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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/11 23:21:46
Subject: Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Regular Dakkanaut
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I don't really see the loss of the plastics as a big deal since 90% of the line was gonna be resin anyway. (since only the basic troops in the starters were going to be plastic, 1 set from each faction.)
So to complain about getting a shedload of resin, is kinda unrealistic since you were probably getting a shedload before. That is unless all you were ordering were the plastic squads for your army, then I can at least understand the complaint.
As for the boutique collectors series comment, most of the Warzone models are cheaper in cost than other companies resins. If you like Warzone you buy Warzone resin models. Sure resin is possibly toxic, but so is metal that is the mainstay of the wargaming industry.
I have a few prerelease models from Prodos, and they are neither brittle or difficult to clean up. The quality of the resin castings is amazing.
With the quality of the sculpts and the solid state of the game Warzone Resurrection should do just fine.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/12 02:37:39
Subject: Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Confident Marauder Chieftain
The Frozen wastes
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The thing is that previously it looked like a "we start at resin and will be moving towards plastic in time", but now it seems we may never get plastics, and that's sad because injection mold plastics while more expensive (especially to do well) is a far superior technology for miniatures casting.
Sorry resin fans but resin is only better if you can't afford good injection molds. While I understand that prodos might have this issue right now I'm hoping that we will in time see a shift to plastic in coming years. The more companies that do plastic the more money there is in developing way to create better and cheaper injection molds and one day we might be able to say our final goodbyes to resin.
Resin is all good and well when casting things in your garage but I don't see it as a long term commercially viable alternative.
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This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2013/08/12 02:44:54
Cheers
TheDungen |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/12 04:14:06
Subject: Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Stone Bonkers Fabricator General
We'll find out soon enough eh.
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TheDungen wrote:The thing is that previously it looked like a "we start at resin and will be moving towards plastic in time", but now it seems we may never get plastics, and that's sad because injection mold plastics while more expensive (especially to do well) is a far superior technology for miniatures casting.
Sorry resin fans but resin is only better if you can't afford good injection molds. While I understand that prodos might have this issue right now I'm hoping that we will in time see a shift to plastic in coming years. The more companies that do plastic the more money there is in developing way to create better and cheaper injection molds and one day we might be able to say our final goodbyes to resin.
Resin is all good and well when casting things in your garage but I don't see it as a long term commercially viable alternative.
Why would we want to say goodbye to a superior material? Resin holds more detail than plastic, fact. Even the latest slide-core tooled moulding tech isn't capable of matching well-cast resin. As for "casting things in your garage", Forgeworld and the many other successful commercial enterprises which cast exclusively in resin would probably have something to say about that.
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I need to acquire plastic Skavenslaves, can you help?
I have a blog now, evidently. Featuring the Alternative Mordheim Model Megalist.
"Your society's broken, so who should we blame? Should we blame the rich, powerful people who caused it? No, lets blame the people with no power and no money and those immigrants who don't even have the vote. Yea, it must be their fething fault." - Iain M Banks
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"The language of modern British politics is meant to sound benign. But words do not mean what they seem to mean. 'Reform' actually means 'cut' or 'end'. 'Flexibility' really means 'exploit'. 'Prudence' really means 'don't invest'. And 'efficient'? That means whatever you want it to mean, usually 'cut'. All really mean 'keep wages low for the masses, taxes low for the rich, profits high for the corporations, and accept the decline in public services and amenities this will cause'." - Robin McAlpine from Common Weal |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/12 06:18:22
Subject: Re:Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Hauptmann
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I think people misunderstand what kind of resin is getting used here. We're not looking at brittle Spartan/Forgeworld stuff but rather flexible resin plastic ala Privateer Press, Mantic and many others. A while back on FBI they showed of the material by bending Mitch's sword. No snapping, the material is not brittle.
The current spate of plastic resin has been a huge boon to the industry and has finally given us a true replacement to white metal without the expense and loss of detail of polystyrene nor the brittleness of traditional resin. Flexible, easy to work with, light and capable of holding great detail; well done polystyrene is nice if you can afford it, but plastic resins can perform the same task with better detail and less cost. The only downside is that plastic cement doesn't work on it. Not really a huge downside.
Given the choice, not eating the whole budget and delaying things for more months just to get lower quality sculpts is the kind of thing that would likely kill a small company like Prodos. Not shooting themselves in the foot just to tick off a stretch goal is a better plan. Plastics may come down the line, but priority number one is getting those starter sets ready. I think they made the right choice, and better yet, were very communicative about the possibility. We already knew plastics depended on the quality at the end of the day. They didn't get the quality they wanted for the costs they would incur, so going in house was the better plan.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/12 07:33:57
Subject: Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Legendary Master of the Chapter
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I thought they just said that there wouldn't even be restic or any kind of plastic. In other words, it won't be the flexible stuff.
Oh, and as someone who never got into Warzone back in the day (like 95% or so of the market this Warzone edition wants to reach, right?), I have no loyalty to the name. I came here for cool sculpts in a material I am willing to use. Plastic troops would sell beyond the limited pool of Warzone players, and I would certainly count myself in that category. Resin models won't appeal to nearly as many people.
Mantic, WGF, Wyrd, Dreamforge and more companies are releasing real, viable plastic troops that look good. After dealing with restic and resin and metal until I was sick of it all, I now know I can just wait until someone comes out with real plastics that will fill whatever niche these resins are aiming for, and the plastics will be worth my time.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/12 09:01:04
Subject: Re:Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Watches History Channel
Kenilworth, Warwickshire, UK
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Hi there Bobtheinquisitor,
I can understand your worries, but they are completely unnecessary.
I am actually one of the manufacturing and design team at Prodos Games and we have worked incredibly hard to ensure the customer gets naught but the best quality in miniatures, game rules and supporting materials. We have been disappointed with the quality of many miniatures from other companies and now endeavour to ensure that our models do not suffer the same problems. We find it strange that the 3 most successful companies in the industry are using less than top quality materials and methods to make their models.
Restic is actually a nothing word. It's a way of describing a material that shares properties of 2 common materials, but it is actually a completely different type of Plastic (all resins are plastics).
Our resin is high quality, non-toxic (unless sanded down, like all resins), easy to clean up and has no bubbles. This is due to the chemicals used and the process used too. The resin is also very hard-wearing. Jarek actually posted up a picture of him bending Mitch Hunter's sword around to over 90 degrees. No damage was caused and due to the 'memory' of the material, it eventually bent back. You can encourage this by heating it up as usual.
If you received a batch of plastics, you would be very disappointed. I am a bit fan of Wyrd Miniatures and their Malifaux line. Comparing their plastics to metals, the plastics are much smoother, the detail is slightly lacking, but they are still beautiful models. This is because they have been sculpted for purpose rather than ours, which really push the boundaries of miniature design, but require a finer material (in this case, resin) to be made. If we do make plastics, the renders will have to change and I would imagine that is a possibility in the future. However, for the time-being, we prefer to keep production in house with strict quality control.
Thanks for your concerns, and I hope that clears those up a little!
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/12 10:31:55
Subject: Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Confident Marauder Chieftain
The Frozen wastes
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Because the limitations of resin is material based while plastic is process based With the proper process you can make any material do anything (any material can hold any amount of detail), so yeah plastic can hold the same amount of detail as resin and not have any of the drawbacks it's just a matter of how to make it do that.
As for injection molds the more pressure you can safely apply the more detail you'll get out of it (or the more detail you can put in the mold without suffering miscasts). Again that means that the molds and the process will be more expensive and I can understand many of the smaller companies going resin for this reason but don't give me the crap about it being superior because it's not.
Look I get that your plastics experiment didn't go well and that you just don't have the finance or time to make another attempt on that right now, but why not say that? The miniatures Jarek showed in that video has nothing to do with the limitations of plastic, but they are an example of a product I understand you do not feel comfortable to release to you consumers. I'm not arguing your decision I'm arguing the people saying resin has some inherent quality of being better, sorry guys but things that are mainstream are not worse because they are mainstream they are better because otherwise they would never have become mainstream. At least when it comes to industrial issues.
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This message was edited 6 times. Last update was at 2013/08/12 10:57:55
Cheers
TheDungen |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/12 11:12:49
Subject: Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Wraith
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Wasn't most of this stuff supposed to be in resin anyway?
Also, poisonous? Really? We're not working with a cyanide based resin here. It's resin. Same working protocols as any other resin.
Rather confused by the uproar.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/12 11:28:57
Subject: Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Confident Marauder Chieftain
The Frozen wastes
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what uproar? There's one guy complaining and me arguing the guys who says resin is better by definition. Poisonous isn't the right word, toxic is the right word. Though not nearly as bad for us as for the people making it I admit. (poisons are consumed, toxics are all things that are... dangerous)
Prodos was faced with a decision to make, either scrap the entire would be plastic range and start anew with models intended for plastic, or go resin. One can argue if they think they made the right decision, but sometimes it' not about making the right decision, sometimes you just have to make a decision, and accept whatever consequences come with it.
Some people like me will be disappointed at first but realise it was the only viable decision, other will be mad. That's the consequences of this course of action. The alternative would be delaying the range further, something that at this point is unacceptable from Prodos' point of view, because not only will they hurt customer loyalty way more that way, they are also spending money as of now and while they do have the kickstarter funds, that cover a pretty small portion of the costs they have, they need to get their models out there and have their investments starting to make a return profit, or their venture is going to fail.
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This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2013/08/12 11:34:52
Cheers
TheDungen |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/12 14:40:11
Subject: Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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The New Miss Macross!
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Just please do not call the resin that you use "plastic" despite the chemically correct nomenclature but rather use some other descriptor (like resin) to avoid confusion. It's been an industry standard for model making to use "plastic" without any additional descriptors to refer to polystyrene plastic that is compatible with "plastic" (again, no additional adjectives/descriptors) glue. I fully support your decision to use whatever material you think is best to retain the detail (as long as your QA process is better than GW's!) but I hope you will avoid the easy confusion that Mantic keeps generating by switching the model making industry standard nomenclature.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/12 14:59:26
Subject: Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Watches History Channel
Kenilworth, Warwickshire, UK
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For us, resin is what the industry recognises as resin, plastic is styrene plastic (e.g. Wyrd, Wargames Factory, Dreamforge).
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Join Panzerfauste on Kickstarter!
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/12 15:14:36
Subject: Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Stone Bonkers Fabricator General
We'll find out soon enough eh.
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TheDungen wrote:Because the limitations of resin is material based while plastic is process based With the proper process you can make any material do anything (any material can hold any amount of detail), so yeah plastic can hold the same amount of detail as resin and not have any of the drawbacks it's just a matter of how to make it do that.
As for injection molds the more pressure you can safely apply the more detail you'll get out of it (or the more detail you can put in the mold without suffering miscasts). Again that means that the molds and the process will be more expensive and I can understand many of the smaller companies going resin for this reason but don't give me the crap about it being superior because it's not.
Look I get that your plastics experiment didn't go well and that you just don't have the finance or time to make another attempt on that right now, but why not say that? The miniatures Jarek showed in that video has nothing to do with the limitations of plastic, but they are an example of a product I understand you do not feel comfortable to release to you consumers. I'm not arguing your decision I'm arguing the people saying resin has some inherent quality of being better, sorry guys but things that are mainstream are not worse because they are mainstream they are better because otherwise they would never have become mainstream. At least when it comes to industrial issues.
Would you care to show us some examples of this mythical plastics casting technology that can produce miniatures with the detailing and undercuts possible in resin that nobody but you appears to have seen? We get it, plastic is nice and easy to stick together, but for advanced modellers it simply isn't a superior material. Further, it's been pointed out to you -by one of the people making the models no less- that this is not hard-resin, it's not brittle, it doesn't break easily, and the only "disadvantage" it has compared to plastic is you have to use superglue to assemble it.
As for "mainstream"; rofl. Plastics technology is "mainstream" because of economies of scale mate, it has knob-all to do with quality. Injection-moulded plastic can produce acceptably detailed models much cheaper than resin if you're going to be working in high enough volumes, and THAT is why it sees widespread use; it's easy to put together, and it's cheap to make. If it wasn't cheap for the companies who use it, nobody in miniature modelling would even have heard of injection-moulded plastic, let alone be peddling the laughably incorrect argument that it's capable of better detail reproduction than resin.
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I need to acquire plastic Skavenslaves, can you help?
I have a blog now, evidently. Featuring the Alternative Mordheim Model Megalist.
"Your society's broken, so who should we blame? Should we blame the rich, powerful people who caused it? No, lets blame the people with no power and no money and those immigrants who don't even have the vote. Yea, it must be their fething fault." - Iain M Banks
-----
"The language of modern British politics is meant to sound benign. But words do not mean what they seem to mean. 'Reform' actually means 'cut' or 'end'. 'Flexibility' really means 'exploit'. 'Prudence' really means 'don't invest'. And 'efficient'? That means whatever you want it to mean, usually 'cut'. All really mean 'keep wages low for the masses, taxes low for the rich, profits high for the corporations, and accept the decline in public services and amenities this will cause'." - Robin McAlpine from Common Weal |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/13 22:35:15
Subject: Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Confident Marauder Chieftain
The Frozen wastes
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It's still toxic and still melts from heat, and yeah if plastic's cheaper that's and advantage to the company and by extension a benefit to me. I'm not a advanced modeller and while I can agree that the plastics that jarek showed in the video wasn't good enough for release the plastics that other companies say the market's currently dominating company produce is by far sufficient for me. I don't like to much details, they make it hard to convert and make the models truly your own, if there are to be details I prefer adding them myself. The only exception being when it comes to faces, there I'll agree resin is wonderful. As for what 'can' be done it's the simple technological universal truth that nothing is impossible it's just a matter of knowing how to do it. While all resin's as far as i know at this point all has at least one of the following problems, brittle, melts, air bubbles or toxic. prodos resin for an example is still toxic and from what I gather the heat problem (unless you would like to contradict me there rob?) while finecast still has air bubbles, melts and to some extend brittle. Now prove to me that it's 'impossible for plastic to be as detailed as resin, does plastic somehow change it's form after you take it out of the molds? Or is it just matter of getting the plastic to fully fill the mold? an issue that may have yet to be solved but will be solved as will all technological issues. The 'value' of a material is determined by it's properties not what you can do with it, that only determines the 'value' of the process. So while casting resin may today be a superior process in the regard of detail, it only proves that and nothing else (and the cheaper manufacturing cost of plastic is still an advantage of process rather than material). The properties of the material is still inferior. That is until they come up with a formula that has all the material benefits of plastic (or rather none of the drawbacks of resin) it'll still be inferior. Now I could be wrong it's possible they figure out the ultimate resin before they figure out the ultimate injection mold but since the ultimate resin won't cut costs much for the company (it would still have the process drawback of being more expensive to manufacture) while the ultimate injection mold will (since no more resin miniatures will have to be produced for any reason if that happens) do so, the ultimate injection mold seems like the likelier technological advancement at this point. Of course both technologies will in time be replaced. Such is the nature of progress. I can't wait to see what that'll be. Anyway my point stands a future without resin minis is a lot likelier than one without plastic miniatures.
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This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2013/08/13 22:46:42
Cheers
TheDungen |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/13 23:42:52
Subject: Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Longtime Dakkanaut
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I hope that it is easy to clean up. The Privateer and Mantic stuff can be a pain.
I have nothing against resin. You can cast stunning models in it. I am just surprised that the company did not choose plastic. It is so much cheaper to produce minis in plastic. I think that low cost sci-fi minis would sell very well. Some company will eventually get around to it.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/13 23:54:54
Subject: Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Lit By the Flames of Prospero
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spaceelf wrote:I hope that it is easy to clean up. The Privateer and Mantic stuff can be a pain.
I have nothing against resin. You can cast stunning models in it. I am just surprised that the company did not choose plastic. It is so much cheaper to produce minis in plastic. I think that low cost sci-fi minis would sell very well. Some company will eventually get around to it.
The bassic troops for every faction that come in starter boxs are plastic. It would be nice if everything was plastic but plastic molds dont come cheap.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/14 02:29:08
Subject: Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Regular Dakkanaut
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You gotta love the armchair miniature makers and chemists. Polystyrene is a thermoplastic, meaning you have to heat it up to a fairly high temperature to inject it into a mold. Even when heated it's still pretty viscous, but the pressure injection mostly makes up for it. Most of the detail loss comes from the cooling process, which causes shrinkage and a loss of detail. You can't "try harder" to change those properties. If you change those properties you get a different plastic.
When this hobby revolves around converting and painting small detailed miniatures, a substance that gives better detail IS a better product. I welcome the change to all resin and applaud Prodos for exercising quality control rather than shipping out sub-par products, unlike what other companies have done.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/14 02:44:47
Subject: Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Battleship Captain
The Land of the Rising Sun
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My experience with resin figures falls either on brittle ones or huge blocks hard to work with so I'm not that happy but I very much prefer the resin figures PRODOS has shown than the plastic prototype of FB.
As long as the figures are easy to clean and paint (and so far the pictures posted seem so) I'll be happy with PRODOS' decision.
M.
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Jenkins: You don't have jurisdiction here!
Smith Jamison: We aren't here, which means when we open up on you and shred your bodies with automatic fire then this will never have happened.
About the Clans: "Those brief outbursts of sense can't hold back the wave of sibko bred, over hormoned sociopaths that they crank out though." |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/14 03:25:19
Subject: Re:Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Hauptmann
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carboncopy wrote:You gotta love the armchair miniature makers and chemists. Polystyrene is a thermoplastic, meaning you have to heat it up to a fairly high temperature to inject it into a mold. Even when heated it's still pretty viscous, but the pressure injection mostly makes up for it. Most of the detail loss comes from the cooling process, which causes shrinkage and a loss of detail. You can't "try harder" to change those properties. If you change those properties you get a different plastic.
When this hobby revolves around converting and painting small detailed miniatures, a substance that gives better detail IS a better product. I welcome the change to all resin and applaud Prodos for exercising quality control rather than shipping out sub-par products, unlike what other companies have done.
Not to mention that when people talk about the top-tier plastics, they are talking about offerings from companies like Bandai or other model kit makers. Bandai usually pulls in $4 BILLION a year. Compare that to GW's $130 million and, well... people often fail to realize how piddly the TTG industry is.
Even getting aside the cooling issues in terms of detail retention, solving "engineering" issues like undercuts (which requires really complex sprues to "simulate" the same kind of thing you can just do in standard two-piece moulds for metals and resins) requires capital 'M' Money. This is the kind of thing GW is only starting to dive in to despite likely making more than twice (note: number pulled from arse... actual number probably more lopsided) what their nearest competitor does (and note, their nearest competitor barely even touches injection moulding).
Ubiquitous and cheap injection moulding for the tabletop industry is at least a decade off (though way more common now than it was 10-20 years ago). Commonly finding it move in-house for a producer is probably even further off (more than 10 less than 20, maybe). Doing it on the level of model kit creators is probably further off still (if it ever occurs... which it probably wont).
Plastics in the tabletop industry have come a long way, but for most companies, they are just not feasible. Resin is cheap to produce, can be made in forms that don't require sanding (the only thing that makes it toxic due to the small fibres in play), can be made incredibly flexible and heat resistant enough that those of us living in areas with summers in the 30-40 degrees Celsius range wont find a droopy miniature in our car (which seems to be a unique problem for Finecast in my experience). Plastic only starts becoming a better option if you expect to be able to shift tens of thousands of boxes each year (or at least take in steady enough sales that it will eventually pay for itself).
I'm sure one day we will have a process to create plastic minis that bond with plastic cement (or some equivalent made for the material), have perfect detail retention and undercuts... But it wont be GW (or any other tabletop gaming company) that finds it out. It will be R&D for a company that pulls in billions a year, and it will take decades to trickle down to a niche hobby of a niche hobby (if it even ever does).
As reality currently stands, plastic minis don't have the detail retention of resin or metal, they can't do undercuts in one piece and their moulds are a great deal more expensive than for any other material available. To make the savings in terms of material feasible you need to be able to generate tons of sales off a given plastic kit in order to turn a profit off of it. Polystyrene is a great material that is easy to work with, but for the most part its upsides don't really come in to it at the scale most miniature games produce at. And the current downsides (less detail, no undercuts, huge start up cost) make it a hard sell at this point.
The costs need to come down to the point where a producer can bring it in-house (and thus cut out the problem of delays and QC issues by contracting out to a third party) before it becomes standard. For now, it remains the realm of the big boys who can either do it on their own, or eat the potential delays of contracting it out.
In the end Prodos could have chosen to stick with plastics. This would likely set them behind (always bad for a brand new company) because they would have to re-design the minis and then wait for a slot to open up in Renedra's schedule (which has never EVER been an issue in the past  ). This would have likely created losses because the components they are waiting for are integral to central items like the starter sets (meaning they could not release other bits ahead of time and wait it out). So now Prodos would be further behind schedule and would have likely eaten through more KS money. The end result would be a product that was a lower quality than originally intended.
As a backer, I am sad to see plastics wont be on the books, but I'd prefer Prodos release the product up to their quality standards and in a timely fashion rather than eat through money in order to give us a product that is less than they intended. The bright side here is that we will probably start seeing orders get to people in September (maybe even late, late August) which, by KS standards is a damn good show for a new company in terms of the level of scope creep they experienced.
In either case, I have to congratulate Prodos. This hasn't been the perfect KS, but out of all the Kickstarter campaigns I have been involved in, this one takes the cake for communication. I have never once felt out of the loop or like they were hiding info from me. They always responded to comments and criticism (even when it was loud and thick). It may not have had the flash of the CMON or Mantic campaigns (few do), but I always felt like I knew what my money was doing and where it was going. In the end, this has made their decision to drop plastic really easy to handle. So congrats Prodos, for a first showing, you guys did good.
Now get this thing on to the market so that it can start making you money!
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This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2013/08/14 03:25:51
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/14 03:46:32
Subject: Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Lit By the Flames of Prospero
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carboncopy wrote:You gotta love the armchair miniature makers and chemists. Polystyrene is a thermoplastic, meaning you have to heat it up to a fairly high temperature to inject it into a mold. Even when heated it's still pretty viscous, but the pressure injection mostly makes up for it. Most of the detail loss comes from the cooling process, which causes shrinkage and a loss of detail. You can't "try harder" to change those properties. If you change those properties you get a different plastic.
When this hobby revolves around converting and painting small detailed miniatures, a substance that gives better detail IS a better product. I welcome the change to all resin and applaud Prodos for exercising quality control rather than shipping out sub-par products, unlike what other companies have done.
So wait... Are the bassic troops not plastic anymore?
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/14 05:04:15
Subject: Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Hauptmann
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Lockark wrote:carboncopy wrote:You gotta love the armchair miniature makers and chemists. Polystyrene is a thermoplastic, meaning you have to heat it up to a fairly high temperature to inject it into a mold. Even when heated it's still pretty viscous, but the pressure injection mostly makes up for it. Most of the detail loss comes from the cooling process, which causes shrinkage and a loss of detail. You can't "try harder" to change those properties. If you change those properties you get a different plastic.
When this hobby revolves around converting and painting small detailed miniatures, a substance that gives better detail IS a better product. I welcome the change to all resin and applaud Prodos for exercising quality control rather than shipping out sub-par products, unlike what other companies have done.
So wait... Are the bassic troops not plastic anymore?
Nope, as per the latest update (and discussed in a previous one when they gave us the timeline). Basically, plastics proved to be too much of a dip in quality to justify the extra costs involved (in terms of both moulds and in terms of having to re-design the original troops for the new material). This was the common concern brought up during the KS (alongside it creating delays because it couldn't be done in-house) since it is rare to be able to get the same level of detail on to plastic as you can on resin.
Turns out that those concerned with the material change were correct in the end.
That said, the resin being used seems to be quite nice. And I say this as someone who was a bit leery that we would be getting rigid/brittle resin ala Spartan and Forge World.
Above is a picture of Mitch's sword being bent back in on itself. So definitely flexible enough to handled a bit of wear and tear. Looks to be more along the lines of Mantic's restic or whatever the hell Privateer Press use (or like Finecast without the swiss cheese issues; at least I haven't seen any air-bubble problems in the factory photos  ).
But for the time being polystyrene is out because of various issues that would have derailed things. 'Tis sad, but it means we will likely be getting what we pledged for sooner and at the quality level we saw in the renders.
Hopefully this isn't a dealbreaker for many. But in either case, I'm glad Prodos were so open about a choice this difficult. But who knows, if things go well it could certainly happen in the future (once they actually have product on the market and can start gauging post- KS interest levels and demand).
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/14 07:49:02
Subject: Re:Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Lit By the Flames of Prospero
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Ah. I guess I just accepted the lose in qualitiy was just going to be a trade off for plastic, and never realy thought it was that much of a surprise in all honesty. I didn't even realize that was as big a issue in all honesty untill now.
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This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2013/08/14 07:50:14
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/14 10:42:15
Subject: Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Longtime Dakkanaut
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I understand that plastic injection molds are expensive. However, in the long run they really pay off. Plenty of miniature companies have them, even some that are run out of garages. Look at all of the historical plastics. I think that the only reason there is a lack of plastics in TTWG is the lack of vision of the companies.
I just figured that the purpose of the kick starter was to fund the injection molds. Regular silicone molds and resin are relatively inexpensive to produce. A kick starter would not really be needed.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/14 11:15:22
Subject: Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Wraith
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spaceelf wrote:I understand that plastic injection molds are expensive. However, in the long run they really pay off. Plenty of miniature companies have them, even some that are run out of garages. Look at all of the historical plastics. I think that the only reason there is a lack of plastics in TTWG is the lack of vision of the companies.
I just figured that the purpose of the kick starter was to fund the injection molds. Regular silicone molds and resin are relatively inexpensive to produce. A kick starter would not really be needed.
Lack of vision? What about lack of quality? Y'know, as was stated by the company?
Besides, all those renders and rule books designed and shipped themselves for free, after all guys...
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/14 11:32:21
Subject: Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Longtime Dakkanaut
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gunslingerpro wrote: spaceelf wrote:I understand that plastic injection molds are expensive. However, in the long run they really pay off. Plenty of miniature companies have them, even some that are run out of garages. Look at all of the historical plastics. I think that the only reason there is a lack of plastics in TTWG is the lack of vision of the companies.
I just figured that the purpose of the kick starter was to fund the injection molds. Regular silicone molds and resin are relatively inexpensive to produce. A kick starter would not really be needed.
Lack of vision? What about lack of quality? Y'know, as was stated by the company?
Besides, all those renders and rule books designed and shipped themselves for free, after all guys...
Yup, lack of vision. Paper books the way of the future.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/17 15:47:50
Subject: Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Confident Marauder Chieftain
The Frozen wastes
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There are costs of concepts renders, and so on too. As pointed out earlier plastic is much easier to run a profit on so if it was economically viable for prodos to go plastic i think they would have. It's not like they're hogging the kickstarter money, starting a project costs a lot more then what they got in the kickstarter and unless they use that money as efficiently as possible their venture isn't going to succeed. And there is no reason that failing would be in their best interest so I think you can safely assume that they needed the kickstarter. welcome to the wonderful world of capitalism where you can trust people to do what is most likely to return investment (and if you ask me that's a good thing, it means logic and facts are in charge)
carboncopy wrote:You gotta love the armchair miniature makers and chemists. Polystyrene is a thermoplastic, meaning you have to heat it up to a fairly high temperature to inject it into a mold. Even when heated it's still pretty viscous, but the pressure injection mostly makes up for it. Most of the detail loss comes from the cooling process, which causes shrinkage and a loss of detail. You can't "try harder" to change those properties. If you change those properties you get a different plastic.
When this hobby revolves around converting and painting small detailed miniatures, a substance that gives better detail IS a better product. I welcome the change to all resin and applaud Prodos for exercising quality control rather than shipping out sub-par products, unlike what other companies have done.
Really? Well I'll freely admit I'm neither miniatures maker nor chemist, I prefer working on plastic and I prefer my science to be physics. I still dont believe in the long term viability of resin, but if this is true then it's unlikely it'll ever be totally replaces by styrene, but rather by other solutions in the future.
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This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2013/08/17 15:55:49
Cheers
TheDungen |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/17 16:10:30
Subject: Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Battleship Captain
The Land of the Rising Sun
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Lovely Hatamoto renders online now. Everybody go and write how awesome are the masked helmets so Prodos doesn't have other option but to give us more!
M.
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Jenkins: You don't have jurisdiction here!
Smith Jamison: We aren't here, which means when we open up on you and shred your bodies with automatic fire then this will never have happened.
About the Clans: "Those brief outbursts of sense can't hold back the wave of sibko bred, over hormoned sociopaths that they crank out though." |
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/17 17:10:06
Subject: Re:Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Regular Dakkanaut
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Hatamoto Render:
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Tatsamoto KS Exclusive Figure and Friends:
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/17 19:45:47
Subject: Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Thermo-Optical Tuareg
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I've been waiting to see that Hatamoto render. They look pretty good. I'm a little disappointed to see that they've lost the sleek, high-tech facemasks in favor of more traditional looking ones, but other than that, I like what I see.
I also thought those Capitol Heavy Infantry were going to turn out being bulkier. They don't look much heavier than a regular soldier.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/17 20:07:23
Subject: Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Longtime Dakkanaut
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I don't want to know what happened to that Juggernaut. But the Hatamoto look nice.
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![[Post New]](/s/i/i.gif) 2013/08/17 20:41:20
Subject: Re:Mutant Chronicles (R) Warzone Resurrection
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Plastictrees
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What's happening with the guy on the right? There isn't a human under that armour, right? There's some serious terminator issues with all the heavy armour renders they've shown.
Some pretty dramatic head size differences in that one pic as well, even allowing for perspective.
Still wish I'd kept my pledge in on this though, but I have a terrble problem.
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