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Hello, after receiving my Houseguard Halberdiers, I'm really dissatisfied with the quality of privateer's miniatures. They are made out of cheap plastic and are small by comparison to what they should be. They are difficult to glue and have mould lines everywhere, I need so much time to prepare those miniatures and when I do so, I need even more time to clean plastic off. Said plastic also easily turns white even to small stress. Yet, I had paid premium for those models as they are now roughly at 50 euros per 10 models. I do not have problem with their other models, for example Heavy Rifle Team, Garryth 2, solo support, command squad for halberdiers are all made of metal and look solid enough. Yet, now I'm afraid purchasing anything else from them, especially due to exorbitant prices. Cavalry units cost around 20 euros per model and at bare minimum I need 5 of them! I would be happy to purchase them if I would know that quality is on par with their other metal miniatures, but at the moment, I'm afraid that I will end up paying a lot of money for something quite bad.

Privateers plastic is pretty terrible and they should be ashamed of charging money for it. If your comfortable cleaning and pinning metal cavalry models they’re not the worst thing ever. It’s been a long time since I’ve built any but they were fine from what I remember. Ultimately I think that all things considered they’re a bad value proposition though. Even buying khador cavalry years ago with the crazy discounts that used to be available they were expensive and now you can’t give the stuff away.

I did a bunch of warmachine/horde commissions a while back, I recall hating to pin everything and cleaning the mold lines on the hard plastics. The plastic they use are the same as GW terrain plastics, which are low grade hard plastics. Not the GW medium to soft easy to clean plastics.

There is a thread about warmachine/horde being a dying game, it might be relevant to your future purchases. I would advise that you not put too much investment into the game, it is not what it use to be, and I’m not sure it’s big enough to comeback like GW did.

PP has been around for about 20 years now and they have tried a lot of things over that time, so quality can vary a lot depending on the release date of a model and the material it is made of.

Currently, they are doing a mix of resin and metal and those seem to be pretty good quality with crisp detail. Older models can be hit and miss though; they were using PVC plastics for a while and those were often pretty frustrating to work with, and of course, if you get a 17 year old metal model from when they. were a new company, it is not going to be up to modern standards in terms of fit and quality.

On the other hand, if you do have an issue like a badly miscast resin piece, their customer service is pretty great.

There are two different elements here. The quality of PPs models and the cost of PPs models.

In terms of model quality, in the past the quality could be hit and miss at times. But for the most part it was acceptable and improved with time. Most of the models over the past few years models and units are really nice quality wise (I play trolls) with lots of crisp detail, few mould lines and have been a joy to paint. Personally I don’t mind spending some time removing mould lines as I would do more prep work to a model than most people as im really into my painting.

In terms of cost however over the past few years the cost of new products has risen dramatically to a point where I struggle to justify paying RRP for products which forces me into the 2nd hand and resellers market. That being said, I have in recent time looked at some 40K models and I often “watch” some 40K battle reports while I paint as its easy viewing. The cost of the competitive 40K lists in terms of ££ is also really high so its swings and roundabouts.

indeed the new plastic are, for the most part, fup awful, the box I bought I (Circle Reeves/Wolves) was god awful and just over half the 10 in the box where playable, sticking to ebay now as whilst the metals are also a coin flip they are far less hassle to 'fix'

From what I gather their plastic experiment failed, I too wasn't a fan of it and that was on larger models. They've now shifted to metal and resins and honestly I don't mind them one bit. I've loads of their metal models and they aren't that bad to put together.

That said do yourself a favour and get some good high grit diamond files. A 600 and 900 grit pair of files makes cleaning metal models EASY and you can clean them up with a regular firm rubber between uses and the file is good to go again (if you don't clean them they get chocked with material).

I've only found one place that sells them
https://www.eternaltools.com/files-burnishers/small-diamond-files

If you only get one the half-round are about the best all-rounder in terms of small files. One flat side and one curved.


Use a 600 to help break down a thicker bit of mould line if needed; the 900 will remove and polish the rest leaving a great finish to work from. Sometimes if the line is in a good spot and fairly thick I'll scrape with a scalpel first then come in with the files.

Ernestas

You seem to have the worst luck with PP models. i know from your previous posts it is the big game to play in your local area. i think everything i have was either metal or metal/resin mix so i never ran into the problems you have.

As far as costs go. that's a problem across the board. GW is best known for it but other companies have for various reasons been raising prices.

Volume is a big factor. the less models they sell, the smaller the production run the high the unit cost goes. thats what happened to DUST when they parted ways with fantasy flight. fortunately for them the high model quality was maintained.

classic battletech metal blisters used to run about $10 US, now they are pushing $15 and their old plastics were terrible quality. happily all the new plastics are incredibly good quality.

Somehow mantic has been able to keep their costs down while still having decent quality plastics but not quite as detailed as GW.

If you continue to have production mold problems keep hitting their customer service. as you know they are quite good

Yeah, one of the big oddities of "never squatting" mixed with the failure of PVC is that PP's range is... diverse... to put it kindly. Most armies are going to have a mix of Resin, PVC and metal models across it and you get the pros and cons of each accordingly.

FWIW, Cavalry models are usually pretty good. There's ONE line of light cav that's on PVC horses, but all the armored cav is either all metal or a resin/metal mix.

I was interested more specifically in how good their most expensive stuff is, like Khador cavalry in particular. I'm planning about purchasing Retribution's battle engines too. Menoth's heavy cavalry looks attractive, but I already will likely own Khador force. I also have an idea of replacing Menoth light cavalry with conversion kits from RagingHeroes. They have very similar looking models there and I was waiting for an excuse to buy something from them to see how good their models are.

Now I'm in luck, I saw an entire army which is exactly like I want them to be on ebay for 100 bucks. 40 euro shipping bites, but I might even get further discount like 10 bucks less. I think that is a pretty great deal as it all of them are painted, it is 75 point theme army. Second hand market is great for these things and while game is "dying", that is nowhere true in my local hobby shop where it is on the rise. I have tournament this week and are finishing assembling last models for my list. I also just like collecting models. Just having a lot of models to display is part of hobby goal in itself. I love assembling them and painting them myself so often buying prepared models just loses value in my eyes, but deals so great, it is hard to pass them.

In terms of game rules quality? Cavalry generally isn't very good. Too expensive and easily stopped by quality guns or cheap bodies.

No, in terms of plastic. I had noticed there are three types of material made. There is one plastic which is very similar to GW plastic. I was making my Hyperion yesterday and it is made out of such plastic as also some other models like Ryssovass Defenders. Then there is some other type of plastic which I highly dislike. It looks worse, it creates those white spots when it endures stresses with many other negative qualities. Third material which Privateer is using is metal. I like metal as it makes miniature feel more solid.

So, I want to know which material they are using for cavalry. Though, I'm likely to buy an entire army off with them, but I'm still curious if just in case I will decide to get other models too. They cost like 20 euros per model which is insane and at least they could be made out of metal.