The UltraMarch Project: Marneus Calgar And His Honour Guard Suffer The Indignity Of Finecast

There's not much that hasn't already been said about how rubbish Finecast can be. I've had mixed fortunes over the last couple of years and Calgar and his Honour Guard fit into the 'rather dodgy' category of Finecast fail with a few holes, badly formed parts and inexplicably melty bits. Oh well, at least GW are extremely good with their plastics now. So the brief news is simply that I got everyone based and glued together, with green stuff and superglue filling all (hopefully) the holes. Let's get some paint on these guys tomorrow and let the fun begin. 

Finecast Plague Marines - Out Of The Box

*RANT COMMENCES* Why exactly - I hear you ask - are you bothering to do an Out Of The Box review of the Finecast Plague Marines, which are just reproductions of the Death Guard models from all the way back in 2002? 

The reason is that I thought it was about time that we revisited the whole Finecast story now that these products have been around for a fair old while. Doing this with Plague Marines, who are I must admit rather messy by their very nature, might be seen as a cop out. Fair enough. I also happen to have a batch of Space Marines sitting on a shelf too, and I'll talk about those when I do a companion post to this. But back to Finecast… 

Resin is here to stay. Or is it? The rumours are that GW would love to go all plastic in the future. When you see the very high quality plastic clamshells that are coming out right now - the new Daemonic Heralds for instance - it isn't hard to believe that this may well be the direction they'll take. It is possible. The trouble is, as far as I can tell they make huge profits from Finecast: it's cheaper than white metal and they used the switch to bump up prices. 

Plenty of people noticed and were pissed off with this. But as I seem to say all the time, show me a manufacturer who produces comparable quality models at a more competitive price? No one can, because there simply isn't anyone out there as good as GW. There. I said it. Am I a blind fan? Hardly. But I accept that all companies are out to make a profit and that's the deal we have to swallow. Again, it's worth stating that you don't have to follow the buy-an-army strategy that GW promote with their codex and army book range - it's your game so play it however you want! 

These Plague Marines are great. Much, much better then their previous metal counterparts. You can see all the detail. You can see all the flash - and there's plenty, but it's ok because it's simple to deal with. Mould lines are quickly dispatched. Drilling to pin is super easy, as is matching up the pins and holes. 

Finecast had a bumpy start and miscasts are bloody annoying. Yet GW have changed all miscast stuff I've had from them, no questions. And the ease of working through the early stages of a model means it's a far superior medium to white metal, where casting issues often doesn't come to light until a mini is primed or even base coated. 

These smelly chaps will form part of my Armies on Parade display - hence why I purchased GW after converting the Avatar's of War Corruptors. I am at a slight risk of becoming a Nurgle completist however... *RANT CONCLUDES*

Scibor, Forge World and Finecast Resin Compared

This morning I was prepping three resin models from Scibor, Forge World and the GW Finecast range, so I thought I'd note some of my experiences and some of the differences when working simultaneously with three resin variants.

Minotaur, Warpfire Dragon, Ogre Firebelly

Scibor Minotaur

This was the hardest resin and in most respects the easiest to work with, although the glue required a little extra pressure to take. Detail is well defined and mold lines can be easily removed (I use a thin pointed trowel-shaped sculpting tool to do this). Most of the effort is taken up with getting the parts of their original 'sprues' and some caution is advisable here, because this hard resin seems quite brittle in some respects - I didn't snap anything, but the way some of the excess pinged off I'd think this is a potential hazard. Filling is limited to small and thin gaps between parts.

Forge World Warpfire Dragon

This is a medium-hard resin, simple to put together, even with the plastic parts. Detail is astonishingly good - certainly the best I've seen. Lots of effort required in filling, although nothing two layers of liquid greenstuff couldn't deal with.

Finecast Ogre Firebelly

Soft and full of flaws - bubble holes (battle damage?!), and a couple of toes missing on the right foot. Easy to put together. I would say that the detail is worth the extra work on filling and re-sculpting though, as the character, stances and dynamics that can be achieved with finecast are brilliant. Once again, however, I had the suspicion that quality control is low because younger customers are less likely to complain...

Overall thoughts

In a direct face-off I think Forge World wins and Finecast certainly loses. The Scibor resin works brilliantly with their sculpts and I'll be buying from them again, although in terms of detail the minotaur is no match for the GW models. 

Cockatrice - Stage One WIP

Another day, another monstrosity-in-progress. This time it's the cockatrice, which is perhaps the best WFB model in finecast so far - lovely textures, very impressive. Of course, with all this detail it's taken a while to even achieve the basic coats and this is about as far as I've got so far. Other than the blue, green and red, I'll be focusing on developing the remainder of the model as a foul leathery battered hide. I like the idea of there being some beauty in the feathers and some elegance in the dragon scales, juxtaposed with a near-living decomposition in the bulk; I want to emphasise the aberrant character of this loathsome beast, bound together by chaos sorcery.   

Cockatrice - Out Of The Box (And Finecast Seems Good Once Again!)

My trip to the Saturday Crèche (e.g. GW) didn't quite go as projected because as last week progressed I gradually lost enthusiasm for the new undead models. So in the true spirit of an evil mastermind amassing beasts for a vile dread host, I took the chance to grab a miniature that's been on my wanted list for some time: the Cockatrice. Roll the Finecast dice once again... *holds breath*

Still frustratingly too young for his own armies

Bravely - and despite a previous promise that I made to myself - I didn't open the box until I got home. This could have meant a march into the city again on Sunday, but luckily, everything was ship-shape with this kit. In fact, it's brilliant - I don't think I could be more pleased with this model. First off, the price is incredibly reasonable - £21.50 here in the UK, and for a monster of this size and detail, that has to be a bargain. All aspects of the model are sharp and well defined.

Contents as I found it

It went together as easily as resin should, with gaps very similar to the old white metal models. The only mystery part was the right leg, which appeared to be partially miscast - see the red arrow - not a major problem at all and something quickly fixed with a little greenstuff. Overall the prep here will be about the same as if it was a metal piece.

Looks like a slow motion crossbow wound 

So here's the foul beast stuck together. The only odd thing about it - and I realise I've not got a photo to illustrate this (will add one with the WIP posts) - is how thin the head and body actually are. Not problematically so, just in a way that isn't captured at all by any of the promo photos. Anyway, I'm chuffed with this one.

Also known as a Basilisk 

Jabberslythe - Out Of The Box

Following my ordeal with the mangler squigs you might have thought that it would be some time before I crossed paths with Finecast again. However, a Christmas present later and I have the new GW Jabberslythe to work with. I don't have a beastmen army so this is a pure monsterly goodness indulgence model - and so may 2012 continue! 

Although all the individual parts were in very good order, as these photos show, this bad boy needed quite a lot of greenstuff to fill all the gaps, some of which were a good few millimetres wide. To achieve this I used a mixture of 'traditional' and 'liquid' greenstuff, which I smoothed down with a good amount of water applied with a paintbrush.

The photo above shows a small repair that I had to make to the tongue. Finecast, it seems, is as fragile as reported - a two foot drop from a coffee table resulted in a clean snap. I also re-angled the head (this was on purpose) to make the model more dynamic and I'm very pleased with how this has turned out. The scenic base is a great touch although the amount of work that I had to carry out fixing gaps in the forearms meant that while it would have been very useful to leave it as a separate piece for the purposes of painting, this ultimately seemed impractical.  

I thought I would include a couple of additional photos of the undercoating process, simply because I got to use my father-in-law's man-cave...

Overall I'm very pleased with the Jabberslythe so far. It's taking the paint very well and the detail is excellent. Could this be a personal redemption for Finecast...?

Mangler Squigs - A Finecast NIGHTMARE!

This weekend I had my first finecast nightmare - it was truly awful. My previous experiences with the GW resin had been pretty positive, but all that was to change when the temptation of the new Mangler Squigs became too great to resist. 

I picked up a pack on Saturday for the princely sum of £36. That's a lot of cash for a rare choice slot that has totally ridiculous rules and only costs 65 points to field. But the model looked great on the GW website and I reasoned that it would make a wonderfully characterful final addition to my Night Goblin army.

On opening the box it was immediately obvious that something was seriously wrong with the model components. There was the much commented on 'bubbling' and in several places the definition on the chains and ropes was fuzzy at best, absent at worst. One of the goblins that is a non-optional part of the model (it's pinned by the claws of the top squig to the back of the bottom one) was so badly deformed I was actually astonished.

Today I returned the box to my local GW and showed them the problem. I have to say that all the staff I spoke to were great - they were concerned and very apologetic. The manager asked that all the packs that they had in stock be opened to see if they could find me a better model. This is where the nightmare became even worse. All SIX packs had exactly the same kinds of flaws on the models. 

According to the manager these will now be sent back to GW with the warning that there may be a problem with the batch. However, before you think the problem was limited to casting... there's more. I should've taken a photo to illustrate this, but it's only really dawning on me now how strange this is: the models in the packs were different to the one illustrated in all the GW promo material. The top squig has a goblin in it's mouth, and this was clearly in a different position on the model when compared with the photos - how odd is that?!

Fear not though, dear reader, as there is a happy end to this sorry tale. I exchanged this travesty in resin for the new plastic Ghorgon kit, which is fantastic. Although... having said that... as I type this I'm left with the nagging feeling that I might never trust finecast ever again...

Invaded by Nurgle!

Marienburg was briefly invaded by the forces of Nurgle today... but never fear, it was just a model that my brother bought and I had the pleasure of putting together - my first time with the finecast resin. It was really impressive and I can't wait to get something myself. Anyway, here's a photo - as usual I couldn't resist a bit of kit-bashing, so this guy got some wings to make him a little more suitable for warhammer fantasy.