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 Crimson Devil wrote:
Forge World in a nutshell: Great designs, excellent customer service, mediocre resin castings, & poor pricing.

There is no better way to say it.

Yes. And no. It depends.

The Squig Gobba is brilliant. The Colossal Squig is horrible.

It comes down to individual models. Some are stunning; others should be stunned.

 Galas wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Galas wrote:
The point is... did the models FW made, use the detail capacity of resin to their maximun?

https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-CA/Tartaros-Pattern-Terminator-Armour

Yes, the detail capacity of resin is used just fine on those kits. Skulls per square inch is not, despite the "main GW" art team's apparent beliefs otherwise, not the only way of judging detail quality. It's visible in things like the detail on the bolter barrels (hollow tips instead of flat cylinders), free-hanging cables instead of raised half-cylinders on top of other surfaces, deep undercuts for the hollow area behind the helmets, etc.

I wasn't discussing that in fact those models have more detail that the plastic ones (They have!) or that the only way you can add details is by putting skulls in everything. All of those points you have made are accurate, but my point is if the difference, that is at least to me, minimal, is worth the material. I will not say the cost, because the plastic Terminators are overly expensive and the difference is not that big. But I just pick that kit at random to make a generalistic point. To me in general, the space marine kits of FW aren't worth it the difference in detail vs the material and price.
I prefer my resin with more detailed kits and quasi-exposition pieces: Kingdom Death (The Owl Knight* is maybe my favourite miniature in history), Mierce, etc... where the you can see that model and say "You CAN'T do this in plastic", and not just a "Yeah, you can have it in plastic with a little less of detail"

Spoiler:

*Just look at this beautiful piece of art.
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ElU6NPyit60/VuWt-yFb5YI/AAAAAAAA1-U/Ys7tzQYIVtw1mUMVVzLbqZVVd4ji-6l8Q/s1600/Flower%2BKnight.png

Uh, they did do that in plastic.


I swear this thread has a bunch of time travelers who skipped the last decade when making their opinions. Plastic can do everything resin can, if you're willing to up the parts count. I don't know if FW is good quality today, but it was garbage when I used to buy it. Why should I pay more and take a risk when modern plastics have every advantage?

Plastic absolutely can't do everything resin can. It sucks at anything like fur textures and other organics more often than it doesn't, for instance. Even if that were a limitation of the designer rather than the medium, it's so frequent as to materially irrelevant.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Galas wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

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 Galas wrote:
The point is... did the models FW made, use the detail capacity of resin to their maximun?

https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/en-CA/Tartaros-Pattern-Terminator-Armour

Yes, the detail capacity of resin is used just fine on those kits. Skulls per square inch is not, despite the "main GW" art team's apparent beliefs otherwise, not the only way of judging detail quality. It's visible in things like the detail on the bolter barrels (hollow tips instead of flat cylinders), free-hanging cables instead of raised half-cylinders on top of other surfaces, deep undercuts for the hollow area behind the helmets, etc.

I wasn't discussing that in fact those models have more detail that the plastic ones (They have!) or that the only way you can add details is by putting skulls in everything. All of those points you have made are accurate, but my point is if the difference, that is at least to me, minimal, is worth the material. I will not say the cost, because the plastic Terminators are overly expensive and the difference is not that big. But I just pick that kit at random to make a generalistic point. To me in general, the space marine kits of FW aren't worth it the difference in detail vs the material and price.
I prefer my resin with more detailed kits and quasi-exposition pieces: Kingdom Death (The Owl Knight* is maybe my favourite miniature in history), Mierce, etc... where the you can see that model and say "You CAN'T do this in plastic", and not just a "Yeah, you can have it in plastic with a little less of detail"

Spoiler:

*Just look at this beautiful piece of art.
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ElU6NPyit60/VuWt-yFb5YI/AAAAAAAA1-U/Ys7tzQYIVtw1mUMVVzLbqZVVd4ji-6l8Q/s1600/Flower%2BKnight.png

Uh, they did do that in plastic.


I swear this thread has a bunch of time travelers who skipped the last decade when making their opinions. Plastic can do everything resin can, if you're willing to up the parts count. I don't know if FW is good quality today, but it was garbage when I used to buy it. Why should I pay more and take a risk when modern plastics have every advantage?

Yeah, they have done it. And the quality in the detail is just not the same in plastic than in resin. Is just a fact.

http://betweenthebolterandme.blogspot.com.es/2014/05/kingdom-death-plastic-or-resin.html

And I say this preferring plastic myself. But to Caesar what it is of Caesar. Resin and Metal, for now, can have a level of detail that plastic can't achieve. Thats why I said that in general the desings Forgeworld do, don't use to their full potential the resin, unlike other resin manufacturers.

Galas, your eyes must be better than mine.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Plastic absolutely can't do everything resin can. It sucks at anything like fur textures and other organics more often than it doesn't, for instance. Even if that were a limitation of the designer rather than the medium, it's so frequent as to materially irrelevant.

I'd suggest it is a limitation of the designer, especially since so many sculptors use old techniques and shorthand to create textures instead of expanding their skill sets to the edge of the medium's capabilities. (For example, GW's wedge-shaped fur.) But fair enough.

However, I still find the majority of resin minis to be overpriced for what they deliver, as well as being well within the capabilities of decent plastics. At the top end you might have some elite sculptors taking full advantage of the medium, but for every one of them you have dozens of guys sculpting pirate dwarfs, grimdark space knights or nazi orks with the envelope remaining thoroughly unpushed. Forgeworld fits comfortably in the latter group.

Price isn't really up for debate here though. Plastic has some very distinct advantages for gaming pieces in terms of strength and resilience too, no argument, and for things like vehicles where you need consistency and straight lines which resin just is inherently bad at due to shrinkage and warping, as a veteran of a Mk1 FW Spartan build (before the tracks were cast onto the side units) I think you could get elected with that.

But I honestly don't see anyone producing plastics that have the same quality of detail, including KD or GW or any other larger or more prominent manufacturer. Then you have things that are sort of directly comparable, like the recent plastic Roboute vs the FW one, and the ugly potato they gave the plastic version for a face.

There are advantages to plastic which can offset the loss of detail to the individual depending on priorities, but I've yet to see anyone in this industry producing non-vehicle or other flat/smooth surfaces subjects that couldn't be realised better in resin, or even metal. Faces especially.

I totally agree with you Bobtheinquisitor, that many sculptors don't push the capacity of detail of Resin to their full potential. And thats exactly what I was critizing about the Space Marine kits of Forgeworld.
And normally, I agree too, that for that minimal difference in detail, I prefer plastic over resin, for comodity of working with the material and price. And to me Peregrine is totally exageratin when he call "crap" a plastic peice just because it has a little less of detail. As Azrael said, plastic, as a material for gaming pieces, has many objetive benefits over resin.

But ignoring all of that, metal and resin can have better detail than plastic. I'm not using this to put it over plastic, because as I said, plastic is my favourite material. But is just a fact.

Look this images from the link before.

Look the leafs on the thigh or the hand. (Resin left, plastic right)


And here the sharp of the detail on the mask.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Plastic can do everything resin can, if you're willing to up the parts count.

That "if you're willing to up the parts count" is what kills it. Consider the terminators posted previously as an example of underwhelming resin. See those nice storm bolters with hollow barrels? If you wanted to do that in plastic you'd have to do each barrel in two halves, for a total of four per gun. Four tiny pieces that have to be carefully aligned with zero margin for error, on top of all the pieces you have to build the rest of the gun out of. Would you rather have 10+ pieces for a plastic terminator's storm bolter, or a single piece of resin? Obviously part counts like that, with ridiculously tiny pieces, are not practical. So the end result is that even if plastic could in theory match the detail level of resin it's never going to in a real kit. There's a reason GW's plastic storm bolters (including the plastic 30k terminators) have flat ends that you have to drill out yourself if you want them to look right, probably throwing most of them in the trash in the process because you misaligned the holes a bit.

And that's just a relatively simple geometric shape like a gun, where placing the cut lines is really easy. On character models that high part count would mean placing cut lines across detail, down the middle of limbs, etc, and even the slightest lack of precision in manufacturing is going to leave ugly gaps. Or, more likely, you reduce detail until you can get the part count down to a reasonable level.


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 Azreal13 wrote:
Plastic has some very distinct advantages for gaming pieces in terms of strength and resilience too, no argument, and for things like vehicles where you need consistency and straight lines which resin just is inherently bad at due to shrinkage and warping, as a veteran of a Mk1 FW Spartan build (before the tracks were cast onto the side units) I think you could get elected with that.

I think it's kind of 50/50 for vehicles. Resin has some nasty warping/shrinking problems, but plastic can also have warping problems and you end up with a much higher part count to deal with. A resin tank where the hull could be cast as a single solid brick is going to be built from several thin (and easily warped) plastic parts, even if you're willing to accept reduced detail to keep part count down to the minimum. IMO the FW kits that have the worst assembly problems are due more to poor kit design than the inherent problems of resin. The Spartan is a badly designed kit in both versions (separate track pieces in the first one with no way to adjust for shrinkage, poorly placed gates in the second version that require re-sculpting parts of the tracks), the Storm Eagle has massive problems because it has to fit correctly with the thin pieces of the plastic kit it's built from, etc. FW vehicles with good kit design (like the Macharius I bought recently) don't have nearly as much of a problem with this.

Peregrine, don't make the same mistake Khan Noonien Singh did: think a little more three dimensionally. Those bolters could easily be cast with hollow barrels in three or four parts including two for the ammo clips. The top half would include the top half of both barrels, the slide notch and the ejection port. The bottom would have the bottom halves of those details. Then two parts for the ammo drum, possibly one depending on how deep those grooves are around the outside. Simple.

Please take a look at what modern plastics are capable of. Malifaux regularly outs out models that would be impossible in metal and impossibly fragile in resin. And enough customers are willing to assemble thirteen fiddly parts per character to keep Wyrd in business, pumping out niche products like the pigapult in plastic.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Peregrine, don't make the same mistake Khan Noonien Singh did: think a little more three dimensionally. Those bolters could easily be cast with hollow barrels in three or four parts including two for the ammo clips. The top half would include the top half of both barrels, the slide notch and the ejection port. The bottom would have the bottom halves of those details. Then two parts for the ammo drum, possibly one depending on how deep those grooves are around the outside. Simple.

I don't think it works that way, looking at where the center line of the barrels runs you'd end up with undercuts trying to do the "body" of the bolter in only a top and bottom half. But, more importantly, even your optimistic evaluation of the problem means having 3-4 parts (possibly with a bit of modification), compared to a single piece on a resin kit (which also includes the hand and arm). That's a massive increase in part count to maintain the same level of detail, and these are going to be tiny parts that require a ton of cleanup work to smooth out the joints and have zero tolerance for misalignment in assembly.

Please take a look at what modern plastics are capable of. Malifaux regularly outs out models that would be impossible in metal and impossibly fragile in resin. And enough customers are willing to assemble thirteen fiddly parts per character to keep Wyrd in business, pumping out niche products like the pigapult in plastic.

Perhaps, but Malifaux is still a niche-market game within a niche-market hobby, a third-tier product at best. They're successful enough to stay in business, but not much more. And Malifaux also benefits considerably from being a skirmish-scale game where investing tons of time into assembling each model is a lot more acceptable than in a game like 40k where you're putting 50-100+ models on the table.

Not to add fuel to the parts count pedantry fire but the old Chimera had a plastic pintle stormbolter with hollow barrels and it was only 3 parts - top, bottom and clip.

I do think there are some beautiful resin sculpts out there, but they're generally more art pieces than gaming ones. For masses of power armoured dudes resin's flaws outweigh the pros and as has already been pointed out it's not the medium for vehicles.

 Peregrine wrote:
And Malifaux also benefits considerably from being a skirmish-scale game where investing tons of time into assembling each model is a lot more acceptable than in a game like 40k where you're putting 50-100+ models on the table.

+1. Assembling those plastic models with tons of pieces for like 100 models is pain in the ass.

Not to mention would we even have HH line without resin...

 Peregrine wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Peregrine, don't make the same mistake Khan Noonien Singh did: think a little more three dimensionally. Those bolters could easily be cast with hollow barrels in three or four parts including two for the ammo clips. The top half would include the top half of both barrels, the slide notch and the ejection port. The bottom would have the bottom halves of those details. Then two parts for the ammo drum, possibly one depending on how deep those grooves are around the outside. Simple.

I don't think it works that way, looking at where the center line of the barrels runs you'd end up with undercuts trying to do the "body" of the bolter in only a top and bottom half. But, more importantly, even your optimistic evaluation of the problem means having 3-4 parts (possibly with a bit of modification), compared to a single piece on a resin kit (which also includes the hand and arm). That's a massive increase in part count to maintain the same level of detail, and these are going to be tiny parts that require a ton of cleanup work to smooth out the joints and have zero tolerance for misalignment in assembly.

Please take a look at what modern plastics are capable of. Malifaux regularly outs out models that would be impossible in metal and impossibly fragile in resin. And enough customers are willing to assemble thirteen fiddly parts per character to keep Wyrd in business, pumping out niche products like the pigapult in plastic.

Perhaps, but Malifaux is still a niche-market game within a niche-market hobby, a third-tier product at best. They're successful enough to stay in business, but not much more. And Malifaux also benefits considerably from being a skirmish-scale game where investing tons of time into assembling each model is a lot more acceptable than in a game like 40k where you're putting 50-100+ models on the table.

For your first part, check out a lot of modern plastics. The precision is there. GW have been putting out kits that go together like German engineered puzzles for half a decade at least. WGF's minis for Dreamforge and KDM are marvels. You are stuck in the old paradigm, waiting to be swept away in the winds of history like so much toxic resin dust.

For the second point, everything but Warhammer and maybe Warmachine is a niche product. Wyrd must have fifty plastic kits out by now, and they are still expanding. That's not treading water.

You also think of Malifaux as a game, a skirmish game with limited player base, and not as a product range that appeals to far more people than those who play their game. And if we are talking Forgeworld resin, I think you'll find far more people under the age of 40 willing to put together 50 Malifaux minis than work with shoddy resin that costs twice or thrice as much per figure and needs to be replaced by customer service half the time.

Personally, I enjoy assembling Wyrd minis. That's the most fun part, like putting together a 3D puzzle and having a toy you can use at the end. I put together a Forgeworld vehicle once, and it was not enjoyable, and in the end I wasn't willing to risk having to reassemble it or watch the paint part and gap like it did on my FW BFG ships, so it was ultimately expensive, useless, and a waste of time.


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tneva82 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
And Malifaux also benefits considerably from being a skirmish-scale game where investing tons of time into assembling each model is a lot more acceptable than in a game like 40k where you're putting 50-100+ models on the table.

+1. Assembling those plastic models with tons of pieces for like 100 models is pain in the ass.

Not to mention would we even have HH line without resin...

1. It depends on how you approach the hobby. Is there 100 of anything that you would like to assemble in a row?

2. Yes we would. GW always had the option to break the Heresy glass in case of financial emergency. They developed Stormcast Eternals and Custodians without referencing existing resins. They had the capability and the rationale. Forgeworld just let them profit off the series twice.

BobtheInquisitor wrote:

For your first part, check out a lot of modern plastics. The precision is there. GW have been putting out kits that go together like German engineered puzzles for half a decade at least. WGF's minis for Dreamforge and KDM are marvels. You are stuck in the old paradigm, waiting to be swept away in the winds of history like so much toxic resin dust.

It's still not the same type of precision. GW's plastic moulding/production doesn't allow for undercuts (at the moment) and if you want certain details you would need to go with resin or a huge amount of parts. If you wanted the same level of detail (with all the nice precision of plastic moulds) you would need Space Marines that are kinda build like Gundam kits with an internal frame on which you hang all the other parts so that the overlapping parts of the armour would not flow into each other near the parting line of the mould like they do at times for Marines (like around the knee or ankle area). Parts of the plastic marine kit are already like that (torso made up of two parts so you can have a nice collar, arms/pads separate, separate backpack) but they chose to go with fewer parts for the legs to keep things less complicated (and easier to assemble) at the cost of detail and the same happens all the time because they have a certain sprue budget and can't just add more and more bits. Would most people accept half the marines in a box if they got a multi part leg assembly? Lower and upper leg armour (each in two parts if needed), knee, foot, groin, that would be up to 13 parts instead of the one you get now to get resin like detail and undercuts.

Others have already mentioned how GW fur/hair needs to be compromised to work in these types of plastic mould and the photos above show how KD (even with very fine plastic miniatures) can't get the same details as in resin. The difference probably doesn't matter for most people when it comes to gaming miniatures but if you want really nice miniatures for a skirmish game then it can be something to grumble about.

while resin does hold finer detail, it's major drawback is how common bad casts are...
i have been working with the Kingdom Death resins recently, and the casts are horrible...
they are among the worst of the "boutique" resins that i've ever seen...
i have flawless resin casts from a lot of other companies, and KD doesn't even compare...
it looks like they try to get way too many pours out of each mold...
that is my problem with Forge World, too...

i love Forge World's sculpts, but the casts leave a lot to be desired, unless you get in on a very early part of the run...
i would much rather work with GW plastics any day of the week, especially since they have really stepped up their game over the last few years...

cheers
jah

 jah-joshua wrote:
while resin does hold finer detail, it's major drawback is how common bad casts are...

That's a downside of (certain?) resins and production methods while plastic tends to be overall really great (and consistent) when it comes to the production part of tradeoffs (that is: if you don't mess up the mould).

I don't think I've ever bought resin that didn't have QC issues. Not really a fan of a matrial where the "sharper details" are destroyed by air bubbles because the people selling it didn't feel obligated to get rid of the bad casts

I have had flawless resin casts from companies like Hawk Wargames, Paulson Games, Abandoned Frontier and Prodos of all places. But not Forgeworld. Never Forgeworld.

Likewise.

"Flawless casts" isn't something I associate FW with.

Most (if not all) of the other casters I've bought from, also remove the excess gates and vent blocks before shipping - so you aren't paying for excess waste - FW leave it on.

Also, other casters use adequate void fill in the packaging (again, not something I've experienced from FW).

I usually have fun making and painting GW plastics, I never do with FW. The extra processes you have to go through with are just a chore.

GW plastics just seem to get better and better. They have more than enough details for me and those details are never lost through imperfections in the miniature. You get so many weapon options now as well that there is a lot more conversion material.

I have bought 2 resin models from FW and after the 1st came with a few blemishes then the 2nd one a Horus has holes everywhere and horrid mould lines and living in South Africa its a miracle if the item arrives at all so trying to get another one could take months through all the customs and all the other red tape, I will unlikely be getting more.

I think people will bring on the table more than plausible counter-examples but generally speaking, FW tends to do not over-design the models.
Case in point, as discussed elsewhere, GW new Death Guard vs FW Plague Marines.
FW is clearly superior.

This feels like a really subjective subject. Superior is in the eye of the consumer. For instance I'm much less of a hobbyist than I am a gamer. So for me resin is a negative, I much prefer to work in HIPS as it's easier to work with for me as a modeler. In fact I'm not bothered by one piece plastics at all despite the fact that they have considerably less detail than say a FW resin mini. For me superior = easy to work with (single piece plastics are super easy to work with), for some it will = better detail. So I think this really just depends on where you place the value.