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So my question is:

My friend is looking to get into painting Futuristic style mini's like WH 40k. I told him there may be cheaper options for more bang for his buck, since he's just into painting. What would you recommend him painting? Looking for nice detail, cool looking stuff for a very good price.

Thanks!

Mantic, Wargames Factory, Reaper.

EM-4 plastics.

http://www.lead-adventure.de/index.php?topic=49312.0

Lts of suggestions in the thread above.

Thanks for the help! He's hard to convince, the guy is in love with WH 40k and doesn't seem to like anything else.

Moved thread to the appropriate Discussion forum.

Eric

Masakik,
If your friend is dead set on GW 40K miniatures, he (one presumes) could prowl through the E-bay auctions, post a "want to buy old/outdated 40K" advert here on BarterTown or periodically check the "trade in" tables at your local game shop. Might have to do some paint stripping (good practice in and of itself) but individual figures, particularly with 40K tend to be, for a GW product, less expensive.
Just a thought or three

I'd definitely recommend Reaper's bones line- their Chronoscope minis are good detail without costing very much. Also, you could look into Dark Age (they have decent prices) and Mercs Miniatures (also decent prices). I'd recommend Infinity, but those minis are quite costly.

But if he is dead set on GW minis, I figure let him. One option to open his mind is look into some of the use with GW lines- Scibor Miniatures in particular is pretty nice.

Bones is a "bendy" plastic. Keep that in mind before buying it. I wish I'd known that before I traded for a bunch of it.

Eric

Yeah, bones is similar to the kind of plastic you get from pre-paints. I definitely prefer the thicker ones (the spears tend to be bendy).

You could swap out the spears for rods and whatnot. A friend of mine told me how he did it, and I haven't tried this method yet:

When you put the mini into hot or boiling water, the plastic remembers the shape it was formed in and immediately moves back into its original shape. However, if you just let it cool this way, it will remember the shape it cooled in and bend back out of shape.

So, you need to retrain it. Get some boiling water, some cold water and some tongs. Dip the mini into the boiling water (and you'll see it correct all of the poor bends) then pull it out and make it cool much faster by putting it into the cold water.

The first time, it should still bend a little out of it's shape, but not as much as the first time. Do this a few times and you'll have a mini that stays in the shape it was cast in.

Here's the kicker for all of this- his orc spears are perfect, and when they get bent (due to carelessness with minis on the table) they bend right back the way they should be.


As I said, I haven't tried this yet, but his results were definitely very good.