my virgin hands mutilated. If i had but known then I would have placed that box of accursed figures back on the shelf and left them for some other poor soul to suffer.
But alas, i did not. In my innocence I presumed that these where true plastic and would be easy to work. Indeed I had never even heard of this Restic by this point. Oh how i was to be deceived. How I was to fall. When I first got working on these figures i was surprised by the seemingly soft detail and the odd quality of the plastic. I presumed that this was just a new type though, and so I set out to tackle these kits, scalpel boldly held in my hands. In that confrontation I would first learn the true properties of this devilish substance, though as I plunged my knife in and attempted to cut away the flash the restic fought back. Crying in anger I drew my file to, and with both weapons wielded i laid into the monstrous substance, slashing and cutting for all my worth. But alas it was to no avail and no matter how hard I fought the restic device countered and riposted my every move. Beaten I fell back, my hands bleeding and sore from thousands of cuts, cause by that demons foul trickery and its strange power of turning my own blade on me.
However I was not to be beaten. The next morn I arose and once more sallied forth. This time I had learned from my previous encounter and so rather than attempting a shallow to remove just the line, I cut deep into the substance, cleaving it deep. And i thought myself victorious, but in secret the restic still had won. For as I looked upon my models I saw that in my victory I had carved great chunks of detail from them, detail that was to be rebuilt with the sacred Greenstuff. The Restic was to fight once more, for as assembly finally came about I was to learn the true nature. For Plastic glue, that holy substance with which countless models have been assembled was to prove incapable of aiding in the conquering of this fell foe. Although I had vixctory the models still proved capable of collapsing and losing bits at the very worst of moments.

And so brothers, I have laid bare my tail of woe. May I now be accepted into your holy order?

 master of ordinance wrote:
*snip*
And so brothers, I have laid bare my tail of woe. May I now be accepted into your holy order?

You need not beg acceptance, brother. You have been of our kind since your fateful purchase many moons ago. We do not grant status or make members. We only seek to congregate and recognize our ilk, to allow them to crawl from beneath their hobby desks, to enter the light of acceptance.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
Bob was born to post in this thread!

This is the internet, so I have to ask if you're being sarcastic, like my parents when they said I was born to be a surgeon, or if this is praise. I'm not good at recognizing praise. I paint spaceships.

100% praise - no sarcasm!

Preach on brother, preach on!

 gunslingerpro wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:
*snip*
And so brothers, I have laid bare my tail of woe. May I now be accepted into your holy order?

You need not beg acceptance, brother. You have been of our kind since your fateful purchase many moons ago. We do not grant status or make members. We only seek to congregate and recognize our ilk, to allow them to crawl from beneath their hobby desks, to enter the light of acceptance.

Well said, brother gunslingerpro. We welcome you, master of ordinance, thank you for sharing your story.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:
I will not stop playing Gachapon, i need my PVC Hello Kitty Heads!
All must bow to The Japanese superior PVC figurines, but i will not lower myself to using the western infidel's PVC creations.

Jehan-reznor, I cannot speak to our nemesis' eastern cousin, but tread carefully! Thy passion for those kitties of greeting may yet lead to darker introductions.

GOBLIN SPITTERS!!!!!!

Ahhh....I most humbly beg your pardon. I suffer from a recently diagnosed ailment called RTSD. It is akin to the malady afflicting many of our fine service men and women after they return from combat. I too have been waging a battle, though not in the theater of war, but on my work table. My desire is to find solace and peace in the hobby I love, but low! I find nothing of the sort.

Approaching the bench I feel the bile rise into my mouth. A cold sweat breaks out on my brow. The world spins, I clutch the table for support.....

MENOTH WARJACK!!!!

Ohhhh......Again I am most sorry. The only relief I find is at at my local hobby shop in perusing the plastic finery, fondly recalling the melodic sounds of a spru cutter snipping. The gentle removal of flash. Searching in vain for mold lines, and finding none. As I turn the corner into another aisle my heart quickens, for before me is the x-acto section. Numbly I look down at my left hand and see the blood seeping from hundreds of tiny cuts. No amount of bandaging will stem the flow of my life from those wounds. I feel light headed.....

RELIC KNIGHTS!!!!!!

Gods help me.....I hold now the only thing that helps me get through a modeling section. The ponderous weight of real spuncast resin. The smooth texture, the weight, the detail.

Friends, please, I beg you, allow not your fellows to fall into the debilitating trap I am stuck in now. There is little precious relief.