8th Ed. The Great Debate.... Finecast or Metal?

[Captain Krox]

Hey everyone....

I'm growing my army very fast. Acquired a second Batallion Box, to go along with 2 boxes of Skinks, 2 Stegadons and 2 Boxes of Saurus. I've made a few special models to represent various heroes and lords, but now I want more.... I have not Kroxigors, Salamanders, Slaan, etc... you know, all the metal goodies.

So I was starting to think: should I wait for the Finecast versions to come out (if ever) or do I just bite the bullet and get the metal ones? I hate metal, building, painting and transporting metal sucks... at least to me.

But do I have a choice? I want to add some better units to my army. But is it worthwhile waiting?

I anxiously anticipate your replies!

 

[Shaslain]

Convert and/or proxy them until the finecast comes out. I personally do not like the finecast, but you dislike metal so much that I think you should just proxy or convert until they come out. For my salamanders I use the cold ones from the battalion box on 40mm bases, I don't really use kroxigors or slann, and for my terradons I am using tyranid gargoyles with skink arms. I am sure that there are other conversions out there, like swamp trolls for the krox, and the slann...well you might have to look hard for that one.

 

[BEEGfrog]

I use toy dinosaurs as the basis of my steggie and carnie conversions. Standard skinks crew my steggies and an old hunchback saurus from 5th/6th edition rides the carnie. Howdahs made from disassembled bamboo placemats and bamboo chip forks.

The slann is a relatively easy scratch build from green stuff or Fimo/sculpy (way cheaper then green stuff) with Kroak even easier. Use a maquette of aluminium foil to save modelling material and add strength/resilience.

 

[strewart]

I haven't actually worked with a GW resin model, but I can say in general the more I work with resin the more I dislike it. It is harder to clean, easier to ruin detail, it snaps easily, overall not particularly fun. Also, you can examine the surface and see no air bubbles, but be assured underneath the surface there are lots of bubbles. You could be shaving off a bit of flash or excess resin and all of a sudden come across an air bubble that was under the surface.

However, it has a few advantages. It is softer than metal, so easier to hack through large/thick pieces. It will absorb and hold paint much better than metal, paint won't chip either. It is extremely light which makes it easier to glue. Superglue also likes it better than metal so it dries a bit faster.

In GW's case specifically, they have chosen to increase the price to consumers when switching from metal to resin. This is rubbish because resin is a far cheaper material and has a much more stable price; their quality control has also been rather poor with a large percentage of miscasts and big air bubbles getting through into packages. They are replacing them easily, but that is a pain to deal with. There are also questions about how well GW resin can handle temperature. Documented cases of resin models bending in the UK summer (lol) sun and such, so if you live in a hotter climate like Aus or parts of the US, be careful with that.

So really, there are ads and disads for both and its pretty much up to you which you would prefer. I have tried to be unbiased and give an honest overview, but really I have a pretty negative opinion of GWs approach and don't want to touch any of their stuff until they make major changes, but thats my opinion.

I can tell you that the next wave of resin models are meant to be coming out in August, so fairly soon. For Lizardmen, this will only include the Slann with all other metals remaining in metal for a bit longer. But they all will be converted within a year reportedly.