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 AegisGrimm wrote:
Like the old High Elf serpentine dragons. Have assembled several of them and they are still going strong, even with some of the parts that were too small to be pinned. I have 5 metal Space Marine dreadnoughts versus 1 plastic one, spread across three armies and I love them all and they see as much use as anything plastic. I have entire squads of metal torso Imperial and Chaos Space Marines from back in the day, and yeah I scraped plenty of mould lines, but they are indestructible.

Building a Sisters of Twilight Dragon right now. It reminds me, really, of how much I hated large metal miniatures. But, it was a Christmas gift from my wife, so c'est la vie.

Old metal marines were indestructible because they were single piece and had no parts that stuck out. Take something like a Farseer with a staff, though (made of metal). Drop him, and the top of the staff breaks off.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
For example, my Eldar army is the newest army I have been working on for just the last couple years, and everything is metal. All my Rangers and Aspect Warriors are metal that was bought off Ebay. Because I am not worried about a couple of days of sitting in Simple Green before painting, most of my units were bought for half (or less) of the cost of their Finecast counterparts. My squad of Dark Reapers that matches the Finecast ones cost me 15 dollars, and I have a squad of Wraithguard that never cost more than 10 dollars a model from back when they went over to Finecast but before plastics came out. I bought some metal Ork Nobs in mega armor, fully assembled and primed, for 10 dollars (each) at Gencon last summer from the Bits seller there. I sorted through some broken Finecast Wraithguard until I found a couple of mint condition metal ones.

Other than some obvious characters, there are always workarounds for Finecast units in 40K, because nearly all of the units used to have metal versions. And some of the characters, too.

Well, I guess nobody will ever complain about serpent spam playing with you

But seriously, uhhh... if your ENTIRE Eldar army is metal, that means all the models were pre-4th edition releases. Off the top of my head, that excludes at least Wraith Serpent, Wraithlord, Fire Dragons, Wraithguard. I don't even remember any Pre-fourth vehicles except falcons and fire prisms. And even Guardians went plastic in 2nd. I mean, play whatever army makes you happy, but 1850 points of metal sounds like a large, painful footslogging infantry Eldar army with the only nice unit being jetbikes.

Of around twenty Finecast models purchased from GW, not one has not required one round of return and replacement. Most of them have demanded at least three rounds of the same, and even then every one has needed a bit of fixing-up with greenstuff, or swapping-out miscast guns or swords for plastics. (Storm bolters in particular are something that just won't cast properly.)

After all those annoyances, however, resin is easier to work with - not having to use a dremel to take heads out is a plus - once cleaned and fixed, and seems less prone to bending and chipping once painted.

On its own merits, I won't be sad to see Finecast go. It will be a shame, however, if the backlash against GW's poor selection of casting material and method and their unrealistic marketing claims results in a less diverse miniature range, and the disappearance of some my favourite old sculpts.

 Lord of Misrule wrote:
Of around twenty Finecast models purchased from GW, not one has not required one round of return and replacement. Most of them have demanded at least three rounds of the same, and even then every one has needed a bit of fixing-up with greenstuff, or swapping-out miscast guns or swords for plastics. (Storm bolters in particular are something that just won't cast properly.)

3 rounds? That seems a bit excessive and I can understand peoples displeasure. I do have a question though. Would this mean that you got 3 rounds of minis you get to keep? So you got 3 minis 30 minis for the price of 10? Not sure fixing them would be worth it, but now you have 30 minis instead of 10. So maybe it was worth it. That is if you got to keep them all for your troubles.

Davor wrote:

 Lord of Misrule wrote:
Of around twenty Finecast models purchased from GW, not one has not required one round of return and replacement. Most of them have demanded at least three rounds of the same, and even then every one has needed a bit of fixing-up with greenstuff, or swapping-out miscast guns or swords for plastics. (Storm bolters in particular are something that just won't cast properly.)

3 rounds? That seems a bit excessive and I can understand peoples displeasure. I do have a question though. Would this mean that you got 3 rounds of minis you get to keep? So you got 3 minis 30 minis for the price of 10? Not sure fixing them would be worth it, but now you have 30 minis instead of 10. So maybe it was worth it. That is if you got to keep them all for your troubles.

I've gotten to keep the models I've gotten replacements for, though I have heard some people have had to send them back (probably because of the sheer volume of replacements they are having to do). I've taken photos of mine when I request a replacement though.

Frankly, I'd rather have 1 good model than 3 for the price of 1 where they all have heaps of flaws and I'm having to wait and wait before I get a decent one.

It doesn't really help me that I have 3 flawed Lord Commissar models and waiting a week and a half between each one. 1 good one would have been preferable.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Davor wrote:

 Lord of Misrule wrote:
Of around twenty Finecast models purchased from GW, not one has not required one round of return and replacement. Most of them have demanded at least three rounds of the same, and even then every one has needed a bit of fixing-up with greenstuff, or swapping-out miscast guns or swords for plastics. (Storm bolters in particular are something that just won't cast properly.)

3 rounds? That seems a bit excessive and I can understand peoples displeasure. I do have a question though. Would this mean that you got 3 rounds of minis you get to keep? So you got 3 minis 30 minis for the price of 10? Not sure fixing them would be worth it, but now you have 30 minis instead of 10. So maybe it was worth it. That is if you got to keep them all for your troubles.

I've gotten to keep the models I've gotten replacements for, though I have heard some people have had to send them back (probably because of the sheer volume of replacements they are having to do). I've taken photos of mine when I request a replacement though.

Frankly, I'd rather have 1 good model than 3 for the price of 1 where they all have heaps of flaws and I'm having to wait and wait before I get a decent one.

It doesn't really help me that I have 3 flawed Lord Commissar models and waiting a week and a half between each one. 1 good one would have been preferable.

I just take them back to my FLGS, and they swap it for me right away. If they don't have a second one, GW sends one out by FedEx, and it's pretty quick, at least here in North America. This has happened to me even on plastics, though. With GW, I have never had to send anything to them -- just a photo has sufficed.

Well, I guess nobody will ever complain about serpent spam playing with you

But seriously, uhhh... if your ENTIRE Eldar army is metal, that means all the models were pre-4th edition releases. Off the top of my head, that excludes at least Wraith Serpent, Wraithlord, Fire Dragons, Wraithguard. I don't even remember any Pre-fourth vehicles except falcons and fire prisms. And even Guardians went plastic in 2nd. I mean, play whatever army makes you happy, but 1850 points of metal sounds like a large, painful footslogging infantry Eldar army with the only nice unit being jetbikes.

Argh! LOL.

Sorry, all the talk of Finecast, what I really I meant to say that everything that is now in Finecast is metal in my army, sorry! Brain Fart. I meant that my Rangers, Aspect Warriors, Warlocks, and Farseer are all metal. Everything else is plastic, including Autarch conversions on both foot and jetbike, and my Shining Spears are actually conversions of the new Dark Eldar jetbikers holding Dark Elf Cold One spears (the arms where they are couches like they are jousting/charging). Even my Swooping Hawks are conversions using the new Scourges, as I never liked the official models, even in metal.

And technically my (one) Wave Serpent is not a completely plastic kit, as it's one of the old early Forgeworld resin conversions, where the back troops section and the turret are resin, back from the early 2000's.

Never had anything break off that was metal, though, unless it had been extremely bent several times so the material got weakened. Even spear, staff, and long weapon tips. I tend to only play over carpet, though.

Davor wrote:
3 rounds? That seems a bit excessive and I can understand peoples displeasure. I do have a question though. Would this mean that you got 3 rounds of minis you get to keep? So you got 3 minis 30 minis for the price of 10? Not sure fixing them would be worth it, but now you have 30 minis instead of 10. So maybe it was worth it. That is if you got to keep them all for your troubles.

It seems to depend upon the whim of the redshirt/alignment of the stars whether or not I get to keep the miscasts. In a few cases, I could probably either turn things I've been allowed to keep into something worth painting with some fixing/replacing of miscast bits with plastics, or at least put the bits to good use in kitbashes. I think I have five reasonably well-cast Terminator Chaplain bodies, which would be great if I wanted five Terminator chaplains with identical bodies but different plastic arms; sadly I don't, so they're all in the big box of 'unuseable crap I'm somehow unwilling to throw away'.

Even if I had been able to put these 'bonuses' to use, however; I'd cheerfully have traded that for having the miniatures I wanted at the time I wanted them, without week after week of driving to to the local GW for more exchanges every Saturday, waiting another week for them to be shipped, etc.

For the sake of anecdotally adding some broader context, I've bought a similar number of McVey resins for display projects, and never had one miscast; indeed the mould lines on them have sometimes been so slight I've needed a raking light to find them. In that light, even if I am the victim of some unlikely statistical fluke - which I doubt, given, for instance, Mathieu Raymond's well-documented twenty-odd miscasts of the same figure - you'll understand why I have been left somewhat with a somewhat sour opinion on 'the best toy soldiers in the world'.

Talys wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Davor wrote:

 Lord of Misrule wrote:
Of around twenty Finecast models purchased from GW, not one has not required one round of return and replacement. Most of them have demanded at least three rounds of the same, and even then every one has needed a bit of fixing-up with greenstuff, or swapping-out miscast guns or swords for plastics. (Storm bolters in particular are something that just won't cast properly.)

3 rounds? That seems a bit excessive and I can understand peoples displeasure. I do have a question though. Would this mean that you got 3 rounds of minis you get to keep? So you got 3 minis 30 minis for the price of 10? Not sure fixing them would be worth it, but now you have 30 minis instead of 10. So maybe it was worth it. That is if you got to keep them all for your troubles.

I've gotten to keep the models I've gotten replacements for, though I have heard some people have had to send them back (probably because of the sheer volume of replacements they are having to do). I've taken photos of mine when I request a replacement though.

Frankly, I'd rather have 1 good model than 3 for the price of 1 where they all have heaps of flaws and I'm having to wait and wait before I get a decent one.

It doesn't really help me that I have 3 flawed Lord Commissar models and waiting a week and a half between each one. 1 good one would have been preferable.

I just take them back to my FLGS, and they swap it for me right away. If they don't have a second one, GW sends one out by FedEx, and it's pretty quick, at least here in North America. This has happened to me even on plastics, though. With GW, I have never had to send anything to them -- just a photo has sufficed.

I've only bought one FC thing from my local GW which was flawed and I didn't want to waste an hour + fuel going to get a replacement knowing full well the replacement would probably be flawed as well, so I just spent that hour fixing it instead.

The other couple of things I've bought online and so got them replaced via the online support email. The original model usually comes in a couple of days, but the replacements have been 1 to 2 weeks.

Davor wrote:
3 rounds? That seems a bit excessive and I can understand peoples displeasure. I do have a question though. Would this mean that you got 3 rounds of minis you get to keep? So you got 3 minis 30 minis for the price of 10? Not sure fixing them would be worth it, but now you have 30 minis instead of 10. So maybe it was worth it. That is if you got to keep them all for your troubles.

Yeah, you get extra models, but who cares? If I'm demanding a replacement for something it's because it's a defective product. If it's something with only minor flaws that I'd be willing to fix then I wouldn't be asking for a new one. So the absolute best I can hope for is that the defective ones have at least some undamaged parts that I can save for future conversion work, but even then it's still finecast and a horrible material to work with. The more likely outcome is that I have a whole pile of useless garbage to throw away.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Talys wrote:
I've not had resin kits where all the pieces fit with the same precision as an MPP kit

IMO the precision of GW's plastic kits is highly overrated. My plastic kits have had just as many gaps to fill, misaligned parts, etc, as the resin equivalents. Plastic kits might be faster to assemble if you don't care about the quality of the finished product and don't bother with things like filling gaps, but if you want to do it right you're spending about the same amount of time and effort.

Top notch HIPS models have just as much detail now

Well then GW's models aren't top notch. Resin still wins by a solid margin over GW's plastic kits.

This thread is a little too active, isn't it?
Did not expect this...

Raw nerve.

 KaptinBadrukk wrote:
This thread is a little too active, isn't it?
Did not expect this...

A very large portion of the community hates finecast. From the moment we first saw pics on the GW site and even their own display models had little bubbles people have hated it.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 KaptinBadrukk wrote:
This thread is a little too active, isn't it?
Did not expect this...

A very large portion of the community hates finecast. From the moment we first saw pics on the GW site and even their own display models had little bubbles people have hated it.

When recasts from China have a better quality than your own product, you've fethed up.

Oh, I see now.
very man people hate finecast.

 Peregrine wrote:

IMO the precision of GW's plastic kits is highly overrated. My plastic kits have had just as many gaps to fill, misaligned parts, etc, as the resin equivalents. Plastic kits might be faster to assemble if you don't care about the quality of the finished product and don't bother with things like filling gaps, but if you want to do it right you're spending about the same amount of time and effort.

I disagree. I can't remember the last time a plastic GW kit had parts that were misaligned. Resin can be deformed (reshaped after it's been cast), and HIPS can't -- it will break, so whatever form it was made in, is the form it will stay in.

Plastic Cement is a wonderful tool that you can't use on resin.

And while I believe it's important to fill gaps that matter, many current kits are designed so that many (not all) gaps don't matter -- the two pieces connect at a place where they should be two distinct pieces, and the gap is natural.

By the way, I spend tons of time (often hours) preparing each model, plastic or resin, to ensure that the finished product is as perfect as I can make it.

 Peregrine wrote:

Well then GW's models aren't top notch. Resin still wins by a solid margin over GW's plastic kits.

By Resin, I can only suppose you mean FW kits. I can't really think of any scifi resin kits that are superior to GW plastic kits for fit -- or that I like more, anyhow. Certainly not Privateer Press.

Other than Colossals and maybe some limited figures (I think, could be wrong), Privateer Press does not have anything that is "resin" in the way the term is being meant here. That, and the stuff from Mantic, is restic, and noones ever said that stuff is equal to hard resin!

But lots of resin is as good as HIPS. Like the stuff from Anvil, for one, or Kromlech.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Other than Colossals and maybe some limited figures (I think, could be wrong), Privateer Press does not have anything that is "resin" in the way the term is being meant here. That, and the stuff from Mantic, is restic, and noones ever said that stuff is equal to hard resin!

But lots of resin is as good as HIPS. Like the stuff from Anvil, for one, or Kromlech.

There are some resin/metal kits, like Bradigus and Borka. The resin cape on Bradigus, for example is a large part of the model, and cleaning up pegs on it is awful (they're huge).

All the restic kits I categorize as equivalent in desirability as less desirable than resin. Definitely worse by a country mile to HIPS. None of my local shops carry Anvil or Kromlech, so I can't say.

Davor wrote:
It's more complaining about GW for complaining sakes. I don't see any legitimate complaints here. I see whining. I don't see any posts saying I that they bought a Finecast and the replacement of the replacement of the replacement were all defective. That is a legitimate complaint. None of that in this thread. Just Finecast sucks.

Buying a product and having it turn out to be faulty is a legitimate complaint.

GW replacing faulty 'Fine'cast models isn't in itself a sign of outstanding customer service. It's what is required of them by law. You don't invalidate some cosmic right to complain about having received a faulty product just because the company replaced it.


'Fine'cast is bad. GW knows it's bad. But they continue to sell it, because they decided that it was better for them in the long run to keep selling their faulty resin and replacing the casts that people complain about than to scrap the lot and start over, because a lot of people just won't bother to complain about the more minor flaws.

That's a reason for complaint. For a company that takes such pride in calling themselves the market leader to think that a product with the track record that 'Fine'cast has is something that they should have kept selling is just ludicrous, and GW's customers should take every opportunity to point that out to them. Because otherwise, you run the risk of GW deciding that this level of quality is actually in some way acceptable.

I'm not sure why "Finecast just sucks" would not be considered a legitimate complaint