Figure problems?

[Kosh127]

I have just gotten into A Call to Arms and love the game. My local store owners love the game to and it is taking off very quickly here. I love the rules and the history, I also love the figures. Or I would but, I have noticed that about 75 percent of the figs are poorly cast. The guy playing Centuri has an Octorian that is missing pieces on the hull. As in it was not even cast. I have been playing war games for several years and it seems that the molds are over used. Does anyone else have problems with 90% of the ships have tear out? It’s strange some molds are just perfect but most of them are coming up far short. It’s sad when you get a ship that you can’t fix with modeling putty. Mongoose makes such great games and there figs are on par with the best, but there quality control is not very good. Does anyone else have problems with this???

 

[emperorpenguin]

The Octurion seems to be by far the worst culprit. I ordered one back in March and even now am STILL to receive a useable well cast hull

 

[Abraxas]

Oh yes. People here have some horror stories for you. I have also been playing war games for some time (40K and BFG) and although I love ACtA, I have never heard of so many problems with any other wargames.

Part of the problem is that they are using AoG's moulds from when they were making Babylon 5: Wars. These moulds are old and like you said, "over used", which results in many poor casts escaping into the market.

I for one have never had a problem. I bought a Tigara and a Centauri fleet box and neither had a problem... aside from the usual issues. Nothing a blade or file couldn't fix. I consider myself lucky, though NOT to have a problem... which isn't the way it should be. I mean no disrespect to Mongoose, and I will continue to buy models, especially considering your simple return policy, but sometimes what happens to some people is unacceptable.

 

[Kosh127]

I see. I to love this company and do not want to complain but Mongoose please fix the mould!! Mongoose I don't want to talk crap I just want to let you guys know that there is a problem and it requires action.

 

[Chernobyl]

Welcome to ACTA, Kosh...hope you enjoy the game!

Chernobyl

 

[ANLASHOKER]

I had 4 ships give me trouble. The engine section of the hyperion, as mentioned before the octurion, the xill had a lot of extra portion on the top half of the saucer, and the hull of my victory. The top and bottom parts are not symmetrical.

 

[B5Temple]

Oh yeah, there are lots of problems with their molds. I've been very forgiving though, since their customer service has been helpful on a couple of the worst occasions. But here are a few examples of what I've encountered:

Centauri Maximus Frigate: Left engine/fin missing
EA Artemis Frigate: Bad cast on aft section; missing guns
Narn Thentus Frigate: Bad cast on guns (missing)
EA Starfuries and Thunderbolts: Missing fins on a few
Vree Tzymm fighters: Missing engines on a few

To put it mildly -- their quality control needs some work. My Drazi fleet box had ships in it that didn't match the contents on the label. A friend of mine bought a Vree fleet that had lots of stuff missing from the box. And overall, many of the ships are near impossible to put together. I consider myself an advanced modeler and I had lots of days when I wanted to throw the pewter across the room. The G'Quan, Omega, Primus, and most Drazi ships really tested my patience, because of the assembly process. Just dealing with the ridiculous amounts of flash makes me angry.

My recommendations are to have some great X-acto knives, metal snips, clips to hold parts together, needle files, green/brown putty, and lots of time.

 

[Alexb83]

In a whole Minbari fleet, (reinforcements, boxed set and spare fighters) the only realy casting glitch I had was on one Sharlin, and it was just a slight hollow section on the underside of one main hull. Easily filled...

Also, I haven't had any 'excessive' flash on anything. I don't pay much attention to filing down lines anyways, but there was nothing on them that couldn't be clipped off or filed down as part of the building process.

Perhaps I just got lucky?

 

[Invictus]

Yes as said before there are problems especially with the old molds.

I was lucky with my ISA Box.Ok some Fury´s are missing their engines are a smaller problem.But the two Victories were missing the holes to fix stand in, had extreme flash (nothing not to deal with) and some missing part on a "wing".

But I saw ships having a big hole in the hull,wing or whatever and that´s really bad.

Ok what´s the conclusion:most models have some problems,but mostly you can deal with it.And when there is a big problem with a ship contact Mongoose and they will mostly replace it without making problems.

 

[Alexb83]

Oh, that's true - quite a few models had stand holes which were too small or partially filled. I drilled them out to 2.5mm, which is ideal for the stands which Mongoose provides (with a blob of green stuff in the holes to improve the fit). But these are things I do as a matter of course anyway.

I don't think I've had any worse casting quality on my ACTA stuff than any other models I've ever bought.

 

[Celisasu]

I can't speak for the newer ships, but a lot of the stuff Mongoose got from AOG is in bad shape.

One of my T'Loths came with a horribly bent wing.

All of my G'Quans had no holes for putting them on a base. Meant I had(or have in some cases) to drill holes for the base.

I have yet to see a single base sized right for any of the ships I have.

The Vorchan needs a complete redesign.

Most of my Frazis have enough flash to make another Frazi out of each one.


Now a few ships I've found to be in good condition.

All of my Sho'Kos, Var'Nics, and Ka'Tocs are in excellent shape. They just weren't given bases that fit them, but the ships themselves are all in great condition. I'm guessing these were less popular under AOG so the molds weren't used so much.

 

[Iain McGhee]

This does seem to have been looked at recently as the dozen or so models I've got over the last couple of months have been much better quality casts than the bulk of the ones I originally purchased at the end of last year.

 

[angelus2000]

I think it really does vary from ship to ship though. I just got a narn fleet box set a week ago and the G'Quans were in fairly bad shape. Nothing not fixable without a lot of filing. THe Ka'Tocs were nearly perfect, same with the Sho'Kos's, 5 minutes of some line filing and they were done. I expect most, if not all of the Arma models will only need a bit of filing and they'll be good.

Side Note: MP, theres this thing called foam, comes in slabs and little peanut things . If you put some inside a fleet box, stuff doenst bounce around and get dinged and bent up when its getting handled