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Been scanning through the terrible Warhammer Visions 2 and noticed something very interesting in the Tau Kitbash section. Take a look at the Tau Commander suits, the one converted by Matt Holland is either a special cast he made (being the designer fine, but why put it unpainted in the magazine) or a new type of resin. Check out the photos below for the differences but if it is the rumoured new resin the quality is unreal and the edges straight and sharp. Natfka also has an example of a possible new type but not showing a comparison.

http://natfka.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/changes-found-in-finecast-resin.html

Saw that this has been mentioned in the Forgeworld thread but given this is something new maybe others have spotted or already have models in the apparently new material.

Thoughts?

Apologies for the second post but ipad doesn't want to put the other pictures in the same post. This is the older finecast suits from the same issue.

I thought this month's vision was really nice.

Also, it's been known for a while that Forge World was going to be taking over all resin production for GW.

Damn, ninjad. Yup? This was known, I thought, for a while.... GW is using fw formula.

This is good news, while it has been known the change was coming its good to see it confirmed.

Will this be rolled out to all finecast models? That'd be most welcome, and overdue, but late is better than never!

question is did they dump all the finecast stock or just replacing it as it runs out. there could be some dodgy runs still about

Replace as runs out

Well I sure hope my 4 damnned legionaires and TFC come in the new material.

Anyone else see the irony of how Forgeworld is now a literal Forgeworld for the Imperium that is Games Workshop?

How would that be ironic?

It could be the difference between an early run cast or one from the end life of the mold. Quality of the casts can differ a lot based on the age of the mold.

My finecast commander was TERRIBLE almost all of the parts have slightly concave surfaces, noticable mold slip and bubbles but I've seen a few that other people bought amd they had a much better luck of the draw and had decent models.

Resin can differ in color from batch to batch and the slightly darker grey usually makes the parts look a bit cleaner. It may also be a separate cast for the studio vs the production stuff. The studio casts (and FW) are usually done via pressure/vacuum where the finecast is done on a spincaster which gives you very different results. Stuff done with the pressure/vacuum combo generally comes out much better. They also use a cheaper grade of resin for finecast.

Based on the pics and my own experience with casting I think that it's probably a piece cast separately for the studio which is using the FW pressure/vacuum process and resin.

 SickSix wrote:
Well I sure hope my 4 damnned legionaires and TFC come in the new material.

When you get them, please post back to let us know.

Yeah I agree, at first I thought you were making something out of nothing, because I remember being fairly impressed with the quality of my Tau Commander's finecast sculpt. Had a lot of nice sharp edges you don't find on a lot of citidel minis.

However, when I pulled mine out and looked at it, it really does pale in comparison to the recent cast.



There's lot of little warped areas, like the backpack, and the visor. The edges look a little duller as well.

All in all, either this guy managed to get one of the very first tau commander casts and never built it till now, or they really are doing something new.

However, if they were doing something new, you'd think they'd tout if from on high... and charge you an extra $20 bucks for it.

Goresaw wrote:

Spoiler:

Yeah I agree, at first I thought you were making something out of nothing, because I remember being fairly impressed with the quality of my Tau Commander's finecast sculpt. Had a lot of nice sharp edges you don't find on a lot of citidel minis.

However, when I pulled mine out and looked at it, it really does pale in comparison to the recent cast.



There's lot of little warped areas, like the backpack, and the visor. The edges look a little duller as well.

All in all, either this guy managed to get one of the very first tau commander casts and never built it till now, or they really are doing something new.

However, if they were doing something new, you'd think they'd tout if from on high... and charge you an extra $20 bucks for it.

That would mean GW would have to admit something was wrong with finecast in the 1st place.

My experience with red shirts has been prety negative. They will just pretend that finecast was always awsome, and that you are just remembering the terrible stuff incorrectly.

 Lockark wrote:

Goresaw wrote:

Spoiler:

Yeah I agree, at first I thought you were making something out of nothing, because I remember being fairly impressed with the quality of my Tau Commander's finecast sculpt. Had a lot of nice sharp edges you don't find on a lot of citidel minis.

However, when I pulled mine out and looked at it, it really does pale in comparison to the recent cast.



There's lot of little warped areas, like the backpack, and the visor. The edges look a little duller as well.

All in all, either this guy managed to get one of the very first tau commander casts and never built it till now, or they really are doing something new.

However, if they were doing something new, you'd think they'd tout if from on high... and charge you an extra $20 bucks for it.

That would mean GW would have to admit something was wrong with finecast in the 1st place.

My experience with red shirts has been prety negative. They will just pretend that finecast was always awsome, and that you are just remembering the terrible stuff incorrectly.

Not only that, but like someone already mentioned, prices would jump another +30% if this was actually true.

 Alpharius wrote:
How would that be ironic?

Forge World has always been a pleasingly ironic name because in the 40k lore a Forge World is a massive factory planet whereas the RL entity Forge World is a boutique miniature production company, thus the name is implying something other than the literal fact. This development is really just a variation on that theme.

Since you asked, that is. Pretty off-topic imo. Wouldn't want that, would we?

With stretching like that, you must be first alternate on the Cirque du Soleil traveling team!

FW 'taking over' all of GW's resin production would be an OK thing, I guess.

It has to be better than the Finecast Failure...

The ultimate irony is GAMES workshop cares nothing about the game and only about the miniatures.

It's even more ironic since they do not WORK and are not a SHOP.

 paulson games wrote:
It could be the difference between an early run cast or one from the end life of the mold. Quality of the casts can differ a lot based on the age of the mold.

My finecast commander was TERRIBLE almost all of the parts have slightly concave surfaces, noticable mold slip and bubbles but I've seen a few that other people bought amd they had a much better luck of the draw and had decent models.

Resin can differ in color from batch to batch and the slightly darker grey usually makes the parts look a bit cleaner. It may also be a separate cast for the studio vs the production stuff. The studio casts (and FW) are usually done via pressure/vacuum where the finecast is done on a spincaster which gives you very different results. Stuff done with the pressure/vacuum combo generally comes out much better. They also use a cheaper grade of resin for finecast.

Based on the pics and my own experience with casting I think that it's probably a piece cast separately for the studio which is using the FW pressure/vacuum process and resin.

This was my first idea when I saw the photos, as he's a Tau fanatic and sculpted a lot of the stuff it may well be a pre-production cast or one off run to test??

Early not so sure because I have two that I ordered on pre-release and they are not great (also remembering the issues they had with this model in particular, with very little availability put down to the mold in rumours at the time I think)

But then why show it in Warhammer Visions as it really makes the normal finecast look terrible? But then it is GW and they are quite capable of making themselves look bad

Still not seen any other examples that people have bought though, and obviously nothing from GW as that would be admitting their product is not that great!

all i can say, is that i really hope that the switch to FW resin, and casting methods, is true...
i would love to buy Farsight, and the Commander suit, but not if it is soft bendy Finecast...
GW would get a lot more of my money if they switch to a better quality resin, and actual finer casts...

cheers
jah

Well it took GW 4 days to send me a shipping notice. So I am hoping that means they actually had to cast my order and maybe I will get the new material. I will post pictures as soon as it comes in.

If you can see in the below picture there is a slight color difference. The new LotD guys are darker than the failcast guys I have.

However, there are still the same issues with the casting.



I have a video review being uploaded now.

Here

So in summary, same gak, different color.

Soft and bendy, like always, full of bubbles like always.

Good to know, thank you very much.

Hmm, there's a strange dichotomy here. We have multiple people on the Nafka post saying they've received actual "resin-like", and more importantly, flawless, casts - versus those who are sceptical or who have received regular finecast versions like above. I think the real indicator at this point isn't colour, but density of material (how hard is it to drill or bend in comparison?), the shininess level, and the amount of flaws on the cast.

Old: Relatively matt, very low density, easy to bend, flaws all over the place.

"New": Shiny, higher density, harder to bend, few to no flaws.

This is obviously just going from the comments. There could be a sort of mass hysteria thing going on, I suppose, but I think it's unlikely. Or it could be a hoax. It'd be interesting to see what response you'd get if you specified the "new material" when ordering direct from GW.

SickSix: Yeah, that looks like normal finecast, it's not even shinier than the old stuff. Strange that you'd get an "old" pack while the guy in the Nafka post got denser, flawless models and bought them earlier than you. I hope they didn't just dump them together on a shelf in the warehouse. That's not too much to ask, is it?