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Cheese, of course.

Otherwise I echo what Grot6 said, soft plastic or rubbery plastic is crap. I learned to paint with soft plastic Airfix figures and watched in horror as the paint cracked and flaked off just from sitting on the shelf.

That said someone makes a good point about metal, infinity miniatures really do make really good metal minis, other companies make me start pulling hair

Metal by a long shot

I'd get rid of finecast of course.

Definitey resin.
I would miss resin vehicles though. There's really no way for non-huge companies (mantic, Pig Iron, GZG, etc) to make affordable vehicles without it. On the other hand, I don't buy enough GW to need any finecast, and I haven't any desire to buy the top-shelf resin figs currently on the market today.

For figures, resin is great for boutique makers of high-cost, low production run kits. Those makers don't have to worry about the high death rate for resin molds, because when they get premium pay for each model, they can afford to keep making new molds.

Metal on the other hand is absolutely essential for the medium-production average-quality indie companies (em4, Tactical, Pig Iron, Denizen, GZG, etc, etc) that can't afford to invest in plastic or plasti-resin injection molding, but need to make enough figure models that they don't have the time required for resin production. You see the same phenomenon with the smaller plastics companies who can sell enough rank and file trops to make them in plastic, but still have to product metal figs for command, specialists, etc.

Since I buy most of my product from these kinds of companies, It's clear why metal is indispensable to me.

In the end, I think it's fair to say that:

If you're a GW-only player, or a collector of high-end miniatures you currently have very little need for metal. For the rest of us, we can't live without it.

kenshin620 wrote:
Heh try getting the historical community to go from metal to plastic. Most will tear you apart

This is not as true as one might think. There is alot of love for metal, but the success of Perry, Victrix, WGF, and others has really done away with the metal-only mindset of most folks. As mentioned above though, most historical players don't have enough options to rely entirely on plastic, unless they're gaming in 1/72 or 20mm.