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Good review. Thanks.

The Lictor is a major example of a model that clearly will work better in Finecast or plastic than metal, due to the complication of the arm design.

Rymafyr wrote:I think the bio-degradable idea has been mis-construed over the last dozen posts. Originally it was stated a resin of this nature will degrade over time. Given how susceptible it is to heat, it makes sense. Time frame is unknown.

I was just kidding when i brought that up >.<

NAVARRO wrote:

LunaHound wrote:

NAVARRO wrote:This material is great for GW because at the end of each summer people will have to buy their collections all over again...

Cars and electronics used to be able to last decades , now they last 4 years.
GW is always on cutting edge way of doing things! its only natural for them to follow the trend.

Lol yeah I know you are teasing but I would like to add that the difference here is you cannot have any estimative of its longevity it can be 2 years, 2 hours or 2 decades depends of........ the sun

Does that mean GW will start selling us limited warranties? some sort of service protection plan :3

Kilkrazy wrote:Good review. Thanks.

The Lictor is a major example of a model that clearly will work better in Finecast or plastic than metal, due to the complication of the arm design.

For the weight and durability of the material? I will agree there. For how it reacts to glue and the strength of the bond created? I will agree there.

But for GW's heavily pushed 'more detail' approach? Definately not the case with the Lictor. If anything Finecast has worsened it just a little.

As I said, if GW had put as much emphasis on the durability and weight of the material as its ability to 'enhance detail' they would have had a lot more success.

LunaHound wrote:

NAVARRO wrote:

LunaHound wrote:

NAVARRO wrote:This material is great for GW because at the end of each summer people will have to buy their collections all over again...

Cars and electronics used to be able to last decades , now they last 4 years.
GW is always on cutting edge way of doing things! its only natural for them to follow the trend.

Lol yeah I know you are teasing but I would like to add that the difference here is you cannot have any estimative of its longevity it can be 2 years, 2 hours or 2 decades depends of........ the sun

Does that mean GW will start selling us limited warranties? some sort of service protection plan :3

Funny you say that since I just saw on another forum the next line of products to go with these Finecasts...

If GW has indeed made the first biodegradable mini's, then hats off to them. I mean, really, who'd a thunk it? Mini's that dissolve over time so that they have to be replaced every 12 months.

Why, that is pure evil genius on so many levels....and so to the future, a dystopian future where a single Space Marine will cost £25 and will last you precisely a year.

And Kirby, laughing maniacally on his own 'Golden Throne', 125 years old but still earning..whilst everyone stands around saying to themselves 'Maybe the next batch will be free from defects and resemble a snowman in 80f summers?'......

Really thou, until there is a small puddle of goop where the Finecost display pieces are in the Oxford GW (I shall be watching), then I will hold judgement.

Wouldn't surprise me if they were designed to melt thou..... More money in it then, is there not Kirby?

I cant help it , this one is so funny xD

Rev Nice wrote:

anevilgiraffe wrote:wth is Citadel Finecast?

It's like the Rapture.
A new era that apparently exists only in the inner spirtuality of the true believer whilst others point and laugh.

DarkStarSabre wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Good review. Thanks.

The Lictor is a major example of a model that clearly will work better in Finecast or plastic than metal, due to the complication of the arm design.

For the weight and durability of the material? I will agree there. For how it reacts to glue and the strength of the bond created? I will agree there.

But for GW's heavily pushed 'more detail' approach? Definately not the case with the Lictor. If anything Finecast has worsened it just a little.

As I said, if GW had put as much emphasis on the durability and weight of the material as its ability to 'enhance detail' they would have had a lot more success.

Yep. I don't believe the "Detail" BS either.

Watching the fiasco that is Failcast makes me hope GW will fix the problems that have shown up by the time the new Necron codex arrives. Otherwise I will not be purchasing any new Necron figs in the Failcast line, no matter how cool they are.

Just got back from my local GW store. They got a new batch in and on some of them the molds were different (items in different positions on the sprue) than last week. It looks like the quality has improved as well. I asked when they will add more of the old sculpts to the finecast range and was told that there will be more on the 18th and a few more each month thereafter. Picked up a few blisters and they were all nice minus a few micro bubbles. Does anybody know what they will re-release (and I am not talking about the Tomb Kings on the 11th)?

The Terminator Chaplain is supposed to be coming back into stock as of yesterday.

Samus666 wrote:Is there any way to find out for sure if Finecast really is biodegradable?

Dig a hole, bury a few pieces of sprue, and water it regularly. Dig it up in a few weeks time and see if anything happened to it.

Hello,
The more detail is pure BS, and I beleive "Finecast" was meant to mean "fine if you want to spend a hour and a half removing flash and filling airholes". The resin itself does feel funny and almost a little rubbery. That said I am used to working with white resin. I have Logan Grimnar and I got him to try the models out, I did not try the no priming approch however. Here is a pic of him in progress. Overall it was what I expected, I really did not think that they would work any harder at it and the base he came with was still a cheap standard base.

Regards,
Carl

I had a couple of boxes of incubi arrive the other day, got a couple of pretty much flawless bodies but the klaives were all on the same sprue and it looks like the mold slipped on both of them so the fingers don't line up and the blades look like they have doubled up. Luckily I was only using 9 of them because one of the models looked like parts of it were dunked in acid

LunaHound wrote:

Rymafyr wrote:I think the bio-degradable idea has been mis-construed over the last dozen posts. Originally it was stated a resin of this nature will degrade over time. Given how susceptible it is to heat, it makes sense. Time frame is unknown.

I was just kidding when i brought that up >.<

Fair enough

Picked up a Canis to replace the woefully frustrating metal one and it had no miscasts or air bubbles. The thing went together like a charm and looks fantastic. Finecast seems, well, just fine to me. I'm looking forward to finecast releases of Multi-Melta Servitors and Death Cult Assassins for my Grey Knights.

Well, I returned the pile of garbage I had gotten today, no prob. I still wanted to try out the material from a hobby persepctive, so I poked about and found a pretty nice casting of Astaroth. He really only had a couple of minor bubbles of the "smear some putty in and smooth it out" type, which is reasonable enough for resin. Very nice looking model, though I don't think it has anymore detail (all the metal Astaroths I've seen were all slightly soft cast, like much of GW's metals over the least few years). Certainly much easier to assemble than metal would have been.

However, we discovered yet a new level of comedy with Finecast. One of my friends was there. He had tried to get a box of Vanguard Veterans last weekend, but they were all quite bad. So he tried again today. He ended up opening all three boxes they had, and we proceeded to spend about an hour in some form of demented Iron Finecast. All of the kits I would have rejected out of hand, but he was resolved to try and salvage one full kit out of them. "Three kits enter, one kit leaves." It was...painful and hilarious. The jump packs were especially bad: tear out all over, distorted and warped, the forward element between the intakes just not filling. Though finding a good set of the models was really an exercise in "which of these aren't totally horrible." And there were some atrocious castings in there.

Cadaver wrote:
I have not, although I have looked through their model line a number of times. Their stuff looks great from a purely aesthestic perspective. However, in that regard I can consider myself a GW "fanboy" in that I'm really not that big of a tabletop gamer. I like 40k because of the background that GW has created, as well as a certain level of nostalgia from having collected GW models over the past 15 years. Other games like Infinity, Privateer Press and Malifaux, while having some cool aspects, just don't appeal to me beyond a certain appreciation for the models. In my opinion, none of these companies can compare to the design that GW has created for their universe.

Do you know I used to think the same thing (and a number of my gaming friends also), that reservation lasts as long as you play or see your first game. Then I think some people realise that they are playing 40k despite the games system, not because of it. Either because it's what everyone else plays, or because they love the background, or time they have spent creating the army.

I think the analogy to best liken the experience to is if you got to play one of the new racing or rally games on a PS3/Xbox, then going back to playing the flat, 2D version on a SNES or Megadrive. It really is that different, I haven't been this excited about a wargame since I got the 2nd edition starter box set (or maybe the Space Hulk re-release ) It really is that much better, and after you have experienced it you will struggle to go back to 40k. The background is pretty good, I think especially if you have an appreciation of history and sci-fi, you will get a lot of enjoyment from it.

I will continue to collect my converted 40k army from bits sites and the like, just because I like the image and background of them and I'm running a blog about them. I might wheel them out for the occasional game, but I don't think I could go back to setting them up on the tabletop every Thursday again.

As someone said: Miscasts are not the worst issue with Finecast:

rodmillard from Warseer wrote:It peaked at 29 degrees in Bath on Friday - according to a friend of my wife who was there, the minis in the finecash rack in the Bath GW (which is right by a south facing picture window, so would have been considerably hotter than the street temp.) had softened in their blisters to the point that ALL the detail on the back of the models had been crushed by their own packaging. Apparently they had to open all the blisters of certain models to try and find ones which hadn't been deformed by the "unseasonal" heat, and there weren't any.

Heat alone is not enough to do it, but once you subject the mini to both heat AND pressure they will warp and/or lose detail. Unfortunately, the model's own weight is sufficient pressure...

This is looking more and more like a god-damned disaster. I don't want the models I paid more money for to warp like that. Hell, it's about an hour's drive to the store for me, and now I'm afraid my models will warp on the ride there on a hot summer day. Are they really that damn sensitive?

Kroothawk wrote:As someone said: Miscasts are not the worst issue with Finecast:

rodmillard from Warseer wrote:It peaked at 29 degrees in Bath on Friday - according to a friend of my wife who was there, the minis in the finecash rack in the Bath GW (which is right by a south facing picture window, so would have been considerably hotter than the street temp.) had softened in their blisters to the point that ALL the detail on the back of the models had been crushed by their own packaging. Apparently they had to open all the blisters of certain models to try and find ones which hadn't been deformed by the "unseasonal" heat, and there weren't any.

Heat alone is not enough to do it, but once you subject the mini to both heat AND pressure they will warp and/or lose detail. Unfortunately, the model's own weight is sufficient pressure...

Oh dear, that's not good

Is it possible that there was a mistake at GW and they didn't mix this material correctly or something, or is it supposed to be trash?

"What's in your cooler box?"
"grumble... Finecast Miniatures... grumble "

They should have taken a more robust material ... like chocolate (with extra gameplay function)

Sidstyler wrote:Is it possible that there was a mistake at GW and they didn't mix this material correctly or something, or is it supposed to be trash?

They found a resin mix noone has used before. Now they know why

rodmillard from Warseer wrote:It peaked at 29 degrees in Bath on Friday -

It does that here in winter. If that's all it takes, we're in for some fun down here...

... and then think how hot it can get in postal delivery cars.
The whole delivery chain to shops is compromised in summer.

I really hope they fix this crap, because the haemonculi and wracks are going to be "Finecast" too, and I'm honestly not going to keep buying this crap if quality doesn't improve. I'll either have to sculpt the crap myself, convert it out of plastics, or just not use it at this point.

Crap.

insaniak wrote:

rodmillard from Warseer wrote:It peaked at 29 degrees in Bath on Friday -

It does that here in winter. If that's all it takes, we're in for some fun down here...

All so-called Finecast miniatures come with the Gets Hot! rule. Roll a "1" and your mini melts!

olympia wrote:

insaniak wrote:

rodmillard from Warseer wrote:It peaked at 29 degrees in Bath on Friday -

It does that here in winter. If that's all it takes, we're in for some fun down here...

All so-called Finecast miniatures come with the Gets Hot! rule. Roll a "1" and your mini melts!

It seems to be a roll of 1-5. Only the lucky six seems to save at this point....

As GW pointed out, though, the ease with which Finecast deforms in heat does make for very easy conversions. After all your expensive single-character minis have melted into near-unrecognisable mushes on the first warm day, they'll be perfect for converting into Chaos Spawn.

Compare prices of FW & GW FC....

red scorpions (5 minis) honor guard from FW $59 usd
GW FC honor guard $56

FW red scorpion Culln commander (termie armour) $22 usd
GW FC generic space marine commander (reg armor) $20

FW red scorp dreadnought (complete) $41 usd
GW FC dread $44.50

FW preheresy army OR Red Scorpions (40 tactical, 2 dreads, 1 lr, 20 assualt) $644 usd delivered
GW FC similar (40 tactical, 2 dreads, 1 lr, 20 assualt) $565 usd (no shipping or tax)

Which would you choose?

I hate metal. I hate metal because I hate having to repaint my figures after they have been already been painted exactly how I want them to be painted. I hate filing and pinning a metal model only to have the part snap off later from a small jolt taking a huge chunk of paint with it. I hate having to use excessive sealer on metal figures to prevent them from chipping their paint when they rub against another metal figure on the board. Metal sucks, and I am happy to see it go.

That being said the only reason GW switched to metal is because as a product metal figures last for decades which is bad for GW's bottom line. I still have 1st edition rogue trader CSM that I can stip an old paint job off of and repaint to join my army, and the figures would work perfect for possessed. The only reason I have not done so is possessed suck in the 4th edition CSM codex. If they are a good unit in the 5th edition codex, or even halfway viable I'll probably use them, and thus have newly usable figures without giving GW a dime.

All of that being said resin models do not cost GW less money than metal. The raw material may cost less, but when man hours are included in the equation resin costs more then metal. If models are returned due to defects GW ends up paying triple shipping for a figure: To the store for the 1st time, back to the manufacturer, and back to the store for a 2nd time. Returned figures also eats man hours as it takes people's time to process returns. The only way to reduce returns is to reduce defects, and doing so takes man hours. In a case like manufacturing resin the best way to reduce defects is to place a human being on the assembly line using a mark 1 eyeball to find and discard defective figures & parts, which takes man hours. Man hours are not cheap, and the added labor is going to offset the small amounts of savings that GW will have in raw material.

The part that disappointed me the most with GW is releasing models with a high defect rate isn't going to save them any money. They can pay money to have people inspect figures for defects at the manufacturers, or they can pay money to ship returned figures twice, and inspect the figure for missing parts to ensure that the person who returned the figure returned all parts. I don't see how shipping out defective figures saves them any money, and doing so damages the reputation of their resin finecast line. I could understand screwing your customer base over a bit for money, but loosing money to screw over your customer base makes no sense.