The first Citadel Finecraft miniatures I have are some Chaos plague space marines. Today I decided to relax and assemble them, and also check how impressive or not was the resin replacement of metal Games Workshop miniatures.
I had read all kind of comments, from not bad to terrible, and seen some frightening photos that scared me. My results? I thank I had the miniatures via a good online sale (so my mind cand "compensate"), but is a pity I didn't buy them in a physical store in Spain, because I would have returned them due to the quality.
I cannot imagine how can they in some cases even raise prices to sell this crappy resin models and not feel embarrased. Surely the resin has detail and quality, but only in those places where it doesn't have bubble holes.
Let me show you some photos:
Sure you can take out the fine layer of resin from the models, but WTF?! Plastic sprues are way better cut than this "finecast" ones!
Three sprues had the thin layer. Also in general al pieces have tons of remains to cut. In general looks like plastic sprues but less professional.
Almost every single piece needed retouches to remove the border of the molds (look at the elbow or the wrist gauntlet). In some places even more noticeable than plastic sprues.
And now come the fireworks... the now famous GW resin bubble holes. I wanted to think that the photos I saw were an isolated uncommon case, but the truth is that the bubble holes are directly defects, requiring green putty and not "a drop of glue" as GW says.
Look at the skull in the sword hilt. The hole is inmense and clearly visible.
You can find the bubble holes because they usually have like a shiny liquid (but is dry). Note that the hand also has another bubble hole.
Another broken piece, the upper right corner of this shoulder pad. Small bubbles you say?
Look at the "bite"...
The only resin backpack... and the skull has also a hole on the left part...
Plus another hole in the left part.
And the one that got me most angry about: One of the heads of the space marines had also a hole!
I always approach miniature assembly as a Zen-like ritual. In this case, I was frightened about what would be the next defect and if I could fix it or not.
I spent 30 minutes with green stuff fixing everything (and I hope my poor skills are enough once painted), fixing huge defects, not tiny bubbles.
My advice? Wait until this first generation of faulty Finecrapt resin models goes away and Games Workshop fixes their machines. In the meanwhile, buy "old" metal miniatures.
And if you must buy resin ones, buy them in a physical store so that you can return them in case of this kind of defects.
I am puzzled how if they also own Forge World (which produces resin models and I don't read complains against them) and they had he technology of quality resin models since years, they messed up so much .