Reply To: Are older miniatures better ?

[wolfie65Participant 1238xp 0]

Agree on the board game figures, they certainly have gotten a lot better, some of them even rival wargames quality.

Details and undercuts are a double-edged sword. Many of those details are so incredibly tiny that no one who isn’t a professional figure painter can ever do them justice – and sometimes even the pros can’t – and some of those undercuts so severe and hiding so much of the model that the only way to get any paint into those extreme recesses are washes. Even airbrush spray won’t reach and no brush held by human hands is small or flexible enough.

Multipart models are ok to some degree, especially if you like skirmish games in which each and every model is, in fact, an individual, but to my way of thinking, for rank and file, nothing beats the look of 4th edition Warhammer  High Elf spearmen or Goblin archers. I have literally hundreds of those and I love them, whereas 6th edition or later multi-part plastics leave me cold, despite the fact that they may technically be ‘better’ figures.

Demented Games offer most of their Twisted figures in both a metal ‘gamer’s’ as well as a resin ‘collector’s’ version, and I can’t really see a difference in terms of detail. I’d say sculpting and the quality of the mold itself have more to do with that than material.

I have a few 3D printed figures and while they are great as unique individuals, I wouldn’t want a whole army of them, especially because they are just so, so incredibly fragile. You can run over a 5th edition Empire halberdier with a truck and he’ll be ok, your 3D Vampire countess will break if you look at her too hard.