Forge World Fails to Impress

Disclaimer: I have often stated that one of the things I dislike about miniature-wargaming as a hobby is the entitled and oft-negative nature of its customer base. There are a lot of reasons why this attitude exists within the community, some of them reasonable, but many not so much. While I hate adding my voice to the  criticisms sometimes I can't help it and this is one of those times. I hope you find me justified.

Earlier this week I made my first ever purchase of a Forge World miniature,a subsidiary arm of Games Workshop that manufactures highly-detailed resin figures designed to compliment or replace those produced by GW itself. Forge World, like its parent company, gets a lot of flak for its high prices, but I have heard little to no criticism of its actual product.

So when I decided to treat myself by purchasing a new and untouched Ork Warboss on a Bike second-hand from Ebay, I felt assured that I'd get a great figure out of it. Unfortunately I was profoundly disappointed by the quality of the sculpt.

Now I know the first thing some people might take issue with is that I purchased this item through Ebay, as I know there is a whole recasting industry located in China that does imitations of Forge World products for half the price. I want to emphasize that what follows is an original Forge World product. 

• I purchased it from within the UK through an individual seller and not a store.
• The figure arrived within a Forge World bag with appropriate barcode, 
• When I needed a replacement part the seller provided me with his original order number. I used  this to contact Forge World directly who confirmed the original order/barcode and had a new part sent to me.

Hopefully this is sufficient to establish authenticity, and I can get into my issues with the quality of the sculpt itself.

Firstly, here is a layout of the figure's components. There are a lot of parts but its an intricate sculpt so that can be overlooked. There is also no assembly instructions included, but I had heard in advance that Forge World was really bad for this and was not expecting any. Thankfully I located an exceptionally detailed blogpost explaining how to assemble him. So despite this initial problem this is all pretty reasonable.

To give credit where it is due, the components that are well-cast look really good. The best example of this is the main body of my warboss, who looks pretty great right out of the bag. Although the chain on his little skull necklace is subject to some of the casting issues I encounter elsewhere.

Now we get into the real problem. It seems like every small component was very poorly cast, and they all have a huge assortment of flash and mold-lines. This is especially problematic given forgeworld's choice of casting material. Resin lacks the pliancy of plastic in which you don't need much force to trim and cut away excess material even on fine points. 

At the same time it is nowhere near as durable as metal, which requires more pressure to clean excess casting material but is very unlikely to break or lose its shape. To get around this a lot of companies use a type of soft resin mixed with plastic that is easier to work with, Games Workshop's "finecast" material is like this. (Which, despite its rocky beginnings, has become a great material to work with as time has gone on.) Forge World resin on the other hand seems to be "pure" resin and is extremely brittle, to the point that I believe they should not be attempting to cast anything small or intricate with it.

I am an experienced hobbyist, and I am happy to spend lots of time cleaning and assembling an expensive character figure like this. Between fresh hobby knives, a set of miniature nail files, a jeweller's saw, and small clippers I should have all of the tools and expertise necessary to effectively clean up a messy cast like this. Yet I have never felt a material fight me so much as when I work with Forge World resin. No matter how gentle I am I feel constantly at risk of having chunks of the model break apart from under me. Cleaning the really fragile components feels like trying to remove every individual piece of salt from a soda cracker without breaking it. Sure, with a sharp enough knife and enough time it is possible, but also exhausting, and I am constantly at risk of breaking off big flakes of material. This has also made me seriously concerned about future breakages as I plan to use my warboss on the tabletop. I don't know if pinning will matter much if the material just shatters around the pin...

Even the large components can be hard to work with. Many of the mould-lines are the product of off-set castings that require a lot of work to align.

Finally, to top off this nightmare of quality control Forge World accidentally packaged two copies of the left-hand bike gun rather than one for each side. As a result I had to get in touch with the Ebay seller to get his original order number so I could arrange a replacement part through Forge World. To their credit they were kind enough to cast another gun for me even though the original order was past their usual three month returns deadline. I had heard their customer service is excellent, which seems to be true, but at the same time I now completely understand why this company would require a good Customer Service team.

To put things in perspective, I wanted to give some examples of resin done right via some images of Guild Ball figures. These figures and its game are the product of an independent company called Steamforged Games that is closely associated with my local store Element Games. Yet despite their smaller size ,the quality of their resin casting is exceptional. Small components are not bent out of shape, flash is kept to a minimum, and mold-lines are  small and easy to remove. Despite their 28mm figures being almost half the size of my massive warboss, the detail seems just as good if not better on many components. To top it all off, their resin is of a much nicer and more workable quality than the Forge World equivalent.

Note the thin arms on the bottom left that came out perfectly.

A reasonable and easily cleaned mold-line along the front torso of the figure.

Another reasonable mold line along this guy's side.

Conclusion: I am a casual hobbyist, and my skills don't demand flawlessly cast miniatures in order for me to get the most out of my painting and gaming. Yet it seems to me that Forge World products are of such poor quality they are not suitable for tabletop gaming or professional hobbyists. The figure I purchased is an omnishambles of bad casting, extremely brittle resin, and poor quality control. They are a major company with probably the single most expensive miniature wargaming figures in the world, and yet independent companies with cheaper figures comprehensively outperform them. If I could have returned my warboss I would have, but as it stands he will represent my first and last time working with a forge world miniature.

Update: Since writing this piece, I have had a chance to take a close look at other forge world products shown to me by friends and the like. Some have been totally unassembled, others painted, and I admit that some of them looked to be very nice casts indeed. Yet the quality seems to vary enormously, and the brittleness of the resin that I discuss here is present across the entire range. However I feel its important I acknowledge that Forge World is perfectly capable of producing decent casts, and reiterate that this blog is an account of my initial experience with them, and why it led to them losing me as a customer. I know that my experience is not an isolated incident, nor do I think this blog is merely an angry rant. The issues I outline are legitimate grievances with Forge World's quality. I'm not sitting here hoping my blog puts Forge World out of business, rather I genuinely hope they fix these issues and that anyone else who decides to purchase from them has a better experience than my own.