Before deciding which board game to buy to play with my wife and friends, I have read a lot of comments and reviews about this 2nd Edition and how superior it was relative to the first, however,one remark was common in all of them; The figure quality was awful. I´m used to good quality standards from FFG from X-Wing and their awesome customer care, but this I have to agree, they are that bad.

Its not the quality of the miniatures itself, they have great detail and look great in photos, its just the bad plastic they were cast; its soft and doesn't keep its shape. I would like to paint them but I´m afraid that being so malleable the paint won´t adere and break off.

Soy question (and deepest fears) are;

-Are the First Edition figures this bad too?

-Are the reprints/casts that are coming soon, will have this crappy plastic too?

-Can (pleaaaaaaase FFG) sell a pack of the 2nd Edition figures if they decide to recast them in better plastic.

And for those who like painting figures;

-How does the shape of the figures hold the pain?

-Any tip to make them a little more solid? Like a coat of varnish does the trick?

Thanks in advance

The real problem is that you have to squeeze the figures to get them in place on the awful bases provided (mine seemed to have the holes drilled inaccurately, and combined with the so-so quality of the pins on the bottom sides of the miniatures, that isn't good). If you do that first and glue them into place, the odds are better. Still, the plastic is way too soft for miniatures that are supposed to be handled.

I've decided to let it wait for some time/until there's notice on new models in better cast, because it takes quite some time to paint them. We use the cardboard tokens for monsters; the miniatures and bases tucked away.

Edit: This post felt so negative i felt the need to add that otherwise, this game is excellent in almost every other aspect.

Some of the figures were a bit skew, but all I did was put them in very hot water for a few seconds. Shaped them and dunked them into cold water.

That solved all my problems with the miniatures.

I doubt there will be a recasting. The figures aren't X-wing quality but they also aren't $10 a piece. The softer plastic is more durable than the x-wing plastic actually, although it doesn't take fine detail as well. It's the difference between micromachines and FFG x-wing.

They will need to be cleaned of the oily waxy coat they have from casting before painting. I haven't painted them yet but the pics I've seen of painted figures clearly show they can be painted well. They clearly need work to clean up the molding and fitting them into the bases.

The real problem is storage. Those bases seem needlessly large and are difficult to find a storage solution for them.

and for some reason they put the brawn on the bottom with lots of room on top were you can see it. They also should have put any important keywords on top of the base too. And the description or rules underneath incase you dont have the trait memorized

Ease of flipping is another reason i went figure/baseless. I keep the figures around in a box for size and outline reference for now.

The real problem is that you have to squeeze the figures to get them in place on the awful bases provided (mine seemed to have the holes drilled inaccurately, and combined with the so-so quality of the pins on the bottom sides of the miniatures, that isn't good).

Just wanted to note for those that didn't realize it (we didn't at first) -- the medium and large bases are monster specific. They have holes drilled in place for the specific monsters, so you need to make sure you have the right base for the right monster. (We also had figures from the first edition, unmounted, so that compounded the confusion.)

Yeah, that was a bit tricky at first. Even more so as i still had to squeeze the starspawn into place quite a bit.

I doubt there will be a recasting. The figures aren't X-wing quality but they also aren't $10 a piece.

Yeah, at that price they're pre-painted (the large ones, anyway) :-)

The real problem is storage. Those bases seem needlessly large and are difficult to find a storage solution for them.

1st edition figures are of the same quality. A couple of mine are all wonky and lean to the side, but with zombies that's fine I suppose. I have painted all the first edition figures and they paint fine, now I need to start on the 2nd edition.

Just picked up the two expansions. The wing was missing off one of the nightgaunt miniatures and several of the figures wouldn't fit into the bases at all. I had to glue the models in place.

Gluing the figures to the bases is a necessity along with a boiling water dip. This will remove about 90% of the problems people are having. The rest is related to the Deep One and Star Spawn mounting holes being molded in a position that the figure obscures the windows in the base. The figures also have a lot of flash around the mold lines that has to be trimmed away if you are painting them.

Yea the figure quality is about the only thing that disappointed me about this game. Especially coming from Imperial Assault where the figure detail is incredible. I can look at just the face of a figure to know who it is, let alone the body/pose. In this game I was having trouble figuring out who some of the investigator figures belonged to.

But same as IA and Descent, some of the figures come slightly warped and need to be dipped to fixed, I don't know how they avoid that. I think maybe X-Wing is the only place this doesn't happen? But then you are paying a lot of money for each figure. Here you get 32? So I will gladly pay 100 bucks instead of 400 for a game with a few slightly bent minis