An American civil War Miniatures review, and a discussion about different types of plastics.

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**McDougall Designs**

https://mcdougalldesigns3d.com/blogs/news/review-em4-american-civil-war-and-why-different-types-of-plastic-matter

I decided to do a small review and write a little bit about different types of plastic.

**ThePaintingOwl**

I'm not sure why "learning to work with new materials" is a good selling point when the only thing that skill is useful for is handling bottom-tier models in a material meant for cheap toys. You'll get far better results if you stick to normal plastic.

**McDougall Designs**

ThePaintingOwl wrote:
I'm not sure why "learning to work with new materials" is a good selling point when the only thing that skill is useful for is handling bottom-tier models in a material meant for cheap toys. You'll get far better results if you stick to normal plastic.

It's not necessarily A selling point.

It's a reason to not consider other materials bottom tier. There is no bottom tier.

There's only what you are willing to work with and what you're not willing to work with.

PVC is a type of plastic that should be in people's wheel houses work with in my opinion.

If you don't want to work with it, that's fine. There's certainly high impact polystyrene options out there.

But if you're willing to work with a material that requires a little bit more effort, you will get good results and decent miniatures with a little bit more work.

Considering the price point, and that not everyone can afford an armies worth of high impact polystyrene models, it's an option.

**ThePaintingOwl**

McDougall Designs wrote:
There is no bottom tier.

Of course there is. Finecast, for example, is universally agreed to be trash. The defect rate was 100%, with most of those defects being bad enough to demand an immediate refund, and the material wasn't anywhere near durable enough to survive normal assembly and use. I'm sure you could write plenty of guides about working with finecast but the only advice worth caring about was "don't buy anything that uses finecast". And thankfully GW recognized how inexcusably bad it was and stopped using it.

I will grant that PVC isn't as bad as finecast but it's still a bottom-tier material. It bends easily and even after you straighten the initial bent parts any weight on the miniatures will deform the material and permanently bend them (at least until you get out the boiling water to straighten them again). It's soft and doesn't cut or sand well, making cleanup of mold lines (which are usually abundant) a huge pain. And it doesn't allow the level of detail that you can get with resin or hard plastic. PVC's only redeeming quality is that it's often cheap and sometimes low-end stuff is better than nothing.

Looking at your article again it comes across as less of an honest assessment of PVC and more of a sales pitch to convince people to buy PVC miniatures from your store.

**McDougall Designs**

ThePaintingOwl wrote:
McDougall Designs wrote:
There is no bottom tier.

Of course there is. Finecast, for example, is universally agreed to be trash. The defect rate was 100%, with most of those defects being bad enough to demand an immediate refund, and the material wasn't anywhere near durable enough to survive normal assembly and use. I'm sure you could write plenty of guides about working with finecast but the only advice worth caring about was "don't buy anything that uses finecast". And thankfully GW recognized how inexcusably bad it was and stopped using it.

finecast is a defective material, but that's because of the casting process and variation of resin GW used. It's "bottom tier" as you put it, because it was/is a defective material that they still flaunted as good.

I will grant that PVC isn't as bad as finecast but it's still a bottom-tier material. It bends easily and even after you straighten the initial bent parts any weight on the miniatures

after painting, when do you ever put weight on a miniature? For my understanding usually people will store them appropriately and then take them out for use in gaming .

If you are roughly manhandling your miniatures, I would agree you would want something more durable like high impact polystyrene. This does not mean that PVC models are a bad use case.

will deform the material and permanently bend them (at least until you get out the boiling water to straighten them again). It's soft and doesn't cut or sand well, making cleanup of mold lines (which are usually abundant) a huge pain. And it doesn't allow the level of detail that you can get with resin or hard plastic. PVC's only redeeming quality is that it's often cheap and sometimes low-end stuff is better than nothing.

never in my article did I say it was the best material to use. High impact polystyrene is the gold standard for Miniatures in my personal opinion. That being said, the entire point of the article was to show that PVC models can be used and should be used.

There are reasons to use them, and there is reasons to use the material for casting miniatures.

Is it the best and most durable material? No it isn't. Is it something that every hobbyist should use at least once? Or at least play around with once? Yes.

Looking at your article again it comes across as less of an honest assessment of PVC and more of a sales pitch to convince people to buy PVC miniatures from your store.

it's not an open sales pitch. You may think it's one, but it's not.

My commentary comes from my years of experience in this hobby and my viewpoint that hobbyists should have a more varied approach to the Miniatures that they pick up. Favorites are obviously something that needs to be considered, however every tool in the toolbox should be known and understood. And the only way you understand a tool is if you use it, at least a little bit.

Whether someone buys the Miniatures from my store or not is of no consequence to me. I'm perfectly happy if someone doesn't want to make that particular purchase. I simply wish to inform based on my experience, and advocate for all hobbies to know every tool in the toolbox.

**ThePaintingOwl**

McDougall Designs wrote:
finecast is a defective material, but that's because of the casting process and variation of resin GW used. It's "bottom tier" as you put it, because it was/is a defective material that they still flaunted as good.

I'm not sure what your point here is? We can discuss why finecast was a bottom-tier material but it clearly was and that contradicts your claim that "there is no bottom tier".

after painting, when do you ever put weight on a miniature? For my understanding usually people will store them appropriately and then take them out for use in gaming .

Storing them. I've had PVC miniatures bend just from being stored on their side in foam, something that never happens with proper hard plastic or resin miniatures. It's the main reason why I won't deal with the stuff unless I absolutely have to.

High impact polystyrene is the gold standard for Miniatures in my personal opinion.

Then I don't see where the disagreement is? You acknowledge that PVC is a worse material than plastic with no advantages other than being a cheap option if you don't care about quality.

it's not an open sales pitch

Whether or not it was intended as one that's what it comes across as. It's wildly optimistic, doesn't cover all of the drawbacks of PVC, and spends a bunch of time promoting your products (including a page 2 link that is just your store page, not a continuation of the article).

however every tool in the toolbox should be known and understood

But, as with finecast, I don't see any reason for PVC to be in the toolbox at all. Its only real use case is for things like putting the cheapest possible monster miniature on the board for a one-shot D&D battle, where I don't care if it looks like

because it's going to spend an hour on the table and then get tossed in the storage box. If you care about quality enough to want to learn how to use your tools properly you don't touch PVC, you buy real miniatures.

**McDougall Designs**

ThePaintingOwl wrote:
McDougall Designs wrote:
finecast is a defective material, but that's because of the casting process and variation of resin GW used. It's "bottom tier" as you put it, because it was/is a defective material that they still flaunted as good.

I'm not sure what your point here is? We can discuss why finecast was a bottom-tier material but it clearly was and that contradicts your claim that "there is no bottom tier".

my point is that finecast doesn't even bear considering as a material because it was defective to begin with

after painting, when do you ever put weight on a miniature? For my understanding usually people will store them appropriately and then take them out for use in gaming .

Storing them. I've had PVC miniatures bend just from being stored on their side in foam, something that never happens with proper hard plastic or resin miniatures. It's the main reason why I won't deal with the stuff unless I absolutely have to.

I guess this depends on how you store your miniatures. For multi-based units such as black powder figures like these would be used with I tend to store them in plastic totes where they can stand upright and don't have anything pushing down on them.

High impact polystyrene is the gold standard for Miniatures in my personal opinion.

Then I don't see where the disagreement is? You acknowledge that PVC is a worse material than plastic with no advantages other than being a cheap option if you don't care about quality.

"worse" is the word I would put into contention here. PVC is a lesser material in terms of miniature manufacture but is not without its own merits. If you don't like it, that's perfectly fine. But it should not be discounted just because it is more challenging to work with. The details that you can get are perfectly fine, and the plastic itself takes paint well if you prime it appropriately.

it's not an open sales pitch

Whether or not it was intended as one that's what it comes across as. It's wildly optimistic, doesn't cover all of the drawbacks of PVC, and spends a bunch of time promoting your products (including a page 2 link that is just your store page, not a continuation of the article).

I never intended for the article to be exhaustive in scope, nor did I state as such.

however every tool in the toolbox should be known and understood

But, as with finecast, I don't see any reason for PVC to be in the toolbox at all. Its only real use case is for things like putting the cheapest possible monster miniature on the board for a one-shot D&D battle, where I don't care if it looks like because it's going to spend an hour on the table and then get tossed in the storage box. If you care about quality enough to want to learn how to use your tools properly you don't touch PVC, you buy real miniatures.

PVC Miniatures are real miniatures. Just because the material is lesser than high impact polystyrene does not mean that it is not a good material for miniatures.

I could point to plenty of 1:72 scale kits where without pvc, we wouldn't have miniatures for periods and cultures at all, at least in the realm of historical miniatures.

There is no reason why this can't be broadened to include 28 mm Miniatures that are made out of PVC, including the reviewed and referenced American civil War plastics.

**Snord**

That sure went downhill fast...

PVC isn't bottom tier. It's long been used for larger action figures. I wouldn't necessarily want 28mm figures made from PVC, however.

And my Finecast models were largely okay. I think the resin was too soft for smaller parts (and I never left them in the sun), but the detail was good.

Weird how everyone has to discuss everything in such absolute terms...

**McDougall Designs**

Snord wrote:
That sure went downhill fast...

PVC isn't bottom tier. It's long been used for larger action figures. I wouldn't necessarily want 28mm figures made from PVC, however.

And my Finecast models were largely okay. I think the resin was too soft for smaller parts (and I never left them in the sun), but the detail was good.

Weird how everyone has to discuss everything in such absolute terms...

Exactly, there are no absolutes here. Every material and technique is just another tool in the toolbox I should be known and potentially used.

**Mothsniper**

Awesome, thank you for sharing.
Will check it out on the down time

**ThePaintingOwl**

McDougall Designs wrote:
my point is that finecast doesn't even bear considering as a material because it was defective to begin with

So is PVC.

"worse" is the word I would put into contention here. PVC is a lesser material in terms of miniature manufacture but is not without its own merits. If you don't like it, that's perfectly fine. But it should not be discounted just because it is more challenging to work with. The details that you can get are perfectly fine, and the plastic itself takes paint well if you prime it appropriately.

But you haven't said anything about any merits, other than it being an option for cheaper prices if you don't care about quality. At best you've attempted to argue that its flaws aren't so egregiously bad that you can't use it.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Snord wrote:
PVC isn't bottom tier. It's long been used for larger action figures. I wouldn't necessarily want 28mm figures made from PVC, however.

Highlighted the important part. That right there is the acknowledgement that PVC is a bottom-tier material. It may have been used in the past for a long time but you don't want miniatures made from it.

And my Finecast models were largely okay. I think the resin was too soft for smaller parts (and I never left them in the sun), but the detail was good.

You are the outlier then (or just more tolerant of defects). And detail was no better than real resin or even metal. Finecast was literally using the same molds as the metal miniatures it replaced. It was purely a cost cutting attempt by GW, one that failed spectacularly and was removed from production as fast as possible.

**Cruentus**

All of my Finecast have been perfectly fine. Maybe I'm just lucky, but it sure goes directly against a flat out ridiculous hot take of "Finecast, for example, is universally agreed to be trash. The defect rate was 100%..."

My defect rate was 0%. I have plenty of Finecast. I find it fine.

I've also been looking at ACW minis, and I'm always looking for different options, particularly at cheaper price points - even though I am leaning 10mm rather than 28mm.

I've looked at those PVC minis McDougall reviewed, and considered them, the same as the EM4 dwarf crossbowmen, which I think would be fine for my Mordheim or WHFB games as basic, easy to paint crossbowmen. Material be damned, if it looks good at tabletop distance, and is $0.50 a piece. Sign me up.

I've had polystyrene and other models that have been garbage, and other PVC stuff (looking at you WM/H), but I also don't just knee-jerk react about materials, particularly when someone takes the time to show them, show conversions. It at a minimum allows me to make decisions with more info, and walk away if I don't like it.

**ThePaintingOwl**

Cruentus wrote:
All of my Finecast have been perfectly fine. Maybe I'm just lucky, but it sure goes directly against a flat out ridiculous hot take of "Finecast, for example, is universally agreed to be trash. The defect rate was 100%..."

My defect rate was 0%. I have plenty of Finecast. I find it fine.

Point of clarification: are you talking about the original finecast as it was initially launched, or the later resin kits sold under the finecast name that used a different material? The second material wasn't as bad but I'm not exaggerating one bit when I say that original finecast had a 100% defect rate. Go into a GW store and look through the rack of finecast models, every single one would have defects. Buy a finecast model from GW online, get a defective model. GW customer service replaces it with an equally defective model. GW replaces the replacement with an equally defective model. Repeat until you tell them to just give you a refund.

And that's on top of the strength issues, where finecast parts would crumble under the slightest scraping from a knife blade and it was nearly impossible to remove mold lines without damaging the model. As I said before: there's a reason GW phased out the material ASAP and hasn't used it since. Every single product is either hard plastic or real resin.

**McDougall Designs**

Cruentus wrote:
All of my Finecast have been perfectly fine. Maybe I'm just lucky, but it sure goes directly against a flat out ridiculous hot take of "Finecast, for example, is universally agreed to be trash. The defect rate was 100%..."

My defect rate was 0%. I have plenty of Finecast. I find it fine.

I've also been looking at ACW minis, and I'm always looking for different options, particularly at cheaper price points - even though I am leaning 10mm rather than 28mm.

I've looked at those PVC minis McDougall reviewed, and considered them, the same as the EM4 dwarf crossbowmen, which I think would be fine for my Mordheim or WHFB games as basic, easy to paint crossbowmen. Material be damned, if it looks good at tabletop distance, and is $0.50 a piece. Sign me up.

point of note: the EM4 dwarves are a form of HIPS hard plastic.

I've had polystyrene and other models that have been garbage, and other PVC stuff (looking at you WM/H), but I also don't just knee-jerk react about materials, particularly when someone takes the time to show them, show conversions. It at a minimum allows me to make decisions with more info, and walk away if I don't like it.

**kodos**

ThePaintingOwl wrote:
McDougall Designs wrote:
my point is that finecast doesn't even bear considering as a material because it was defective to begin with

So is PVC.

No it is not, Finecast was designed to save GW money by using the same old moulds as they did for metal so it was designed around the casting process and not around the model quality

PVC on the other hand is not designed around a casting process for a different material but has its very own one and model quality is impacted more by the layout of the moulds than the material itself, saying it is the same as Finecast just means not understanding the difference between the two

and it works pretty well for one piece models even in 28mm scale, question is always just how soft it should be as there are different hardness grades, with Boardgames using a softer PVC and Wargames a harder one

**insaniak**

kodos wrote:
Finecast was designed to save GW money by using the same old moulds as they did for metal so it was designed around the casting process and not around the model quality

'Fine'cast didn't use the same moulds as metal. One of the common complaints with early 'Fine'cast models was that they often came with bits of silicon attached, torn from the mould. Metal models are cast in vulcanised rubber, not silicon. The point of 'Fine'cast was to use the same casting process, not the same moulds.

**ThePaintingOwl**

kodos wrote:
saying it is the same as Finecast just means not understanding the difference between the two

I didn't say they're the same material, I said they're both bottom-tier materials with no redeeming qualities other than possibly the option to buy poor quality miniatures at a discount price.

**kodos**

insaniak wrote:
kodos wrote:
Finecast was designed to save GW money by using the same old moulds as they did for metal so it was designed around the casting process and not around the model quality

'Fine'cast didn't use the same moulds as metal. One of the common complaints with early 'Fine'cast models was that they often came with bits of silicon attached, torn from the mould. Metal models are cast in vulcanised rubber, not silicon. The point of 'Fine'cast was to use the same casting process, not the same moulds.

well, there was talk back than why older models are more crab than newer models and the basic answer was that the old models use existing moulds from metal casting while the new models got the new material
if true we had both in the early days and a reason why some of the made to order are coming back in metal while others are finecast depending on if new moulds were made for them or not (and GW learned the lesson and not use finecast in moulds made for metal)

Automatically Appended Next Post:

ThePaintingOwl wrote:
kodos wrote:
saying it is the same as Finecast just means not understanding the difference between the two
I didn't say they're the same material, I said they're both bottom-tier materials with no redeeming qualities other than possibly the option to buy poor quality miniatures at a discount price.

which is not true at all

**insaniak**

kodos wrote:
well, there was talk back than why older models are more crab than newer models and the basic answer was that the old models use existing moulds from metal casting while the new models got the new material

Yes, that was a common talking point, but it was wrong. Even aside from the silicon dags left on the models as proof, there's the simple fact that 'Fine'cast models were on sprues, and metal models weren't. They were never cast in the same moulds.

**ThePaintingOwl**

kodos wrote:
some of the made to order are coming back in metal while others are finecast

Finecast or real resin? AFAIK GW doesn't do finecast anymore, all the old finecast stuff is now cast in real resin.

which is not true at all

You can say that but merely asserting it isn't much of an argument. Compared to plastic and resin PVC has worse durability, worse detail, and frustrating cleanup problems. And neither you nor McDougall Designs have been able to provide any actual advantage of the material other than the fact that it sometimes has a price point appropriate for its poor quality.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

insaniak wrote:
there's the simple fact that 'Fine'cast models were on sprues, and metal models weren't.

To be fair, this doesn't prove anything. We know metal models were clipped off their sprues before packaging so nobody outside of GW's factory knows what their sprue layout looked like or how it compared to finecast.

**insaniak**

ThePaintingOwl wrote:

To be fair, this doesn't prove anything. We know metal models were clipped off their sprues before packaging so nobody outside of GW's factory knows what their sprue layout looked like or how it compared to finecast.

GW have shown their metal moulds in the past, and they're the same general design as everyone else's. Spin cast metal doesn't have a sprue.

I suspect the sprue on 'Fine'cast was simply an attempt to copy the way plastic models make packing simpler by having entire multi part models cast in a single piece, and may well have contributed to the miscast rate.

**kodos**

What is "real" resin?

There are literal 1000s of different resins out there, which one is the real one?

**ThePaintingOwl**

kodos wrote:
What is "real" resin?

There are literal 1000s of different resins out there, which one is the real one?

The 999 of the 1000 that are not finecast. FW resin is real resin, as is the resin used by ever third-party 40k bits seller, as is the resin used by non-40k games. Finecast is a special outlier that had its own unique problems, problems that even GW acknowledged when they phased it out as fast as possible and are not shared with any other resin models I've ever seen.

**kodos**

I am pretty sure every 3rd party uses something different as FW resin is crap and you can easily spot recast by the better quality of the material
And I don't know 2 manufacturer using the same resin as Mantic uses something different than Mierce which is different to Warlord

And Finecast is not an outliner but using a commercial available material for the wrong task

**ThePaintingOwl**

kodos wrote:
I am pretty sure every 3rd party uses something different as FW resin is crap and you can easily spot recast by the better quality of the material
And I don't know 2 manufacturer using the same resin as Mantic uses something different than Mierce which is different to Warlord

Yes, they all use different resins and none of them have the problems that made finecast literal trash. The only resin I've ever seen that even comes close to finecast in quality issues is cheap Chinese/Russian recasts.

And FW resin is just fine. Their issues are with poor quality control, not the material itself. If you get a kit without mold slip (a problem with the molds, not the resin) it's as good as any kit made by any other company. Finecast's problems were with the material, even the best possible quality control and perfect operator skill in the casting process the result was still trash.

**McDougall Designs**

ThePaintingOwl wrote:
kodos wrote:
some of the made to order are coming back in metal while others are finecast

Finecast or real resin? AFAIK GW doesn't do finecast anymore, all the old finecast stuff is now cast in real resin.

which is not true at all

You can say that but merely asserting it isn't much of an argument. Compared to plastic and resin PVC has worse durability, worse detail, and frustrating cleanup problems. And neither you nor McDougall Designs have been able to provide any actual advantage of the material other than the fact that it sometimes has a price point appropriate for its poor quality.

An advantage, and the main one at this point, is the inexpensiveness of models made in the material, and the fact that, for the reviewed ACW figures, they are in scale with other manufacturers such as Wargames Atlantic's historical ranges. I admit, one headswap does not an exhaustive list make, but it does show that they are convertible.

When coupled with the cheap as chips price, this could definitely be an advantage. Especially if Em4 were to expand the range with other troops types, such as zouaves or models from an earlier war.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

insaniak wrote:
there's the simple fact that 'Fine'cast models were on sprues, and metal models weren't.

To be fair, this doesn't prove anything. We know metal models were clipped off their sprues before packaging so nobody outside of GW's factory knows what their sprue layout looked like or how it compared to finecast.