Fixing Finecast… Part 2

January 25, 2012 by elromanozo

Video Sponsors: Infinity - Heavy Gear

Romain adds the finishing touches to his Finecast Farseer.

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6xp

veelckoo

Filling bubles is not a rocket science exactly. But if one has to recreate parts of a model that are missing – that is plainly stupid.
Imagine that part of face was missing (that happens with “fine”cast – http://www.waylandgames.co.uk/images/finecastfaults/web_b_item-09.jpg) – not exactly easiest assigment.
Given the price of those models I won’t be buying them until the quality improves a lot.
It might mean that i won;t be buying them at all.
Pity because i still need some models for my armies which are only available as failcast. Ill try to find metals on ebay.
Good job GW,

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183xp

bloodwin

I made sure to get the skaven characters in metal recently before they go finecast. Other than that you can convert figures if you really dont like finecast. As a fantasy player I don’t often bother using the characters so they are just display pieces. The lords and herpes I have are either old metals new plastics or plastic conversions. For me the hobby is as much about conversions as painting and that funny game thing. 😉

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69xp

crovax20

Oh my, Romain you daredevil! I wouldn’t try bending it without heating the stuff ever. One of my finecast spearchucka crewmembers holding a spear, had his spear a bit bended. I tried to flex it a little without heating and snap!

It is a shame the industry is dominated by GW, and nobody seems to be able to get someone who is responsible for this horrible finecast stuff in front of a microphone and publicly apologize. I mean someone at GW must have been aware of the terrible quality of a lot of models and still gave it the green light.

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183xp

bloodwin

Why should they apologise? If theres something wrong GW will exchange it. You don’t have to buy their products.

3471xp

nogginthenog

I think when GW introduce, in their own words, the finest miniatures ever, to the world, and what we get is this, and 10 months on the QA still hasnt been sorted, never mind the issues with the material itself, they really ought to do some damage control.

If it were just the usual moans, as you get with every codex/army book, then thats just the nature of the internet, but this is much more than that , its a genuine issue witha product they charge a very premium price for.

My librarian terminator cost more than any of my four Studio McVey minis, and there is barely a mould line on any of them, the terminatir, took me a week to get it looking sort of like it should,GW really has no excuse for what they put out, they are very, very poor quality, in comparison to their own previous output, never mind the competition.

Its galling because the metal versions were largely excellent, and the plastic stuff really is as good as it gets in the wargaming world.

3928xp

poosh

That’s just not true. GW shipped a massed amount of defective products. You apologize for that. You fire the guy who let that happen. If you buy a model with a misshaped anything, or a bubble in a bad place, you take it back to the shop. When you pay the cost of Finecast you are paying for a PERFECT model. Not something you have to fix etc. You don’t sit there and take it in the arse, and “fix” the model. Would you sit there and take it if someone sold you a car with a missing steering wheel?

You don’t have to buy their products, of course. But as a company you DON’T sell defective products. If Microsoft sell you a keyboard with a key missing you don’t tell the consumer “you don’t have to buy our products, stop moaning.” It’s absurd.

GW messed up their Finecast launch. So many people have a bad view of Finecast because of it. They did not bother about quality control. They shipped defective items across the globe. Why is it that all my finecast takes less than a minute to put together, without any effort at all; crisp and superior to anything PP or Mantic have made in resin; a true pleasure. Yet so many people have taken hours on the same models putting them together (and my first Finecast had seven holes in it), and are given deformed crap.

They don’t even need to apologise, just fire the idiot(s) behind this, they’re a bloody liability. Any other company would have fired the people on the spot for this.

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elromanozo

The industry is dominated by GW…
But only because you guys say so.
Vote with your wallets, people !

BoW Romain

3471xp

nogginthenog

Its not quite that simple Romain.

The problem is with wargaming, you need other people to play the games with, for a huge proportion of the people that play in this country, especially the younger ones, the only place they have available to do that is GW stores.

No one else has got a large enough market penetration that means just buying a rulebook and minis off the shelf (or internet) means you can learn a game and find people to play against.

I have a few set friends who I play games with, we’ve been doing this for twenty years, so we get to try other things, Infinity is the one we are having a go at now, but, at least in the UK, for a lot of people,if they want to do more than collect minis, and actually play, they often have to go for warhammer of whatever flavour.

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946xp

trebormills

GW is in a strong postion but IMO the lead they have is starting to be massively eroded. The big 3 are: Mantic proxies, Infinity, Warmahordes
plus
Older players getting burnt out, Kings of war and Warpath might threaten but not convinced yet, the rise of cheap 28mm plastic for historical games, DBA still will not die and that leads to HOTT and the biggest of the others- PR disasters

GW still stand above all but in some areas are rapidly falling even in the UK. Price cuts and new editions may of course pull them back into the untouchable realms

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183xp

bloodwin

Nice to see a sensible vid about this. I think it might had worked better with a filler that contrasted more and a closer camera view but good to see some decent instruction on finecast which is also applicable to most resin miniatures.

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946xp

trebormills

Did the shop move its foundrys to Cadburys choclates? Aerocast, light and bubbly
I have to say the Finecast quality has gone up since the first runs that I saw but Id rather plastic or metal…so much so that I refuse to buy this new fangled stuff. Which is a shame as Id love a few minis (hello green knight, Nazguls etc)

Id love to see a plastic exemplar vid by our Gallic friend…stop the people moaning that PP doesnt get bashed. I dislike the pp mold lines and pour point placement but at least I get a great fig without to much clean up

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3765xp

manpug

I think I have a helpful tip for filling bubble holes in finecast.
1. Open pot of liquid putty
2. Turn finecast model upside down
2. Dip fincast model into liquid putty
4. Remove finecast model from liquid putty
The end.

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26028xp

warzan

lol comment of the day right there.

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4818xp

elromanozo

I’ll say !

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3765xp

manpug

For some reason Romain, I think my tip didn’t help much.

1459xp

beerogre

Just a bit of background guys.

I personally walked into my local GW store and bought these over the counter.
I also asked the manager to open the box so that we could both inspect the models before I paid for them.
This will all be on their store video tape and I still have the receipt. There were no shenanigans here. I didn’t pick a bad box and at any time before taking my money both they or I could’ve changed the product to another box.
The models passed a cursory inspection and Romain was the next person to open the box.
Take from that what you will.

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746xp

spaderfish

So it is destiny then.

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8xp

thedamnedartificer

Yesterday I recieved 3 finecast blisters I bought from a small independant retailer over mail order, and one of them was in perfect condition, not as much as a single airbubble in it, the other two however had so many bubbles, warpage/shrinkage and leftover pink rubber embedded in the parts that they were completely worthless and was beyond saving. I then took pictures and wrote an email to the GW customer service,explaining in a rational tone that I was very dissatisfied with their product and told them that I found it disappointing that they would let something like this pass through their quality control (if indeed they have such a thing). I got a reply in less than 40 minutes where they apologized and offered to replace them, and today I got a confirmation mail that they had dispatched them already which made me very happy.

So at least they have exceptional customer service, which was nice but I sure hope they fix their problems or else I’ll probably lay off buying more of their finecast range unless I can inspect it personally first.

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beerogre

I have no complaints about the GW customer service either. However, this Farseer model is perfectly serviceable as a gaming model, even without all the filling and sanding. However, it’s not perfect and could not be described as such.

Mould Lines and flash are to be accepted… metal models had them too… but bubbles that require filling and sometimes remodelling are not what you would expect from premium product.

3904xp

huscarle

Fixing Finecast Part 3
Romain take his model back to the shop

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3595xp

chilledenuff

It’s lucky thier customer service is as good as it is. Finecast is awful. i bought mangler squigs. 3 boxes in, i got a set that wasn’t complete trash, still not perfect though.
it’s no surprise that prices didn’t drop when it took over from the more expensive metal models. They’re having to cast 5 times as many of each model to replace defective castings