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Another new thing I discovered at the beginning of my return to the WH40K hobby was that the white metal models had been replaced with this new 'Finecast' stuff. Initially I was quite excited by this however every 'Finecast' model I bought were riddled with horrible imperfections. I know that white metal was by no means perfect however I never encountered the number of imperfections that I did with the 'Finecast' versions. I was also quite surprised to see that GW had released products specifically for dealing with the flaws on 'Finecast' models such as liquid green stuff.

I (very) recently purchased a box of Dark Eldar mandrakes and found it really difficult to tell what was supposed to be detail and what was imperfections in the actual models - so much so that I just filled in every crevice with liquid green stuff and painted the detail on myself. I have since taken a vow never to buy anymore 'Finecast' products.

Just to make it clear - I like the idea of 'Finecast' models and when they work - they work incredibly well! What I don't like is that in typical modern GW fashion they are exploiting the obvious flaws and making the gamer pay for them through products like liquid green stuff instead of ironing out the bugs in the casting process. It's a medium that's been around a few years now so you would think that GW would have taken the feedback on board and sorted the 'Finecast' process out. I guess that will never happen while they are making money from the problem.....

Apologies, for hashing out a subject that's probably been debated to death on here but i'm pretty sure there's a few fellow gamers out there still tearing their hair out with GW and the 'Finecast' products.....

I think finecast has someone nice models but is to expensive.
Also i like customizing my models and finecast makes this a lot more difficult.

It's okay, not the best but okay. Problem is its so expensive!

Don't sweat it, the latest rumor mills are churning out articles stating that Finecast is at the end of its days.
I personally have had no problems with Finecast, and actually really like working with it. My Typhus model is beautiful

I actually kind of like finecast more than metal. With metal, if a model of mine broke, it would be really tough to repair it. On the other hand, fine cast was lighter than metal so supporting the part didn't take a lot of difficulty.

It's Fine, thanks for asking

I prefer working with resin over metal, but the quality is definitely an issue. I barely managed to salvage a Big Mek back when it first started rolling out. I haven't had nearly as many problems since, but it's still wonky. Hopefully, as mentioned before, they switch to plastic, refine the process, or something, anything. I can't imagine this being sustainable.

there were no finecast models for IG that I would have wanted , so am ok with finecast.

It's an overpriced material of inferior quality compared to most other brands forms of resin. I understand making metal models is a pain, but having to re-sculpt the model or repeatedly replace it is a massive pain compared to drilling and pinning. Finecast would be fine (no pun intended) if it was not for the issue of quality and price.

I don't mind resin. It is lighter.

That being said, there are different grades of it and they obviously chose to use the worst cheap grade they could find.
Back that up with a lack of anything resembling a quality control department anywhere near the resin department in the production factory and you have the issues we have today.

There are two main reasons to switch to resin. he first being that it is lighter and easier to work with. the other is that it costs so much less to produce and create. Heck, it even costs a whole lot less to transport from point A to point B because of the weight difference. So then, why are we paying double what we did for the metal that it replaced?

Since I like to customize and don't like static poses for many of the models, I prefer plastic over both.

My view is that if they want to go resin, lower the price to keep it in line with the money they are saving and use resin that is of a higher quality and have the quality control guys make a round or two through the department.

I like resin better than metal, so I like the finecast models I have.
I haven't had problems with imperfections.

Of course i only have 4 or 5 finecast models.

Totally agree with y'all - it is way too expensive for what you get. Metal was harder to repair but in my experience there was always much less chance of a flaw occurring.

I think finecast is much better from a modelling point of view - better detail, lighter, easier to model - I just wish I didn't have to fear the inevitable imperfections everytime I bought a new finecast product.

Rippy - My local GW stopped restocking finecast models a few months ago so I kind of knew then that they would be phasing them out. The awesome new dark elf character models are made of plastic so maybe that's a sign of things to come

I think finecast is great - it has made conversions a breeze compared to the hell I'd have to go through with metal.

I haven't run into any miscasts on my 10+ finecast minis.

Me views on finecast:

1) I think it hold and shows detail as good as metal - indeed seeing detail on it is actually I think easier than on metal (at least unpainted metal).

2) It's soft nature makes it hard to file so its a scrape clean only - annoying

3) It gets these odd raised areas of fairly thick flash - this is the most annoying thing because its not an imperfection for replacement and just part of the flash- yet it can prove very hard to remove without losing or harming the details areas.

4) Quality control is a problem - even now there are more errors slipping out than I recall in the past with GW metals. GW does replace things so its not a big worry but it is an annoyance.


Overall I don't mind the shift to resin but the odd flash makes me avoid it especially when combined with the iffy quality control. That said I'll still typically buy big things in finecast where the flash is generally easier to get off.

I've never had a problem with Finecast, I love it. Bit of annoying flash in awkward places, but the quality and ease of conversion is just incredible.

Finecrap....errrr....Failcast...uhhhh....FINECAST was heralded as the Second Coming in miniatures. It fell flat on it's face. To those that were lucky enough to not have to deal with malformed parts, bubbles, warping, and extreme flash lines- you were lucky. VERY lucky. I only own about 10 of them, and I've had to return 3 of them for the above reasons. A sampling of only 10 with three failures for a 30% fail rate is not a large enough sampling to make any conclusions on. Looking at the interwebs may back up my high failure assertion until we realize that people use the interwebs for and porn. The only evidence I have to back up that it's such a bad medium is by talking to my fellow players and the FLGS owners. When I do that, then the failure rate seems to be about 25%.

With a 25% unacceptable rate among the customers, the actual rate must be much, much higher at the actual production stage, unless GW has no Quality Control at all at the production level (which seems absurd to me). This material can't be recycled as a metal mini can ("Just throw it back into the pot and we'll make another"). It's a two part resin-epoxy mixture mashed together under some heat and pressure. So many variables can throw the entire process off that it's no wonder it has such a high fail rate. Truly, casting in resin is an art form as much as it is a science.

If you look back over the last couple years, you'll see GW at first would not even acknowledge any sort of problem. Then they rolled out a little memo to the company and LGS's that basically said "accept all returns of Finecast products". A little bottle of liquid greenstuff suddenly appeared- and the way it was intended to be used was aptly demonstrated in White Dwarf when they used it to fill in some bubbles on a Finecast model. About the same time, the "Finishing Kit" was released, along with another article on fixing Finecast models.

Whether or not you spend more time prepping a metal, plastic, resin, or Finecast (which is a resin...) is immaterial. The tools required and techniques used are all vastly different from each other. For a new hobbyist, it's more money and more time spent learning another skill. Money in new tools/equipment, and maybe even models that you mess up, and time you could be spending on playing or painting. After you screw up your second or third Finecast model at $20US-$30US a pop, you'll tend to avoid it as much as possible.

Finally, GW has proven that they can produce a plastic miniature in just as much detail and without bubbles/deformation as in Finecast. I made another post up in Rumors talking about why GW switched to Finecast (hint: It's a money thing). The current Finecast Models will probably get converted over to plastic. They pretty much have been over the last couple months. I highly doubt Forgeworld will pick up the Finecast line- it's a completely different manufacturing process and material from the resin they use. GW will have to do something with all the equipment they purchased. I bet they sell it off and use it as a tax write-off. We'll see what happens over the next year's financial reports, specifically the manufacturing section.

Good bye and good riddance Finecrap....errrr....Failcast...uhhhh....FINECAST!

In theory, it should have been great: cheaper material equals a price drop, lighter material wouldn't require pinning, softer material was easier to convert. They raised the cost, the models drooped, and there were holes and obscured details everywhere. It became the joke of the community, rather than the second coming we were promised. And it never lost its joke status. I have a couple good FC models and the rest suck. My cocatrice from fantasy and Cato Sicarius are flawless. Everything else has issues. Issues were on: Grimgore, 2 hellcannons, 25th anniversary marine, and I skipped on everything else.

I refuse to buy something to fix what should have been right to begin with. I saw screw buying the liquid green stuff, if it aint right, return it for a new one. if THAT aint right, return that one and so on ill you get one that's done right. My yarrick was wekk done but the hammer shaft on my coatez model needed to be heated so I could bend it out to where it belonged (that was acceptable to me). Had it ben full of bubbles and holes Ida returned it rather than buying liquid green stuff to fix it..

The liquid greenstuff is only supposed to fill small bubbles in otherwise flat or undetailed areas (same as for resin from Privateer Press and Foregeworld and Spartan Games). It's where the bubbles appear in areas of detail and suddenly blast them apart that you have to get returns.

Excusing incompetence does not solve it. if I buy a models and it is not "right" within reasonable limits, I return it and will certainly not buy a product the same company sells to fix it.

 EVIL INC wrote:
Excusing incompetence does not solve it. if I buy a models and it is not "right" within reasonable limits, I return it and will certainly not buy a product the same company sells to fix it.

But surely in the metal era you bought greenstuff and used it to smooth over joints where two parts of metal didn't 100% meet flush (or shaved the parts down with a file to get a smoother join). As I said small bubbles in otherwise undetailed areas isn't a problem, maybe its not ideal, but like bits of sprue and flash its within the acceptable region of cleaning. I fully agree that where those bubbles are huge in size and have caused a lot of detail that you do need to get replacement parts (got a Fateweaver wing with a nasty bubble on the top of the wing that I need to get replaced)

I have nearly twenty years of experience in the hobby now, and I personally would gladly go back to the days of metal GW models. Larger models always were a problem, but I very rarely had metal infantry-sized models have anything but some mold lines to clean up before painting, and lots of times those were simple knife-scrape fixes.

Finecast was essentially the exact opposite that a replacement for pewter was supposed to be. It is easier to break and is far too heat-sensitive, there is terrible quality control, and it saw a 25% price hike on nearly everything when it replaced the metal model. Everything about it is unacceptable for what the models are priced at.

For thicker models I dont mind finecast as much, its the thin models that I cant stand because they break so easily, Harlequins and Wracks were my two Fails. while Lysander is holding up nicely

I much prefer plastic models and I have heard some rumours that finecast is slowly being phased out.

In theory, Finecast was a good idea. GW, however, failed to execute it in any way approaching "good." Their lack of quality control, their high prices, etc. In fact, it's very telling when you realize that it is cheaper for GW to potentially replace (one or more times) every Finecast model you buy due to errors than it is for GW to just make it right to begin with.

Complaints about finecast are hardly new.

As best I can tell, the initial switch to finecast went very, VERY badly. Much of what they produced was unworkable garbage. They've been slowly getting better over time, though, and apparently you're more likely to get something that's perfect than something that's hideously deformed, with most stuff in the middle taking relatively little work to make correct.

That said, I think people way over-romanticize the old metal models. There were plenty of casting problems with those too. About a year ago I got two squads of kasrkin from GW in metal, and those were a pain in the butt to get the mould lines off of thanks to miscasting (I also had to use pliers to bend things into their correct positions on a couple of occasions). All made worse, of course, because working in metal is so much harder.

Finecast isn't as good as plastics, but they're no longer just worse than the metals they've replaced.

I'd like someone to convince me that Finecast Harlequins are better than the metal ones of the same sculpt. Especially at the ankles and swords.

I will say that yes, if I bought a metal model that was screwed up, I returned it.
There is a HUGE difference between buying a model where a join does not fit 1005 tight and buying a model that looks as though it has been shot by a shotgun riddled with holes and looking like it has been half melted (yes, I have returned metal models that looked like that , half melted that is).

I dislike fine cast. They should have just made everything plastic and been done with it. It's not like the plastic characters aren't good.
I got a farsight model and ever since day 1 he's been getting lower to the ground. I literally have seen him doing a sort of sideways limbo.
Make a plastic one and I'll buy it in a heartbeat to replace him.

 EVIL INC wrote:
I will say that yes, if I bought a metal model that was screwed up, I returned it.
There is a HUGE difference between buying a model where a join does not fit 1005 tight and buying a model that looks as though it has been shot by a shotgun riddled with holes and looking like it has been half melted (yes, I have returned metal models that looked like that , half melted that is).

I agree,
And also back then metal was a lot cheaper, so i could forgive some defects, but if i have to pay premium prices then i also expect premium quality.
I have checked many finecrap at my local store and most of them had some flaws, so no thank you.