Siocast has been getting a lot of bad wrap over the past few months. Is it really as bad as everyone says and how can Corvus Belli fix it? Music by Bensound.com/royalty-free-music License code: KA20UQHMG0CGRDC9
I'm glad that CB have been very transparent about why they're looking for other methods. Unfortunately, I've know a lot of people who have avoided buying specific TAGs due to the price of metal models (looking at you Maghariba Guard). I'm getting my first injected thermoplastic tag soon so I'm really interested to see the quality. Also very tempted to glue some pennies under the base to increase weight as I do like the weight of Infinity miniatures!
I have worked with the Chernobog and the Marut in this material, both were crisp and other than some minor mold lines, I had no issues. The Marut being in siocast definitely is a boon because that thin, long sword would just break in metal. Out of the two models, I only pinned the Chernobog and that was more because of the number of parts than any concern that it might actually break. In all, I agree that a substitute to metal is important. CB will find its way.
I've been a bit dismayed with the variability of siocast minis. I think it works pretty well for 'organic' shapes, but once it's being used for mechanical things like TAGs and REMs which have symmetrical "mechanical" components, it's really easy to see how misshapen many of the parts become. As painful as metal can be, I've never felt like it was affecting the quality of my painting, but with my recent Caskuda build, I found myself in a couple of parts of the model saying "why fuss for hours blending and detailing part X when it's deformed and blobby here?"
I often wonder if designers plan their designs according to the material and the manufacturing process. I often see CB artists on the net and I see that the people sculpting are not sculptors but 3D video game artists. I don't think they've understood the job they're being asked to do, and CB doesn't seem to be doing a very helpful job.
I think that it works perfectly in certain situations, eg a weapon with hands that would attach to arms, or heads and other small parts. Superglue seems to work well when I've used different mediums with each other and again, aircraft modellers don't seem to have issues gluing metals/plastics/resins together. Perry Miniatures offer metal heads to go with their plastic figures so that more variety can be achieved.
I have a few Siocast models, and maybe I’ve just been lucky but I can’t complain about any that I have received. I don’t think sharply increasing the price and going back to metal is the right call. The price would push people out of the game and prevent people from picking it up. At the same time Siocast apparently does have issues. Keep in mind Corvus has about a year of experience with Siocast and decades with metal. I would full expect their Siocast game to continue to improve. However, like you said they need to clamp down much harder on their QC of the Siocast models to avoid it getting a reputation like Finecast. Hard plastic would be great but I don’t think CB can match that to their current vision.
If CB wants to make hard plastic, there's a micro factory for plastic game miniatures in France, and a medium-sized one in Poland that already has a reputation and makes Masters of Universe (although Starfinder isn't very top-notch). And that's not to mention the manufacturers of models in Europe (Heller, Revell) who are looking for contracts to diversify because of the decline in the model-building hobby. I think they could make plastic in Europe easily and cheaply.
@@waardlafrance110 perhaps they could find a HIPS manufacturer in Europe, however this would mean outsourcing production to a 3rd party which is something CB are very keen to avoid and also might require a redesign of much of the range since the rigid mold production process of HIPS would not work for CB's current mini's.
@DeepGreenX do you think creating new HIPS moulds is quite a cheap process? At the rate GW produce a limited edition Primaris Lieutenant I’d imagine it could suit CB.
@@the_infinitygamer unless mold tooling costs have dropped significantly since I last checked then the major stumbling block for HIPS production is the high cost of molds. GW can do it since they are guaranteed to sell enough product that it offsets the mold tooling costs. They also have legacy production capacity from when they invested their LOTR money into the technology, they bought a HIPS factory I think?
So as an experienced modeller (25 plus years from garage kits of anime to wargaming) I dont have a problem with siocast, however, some of my newer players have received a few horror stories worst being an Oyoroi which apparently have different molds and he got a mix of parts and it couldnt be assembled(well not with his skills) This speaks loudly to that quality control issue you refer to. So the problem is multifaceted but I do think there is a solution which CB isn't exploring yet and that is to study what causes the fails, then design the sculpts to avoid that. It could make kits come in many more pieces which will drive up costs, but not to the extent that metal will. In other words, if the pieces are smaller with more sprue connections they can mostly eliminate the variability however may use 20% or more material producing a model. (Tamaya and bandai figured this out decades ago) So the nuts an bolts is to get the quality the price goes up, pick your poison on which way. While I do thing GW is on to plastic, I think the true future is most likely some sort of digital distribution where the user will 'print' their models, this is what the entire industry is trying to avoid as they dont know how to keep piracy out. CB at its core is a mini manufacturer, they dont sell games..... And to embrace the future they may need to recognize that the current model is like a film camera, not unknown but continually being moved away from.
I’ve been saying for a long time that model manufacturers are missing a trick by charging for print versions and letting people create them at home. I appreciate this only works if people can’t just print models over and over once they have the design. It would, however, secure the net profit margin from the ‘sale’ of the model without the overheads and delivery costs.
@@the_infinitygameronce a paid for STL is out on the internet there's currently no way to ensure it doesn't get shared about for free. For selling STLs to be a viable business model there would have to be some hack proof way of sharing the file to just one user or having the file as a one use piece of software. Interestingly this is possible at the moment but only using single use USB keys which wipe themselves after a single activation.
@@the_infinitygamer Yea I think its just gonna take a well designed game with a market model that includes self production and large portions of market share will slip. This of course predicated on the continual decline of cost for high quality production means.
It's a tough choice, but I think CB should ramp up QA for SioCast minis. From what I heard they can re-use SioCast material for casting. This still costs them, but losing faith in received product might be damaging to the brand. I love their metal minis. Great quality and true scale proportions. I can't justify spending money on subpar product, especially knowing that they can do better. I haven't yet bought any SioCast mini, mostly due to fear of getting the "miscast" one...
But could they? When you see the control in the rules, it raises questions, and I'm not just talking about Defiance, which is the worst example of a lack of quality control.
I heard they can reduce waste with recasting the excess too. Not sure if they can recycle processed minis or whether it’s just off cuts of raw material though.
I've got three Siocast remotes and, whilst not quite as good as metal or resin, they're fine for my needs at the price point. As with a lot of things it's the problems that get voiced and if people are happy they tend not to say much so I'm not convinced the problems are as bad or as widespread as it might seem. I've been playing with toy soldiers for 40 years and come across a wide range of materials in that time: they all have their pros and cons. Feels like there's some unrealistic expectations out there being amplified by some people's tribalism for their favourite (therefore perceived "best") materials.
There’s definitely a camp that never liked siocast and never will. I’m similar to you in that I’ve been very lucky to receive good casts but I can’t ignore the growing evidence of disparity in quality.
I’ve had a few Siocast so far, no issues at all, and if I did have any issues, I’m confident that CB’s customer service team would replace it. There’s a reason they put the blue numbered tags in the box.
I’ve also had no issues with mine, certainly not enough to warrant getting the replacements team involved. Have you seen some of the images of what others have received?
They are in a tough situation. You brought up switching to plastic, but the reason why smaller manufacturers are extremely hesitant to switch to plastic is simple: It costs about $150,000+ in upfront tooling costs, _per kit_ , to spin up a standard plastic kit. For small order stuff like this, that's a massive gamble that could sink a company. Plastic is also the cheapest on a per unit basis, but you need to sell a ton of units to make up that initial cost. Siocast, metal, and resin have upfront costs that are far far smaller than that... so that's what everyone is stuck with. I agree that they need better QA/QC, and I bet there's a ton that could be done to improve the consistency of the casts. But without insider knowledge we won't know what the true issues are.
@@the_infinitygamer For one set of sprues. If it's something small you can do tricks like packing multiple kits onto quarters of a larger sprue. But honestly I might be underselling the price? The key is, once the mold is made and the injection molding equipment bought, the cost to actually make the sprues is a few cents. So it's a huge upfront cost, but actually printing kits becomes almost free.
My experiance is limited, but...yes. yes it is. I do not like how bendy it is. I have the O - Yoroi waiting to be built...but that arm sword is proper bendy. Maybe im just old school, but give me metal any day of the week. Im happy to pay more (within reason), im happy to pin, im happy to do any of the stuff that metal needs but im not happy with wibbly wobbly bits. I havn't got it yet, but i have seen how bendy the new Combine beetle tag is, i wouldnt have put the order down if i had known. I was basing my purchase off the Bear, that seems a much less bendy material. probably makes it more brittle though.
I got the Marut from the limited edition ITS box. The barrel was bent so I spent over two weeks of hot soapy water and still no joy. In the end I spent so much time trying to remold with hot water that the barrel came apart. This was actually a blessing as I've been modeling since 1998 and simply put it back together better than it was. The sword was similar to your TAG as in bent. It's been in the vice now for 2 months, I'm just hoping it holds.
I had this with the Aristeia! PVC models - no matter how long they stayed in warm water I couldn’t get various swords or staffs anywhere near straight.
My Chernobog literally shattered in my hand. I pulled it out of my case to put on the table and poof it shattered into 8+ peices. Luckily I found most of it and was able to glue it back together and green stuff what I couldn't find. Honestly I think CB should up quality control and also offer both metal and plastic, let the customer choose if they want the quality metal TAG or the cheaper plastic that may have issues.
Thats a more than a bit scary. Im no engineer but that sounds like the entire model failed at a basic structural level. Even assuming that CB are closely checking the model for details/mold slip etc then they cant really check the internal structure. Which in itself in book makes it potentially a complete non starter as a material for a model.
@@jamesmaybrick2001 For whatever reason, maybe connected to casting temperature or flow, sometimes siocast turns unexpectedly brittle. I've had the same almost spontaneous shattering in the arm of a penitent.
I can't stand SioCast! After getting my hands on a Unicool Marut, I wish they had invested in that instead. Prepping whatever that material is feels like working on a nice resin miniature. It sands/scrapes well and details are crisp. I couldn't find any weird casting defects like you would on SioCast models. My O-Yoroi and Stigmata took a lot of hours to prep because there were problems everywhere. The dream is to see Infinity in injection-molded polystyrene. It's the gold standard for consistency and ease of use. If they need to crowdfund and/or outsource, so be it.
Siocast has put me off of some Infinity miniatures. I love building minis, but I find Siocast so frustrating to work with. Metal is really easy to scrape, file, sand, and polish, making it really easy to clean minis. I have not been able to clean a single Siocast mini to make it look seamless. Dealing with those fuzzy burrs is a nightmare. There's some benefit to Siocast - the lighter weight makes it easier to transport with a magnetized case and it's easier to cut for conversions - but I find it deeply unpleasant to work with. I would rather pay more for metal.
See if you can pick up some fine grain sanding sticks for working with SioCast, Green Stuff World do a good set or theres a set of Gunpla Sanding sticks that have three diffrent grades which work really well. A rule of thumb (wait for it) that I've found that helps in working with Siocast or PVC is to use my fingernails as a test surfae for any sanding or filing tools. If it leaves a fuzzy surface on the nail then it will leave a similar surface on SioCast or PVC.
I have experience with non Infinity siocast mini's. The quality was expectable, but the not being able to clean the mold lines an other imperfections like I can with GW plastic is a deal breaker for me.
I must admit I bought the GW mould line tool to see if that would work on siocast. It’s better than some tools but I imagine it’s perfect for harder plastic.
I've found that people expect something like siocast to be flawless. However, metal is not flawless. It really comes down to caster skill and mold maintenance, plus QA. I expect to have to trim the joints of metal models because metal models are not dimensionally sound. I also see mold slips and other issues. In Siocast or metal, badly maintained molds will create bad castings, as will unskilled casters. I stopped playing Dream Pod 9s Heavy Gear because their casters where constantly producing flawed casts that the company was allowing to be sold. So for me, Siocast is perfectly fine. It has similar issues to metal. However if people are receiving unacceptable castings I hope they are informing Corvus Belli, and CB understands that they need to refresh molds faster, or design them better, or otherwise resolve whatever those issues are.
This is essentially what Rackham did in the 2000's. Cost saving measures with different material and simpler models. Eventually they went to pre-paint. It destroyed their company.
All three in succession. Confrontation (like Infinity) really set themselves apart at the time by having models that were unlike anything else out there. Their detail was at another level. When they changed material some of that was lost as the new stuff wasn’t as detailed, was much harder to work with, and the new paint jobs were bad and hard to paint over. I recognize that I come to the hobby as a painter first and a gamer a very distance second, but it seems like I wasn’t the only one because they folded not long after. It was a shame as the stuff the made was cool…. AT-43 had some great designs and the confrontation universe was rich.
They also started to drag out the lifespan of the molds for the metal minis. The flash was so bad that chunks of detail would be lost. So it was more than just a material swap, more like a lack of recognizing that great models are what made them special and then a downward spiral.
I personally think metal is worse in all respects, flashing and vents are at an elbow, facing side of the arm etc. I think (Any medium) is better overall to work with, clean up and the miniatures look better. Metal minis end up with defects from vents etc where you have to "sculpt" the detail back in which can be a challenge, at least for me. Metal is just as poor over all, my recent production Morats have had mold lines and gates in terrible locations, with all the experience they have in working with metal and with new molds, they need to do better with their metal as well. Please don't Laud metal as perfect as it is not, scraping lines and minute detail with vent pieces molded on fine detail, and a pain to remove( magazines, front weapon barrels, sights, pistol grips, on attachment points). All mediums have problems, balancing them is the challenge. I would like to hear from other people who have experience with other miniature lines? I have a Marut, Alt Sculpt Marut, Bultrak, Agamemnon, Gator and Probots and they are all fine.
Fair, I am sitting here cleaning up my Yadu Tactical assault team. I failed to mention you had and excellent point regarding quality control. They should have the slips in all the miniatures they produce, as a check and as a reassurance they will address an issue with the model. Honestly I have not looked for, but assumed they were in the boxes for the scio-cast stuff... But I cannot specifically recall.@@the_infinitygamer
First of great topic and good commentary on it, My personal experience has been a mixed bag both with Metal and with Siocast inevitably those metal molds do degrade and you get very poor fitting models with gaps when assembled, rounded edges that should be sharp, and rough surfaces that should be smooth I have had this mostly on TAGs an Iguana and a Zeta specifically while the Equipe Mirage-5 team was perfect, My Siocast Fuzzbots were great while the Sputnik had issues with vent details messed up and some sort of malfunction where a scoop of the section where the protrusions holding weapons joins the body were missing. All up I would have to say my experience with both has been the same and I would like to see greater quality control whether Metal or Siocast across the board for the price point CB play at.
I’m in the same boat, joins on metal minis have been as bad as slipped details on siocast. Seems you trade one annoying imperfection for another depending on your material!
I'm not an Infinity player and i haven’t seen any CB models made in siocast. I was excited about siocast when it was announced. I am aware that a higher quality (more expensive) siocast material was released. I don't know which version CB uses. I have one box of siocast models from another company. I don't know which version of the material was used (I'm assuming the cheaper one). But they are bad. Some models clearly came out of molds that slipped or are suffering from wear and tear (that happens with most molds eventually, but they are silicone molds so... more prone to it that galvanised rubber molds used to make metal models). The material itself is prone to tearing when cleaning, a bit like pvc but more rubbery. I am very dissapointed. I'm not "dismayed" as I'm not invested in a company that has invested in switching to siocast.
You know the reason I watch your videos is your passion for this game. Parts of this were clearly difficult to talk about because you want the inconsistencies to be solved so that you can promote the game andnl its models with confidence. At least that's how it comes across. So far I have only had one experience with siocast in the Penitent from the Bakunin set. It was different to work with but not impossible. I haven't painted it yet so I don't feel I can really judge until I have a few more under my belt.
I think an aspect of the change thats not being covered is the impact on the design process. Due to these issues and the known limitations of the material / process your likley to see less vents and finer details. If this continues you will see a distinct aesthetic change, and its already evident. I myself have not recieved a flawless (sio)cast, may just be unlicky as I only have a sample size of 4. If you take the Polaris Bear. Massive smooth armour sections, softer fur detail and curved hammer handle so it's almost like a pigtail (joke and jab at the QC). You can see these changes are already impacting the game we love. This has always occured to an extent in Infinity even on the meral models but not the core design. For example on the box art you see a pattern on the 012 fabric but it's missing on the metal model, but it's missing detail in the retail version, not designed without it. Interesting future. I just pray every release models I want or need or not in Siocast.
I really wanted to like Siocast, but the stuff is so flimsy. I bought a starter from another game (all made from Siocast), and pretty much every model has something broken. For Infinity, I was building the new Meteor Zond, dropped a piece on CARPET, and it broke. It feels really cheap, is hard to work with (cleaning is rough), and I have had more experiences with broken pieces than in-tact ones.
It does snap quite easily. I am grateful that they’re clean breaks and are pretty easy to glue back together. Metal doesn’t snap at all and just bends, which is a blessing for some minis.
I think the failure rate of scio is much higher then advertised and that’s what we’re seeing. I absolutely hate to give the zombie company that is Privateer Press any accolades. But their 3D printed minis in the new MK4 boxes are amazingly good. Their darker resin in the newest boxes isn’t brittle and has a little flex to it. the details are all clean. With that said PP is 2 to 3 months behind their own advertised release schedule. I suspect it’s not as easy to mass print models as they thought. I have a 3D printer and I amazingly do not mind buying 3D printed models at traditional prices.
@@the_infinitygamer PP started 3d printing mid-2022 and there were issues with some of the early kits: the resin used was quite brittle and would often break when handled or in shipping. Not everything put out, by all means (I have two of their first army boxes and if I hadn't stress tested all the models by dropping them from 3 feet to the floor I don't think I would have had all that many breaks) but enough to make it very noticeable online especially because PP has a lot of angry exes who gleefully announced this to the world. One year in, PP seems to be doing what they once did with resin casting with commercial 3d printing. They're eating into the delayed schedule (the most recent pirate trolls came out almost on schedule alongside the vampire elves that should have been out 3 months ago), the prints are very good on surface detail and has a nice flex to them - all the ones I have seen have survived other players nervously agreeing to do my drop test. They are doing cool things to their models that simply cannot be replicated on cast models - very deep recesses, grilles with holes all the way through them and similar things that could not be done with other materials without making them out of a LOT of parts. Turns out undercuts aren't much of an issue when you 3d print stuff. Their models mostly are in one piece as well, which is interesting even if I do saw some of them apart to do reposing. The difference between CB's Siocast efforts and this is that all these improvements happened during the first year, whereas my impression (not playing Infinity any more, not related to Siocast at all) is that CB isn't improving the processes at nearly the same rate. This makes me personally nervous because I am looking at Warcrow, which is all supposed to come out in Siocast.
It makes sense when you think about it: To get a model out of a 2-piece mould it needs to be able to be pulled out of said mould. Which means some things are impossible to make without the number of parts you have to glue together increasing. I just saw one of the new pirate trolls that has an earring in one ear which is an actual ring just attached to the ear in a place you'd need to add something like 2-3 extra parts to a HIPS model to in order to make. The whole model is in one piece. You just glue it to a base, remove supports and lightly file off any print artifacts, prime it and start painting.@@the_infinitygamer
I have several Siocast models and was lucky up to now. But the removal of imperfections like moldlines is quite difficult compared to metal or plastic. In comparison unicool is amazing. I have both the infinity models and a lot of unicool models from eldfall chronicles. The details are amazing and cleanup is a breeze if necessary at all. I had no moldlines at all at nearly every eldfall chronicles model. If CB would switch to unicool I would celebrate it a lot.
I have always been skeptical of siocast. Now mainly my skeptical point of view comes from experience in seeing new materials enter the hobby space. I have been in the hobby over 30 years, I started on metal minis. New material always have growing pains and it can take years to get it right. What I have personally seen of siocast leaves me with the feeling of nice technology, not quite ready. I have had slipped mold lines on my nomad remotes, cb took 3 months but eventually replaced the parts. I had flimsy AF weapons on my morat tag they are all now replaced with plasticard. My marut was a wtf, 90% was perfectly acceptable, in fact i was ready to sing the praises of cb. But that 10%, a sword again, this one was so sloppy yojimbo was laughing, again replaced the sword with plasticard and dropped a pin through the sword arm, the replacement was marginally better, but not worth the hassle of removing the original patch work. I am not panicked by poor miniatures or poor casting. Been in the hobby long enough to just see it as an opportunity. But it should be my choice to slice up a new mini, not a boarder line necessity because of bad casting, poor QC and new manufacturing product. But far worse than having a knowledgeable hobbyists rolling thier eyes, is a new hobbyists or customer getting a questionable or poor product. That all said, I don't think siocast is a bad material, I just think cb needs to get a better QC process in place and work out the bugs
Well said. Band not everyone has the experience you have to fix these issues and have their model still look good, others will try and be saddened by the end result.
I'm almost sure the QC issues with Siocast are from the molds being overused. The silicone molds for their metal minis last quite a long time and I suspect their current production teams are using that lifetime for their silicone Siocast molds which seem to wear out much faster.
@@DeepGreenXI would tend to agree with your assertion. I commission painted an earlier production marut before I got mine. Originally my thinking was I would just keep running my metal original. But i really liked what I saw with the new one while painting it. A second one also gave me the option of running double tags, which is just funny.
Plastic is way too expensive unless your product is selling in large numbers, hence why specialist games still use resin due to the smaller number of units sold
I have only assembled my bear so far and it was fine. I have not built my Chernobog yet. It takes time to fine tune stuff. Hope they work out the isssues with whatever models they had some issues with. Otherwise i am ok paying a premium for the sweet sculpts.
Like others, i've been lucky with them. I just assembled my first siocast model yesterday. The details looked great. The only, minor complaint i had, is that when you take a file to the mold lines/flash, the excess material kinda clings to the model, and i have to go back in with a hobby knife to cut/wiggle it off the model. Again, very minor complaint. I absolutely love the siocast model i worked on.
@@geteavnroc2250 There's your problem. It's not the same material as metal, so you can't just assume the same tools will work. They don't work on this type of nylon-like polymer. Shaving mould lines (with a fresh sharp blade) and SANDING (NOT filing) are the methods that work better. Filing just results in the material burring up and the "cut" bits curling and going stringy. I also use a curved blade with the cutting edge on the inside - and a lot of care. The various shapes and styles of the x-acto type blades exist for reasons. All have specific niches of work they are better at. Just like Resin models don't use the same techniques as metal or plastic. I'm on my 3rd siocast model. The Gator. My first two were the Marut (with small arms cradling the weapon, large arms akimbo - not the limited edition version) and the vostok remote. Both of those were pretty crisp (and with none of the flaws I'd seen in other people's pictures). Same with the gator. I've had metal castings with worse quality (from CB) and resin with much worse quality (Nottingham-based resin specialist mob owned by the big fish in the pond).
I fully agree that companies need to improve their QA processes. I have had some SioCast that are essentially perfect and rival metal or plastic and I have had the same mini be very disappointing in its casting quality.
I have a couple of Siocast miniatures and I am fortunate enough to not have any miscasts. What I dislike that Siocast is a bit tricky to work with. You can forget drilling it, removing mold lines leaves the edges ... raggedy, if that makes sense. They are not crisp anymore. I tend to use sharp scissors now, to work at the edges. That being said, I think it is the correct decision from CB to use a synthetic material for their miniatures (and tbh I don't think Siocast is anywhere near as bad as Failcast. I have some of the LotRs miniatures here, that GW still sells and they are horrible). I think the age of metal is over. They just have to work on the quality or try another material.
The issue with HIPS is the upfront cost. Gw can justify it because of the quantity of models they shift. I'd love plastic morats as i dislike working with metal. My Bultrak wasnt too bad, just not too easy to clean the mouldlines off. The gun has snapped several times, but its always a clean break.
Even new small companies are doing HIPS. It is not that expensive anymore, it is an issue of CB managers not wanting to invest, especially now when they wasted money on Siocast machine I believe they are still paying for.
Anyone know how long CB take to rectify a siofail. Just spent way to long trying to put a caskuda together and realised that the groin bit is totally warped and essentially makes the model unworkable. I could probably fix it with a dril, pin, green stuff and essentially a converson jobby. But i shoudlnt have to. Its bloody annoying as its not immediately obvious at first glance and i bought the thing a few months ago and my lovely UK consumer protections are well past their use by date. Hopefully CB will sort, but that means waiting for a delivery from spain (I assume). I want to build the dam thing now! I just dont like the stuff. Give me nice tough to clean metal!
I think that CB, GW and other miniatures companies have to face the reality and to start selling stl files for 3d printing. The quality of the printed minis is amazing!
I don’t actually know the difference between blue and white but they’re the quality control tickets so they can track back to either who did the QC or what your release number was.
I think the only siocast minis I’ve built so far are the Vostok and the probots and both were fine. I have the ITS marut and the resin is really nice. Maybe just moving forward with resin would be a solution, not unicool but some other basic resin? I am of the opinion that hard plastic models would be a good solution but would also help grow the game. I know a lot of modern gamers eschew metal minis and want to play games that are all plastic.
I'm pals with a couple of "name" indie mini companies, and they refuse to touch the stuff. I know a couple others who adopted it, and been fine with it, but then encountered machine repair and customer service issues, leading to long delayes in being able to make their products. I also dislike being locked into Siocast. If they go under your machines that cost thousands are dead in the water.
There is currently no good way to enforce DRM on print files, so they would have to print in house. Which I think is fine. You will have a lot more sculpting freedom than Siocast, metal or plastics too. @@the_infinitygamer
Unfortunately, at this point, it's probably Styrene or bust. I was concerned about the potential quality issues of introducing a new material with insufficient time to properly engineer the processes for designing the molds, and understanding the behavior of the material in a full production environment. Chewy plastics (looking at you, Privateer Press...) dont fare all that well for wargaming models, typically, because they're such an absolute pita to work with. I haven't bought much Infinity stuff lately, as my backlog is kinda deep, but for what their kits cost, stateside, im not gonna touch the Siocast stuff until i get verification that they've solved the QC issues.
I was happy to have won some metal YJ rems, happier that they are metal. Metal offers unsurpassed detail and sharpness in miniatures. Even better than GW plastic. For a skirmish game like Infinity, metal is great. But metal wasn't great for a game like Warhammer. I think CB could have done some more customer education - let us know that you need to use nail buffs rather than metal files for instance. I don't like working with Siocast, (removing mold lines) but my Marut was pretty good quality. Dropping it isn't an issue and it was easier to make than it would have been in metal.
Quite a few of the new TAG designs seem to lend themselves to siocast, which is great. I’m disappointed that Unicool isn’t going ahead as the Marut and Ayyar in that material were easily as good as metal.
I am new to this game so the discussion aroun siocast has given me pause to buy a TAG. That being said it would be great if CB did create a response addressing peoples concerns ans also talking long term somthing along the lines of "We know there are issues but we believe these are caused by the new processes and not a consistent issue with the material itself. We offer such and such for people facing problems but as we learn more things will get better. That would put my mind at ease at least.
I agree. You might get lucky and get TAGs as good as the ones I’ve received but that’s a bit of a lottery, which is unfair on you. I hope CB addresses the issues with siocast, either directly or indirectly in their process.
I presume CB did have a look at using hard plastic before committing to Siocast, the same used for plastic aircraft kits or the dreaded Games Workshop, but hard plastics could be enhanced by using white metal parts for some of the parts where the plastic may be more easily snapped or vulnerable. If you look at some of the model aircraft builders out there on RU-vid, hard plastic has its own issues of poor fit of parts etc, but it does seem that it is more easily fixed than Siocast, more easily filed, filled and scraped for example. The perfect answer would be that the price of the metals used would come down, but I suspect that that won't happen, so the search for the perfect alternative, for both price and model quality, will continue...
I don't think these low-volume plastic manufacturing methods is the way to go. Wonder how much it would cost them to have someone like Archon Studios to do PS kits for the stuff. Setting up a full PS pipeline is really expensive, but I don't know how it is to hire someone else to do it. I have seen some companies do it, but I have no numbers.
I think we have been lucky that CB have such a great missing parts/defects department. I have bought a fair amount of Siocast and I'd say 50% of them have had some form of defect. Some of those I've been able to resolve myself but should it be down to the consumer to fix issues with a product we have bought? Luckily CB replace things reasonably quick but there is still that delay in getting parts out rather than them just being in good condition in the first place
Very well said. The fact CB are so good at replacing defects means this issue has been softened for many but that doesn’t mean it should be the standard.
@@the_infinitygamer absolutely, should not be the standard. I know quite a few people who will not buy Siocast because of the inconsistency. They are migrating their hobby money into other companies.
They do, but I guess from other comments that replacing Sio models happens more often and therefore it takes longer to get the replacement parts/models
My experience with Siocast has not been a good one to date. (different suppliers) The models that have been Cast resin, so far have been the best miniatures I have worked with. Just my opinion of my experiences. I will no longer pledge on Siocast miniatures until such time as they improve. Why is Casting Resin no used? It may be cost, I am not sure.
@@the_infinitygamer I have a few different suppliers from around the world. If we can connect I am happy to show you a few different options and suppliers.
I've had 3 models in Siocast so far, and I'm most definitely NOT a fan of it. One model was super brittle and of course its fins and such were warped af, tried hot water bath and bending and the pieces snapped instantly. Clean up is a chore. Water sanding is the key, but it isn't always that easy. Mold slips and dips are definitely a problem. As far as solutions: More QC is great, but I cannot imagine that isn't costing them $$$ too. Hard plastic like GW/Wyrd use is probably the only way forward, even though tooling is expensive. I mean worst case, quit doing those models inhouse. Sub them out to a Chinese/Taiwanese company.
The whole industry is moving away or completely moved away from metal. CB will of course have some teething problems doing QC from one material to another, also could be a supplier issue as well. Plastics whether siocast or not have to become the standard to justify the price point and to remain relevant in a growing industry. Everyone and the mum can make a sci fi miniature range now it seems. Many new people to the hobby will struggle with metal, to paint, kitbash etc. In comparison plastics are easier to deal with and staying with metal will only make new people go to other companies. I have been hoping for years and years that CB goes fully plastic, its a great IP, and is just a common sense business move. The last thing CB or any of the fans want is a forgeworld resin QC system in place....
I think the transfer away from metal is inevitable but the replacement has to be of the same quality otherwise it’s a non-starter. GW had the same issue with going from metal to finecast but has now landed on an excellent solution. I hope CB can do the same on their relatively limited resources.
Plastic is definitely the way of the future. Wyrd Games' Malifaux went from metal some years ago, and the detail and quality of their models now is amazing. I feel that for the long-term health and growth of Infinity, CB are just going to have to bite the bullet and nice away from metal: it's awful to work with, and clearly siocast isn't the answer they were hoping it would be.
Wyrd had to outsource their production for their HIPS minis and fundamentally change their sculpts to make them work in the material. It wasn't a smooth transition either as I remeber their initial HIPS minis were very low detail and had lots of large smooth surfaces. A transition to HIPS might be possible but would mean shifting away from in house production and that's both against CB's stated business ethos and very risky in today's market.
@@the_infinitygamer and also supply. Remeber when the Evergiven blocked the Suez canal, CB was one of the few companies who were able to keep their products in stock to players and stores. Theres also the infamous tale of a cargo ship sinking on the way from China to the US and taking a vast amount of Fantasy Flight game stuff to the bottom of the sea.
I am neither completely happy with metal and siocast. The perfect material, for me as a customer, would be: - can hold small, thin, sharp design - easy to cut - easy to clean (file) - lightweight (so it won’t break when it drops) - clues quickly - easy to prime (paint doesn’t rub off easily) - not so difficult to fix mismatching components My experience with Kingdom Death hard plastic miniatures fulfill these points (except maybe the last one). I would like to see hard plastic been used. I assume the business requirements that CB has make using hard plastic production challenging, like: - production in-house - cost for molds - production expertise - time to market
Resin is incredibly variable from mini to mini as it needs to be produced in a batch process where the resin and catalyst are mixed in a certain ratio sometimes 50-50 but more often 10-90. If the ratio is off the resulting cast can either be very brittle or the heat generated in the curing process will break or deform the piece. Siocast comes a one part nylon polymer so there's no mixing batches beyond what goes into the initial chemical composition of the polymer at the factory. In theory this leads to a much more consistent production process however Siocast does get effected by the heat dissipation of a part as it rapidly hardens.
The Siocast is a horror, it even knocked my mother over on the road. I wonder if the siocast is better in other brands, the failure rate of corvus belli raises questions about other brands including those that make limited editions for kickstarter, and what we see with cb does not encourage us to try a purchase from other brands. But you can't dismiss the problem of the lack of rigor specific to the spanish, I've done a lot of research since I've been buying intensively from CB, I have memories of working relationships with spanish people and I've read the spanish net and you can't say that the spanish mentality is very keen on exactitude at work, so the siocast is made worse by that. Otherwise, one of the problems with siocast is the preparation of the miniature: people don't understand that you shouldn't file but rip and cut, and that you can use sandpaper but with a very fine grain. In the french community, someone said he visited the workshop, and the casters said they hated siocast and preferred metal, I'm not sure what to think, the guy who said it is not known for his reliability, but there were other people at this visit post interplanetario, maybe it could be validated. I've heard that siocast poses problems for molding, as it's difficult to maintain the same hardness throughout the part, which would easily cause the part to twist, whereas for metal it's like a blacksmith's job, you can master the whole casting process from A to Z. If the caster said that, I'm not sure they're ready to switch all their Warcrow production to siocast. If they do, they'll end up with the reputation of Mantic's soft plastic.
I was at IP this year and visited CB HQ and I can 100% tell you that when asked, guy that casts minis at CB said he vastly prefers casting Siocast. And I can tell why, he cast 1 mold of metal minis and 1 mold of Siocast, and Siocast is obviously far easier to cast.
I had some real shit Siocast models. On top of that, i don't think Siocast dust is healthy. And on top of that, the Siocast models aren't exactly cheap either. There has been an overall price increase and the quality is not holding up. Also fix the ingame balance issues.
@@the_infinitygamer of course not, but the dust is more heavy and settles easier, you can remove it easier. So, maybe not safer, but better to handle. I hope the quality will get there, else the stuff Atomic Mass Games uses for Shatterpoint and GW would be best. It's also a lot easier to mod and reconfigure.
Tricky to say. The metal TAGs still available will be older and may be stock from previous production runs and therefore unaffected by the newer costs.
Excusing Siocast's *many* problems as 'still part of the learning process' is inexcusable. The first siocast models went out in 2021 at which point, I would hope they'd been working with it for a good while. That puts their experience with this at 3, maybe 4 years. If you can't get the manufacturing up to a decent level of quality in that time, the problem isn't you, the problem is the material. in my experience, siocast isn't just inconsistent in terms of final product, but it's inconsistent in material properties across kits. I've seen kits with differing colours between parts, differing finish, different structural strength and more. Clearly, siocast is not the high quality material they were looking for. What I wonder is why CB cannot move over to traditional injection-moulded plastic. Games workshop can manage it. Atomic Mass games can manage it. Parabellum have figured it out. Wyrd games has it locked down. Every model airplane company out there found a way to do it. Hell even a tiny company like Adam Poots games managed to get incredibly quality plastic miniature kits out . Ramping up QA might be a temporary solution, but I very much doubt there's any way they can get an economical end result, or even reliable testing.
Any sort of HIPS production means outsourcing (unless you have GW LOTR money available) and outsourcing your core income generating product (miniatures) carries all sorts of risks. CB have been very clear about two things, they want to keep production of their minis in house as much as possible and they don't want to compromise their miniature sculpts to suit a material. Unfortunatly moving to HIPS would require both of the above to be changed.
Sadly it seems that they’ve hit a compromise that doesn’t make anyone happy. While not outsourcing they’re reliant on another company’s machines and materials, which is affecting the quality of the output. It may also be affecting the designs if details like vents can’t be reliably moulded. With the current set-up being a compromise of sorts where does the future lie?
CB needs to stop being cheap and invest in hard plastic production. Few years back I participated in a forum topic about CB switching to plastic. Some guy on the forums sent me a PM claiming he knows how CB works and knows the owner, who is apparently only interested in getting the most money out of company with minimal reinvestments. I dunno if this guy was speaking the truth, but that was back in 2019, so I guess he wasn't that wrong. Sure Siocast was an investment, but I am sure CB got a good deal for that since it is a Spanish company, so it was really minor compared to investing into hard plastic production back then. Getting into hard plastic production is not that prohibitively expensive nowadays, even really small companies do it. It is baffling that CB cannot/won't do it. I'd even be perfectly willing to back a Kickstarter campaign for them to get hard plastic production going. And they need to embrace 3d printing in some form. This is the future, even Mantic has a 3d printable files.
The question you have to ask is if they can do HIPS production in house and would they need to fundamentally alter the aesthetic of their sculpts to accommodate for the limitations of HIPS production?
On their scale, there should be no problem doing HIPS in house, especially if it phases out metal production. And aestethics already changed fundamentally when they switched from N2 manual to N3 digital sculpting and this helped company grow tenfold in very few years.@@DeepGreenX
@@andrejstojsin was there any call for that tone? I asked if you knew about the costs inloved with HIPS production and a yes or no would have been a good enough answer.
SIO is not pleasant to work with, has awful quality control, abysmal properties, soft details and I refuse to purchase a Siocast model. I want *metal* models. Not a cheap ripoff. My chernobog was fucked. Some of my replacement was too. It took 2 runs through QA to get a version of it with the detail a metal one would have had out the box.
The Chernoberg is one of those minis that I don't think could have been made in metal due to the sheer weight of the components. It would have needed to be extensively pinned in order to hold together under it's own weight.
@@DeepGreenX The chernobog as a mini wouldn't be remotely as poorly thought through regarding things like weapon placement, or oversized, if it were being produced in metal. It could have done with the material's limitations to reign in quite how silly it is. Very much a Mechwarrior model rather than an Infinity one.
@@SpaceElf ok so in other words it can only look the way it does and have been designed the way it does becuse it's made of SioCast and not metal? Therefore there's no comparison between the SioCast Chernoborg and a metal one since the metal one doesn't and can't exist.
