Citadel Finecast - one year later and still problems

It's been one year (okay, 11 months) since the launch of Finecast.  Most folks from day one (okay, from when rumors of Games Workshop ditching metal surfaced) have felt this is a bad move and this hasn't change much since then.  For the most part I have, up until yesterday thought Finecast was a good move.  The complaints always made sense, I just used to of the opinion that the problems were temporary. The casting has issues, and the price increase that came along with it was disingenuous at best.  A year later and it hasn't gotten any better. Games Workshop's claim of this being an improvement on metal is clearly now patently untrue.

There are advantages to be had with finecast as I hate metal, and this could be an elegant solution.  The reason it's not is because Games Workshop fails on every level put any effort into quality control.  As I wrote about in a post last year on the quality issues, I work in manufacturing.  Games Workshop's unwillingness to have any sort of quality control program is just infuriating.  I'm almost at the point where I want to stop playing the game.  I understand casting problems, if the process just creates a lot miscasts (and they can't fix it) that's okay.  What is not okay, is no quality control.  These miscasts should not be making it into boxes.

What made me write this post, instead of my planned one about finishing my Manticore, was a Hellcannon I got in the mail yesterday.  I hadn't planned on opening up the box, as it's going to be a few weeks until I work on Fantasy (I had planned it for my summer painting project) I knew I should check for miscasts.  I am really glad I did.

Not only are there tons of miscasts (10 plus pieces have issues) I got two right barrels.  Is Games Workshop even trying?  At this point it feels like Games Workshop is trying to break up with me, and just doesn't have the balls to do it.   Are they just trying to see how much they can get away with?

I did the math.  I have bought 5 finecast models in the last year.   Two of them did not have any real issues (some bubbles, but not much).  Three of the five I had to call Games Workshop about.  One of them, the Draigo I got on day one (and wrote about here) I had to call them back as the replacement model had issues.

Sixty percent failure rate might as well be one hundred percent.  I realize this is a small sample size, but these are models bought at different times, from different vendors.  Games Workshop should be embarrassed, as a manufacturer I would be, but at the end of the day it just feels like their business model doesn't required them to care.