First of all, check out the awesome package of 75 plastic WW2 figures from Warlord games sprue sale. 54 Pounds including delivery (and one more pack of bases than I intended, misclicked order).
Now, on to the review of the Finecast.
I was given three Grotesques by a gaming buddy who decided that he'd had enough of dealing with the funky finecast and trying to make things fit. Two of them were still on the sprues and the parts are above. Please note the snapped sword blade in the bottom right. It's a shame it broke there as gluing such a small point, even with it being Finecast, isn't much fun. Lucky I plan to run one of these with a liquifier gun, which will replace the right army blade.
The close combat arms for the beasties. I love the details on the mechanical claw arm. A creepily excellent piece of work by the sculptor.
Torso and head. I'm not up to date with moulding and resin technology & design but why would you put vents on top of the smoothly rounded backpack chamber-thingies? I've cut them off and it's really hard work to then smooth out the rounded, nicely moulded chambers is a hassle. I'm not an expert sculptor or miniature maker and I don't want to have to fix my model and reshape parts that the production process has impacted on.
Liquifier gun, lower body and details. Similar problems with the vent locations for the extra bits you see at the bottom and top middle. I had to carve, file these down and couldn't quite get them smooth.
Here is the assembled body that my friend already made. You can see the big gap in the waist that I'll need to greenstuff. I dry-fitted one of the other torsos after cleanup and it doesn't line up well so I may need to hot water bend the spine to line it up.
The first of the moulding problems. One of the liquifier guns has an air bubble right on the joint of the arm, which means there is a big gap just where the arm should connect to the body, which is not cool. Greenstuff is definitely required here.
Both of these show the same problem area. Apparently the grotesques use too much underarm deodorant because this is a problem area on all of the models.
Overall I think the Grotesque model is, despite my grumbling above, a very nice piece of work. Admittedly it's monopose and I'd love to see a three model multi-part plastic set but I guess they aren't big enough sellers to warrant it. The general detail and style of the model is excellent, as is nearly everything in the Dark Eldar range. I'm mixed with GW releases and often find them simply ok or not to my taste, but I can't think of a DE model that doesn't resonate with me, even if I don't want to actually own it. One of their most consistently brilliant product lines for sure. I'm looking forward to painting this unit up as a creepy addition to my force and perhaps I'll even invest in a Raider so I can't jump them forward into action nice and quickly. It'll be a nice challenge for my colour scheme work too.
The Grotesque is a creepy, impressive piece of work that will fit nicely into my army and I'm looking forward to painting it. The Finecast production is what lets it down in my view. The mould lines run over places that are hard to clean up, the vents/flash from the resin are in terrible places from a detail point of view and I've got bubbles that affect detail and in one case (that I've noticed so far) actually impact the stability of the glue joint. There are lots of small spikes of resin flash that I cut off but sometimes they extend from the top of protruding pieces, which means you have to work hard not to cut off actual detail when you're removing the flash. I'm going to have to use greenstuff to fix and in some cases resculpt aspects of the model.
So here is the question.
- How many errors would you accept before you got in touch with GW to look for replacement?
- Would receiving the models as a gift change your opinion on the above?
- If you've got three models with errors but could probably cobble together good models from the bits would you contact GW?
I'd love to hear your thoughts on the above. I don't like to abuse such a good customer service policy as GW offers but then again I don't think charging such high prices for models when they are some serious production issues making the model look bad are good either.
Thanks for reading and for anyone who read the review and wants to know more about whether the models are worth it then keep watching the blog as I go about assembling and painting.
All the best
Pete
PS: I noticed another bubble in the bicep of one model, which is not something that can easily be ignored. Such a shame.
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