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Goose LeChance wrote: I'm kind of surprised there are so many people willing to pay the price of high quality metals, for cheap bendy plastic that can't hold the same detail. It's not like the TAGs will cost 10$, or will they?
Because it's not "cheap bendy plastic that can't hold the same detail", it's a new type of injection molded plastic that holds the same detail, in a more resilient material easier to assemble, easier to store, easier to paint.
The main issue I have is that paint chips off it more easily and you have to be a lot more careful with metal bumping metal than other materials. It's also inherently top heavy and falls over more often. Not a deal breaker at all, but it's a lot easier to handle plastics generally.
This is it exactly, multipart metal models are significantly more fragile than plastic models and even for single pieces, the weight-to-strength ratio of pewter is really bad for thin parts, which is why GW always made swords so thick. HIPS remains my favorite material, but modern PVC figures are good enough in detail and damn near invincible. And these newer thermoplast injection molded plastics have detail almost exactly comparable to metal, but with all the benefits of being plastic. I tossed around the Lysette model I pictured above to see how fragile it would be, she survived a dozen light tosses across my bedroom from standing hight onto hardwood flooring with no damage. My Yu Jing Invincible with HMG has been pinned and I've still had to re-glue his arms a few times AND repaint his wrists. I now use a proxy Daktari because both the original and her replacement eventually broke at the ankle and couldn't be repaired.
Might be different if I only painted for display, or only played in my own house, but the realities of storing and transporting and playing at vaious FLGS and tournaments means a LOT of breakage and repair work over time, no matter how careful you are.
So yeah, excited for new plastic Inifinity stuff, I'll be grabbing the remotes on release
The word is out that the new material is SIOres from Siocast. It's a bendy material which suppose can hold great detail.
Creature Caster also started to use it.
Here's a miniature assembly video.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/07/30 06:38:08
I like it, high level of elasticity, can see how it's going to rub someone the wrong way as it can give you the feeling of a 'cheap toy soldier' feeling.
In the end the feel is less important compared to the quality of detail; the ease of cleaning; the final finish with paint on it and the general performance of the material.
Not going into pros and cons of metal lets just say as a traditional sculptor no other material comes close to replicate the micro detailing I do.
Infinity moved into Digital sculpting and sculpts IMO feel less interesting... now they move away from metals and that is a real blow... I dont like bendy light melty to high temperatures if you leave it in a car things that cleaning mouldiness alone are infuriating etc. They are not even collector worthy. Discardable game tokens.
I really need my metal fix or if not bothered with detail Hips so will move away from this... Rackham, PP etc all lost me cause of this same shift.
Not long ago I wrote here that it would be nice to have Defiance with the plastic models in the retail, and now I see that they are starting with this new thermoplastics. I hope it will be a great material allowing them to finally make more wide spread releases of plastic minis for both regular Infinity and its off-shots like board games etc.
Very nice presentation video of the Siocast technology and siores material. Wow the casting process is fast...and the detail is there.
Looks quite promising...
Impressive indeed! The cooling is normal for plastics being super fast so for small producers its going to make a big difference over metals and such.
The quality and how good it is to work with will remain on the fence until we get to really see results in hand. I have seen Creature Caster advertising these, not with their core products yet, but with a side project with another studio.
Considering that CC and Infinity are both in the deluxe style market - CC very much so - it makes me think this new method must be pretty good for them to have picked it up. It could certainly help a lot of firms looking to move into plastics for increased production workflow and output but without slaving them to factories in China where quality can be a questionable element (and where you lose some degree of control over the production process)
the ability to recycle the 'waste' directly seems a big plus,
one of the issues with resin is the temptation to send out slightly flawed casts because if you don't they're just landfill, and the more you do it the more lax you get in what goes out the door (after all it's almost as good as what you shipped last month)
but if you can just remelt stuff and try again like metal there's no excuse not to
I'm disappointed with its flexibility. I guess that will make it better able to withstand bumps and knocks, but my fear is that it will also mean more products coming out of the box deformed. And it doesn't matter how many times Reaper insist that you can just use hot water to reshape Bones minis, I've always found that those minis just bend themselves back to their original, deformed shape over time.
I'm very interested to see CB adopt SIOres, and I hope it proves a success. There are a lot of good reasons to get away from metal, however much I may personally love it. But I'm withholding final judgement until we've got better data.
On the other hand this puts CB / Infinity back on my radar. Looking forward to seeing more of the range develop with this as I can only envisage consistent use and experience leading to nicer quality minis in the future, on paper at least!
precinctomega wrote:I'm disappointed with its flexibility. I guess that will make it better able to withstand bumps and knocks, but my fear is that it will also mean more products coming out of the box deformed. And it doesn't matter how many times Reaper insist that you can just use hot water to reshape Bones minis, I've always found that those minis just bend themselves back to their original, deformed shape over time.
I'm very interested to see CB adopt SIOres, and I hope it proves a success. There are a lot of good reasons to get away from metal, however much I may personally love it. But I'm withholding final judgement until we've got better data.
Early bones that was 100% true. For PVC minis in general I tend to see about a 75-80% success rate if you don't include Bones 1&2.
Overread wrote:At the same time metal (esp the thicknesses Infinity uses) and resins can also bend in transport.
I regularly boil resin. Metals though, if they bend too much not much you can do to fix if you cannot put a pin rod in as it will be to heavy for the connection which will also have the bent, brittle metal at the break points. This is my #1 reason I hate metal. Weapon and small fiddly bit breakage that you just can't fix unless you want to resculpt (which I cannot do nor do I want to spend months learning).
NAVARRO wrote: Gutted here 100% not for me. Oh well I hope people enjoy it and have fun with it.
Unfortunately they'll never make everyone happy. I'm almost certain the reason for moving to siocast for Tags and remotes is the crazy price fluxuations tin has (and has had for years) where it can triple in the course of a week or two and the drop down a week later. Makes setting a consistent MSRP hard at the production scale they do. Removing the largest single consumers of that material just means what they buy can last longer as they wait for an affordable price.
Any thoughts on whether they'll do "premium" metal minis direct only so that the better margins offset the metal costs? They did a limited amount of plastic and metal split releases for Aristeia.
Part of the equation is what they actually use the material for. While I'm not at all a fan of PVC, a lot of its problems are really only horrendous at 30 mm. I've got a fair few models in the 40 mm size in PVC that overall look pretty good as long as they're not wielding spears.
Who knows but it might not be worth the cost of having two different production set ups for these figures as I doubt the number of people that care about the material is super high (no offence to those that do) as those that prefer metal tend to be the older crowed that have used it for the majority of their time in the hobby and don't like change. Navarro would be an outlier in the metal fan group I believe to due his background as a sculptor.
Also since the vast majority of people cannot/don't paint at a level to take advantage of the detail that metal/resin has over plastic (I know I don't) I don't think that's a big of an issue for the majority of people either. Who cares about an extra 10% detail that you're not going to see from 3' away while playing that you didn't even really bother to paint?
I don't know what the numbers would be for it to be worth it to them to have a separate metal option from them but I don't know if they'd get there (especially with how expensive shipping in from Spain as it's one of the highest postal cost in Europe) unless they did a "here's your one time chance to get metal versions direct from us" type of thing to force a bunch of orders at once and get those sitting on the fence to jump off because of FOMO.
The Aristeia stuff was a limited release at launch and was just a way to appeal to the normal infinity group as outside of "costumes" (which don't sell high enough numbers to justify plastic) they haven't done any other main releases in metal for the game.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2021/08/04 19:43:42
Scrub wrote: On the other hand this puts CB / Infinity back on my radar. Looking forward to seeing more of the range develop with this as I can only envisage consistent use and experience leading to nicer quality minis in the future, on paper at least!
Same here, I stopped working with metal minis years ago. Infinity is an interesting game/setting and now with plastics I might actually consider it.
I prefer to buy from miniature manufacturers that *don't* support the overthrow of democracy.
Blastaar wrote: Hmm.... I can attest that Bones USA is a very good material. However, I do prefer metal.
This is the price of tin over the last year posted by a Modiphius line manager in discord where this is also being discussed.
There's really only 2 large scale tin mines too from what I've read and the demand is just going up so mini manufactures have to compete against a lot of others with more money and that can buy larger quantities. Those prices in the chart will come down but where it will land is anyone's guess. That doesn't include shipping as it has to come from asia and shipping containers have gone up well over double (I've heard 3-4x from some people).
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/08/05 04:43:07
