how many of you pay more for the old metal versions of characters to avoid finecast?

[Mr Mystery]

Every medium has it's advantages and disadvantages.

Plastic does not look as good and doesn't have the same amount of fine detail as resin or metal.
Plastic is far easier to work with and paint.
Resin is the most detailed medium but tends to have more quality problems.

For
Bigs kits, rank and file troops = Give me plastic.
Weapons and arms = Plastic or resin
Elites more and more detailed models = I'd like resin or metal.
HQs and Limited edition = I'd like metal or resin never plastic.

Can you imagine how people would react if the government started making plastic coins? Metal has more raw value and will always do so.

Having built Glottkin and a Maggoth Rider, I have to disagree about big stuff. Really nice kits, and good detailing to boot.

[John Bower]

What metal I do have is 2nd hand; and won't touch finecrap with somebody else's bargepole. I've managed to hold out for my Venomthropes and now it seems I did that right, if rumour is true and everything points to it we're getting plastic ones soon.

Other than that most of my HQ's are either scratch built plastic (my Terminator Librarian for eg is a Grey Knight model painted for the Ultras), and my DE Archons and Succubus are all made up from Kabalite and/or Wych kits.

[Pssyche]

John Bower, you're calling it "Failcrap".
Fair enough.
How many Finecast models have you bought and what were their failings?
Did GW Customer Services let you down too?
Just interested to know why you throw insulting terms about like confetti.

My experience is that I've never had a poor Finecast model and neither have my gaming friends, apart from the first couple of months.
The only time we hear "Failcast" is off people who never bought it in the first place.

[CoffeeGrunt]

Can you imagine how people would react if the government started making plastic coins? Metal has more raw value and will always do so.

People seem to be fine with the steady translation to a wafer of magnetised plastic instead of a pile of metal coins right now. For similar reasons to those in this thread: it's lighter and more convenient to work with most of the time.

[daboarder]

I've bought a few finecast models, and if I am planning an exstensive conversion then its MUCH easier to work with than metal, that being said metal has its benefits such as being easier to strip and overall a more durable material, furthermore I can glue peices of metal together gently to get a feel for posing before I pull them apart, clean the joint and begin proper work, cant do that with finecast.


HOWEVER, if I was buying pieces second hand I would buy metal given the option do to the ease with which a person can remove paint and glue form the model resulting in what is essentially the same bare metal as when the item was originally bought. (throw it in acetone for 24 hours and it'll eat the paint and superglue entirely

As for plastic, I find it infinitely better than either Metal and Finecast in all regards.

[Houghten]

John Bower, you're calling it "Failcrap".
Fair enough.
How many Finecast models have you bought and what were their failings?
Did GW Customer Services let you down too?
Just interested to know why you throw insulting terms about like confetti.

My experience is that I've never had a poor Finecast model and neither have my gaming friends, apart from the first couple of months.
The only time we hear "Failcast" is off people who never bought it in the first place.

Well, I've bought a few, and I call it Failcost for sure.

My very first was a Warrior Priest, whose head collapsed when I tried to shave off the mould line because there was a huge air bubble where his brain was supposed to be.

I can't remember in what order I bought the others, but:

Inquisitor Karamazov had no pointing finger, just a hollow cavity. It hadn't even snapped off; it just never formed. Many of the protrusions on my Dark Eldar Haemonculus and Grotesque are similarly half-formed, and the Grotesque's waist joint will not line up no matter what angle you turn it at (it shares the latter problem with my Sslyth, only worse because it's scaly).
I took Karamazov back and complained. Customer Services sent over another, whose legs were covered in some kind of sticky brown stuff; I was able to salvage a single workable model between the two of them, which I then snapped half the cables off in the process of cleaning up because of hidden bubbles, much the same way as the Warrior Priest.

Archons and Medusae each have two helmet options, and both of mine came with two malformed helmets. The Archon's had one side higher than the other, lending them a goofy expression instead of an imperious one. The Medusae's open helmet had excess resin around the pupil, which is inset so it can't simply be scraped off like a mould line, and the closed helmet just had a big mysterious line scored down it.

The legs on my Goblin Warboss on Gigantic Spider just would. not. go. together. Half the sockets were full of the opposite of an air bubble and the other half were too wide. Somehow the fallen log never managed to fit into the picture, either.

I'll admit to having had some successes, too. I don't remember any particular problems with my Tyrant Guard, and my Lhamean and Spiritseer only took a couple of hot water dunkings each to straighten out the bent bits. My Ur-ghul had a warped face, but it's an Ur-ghul - who's going to notice?


---


I don't think I've bought a Finecast model since the Spiritseer. Not because I'm scared off entirely - I'll probably get some Ushabti quite soon and then complain about them too - but because of the recent releases! All the blisters have been plastic except Hobbit releases and the Shadowdancer, but I already had two metal Wardancer Lords.

I'm no fan of metal, either. I've built Exorcists and S-Dragons and Thunderfire cannon, I've greenstuffed wrists and shoulders, I've painstakingly filed off insignia that would have taken five minutes on plastic...
My Nob with Waaagh! Banner has fallen over and fallen apart so many times I'm seriously considering replacing him with a Finecast one, but that option ranks slightly lower than converting a plastic one.

[John Bower]

John Bower, you're calling it "Failcrap".
Fair enough.
How many Finecast models have you bought and what were their failings?
Did GW Customer Services let you down too?
Just interested to know why you throw insulting terms about like confetti.

My experience is that I've never had a poor Finecast model and neither have my gaming friends, apart from the first couple of months.
The only time we hear "Failcast" is off people who never bought it in the first place.

Don't have any. After seeing those that several of my friends bought with holes all over them; weapons more bent than a 10 bob note etc. I chose not to.

[Cap'nSmurfs]

I never had any real problems with Finecast (oh no! a small bubble!); I don't really like it as a medium for squads/units, but I'll happily pick up single-figures (characters or monsters) in Finecast when I want them. I welcome wholeheartedly the move to plastic characters, however. It's a superior medium now they're able to produce really detailed and dynamic plastics.

Metal's awful. I think it's only familiarity which keeps people interested. It's heavy, it's hard to convert, the pieces never stick together properly, paint doesn't want to stay on it. I went back and painted my old metal Eldrad a couple of years ago, it was a pain in the ***.

It seems clear to me that Finecast was a stopgap between needing to get out of metals and bringing their plastics fully up to scratch. It did its job. All hail the plastic future!

[Mr Mystery]

Don't have any. After seeing those that several of my friends bought with holes all over them; weapons more bent than a 10 bob note etc. I chose not to.

[engage pedant mode]10 bob notes aren't bent....I think you mean 9 bob notes?[/disengage pedant mode]

[Arkhan Land]

i go for the old metal models cause im not a "poser" (hehe) and by that i mean that i enjoy lots of static old models. the finecast things i have are okay and although the lightness and posability are better overall im not stoked on their succeptebility to heat and the work it takes to mend /fix them up when damaged. i specifically dig the early 40k models the extra lead helps to keep features better than post 1993 models, which is sadly when they started to make some of the better "non static poses"