I'm really excited for this game, I'm an experienced table top player and hobby enthusiast, so from a veterans perspective I'm going to rate these miniatures, quality, and my trials attempting to assemble them.

First off, the miniature quality is what I'd rank as "imperial assault" quality, to make it relevant to the FFG group. However it's more of a soft plastic, I'd say a pvc of sorts, not a styrene. Which is disappointing, but workable. The detail however is pretty high, and I'm rather impressed with the level of detail found in the molds here. Definitely a lot of small details on these guys that leaves variety for varying schemes to paint on them. However due to their soft nature, you will find that most of the spears, and bows and thinner pieces will be bent right out of the box. I did attempt to boil and cold water shock some of these back into place, but have had varying success to get the results to stay for more than a few hours. I'm contemplating replacing them with styrene tubing, as the spears are just a mess.

Assembly has been a chore, the soft plastic makes mold lines difficult to remove, I have to apply more pressure rather than scraping them off. I eventually gave up and just used an exacto knife. However there is a LOT of mold lines on these, some in hard to reach places that will leave you questioning your integrity on whether or not to leave them there. The larger models I had little issues with, but most of the infantry I had glaring problems that left cleanup for them feeling like a chore. A lot of the push fit pieces also had mold lines on them, meaning that if not cleaned correctly those would get in the way and prevent the two pieces from locking together fully. In the end I just decided to simply clip off the push fit parts, and begin gluing them together as it was actually easier than trying to force the bendable, soft plastic arms of the archers into the bodies. The heros went together fine, but I had a MAJOR issue with getting them to fit into their scenic bases. I'm not sure if its a warping issue, but the circular base for both heros, is LARGER than the hole drilled into the scenic base and I will not be able to get them to fit inside the scenic base without some major cutting down of the plastic. This has been the most frustrating dilemma so far. Forcing them into the bases and wedging them from different angles does not seem to work. I'm not sure if this is a problem exclusive to me but I will probably contact FFG to see if they have a solution. Feedback for them will be critical to help this game going forward.

As a hobbyist, most of this is an easy fix, but for those who dont have experience or dont want to bother with buying hobby tools, I could see these as nightmares. Just my two cents so far. Has anyone else had similar issues with their advance copies?

I've just started to put my set together.

The golem is fine. Very little mold lines, pieces fit well enough that I felt like glue was optional (although I glued it anyway), and looks like the centerpiece figure you'd expect from this set. Makes me (mostly) excited to work on the carrion worm.

The infantry are...well, as the OP says, the detail is nice, but the material is softer than I would prefer. I keep having to remember not to apply too much pressure on the reanimate head pieces, as I've nearly snapped a figure off at the knees at least twice. There is a good deal of flash around one pose's pauldron, but nothing too irksome.

I'm trying to avoid thinking about comparison cost too much with this line, but it's hard. My gut tells me that the expansions are maybe overpriced just a little, but the gameplay extras do add some cost/value to the sets.

Great points so far. I was also surprised at the level of detail. It's not at a super-high level, but they are great for the tabletop. I kept the Waiqar, and handed the Daqan off to a friend, so the Carrion Lancer's spear was the only thing I needed to reset. Two trips through boiling water did the trick for me, but I do believe my buddy is having similar issues to what you're describing with the spearmen.

Mold lines are a PITA on these models. I cleaned up Ardus and the Carrion Lancer thoroughly, but eventually decided not to bother with the rank-and-file troops. I went over them and got the really obvious stuff out (mostly the tops of the skeleton heads), but just left the rest of it.

I also couldn't get Ardus to fit on his scenic base, and had to remove a good bit around the scenic base to get him to fit. This one isn't a huge problem for me though, I'm going to replace Ardus' base anyway (I can't stand having the same scenic base show up three or four times on the same battlefield!)

Like you said, none of this is really an issue if you've done any miniatures games in the past, but if you're coming from X Wing or something similar, it might be a little more than you are expecting. Ah well, welcome to the wonderful world of miniatures gaming!

Thanks for your honest opinions, I expected as much as it's the same plastic as Imperial Assault which is a bit of a turn off as the soft plastic made removing the mould lines a lot harder than I expected. Still, the game has my interest so I'm just going to suffer through it and learn the hobby skills.

Edit:

Never mind the mould lines, I just need one of these bad boys!

Unfortunate, but expected from FFG. In IA it is equivalent to winning the lottery if you open up a big box and there isn't at least a few bent or broken pieces. I generally spend several hours glueing and scraping. But isn't there always a great deal of assembly required with mini war games? So I guess this seems pretty par for the course no? I was really hoping that having to assemble the products would remove the broken/bent pieces though I also had similar problems with Descent and Mansions of Madness, both 2nd editions, but those like IA all come as one piece so I can understand the difficulty of shipping them like that.

Have you found that there are parts that just won't fit? My Rancor was just a chore, it took me a long time to get the pieces to fit together properly (scraping) and even then I had to use a tub of green stuff to make it appear seamless.

Sorastro had a great fix for bent pieces in IA, I can't remember which video it is in... but he used a blow dryer. Just a few seconds (and really only do a few seconds) gets the plastic manageable, then you just hold it in the desired place for a few more seconds and it sticks. Had a ton of success with this and works a lot better than the hot/cold water. I've never tried it on big pieces though.

Ahh found it, its Vader, video spoilered for size:

I am planning to make templates of the bottoms of the scenics for heroes and use those templates to make my own custom bases.

Am I the only person who actually *prefers* FFG's PVC material to styrene at this point?

It's not as easy for major conversions, but far from impossible to modify.

The fact that it has some "give" and flexibility means that actually *breaking* these models due to dropping/slapping/accidental smashing is extremely unlikely.

They hold paint so well you have to put some muscle into trying to scratch it off.

About the only complaint I can see about them comes from the level of detail but, as someone who has been playing Imperial Assault for the last year, I've watched the quality of FFG's sculpting improve measurably. Their design aesthetic is, to me, vastly preferable to the majority of their competitors in this field. (Mantic being underdesigned and GW being overdesigned)

I don't personally get the mold line complaints. I've never had any issue removing mold lines across Imperial Assault, Descent or DOOM. If you're marring the PVC by removing the mold line, you were going to do that to styrene, anyway.

11 minutes ago, Tvayumat said:

Am I the only person who actually *prefers* FFG's PVC material to styrene at this point?

It's not as easy for major conversions, but far from impossible to modify.

The fact that it has some "give" and flexibility means that actually *breaking* these models due to dropping/slapping/accidental smashing is extremely unlikely.

They hold paint so well you have to put some muscle into trying to scratch it off.

About the only complaint I can see about them comes from the level of detail but, as someone who has been playing Imperial Assault for the last year, I've watched the quality of FFG's sculpting improve measurably. Their design aesthetic is, to me, vastly preferable to the majority of their competitors in this field. (Mantic being underdesigned and GW being overdesigned)

I don't personally get the mold line complaints. I've never had any issue removing mold lines across Imperial Assault, Descent or DOOM. If you're marring the PVC by removing the mold line, you were going to do that to styrene, anyway.

I agree completely. I don't really get foam for PVC because the paint just doesn't come off no matter what happens

12 minutes ago, blkdymnd said:

I agree completely. I don't really get foam for PVC because the paint just doesn't come off no matter what happens

So much this.

I am a model painter. I paint like crazy. I hold myself to high standards of quality and constantly improve. I treat my metal models as if they were woven from dreams and spiders' webs.

I'll take my IA models after a skirmish, scoop them up in both hands, and drop them into a tray in a pile to move to the next game, because the paint job may as well be indestructible.

Well I obviously need one of those electronic nail buffers. That is amazing. It would make working with pvc models a lot less of a chore for sure. Excellent suggestion Muz333! So as an update on those warped Scenic bases. I contacted FFG this morning, and by this afternoon they had shipped me out a package of replacements. Excellent customer service I'd have to say, and despite the issues, I think with that sort of response time and proper feedback we can make this game amazing going forward. Thanks for all the discussion guys! I'm completely new to PVC miniatures. At least in the terms of this is the first time I've wanted to paint PVC minis. So all of this has been really positive discussion helping me figure out how to work with these and what I can expect!

Cutting more than scraping made it easy for me. Straightening with just a hair dryer also worked great.

I'm doing a cursory look of my contents that arrived today, and the spears are actually fairly straight. The base for the rune golem is slightly tweaked, but overall not as much bendiness as I expected

On 31.3.2017 at 6:41 PM, FrogTrigger said:

But isn't there always a great deal of assembly required with mini war games?

Depends on company and their casting ability and probably material I would say. You normaly will always have flash/mold lines and not perfectly fitting parts but there those companies where you have less of them and those where you have more of them. Most GW plastic nowadays is in my opinion really good, not that many mold lines and fits together quite nicely, from the few Malifaux plastics I have I would say the same and I would say that Corvus Belli metal miniatures are also quite good in terms of flash and fitting. But the PVC minis I got (Mantic, Kings of War) had much flash/mold lines and even after learning it's better to cut the mold line than scrap it it's still more of a pain for me to clean them then my Space Marines.
But yes assembly is a big part of most miniature games a Space Marine is about 7 or 8 pieces minimum which of course will take time to cut out, clean and glue and but not that much if you have a little experience which I have but I still find thoroughly (meaning really getting rid of everything) cleaning some of my PVC minis annyoing.
And about which material is better that's more or less a personal opinion some like weight some details but I would say a good plastic miniature doesn't break that easily nor does the paint goes off that easily that's more of a problem for metall minis, I personally like resin and plastic most, yes I know funny for someone who rates Infinity (metal) as his number one game

One more thing I never had an IA or Runewars miniature in my hand so I can't compare them to my other miniatures.

EDIT: The plastic Hawk Wargames uses for their Droopfleet Commander ships is also quite good in my opinion.