Well off I went this morning to my local Games Workshop to see for myself what these finecast minis are really like.
It took me a while to decide what to get. I got there about an hour after opening and 2 or 3 miniatures had already sold out. The Space Marine stuff seemed to have gone first, suprise, suprise.
I did see the Azhag miniature down there, but my wife would have gone nuts at me if I had spent £55 on another piece of resin this month, so I wisely put it back on the shelf .
After a lot of uming and aring between the Imperial Guard Lord Commissar, Commissar Yarrick, Emperor’s Champion and Grimgor Ironhide, I chose the Orc Grimgor.
The cost was £10.50 which is slightly more expensive than it was before I think, I can’t remember what he used to cost to compare. But £10.50 for a resin single figure isn’t too bad in my opinion, it’s certainly in the same ball park as resin figures from the small boutique companies out there and as I tell me wife, I don’t smoke and don’t drink a great deal so compared to what people spend on those I’m still okay lol
Here are the first photos:
All the single miniatures come in the new style clampacks instead of the old blisters, a colour card at the front showing you a painted version of what is inside and if you turn it over you can clearly see the miniature in the back, the miniature is cast in a very readable colour grey (very similar to FW resin colour) making it very easy to check the cast for any small flaws before you buy. The new packaging does it’s job well and makes you want to buy everything… if I had stayed much longer I would have definetly come out with a few more figures .
When I heard clam packs were being used, I did have some reservations. I had visions of the usual perlaver I have when trying to get into the things like when I buy xbox accessory packs or other computer equipment, which usually involves a lot of swearing, tearing, cutting with scissors etc.(well for me anyway as I don’t have a lot of patience ) The new packs have a tab at the back that you pull to open, which makes it pretty easy to get into.
Here are some shots of the sprue as it looks straight from the clampack (bigger photos in the discussion area here). I had a good look around the store at most of the ones that were there and all seemed to be the same quality of cast as this one in the photos. When I took the sprue out to have a proper look at it I couldn’t see any major casting problems at all.
The detail on the cast is extremely crisp and fine, a huge improvement on the metal versions. There was minimal flash as you can see from the photos and hardly any mold lines either. What mold lines there were, were very fine and easily removable with a scalpel (bye, bye needles files! lol). By the time I had finished looking I had only found one small airbubble in the whole cast. But this was so small it was easily filled with some superglue and wasn’t anywhere that damaged the details anyway.
While I was in there, the manager did show me the Space Marine Librarian in Terminator armour and Njal and a metal Njal to compare it with, again everything is a lot crisper but the places where you see the largest improvement is in textured surfaces like fur and also the faces, they are much finer now they are in resin, the Librarian’s face looked like he had been on a diet lol
Conclusion
Very nice indeed, great level of detail in the cast, very crisp and fine. The colour of the resin is a nice readable grey, making it very easy to see the details and more importantly any flaws. The price is more expensive than it used to be but I think the improvements are well worth the extra money (especially from a painters point of view anyway). I would have to disagree with some of the reviews I have seen so far that there is no improvement between these and their metal equivilants. I think I read somewhere that there is very little mold release on them but I think I will give it a quick scrub in some warm soapy water anyway before painting, just in case. I am hoping that not having to struggle cleaning metal miniatures from now on will mean I paint a lot more.
Now I’m off to gather together up all my old metal minis to sell on ebay so I can go out and buy the new resin versions.
If you want to comment, here is the link to the thread in the discussion area:
Thanks for reading.
W.
