Malifaux's New Plastics - Part 1

A friend and I got some Gencon Malifaux stuff through Wyrd's online store, and they finally arrived a couple days ago. I picked up Mei Feng's Rail Crew as part of my slowly growing Arcanists, and Miss Terious for my Guild. I know that a bunch of people have already put out pictures and reviews for Malifaux's plastics, but the plastics are still quite new so I thought I'd toss in my two cents.

Rail Crew Sprue, Front Side

Rail Crew Sprue, Back Side

The Rail Crew is all on one plastic sprue. This means that the packaging was a large but thin box, which is very different from the old packaging. I guess we'll see how stores adapt to that. The actual miniatures look alright, and there are a couple of spare/alternate parts on the sprue, which is a nice touch. For the most part, they seem to be attached to the sprue at logical places so you won't have a nightmare trying to clean up flash in awkward, visible locations.

Miss Terious Sprue, Front and Back

Miss Terious is all on a single small sprue. I had heard people express concern that her axe seemed very fragile and prone to breaking, and assumed they were exaggerating. They were not. The axe is extremely thin and the plastic doesn't seem particularly sturdy at that thickness. I feel like some parts in the Rail Crew box also have this problem. I can only try to be careful and hope that it stands up to the rigors of actual use.

Generally speaking, here's what I noticed about the new plastics:

• Scale and proportions of the models are different. Less heroic scale and more realistic. Reminded me a little of Infinity's scale, which is noticeably smaller and sleeker than Malifaux's.

• The plastics seem to allow for smaller, better scaled accessories like weapons and hair. Hopefully these small parts will hold up under stress better than they would have in pewter.

• Models generally have less, as well as softer, detail compared to before. It's very noticeable on larger areas that seem unnaturally smooth, but smaller areas do sometimes have greater fine detail.

• Despite what people may want to think, the actual miniatures do not look exactly like the CG renders that are shown, much less the art.

• Prices don't seem any better, although I don't recall Wyrd claiming that they would be, and it's possible that the initial prices are higher to help cover the start up costs.

Overall, switching to plastics doesn't seem like it was a terrible idea. I'm not convinced it was an improvement, but at worst, it was a sidestep. At the least, conversions will be easier now because plastics are easier to work with than pewter. Anyway, I think that once Wyrd gets the hang of it and works out their production kinks, it will be business as usual.

I'll be busy during the next few days, but as soon as I get a chance to assemble these models, I will post up another entry covering how easy or difficult the assembly was. At that point, I'll have a better idea as to how much the change to plastics really affected the average Malifaux gamer.