Games Workshop/ Citadel Finecast Orc Shamen Review

A customer sent a GW/ Citadel Finecast Orc Shamen for us to paint up for them. After hearing all the horror stories online I was a bit leery of tackling anything Finecast.  There are loads of stories of poor castings and miscasts with tons of airbubbles and chunks of resin here and there from bad molds. While we've worked with a bunch of different resins before I wasn't sure what to expect with all the bad publicity.

First thing I did was pick up a Citadel Clean Up Kit:

http://www.games-workshop.com/MEDIA_CustomProductCatalog/m2000577a_99239999058_CleaningKit_873x627.jpg

This is a brush and a Mouldline Scraping Tool. The brush's bristles are supposed to be the right firmness for brushing away flash on their resin pieces. The Mouldline Scraping Tool is specially built for scraping off the mold lines on their resin. The kit is a bit pricey, as are all things GW. But they are quality pieces. Mouldline Scraping Tool is pretty heavy and it's neither sharp or dull.

I am a firm believer in using the right tool for the right job. I value my time greatly and the proper tool will help you do the job well and in less time than if you used something less ideal. The Mouldline Scraping Tool was amazing. It quickly and easily knocked off the light mold lines present on the figure. I also used an Xacto blade to see how that would work out and though it works, I feel the Mouldline Scraping Tool does a slightly better job. Overall I like it a lot and highly recommend it. It can't reach all the places but the fine point of an Xacto blade can take care of those spots well enough.

The pieces themselves were well cast. There was a light light mold line around each one that easily cleaned up. Assembly was a breeze. The resin glues very easily with super glue. I used my favorites; the Loctite Gel Control and Precision Max glues and they both worked just fine. The resin sticks together pretty quickly so be careful. There's not much time for re-aligning pieces once they make contact with each other. The fit on the pieces was really good. The only pieces where the fit was not right on was one of the boar's rear legs. In the end after a touch of green stuff, priming, and painting it the seam  could not be noticed though.

Now here's some pics of the cleaned pieces:

 There were only two very casting flaws on this piece. On this pic if you look at the bottom of the right leg you'll see a feather around a thong on the orc's ankle. The very tip of this was missing. Also, there was a very small airbubble on the bottom of the staff on the bone. It can be seen on the right, just above the pouch hung on the end of the staff:

This pic shows the one seam that was not a clean fit. A little it of green stuff hid this just fine:

 Another pic that more clearly shows the airbubble on the bottom of the staff:

The figure was well detailed and the detail was cast pretty crisp. It was almost too detailed as there are tons to things to paint up on it! We've had to adjust prices on GW items to better reflect the time that these castings have been taking to paint.

In all I was very pleased with this piece. GW charges a hefty sum for their models and while I felt the 3 issues I had with the piece were minor, for what they are charging per piece one would think the piece should be perfect out of the package. Would I buy a Finecast piece for my collection? Probably. The detail on the piece was excellent. Is it worth the money they are charging for Finecast? Well, that's up to the individual to decide based on what they are comfortable spending.

Unfortunately I do not have any painted images of this piece. We were in such a rush getting ready for the show I did not have time to image the piece up before heading out. It did paint up well and the customer was very pleased with the piece.

There are 3 more pieces that came in and if there is interest I may do a write up on them as we get to them to get a better idea of what the overall quality of the line is. If they are as nice as this piece was I would be more comfortable with the Finecast line.