More like from "absolute top tier quality metal miniature manufacturer" to "they use the same 'eh, it's okay, I guess' technology Siocast sells to everyone else". I'd much rather pay more for spincast metal minis.
For sure. I wish they had an option for metals. I like working with the material, the feel of it, the weight, how it paints, it can be bent, pinned, etc. It wouldn't be so bad if the quality was top notch like GWs plastics, but it's not. It's not even close. I saw one on FB fully assembled. Look at all the messed up areas of the casting on this thing. Hell, the new Battletech stuff is just as good and costs a fraction of the price. The arm on the left is just awful, same goes for the area around the little sensor or whatever on the right. Tons of fuzzy details too.
People arguing "we're absolutely correct in claiming that every single change is for the worse" and going off fuzzy screen captures arguing about quality with someone who actually has the product in hand and has years of well known and respected reviews....oh forums, don't ever change.
I tend to not trust reviews done by people who received free product and are reliant on the company that produces it liking their review if they want to continue getting free product early in the future. But that's just me.
Oof. That's bad. If it looks bad from a pic like that, it's really bad. It's one thing when issues are not noticeable at an arm's reach for playing hobbyist, another for a painter who wants to show off detailed pics of his work, for example. The clean up looks like shit, the material crumbles when sanded/filed and right of head the "foot of the hill" angle is distorted where the angle is clean in the render and on the left of head. That's another poor casting spot. You really didn't realize the entropy comment was massively tongue in cheek, even with the emotes? Seriously? Also, you jest, anyone who receives free product to keep is compromised and biased. That's exactly why I trust game reviewers who buy their copies and give away the freebies they got. I can look at the Steam account of the author and the Steam reviews they leave aside from their video material and see they had indeed purchased the stuff themselves. It's very naive to think that even when no other incentive is present the mere fact of "I have to write well about them so the stuff keeps coming early and for free" doesn't at all compromise a reviewer's integrity and doesn't introduce bias. The person themselves might be the most honest person ever and it's still not a clean situation. Exactly.
Calling The Dice Abide a liar? Since you and Nuada are two of the most consistently negative people on the forums, I'll trust the guy who has a history in the Infinity community of being fair and truthful and actually brings something to the hobby. That's just me though. Carry on.
It looks like the issue might be that the polimer is actually too "watery" and some detail that would require more viscosity for the indentations, like the metal spincast has, cannot be achieved. @Muad'dib could you comment on that perhaps? Is some undercut geometry harder to attain with these polymers, is that what were seeing around the head area with the loss of indent and detail? Like I said above - the person might be the most honest in the world. I do not imply anything about Dice, he's a cool dude in my book. The "reviewer gets stuff early and free of charge and gets to keep it" setup isn't. It inherently biases the reviewer. And if all you got from my posting history is "negative" then I can't really help it. Especially with all the positive commentary, feedback, appreciation of the CB team when they do something right, etc. The fact that I do not hesitate to point out when I consider something is wrong doesn't mean that's all I do. That's a really dishonest take, gotta say.
So far this is only the second time we've got a freebie from Corvus Belli, first was the MO box. I kept the MO box, because I play MO, and I wanted to paint the minis for the OPATH challenge. We knew the Vostok would be in high demand, so instead of keeping it ourselves, we're sending it to a friend who is kicking off a paint live stream, then raffling or auctioning it off for charity once it's completed. Getting press copies is new to us and we're figuring out the best way to handle it, though for our own sanity and backlogs, we probably won't be keeping everything, lol. We've been discussing what to do with Crimson Stone, originally Jon was going to keep it (since I got MO), but he ended up preordering the bundle anyhow, so we'll see. I only have so many likes to give, haha.
Firstly, I don't know him at all. So I don't inherently trust or distrust them. I like their articles, but do not always agree with their views. They may think that the model is perfectly fine for the amount they paid for it, or it just meets their standards. That's fine. I don't think it is a well made model. The original sculpt is pretty good, the castings aren't. But just because someone else likes a product doesn't mean I should shut up and be silent about flaws that I can plainly see in it.
I definitely encourage people make up their own minds. I don't think cherrypicking the worst photos on the internet to make your opinion from is an objective way to get there. Especially when the person who took those pictures, and has the model in-hand, doesn't feel like cleanup will be an issue.
I'm not sure any cherry picking happened. I've found issues both in the official comparison photo and almost every single shot of the Spanish video. I didn't bother with screenshots from the other video as it had the same issues. I don't speak Spanish so I have no idea what the opinion of the person was, but they have clearly indicated the same issues and places I wrote about. They may consider them easy to clean up, I have another opinion and even if they are, it's additional workload that was not the case before in my experience and potential damage to detail or leftover issues where they cannot be easily reached or adjusted due to how the material behaves (crumbling, need to cut into it to make it actually smooth, etc.)
I'm curious how they plan to fix the loss of detail, the soft details, the messed up arm details, and the entirely missing divide between the chassis and the bottom of the head. Some mold lines are really the least of the issues on this model. As for the photo. It's the one they posted on FB, I can only work off the assumption they thought it was a good enough photo for public consumption. I hope the material and sculpt work out. I would like to have two of these things. I would have much preferred to pay extra and get them in metal though.
In the siocast interview video on page 8 (post 143) of this thread the siocast rep says molds are good for 300-500 cycles.
Would this plastic miniatures become better in future? I don’t know. I want to see, how it act during mold lines cleaning with different things, and I want to know, how could we clean it from paint if something goes wrong. I am still more and more skeptical about this, but for now it’s just an interest to see, how far would it go. I feel something like: “Come on, plastic! You and I! Come on! Let’s the battle begins!!!” (Somewhere far inside) And to be honest I was skeptical about reviews too) cause gifted thing in some way makes you feel better about it.
So moving slightly away from quality for a second, how do people feel about cost? From what I can glean from Siocast literature, pewter and their own material are pretty close in price. It actually stated that theirs was 'slightly more expenseive' than pewter, but given recent rises, that may no longer be true. The point being, pound for pound, siocast produces seven times the number of minis as pewter. That is an absolutely massive saving n production costs. And you can see how those savings pan out with other companies that offer siocast and metal alternatives, such as The Plastic Soldier Company or Lurkio: both seem to sell their siocast at half the price. My question, then, is why have CB stated that the price of their models will remain the same?
My guess, money. Because they can. The same reason they don't release a lot of models as single blisters. Want one more of this? Hah! Better buy the box pack so we can sell more of these less useful/AVA limited profiles that people normally wouldn't buy. Sales numbers go up, they don't really care if it's good for the consumer.
I'd like to hear a response to this issue, I think it's a big one. I'd like to be wrong on my rough-and-ready estimates, if someone can point out where I've made the error. Making that kind of saving without passing something on to the consumer sounds a bit much to me, especially if there's concerns over the new product being of inferior quality to the old.
