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What's your favorite material for monopose (or low option) miniatures?

Skipable background related to why I ask the question...

I've been out of 40k for a longtime but have been chatting with my buddy who has been playing 40k quite a bit. Apparently there's a big trend the last few years toward plastic kits that are mostly mono-pose with limited or no poseabilty or customization options except in as much as the builder is willing to cut and customize themeselves. This surprised me as back when I was doing 40k the beneifit of plastic was generally that they allowed for poseable multi-option kits and possibly some affordability for rank-and-file figures and this seems to hold true today. I'm sure that technology and economies of scale now make more mono-pose plastic kits profitable for GW and there are certainly benefits in plastic even for monopose models. However, for myself, if poseability wasn't an issue I always preferred the durability of metal figures. Something about metal always felt special (especially for figs I didn't have to modify), even totemic in it's weight and it was always nice to know that if you screwed up the painjob or want to sell it you can toss it into harsh chemicals and strip it easily.

So...
What material do you prefer for Monopose (or low option) miniatures?
And if you're willing, tell us why?

I don't think material is the only part of the question. The design of the figure plays a large part too. Some designs - including many monopose - don't lend themselves to conversion, so from a conversion point of view, the medium can be irrelevant.

Plastic IS easier to rework, but the design matters more.

Metal, some sort of plastic, some sort of resin - i dont really care.
So voted other.

Plastic all the way. I hate the feeling and heft of metal. I hate cleaning and gluing metal. I hate painting metal and then painting metal and then gluing metal back together and then painting metal and then giving up on metal. Plastic is a joy to work with where metal is a chore.

I’d prefer HIPS, but I’m happy to work with PVC or even restic. For resin, it depends on who the manufacturer is. I’ve had some horrible experiences thanks to Forgeworld and Spartan Games.

Same answer as for multi pose models - HIPS.

There isn't a time that any advantage that any other material may have that beats HIPS for me for anything.

Metal is a pain to clean, assemble or modify. And as much as others claim to the contrary, it is so easy to chip paint and once it does the maintenance of the paint job is effort.

Resin is also a pain to work with and also has a number of pre-painting issues (bubbles, warping, etc.). Even after painting, thin parts are far more subject to warping over time (which is repairable, but still upkeep). Not to mention more disastrous to damage from being dropped.

Restic, PVC, etc. tends to not have very good detail. Which is fine for board game tokens and such, but the main draw for miniatures gaming is the miniatures for me. So I usually want a higher quality. If for ease of painting at very least.

As a general guideline, I skip models made in anything but HIPS. Even out of all my GW miniatures, only two are Finecast (CSM Sorcerer and Dark Apostle). And they are going to largely be replaced with the new plastic versions I am in the process of painting up. There's a good chance the Finecast ones will be given to the same player I gave all my old mini CSM to after I went through the process of updating to the new models. I straight up skip any unit that is still Finecast when considering kill teams. I could really use a Lichtor for my nid team, but I won't buy non-HIPS.

For me I don't care about material type.

Metal - Plastic - Resin - each has their ups and downs and over time I've learned to work with each one. With practice and the right tools they are mostly not that hard to work with.


My issues are more typically

1) Is the sculpting suitable for the material. Have you given me long thin bendy bits of resin that will snap if I look at them wrong; or fine details that plastic will make look fuzzy because its not got the ability to capture them right when cast.

2) Is the mould design suitable. Eg one thing I HATE about some of the scourge models form HawK Wargames is that they place a lot of ridges right on the join line. So suddenly what would be a few moments cleaning a mould line is a sheer nightmare of ridges. Resin/plastic/metal makes no difference with issues like that.

3) Highly complex metal sculpts that rely on a lot of interconnecting parts where minor shifts in size after cooling result in a nightmare of joins that don't settle right.

4) The quality of the material itself. Ergo not if its metal/plastic/resin but the quality of it itself. Eg I love GW plastics, but I'm not a fan of Privateer Press's plastics; resins I'm a general fan of but I hate Finecast (actually its one I outright avoid). Reaper Bones is ok for its price but its not the nicest to clean (like PP's plastic its got an odd nature to it that defies easily filing and makes even scraping a pain which makes it more of a cut to clean which is trickier.




So for me I don't care for material type, but quality of design, casting and material quality itself.

Generally for a human sized monopose miniature I prefer metal. There are just things you can do with metal sculpts that even the most talented artist will struggle to achieve in plastic.

If it gets any bigger than human sized though, then sprue plastic all the way.

Plastic (HIPS).

Metal and resin can go die in a fire. Cleaning, pinning, fragility of pieces, chipping.... whatever, don't want to deal with any of it.

Monopose, multipose, doesn't matter.

The only time I don't like plastics is when the manufacturer mucks it up (like PP did), but metal and resin just isn't an acceptable alternative anymore.

Monopose single piece metal doesn't have a problem with pinning, to be fair.

 Da Boss wrote:
Monopose single piece metal doesn't have a problem with pinning, to be fair.

Sure? But not all monopose models are single piece.

Plastic.

Always, always plastic.

Having just built The Silent King, which is of course a single pose model, stuff building it in any other material!

Wyrd's latest round of pre-assembled single pose figures (the Witches and Woes box and the Fat Cap golem figure) are at a pretty promising point along the plastic-resin spectrum. I assume that sort of mix is available to others...

As far as assembly goes, plastic cement makes that material really, really favorable if it's a "some assembly required" figure. My willingness to put up with putting together metal and resin (especially old fashioned models without tabbed joints) has really diminished over the years.

Voss wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
Monopose single piece metal doesn't have a problem with pinning, to be fair.

Sure? But not all monopose models are single piece.

No, but if they're metal, they damn well should be...

Always plastic.

Resin is inconvenient and more fragile plastic that requires superglue.

Metal models fall apart of you look at them funny.

If I'm buying it used, metal all the way as it's just easier to strip.


If I'm buying new, single-pose minis, it's HIPS, especially if it's a multi-part model.

I used to be a metal snob. In fact I have 120 metal necron warriors I got just because one-piece metal models are nearly indestructible. I left a bunch of Rhino bits in my car once that got twisted by the sun. However, metal is so much harder to keep paint on because of how it chips. This made me sway more to plastics.

Resin is a pain to work with and GW finecast made me HATE that material.

Depends on the model - a character can be monopose and I'd be fine with resin, but for large numbers HIPS would definitely be my preference (since it has the best combination of durability, cost and weight).

I know there are some bad resins out there, but folks on here need to work with some of Artel W's or Anvils stuff, they use very nice resin and cast it so cleanly. It's never been a hassle to put together any of their stuff.

Good thoughts all around.

As I mentioned in the OP, I really like Metal.
However, I would temper that sometimes in relation to cost. Sometimes I can't find a cheap used (likely poorly painted and will be stripped) metal example of what I want.

Thus, bones (which I am not particularly fond of in small figures) I quite like in large figures. I find it easy to work with (once you get the hang of cutting flash rather than filing or scraping), I'm not a good enough painter to benefit from finer detailed materials and the cost/size ratio can't be beat.

If you have a horde style army (or just a very large army) you'll need to be a weight lifter to haul around a ton of all-metal infantry. I've figured this out with both IG and Necron.

Hard plastic is probably my fave, but I'm sick of monopose figures coming in 15 different tiny parts like GW do. Why? So totally pointless, especially when they still can't produce models with gun barrels without a hole. If you go monopose, cut the parts down to 3-5 bits.

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
Hard plastic is probably my fave, but I'm sick of monopose figures coming in 15 different tiny parts like GW do. Why? So totally pointless, especially when they still can't produce models with gun barrels without a hole. If you go monopose, cut the parts down to 3-5 bits.

I see it as a trade-off really. Monopose means that the end model does look a bit better than an non customized multi-pose. It just looks a bit repetitive when you have 50 guys and only 5 poses. I think I could live with monopose for characters, anything an army would realistically have only a couple of. Potentially for cheap "paint kits" or start collecting boxes. Line troopers need at least some minimal variation in the normal kit however.

I love the feel and weight of metal minis and the old style of the metal models but I HATE super glue and to this day I still despise some of the metal kits I had which I had to actively battle with to put together. I'll never forgive my old cat for merrily batting Imrik off the desk and into oblivion..

Plastic for sure. So much easier to clean up, assemble, convert, and paint. I have a few legacy metals left in my collection that I will still eventually build and paint but I don't intend to buy a non-HIPS model ever again.

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
Hard plastic is probably my fave, but I'm sick of monopose figures coming in 15 different tiny parts like GW do. Why? So totally pointless, especially when they still can't produce models with gun barrels without a hole. If you go monopose, cut the parts down to 3-5 bits.

As irritating as that is, the alternative is plastic models like GW produced in the '90s, with fudged details and stretched limbs to satisfy the demands of plastic production and its issues with undercuts. You can get away with fewer parts when the models have less detail on them, but for the style of over-decorated model GW is favouring these days, if you're making it plastic then multiple parts are unavoidable.

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
Hard plastic is probably my fave, but I'm sick of monopose figures coming in 15 different tiny parts like GW do. Why? So totally pointless, especially when they still can't produce models with gun barrels without a hole. If you go monopose, cut the parts down to 3-5 bits.

I don't know much about casting sprues, but I am pretty sure what you are asking for is near impossible. Or at very least cost prohibited for HIPS unless you just one models about 3/8" in depth. I have bought a lot of GW's newer models. Outside a few bits here and there which I had a difficult time understanding why a bit was cut and placed on a sprue, I have been thoroughly impressed with how GW has cut and laid model parts on sprues these days. Most modern GW model for to some effort to hide part cuts within the natural lines of the model as well as conceal a good number of sprue gates on the faces of the bits that won't be seen.

I would prefer GW not produce models with gun holes as that can only really be done by splitting the barrel in two parts most of the time. It is far easier to drill the hole than clean up the seam. Primaris Hellblasters have a split barrel, and even GW's own photos show they couldn't completely conceal the split if you know what you are looking for just above and behind the barrel itself.

Those extra bits are what allow models to have extra depth as well as extra-posing. Again, I don't know if you mean mono-posing like what often gets labeled to new GW models. I would say just because a model doesn't have interchangeable legs and torso bits that you can't get a lot of milage out them. The first spoiler below are all my Tactius Primaris models. There are only a couple that look close to the same and I have to examine the group closely to notice. The second is all my Reivers. The SMG/Carbine ones might have a few that look pretty similar. In both cases, the similar ones are largely in the most generic shooting pose which I think should kinda blend together.





If that isn't enough, I could also take a picture of my new sculpt Chaos Space Marines. They were a little hard to conceal the sameness due to the ornate armor repetition, but that isn't any different from the old sculpt Chaos Space Marines which also only had so many different parts in the model kit.

 cuda1179 wrote:

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
Hard plastic is probably my fave, but I'm sick of monopose figures coming in 15 different tiny parts like GW do. Why? So totally pointless, especially when they still can't produce models with gun barrels without a hole. If you go monopose, cut the parts down to 3-5 bits.

I see it as a trade-off really. Monopose means that the end model does look a bit better than an non customized multi-pose. It just looks a bit repetitive when you have 50 guys and only 5 poses. I think I could live with monopose for characters, anything an army would realistically have only a couple of. Potentially for cheap "paint kits" or start collecting boxes. Line troopers need at least some minimal variation in the normal kit however.

I would agree for loose formation games I would like a bit of variation.
However I only need a couple of variations. Say 3 or 4 sculpts is enough to make a mixed squad look diverse, especially when they're not all looking the same way. I have a couple generic sci-fi platoons made of Sedition Wars troopers, etc where there is only 3 variation of basic trooper bodies plus a fourth support weapon sculpt. I used the basing to add the illusion of differentiation also.
The Champ Industries plastic industrial bases only came in 4 sculpts but by mixing up the paint pattern you get a pretty mixed looking platoon with very limited actual variation. One of two platoons.

Sedition wars figs had assembly issues, but even then these were pretty easy to complete. It would have been alot of not-fun to assemble 40 of these guys if they were 15 parts each.

I actually don't care if there's much/any variation for ranked army games. I think there's a charm to a regiment of identical figures marching forward. Not to mention ease of painting. I've got platoons of single sculpt Battlemasters Chaos warriors I use in various fantasy rulesets. The only differentiations are two different schemes and a few different emblem designs that I glued on the shields.

Not cutting edge figs by any means, but they look great ranked, required no assembly and were dead easy to paint. Did roughly the same with with the Battlemasters Beastmen and Chaos archers also.

 Saturmorn Carvilli wrote:
As a general guideline, I skip models made in anything but HIPS.

Ditto. Even if I can't pose or convert the figure, I still want to avoid the weight of metal and the hassles of resin, and retain the ability to use plastic glue for the best bond (especially feet-to-base).

Monopose to mean means the model should be all in one piece. If it is all one piece, then Metal all the way.

If it is in pieces, Metal is the worst, except for maybe metal/resin hybrids! Ugh!

If it is in pieces, then plastic.

I voted Resin but I don't mean failcast which is the worst material on the market. Resin from any other company but GW is actually fine and I've yet to see a plastic model with the detail of a proper resin model. Since one-pose miniatures are usually heromodels you only have one of I'm happy with those being highly detailed resin models. And if I want to magnetize them for other weapons resin is still much easier to work with than metal.

Metal if it's a complete model. Plastic if it's multiple-part but if it's especially delicate/slender I prefer metal in all cases.