Citadel Finecraft,or should I Say Citadel Finecrap
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 .
Tags: Miniatures Warhammer 40000
Assembling a magnetized Dark Eldar Chronos + Talos
The newly released Dark Eldar Talos/Chronos is a gorgeous looking flying monster, but it is also expensive to buy two of them just to have both a Talos and a Chronos models.
As they share many common parts, I decided to finally go for a magnetic modding to try to exchange arms, lower body and rear part and have interchangeable parts.
I used a split into two small magnet, nails, needes. Tools I used were a modelling knife, plastic cutter and a modelling drill (tiny one).
The rear Chronos syphon or Talos knives use headless needles to be interchargeable. The needles are glued to the parts, and the rear of the miniature has a deep hole.
Cutting an arm to fit the nail. I do an L shaped cut with the knife, then drill a hole, extend it with the knife, cut the nail head and glue it.
Chronos arm detail.
Cut oval magned glued in the arm placeholder
With the cutter I splitted it into two (it was tiny).
Talos components unplugged.
Chronos version, with the tentacles and the spirit syphon at the back.
Looks really fantastic and here the magnets work perfectly.
Talos version. Notice my fail that makes the scorpion-like tail hang too low.
Also the arms of the talos version seem to be a bit heavy so the magnetized arms tend to rotate down to a hanging position.
For being my first attemp to magnetize a model is not bad, my worst fail has been the positioning of the tail and wasn't due to the magnets but of my dumbness of not properly checking the instructions before.
For the next magnetized model I definetly need magnets on both sides. The trick of the nail heads is not strong enough to allow all arm positions.
But at least I achieved my mission of having both miniatures paying just for one :)
Tags: Miniatures Warhammer 40000
Book Review: Ultramarines: The Killing Ground
The Killing Ground represents the fourth book in the Ultramarines series of Black Library Warhammer 40.000 books.
Continues the adventures of Uriel and Pasanius, this time in an imperial planet in which there is a killing ground... where the dead are not at peace precisely.
This book has Imperial Guard, ghosts, the unfleshed from the third book, and another sweet surprise I don't want to spoil, but that sadly is badly represented here, being killed almost entirely as mere puppets instead of the "special" thing they are.
The story is predictable in general, nothing incredible, but at least you enjoy reading. I just wish it had more action and less ghostly stories.
Not bad but neither impressive, a mere nexus between the original Omnibus and the following books.
Tags: Books Warhammer 40000
proof: Warcraft was originally going to be Warhammer
For many years there has been a legend about Warcraft, that the first game of one of the best money-making machines franchises was in fact going to be originally the computer version of Warhammer, by Games Workshop.
Stories say that GW decided to cancel it (or decided to not do it) but Blizzard went on and released Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.
I've tried many times to hunt for reliable sources about this, not finding a single non-forum based comment/version/claim.
Well, today, reading a spanish PDF e-zine (Cargad! #10) I found an interview with Félix Paniagua, an ex-GW miniatures scuptor that claims the following (fragment on page 22):
Felix: [...] Did you knew that Warcraft was going to be Warhammer?
Interviewer: What?
Felix: The guys at Blizzard proposed Games Workshop to do a computer game based on Warhammer. Games Workshop said no, so Blizzard still continued with it and called it Warcraft. Games Workshop didn't took long to start being sorry [for the decision they took].
 
So, for me an ex-employee's claim is enough proof that this is actually true.
Tags: Videogames Warhammer 40000
Assembling a little bird + some painting progress
With the newly released Grey Knights I couldn't resist ordering a few of them to build another small army.
My plan is to have in time 7 or 8 different race armies of at minimum 1500 points, to be able to play with friends and all enjoy as much variety as possible, but as I'm the only one that buys them...
It is also quite nice to paint different models and in different colors, I noticed some time ago that both of my armies were too dark and greenish in general.
Right now I have this armies:
- Space Marine Dark Angels: Endless army, one day I should count the points, but I can play just with a Deathwing sub-army if I want.
- Orks: Another big one. I have almost all models I want (as with the Space Marines) but also is a huge green swarm with lots of orks and heavy stuff (2 dreadnoughs and the like).
- Genestealer Cult: All my old and new Space Hulk Genestealers, the old and new hybrids, patriarch, mages, a Carnifex (big badass and awesome miniature) and one tank small conversion I will show once painted (someday...). Very specialiced and probably not suitable for all battles, but I wanted my genestealer horde to become a true cult :)
- Dark Eldar: Kabalite warriors squad, 3 reavers and one mandrakes squad. right now the smallest army, whenever the 2nd wave of DE miniatures is launched I'll probably expand it.
- Grey Knights: One normal squad, one terminator armour squad, a brother captain and the Stormraven I'm currently building.
Also they have as allies two inquisitors and two assassins (models I bought a while ago and couldn't use with the Dark Angels due to Codex restrictions!).
I also bought a Chaos Space Marines battleforce, Terminator lord and Soul Grinder.
So the total is 6 armies so far. Most of them unpainted so not worth taking pictures.
In the future I will probably add an Eldar battleforce and some Necrons (which rumors say will be revamped soon), and that will probably be all. Increasing ranks but remaining races like the Tau or Imperial guard do not engage me enough and have just one or two nice-looking miniatures for me to collect and paint.
Having said all that, I can focus on the initial idea of this post, divided in two parts. First, my progress assembling a "little bird":
I've also learned to not glue everything before painting, so the pilot and cabin aren't glued to allow me to paint everything in detail.
The Stormraven is huge and heavy (and I haven't finished yet), with an amazing level of detail. I'm looking forward to paint it and try metal highlights (it's going to be for the Grey Knights). An expensive (at least for GW range, compared with Forge World items is even cheap XD) but awesome model.
And the second part of the post is that having enough time to paint seems to be a difficult task for me. Anything below 1 hour is not enough, and usually when I have at least that much spare time is after midnight and my pulse is not perfect due to starting to feel tired.
So in painting I advance slowly, quite slowly. But I do advance something.
I finally finished painting the remaining details of Azrael, my Dark Angels army commander. He had a few details still unpainted (weapon, head and banner pole/angel figure at the top), so I finally did them:
I also have started to paint the ork Stompa, not only because it will look great, but also because has 6 fragments unglued waiting for being painted, so now it is both unusable in games (at least without blue-tac) and taking a lot of space in the shelves.
Those are two finished fragments, the back gretching with a drill, and the head with the Ork Kaptain giving orders.
I am currently painting the main body to glue this pieces and then glue each remaining fragment as I finish with them.
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