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I don't understand it myself, the detailing is better with metal figures, you get greater undercut, and weight is satisfying. Maybe if finecast improves it will be a good replacement.

Plastic has lots of advantages, easy to glue, soft, strong. It's nice - bit different.

The metal-hate, don't get it at all, it's not that hard to work with. I guess it mostly is newer gamers because older gamers are used to a large proportion of metal figures.

Whole armies were metal, the few plastics were crude. With 2nd ed 40K if you didn't want the gak plastic marines out the box you had to make an entirely metal army. I think the RT plastic marines were better but you couldn't get them by 2nd ed. Collecting a Skaven fantasy army was a nightmare, a ton of lead, the alternative being some pretty poor plastics. Now gamers make a fuss because a few single characters are metal. Pfft.

Problem with those old D&D figures is the high lead content. If not stored correctly they corrode.

Guardlard01 wrote:I had heard that they have a tendency to corrode but its been over thirty years and they don't show any signs of it.

It's dependent upon the way you store them. One cause of corrosion is the chemicals used in some wooden furniture. So if you have an old cupboard or box the chemical leaches out and reacts with the lead. Certainly the lead figures in a particular oak cupboard in this house show a very high frequency of corrosion.

Guardlard01 wrote:

One cause of corrosion is the chemicals used in some wooden furniture. So if you have an old cupboard or box the chemical leaches out and reacts with the lead.

Thankfully I don't have them displayed on any real wood furniture. And if they aren't on display they're tucked away safely in their original box.

That's not enough, we have them in originals boxes/blisters, or in plastic storage boxes, but they were together in a large wooden cupboard. The chemicals released go through everything. First they go black, then they crack and crumble and turn to dust.

Guardlard01 wrote:

That's not enough, we have them in originals boxes/blisters, or in plastic storage boxes, but they were together in a large wooden cupboard. The chemicals released go through everything. First they go black, then they crack and crumble and turn to dust.

Thats terrible news Howard. How many did you lose?

Well my parents were collecting them from when I was young. But I would say that over a dozen crumbled to nothing on a recent examination but we have several dozens more that are black but hopefully not beyond use.

it does seem dependent on the alloy in individual figures, sometimes in a box one will rot and another will be untouched.

No we have a lot more that are okay, I sold some on ebay for quite a bit recently. There's a strong market for pre-slottas, the trick is to identify what you have exactly and people will bid high.

I have some really characterful figures though, excellent D&D adventurers.

I think it affects only lead. Tin miniatures can tarnish, but I think this is just a discolouration, it's not corrosion that will eat the figure.

It's an issue with solid hardwood furniture; oak, cedar where acidic compounds are released from the wood and are likely to affect things stored within it.

This applies to modern furniture too, but a lot of the cheaper furniture from IKEA these days is composite wood pulp and fibres, so it's not proper solid wooden furniture so I think this is okay, it's not full of chemicals in the same way. Storing them on open shelving or a way that allows some ventilation is good, putting them in the bottom of a stuffy heavy oak chest is bad.

For those that have not seen the blight, this is what lead rot looks like when father nurgle casts his eye over your collection.

Rented Tritium - you referring to my picture? That figure has never been painted or stripped.

swordman600 wrote:well metal miniatures are expensive

Finecast are more. But the price of plastics has been brought up to meet metal, because the quality was similar so people are happy to pay, was the reasoning.

I converted a Mephiston recently and have to say that was a nightmare as he's cast in one piece, body, cloak, shoulderpads and head.

This is him when done.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v201/howardtreesong/Inquisitor02.jpg

I had to saw through the shoulderpads and right through the stuff on his head... that was a lot of work for something I'm only moderately happy with (he didn't make it to my gallery anyway).

Generally though, I find metal miniatures just take a bit more time. The longest job is cleaning up mould lines and I find that because plastic kits are usually more multi-part, you have a lot more lines to clean up, so the time saving isn't really there even with the softer material.

BlapBlapBlap wrote:I dislike metal models. They are cumbersome, hard to covert, and they're made with some lead.

Not recently. And if you don't like lead don't eat them.