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hey dakka, GW makes minis out of three materials (as you know), two or which are fine cast and metal.

which one do you prefer more? Obviously plastic is basically better, but leave that option our of here.

Metal. Because never with Metal did I have to open up my Greenstuff and re-sculpt half the damn kit only to find that I had missed a rather obscure air bubble when I came to paint it.

Honestly I'd rather not work with either ever but out of those two, definitely metal.

Really? I finally thought the Finecast debate was finished with. Why bring it up now that GW doesn't sell in metal or Finecast as much anymore now.

I was just curious as to the communities opinion.

I wouldn't have had a problem with resin replacing metal if it had been done well.

'Fine'cast was not done well.

 insaniak wrote:
I wouldn't have had a problem with resin replacing metal if it had been done well.

'Fine'cast was not done well.

So much this. As annoying as metal is to work with (still got a metal Hive Tyrant that needs work with pinning/getting parts for but is relatively in one piece) it's nowhere near as bad as the cheap resin they used (not touched my resin Zoanthrope with a bargepole since it snapped...and snapped...and snapped).

Finecast with its "realistic battle damage" snd super frailty was unacceptably bad.

Finecast is horrible. Jesus, my Havocs didn't have detail as much as they had bumps.

Davor wrote:
Really? I finally thought the Finecast debate was finished with. Why bring it up now that GW doesn't sell in metal or Finecast as much anymore now.

Some models are still metal.

I'd rather work with Finecast than pewter minis. Pewter is impossible to fiddle with, at least Finecast can be cut apart and drilled easily.

And Finecast too.
I think what he might be thinking of is that they don't release new models in anything but plastic anymore.

Hate to say it, but I prefer finecast.

Now, firstly, let me justify that by saying that finecast (also known as finecrap or fineca$h) was bloody awful. It's perpetually bent, it breaks if you so much as cough in its general direction, it comes with an excessive amount of sprue, it's often difficult to tell apart from the sprue, and often snaps when you try to remove it from said sprue. Oh, and to top it all off it somehow ended up costing even more than metal. Also, it had a really pretentious name.

So, what on earth could I possibly like about finecast to prefer it to metal?

Well:

1) I can cut/trim it without industrial cutting tools. One advantage of being soft is that it's also very easy to cut, meaning I can easily do conversions and such. Metal, meanwhile, is a bastard to work with.

2) Finecast is easier to glue. Admittedly, you're in trouble if you ever want to separate the pieces (since glue is considerably tougher than finecast). But, the ease with which pieces can be trimmed/modified combined with its lightness means that it's a lot easier to stick models together.

3) Finecast takes paint much, much better. Scratches on models are something that irritate me no end (I dislike painting at the best of times), and they occur on virtually all my metal models. It seems I have to literally smother them in varnish the instant I finish painting them, otherwise the air itself will chap paint off them overnight. In contrast, whilst I've had many issues with finecast, scratching has never been one of them.

I'm probably just strange, but I find that these benefits make finecast more appealing to me than metal.

However, I still retain the right to complain when Trazyn the Infinite's staff brakes after falling all of 2 feet onto carpeted floor. Or when a spike/blades bends or breaks when I try to remove the damn thing from the 47000 bits of sprue attached to it.

Dislike both, but I had rather a hard time with metal mini's. Never liked it, my paint jobs were worse than usual, and very clunky. GW has such an awesome product with the plastic they currently do.

 vipoid wrote:
Hate to say it, but I prefer finecast.

I agree. Finecast is pretty bad, but I still prefer it to pewter. I always had the metal models falling apart, and I've never learned how to pin (mostly because until recently I never had the tools). I remember holding the legs and torso of my 3rd edition Hive Tyrant for 2 hours just to wait for the glue to form the proper bond, or slicing my knife through metal and glue under my thumbnail just to try and do the slightest modification to the model. Finest may be garbage - my Harlequin's swords are perpetually bent, but it's better than having paint chip off from placing the model on the table.

Pewter is better for small models. I'd rather have a metal space marine model than finecast- I'll have the pewter model for the rest of my life. It make look fairly terrible, but it'll last.

I love metal models, there's something about a Metal Daemon Prince and the weight of it that gets me excited. I hate finecast, Kharn the Betrayer took me about 35 minutes to assemble and it was wobbly as hell, only when I used super super glue would it stay stuck and I was reluctant to leave it to stick rather than adopt a bowlers grip on each glued component for 30 minutes.

Abaddon
Daemon Prince
Ahriman
30 Death Guard Plague Marines
18 Thousand Sons
These are all my metal models and they are just a thing of beauty

Also if an Eldar player gets all cheesey on you, you can always lob a pound of Daemon Prince at their head and claim a victory by TKO

 KillMaimBurn96 wrote:
I love metal models, there's something about a Metal Daemon Prince and the weight of it that gets me excited. I hate finecast, Kharn the Betrayer took me about 35 minutes to assemble and it was wobbly as hell, only when I used super super glue would it stay stuck and I was reluctant to leave it to stick rather than adopt a bowlers grip on each glued component for 30 minutes.

Abaddon
Daemon Prince
Ahriman
30 Death Guard Plague Marines
18 Thousand Sons
These are all my metal models and they are just a thing of beauty

Also if an Eldar player gets all cheesey on you, you can always lob a pound of Daemon Prince at their head and claim a victory by TKO

I suddenly got an image of Belakor pulling an RKO outta nowhere.

 Frozocrone wrote:

 KillMaimBurn96 wrote:
I love metal models, there's something about a Metal Daemon Prince and the weight of it that gets me excited. I hate finecast, Kharn the Betrayer took me about 35 minutes to assemble and it was wobbly as hell, only when I used super super glue would it stay stuck and I was reluctant to leave it to stick rather than adopt a bowlers grip on each glued component for 30 minutes.

Abaddon
Daemon Prince
Ahriman
30 Death Guard Plague Marines
18 Thousand Sons
These are all my metal models and they are just a thing of beauty

Also if an Eldar player gets all cheesey on you, you can always lob a pound of Daemon Prince at their head and claim a victory by TKO

I suddenly got an image of Belakor pulling an RKO outta nowhere.

Apocalypse Blast Plate AP1 S10

Metal gets my vote. Too many times I've found bits of my fine cast model missing and any time it gets bumped I'm worried that something thin will snap off.

Im not a huge fan of metal. But some of my favorite
Models are metal and they look amazing.

I quite enjoy metal. In fact I prefer it for character models than plastic. I enjoy real resin too, but not as much.

Finecast is literally the worst modeling material I have ever used.

My vote goes to fine-ass'd, I've only had to deal with two fincast models (Fateweaver and Be'lakor) and it is a real pain in the ass to deal with, metal takes forever because 1. I use jeweler's files to get rid of the moldlines which takes a while as you have to start at the highest and move down unless you want scratch marks, and 2. It takes a fething eternity to glue, I've used a clamp multiple times to hold a stupid arm in place and 3. With the really old metal models the holes don't match up 100%, which is why my 1998 flesh hounds have legs straight out of the exorcist (which too be fair looks pretty cool.)

I prefer metal. Like the weight ,lower price, greater durability and better casting [still not very good though] compared to its GW replacemant and the details don't seem much softer.

 jonolikespie wrote:


Finecast is literally the worst modeling material I have ever used.

I see you have never worked with Restic or MDF

Metal is my second favorite material after plastic, so I'm definitely choosing it. I have had nothing but negative experiences with Finecast. Even GW removed any mention of it from their website, and haven't produced any more in at least a year.

If i had to chose i would go finecast.

only because if both were equally bad casted then at least i can resculpt fine cast easier. also i prefer the finecast weight over heavy metal.

But this would require finecast to actually be done well (which iv had a few non issue ones. but way more bad ones)