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In your opinion, which is the best support for painting : the old one metal, the classic "grey" plastic, or the new resin used for finecast ?

I must admit that I am quite impressed by the quality of the figurines in "basic plastique" : khorne bloodcrushers, Kranon, tyranids figs... are just some example of high quality figurines. I know that some people are still in love with metal one, but I would be intersted in your opinion about finecast : do you think they are really better than the others, do the price worth it ?

Plastic all the way for me.

Plastic or metal, but I prefer plastic. Finecast is too fiddely for me I find, in handling it and also in painting it.

I like metal because it's easier to strip (meaning I can soak it in the super strong stuff with no worries)

Looks like nobody love the finecast. I think they are not easy to prepare for painting, and they are really expensive. I am sure GW could sell more of their "special" models if they made them in plastic instead of resine.

 meecham63 wrote:
Looks like nobody love the finecast. I think they are not easy to prepare for painting, and they are really expensive. I am sure GW could sell more of their "special" models if they made them in plastic instead of resin.

I have no idea why they are more expensive, the material they are made out of is really cheap, there is no difference i can see between a metal model and its finecast molded model, and they dont paint any easier at all IMO.

I really do not know why GW dont just go ALL plastic, their latest plastic stuff is really very good, I enjoy painting them so would now have to say plastic is my favourite, it used to be metal. I still like my metal models and thankfully i still have a fair few metal models waiting to go into my various armies, although i did "lose" a fair few (TWOP'd) there is something nice and comforting about painting and playing with a solid metal model.

Plastic, for me. It's by far the easiest material to work with when prepping models and the most resilient (barring stripping, in which case metal wins) when finished, thanks to its slight spring and reasonable strength with very little associated weight (topple a plastic model and it skitters to a stop, perhaps with a slight chip; drop a metal model and it's chipped, bent out of shape, and there's probably now a small crater in your table/floor).

There's something to be said for resin and metal, certainly (haven't gotten a finecast model, to date), but my painting and modeling skills aren't sufficient for me to try tackling many of the types of models that really take advantage of the materials.

Regarding GW going all plastic, if I'm not mistaken, the issue is in the tooling costs. Injection molded plastic kits require very expensive steel molds to be tooled, whereas metal or resin molds are significantly cheaper/easier to produce, even considering their limited lifespan. It doesn't make sense, financially, to produce molds for plastic if they don't expect serious sales volume, hence the availability of plastic troops, vehicles, etc. but few characters. They seem to be expanding on that front, though, from what I've heard.