Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Thrax wrote:

insaniak wrote:

Thrax wrote:Overall, I would say GW shouldn't have hyped this.

That, or they should have hyped it, but then also actually delivered what they promised...

Indeed. There is that scenario as well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
This whole finecast situation will certainly work to GW's benefit if it curbs the appeal of internet purchases.

As a businessman I am not convinced that making your product worse, so that people are not confident to buy it, is a good strategy.

I went to my local gw and went through 5 miscasts untill i decided to change to a plastic kit. every single sternguard sergeant model had i massive hole in his head, all of the vanguard were horrible miscasts but the ic were perfect. my guess is that gw relessed a whole stack of minis in a short space of time someust slipped under the radar. it seems every kit around australia had problems with the sternguard and vanguard.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
still it is a step foward they will fix it

I picked up a Ghazghkull Thraka on Saturday, and I can't say there were any noticeable flaws. There was some flash to trim & mold lines to clear, but beyond that, nothing. My only complaint is regards the GW claim that Finecast is more resilient than metal, since I managed to snap his Bosspole (without, I thought, a lot of force being applied. And no I wasn't stress testing it, it was an accident...). On the plus side it did glue back on with no problems and is pretty sound now...

On the point of dodgy blisters (miscasts etc) from what I inspected at my local GW, I saw only 1, and Empereror's Champion who'd forgotten to pack his sword...

Overall I'm fairly positive about Finecast - I've never worked with resin, so I've still to learn how best to work with the stuff, but I'm liking it so far...

I'm not trying to be a fanboy/apologist etc here; I read the prelaunch reviews and was a little apprehensive when i went to GW, to the extent that I opened the box before I left the store. Just trying to be open minded and objective...

Tech Guard wrote:I went to my local gw and went through 5 miscasts untill i decided to change to a plastic kit. every single sternguard sergeant model had i massive hole in his head, all of the vanguard were horrible miscasts but the ic were perfect. my guess is that gw relessed a whole stack of minis in a short space of time someust slipped under the radar. it seems every kit around australia had problems with the sternguard and vanguard.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
still it is a step foward they will fix it

lol, now that's loyalty. Things were so bad at your GW that you skipped buying Finecast at all, noting that this was apparently a problem all over Australia with big stacks of miscast minis, but then ended your post by saying this was still a "step forward" and that GW would fix it.

If GW has any integrity at all then I'm pretty confident they'll fix it, too. I just thought it sounded funny.

Archroy wrote: My only complaint is regards the GW claim that Finecast is more resilient than metal.

never believe GW's claims, the whole "dropped a dragon from 3 feet and it was fine" rubbish is obvious BS, it was placed gently on the floor, just like when they were trying to sell the large figure case for monsters and had it placed on a car then took a picture after they had gently put it on the floor afterwards, when in reality it would of been scratched and dented.

GW's number 1 selling tactic is to lie like its going out of fashion

I'm surprised there was no propaganda post on the GW site yesterday. Which makes me think that they had one prepared ("Our glorious product conquers all hearts, what was your first model?") but with the massive backlash decided to scrap it and instead keep it quiet.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Thrax wrote:

insaniak wrote:

Thrax wrote:Overall, I would say GW shouldn't have hyped this.

That, or they should have hyped it, but then also actually delivered what they promised...

Indeed. There is that scenario as well.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
This whole finecast situation will certainly work to GW's benefit if it curbs the appeal of internet purchases.

As a businessman I am not convinced that making your product worse, so that people are not confident to buy it, is a good strategy.

I was alluding to the fact that GW seems to want to hassle the internet stores that carry their product. It's already taboo to list their stuff online or show pictures of it if you're an online vendor, and they've gone gak-crazy with the whole trade embargo issue - so I suspect they'll be pleased with more people buying the finecast in brick and mortar shops than online - that was the point I was trying to make. Although, you're correct, it doesn't make any business sense, but that's GW's modus operandi.

But I was impressed with the emperores champion model, had no trouble converting him into captain tycho, this would have been a nightmare in resin. but then again if you look at forge worlds resin gw casting is amazing, anybody who has put together an elysian army will know.

I know all too well.

Look to be brutaly honest the sternguard seargents looked as though they had been shot in the head with a bolt gun, way beyond saving. the vanguards feet looked like mutations. i think that they skiped the caulity check on models in non see through packeging but for the clams were very catious

I have a DKoK army and love the detail of the FW resin, but I absolutely loathe the lack of durability of it. Bayonettes and limbs snap at the lightest touch, and if you think you can take these in the car during summer, forget about it. Did have a couple issues with my Krieg (thinning on some of the longcoats, and some resin blobs), but overall very well cast, just brittle as hell.

The finecast stuff is...different.

EDIT: typo

yes well every game i play with my elysians i am repairing a brocken body part.

'Can't take it in your car in the summer' seems like grasping at straws to find something wrong with finecast. I mean, I'm sure it might be a problem. but its a problem I have with current plastic tanks as well - I've seen some tanks from other gamers which have literally exploded or turned nearly inside-out as the pent up air gets released. I myself have a hammerhead tank with erectile dysfunction - left in the car, the barrel went all flaccid and now points directly into the cockpit of the tank

Trasvi wrote:'Can't take it in your car in the summer' seems like grasping at straws to find something wrong with finecast. I mean, I'm sure it might be a problem. but its a problem I have with current plastic tanks as well - I've seen some tanks from other gamers which have literally exploded or turned nearly inside-out as the pent up air gets released. I myself have a hammerhead tank with erectile dysfunction - left in the car, the barrel went all flaccid and now points directly into the cockpit of the tank

Come on, Tau guys, ED is no reason to kill yourselves! They have drugs for that now!

Never had issue with plastic tanks, but did lose a squad of krieg that were in the part of the case that was sticking out of the shade in the parked car. I'm not 'grasping at straws' to find flaws with finecast, only stating my experience with a FULLY FW resin army that I personally own and can share my experiences with. Call that what you will.

army310 wrote:
I think all the bad press is coming from PP or something

Do you realize how stupid that sounds? I mean, really? PP had their response to finecast and other GW stupidity, faking problems isnt it.

BrookM wrote:I'm surprised there was no propaganda post on the GW site yesterday. Which makes me think that they had one prepared ("Our glorious product conquers all hearts, what was your first model?") but with the massive backlash decided to scrap it and instead keep it quiet.

It was a public holiday here yesterday - so there's always time for them to pontificate on the runaway success that is Finecast...

htj wrote:

Thrax wrote:This whole finecast situation will certainly work to GW's benefit if it curbs the appeal of internet purchases.

I'm not convinced of that. Direct only means that people like myself, who prefer to mail order, have to order from GW online. Net gain for them as they get full RRP. Now I'm less likely to order online, sure, but I'm not going to the shop to receive crappy service and for them not to have the miniature I want anyway. I'm just not going to buy the miniature. Net loss for them. I don't know if I'm representative of a large market share, but I think enough people are going to feel the same that this is going to hurt them more than help them.

I almost always online order what I don't get there I get off ebay or trade forums. Once upon a time I had an awesome game shop in town that carried loads of citadel products. The game shop is still there but it now sells mostly magic, yogio, warmachine, and D20 RPGs. The other shop in town is a historical military hobby shop and while they have 40k games held their the selection is none existent. That leaves GW Milwaukee which is a 2hr round trip @ $4 a gal 24mpg with my v8. ( So it's cheaper to ship an order anyway!)

If there is even a 10% chance I'm going to get a failcast instead of a finecast from GW direct mail order then I'm passing. I actually cancelled my tomb-kings pre-orders because I have no confidence I'll get a decent model and I'm not paying for return shipping on a defective product. I've spent $360+ at another mini manufacturer so far.

Archroy wrote:

BrookM wrote:I'm surprised there was no propaganda post on the GW site yesterday. Which makes me think that they had one prepared ("Our glorious product conquers all hearts, what was your first model?") but with the massive backlash decided to scrap it and instead keep it quiet.

It was a public holiday here yesterday - so there's always time for them to pontificate on the runaway success that is Finecast...

Aha, consider me corrected.

BrookM wrote:I'm surprised there was no propaganda post on the GW site yesterday. Which makes me think that they had one prepared ("Our glorious product conquers all hearts, what was your first model?") but with the massive backlash decided to scrap it and instead keep it quiet.

Public holiday notwithstanding, the GW Facebook team have been pretty busy toeing the party line. Lots of posts about pictures from 'such and such GW' with 'hordes of happy customers'. Basically giving the impression that Finecast has been flying off the shelves and a massive success.

As usual, there is a bit of a dichotomy with regards to GW - if one goes purely by what GW say then clearly Finecast has been a massive success. Obviously, some stories on Dakka and the like beg to differ. i suspect the truth is somewhere in between; I am sure GW stores have been busier than normal recently - but how successful the launch actually is, we wait to see.

Thrax wrote:The owner of my FLGS is honestly stressed out with his orders because he has no way to know what shape his orders will be in when they arrive and how his customers will react if they have issues. Some people have been pretty gracious, others have been off the rails pissed....

... I feel for the guy.

This deserves more attention. We can quibble about what percentage of Fincasts are flawed, but there is a big difference between how GW stores and our FLGS can handle them. At this point AFAIK, Fincast shippments to FLGS are limited (I believe Mikaila said something to this effect). Thus, it's likely that a FLGS will have to give a refund if a return comes back and they don't have the item in stock. The FLGS gives a refund and likely loses a sale that will go elsewhere rather than wait for a new shippment.

The GW store on the other hand likely has more access to stock and resupply. They're far more likely to be able to provide the customer with a replacement on-the-spot and keep the sale.

Really doesn't seem like a fair shake for the FLGS.

Eilif wrote:

Thrax wrote:The owner of my FLGS is honestly stressed out with his orders because he has no way to know what shape his orders will be in when they arrive and how his customers will react if they have issues. Some people have been pretty gracious, others have been off the rails pissed....

... I feel for the guy.

This deserves more attention. We can quibble about what percentage of Fincasts are flawed, but there is a big difference between how GW stores and our FLGS can handle them. At this point AFAIK, Fincast shippments to FLGS are limited (I believe Mikaila said something to this effect). Thus, it's likely that a FLGS will have to give a refund if a return comes back and they don't have the item in stock. The FLGS gives a refund and likely loses a sale that will go elsewhere rather than wait for a new shippment.

The GW store on the other hand likely has more access to stock and resupply. They're far more likely to be able to provide the customer with a replacement on-the-spot and keep the sale.

Really doesn't seem like a fair shake for the FLGS.

Good point. But unless they drop finecast I cant see how independent stores can fight that.

Well, now we know why the cost of plastic kits is going up, it's to cover the cost of replacing all the Failcast miscasts.

Just popped into my local GW and whilst the staff were distracted by the half term rabble, I scrutinised a fair few finecast blisters. Have to say I couldn't find much fault with the ones I saw, aside from a badly bent pistol on an Empire Captain. Eventually a store member came over and gave me an undercoated of Astorath to look over. I was reasonably impressed with how the model looked, although I accept that they would hardly choose a miscast model for display purposes.

I would consider myself one of those who would quite happily see Failcast um... fail after all the debacle of recent weeks, but my first impressions are regrettably positive (aside from the prices ).

EDIT - Still didn't buy any though. So to you GW

Flashman, if you are going to be positive and accepting, then you can just find another forum! This is a place for impossible to satisfy people to piss and moan to a bunch of other unappeasable and helpless people!

DaNewBoy wrote:Flashman, if you are going to be positive and accepting, then you can just find another forum! This is a place for impossible to satisfy people to piss and moan to a bunch of other unappeasable and helpless people!

Oh I know that, I've edited my post to a more appropriate tone

I went into my FLGS and had a look at some of the finecast stuff. All in all it looked pretty good, but i would have prefered if the boxes of finecsat still had some kind of window, as i am somewhat concerned about what might be inside.
I picked up the Emperors Champion, who apart from a bubble smaller than a pinprick (im very picky) on his shoulder-rim, was pretty good.
When i painted him up thought, it really showed how much better resin is than pewter. My other Emperor's Champion (pewter) was a lot less detailed and was harder to distiguish some of the lines.
All in all, finecast seems like a good idea, but i think that some of the stuff GW said was a bit off.

Eilif wrote:At this point AFAIK, Fincast shippments to FLGS are limited (I believe Mikaila said something to this effect).

I've also heard that FC shipments are limited to three and my FLGS didn't have more than three of anything that I noticed.

I picked up a Finecast Dante and was quite happy with the quality. Clean up on the resin is a snap, especially compared to all those small vent worms on metal models.



More in this dakka gallery

Asuron wrote:

Howard A Treesong wrote:My old LGS wasn't told anything about the 'Finecast' range from GW. All that happened was that he was finding that more and more items were "out of stock" when he was ordering from them and he started to think that they were blocking his orders for some reason (GW do pull the occasional stunt with their retailers).

Now he accepts that they were likely running down the metal stock for the change over. The GW rep didn't mention a thing about the resin stuff at all, the first he knew of the resin stuff was in the White Dwarf when delivered this week.

The hell? So much for GW keeping their own retailers in the loop.

They weren't the only ones
Miniwargaming said the same thing in their review of the models, they weren't told anything and it put alot of stress on them to get the orders in

What the hell has to be going through their brains, to not tell anybody about what they are doing so they can prepare for this
Instead it forces retailers to put a hole in their wallet for a while just to have stock to sell, because there was no way they could have been prepared for this
Even their own employees couldn't tell me what they were selling two days before, because apparentlly they hadn't been told!
I mean how are you going to assure a customer of anything, if noone knows anything?

Its like all the examples of how to not run a business, GW seem to exemplify

Talking again to my LGS he said that he's thinking about dropping the blisters from his shop. They are too expensive, they don't sell like the boxed stuff, and they are too easily stolen... they just aren't worth it. He sells lots more boxes than blisters and the kids who used to buy the stuff have stopped because of the cost (there are no lower cost items). He doesn't make much money on GW but it's good to be an official retailer and get yourself into the White Dwarf lists and it gets people into the shop in general. But GW sales are poor. I think he's quite frustrated by it.

Finecast first look by Kilkrazy

I went along to the London Oxford Street Plaza shop at lunchtime. Had a bit of a chat with one of the older guys there, who was assembling models from Finecast.

My impressions
Detail looks very clear and impressive. I believe this is partly due to lack of specular highlighting and will be less apparent once the models are painted.

I couldn’t find any models with big missing bits or obvious air bubbles. I didn’t look at very many. I did find some with very thin resin and/or small missing pieces, but nothing with huge chunks missing. There is also quite a lot of cleaning up to do because of all the vents, however the soft material should facilitate this.

Some filling with putty may be needed depending on the model. The Hive Tyrant on display had pretty big cracks in his carapace where the pieces didn’t join properly. Some of the other display models had clear offset mould halves which, to be fair, can happen on metal too. There was also some rough texture on some of the surfaces on the big winged demon.

The models are very light.

The material is less soft and bendy than I expected, which I’m quite glad about. I was worried the models were going to feel like children’s toys.

I didn’t try the experiment of bending a sword in two, but I did snap a tail off a Chaos steed when I picked it up.

Staff impressions
The shop guy said they had had up to 1/3 bad castings with some of the more complicated models. He thought this would improve as the manufacturing staff gained experience with the process. I agree – most manufacturing processes improve productivity by 20% in the first three months.

We will have to wait and see what this may mean for Finecast. A 20% improvement in a process which produces 33% bad castings could involve the failure rate settling at ¼.

That is the most complex models, however. The simpler ones like the smaller one and two piece models ought to do better. And hopefully masters created specifically for resin will make better moulds.

The man said GW have a good return/refund policy. (In the UK. Your local laws may differ.) He expected the whole metal range to get moved over to Finecast. This would be a benefit as it allowed them to stock more in the shop – presumably (my guess) because the amount of metal in the supply chain was too expensive.

He didn’t think Finecast was an interim step to going all-polystyrene.

Overall
My overall impressions were better than I had expected. I don’t think Finecast is a rocket ride to the moon, OTOH it isn’t an express elevator to hell. You’ll just have to be a bit careful checking models in case you need to return them.

The main thing that shocked me was the prices:

Zoanthrope = £15.50
Hive Tyrant = £36

I knew about this before I went in the shop and I still got a considerable “sticker shock” when I picked up the package.

So I’m afraid there will be no Finecast Hive Tyrant for me. I shall convert one of my secondhand eBay Carnifexes and save £20.