PhantomViper wrote:box of CoC Reductors.

These were the worst ones I saw. The entire box needed hot water treatment and had hideously large mould lines and mushy detail.

Also "shallow detail"? Do you paint your models with wall paint for this to even be considered a problem?!

That's a stupid thing to say.

I'm talking about actual depth of detail from the top of the detail to the deepest point. Go compare CoC small based infantry with the metal infantry PP makes. Night and day.

And it makes a massive difference in terms of speed of painting. There's more room to highlight and wet blend up the height of the detail. PP's metals (with a few exceptions like Black 13th) have nice deep details that give both new and experienced painters more to work with than their plastics.

I stopped buying PVC miniatures because they are very rarely implemented as properly as PVC anime figures, PCV movie monster kits and so on. I know what can actually be done with the material and PP and Mantic are failing to do it right.

---

I still keep my eye on GW, like most of us here. Sometimes I am tempted to come back, but man those prices keep me away. Far away.

It's almost like GW doesn't even want us as customers. I mean how can you charge so much for a substandard product? (books and rules I mean). I guess GW just doesn't want my money.

ComTrav wrote:
I still think GW is best-in-business when it comes to multi-part plastic kits -- it is so easy to work with, you can so many diverse and easily interchangeable bits, it just begs to be converted or kitbashed. The sculpts themselves are a matter of aesthetics, what you get in an overall kit is still pretty impressive.

https://www.perry-miniatures.com/product_info.php?cPath=22_62&products_id=2490&osCsid=ag8qva6c62efveetsoo2itakg1

https://www.perry-miniatures.com/product_info.php?cPath=23_34&products_id=2471&osCsid=ag8qva6c62efveetsoo2itakg1

https://www.perry-miniatures.com/product_info.php?cPath=23_34&products_id=3168&osCsid=ag8qva6c62efveetsoo2itakg1

Davor wrote:
I still keep my eye on GW, like most of us here. Sometimes I am tempted to come back, but man those prices keep me away. Far away.

It's almost like GW doesn't even want us as customers. I mean how can you charge so much for a substandard product? (books and rules I mean). I guess GW just doesn't want my money.

If the rules were more up to snuff or the quality they claim to be, which is mostly my main issue, then I'd be a little more happy to give them my money. The price for the kits is still nonsensical, but that is mostly can be overcomed by alternatives on the market (some of the Fireforge Stuff looks really nice for a Brettonnian stand-in. Also for Kings of War as well).

PhantomViper wrote:

 frozenwastes wrote:

jah-joshua wrote:i've been a fan of PP's metals from day 1, and own a ton of them, but as soon as the switch was made to restic, my purchases went to 0 for anything in that material...
having looked at the minis in hand, i walked straight away, and never looked back...
i'll still buy the metal stuff, and the proper resin Collosals are nice, but restic is horrible...

This describes me as well. I love PP's metals and don't buy their plastics at all. And the smaller the miniature, the worse it is. There are some almost passable large and medium models in that plastic, but the small base ones are horrible with shallow detail I wouldn't want to inflict them on anyone.

Just bought a box of the new plastic Bane Thralls and I didn't have a single cause for complain with them, same thing with a box of CoC Reductors. On the other hand, the box of Bane Riders that I bought at the same time required a considerable amount of elbow grease to get the horses to align because they were a bit bent (nothing that hot water didn't solve luckily).

Either I'm incredibly lucky or I just can't seem to associate mold lines and bent spears with horrible quality like some people do...

Also "shallow detail"? Do you paint your models with wall paint for this to even be considered a problem?!

i painted the alternate green Bane Thralls for the Escalation book, back in MKI, and they are pretty chunky, nearly one-piece models...
the ones i painted were metal, and i have to wonder about the spikes on the shoulders of the plastics, more than anything...
were they straight???
did they have thick mould lines???

it seems like the bendiness of the spears and swords is not a problem you have to worry about on the bodies of chunky models, but mould lines sure are...
that mold line running across the top of the Khador 'Jacks keeps me from buying them, though, even though i would like to paint some...
pretty much all of the ones i've seen had the same look of serious mould slippage...
i've only had that happen on two or three metal minis in over twenty-five years of collecting...

as a commission painter, bendy spears and mould lines make prep take a lot longer, and i don't trust the spears to make it to the client without having gone back to their original bent state...
i know i've heard of a lot of the PVC minis doing that, thanks to the "memory" of the material wanting to go back to the original shape it cured in...
that's not to say that metals don't bend, too, but at least they don't do it themselves...
minis need to be handled with care, no matter what material they are cast in...

basically, for me, i would be happy to have multi-part HIPS plastic kits for every model, but boutique resins and metal minis just have that little bit more depth of detail that makes it impossible to resist a beautiful sculpt, even if the material is more fragile...
luckily, my favorite minis to paint are Space Marines, so i get to work mostly with plastic...

cheers
jah

The PP plastics are real hit+miss, and it seems that a lot of their stuff is getting retooled over time.

A friend of mine got Troll Warders and each had a enormous mould line running down the center of their face. That box he angrily returned to PP.
My warders had a tiny bit of flash running around the outside of their face.

My Corollary has got to be one of the most perfectly cast miniatures I've ever bought - not a single line of flash anywhere on the entire thing. Yet my Cypher was probably the worst model ever - mould lines in just terribly stupid places, like they had a competition to run it through every single piece of concave fine detail they could.

The metals are great and I'd compare them to GW metals any day.


The only plastics company that I see routinely getting compared to GW is Perry Miniatures - as it is run by ex-GW sculptors, this doesn't really seem surprising. Unfortunately historical minis don't really appeal to everyone or be used for anything, and there is still a dearth of quality hard plastic minis outside of historicals.
There are definitely pro's and con's to multi-part minis - single-pose invariably look more natural but the simple fact is they can't be produced as cheaply as plastic mins. GW has pioneered the single-pose plastic heroes which do look fantastic.

As for aesthetics... personal choice. I happen to love much of WMH - but I can't stand Menoth, so I don't collect them. If you can't find an aesthetic that you like, don't collect any, but its not anyone's fault (yours or theirs) that you can't find something you like.

I'm a huge WM/H fan and I'm glad I've gotten a lot of stuff in metal before it was changed over to pvc.

WM/H does attract a good amount of people who are in it for the game and who don't even bother cleaning the models and rarely paint them. So I do get that Privateer might be supported by an audience who will give them more of a pass on their bad pvc figures. For me, painting miniatures and terrain is my primary hobby with gaming being a added bonus.*

Different people have different priorities.

* You'd think that would make me an ideal customer for GW's stuff, but other than some Chaos models that they releases years ago, I've been unimpressed by the art direction of the last 5+ years. When the Forsaken came out I grabbed a used set of Chaos Warriors and Knights for fantasy skirmish gaming off of eBay on the off hand chance that GW will one day re-release them with the same art direction and design direction as the Forsaken... ugh!

Trasvi wrote:

My Corollary has got to be one of the most perfectly cast miniatures I've ever bought - not a single line of flash anywhere on the entire thing.

That is because the Corollary is a resin and white metal model, there are no PVC parts in that kit.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 frozenwastes wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:box of CoC Reductors.

These were the worst ones I saw. The entire box needed hot water treatment and had hideously large mould lines and mushy detail.

I think that PP refines the casting process of their kits with time.

For example, I bought the Heavy Vector kit as soon as it came out and it had some pretty noticeable mold lines in most parts. I bought two more Heavy Vector kits in my last CoC purchase spree and both were pretty much mold line free (just like the Reductors and Bane Thralls)...

PhantomViper wrote:

Trasvi wrote:

My Corollary has got to be one of the most perfectly cast miniatures I've ever bought - not a single line of flash anywhere on the entire thing.

That is because the Corollary is a resin and white metal model, there are no PVC parts in that kit.

I recently picked up the Exulon Thexas model, and it was much the same... Sure there were some pieces of flash on the model, but they pulled off cleanly and the entire kit had basically no mold lines (part of what I filed I thought was a mold line, turns out was part of the model design )

Despite the issues with the PVC plastic, Privateer Press has at least acknowledged the complaints and have claimed to be looking into ways to improve it or even other alternatives (I've heard the forthcoming CoC battle engine is going to use a different type of plastic and that's why it's not out yet). That's worlds better than GW who, despite the complaints of Finecast, still claimed it was superior and suitable for the "best miniature figures in the world"

I first got into WH40K back during 2nd edition when my brothers and I respectively bought SM, Orks and IG when they came in boxes of 36 minis on plastic sprues. I still have my beat up copy of Rogue Trader. I haven't played a game since 4th edition.

I have two insanely large IG armies based on Catachans and Cadians. I've watched GW go from selling plastic boxes of 36 to metal squads of 10 back to plastic boxes of 30, then 20, now 10 minis while increasing the amount of models needed for games. I have enough models that still need painting that I don't need to buy any more unless something comes out that really intrigues me.

The primary reasons why I don't play GW games anymore is poor rules, wonky scale and no hobby support.

I have never understood the GW approach to rules. The basic mechanics are involved and not always intuitive but they make it so much worse by trying to shoehorn in new models with new rules. For example I'm not sure why we need Assault Marines, Vanguard Marines and Honor Guard Marines who can all have jetpacks and similar loadouts but all have different points and rules. Centurions and grav weapons strike me as answers to a question nobody was asking. Every new model has it's own rules, every thing has some kind of modifier and to keep track of it all I need a BRB, multiple codexes and possibly supplements to figure it all out each turn.

I don't understand why GW makes the rules so expensive either. I'm not saying they should be free but at my local GW the redshirt/blackshirt whatever it is now, told me that he'd go over the new rules for 7th Ed with me but I'd have to buy all the books I needed and I understand that policy but buying the BRB, SM and AM codexes is about $200 which is a huge chunk of my hobby budget. I feel stupid spending that much money on overly complex rules that will be invalidated by another new edition in a few years.

The scale of games has also gotten crazy. I remember when 40K was a skirmish game and now they've added flyers and knight titans. I think the Valkyrie, LR Crusader and Knight are great kits (I agree with the people that think Dreamforge's Leviathan is a better model kit but knights are still sweet) but it's really hard to keep the game balanced when you can field all that in a standard game. 40K is still better than WHFB's crazy army size. Apocalypse is fun but not every game needs to be that size where everyone needs the new shiny that counters the opposing new shiny in an ever growing arms race of giant models.

I was around when Epic was supported, I have an Epic IG army complete with lots of tanks, superheavy tanks and titans, it's a fun game. I don't understand why GW dropped it. Shrinking the models let me field all the cool stuff in a giant battle that also created more room on the table to actually use tactics and movement and just just roll buckets of dice.

I was a WD subcriber back when every issue had hobby support. Complete rules for Necromunda, conversion ideas and walkthroughs, staff armies and warbands, narrative battles and campaigns, how to make your own scenery all the stuff that made the hobby interesting. Now GW is a corporation that sells model kits and wants to buy GW model kits, assemble them so they look like the box art, paint them with GW paints so they look like the box art and play gameswith them on tables covered with GW terrain. I have no problem with GW trying to make as much money as they can, I get it, but it seems to me that they've abandoned the idea of paying attention to why hobbyists would want to buy their stuff and instead just make stuff and expect hobbyists to buy it. I understand that GW has to be careful with their IP and they want people to buy their own stuff not anyone elses and all that but GW isn't a company that was built on selling widgets it was built on selling a hobby experience.

Now I just buy the occaisional GW kit for converting and painting and mostly buy from smaller companies that produce models I like that can be proxied in with my GW hordes if I want to play games with the older edition rules. I've put too much time and effort into my old GW armies to just sell them off or throw them away but the longer I abstain from playing current 40K and WHFB the less I miss it and the harder it is to justify the expense of jumping back in wholeheartedly.

Because of the sheer scale of our collections (the amount of money & time spent) and the fact that we still enjoy casual play, my gang won't be quitting 40K ever. However, the amount of proxies and ... replacements for existing kits offered by other sources are appearing more and more in our armies. GW's prices are ludicrous.

At the moment, none of us have read 7th ed and my own interest in that rule-set is non-existent. We don't have any D-strength weapons on the table, and won't because they aren't appropriate for a game of regular 40K (our own opinion, ymmv).

We still play the original Apocalypse and always have a blast when we do - we make an entire day of it, including breaks for meals.

A number of us have begun playing Bolt Action using 15 mm miniatures and have enjoyed it greatly - we're starting Bolt Action nights twice a month at our local store.

I began playing Dust Warfare this spring, and my opponent and I have switched to Battlefield now that rule-set is available - quick and brutal games!

Another friend and I play Battletech every few months.

Boardgames w/ a varying cast of characters are played usually once a week.