"General irritation with Warmachine miniatures" Topic

I don't play Warmachine (only rarely, and never regularly), but many of my friends do. I've got nothing against the game, rules, etcetera – big robots just don't interest me at all.

I am, however, assembling some of the models for my roommate, who hates to assemble/cleanup/base miniatures. I'm trading him some jack and figure assemblies for a few paintjobs. Another friend of mine is trading me a couple of conversions for a few paint jobs (all Warmachine miniatures).

So one of the figures that my roomamte wants me to assemble for him is the new "Epic Stryker" Cygnar warcaster miniature. This is a character figure for the game, and the figure is very well sculpted for its type, but WAAAY too busy for my tastes. Little buckles and bangles everywhere – he's gonna be a nightmare to paint. I wish my roommate good luck on that count…

So there's a sculpted base (fits in the slottabase depression) a torso/leg/cloak piece, a right leg, two separate arms, a backpack smokestack, a separate head, and the sword. Too many itty bitty parts for my taste, but then I'm getting paid in painted minis for my time so I went to work.

The pose is dynamic enough, I guess, although the legs look deformed. Some of the pieces fit well enough (the backpack and the head fit in very nicely), but I had to dust off my Dremel tool to get the sculpted base to fit into the slottabase, and the right leg doesn't fit very well at all -to get him to stand up I had to leave a slight gap – too small to fill with putty, but big enough that I know it'll be noticeable when I'm done. The arms have hoses coming off of them that don't seem to go anywhere in particular.

All other complaints aside, though, what really bugs me is the fragility of the joints – these joints are TINY, some of them (the rear foot, the wrists, the neck) are about one mm in total area, and some of the others aren't much better (the foot for the right leg, connecting to the base). They are too small to pin and too small to hold a lot of glue. I have no idea how well this miniature will hold up to any kind of handling or transportation.

The other irritation is that I'm not too familiar with this line of figures, so I wasn't too sure about the posing of the right foot and the arms. I looked all over the PP website – no luck. I did a google search – no luck. Then I went over to Electric Ocean and looked through their GenCon 2005 Privateer Press booth coverage, and found a pic.

Man! That got under my skin. They have this huge website full of very nice figures, but the ONE miniature I'm working on is one that they don't have a picture of. GRRRRrrrrr….

That's about it. No real complaints, just irritation. I can't wait to get back to my nice, straightforward Wargods and Lord of the Rings minis (Mines of Moria is coming soon!), with their easy-to-assemble figures and clean lines.

Bleah. And here I was looking forward to the new "Hordes" game from PP – now I'm afraid of the minis.

I do not play it either, but have painted several of the minis on commission, I understand your feelings about the fussy nature and some of the poses, but that is the fashion at teh moment.

My real dislike with them is the inconsistent scale issue. I just finished 2 of the Cygnar Multi Barrel cannon teams and the kneeling loader figure is 28mm high, kneeling down. If this guy were to ever stand up he has to be 40mm.

That's another point with the Stryker figure – as I mentioned, I'm painting some WM minis for another friend of mine. Disregarding the base, the Stryker figure is head and shoulders taller than the other guys I'm working on.

One of them is an elf, so I expect her to be short, but the other one is just a human with a gun – he should at least look comparable to Stryker, but he doesn't. He looks tiny by comparison.

*SHRUG* They're not for me, so I'm not too worried about it.

I lost my nerve trying to assemble a Chronopia Elf Dragon Rider, the figure simply wouldn't fit together. I just picked it up and sent it flying out of sheer frustration.

We used to have the same complaint with GW, I always wondered how a general or warlord could function in battle with all those amulets, chains etc hanging all over him.

With GW, the "general" figures are pretty consistently my least favorite in any given range. Too many doodads, and they usually get the biggest, dorkiest helm imaginable.

With PP's Warmachine and RPG fiugres, I have mostly human figures – maybe 24 – and they seem consistent in scale. The only jacks I have are the earliest Kryx ones, and they seemed to assemble OK. They do seem to be going in for bigger and bigger figures though.

I am with you, Alex, on not being excited about giant robots in general.

This issue pops up somewhat frequently on PP's forums. Even on their rank and file troopers there are way too many fiddly bits sometimes (seperate hands, horns, swords, bayonets, etc.). PP claims that they do this to prevent miscasts, and allow for more dynamic poses, both during the casting process and during the assembly. I can see their point, but I think for the rank and file that they should go with several single-piece casts for each unit and let it be. No one wants to be gluing on several squad's worth of little crescent-shaped (?) bayonets on to the end of rifles, for example. Even some of the regular warcasters are too fiddly. One dude has a staff that he is raising over his head that was cast sepeartely. It could've been cast as part of the miniature, but for some reason wasn't. It constantly snaps off when I take the guy out of his slot in my foam tray…

The usual defense by the PP supporters is that PP's miniatures "push" gamers to expand their modeling and painting boundaries. I find nothing boundary-expanding by trying to pin a hand onto the end of the wrist of my Arcane Gun Mage Captain…

Later,
Markus

Yeah, I have a little Khadoran force of 2 warjacks, Sorscha, a Man O' War Kapitan, and two Man O' War grunts.

It took me an insane amount of time, brownstuff, and patience just to clean, resculpt some detail, fill in gaps caused by warped parts, and assemble the warjacks and one of the Man O' War suits.

Didn't really seem to be worth all that bother (especially after the local shop got rid of the gaming tables), so they all went straight into my box of miniature limbo. I don't plan to buy any more Warmachine figures, and lately I've found myself steering clear of multipart metal figures entirely.

-Mel

I have to chime in about PP's Khador Warjacks…

They have MASSIVE gaps! particularly at the boiler. Steer clear unless you are handy with filling 1/8" gaps.

They should come with a warning label: "Mind the gap."

Or you can ignore the gaps entirely, which is what I did. No one seems to notice on the tabletop. I was obsessing about this when I dry-fitted the Khador warjacks together, but decided to go ahead and file them down a little, glue them together, and paint them up. They came out pretty good. I even choose a very light color scheme. I would assume hat a darker color scheme would hide the gaps even better…

Although I do agree with you. For all of PP's reputed obsession with quality you would think they would've gone back and re-mastered these by now. One of the Menoth warjacks (the Guardian?) has the same problem where the boiler doesn't meet the body. Luckily you don't see it unless you pick the miniature up and look at it from underneath.

Later,
Markus

Little as I like most of the IKWM range, I thought the Khador jacks were rather nice, actually. They assemble easily, the (huge) gap at the boiler is a two-minute fix with a little magicsculp, and unlike many of the other models in the range they're sturdy and fairly modular…you can easily use the bodies of any of the first three types with each others' arms and heads to get better variety.

Much, much easier to paint if you don't glue the arms on first, though. I made that mistake once…

Rich

Hmmm- yes PP figs can be fussy to put together, the jacks especially are heavy and some really should be pinned, I play only Khador, so I can't really comment on the other factions, but I have pinned thus far- 2 jacks, sorcha's axe thing, wrists and arms on Man O'Wars (men o'war?) and wrists and arms on Iron Fang Pikemen. I have also gotten somewhat adept at filling the "Khador Gap" in the backs of many of the Khador jacks. As mentioned, it really does look ok if you do nothing and paint up the fig, but I get kind of obsessive about that kind of thing.

Having said all that- Warmachine figs are really, really easy to pin- most have hole/post joins and all it takes is a bit of filing on the post to get a good spot to drill.

If you want assembly hell, try pinning Rackham figs, especially the Cynwall elves and the Drune kelts- an excercise in frustration, no matter how pretty the figs are. There is nothing like drilling out a wrist barely larger than my smallest viable pin bit- shudder.

I highly recomend brushthralls.com and their pinning primer, link for help with Warmachine assembly or pinning in general.
Cheers,
TG

I have to agree with Thunderhead. I've had no problems assembling Warmachine miniatures. I've 4 Khador, 8 Cygnar and 4 Mercenary Jacks, and used no more filler than with any other multi-part minis. At least the parts fit together well, which is more than I could say of GW. Now they have distorsion problems. Admittedly I always pin multi-parts, so I'm no stranger to the pin-vice.

You want a challenge? Like the man said, try Confrontation minis! I love 'em!

Patrick R – For awesome Elf 'Dragoons', try the Grendel Leviathan line, they go together easy, only bugaboo is the resin flash you have to remove. The result is more than worth it!

I agree on the Warmachine figs. Scale is random, leaning towards huge, and those warjacks do eat up the putty like nobody's business.

The accessory syndrome isn't limited to Warmachine, though, many figures from most of the major manufacturers -and many smaller ones as well – sport at least 3 daggers, 7 purses, 5 potion bottles, and more straps and belts than an entire adult store.

Nightmare to paint is right….

Ral Partha made the 'complete adventurer' a long time ago, a fully outfitted dungeoneer who did, indeed, have everything including the kitchen sink on his person…..

We have painted several warmachine figures for customers.
Pl see images link

Fernando Enterprises miniature painting service
web; miniaturelovers.com

If you can paint the miniatures right, it becomes pretty hard to notice gaps.
The only problem is, it's pretty hard to paint the miniatures right, unless you have a really small brush.