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Time to add my two penneth's worth.

I'm disappointed and more than a little peeved. The majority of Finecost miniatures I've seen pictures of or read reviews of have had hideous flaws, such as air bubbles or voids obliterating parts of the detail. Often these details would be very difficult to resculpt unless you have a great deal of sculpting experience. These flaws are even present on several miniatures shown on the GW website, presumably the best casts they could find. If even they can't find good quality casts to showcase, what hope is there for me? I keep reading positive reviews saying that so-and-so model was really good quality, except it was missing part of it's fingers, or foot, or weapon etc. Um... that is not good quality.

This is hugely discouraging and I don't think it is an overreaction to be worried and annoyed by the prospect of recieving faulty goods for marked up prices.
I do not expect perfection, I can cope with excessive amounts of flash and mould lines, even with a small amount of warping. But at these prices the miniature itself had better be complete and undamaged.

I have never had a problem with a metal miniature, besides basic cleanup. I understand that metal miscasts do happen but it seems they are much rarer. Weight is not important to me, neither is the visibility of details pre-painting. I have never needed to pin a metal mini - a bit of grey stuff mixed with superglue creates an incredibly strong bond, if required. I'm glad they're softer than metal, but they actually sound much too soft. So these much touted benefits of resin mean nothing to me. I am intrigued by the conversion possibilities and am glad that paint will not chip off these models, but these are minor advantages when weighed against the prospect bad quality casts. We are being charged more for an inferior product.

I was actually glad when I heard GW were switching to resin. I assumed it would be cheaper. I also assumed that, given the high quality of most of their miniatures, there would be few casting problems. One of GW's few remaining virtues is (or was) their high quality. This is not a matter of expecting zero imperfections. They promised the best of the best. If other, smaller, companies can produce resin miniatures without this many flaws, then so can GW. If other, smaller, companies can reduce prices when they switch to resin, then so can GW.

There are (or were) a great many metal minis I'd planned to buy. but I have no intention of spending my money, time and effort sending back defective miniatures (that cost an arm and a leg) and therefore I will not be playing Resin Roulette. I will not be buying Finecast minis, except perhaps when I can view them in advance. Absolutely no boxes or mail orders. They are not worth the money. Quite frankly, with quality like this, I think they'd be expensive at half the price.

CMDante wrote:

Read back a bit further to the point where people were getting hyper critical about a few small air bubbles on the Chaos Warrior pictured a few pages back (and elsewhere on other forums). Those "faults" were not "substantial resculpting work".

In that case we have very different standards. Part of the foot was missing. Part of an armour plate was missing. The bottom of the scabbard was missing. Part of the skull on his chest was missing. There were several smaller flaws also. In my book these things were faults. And any way you spin it they required sculpting work. I have bought resin pieces before (not many, I'll grant you) and none of them had FAULTS like this. So my standards are not impossibly high, other manufacturers have set the bar.

Edited to say: Ninja'd

Is there any way to find out for sure if Finecast really is biodegradable? Because that would take the cake. If that's correct then no way will I ever buy a finecast, even if I can check for miscasts first.

schadenfreude wrote:

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.

Wouldn't be the first time

But seriously, the only rationalisation I can think of is that GW didn't expect the defective models to get returned. That means they assumed their customers would happily accept defective models after paying through the nose for them, which is kinda insulting.

Popped into my LGS today and took a look at their Finecast range. They had taken down some models that had serious flaws, such as packed with the wrong base or missing components (not sure if this was due to incomplete sprues or miscasts). Most of the figures on the shelf looked perfect, although there were a few with serious flaws. Lelith Hesperax had an air bubble where her chin should be, for example - that mini seems to have a lot of problems. I bought a Shadowseer, because it's the last model I need for my Harlequins collection (including all the Rogue Trader ones ) and it looked flawless. Shop assistant checked blister over before taking my cash, didn't spot any problems either. Got it home, there are 13 very small air bubbles - 4 on the backpack, 2 on the fingers of the left hand, one on the end of the staff, one in the edge of the belt, one on the fingers of the right hand, 2 on the shuriken pistol, 2 on top of the head - all in positions that were hard to see while it was in the blister. Thankfully, none of the holes obliterate detail, tho some are in tricky places. The holes are too large to ignore or cover with paint, but small enough to be a pain to use green stuff on, so eugh. Some are small enough to use superglue on, but I feel uncomfortable smearing superglue all over the thing.

There's resin inside the hood, between the head and hood, where there should be empty space. The resin itself is better than I expected, soft but not too soft, except for the thin staff, which is very wobbly and bendy. It cuts slightly easier than plastic. Using files is not a problem, so long as you are gentle. I tried one out on a bit of sprue first, then on an inconspicuous bit of the model. Mould lines removed very easily, no damage caused.

All in all, I wish I'd bought a second hand metal one off ebay. These are not an improvement on metal. I would choose plesin over metal if I wanted to do a tricky conversion, or if the metal was much more expensive, but otherwise I'm favouring second-hand pewter whenever possible. I stand by my decision to not buy finecast unless i can check it in store, and next time I'll check a lot more thoroughly. Luckily, it looks like my LGS will be very understanding about this. That does however prevent me from mail ordering from discount stores. My LGS is amazing, but it's a long way from where I live and only gives 10% discount in store, compared to the 20% discount you can get from some online stores.

I'm still shocked that GW have reduced the quality of their products, that's one thing I never expected of them, and i definitely think this reduction in quality (if necessary at all) should have been accompanied by a big reduction in price, a la Mantic's doubling the numbers of minis in their boxes that changed from metal to resin. Increasing the prices and claiming these are the best miniatures ever produced is just a con.

Edit: spotted 2 more air bubbles. D'oh!

Definitely looking at alternatives. Eagerly awaiting warpath minis, and me and my buddies play using our own home-spun rules.