As usual after a painting competition or similar event, I'm riding a motivational wave right now. The motivation is even so strong I've started working on a figure which I otherwise would never paint.

It's the special edition Painting Crusade IX figure offered for a fair 3 EUR extra to the admission price of the painting competition. There was a choice of heads, I went for the gas mask.

It's going to be another quick paint up for fun. As you can see those large surfaces isn't something for me:

The sculpt itself is quite good, but the casting rather terrible. Lots of air bubbles. I tried to smooth them out, but still a lot of them remain. The cast is obviously done by a hobbyist (I hope so).

A bit like Finecast then, but of course the guys at GW are pros. Then why do new stories about Finecast fails keep appearing? Recently Warhammer 40K turned 25. To celebrate that, GW released a special edition figure, in Finecast. Quite understandably some people have started complaining to have received a figure with all the classic faults on them, with that difference that this figure costs somewhere around 25 EUR. Another story with more pictures here. When will people learn to stay away from that medium?

Another "fine" story that popped up last week was this one by fellow bloggers 5th Dimension. Imagine finally having a Necron Lord with a straight staff, painting him up to a nice standard and then this happens while it sits in the display cabinet...

After my last complaint (read all about it in part 2 of my story) I got promised by GW customer service that before sending another replacement to me, it would be inspected by someone from QA (isn't that their job?) and another person from customer services.

This time I got the miniature delivered in an envelope (previously it was a box), with the addresses written on them by hand. Let's take a look at this "supposed-to-be" flawless figure:

My first reaction was probably the same as yours. How can a figure without a head get through QA????

But then I took a closer look at the envelope, and the head was in there. The blister was opened, so there had been an inspection for sure. But the contents of the envelope got severely battered during shipping. There were a lot of indentation marks on the blister plastic, the paper inlay was even ripped where the head was, so this envelope was probably placed at the bottom of a pile. Besides the head one of the "antenna thingies" on top of the figure also broke of. Good idea to ship this in an envelope GW! Time to check out the casting quality.

The areas which were really problematic on the previous two figures looked okay now: the chest area and the worms on the base didn't have a bubble on the tip of every pointy bit. But a further inspection quickly revealed several big bubbles on the arms. The hair also was damaged by bubbles.


Two other major defects included a part of the base being evaporated by a big bubble, and one of the vials on the mechanical hand having a similar problem.

The cloak had two identical problems to the previous figure: the cloak which is very thin in places, and the corner near the bottom suffering from a bubble. The spine area on the back was also severely damaged during shipping.

This figure also had a small bit of mold material on it, which you might have read about elsewhere. It was hard to picture since it was in one of the recesses in which an arm should be glued, but it appeared as a small pink speck.

I have decided not to ask for a replacement this time. I think I've seen enough of this product to get a good image of its quality. And with this last one they made two very severe errors: bad packaging and sending me a figure with obvious flaws while promising to send a perfect one. I'm now going to try to get my money back, but I'm afraid the only thing I will get back is a voucher of some sort. I'll keep you guys up to date!

As written at the end of part 1, I asked for a replacement. It was sent out right away and I received it in about a week. I still had some hope left to get an error-free model this time, but it turned out otherwise.

In general this model has more problems on it than the previous one. When putting them next to each other I immediately noticed number two had some deformation issues. The face looks different, much more slim than the previous one. The arm is also bent in a strange way, and the two tentacles above his head look completely different.



The first model had a lot of bubbles in the chest area, this one had exactly the same mistakes. There's also a big lump of flash on his chin.

The mechanical arm has bubbles in exactly the same spot as the first model, together with some more bubbles a bit higher up. In general the lower part of the model has less bubbles, but the toe still had the same problem. I also noticed some additional channels between the worms on the base. Speaking of the base: there's a part missing, caused by a bubble.



The cloak is probably the worst part of the miniature. It's so thin it's translucent in places, and on two occasions a hole formed. The spine normally has some spines running along it, but halfway these are simply missing.



This is how it looks when it's held against a light:



What really struck me is the difference between the first and the second sprue. I also noticed some errors on the first sprue, like the weapon which is missing a large part. But in general the channels are laid out completely different. How can you achieve a consistent quality when all of the molds are different?



Anyway I asked customer support if it was relevant to get another replacement, or if there is a consistent problem with this particular model. It took about a week to get a reply, but this is what they sent me:

Hi Gerrie,

Firstly I want to apologise that the replacement model you received was once again faulty. I have requested another Urien Rakarth for you, that both me (and the rest of the customer service team) and the Quality Control Manager will check before we send it out to you.

Again apologies and we will let you know immediately  when we have a model we are satisfied with to send out to you.

I expect them to return a flawless model now, nothing less. If that isn't the case I'll ask for a refund.

To be continued....