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Kilkrazy wrote:There's an easy solution to all of this.

Don't buy GW rules and models.

That's the thing, what might be bad for GW now in ten years time may will be remembered as the point that the entire hobby got a boost. Privateer Press have already got a significant number of players, a well timed sale (something GW has not done since I was a teenager) coinciding with the GW price rise will bring them even more.

I cancelled my WFB O&G army - not only because of the price rises (especially because of my location in the world, the new trade embargo made them even more expensive) but because of everything else over the last couple of years. To be honest, I just didn't have the stomach for it.

So, I've decided to get into Infinity, on the basis of what I have read here and on some recommendations by a couple of friends back home. I've also picked up one of the new Mantic games, 34.99 (pounds) they are catering for what GW is failing to provide in many ways.

I think the more other games systems can be promoted the better. Let people know there are many more, fun systems out there that in many ways are better than the tired, cash-cows of 40k and WFB with their constant regurgitation of rules and new editions which really give no new experience beyond anything that you have experienced a hundred times already.

I think it is a great time for the hobby to expand. The other companies besides GW would be wise to kick into promotion overdrive at this point. Framing it from the perspective of war(gaming), GW has dropped its guard in a big way on more than one front; I think its safe to say at this point. This could open up the field and break the monopoly further if other companies take advantage of the sentiments brewing in the community. Of course GW is the beast in TDA with a stormshield and thunderhammer deepstriking on top of a landraider directly into our bank accounts.

I bought finecast Dante a couple of weeks ago and he was flawless. I checked carefully. Some of the other models at the LGS had the common problems. Kinda crazy. I can't remember the last time I returned a metal model. Usually my returns are not from defect but from a missing component or sprue.

I bought the finecast Raptors box today just to test my luck. The champ with the LC is epic. Except he has a quarter inch divet in his shoulder pad and side. Two other troops have minor bubbles ruining tubes, a chainsword engine and a skull pad. Two troops are pretty nice. Comparable to metal.

Based on the price for the box, I think I will be calling customer service on Monday (are they open tommorow?). From here on out, I don't think I will buy anything I can't inspect. I've been collecting since 91 and have grown to really like working with metal. It is an amazing substance and I am suprised how many people don't seem to be willing to learn or enjoy the process. We are entering the silicone age or plastic age. Plastic/Resin is fast and feels like liquid under the bite of the blade so it has its appeal.

This stuff is not better than metal. The quality has dropped for the moment. If GW takes care with the customer service as they always have, then this will register as a growing pain into the future. Only time will tell.

I blame the typos on the good music and the ale

Pacific wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:There's an easy solution to all of this.

Don't buy GW rules and models.

That's the thing, what might be bad for GW now in ten years time may will be remembered as the point that the entire hobby got a boost. Privateer Press have already got a significant number of players, a well timed sale (something GW has not done since I was a teenager) coinciding with the GW price rise will bring them even more.

Except that it probably won't be. Because, well, miniature gaming is a niche hobby as it is and if GW goes up, those players aren't going to mystically go play Warmachine. They're going to go play video games or something else.

Without GW, most independent game stores fold within weeks.

A lot of people who start GW stop within a year or two. They are the n00bs who account for a significant chunk of GW's revenue because they have to buy all new books, armies and clobber quite quickly. When bored, most of them fall away. Some of them become long term players and some of the long term people go on to notice other games. However, everyone who plays wargames didn't come in through GW. The wargame industry as a whole is not dependent on GW as an entry point.

In the UK it was the rise and rise of GW in the days when it was a general RPG/wargame company that wiped out a lot of UK independent shops. UK retail space lease costs are also to blame.

I'm not completely sure about that (++EDIT sorry, Warglock's post final comment++). Although GW has been responsible for growing the market, there are a lot of great alternatives out there now and they are growing in popularity. I think you are right that the hobby would suffer (in terms of the total number of wargamers) if GW closed suddenly. But I don't think GW is going to fold overnight, I think the worst thing that could happen to them is there share value drops to the point they end up getting bought out by some Chinese toy company (the issue has raised it's head in the past).

In the meantime, a greater divergence of games will mean hobbyists won't just stop playing on the basis of being upset by GW (either through price, or any other issue which has come about in the last month), they will see games of other games taking place at their FLGS and decide to give one of those a try instead. I know a number of guys who had stopped playing GW stuff and also wargaming on the basis they were bored with it, but have their interest invigorated by the breath of fresh air that is the new games which have come to prominence over the last few years. And I think the effect will be a steamrollering in popularity of those games, as when more people see the games then more and more of them will want in. We are already seeing this with the likes of Infinity, which has existed as a relatively low key game for years, despite having a fantastic rules system and models. Now some clever marketing at a time when GW is seeming to push its customers away, and the player base of the game is exploding. Privateer Press and Mantic are doing exactly the same thing.

army310 wrote:Just want to say I like finecast.

...yes. Good for you!

After tonight I can't say I'm really a fan.

winterdyne wrote:Mould slipping on a couple of occasions, with the line of offset passing through detail that would be difficult to fix (the book title on his left hip).

That's what happened to me, I'm not sure I can fix those incubi swords without ruining them. Kinda hard to say which pisses me off more, the mold slipping or the bubbles destroying detail.

cadbren wrote:Where are these cast and checked? Are they made in the UK?

Yes, I think a few pages back a few of us confirmed that all our boxes were manufactured in the UK.



Anyway, because I'm a big god damn idiot, I decided "Screw it! I'm gonna go gamble $40 away!" today and bought yet another box of incubi. When I got out to my car I eagerly opened the box to inspect them, though that proved pointless because it was 10pm and my dome lights didn't illuminate much. I just now inspected the parts under a lamp real close, and while I'd say this box is slightly better (besides having a lot of flash the sprue with the swords on it is pretty good, none of the arms have missing spikes and the mold didn't shift this time), it seems to have the same problems (just not quite as many, only a couple of details and mostly on the trophy racks this time), and one new one. One of the bodies is still missing the spikes on its legs (the same pose from the first box...not sure why this keeps happening), a couple of other details on the trophy racks are missing (this time there's a big hole on what looks like a crux terminatus so half of it is missing, and there's a small hole or two in some of the other gems), and this time one of the trophy racks was actually broken. It's still attached to the sprue but the end of it is broken in the middle and has to be glued back on...before I've even clipped anything off! There was also a huge amount of excess resin between a couple of bits on one of the sprues...not the paper thin flash or the vents, just this big chunk of stuff. Not sure what that is.

So...I dunno. These are not going to be quite as difficult to fix, except for that one guys armor spikes and that crux/cross detail, but...seriously? I mean I'm not expecting utter perfection here (although for these prices that's exactly what we deserve), resin will have bubbles, that's just how it is...but these types of problems just shouldn't be happening, should they? I'm not an expert at resin casting, in fact I know jack all about it, but if there are bubbles so bad that fine details (those same fine details we're paying a premium for) are just gone, that's just not right, is it?

This is my last box of Finecast incubi (probably my last closed box Finecast purchase ever), I'm not doing this again. By all rights I was stupid as hell to do it the first time knowing what I did beforehand, and I couldn't even tell you what the hell was going through my mind earlier tonight (I guess running on 3 hours of sleep might not have helped), but that's it. If I absolutely have to have any more of these models I'll be buying the metals second hand. I like the lighter material but it isn't worth the extra work involved (and broken parts before I've even clipped anything off the sprue! GOD DAMN IT).

Speaking of which, the store's Finecast Astorath came off his sprue inside the blister. Perhaps packing the models without foam when switching to a more brittle material was unwise.

I think I'd be calling GW Customer Service if I were you, Sid - about both boxes.

So I don't know about you guys, or if you've heard about this stuff yet, but regardless, I thought I'd post it up here, and see what you think.

Yesterday I was down at my local GW, chatting with one of the guys there (funny story, the new manager there seems a bit nutty, he was dancing to the music playing in store) and he was plugging finecast somewhat. I asked a bit about the quality issues, and he told me at this point, finecast is at 80% un- warped quality at the moment, and they were planning on getting it to 100% by gamesday. Which led onto the other topic that they apparently had to rush finecast because it got leaked onto the interwebz before they were ready. He said the GW like to intentionally leak certain stuff (I may have stifled a giggle then) but they were trying to keep finecast under wraps until Gamesday, and have all the metal miniatures in resin. Of course, as they had to release it early, they have some quality issues, and only the 100 most wanted miniatures got finecasted.

Taken with a grain of salt of course, but it makes me hope that they will have got their act together by gamesday.

GW could probably get away with casting problems if they weren't so expensive. But when you charge nearly £15 for a single foot figure people are not going to be forgiving.

GW have to get this gak sorted because major companies don't ship models like this, air bubbles and the like are a rarity.

I have seen resin kits that come with air bubbles and warpage as standard, and by that I mean you are not going to get a better replacement, it's what you knowingly buy into and have to work with. But if you wanted an obscure model your choices were to settle for a dodgy resin or scratchbuild. But this conjours up memories of military modelling in the 80s and early 90s when if you didn't go to Verlinden or Accurate Armour or someone like then then you were buying god-knows-what. Resin stuff would come in strange colours like blue or green or puke-yellow and was being made by largely unknown and now long forgotten businesses and stuff coming out of Eastern Europe which came in mostly plain boxes with a label stapled onto the cover. And if you didn't find it at a model show under a table then you were ordering it blind out the back of a magazine.

They were better times!!



The Eastern European stuff is good today as is that produced by small companies, the technology is so much better and the internet has improved awareness of products however obscure. GW shouldn't be behind everyone else in quality, air bubbles are not expected by anyone these days in or outside of the GW hobby.

ghosty wrote:Which led onto the other topic that they apparently had to rush finecast because it got leaked onto the interwebz before they were ready.

But why would they need to rush? What was the disaster that would befall them if there was a leak? It's a change of casting material which is different to releasing a new army or something which you could worry about a competitor undercutting you by rush releasing an alternative.

There have been rumours for ages and ages. It just sounds like an excuse to me, because the damage being done right now by them releasing a major product prematurely is much greater than the harm of simply waiting. I can't imagine what the harm could be by holding off on the release of finecast.

Anyway, GW have been winding down metal supplies for ages, reducing things in stores and making less and less available to independent stores so a sudden rushed release decision doesn't sound right to me, otherwise there would have been no metal in the stores for months running up to Gamesday.

The faux need for secrecy is just baffling to me. If what you say is correct then GW is being run by people who have bigged themselves up into thinking think they are in the computer or arms industry where everything needs to be guarded at all times because of the very real risk of people are trying to steal ideas and undercut each other all the time and your very business and national security hangs upon it. Is this why GW legal have been going mad recently, the company is being run by people who have a massively inflated sense of importance and feel they have to prove this to shareholders and the world? I can't wrap my head around it. It's all this 'fortress wall' bunker mentality bs again.

The "we needed to rush production of tens of thousands of pounds worth of models, knowing that doing so would make us look like idiots with no QC, cause customers and independent stores to leave us in droves, and cost us a fortune in returns, because the alternative was that people might find out about the release early" excuse sounds like an excuse, on balance.

I don't really know what to expect but I guess I'll be getting up early tomorrow to give them a call, because I'm out $80 now (my own damn fault I admit) and I'm not satisfied. I just can't forgive bs like missing details due to giant resin bubbles, not when the product is advertised as having "finer detail" than the metal ones which had none of these stupid problems.

I do like though how this rumored sudden change in policy, a policy they've had for years now, comes about right around the time they rush out a product that they know is going to be sub par and garner a lot of complaints...

ghosty wrote:So I don't know about you guys, or if you've heard about this stuff yet, but regardless, I thought I'd post it up here, and see what you think.

Yesterday I was down at my local GW, chatting with one of the guys there (funny story, the new manager there seems a bit nutty, he was dancing to the music playing in store) and he was plugging finecast somewhat. I asked a bit about the quality issues, and he told me at this point, finecast is at 80% un- warped quality at the moment, and they were planning on getting it to 100% by gamesday. Which led onto the other topic that they apparently had to rush finecast because it got leaked onto the interwebz before they were ready. He said the GW like to intentionally leak certain stuff (I may have stifled a giggle then) but they were trying to keep finecast under wraps until Gamesday, and have all the metal miniatures in resin. Of course, as they had to release it early, they have some quality issues, and only the 100 most wanted miniatures got finecasted.

Taken with a grain of salt of course, but it makes me hope that they will have got their act together by gamesday.

If I am right in saying it, I think White Dwarf is worked on well in advance of the published copy. I'm not sure of the exact figure but the copy you see in the shops was actually written some months in advance (they may be possibly anything up to 6 months in advance). Anyway, given the large Finecast spread that they had this month seems to somewhat debunk the notion that they rushed out the release to countermand some internet rumours...

Sidstyler wrote:I don't really know what to expect but I guess I'll be getting up early tomorrow to give them a call, because I'm out $80 now (my own damn fault I admit) and I'm not satisfied. I just can't forgive bs like missing details due to giant resin bubbles, not when the product is advertised as having "finer detail" than the metal ones which had none of these stupid problems.

I do like though how this rumored sudden change in policy, a policy they've had for years now, comes about right around the time they rush out a product that they know is going to be sub par and garner a lot of complaints...

I would not worry. Looks like the ship defective items to them first policy only applies to me. But keep us posted. I'll be calling them tomorrow as well, asking why they have not shipped my replacement boxes yet. Oh, how fun!

So, if I want to get, say, Vulkan Hestan or Chief Librarian Tigurius, I just have to wait until GW decides that I can have them again? If I am understanding correctly, they are no longer available in metal, but since they haven't come out in resin yet, I am just hosed?

Jimsolo wrote:So, if I want to get, say, Vulkan Hestan or Chief Librarian Tigurius, I just have to wait until GW decides that I can have them again? If I am understanding correctly, they are no longer available in metal, but since they haven't come out in resin yet, I am just hosed?

I think so. I was at the local GW store today and the manager told me that GW has also required all their independent stock lists to get rid of the metal models. It looks like that at least the premiere stores will be having sales on the metal figs or shipping them back to GW to get rid of their metal stock.

The GW website says "Usually ships within 24 hours" under availability when I looked at Vulken Hestan. If you couldn't get it anymore then wouldn't they have made it "No longer available", or can you still purchase the models but have to wait until a Finecast replacement comes out, which could be months?

thebadabwar wrote:

Jimsolo wrote:So, if I want to get, say, Vulkan Hestan or Chief Librarian Tigurius, I just have to wait until GW decides that I can have them again? If I am understanding correctly, they are no longer available in metal, but since they haven't come out in resin yet, I am just hosed?

I think so. I was at the local GW store today and the manager told me that GW has also required all their independent stock lists to get rid of the metal models. It looks like that at least the premiere stores will be having sales on the metal figs or shipping them back to GW to get rid of their metal stock.

I'm not sure Indies can move that stock quickly enough without losing significant profit margins.

I broke my Succubus's foot I mean I knew these were light but while trying to clear a mold line I cut through the model. The worst part though is that the base rail wouldn't fit in the slot well at all. I like the look and feel of fine cast and think it's a good idea, but the fragility really makes me nervous seeing as I'm still pretty new to the hobby.

WarOne wrote:I'm not sure Indies can move that stock quickly enough without losing significant profit margins.

I guess it depends on the store. One local store here did a 40% off on all metal. It's one of the "Partner" stores. But the other stores around here still have their metal stuff sitting there on the shelves full priced. The GW sore manager implied that they could loose their account with GW if they would not get rid of their metal stock in time. This all sounds fishy to me. Plus don't most independent stores get their GW stuff through other distributors?

Just..fix the issues with the resins. I've ordered resin from eastern Europe, from France, and Japan. Forge-world and games-workshop have consistently been of poor quality.

Deep Throat wrote:I broke my Succubus's foot I mean I knew these were light but while trying to clear a mold line I cut through the model. The worst part though is that the base rail wouldn't fit in the slot well at all. I like the look and feel of fine cast and think it's a good idea, but the fragility really makes me nervous seeing as I'm still pretty new to the hobby.

This is a good thing and a bad thing.

The softness makes it so much easier to convert and clean up.

But the downside is things like this happen - especially with where some of the the sprue is attached - some of those clampack characters I'd be so hesistant to touch with where the sprues go on the model....

There is a learning curve to working with a new material. At least the resin should cement back together easily after being cut.

Pacific wrote:I'm not completely sure about that (++EDIT sorry, Warglock's post final comment++). Although GW has been responsible for growing the market, there are a lot of great alternatives out there now and they are growing in popularity. I think you are right that the hobby would suffer (in terms of the total number of wargamers) if GW closed suddenly.

Personally I think tha the kind of closed-mind gamers who are all "Only GW" are no great loss to the wargaming world. If GW were to close tomorrow and take all of them with them I'd consider it a great service to the wider wargaming hobby.

But then I am a cantankerous old git.

It really is a sad state of affairs that regular GW seems to have more miscasts than Forge World, and in some cases it's just as expensive if not moreso

Is there going to be a second wave of Finecast? Anyone have a release list similar to the first if so...

The shipment from CS containing the replacement Big Mek with SAG for the one I posted in this thread arrived Saturday. It's a lighter gray color than the miscast version and it's completely 100% bubble free, the grot has all it's fingers and toes even!(TFG) Comparing the two just made me realize there are even more problems with the first miss-cast version than I realized. Lot numbers were different of course.

While I'm not happy with the return service and getting a bum mini to start with at least the following batch looked as nice as the material could look. Hopefully they'll get the QA tightened up and the mix for the resin perfected.

I just wanted to add that http://www.bronzeagemin.com/ actually shipped me free models as an apology for an order delay shorter than what it took GW to replace my Mek. While I can't really expect free stuff it's just another difference between Walmart, I mean Games-Workshop and the smaller shops around. I'm sort of looking at the bright side of Finecast, it has certainly exposed me to a bunch of really nice small shops that make some great models.

snake wrote:Is there going to be a second wave of Finecast? Anyone have a release list similar to the first if so...

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/374302.page
Also some monsters in July (Lammasu, Taurus and more).

Question, how bad is the melting problem with these models?

I've heard quite a few people mention this and I don't want to spend £50 on Azhag the Slaughterer or some equivilent only to leave it in my bedroom, the sun to shine in the window and cause my model to become a pile of goo on a base or to collapse on itself

They don't melt. They may sag if you let them get too warm. That's how you can correct warpage by warming them under the hot tap or with a hairdryer.

Saw / got my first finecast over the weekend.

Looked at 10+ of them.

Sorry that i can't add to the doom and gloom of this thread.

But there was nothing wrong with them, nor was there any issues with the one i bought.

Its going to be rather nice to work on the conversion i have planned for it in plastic instead of metal.

Well worth the $13 for the commisar.