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I've just started building my Menoth army to pass the time while I recover from a torn Achilles and after opening the boxes, I found that I'm missing a part from each of the models in the BB and one Choir Member is miscast.

I've had a couple of issues with miscast, but never this many in a single purchase from the same store.

Has PP Quality Control slipped?

Has anyone else had issues recently with the quality of PP models?

Nope. From everything I've seen, the new kits are getting better.

The BB I opened was pretty badly cast.

Kreoss had some white chalky film on him and the Repenter had a miscast Shoulder, on top of the missing pieces.

The old metals from kits I've bought have had some issues. I might have just gotten a bad batch of Menoth stuff.

Puscifer wrote:
The BB I opened was pretty badly cast.

Kreoss had some white chalky film on him and the Repenter had a miscast Shoulder, on top of the missing pieces.

The old metals from kits I've bought have had some issues. I might have just gotten a bad batch of Menoth stuff.

Sounds like a bad run of luck to me. They should replace everything. You may have bought an old, old box from when they were first releasing the plastics.

Go here to this link. They'll replace any missing or damaged pieces free of charge and no questions asked.

http://mispack.privateerpress.com/

For the most part, PP has had the same troubles as everyone else with their items, only that their mold lines were terrible in the beginning. As time as passed on, this has started to get better but not completely gone.

The primary reason you don't hear it is many of the warmachine players feel PP can do no wrong and won't do anything but berate anyone who says PP can improve something, such as their models.

 juraigamer wrote:


The primary reason you don't hear it is many of the warmachine players feel PP can do no wrong and won't do anything but berate anyone who says PP can improve something, such as their models.

I have no words.


I don't even begin to know where to start telling you how wrong you are with that statement.

I don't know what the metal versions looked like but I purchased a box of the plastic winter guard infantry and one of winter guard rifles and I was disappointed by how soft the details were. Same with the Exemplars Errant's I bought.

Also every man-o-war I've ever assembled has kind of messed up feet and legs. But once you paint them you don't notice.

PP has made a poor choice in plastic material.

Their newest material is good, but the older plastic is indeed awful.

They definitely aren't the best in terms of model and material quality, former GW players are really spoiled in that respect.

 juraigamer wrote:
For the most part, PP has had the same troubles as everyone else with their items, only that their mold lines were terrible in the beginning. As time as passed on, this has started to get better but not completely gone.

The primary reason you don't hear it is many of the warmachine players feel PP can do no wrong and won't do anything but berate anyone who says PP can improve something, such as their models.

This isn't the case in my experience. Yes, there are a lot of PP fanboys, and I count myself amongst them, but no company is perfect and PP has their fair share of problems. I think the difference is that PP encourges positive community building and really puts a lot of effort into their customers where other companies fail to do so and in most cases do the direct opposite, which creates loyalty to the brand.

You also have to realize that PP is still in the middle of growing as a company and has a long way to go still. They hammer out their problems in time and offer replacements for mis-castings or missing parts.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 juraigamer wrote:


The primary reason you don't hear it is many of the warmachine players feel PP can do no wrong and won't do anything but berate anyone who says PP can improve something, such as their models.

I have no words.


I don't even begin to know where to start telling you how wrong you are with that statement.

Indeed.

Very few people white knight for PP over their plastic quality. There are a ton of threads on their own forums casually lamenting this very issue. PP is at least nice enough not to censure those things, and given their upcoming change in plastic they've listened to the complaints.

Most people who left 40k to play warmachine came over for the tight ruleset and are willing to forgive the drop in model quality.

PP is changing its plastic?? source?

Its why the TEP(CoC battle engine) is taking so damn long to get released. They're going to a different type of plastic and casting system which holds sharper details.

Nothing I know of to link to, just accounts from people who have asked at the various conventions.

I have bought about 40 points of Menoth stuff and every single kit either had a missing piece, miscast piece, the worst mold lines I've ever seen or all of the above. Coming from 15 years of GW models, PP quality is bad. I don't think their QC is slipping, I just think the quality was never really that good to begin with. I love the rules but don't really like the aesthetics of any of the factions as a whole or the model quality.

Has it ever been that good?

Their metals are solid, and always have been.

Their plastics less so. That said, I've been lucky - I've not had any issues with any of the plastics I've bought.

 juraigamer wrote:


The primary reason you don't hear it is many of the warmachine players feel PP can do no wrong and won't do anything but berate anyone who says PP can improve something, such as their models.

Eh, no. Pp get slated quite a bit over their plastics - there's no berating done over folks who raise this. They're improving, but they've got a ways to go.

I wonder about the quality control myself. I'm not saying they are awful, in many ways they do a great job. But in 2 and a half decades of miniature buying the only mistakes I've had from GW, Reaper, Ultraforge and Mierce were my Fateweaver had a bubble in a wing, and a box of Wraithguard came with the wrong bases.

In only 3 weeks buying models from PP I've had Stormblades missing a shoulder, Black 13th missing a base, and Ol'Rowdy missing a kneepad and a smoke stack.

Now things happen, which is why I'm not slamming them, but I do think that they might need to be a bit more diligent on monitoring their models.

Yeah, the plastics kinda aren't all that. The metals are amazing though.
My convergence jack kits have had bad mold lines but good detail. (But I guess that's the resin type stuff?)
I bought one unit of plastic infantry for CoC and they looked alright painted up. (took a lot of work to get them there.)
Overall, I love their models and art direction.

Domine Nox wrote:
I wonder about the quality control myself. I'm not saying they are awful, in many ways they do a great job. But in 2 and a half decades of miniature buying the only mistakes I've had from GW, Reaper, Ultraforge and Mierce were my Fateweaver had a bubble in a wing, and a box of Wraithguard came with the wrong bases.

Then you've been incredibly lucky with your past purchases and that luck is now catching up to you.

I've only bought GW miniatures for 14 years and I've had mold slippings, broken metal due to extreme casting temperatures, missing flying bases, missing parts on metal models, missing sprues in plastic kits, not to mention the tree separate boxes of Failcrap DE Wracks that if you picked up all the non-defective models and put them together you wouldn't have the equivalent of a single box of models...

You've only had those two minor flaws in 25 years? You are damn lucky!

The only PP sets that I've had issues with was the 2 player starter sets, the Warmachine one inparticular was very heavy on mould lines. Which was a real same because I split that set with a mate who I was trying to get into the game, which put him off a bit. The Hordes one was better but still more than I expected given the quality of all the other stuff I've had from them.

Here's PP's latest plastic entry. I think they're making progress. (giant kit, not resin, but all plastic.)
http://privateerpress.com/warmachine/gallery/convergence-of-cyriss/battle-engines/transfinite-emergence-projector-permutation-servitors

That's awesome. I don't know what it is, but I need it.

Zond wrote:
That's awesome. I don't know what it is, but I need it.

It's for Convergence. It's basically a giant laser cannon that spits out floating servitors that do different things.

 juraigamer wrote:

The primary reason you don't hear it is many of the warmachine players feel PP can do no wrong and won't do anything but berate anyone who says PP can improve something, such as their models.

Where the hell are you getting this from? There have been several threads on the main PP forums with lots of users expressing their issues with PP plastics.

 MWHistorian wrote:
Here's PP's latest plastic entry. I think they're making progress. (giant kit, not resin, but all plastic.)
http://privateerpress.com/warmachine/gallery/convergence-of-cyriss/battle-engines/transfinite-emergence-projector-permutation-servitors

Definitely a step in the right direction, but I'm not shelling out another dime unless I see the sprue. I actually opened a box of Tharn Ravagers (with LGS approval) to check mold lines.

I haven't had major issues, though some smaller ones. Nothing really worse than other model companies.

Any issues I do have are quickly corrected. Something that IS very different than some model companies.

Maybe I'm just lucky.

 MWHistorian wrote:

Zond wrote:
That's awesome. I don't know what it is, but I need it.

It's for Convergence. It's basically a giant laser cannon that spits out floating servitors that do different things.

It's assuming direct control... Of my wallet!

I wanted to add that the only issues I've had with PA metals is over eKaya's tiny little hand. It may have been my fault, but Yan Lo's beard! Why make the hand a separate piece????

Really dudes. PP definitely listen (except when it comes to Monsterpocalypse) and are quick to fix any errors in packing. Their office smelbs nice too.

Well we're doomed now.

The TEP is absolutely bonkers.

It gets 2 sprays base. And then it gets three servitors each turn.

For each servitor completely within its left arc, it gets an additional die on attack rolls. For each completely within its right, an additional die of damage. For each completely within its back arc, it gets one additional spray.

So if it sticks one in each arc, its rolling 3 die for attack and damage and has 3 spray 10s. It can get as high as 5 sprays, 5 die for attack, or 5 die for damage if it goes all in one arc.

And to top it all off, it has Sac Pawn on its 3 little derp bots.

I had some bad luck streaks like that with Cryx, Ret and Khador. Menoth was mostly flawless other than having to straighten a few weapons. When I was first starting with Retribution and had done a big order there was 3-4 kits that had either a miscast or missing piece. The mispack form is generally pretty quick in it's turnaround, so I wasn't really all that upset.

As to overall quality, some of their older plastics do sort of leave something to be desired, the placing of the mold lines in particular (Khador warjacks). I seem to remember PP even commenting that they weren't exactly happy, and were looking for a solution. This was about 18 months ago, and I believe the thread was in their main discussion forum, and the topic started off about one of the Khador infantry kits. Hopefully the TEP is step 1 of that solution and more kits will be released (or redone) with the new material.