Good Quality Models I Say!

[JayRaider]

More variation of models in a box would be great.
Fingers crossed that when/if BFE relaunches they'll have that worked out

 

[Mage]

What type of game are reaper doing?

 

[Sgt. Brassones]

What type of game are reaper doing?

No game, just pre-painted plastic versions of some of their metal sculpts. They look awefull ,BTW. But they're really cheap; $1.50 for single skellies. $3.99 for a troll, etc.

 

[MaxSteiner]

I was trying to find a picture, but I can't find one... suffice to say they are so bad, it kinda makes you realise whats good about the mongoose ones
Almost got the price right on them though like Sgt Brasstones says... if it werent for the fact that you could get 6 D&D skellies of ebay for the price of one reaper one... Not to sure how well they're gonna do given that.

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

Gotta agree DaBoss.
Rackham and Mongoose (and Reaper too now) are catching up quickly, but they're still a ways behind Hasbro and Wizkids in terms of quality of paintjobs and variation.

Of course, Hasbro and Wizkids have more expierence in the field, are have a lot more money to pump into development and production. The Rackham and MGP prepaints are much closer in quality to the current clix figures than the early ones though, so hopefully they'll continue to improve at a similar rate.

 

[MaxSteiner]

The problem is, as they catch up Hasbro and Wizkids are also moving forward.
Mongooses problem was that they assumed that the painters were going to be able to do a lot of paintig techniques, and the result was the googly eyes, wonky beards etc. Rackham I think set the bar to low but had the good sense to use washes lol, Reaper... god knows the figure I saw hada failed attempt at drybrushing done :shock:.

I agree about the time thing, I think alot of its just taking it slowly, and letting the painters build up to it rather than any thing to do with the size of the company.
The excuse that Hasbro is way larger than Mongoose doesn't wash (haha I made a painting joke), they don't have any specialised techniques or anything, and if that excuse is going to be carted out every single time Mongoose puts out something that looks a bit naff (It happened alot with the SST figures too) its just going to foster an inferiority complex.
I think it comes down to two things, the kind of sculpt you produce, a nice figure with some prominant details and lots of flat bits is always going to look better than a fully proportioned perfectly equiped soldier of the future, simply because you can slap the paint on the simpler figure, then dry brush the detail and it will still look ok. You have to sculpt the figure with your painters in mind rather than any kind of aesthetics.
Painter experiance is the secound thing, they will get better over time, or I believe the far more common route over there is to head hunt the workers from another factory and offer them more money .

 

[Xorrandor]

The problem is, as they catch up Hasbro and Wizkids are also moving forward.

True, but that assumes one actually cares about relative rather than absolute quality. Me, I'm happy with the models now: I think they are "good enough" for gaming purposes. As the quality gets better, more gamers will hit that threshold. And there will always be at least 10% of people who think they can do better. So if Hasbro and WK hit 89% acceptance, and Mongoose gets stuck at 60%, that's still 60% of the hobby market that you can try to win over with other qualities. (Rules are the main driver for me, but others may like fluff, or an organized tournament system.) My point being that painting technique improvements hit a point of diminishing returns.

I think it comes down to two things, the kind of sculpt you produce, a nice figure with some prominant details and lots of flat bits is always going to look better than a fully proportioned perfectly equiped soldier of the future, simply because you can slap the paint on the simpler figure, then dry brush the detail and it will still look ok. You have to sculpt the figure with your painters in mind rather than any kind of aesthetics.

A reasonably large point that I agree is often overlooked. It's one reason I had hoped SST:Evo would be out by the (second) deadline: painting quality on SF minis is likely to look better than on moderns, given identical painter skill.

Painter experiance is the secound thing, they will get better over time, or I believe the far more common route over there is to head hunt the workers from another factory and offer them more money .

A time-honored tradition that I'm sure sees plenty of use . And that is one advantage of Hasbro being bigger: a bigger recruiting pool :twisted: .