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I love my finecast LOTR and Hobbit models, prefer them to metals.

Has anyone RECENTLY bought finecast? Has the quality improved any?

The introduction of finecast was the biggest mistake GW ever did, right next to blowing up the old world or stopping the support for lotr/hobbit. For a premium price they sold the worst quality miniatures on the market. Even the minis that weren't "converted" from metal to finecast but made in that stuff were bad, at least I can say that about the Easterlings I bought. Whenever I think about buying a mini and realize it's made in finecast the first thing I do is look up whether that mini has ever been produced in metal and if it was I'll rather search ebay for months than buying failcast. Because of that I still don't own an Epidemius, but oh well...

If we're talking about old sculpts that's a different topic altogether and very much comes down to personal taste. I'll say the old metal Typhus is still better than the new plastic one, but that's mainly because of the pose, as everything else has been ported over. The quality of GWs plastic minis has improved, if you compared the early metal lotr minis to their plastic counterparts there always was a difference in sculpting quality and details with metal being superior. Today I'd say that difference is very small and due to finecast plastic is more often than not superior due to no miscasts, smaller mould lines etc.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Has anyone RECENTLY bought finecast? Has the quality improved any?

Well I have weirdboy coming up "sometime"(FLGS sometimes get stuff quickly, sometime takes ages). We'll see how it goes.

I was out of the hobby by the time finecast came around, but buying finecast models now, the only ones I've really taken a dislike to are the Death Cult Assassins. All of the others have been OK, the DCA's swords were horribly out of shape and the tags from the sprue are in awkward as hell positions. I've not had one that's had air bubbles yet in a dozen or so clamshells.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Has anyone RECENTLY bought finecast? Has the quality improved any?

My Eisenhorn is pretty good quality.
Failcast quality also heavily depends on the sculpt. For instance I bought Farsight a couple years ago, and it was very far from perfect. The model has little fins, which tend to snap very easily (in metal they could bend easily, but you could bend them back, and in current plastic it would be way sturdier). Also, the mold has to go around the fins, so it's pretty tortuous. Because of that, they had to add many channels for the resin to flow, which means more cleaning, and sadly wasn't sufficient to prevent bubbles (I had quite a few, luckily easy to fix on flat panels).
Eisenhorn doesn't have as many protruding bits, and comes in 10 components, which is quite a lot for such a small model. As a result, it's much easier to cast, and I indeed got a bubble-free, warp-free cast.

My Eisenhorn was alright, but there are some annoying imperfections on it. I've managed to cover them up mostly, but I don't know how confident I would be actually putting him on the table.

Finecast sucks, and the sooner GW gets replaces their old lines with plastic, the sooner I'll start buying up aspect warriors to complete my Craftworld army (and until then, they'll be chilling with my Dark Eldar... shame I like Incubi).

 Fafnir wrote:
My Eisenhorn was alright, but there are some annoying imperfections on it. I've managed to cover them up mostly, but I don't know how confident I would be actually putting him on the table.

Finecast sucks, and the sooner GW gets replaces their old lines with plastic, the sooner I'll start buying up aspect warriors to complete my Craftworld army (and until then, they'll be chilling with my Dark Eldar... shame I like Incubi).

And the sooner you get price markups for individual models like heroes in plastic.

This is GW. Markups are going to happen no matter what. But if it means I'll actually get those models in the level of quality I desire, I'll pay it. I've paid it for everything else. It doesn't matter how little you pay for crap, it's still crap.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Has anyone RECENTLY bought finecast? Has the quality improved any?

I got the Iron Warrior Warpsmith last week. No casting issues, but then I’ve had no issue with the 10 or so FC models I bought since they started using the stuff.

There’s definitely an over reaction to the product even considering the poor rollout of it.

 Fafnir wrote:
This is GW. Markups are going to happen no matter what. But if it means I'll actually get those models in the level of quality I desire, I'll pay it. I've paid it for everything else. It doesn't matter how little you pay for crap, it's still crap.

But plastic by their nature sucks for making small print runs like characters.

And then comes question of is it still crap. None I have bought ever had anything of note. Generally have been even easier to assemble than plastic due to less parts. Seeing dissatisfied voices always gets out of proportion volume up and lots of complains seems to stem from start of the material rather than up to date...Well let's see I'm suspicious of all those claims. Buddha said to not trust anything you can't verify yourself. So far all my own verifications(ie buying models) has been 100% bubble etc free.

I preferred finecast to metal, because of chipping and ease of assembly. I didn't really get any bad casts personally of the few models I got in Finecast (Marneus and Honour Guard, a jump pack Chaplain, Terminator Librarian, a Skaven Warlord and Queek Headtaker), and I'm not exactly keen on my metal sculpts (hard to convert and kitbash, chipping paint).

Of course, I prefer plastic VASTLY over both, but I didn't hate finecast that much.

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:
I'm not talking about the materiel itself. I'm talking about the scultps models. Its mainly metal I'm talking about as failcast is just basically a lighter 'metal' as they have the same sculpts, I just prefer failcast as metal chipped all the time. I just said failcast because there wasn't any metal left, but the new models don't come close to the old ones in my opinion.

I think you'll not soon see sculpts like the old ones from GW. They're firmly a plastic company sculpting in CAD now, which has influenced their house style. Aside from the practicalities of the casting medium that shouldn't influence style, but I suspect the ease to copy and paste, a huge asset library and and output that surely impacts how much time the sculptors can spend on a model has led to what I see as sterile design that lacks adventurous departures from established design elements of a faction to give a character model some actual character.

 notprop wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Has anyone RECENTLY bought finecast? Has the quality improved any?

I got the Iron Warrior Warpsmith last week. No casting issues, but then I’ve had no issue with the 10 or so FC models I bought since they started using the stuff.

There’s definitely an over reaction to the product even considering the poor rollout of it.

I've bought a fair number of Finecast models soon after rollout and not a single one was even close to flawless. Second chances turned to third chances, turned to fourth, to fifth, because I hate metal and wanted GW's foray into resin casting to be good rather than the catastrophe it was. And make no mistake, shipping out so many flawed casts for the company that advertises itself as making the best models in the world was a catastrophe.

Calling it an overreaction is rewriting history, plain and simple. Now if you're talking about refusal to look at recently produced sculpts and perhaps reevaluating one's opinion (I have little issue with Veridyan, for instance - GW's resin models have definitely improved), that's another matter. Perfectly valid to reconsider whether one's grudge is still justified. But boy oh boy, it sure has been for the longest time.

I don't miss failcast it's crap quality resin 13 pence a gallon utterly unsuitable for casting things like staves and thin swords.

Good riddance.

I tried to attack this thread with my pile of Howling Banshees... they hit it well enough, but they failed to wound because they needed 7's to wound it. 6+ due to toughness, but -1 to wound rolls because of their floppy swords.

tneva82 wrote:

 Fafnir wrote:
This is GW. Markups are going to happen no matter what. But if it means I'll actually get those models in the level of quality I desire, I'll pay it. I've paid it for everything else. It doesn't matter how little you pay for crap, it's still crap.

But plastic by their nature sucks for making small print runs like characters.

And then comes question of is it still crap. None I have bought ever had anything of note. Generally have been even easier to assemble than plastic due to less parts. Seeing dissatisfied voices always gets out of proportion volume up and lots of complains seems to stem from start of the material rather than up to date...Well let's see I'm suspicious of all those claims. Buddha said to not trust anything you can't verify yourself. So far all my own verifications(ie buying models) has been 100% bubble etc free.

I've gotten an Eisenhorn and two Veridyans (the first one met an unfortunate accident) in the last year. All three have had some bubbling, and the floppy swords cannot be understated.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Has anyone RECENTLY bought finecast? Has the quality improved any?

It's usually a miss. My Sly Marbo finecast was pretty good.

I had to request a new Lelith Hesperax because several details were caked in excess resin, and her face had lots of defects on them.

The biggest issue I have had with finecast is Sammael. I don't understand how a multi-part kit like this can be justified as being a resin. In both the original purchase and the replacement I have had many issues. The original purchase had clear slips in the mold so I ended up with half of the bike being much lower than the other half, which in turn made it nearly impossible to super glue the armor plates/eagle covering to the bike hull. The ceremonial dagger at his hip was also completely missing. The plasma cannon was warped beyond belief, and the alignment between the footpads and the feet was completely off.

The replacement kit that arrived was slightly better but still had it's own issues. The ceremonial dagger was completely caked in resin and beyond fixing, the footpad alignment was still completely off and needed to be eased into place with a hairdryer, and the bike was still slightly off center both vertically and horizontally. Lots of hairdryer work just to get it slightly balanced. It's basically felt like a $50 DIY kit, made me question whether effort was worth it, and turned me off from the hobby for several months. That hunk of resin was the final straw.

I'd honestly like an answer as to why limited edition primaris captains are launched in full plastic molds, but Sammael and other rather complex multi-part kits are given the resin treatment. I'll probably never get an honest answer from GW, and it'll be some jargon about how they can't justify plastic molds for models that don't sell frequently, while models that are limited edition get....plastic molds?

I refuse to buy the stuff, but the dozen or so recent acquisitions by buddies are pretty "normal" for Finecast - they all have imperfections or issues.

Most guys are able to fix them with green stuff, but you couldn't get me to glance sideways at a Finecast model. Resin is my least favourite modeling material, even from competent companies (i.e. anyone other than GW and Forgeworld).

I own forgeworld and other 3rd party resin, but failcast is the nextlevel of garbage. Mate picked up necron destroyers recently and its failcast gun was in an s bend from the box FFS thats not even mold slip etc thats rediculous.
Time spent struggling to straighten it and I watched it warping as we are playing in like a 15-20c room ffs.
It needs to be purged for the heritical mistake it was.

I'd dropped out of the hobby by the time finecast launched, and came back in about 18 months ago. I'd heard all the horror stories about finecast by that point and determined that I was going to avoid it - under no circumstances was I ever going to own a finecast model. Which is a bit difficult given that my favourite 40k faction is Biel-Tan, but I've managed to build a decent sized Aspect Warrior collection through eBay, buying only the metal versions. I have ended up with one Finecast model - Eisenhorn - because I love the books and couldn't not buy the model. It's honestly not too bad, though he did feel worryingly flimsy as I was cleaning and assembling him. There were a few small air bubble issues, but a touch of Vallejo Plastic Putty solved those quickly enough. I haven't painted or gamed with him yet though, so long-term durability remains to be seen.

On the whole I definitely prefer plastic as a material, but I can see the attraction of a lot of the old sculpts. They often have more character than the newer ones. Using the Aspect Warriors as an interesting example, I've seen plenty of people who call for new plastic versions claiming that the existing ones are horribly dated. I'm quite happy with the aesthetic, I think they look fine. In fact I even prefer the 3rd edition spade-head Howling Banshees over the most recent ones. I'd love to see plastic versions - but I'd like them to look largely like the existing ones do. Though in the case of the Eldar that's possibly because Jes Goodwin's original design aesthetic for them still holds up great. The man has an eye for a timeless Eldar design. The Warlocks being a great example. Even the most recent ones are, what, mid-90s?

One of the main reasons I'd love plastic versions is that even though I don't mind metal, it can be annoying at times. I don't think I've ever chipped a metal model (lots of people seem to be claiming that they chip if you look at them funny), but I have had some accidents. Even recently I've been painting some metal swooping hawks, and from the squad of 10, 2 of them have taken a tumble to the carpet and due to the design and the weight of metal, they've landed on the base and bent over at the foot. I managed to bend one back upright without breaking, but the other one snapped off the base at the toes and I had to imrpovise a repair. Plastic would be so much easier!

 Motsie wrote:

I'd honestly like an answer as to why limited edition primaris captains are launched in full plastic molds, but Sammael and other rather complex multi-part kits are given the resin treatment. I'll probably never get an honest answer from GW, and it'll be some jargon about how they can't justify plastic molds for models that don't sell frequently, while models that are limited edition get....plastic molds?

It's a history thing. Sammael and other similar models are old sculpts that were designed for metal casting and converted to finecast - or in some cases designed for finecast from the get-go - because at the time the GW design philosophy was that bulk kits got plastic and characters/elites/other-kits-that-didn't-move-many-copies got metal, purely down to the economics of recouping setup costs and the fact that back in the day you could get better detail in a metal model. More recently GW have had a policy of designing nearly everything new for plastic moulds (even a lot of limited edition things) probably because their plastic technology has improved, they'd already ditched metal and they ballsed-up the launch of finecast so badly that it gained a reputation it will never recover from. The likes of the said Primaris captains were designed after GW made that transition. Spin casting and injection moulding are quite different processes, so converting an old metal/finecast model to plastic would be too troublesome. A plastic Sammael would require a new sculpt. They may well do that at some point, as they gradually phase out all the non-plastic. I'm sure there's plenty of models that they'd like to replace with new versions, but they can only put out models so fast and it seems of late that they prefer launching brand new models ahead of replacing old ones. Likely because people who already own an old version might not buy the new one but if it's a brand new unit and nobody has it yet, sales will probably be higher.

Fundamentally I think there's a mistake in there. The costs of setting up for plastic moulding mean that for the most part we won't get variations on kits like HQs, whereas in the past there were often several different metal versions which was great if you wanted more than one of that HQ in your army. Back on the Eldar example, I've got four different OOP metal Farseers waiting to paint. Back in the day I had multiple different metal High Elf mages, etc. Nowadays you get one monopose plastic version of each HQ and that's it. Admittedly easier to convert, but each one will be starting from the same base.

 Motsie wrote:

I'd honestly like an answer as to why limited edition primaris captains are launched in full plastic molds, but Sammael and other rather complex multi-part kits are given the resin treatment. I'll probably never get an honest answer from GW, and it'll be some jargon about how they can't justify plastic molds for models that don't sell frequently, while models that are limited edition get....plastic molds?

They sold 50 or so of the special captain at the local GW's store birthday. There's lots and lots of GW stores. But how many people are gonna buy Sammael?

 godardc wrote:
I see a lot of people hating finecast but acknowledging to have only a few finecast models, strange; how can you speak about something you don't know ? I loved finecast and its soft texture. I never had any issue with it, but I bought it very late, and I heard that late casts were better ?

I'm not sure how many dog turds you need to eat to be ale to say definitively they don't taste good, but I own about a dozen or so: I came in at that awkward time when every Necron character model was failcast, along with a handful of others. So, for Necrons alone I have 2x Crypteks, Szeras, 2x Overlords, Anrakyr, Vargard, Trazyn, Imotekh, and Zandrekh. I also have at least one Ork character - I forget which - and the Word Bearer Chaplain Guy with all the scrolls.

Finecast pros: Material was lighter, so you didn't have models chipping the way metal would. It really took to glue and paint quite well. Easy to clean up, just like resin.

Bad:As many people have noted, the models would warp after being finished. This made them remarkably unsuitable for the staff weapons Necron characters used, and is why many of my Necron characters have plastic staves from other kits, like Lychguard. The casting detail was not very crisp at all, as well - lots of muddy details.

Ugly: Every single one of these models had casting issues.At a minimum, there were air bubbles that needed to be filled around the feet and undersides. Every single one had some level of missing detail. Some were showstoppers and I went back and forth with GWS to get replacements that had errors in different places, some I just fixed on my own, most I just accepted. The Ork model did well since it was a big, heavy model, but the Necrons all had some little detail somewhere that was obliterated by an air bubble in the mold.


The original waves (which was like, all of the Necrons) had fewer gates than were added to later releases, so you got better castings later - this is true. Ultimately IMO Finecast truly was not fit for purpose and should not have gone into a wide release; since mo matter what you're always going to have problems with parts warping even if you get a perfect cast.

I have a bunch of Eldar aspect warriors, and while the casting issues with detail or blotching out of the models was a minimum there are still tons of other issues.

As said above... any detail that was narrow was prone to massive warping. Swooping Hawks blaster barrels, Howling Banshee swords are two easy to point out.

Speaking of Swooping Hawks... the narrow attachment point to their base is just wide enough to warp wildly causing all sorts of "lazy models" laying on their backs, or bent so far backwards that they're practically firing upwards.

Warp spiders had another irritating issue. They're bulky enough that warping isn't a huge problem, but any areas where two pieces of the model come together are overrun with excess material that leaves you having to practically carve it out, usually at great peril to your fingers

It is just terrible. I try not to buy it anymore, going so far as to try to find Sigmar plastic models to covert into Exodite models that have rejoined with their Craftworld brethren in these dark times.

I will agree that the paint takes to them better and stays on them better, though. I have a Sororitas army that is pretty much all pewter, and those models chip paint in a wind gust :(

For the time, it was probably a step forward... in hindsight, it was an abomination

It would have been a step forward, had they bothered to sort the QA issues out and used a decent resin, and decent quality moulds to produce the sort of resin models other companies manage

Nothing intrinsically wrong with resin, for hero models and other lower volume it’s ideal

Just the implementation was abysmal

Plastic doesn't come bent. I got some Warlocks recently and everyone had a problem. Failcast is called failcast for a reason.

leopard wrote:
It would have been a step forward, had they bothered to sort the QA issues out and used a decent resin, and decent quality moulds to produce the sort of resin models other companies manage

Nothing intrinsically wrong with resin, for hero models and other lower volume it’s ideal

Just the implementation was abysmal

I don't think it's fair to call Finecast resin, regardless of what they call it. It's really quite different than any other vendors resin and I think it's more fair to call it it's own creature since it's certainly produced with a special technique, as well.

I don't think anyone disputes resin is a great medium, if we define resin as what is released by Forge World, Puppets War, Kromlech, Mad Robot, Victoria, and an infinite number of Chinese and Russian basement casters.

pm713 wrote:
Plastic doesn't come bent. I got some Warlocks recently and everyone had a problem. Failcast is called failcast for a reason.

Plastic does come bent sometimes. Not nearly as often or as badly as finecast, but it's not perfect.

 godardc wrote:
I see a lot of people hating finecast but acknowledging to have only a few finecast models, strange; how can you speak about something you don't know ? I loved finecast and its soft texture. I never had any issue with it, but I bought it very late, and I heard that late casts were better ?

You don't need to eat dog gak to know it tastes bad.

 Peregrine wrote:

pm713 wrote:
Plastic doesn't come bent. I got some Warlocks recently and everyone had a problem. Failcast is called failcast for a reason.

Plastic does come bent sometimes. Not nearly as often or as badly as finecast, but it's not perfect.

I've never had any bent plastic. There are two things I got in failcast I can think of that weren't bent, droopy or otherwise flawed badly.

pm713 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

pm713 wrote:
Plastic doesn't come bent. I got some Warlocks recently and everyone had a problem. Failcast is called failcast for a reason.

Plastic does come bent sometimes. Not nearly as often or as badly as finecast, but it's not perfect.

I've never had any bent plastic. There are two things I got in failcast I can think of that weren't bent, droopy or otherwise flawed badly.

Did you try assembling a space marine landspeeder when it was released in 3rd edition? They were notorious for having a warped chassis that didn't fit together properly.

Likewise, when they released the heavy weapons sprue for the Eldar vehicles in late 4th/early 5th (?) edition, the missile launchers tended to have varying degrees of bend in them - I think the muzzle was dragged sideways by one of the venting ports on the sprue. That was when I was selling bits online, and about half of the HW sprues that I got had to be replaced,and there were several others that I wound up just keeping because they were passable but I didn't think they were good enough to sell.

And let's not even get into the sometimes appalling mould slippage on the tactical marine sprue over the years...