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I noticed that the new Storm of Magic character models are plastic kits. Why did GW not just skip the resin and make Finecast be plastic kits?

Because GW doesn't make logical decisions very often.

The idea behind Finecast was to use the master sculpts that had been made for metal moulding, and to use a much cheaper material.

It would have been very expensive to redesign all the metal models to work as plastic moulded items.

Hargus56 wrote:I noticed that the new Storm of Magic character models are plastic kits. Why did GW not just skip the resin and make Finecast be plastic kits?

Good question....


LMAO!!!!

Its expensive to make plastic kits for everything

Yet we still got 4 mono posed plastic characters

No one truly knows what GW thinks....besides "raise prices" and "space marines"

It wouldn't suprise me to see more mono pose plastic kits in the future. The finecast range was just a way to use pre-existing molds and fill them with a cheaper material since the price of Tin has risen drastically over the last several years.
But it might just be the case that any future molds will just be plastic and not finecast.

Cost is the reason.

Metal models are cast in vulcanised rubber moulds, which are relatively cheap and easy to make.

The new Finecast models use the same original Master models as the metals, with just a little re-jiggering to put them on sprues, and are cast in silicon moulds which are likewise relatively cheap and easy to make.

GW's plastics use a pressure-injection system, and are cast in stainless steel moulds that cost in the tens of thousands of dollars to make. Because steel moulds don't flex, models need to be specifically sculpted for this sort of casting, and so most of the metals would have been unsuitable as is... they would have had to resculpt most (if not all) of the original metals to produce them in plastic.

While the cost of producing injection moulds is coming down, if they can iron out the kinks in Finecast, I can actually see them going the other way, and eventually replacing the plastics with finecast as well... It's less of a big, scary investment for a new kit.

insaniak wrote:GW's plastics use a pressure-injection system, and are cast in stainless steel moulds that cost in the tens of thousands of dollars to make. Because steel moulds don't flex, models need to be specifically sculpted for this sort of casting, and so most of the metals would have been unsuitable as is... they would have had to resculpt most (if not all) of the original metals to produce them in plastic.

Not to mention terrible things can happen to those molds

Didnt the Chaos Daemon Prince kit get delayed becuase something went wrong?

But all in all, you're correct that plastic is becoming more affordable. Just seeing the rise of all these new plastic companies can attest to that

If Failcost was a stepping stone on the journey to all-plastic, then so be it, but as it stands, it was done to save money and pass the 'savings' onto the customer.

H.B.M.C. wrote:If Failcost was a stepping stone on the journey to all-plastic, then so be it, but as it stands, it was done to save money and pass the 'savings' onto the customer.

Savings in the form of a price hike, a capitalism.

Personally, finecast made recasting entire models easier as the sprue and layout are already done. Making the mold for more of them is easy once you learn how. If anything, GW will have lost more money from me by switching to resin.

I'll pay GW more if they bring back decent Empire infantry. Pajamas just aren't worth the money, and until they admit that, I'll pirate my way thru every army I collect.

H.B.M.C. wrote:If Failcost was a stepping stone on the journey to all-plastic, then so be it, but as it stands, it was done to save money and pass the 'savings' onto the customer.

When did GW ever say it was done to pass the savings on to the customer. Most business would try to lower production costs and pass the savings onto themselves.

Notice he was putting 'these things' over savings

Hmmm... If they redo all Metal to Resin it is impratical than simply releasing Multi-Part Plastic Kits. I would love multi-part for Heros and Lords.

Fine-cast is excellent quality, a bit of miss moulds but satisfactory. It goes well with plastic. Better quality detail for where it matters.

Ultramarinescout wrote:Fine-cast is excellent quality...

Compared to what, exactly?

Ultramarinescout wrote:Fine-cast is excellent quality, a bit of miss moulds but satisfactory. It goes well with plastic. Better quality detail for where it matters.

I still don't believe the whole 'better quality' nonsense. After all, when both have primer on them, it's difficult to tell them apart.

Then again, Finecost does have its positives - take the Nurgle Daemon Prince, for example. The U.S. price increased only a tiny amount, it's not much simpler to put togther compared to the old metal version, and since it's Nurgle, who cares if there are any imperfections! It's part of the aesthetics, baby!

Ultramarinescout wrote:Fine-cast is excellent quality, a bit of miss moulds but satisfactory. It goes well with plastic. Better quality detail for where it matters.

I would not call 4 miscast replacement Urien Rackarths satisfactory, and oddly enough it was the same problem all four times.

I would imagine the type of plastic used in FineCast (vs the usual grey plastic) has a lower viscocity (more towards water than oil) that allows the plastic to flow into much finer detailed molds.
A comparison of similar models that are from recent releases can show the different detail levels between types of plastic used:
Finecast Libby:

Space Hulk Libby:

The space hulk plastics were a bit more dense than the ones used on the normal plastic sprues IIRC.

The red makes it go faster but they have to be careful about it, to fast and their will be imperfections. That’s why it’s less detailed.

Don’t you love incorrect reasoning?

dkellyj wrote:I would imagine the type of plastic used in FineCast (vs the usual grey plastic) has a lower viscocity (more towards water than oil) that allows the plastic to flow into much finer detailed molds.

They use completely different processes (Finecast is spincast, where polystyrene is pressure-injection moulded) so it's not quite that simple. The difference in detail isn't so much to do with viscosity as with the fact that the steel moulds for polystyrene can't handle undercuts.

I thought finecast was injection as well?

Or rather, I assumed Finecast was injection.

Mr Mystery wrote:I thought finecast was injection as well?

Or rather, I assumed Finecast was injection.

Everything said about it pre-release was that it was spincast. And it seems unlikely that they would be using silicon moulds for pressure-injection. They would deform too much.

Ultramarinescout wrote:Fine-cast is excellent quality, a bit of miss moulds but satisfactory. It goes well with plastic. Better quality detail for where it matters.

Any other casting technique in the Market.


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btemple0 wrote:

Ultramarinescout wrote:Fine-cast is excellent quality, a bit of miss moulds but satisfactory. It goes well with plastic. Better quality detail for where it matters.

I would not call 4 miscast replacement Urien Rackarths satisfactory, and oddly enough it was the same problem all four times.

Everything has to be perfected... Trust me there will be near to no miscasts 1 year on.

Based on what? Hope?

Wishful thinking won't make Failcost's failures disappear, no matter how much the white-armoured among us want it to. I think that models specifically designed from the ground up to be Failcost minis (ie. not metal models re-tooled) are likely to be better (and thus their name will simply become Finecost, not Failcost), but this idea that they are this super-high detailed miniature that is greater than all other miniatures ever made (as GW has claimed multiple times) is a load of nonsense.

Ultramarinescout wrote:Everything has to be perfected... Trust me there will be near to no miscasts 1 year on.

It could be suggested that a slightly more professional company would have done the perfecting before jumping into mass-release.

Particularly in the miniatures industry, where the Scrapheap of Broken Dreams is piled high with the failures brought on by promising more than you can actually deliver due to not taking enough time to make sure of what you were doing (Mongoose? Nope, nobody mentioned Mongoose...).

They're even still persisting that the limit of 3 per person is due to demand, and not due to the fact that this was rushed to market without proper inventory.

H.B.M.C. wrote:Based on what? Hope?

Wishful thinking won't make Failcost's failures disappear, no matter how much the white-armoured among us want it to. I think that models specifically designed from the ground up to be Failcost minis (ie. not metal models re-tooled) are likely to be better (and thus their name will simply become Finecost, not Failcost), but this idea that they are this super-high detailed miniature that is greater than all other miniatures ever made (as GW has claimed multiple times) is a load of nonsense.

With your logic we will be still using Pewter. Sometimes companies will make mistakes and do things wrong. I myself have seen a lot of difference in models in quality. Just wondering, do you whine at Every Price Rise on anything? We need to support GW because if you don't they will go Bankrupt that means, NO more cool models, No more tournaments, it will go to Basement days and worse, I'll be out of a job.


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H.B.M.C. wrote:They're even still persisting that the limit of 3 per person is due to demand, and not due to the fact that this was rushed to market without proper inventory.

Do you even know the demand of that thing? We sell out of Fine-cast every week at my store!

Ultramarinescout wrote:
With your logic we will be still using Pewter. Sometimes companies will make mistakes and do things wrong. I myself have seen a lot of difference in models in quality. Just wondering, do you whine at Every Price Rise on anything? We need to support GW because if you don't they will go Bankrupt that means, NO more cool models, No more tournaments, it will go to Basement days and worse, I'll be out of a job.

The sad truth is no, we don't have to support Games Workshop. I love Warhammer, it's been a hobby of mine for more than half my life, but I see no reason to support them when they're doing such silly, silly things. Finecast is something no one really asked for, and yet we got it - with yet another price hike to pay for the switch. It doesn't have, to my eyes, any noticible improvement on just how much detail comes through. At least no on the models sold in store. Truth is? I'd rather stick with my metal minis. I like them. I like knowing if my kid decided to, for example, pick up the model and throw it down the stairs to see how the cool jump pack works I'm going to be buffing scratches out my wooden flooring, not sweeping up a model.

And no, that was no a random example.

Yes, metal is harder to work with. In an ideal world I'd rather see everything plastic. I cannot complain about the quality of Games Workshop's multipart plastic kits at all, although I can and do grumble about the somewhat absurd pricing. People bitch about the pricing for this stuff is just how much it's gone up...during a recession. The only reason I have new models is I'm an ex-GW stockist, and can still occasionally acquire things at stockist prices. The rest of my stuff is second hand.

Ultramarinescout wrote:Do you even know the demand of that thing? We sell out of Fine-cast every week at my store!

I assume you have quite a lot of Finecast then? Selling out of the single pack of, say, the Space Marine Librarian in Terminator Armour is much less impressive than selling out two dozen.

Ultramarinescout wrote:With your logic we will be still using Pewter.

Yeah... no.

That's... no. Just no.

Ultramarinescout wrote:Sometimes companies will make mistakes and do things wrong.

A good example of a company making a mistake is GW and Failcost - a product hyped to be the most detailed miniatures ever when really it was just them switching materials because tin is really expensive these days. And then they put the price up.

Ultramarinescout wrote:I myself have seen a lot of difference in models in quality.

Great! That was almost a full sentence.

Ultramarinescout wrote:Just wondering, do you whine at Every Price Rise on anything?

Red herring.

Ultramarinescout wrote:We need to support GW because if you don't they will go Bankrupt that means, NO more cool models, No more tournaments, it will go to Basement days

We don't need to support them. Why should we prop up those that scorn us so? GW going bankrupt would have little effect on most people and I'd celebrate it.

And there are plenty of 'cool models' and 'tournaments' out there that don't involved or require GW at all. I know that you're trained to believe that GW are the hobby, as opposed to simply being one company within the hobby (as large a part of the hobby as they may be) - but there's more out there than GW. One day you'll understand that.

Ultramarinescout wrote:...and worse, I'll be out of a job.

Ah! And the penny drops. You work for GW. The pattern of your posts now makes perfect sense.

Ultramarinescout wrote:Do you even know the demand of that thing? We sell out of Fine-cast every week at my store!

Of course you sell out - you only sell a portion of it and the rest goes back to HQ because of all the miscasts, right?