I picked up some Forgeworld resin models for the first time in ages– Here's a look at them...
The kits I purchased are the Tomb Swarms and Prophet of the Redemption, and let me say up front that these castings are freaking beautiful. When Warhammer: The Old World first dropped and it was revealed that some of the models would be resin kits, there was much wailing and rending of garments from the online community. The Finecast fiasco had left its scars, and people were skeptical.
Finecast was simply a stopgap measure to deal with the rising costs of metal at the time, and now that GW primarily produces in plastic it is long gone. Forgeworld resin is not Finecast, there is simply no comparison.
First we'll look at the Tomb Swarms:
I examined all the components and the castings are practically flawless. Only minor bits of flash and feed gates that are easily cleaned off. A nice bit of detail is that the instructions call out is how each swarm has a differently-shaped plug and socket, making it easy to match up which bits go with which swarm (the strands of bugs tend to look very similar).
The detail in the casting is clean and sharp, right down to the spiky tips on the shield.
As with any resin casting, there are small connecting shims and rods that need to be trimmed off with a knife. These are very minor, and are much less obtrusive than the support structures I've seen on 3D prints which leave pock-marks all over the model that need to be cleaned up. And the best part is, the resin doesn't have any build lines!
The instructions recommend washing the parts with soap and water to remove any mold release agent. The parts aren't greasy at all, and I tried gluing some together without washing them, and the super glue stuck the pieces securely. (I'll still wash them anyway.) The pieces also line up flawlessly– All the seams run between the bugs or along the segment separations of the small scarabs, so there are hardly any visible joins.
Future Rob here– I cleaned up and washed all the parts before assembling the models, and I did have trouble sticking two of the pieces together. I suspected that may have been a result of my dish soap leaving a bit of a residue, so I washed them again with isopropyl alcohol, and didn't have any trouble gluing the parts after that. I'll have another post about the Tomb Swarms, and I'll let you know how it went with priming and painting the models.
Looking at all the components for the swarms, I only found two tiny air bubbles, which are easily fixed with a touch of putty. (Honestly, the one on the scarab's wing is so small and on the underside, I had trouble finding it with the naked eye. I only noticed it in these enlarged photos!)
After all my praise for this resin kit, I have to say that it's a disappointment that GW is still using the same old 40mm bases with their sloppy surface detail bleeding over onto the side, and those awful "Lego" holes underneath which make it impossible to do any work that involves cutting through the top of the base. GW has re-engineered models and created so many new base sizes, you'd think they could retire these busted old things and give us some new proper, clean open-bottom 40mm squares!
The other model I bought was the Prophet of the Redemption. I plan on using him for a necromancer conversion and I bought two of him, which gives me the opportunity to compare the quality between two identical kits.
As with the swarms, the prophet's casting looks fantastic. In addition to the assembly instructions, the blister pack also includes the stat profile and special rules for the miniature.
He has a little more in the way of shims that need to be trimmed off– Particularly between the crenulations on the bottom of his robe.
The parts and quality were consistent across both models, but I noticed some minor differences between how they were laid up in the mold. For example, the shim is on different fingers in these two examples (but all the separate fingers are perfectly formed). There also appears to be a bit of mold shift on one sprue– At the base of the arm, and on the book. These imperfections are magnified by the size of the photo; at actual size they are quite minor– Nothing a quick scrape of a hobby knife can't clean up.
The detail is nice and sharp, and all the pointy bits (like the tips of the fire) are filled in. I didn't notice any air bubbles in either kit.
The staves both had a slight curve to them:
Boiling and straightening them would likely do the trick, but that's probably not even necessary. The bottom of the staff attaches to the base pillar that he's standing on, so the attachment points will probably hold the staff straight once glued together.
The resin is also pretty flexible on thin pieces like this. That's about as far as I dared bend the piece without breaking it (which is still pretty far!) and it sprang right back to shape.
In the end, I am very happy with these models. The sculpting, engineering, casting, and quality are all superb, and I'm looking forward to assembling and painting them!
Speaking of which, my project queue has been making slow but steady progress. I've got all six of the Sepulchral Stalkers primed, and the bases are under way:
I have also finished the basic assembly of all ten ghouls. The most time-consuming part of building the Cryptguard is finding the pieces on that jigsaw puzzle of a sprue. The poses only fit together one way, so it's a real hunt to find the parts and follow the directions rather than simply grabbing a torso, a set of legs, and any two arms. Can't argue with the results, though. These are some pretty dynamic looking miniatures!
I've got the wolf pelts sculpted on half of the regiment.
I even found some old metal goblin wolf chariot accessories in my parts box, so I added tails to a couple of the pelts.
And, I finally started work on my Ghost crew from Star Wars: Shatterpoint. I need to do extensive work on Ezra and Sabine to give them normal poses, so I'll start with Hera, Kanan, and Zeb. I was a big fan of Star Wars: Rebels, so I've been looking forward to these for a while!
'Til next time!
Lovely models! I do agree, modern ForgeWorld is incredibly crisp and goes together beautifully. They really do a high quality product!
ReplyDeleteTheir new stuff is aces!
DeleteSeeing the photo of that resin bend is giving my anxiety by proxy.
ReplyDeletelol!
DeleteAwesome! It's good to see some Forgeworld stuff with good casting results. I've heard so many horror stories about the titan castings over the years.
ReplyDeleteLoving those wolf-pelt ghouls
Thank you!
DeleteThese look pretty nice. I must admit, I was very wary about GW resin after the Finecast business. It's not my favourite medium, but these are definitely good models.
ReplyDeleteFinecast has gone the way of the dodo; it was a completely different material and casting process. It's really not even a relevant comparison point anymore.
Delete