Thursday, September 29, 2011

Scibor Adeptus Custodes Model Review (Quality Assurance Time)

I have gotten a number of requests for a review of the quality of the resin Scibor Adeptus Custodes Models I am working with. Here are my thoughts.

Having ordered a few armies worth of models over time I can safely say that Scibor delivers models in a timely fashion (much more so than Forgeworld for example). I had my models very quickly (10 days or so) after ordering them and I ordered fairly large quantities of the same models at the same time. Additionally (and very cooly)they threw in bonus models for ordering "bulk" (I ordered 45 models at one time plus characters and scribes so like 50 models all at once). That is ten days shipping keeping in mind that they were shipping from Poland to the United States (and I was ordering from Australia... I love the global marketplace!). The models were carefully packed and everything arrived in the appropriate pieces. 10 out of ten on this front.

Getting down to the models themselves... Scibor models are notorious for their oily coverings when you first open the packages. I am sure that this is just model release agent and a quick warm soapy bath and you are clean as a whistle. As I do the same with Forgeworld stuff it is par for the course and fine with me. I am told that if you do not clean this off it can muck with your priming. Clean it. It takes little time and is worth it.

Now the casting of these models is the worst of any Scibor models I have bought to date. My dwarves and chaos dwarves had at most 3 miscasts each (and we are talking hundreds of models here). The Custodes have miscasts or extra flash on almost every other model out of 50. Now, most of these can be easily fixed by a quick flick of a hobby blade. I anticipating a 45minute job (and that is only because I work slowly) to clean the whole army. There are two models with damaged faces:

As you can see these two have minor miscast holes in their faces and one is missing the tips of his feet. A little putty and this is fine.
You can see extra flash on this guys chest:
And something similar on this guy's face... It is not a tumor!:

The most common problem by far is the back of the robes. Many models need flash removal on their kilt. They look like this:
All in all though this is much less flash and miscasting than you would see in comparable GW models especially if those models were Finecast. The flash is so minimal I almost feel guilty for complaining about it. The two face divits are the biggest problems but some putty and those dudes will be fine. In the Era of Finecast these are resin cast models with crisp detail and none of the rubbish that I have come to expect from GW's resins...
Sure the models are largish but that makes them extra heroic scale!
Honestly, though they are larger than GW's models, they still easily work.

The long and the short... I recommend Scibor. Working with their models is a pleasant breath of fresh air from the usual problems we face as hobbyists.

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