8.26.2012

Anger of the (Finecast) Necrons


UPDATE: GW Customer Service, as usual, took good care of me and this situation. Finecast still sucks, though.

So here I am at step one of my attempt to field 1850-2000 points of Necrons, fully painted to TT, within 3 weeks. First up are my first 32 warriors, 5 immortals (thank you, readers, for the suggestion), a lord, an overlord, a cryptek, Imotekh, and Obyron. The plastics have been carefully assembled and the mold lines have, for the most part, been rubbed out.

But then came the task of dealing with the Fincecast ICs. [read more]


Now, I've been ambivalent about Finecast. I did not get on the "Failcast" train and just start indiscriminately dogging the material. For chunky models like Hive Guard, I think it beats metal when you can find casts that don't make the model asymmetrical. And when I've had problems, a quick call to GW Customer Service has remedied my problem to my satisfaction every single time.

But look at the circled areas in that picture above (you can click on it to enlarge). Those two staves snapped during their removal from the sprue. I was not at all hard on these models; rather, I was babying them. I think it has to do with the fact that those staves look segmented, creating natural break points. Regardless of the reason, I've finally come to see that Finecast is really bad with thin, highly detailed areas.

I'm going to call GW tomorrow to remedy this, but I don't know if getting a replacement is going to solve the problem. The staff looks too thin to pin, but I will see what I can do to fix it. If I'm successful and GW sends a replacement, I may give the fixed one away. Stay tuned.

7 comments:

  1. gggrrr...typical of Finecrap!it's a botch, and a swizz...

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  2. I have been really dissapointed with the finecast line. I have bought 2 zoanthropes an both have been terrible.

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  3. Had the same issue with my Overlord (actually worse as all the piping under his chest was malformed and needed a heap of GS work) and ended up kitbashing all of my Crypteks to avoid more finecast. You can pin the staves if you're really careful with the pin drill.

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  4. Greenstuff? JB Weld? I dunno. The painting guide gives tips on how to deal with warps but not breaks.

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  5. I had that same problem with a Techmarine. The flamer arm almost immediatly broke (same thing happened on my metal TM). Later one of the over she shoulder tech arms broke off. I pinned both breaks and just soldiered on. It's really an issue with GW just willy-nilly recasting metal models in Resin. Most of those models work pretty well in metal, but once you cast it in flexable brittle resin. The inadequate material holding up certan parts is certain to break.

    Recently I had an Ork Nob with Attack Squig break at the squig's hair to nob arm area. it's because there wasn't sufficient thickness in the original model to support the squig. I think finecast will get better once they get past recasting formerly metal models. ONce they start to create models designed for the material we will get much more durable models that look good.

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  6. Tasha, your term "flexible brittle resin" describes it in a nutshell. Too wiggly to not warp, too brittle to not break.

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  7. I think going with the flexible resin was an attempt to give some flex and avoid breakage in these thin bits, but ultimately yes, it is still too brittle. Some of the crisper resins actually hold up quite well in thin sections, often as well as plastic (ABS) parts anyway.

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