Why does finecast even exist?! - The Painting Phase.

[Guest]

Finecast? Why :)

 

Very good insight.

[RWJP]

Yet another great episode... It's been really refreshing hearing someone talk about the business decisions GW makes in a relatively "detached" manner without the emotion that often gets involved on the internet. No drama, just "This is why they did it, these are the decisions that were made and the process that was followed."

Their comments about honesty in communication were particularly poignant. I wonder what the reaction would have been to Finecast if GW had come out with a simple message saying that metal was getting too expensive so they were switching to resin to avoid having to raise prices for customers. Sure, with how Finecast ended up, people still would have been unhappy but I think the fallout might not have been so bad.

[Lord Marshal]

19 minutes ago, RWJP said:

Their comments about honesty in communication were particularly poignant. I wonder what the reaction would have been to Finecast if GW had come out with a simple message saying that metal was getting too expensive so they were switching to resin to avoid having to raise prices for customers. Sure, with how Finecast ended up, people still would have been unhappy but I think the fallout might not have been so bad.

 

Frankly? I can't see it having done much. 

 

"We're doing this to save raising prices... but we're still raising prices on everything we converted to this cheaper material and you're getting a worse product out the other end."

 

Edited November 20, 2023 by Lord Marshal

[MegaVolt87]

5 minutes ago, Lord Marshal said:

 

Frankly? I can't see it having done much. 

 

"We're doing this to save raising prices... but we're still raising prices on everything we converted to this cheaper material and you're getting a worse product out the other end."

 

 

I remember the finecast switch. It was basically an open secret why it happened with increasing metal prices even though GW never were open about it. The real problem with finecast was, a lot of times a company will pass on some, if not all the savings to the customer with a change like this. Well, look how that played out with the finecast pricing. GW not only reaped the benefits of production savings, they went on to increase prices anyway over the metals they replaced. Failcast is something that makes a good case study I believe in the business world. 

[Rain]

Finecast wasn’t…great, but I still prefer it to metal. Metal was impossible to actually game with without getting chips on the model.  The models were heavy, so they were prone to falling over on any terrain or uneven surface, and they would inevitably chip when this happened.
 

The chips were also shiny, and very obvious and distracting when they happened. I frankly don’t care how expensive the material is, I care about the quality and usability of the model. Some exotic radioactive isotope would probably be a really expensive material. Doesn’t mean I want my toy soldiers to be made from the demon core.
 

Also, just anecdotally, I never had a model with actual damage from bubbles, or missing features, or anything like the horror pictures I’ve seen online. Worst I had was some warping that required holding the piece under hot water and gently bending it into position.

 

For reference, I played Dark Eldar in the age of FC, which had a ton of FC units, including semi-staples such as Wracks.

[twopounder]

2 hours ago, Rain said:

Finecast wasn’t…great, but I still prefer it to metal. Metal was impossible to actually game with without getting chips on the model.  The models were heavy, so they were prone to falling over on any terrain or uneven surface, and they would inevitably chip when this happened.
 

The chips were also shiny, and very obvious and distracting when they happened. I frankly don’t care how expensive the material is, I care about the quality and usability of the model. Some exotic radioactive isotope would probably be a really expensive material. Doesn’t mean I want my toy soldiers to be made from the demon core.
 

Also, just anecdotally, I never had a model with actual damage from bubbles, or missing features, or anything like the horror pictures I’ve seen online. Worst I had was some warping that required holding the piece under hot water and gently bending it into position.

 

For reference, I played Dark Eldar in the age of FC, which had a ton of FC units, including semi-staples such as Wracks.

 

I thought this too, until I started washing them in alcohol before painting. The issue was mold release still on the metal. Metals were far superior. It also didn't break as easily as the resin and never had bubbles. 

[Magos Takatus]

I once bought a blister pack of some Dark Reapers and it was flat out missing one of the missile launchers. Suffice to say they cracked open another pack and gave me a replacement. The worst models I had to deal with were Ork Kommandos. In that video Peachy complained about the V-shaped pieces on the models. Kommandos were absolutely and completely riddled with them. They were all over the dynamite that they carried, handing off pieces of equipment. It felt like it almost took as long to prep the models as it did to paint them, and I still missed some that I had to shave off and re-prime and paint that small area. It's true that not all resin models are created equal.

[Marshal Rohr]

Painting Phase is the best podcast available right now. They deserve a ton of success. 
 

The Duncan and Peachy reunion show would probably break the Hobby Internet 

Edited November 21, 2023 by Marshal Rohr

[Xenith]

On 11/20/2023 at 7:49 PM, RWJP said:

I wonder what the reaction would have been to Finecast if GW had come out with a simple message saying that metal was getting too expensive so they were switching to resin to avoid having to raise prices for customers.

 

Like, GW did that. I remember it. They said. They also put up notices in their shops in the mid 2000's (2006 - 2007?) about the massive spikes and volatility in the tin market and how they were going to have to raise prices on metal models, and then in 2010 or so they moved away from white metal completely and into finecast. 

 

Here's the historic tin price graph:

 

Spoiler

 

Tin went from US$6,000/ton in Dec 2005 and spiked at...US$23,500 in april 2008.  It quadrupled in price in 28 months, which is insane (and if you follow the chart, it did it again, and again).

 

In Feb 22 tin was >US$40,000/ton, almost 6x more expensive than pre-2005 times, which goes some way to explain why MTO metals are so damn pricey. 

Edited November 22, 2023 by Xenith

[Dr. Clock]

Never did buy any finecast; never will.

 

Bought a few FW kits over the years but anything in actual finecast is a pass from me because I know it's just a placeholder until plastics are done for them. I know how to wait. So any unit's that's in finecast has just been a plastic conversion project for me (if I don't have the old metal or can't find on Ebay)... and indeed some of those projects became their own armies! I got Idoneth Thralls to use as wracks, Khainite Shadowstalkers for mandrakes, and bought a bunch of third party fishy weirdos to use as various Court and Beast units... This along with generally stocking up on fantasy stuff for DnD ended with a good dip into AoS over the last few years. Basically I just wrote finecast off, and this made it easier to try out other things.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

[Xenith]

From anecdote, only th stuff that was initially metal the converted to finecast had the real issues- anything designed to be in finecast had much better quality overall. And as we've seen, GW was only happy to immediately replace duff kits with fresh ones, probably costing them time and money, hence the next rapid experiments into monopose plastic characters, the first wave being in 2010 or so with the banshee, dark elf sorceress, etc. 

 

When was the last finecast release?

[son of the forest]

Was anything actually designed for fine cast? I thought everything in fine cast had previously been metal

[Redcomet]

It was a great episode. Really highlights that things aren’t as simple as people tend to believe, nor done because they are Evil.

A lot of the decisions in that era was done in an attempt to save the company. Peachy has said before that GW was a week away from running out of money and closing down at one point.

Also interesting that the corporate culture hasn’t changed much since then. I bet you a dollar that a lot of executives have their eye on a possible bubble again, and that a lot of decisions are to mitigate that.

In some cases I think the company never left crisis mode.

23 minutes ago, son of the forest said:

Was anything actually designed for fine cast? I thought everything in fine cast had previously been metal

They where. And any future minis where constrained by using the same kind of two piece rubber mold technique. 

[Redcomet]

35 minutes ago, Xenith said:

From anecdote, only th stuff that was initially metal the converted to finecast had the real issues- anything designed to be in finecast had much better quality overall. And as we've seen, GW was only happy to immediately replace duff kits with fresh ones, probably costing them time and money, hence the next rapid experiments into monopose plastic characters, the first wave being in 2010 or so with the banshee, dark elf sorceress, etc. 

 

When was the last finecast release?

They weren’t designed for finecast. Finecast used the same casting techniques as metal minis. The only reason they got better is because the casting department spent a lot of time making it better. They drilled a lot of vents in the molds for instance. 

[Jukkiz]

3 hours ago, Xenith said:

 

When was the last finecast release?

weren´t couple of the last MTO minis finecrap, according to the page mentions?  Not all were metal that much i remember

[son of the forest]

Ahh yea now I've thought about it Cannoness Veridyan was fine cast from the beginning 

[Lexington]

5 hours ago, Redcomet said:

They weren’t designed for finecast. Finecast used the same casting techniques as metal minis. The only reason they got better is because the casting department spent a lot of time making it better. They drilled a lot of vents in the molds for instance. 

This lines up with what a friend in the casting biz once told me - it’s not that Finecast is a bad material, it’s that GW seemingly put almost no time towards researching it or figuring out how to best use it to cast their own minis before shoving it out into the market. Mixes were off, lack of proper venting, etc., to the point that over 60% of the original batch was returned as defective. The whole thing was a rush job, and it showed.

[Xenith]

7 hours ago, Redcomet said:

They weren’t designed for finecast. Finecast used the same casting techniques as metal minis. The only reason they got better is because the casting department spent a lot of time making it better. They drilled a lot of vents in the molds for instance. 

 

I believe that some of the later Necron characters like Oberyn were only even in finecast, and never in metal. Some also like the Archons court, sslyth etc, were also only even in finecast, and didn't have anywhere near the problems that the ones that used moulds originally designed for metal did.  

[alfred_the_great]

I’ve gone back and listened to a couple other episodes: it’s quite a good podcast. And definitely illuminating on GW’s culture. 

[Joe]

On 11/23/2023 at 9:34 AM, Xenith said:

When was the last finecast release?

 

The last new miniature to release in Finecast was Severina Raine in 2019.

[Halandaar]

22 hours ago, Jukkiz said:

weren´t couple of the last MTO minis finecrap, according to the page mentions?  Not all were metal that much i remember

 

Made To Order minis are always cast in whatever material they were last available in, so yeah it's perfectly likely that some models available on MTO were cast in Finecast. Only the older minis that never got a Finecast release are cast in metal for MTO runs.

[Tyriks]

23 hours ago, Xenith said:

 

I believe that some of the later Necron characters like Oberyn were only even in finecast, and never in metal. Some also like the Archons court, sslyth etc, were also only even in finecast, and didn't have anywhere near the problems that the ones that used moulds originally designed for metal did.  

This was actually every named Necron character besides C'tan shards amd the new stuff. All of them came out with the 5th ed codex in 2010.

[Guest]

I only had 2 real encounters with Failcast.

 

Calgar and his Honour Guard... Over 6 sets I could not get a full set with them, I just gave up. 

 

Kantor, again I went through 3 I think and just told them to refund me. 

[Xenith]

On 11/24/2023 at 11:49 AM, Tyriks said:

This was actually every named Necron character besides C'tan shards amd the new stuff. All of them came out with the 5th ed codex in 2010.

 

I think that this is one of the false memories I have - I swear that the Necron characters like Imotek and Trazyn were in metal first, and the next wave like Oberyn and the Nemesor were in FC, however I think I've since been show to be wrong! 

[Aarik]

Really great episode.  One thing I thought was interesting and had not heard before was that for Ad Mech, the Cult Mechanicus was originally intended to be a separate army from Skitarii and incorporate the FW HH Mechanicum models.  And that was the reason that Cult Mechanicus and Skitarii were in separate codexes when they were released.