Malifaux, down the drain

[Varangian]

Ok, now having said that, and having listened to everyone here and on different threads I am of the oppinion that IF and I mean IF the plastic is the right plastic and can take high temps, be drilled, pinned, etc rhen MAYBE plastic or the right kind of resin would be acceptable.  Wyrd's plastic is not.

Actually, where are you getting that data? I own some, and it's the toughest plastic I've found yet. It's superior to GW's, and definitely PP's. It's had no problems with high temperatures, is easily drilled, and pinned.

If you dislike plastic, you dislike it.

[i_was_like_you]

Personally I prefer plastic over resin and metal figures, provided the sculpting and casting results in a good quality figure. Why do I prefer plastic? Three reasons:

1) Plastic figures are lighter and easier to clean up.
2) Customizing or trimming figure parts to fit is way easier.
3) I have never had to pin a plastic figure together.

While I do like a nice hefty feel to a figure, I'd rather have one that I can be sure won't break or explode into pieces if it tips over on the table. I've never tipped a plastic figure over and had pieces of it break off, but it happens with metal, even sometimes when they're pinned. Plus I'm lazy and hate pinning then having to add green stuff over the seams in metal figures. It's far less frequently required with well-cast plastics.

I agree that those are three very important points.

Something I'm hoping to see Wyrd do, at least gradually, is re-release some, if not all, of its older models in plastic. If they hadn't jumped on releasing their alternate models along with their avatars during the last Malifaux year (GenCon 2011 to GenCon 2012), those would be quite the impetus to get players to rebuy those models in plastic (not that it stopped us from rebuying them in metal). Even if they don't make alternate sculpts of the old models, their plastic editions would be useful for quite a few of them (as in a lot of the avatars that didn't already get the resin treatment, and Nekima with her fragile ankle).

The plastic models are so inspiring as far as customizing them. I'm planning on borrowing a page from LoboStele's book and putting LEDs into certain models for dramatic effect. With Miss Terious, I want to put an eerie green glow emanating from her death marshal's coffin. For metal gamin and the rail golem, the bright red of the fire glowing in their bellies.

So far I only have the Hanging Trees and Miss Terious. My complaints with them are minimal. I'd say they might need to change the "printing" size for the plastic models, as they're a wee bit too tiny compared to their metal counterparts. It makes heads and hands even tinier than the original Sword Vikie, and she was a pain to keep together.  It also makes other details like the hanging ropes far too fragile. One of the Eric's ropes broke in shipping. The other snapped of when I was snipping the sprue at his feet in an attempt to more carefully remove him. Other than that, assembly and mold line cleanup was a breeze.

[Major_Gilbear]

Why do I prefer plastic? Three reasons:

1) Plastic figures are lighter and easier to clean up.
2) Customizing or trimming figure parts to fit is way easier.
3) I have never had to pin a plastic figure together.

I'll give you that plastics are lighter - important if you have to cart 200+ models around - but I'm not so sure on the rest.

A lot depends on the type of metal and the type of plastic used. A lot also depends on how the miniature is designed and fits together, and how good production quality and QA is.

I recently got Lazarus... I pre-ordered before the plastic announcement, and as that was the only Wyrd plastic I had on order, I thought I'd leave the order standing and assess the model when it arrived on its own merits.

My comments on Lazarus are as follows:

1/ There is a huge number of pieces for what is essentially a pretty straightforward model (would have been 3-4 pieces in metal, but this has something like 25 pieces and none of them are "optional extras"!).

2/ The "instructions" are hilari-bad. You get an exploded diagram that misses out all the connectors and where the steel screw goes. Yes, you get a metal screw in the kit... To screw parts of it together... Not sure what though.

3/ The mould lines are generally quite fine - about what you'd expect with a Lego in fact. The plastic seems to be a lot like Lego too.

4/ The cables are made of very thin translucent blue rubbery plastic, a lot like the material for the Lego one below. Not sure how well they'll glue or take (and keep!) paint.



5/ The joints are ball-and-socket where the arms connect to the torso, peg joints where the legs connect to the hips, and are hinge joints (with a separate pin) for all the other joints. This looks like it will be quite posable, but a pain to assemble.

6/ The mouldlines that exist are often composite, and the thin parts are very brittle.

7/ The level of detail and styling is quite different from the equivalent metal figures. Small details are very fine, and the lines are all quite "straight", which misses that quirky and slightly organic Malifaux style of the metal models.

Overall, the model feels much more like a toy (a Lego toy in fact), and also looks quite different to everything else in the range. I feel that too much was made of flexible posing (given that Lazarus is a unique character anyway), and that not enough advantage was taken of the new medium to create a dynamic model. Better examples of how complex dynamic models can be made in a small number of pieces in plastic can be seen in the GW starter boxes for WHFB and WH40k IMO.

So will I be buying any more plastics from Wyrd?
- I doubt it.

Why not?
- Lots of extra assembly and prep work required instead of less. Different style of sculpt. Feels like character is missing from the model.

But it's easy to convert if I'm not happy with it?
- Not really. It's a hard and unforgiving plastic to work with, and the model is a shower of tiny parts.

But at least it will stay together if I drop it!
- Hmm, not necessarily. The recommended superglue doesn't bond to the plastic any better than metal, and most plastic glue doesn't "melt" the parts together (although plastic solvents like JB Weld might). And with that many parts - none of which lock together BTW - if you drop it, it could well shatter unless it's pinned/solvent welded.

What about gaps and gap-filling?
- I think the kit is well-engineered enough to not need any gap-filling. Organic models might be different though.


So, I think that plastics can be just as good as metal or resin for models (but definitely not better as such), although the model in question needs to take proper advantage of the material it's made of IMO. I personally prefer metals generally, and don't mind some good plastics and resins.

Anyway, that's my opinion: these are not the robots I'm looking for!

[Doomsdave]

Nice thorough review.  Thanks.  I think I will not be buying the Malifaux plastics.  And I quite like plastics in general. 

[Major_Gilbear]

@Doomsdave:

No worries!

I'll try and get some pix up of the kit later tonight if I can, so you can see what the kit looks like for yourselves. I think that's important in the context of my review/experience, and of this thread in general.

[Varangian]

I had not heard that about Lazarus, the part about the screw is definitely odd. I had to hunt down a thread in Wyrd about it, the unboxing, then post-construction video that I ran across was actually a bit complimentary, so I guess it's all a matter of taste. http://www.wyrd-games.net/showthread.php?34553-Unboxing-Lazarus&highlight=Lazarus

I'm looking at the Dark Debts box, as well as the Hanging Trees, Beckoners, Mr Tannen, Mr Graves, Miss Terious, and Santana, and they're some of the cleanest sculpts I've seen in plastic. I quite like the material myself, the combination styrene-abs (LEGO plastic) makes for some pretty tough stuff, which I like.

I'm looking forward to seeing your pictures!

[Dr. The Viking]

I think in ten years people will have gotten over looking at the medium and will instead consider the quality of the product.

[Chairface]

I think in ten years people will have gotten over looking at the medium and will instead consider the quality of the product.

Wiser words have never been spoken

[Chairface]

Sorry, double post

[Varangian]

Sorry, double post

It was so powerful a statement it couldn't be contained in just one post!

I agree completely. I think it's nostalgia holding so many people to metal, pure and simple.

[Major_Gilbear]

Right, sorry for the long wait (found the camera cable at last... Not my camera. Sigh.  ).

Anyway, here are the pictures to accompany my post above:

The lower layer of the package that comes in the box. All the parts are on sprues, and all the sprues are clipped into each tray. Getting the parts out with breaking them off the sprue requires some care!




This is the upper layer of parts. Note the screw that hold the torso parts together, and also the blue plastic cables on their sprue - these are the bendy ones. Also note the row of pegs that pin the leg joints.




These are the instructions. One sided. No mention on them of the screw, or of the row of pegs that pin the joints. Also, the hip piece is different in the instructions than on the sprue.




These are not moulded with simple two-part moulds. As you can see from the mould lines on this ball-joint, they are quite complex and indicate that the mould has several parts.




These are what the old robots of the same base size look like. Very different, and far less assembly. Although the mould lines are much heaver, there are also fewer overall. The bases are 40mm diameter, and the squares on the cutting mat are 10mm across.




Here's a comparison of the chest pieces of all three robots. You can see the difference in the level and scale of detail. The metal detail is chunkier and slightly deeper. The plastic details are slightly finer and slightly softer too.

I think in ten years people will have gotten over looking at the medium and will instead consider the quality of the product.

I agree completely. I think it's nostalgia holding so many people to metal, pure and simple.

I feel that comments like this are unfair. I do inherently prefer metal, I admit - it allows a second hand market in figures exist for one thing! However, I don't irrationally dislike plastics at all - far from it; I like them just fine if they are good.

What I do dislike is the complete lack of imagination and effort that many miniatures companies put into thinking about how the medium they are using affects the finished product. Too often, the move to plastic models means more parts, more mouldlines and more time spent preparing a model - and for what? Instead of making a shower of parts on a sprue, more effort should be made to try out poses and assemblies that cannot be reliably or easily done in metal. Likewise, if a model is made up of several parts, care should be taken to put the mould lines in places where they will be covered over with another part or otherwise hidden from view. GW (love 'em or hate 'em) have demonstrated just how incredible simple plastic models can be by producing some show-stopping character figures for their current WHFB and WH40k sets. Just look at and scroll through the parts of the models in this puff article to see what I mean.

Models like Lazarus above are well intentioned, but poorly designed. Plastic is easy to cut and convert compared to metal (or so I keep hearing - I find no real difference myself), so why make a model in so many parts where you don't do the same with metal ones? Why not give us more models in cooler poses on the sprue for the same price instead, and we can just use a knife and our imagination to make them "ours".

The real reason that there is talk of medium when discussing plastic models at the moment is that it has taken many years to get to the level of sculpts that we're seeing nowadays in metal. The move to plastic by many of those companies seems to have failed to grasp the fundamental differences in mediums, and too often I see models that are merely translated into plastic rather than sculpted from the start with the medium in mind, and they are far too often inferior (which is a shame, and quite unnecessary).

As for ten years from now... Hmm. Anyone remember the old, old WHFB plastics (Drastik Plastik)? Yes? What are they worth now compared to their metal contemporaries? And how are they for quality compared to their metal contemporaries? Nostalgia's not everything, especially when it seems that people have such short memories!

[Heldrak]

Thank you for the thoughtful post and the detailed pictures, Major.

I'm not a metal snob myself, it's the quality of the sculpt that matters, not the substance that it is cast in (provided that the substance is sturdy and long-wearing and appropriate for the figure).

That being said, I was rather underwhelmed with the Santana Ortega and Miss Terious plastic figures that I acquired recently (at a considerable cost after-market). They are both tiny and lacking in detail in comparison to the previous generation of Malifaux metal figures.

[Kitsune]

Thanks for the informative write up. I doubt I'll be buying any wyrd plastic minis due to the pricing they've put on them. Perhaps if something comes out for my Rasputina crew, I might change my mind, but I can't see it for the forseeable as Wyrd seem more interested in pumping more expansions & factions now.

Wish they'd gone for a rules revision/tidy up this year over the ten thunders stuff (nice as it is). Game is getting a bit busy now.

[RepublicsFury]

Wiser words have never been spoken

I doubt it.   But that's me.

[Gibby]

That plastic figure looks rubbish for the price they've set. Bye, Malifaux.