225: 5 years old today

Amazingly, today marks 5 years since I started Iron Legion.  Can't quite believe its been that long.  Looking at the post number, it would seem that I've managed to average exactly 45 posts a year, a little under 1 post per week.  Not bad really, but that's not been all that consistent, with times when I've managed to keep a good run going, and other times like recently when a new job, going back to university, and renovating our house means that hobby ends up right at the bottom of the pile, I take a bit of a break.

I'll be back soon, and in the meantime, as a birthday present to you all, I found this out at a recent game and it was news to me:

Skyfire works not only against Flyers and Flying Monstrous Creatures, but against Skimmers too.  May not be all that important, but it opens up the flexibility of units like the Hydra, Hunter/Stalker and others that have the Skyfire rule without Interceptor.

See  you all soon.

224: Finecast is dead, and I'll be sorry to see it go

If you follow any of the rumour mills out there you'll have seen recent talk that GW is abandoning finecast in place of plastic and that forgeworld will be coming more "in-house". I'll probably be the only one to say this, but I'll be sad to see finecast go.

It's got problems, major problems, but if you step back from the rage for a moment, you'll see those problems have a lot more to do with the casting process than they do with finecast. Bubbles, flash, misaligned casts are all symptoms of casting resin and certainly not exclusive to GW or finecast. In fact I've seen the same people bitch and moan about all these things with finecast, but just put them down to par for the course for forgeworld because it is made from resin. Double standards much?
A lot of the problem comes from GW marketing finecast as the best thing since sliced bread.  A bold claim they couldn't back up with product, but get a problem with either their or forgeworld's respective products and they will replace them without question (at least in my experience, others may differ).  If only they'd taken some advice from forgeworld on casting techniques and problem solving, or had a decent quality control system (less of a problem with plastic, but I've still come across problems), I don't think they'd have had half the bad press they did.

I can only hope that we may see forgeworld start to use finecast so we can get their delicious detail without risking our health every time we try and clean and trim models. I also hope forgeworld getting closer to GW won't see their excellent customer engagement start to suffer, and that we might see a softening of GW's policies as they learn from those that are eternally loved.

Anyway, that's my 2 penny'th.

Andy