GW Finecast Review: DE Mandrakes

[paulson games]

I picked up a box of the Mandrakes, I honestly don't see any major differance between the new resin and other brands available for self casting. It's a bit more durable than the resin forgeworld uses but not by much. Overall it's very nice stuff to work with much better than the metal, and the casting is quite good, most of the threads on other forums people are bashing and have posted have some really rough miscasts the likes of which I didn't see present on any of the blisters I was sorting through.

The quality is on par with FW stuff, with the exception that the mold lines are way better. FW models in my experience tend to have a lot of mold slip and really bad mold lines, the fine cast stuff seems to have fixed that pretty well. They do have some small bubbles on some of the models. On my Mandrakes one of the guys only has two toes and each of the models has some microbubbles on the right hand so the fingers are all slightly damaged. But given my experience with resin that's a very common occurance as the parts are really tiny, none of them are deformed enough to be unuseable but they will all require a slight bit of touch up with greenstuff.

One of the librarians I saw in the store had some issues with the power cables on his staff having some voids due to bubbles, but I looked at maybe 30 os so blisters and only two models had apparent flaws, so overall they are pretty solid casts. And that's coming from a very detail focused snob like me

In my opinion I think they came out well for the most part, but I am a very experienced modeller and used to the difficulties of working with resin. I'm not sure how great of a choice it'd be for the average 12-14 year old gamer however. I do realize that many of the kids may not notice or even care about the finer details as they are just getting the models to use for table top play and not high end modelling or painting. I realize that it may not have been a feasible option but I would have preferred if they'd kept the metal around for when you want a tablestandard model and then having finecast available for the more diehard modellers.

They were $33 which is a bit steep, the old models were $25 if I recall correctly? Being that the cause for the switch away from metals is that resin is cheaper to produce I'm not entirely sure why the price hike. They should have kept the price where it was at as they'd already be coming out ahead... but GW never misses a chance to drive their prices endlessly up. Finecast is a fairly solid product quality wise but I do think they are going to end up slowing a lot of their sales due to the higher cost.



3 out of the 5 models:




The microbubbles, and other normal stuff for resin like the weapons being slightly bent which can be corrected with hot water.

[mangozac]

Thanks for sharing - I didn't know this was going ahead so soon.

Very interesting to see, but I don't think it's worth the price hike. The extra detail is very nice, however I wonder how well may of the older sculpts can take advantage of this?

[paulson games]

I took the box back to the local bunker which exchanged it. I gave the box a quick look over and it was better than the first but there were still a few minor bubble problems. None of these were major and could easily be corrected with a dab of superglue or greenstuff. I'm still a bit irritated as it required a second trip back for marginal models, not the sterling quality that GW is advertising finecast as being.

I took some on the sprue shots which I'd skipped last time.





The bubbles on the new box:








The bubbles were still occuring in the same places, hands and toes so I know it's likely a result of the mold and not just a singular miscast. From my personal casting experience I know it'd take only a few seconds of work to prevent this using a light dusting of Talc powder on the molds which helps wick the resin to the surface and eliminate fine bubbles. This is an easily correctable problem which is why I'm not to happy with the purchase. (with the previous experience compounding it)

I apreciate the fact that the store was able to exchange the box, however it's not something I should have to chase around fixing, they are billing finecast as a superior quality product and in my experience it's proving no better than the metals. My biggest suggestion is make sure you go over every mini in the store before leaving and if you find a problem immediately exchange it or return it.

I had been planning on purchasing enough Mandrakes to fill out two full units, with future plans of purchasing enough Talos engines and Wracks to fill out a flesh cult list. I no longer intend to be doing so, with the increased cost of the models and downgrade in quality I really can't justify spending money on those. This is why GW just isn't cutting it for me anymore, had the quality upheld their BS hype campaign claims I had planned on buying 3 more boxes of mandrakes, 3 talos engines and at least 8 boxes of wracks. That's $500 in sales they just lost, purchases that will be going to Privateer Press, I will be buying cephalyx overlords and thralls to use as stand in models for the wracks and I will piece together the talos engines out of warjacks.

I gave it a shot and I'm disappointed enough I don't see any reason to use fine cast to fill core unit slots. The quality level is not what they have been promoting, GW just keeps f'ing up their stuff and I'm done with them. There are plenty of other options out there (and less expensive)



Privateer's Cephalyx Slaver Box - $33 for 6 guys, without dubious casts? Yes Please!

[Munkey Joe]