Metal, plastic, resin… The materials used for tabletop gaming miniatures are many. Each one has strengths and weaknesses. We considered each carefully in order to be able to answer the question: « As a painter and a gamer, what are my wishes? »
The choice of plastic is a compromise between flexibility and hardness. If the material is too flexible, long and fine parts like swords and lances will bend under their own weight, and details aren’t as crisp... If the material is too hard, the miniatures can easily be broken and become harder to produce if they are too complicated, forcing the sculptor to make only round angles.
For our Alkemy game, it seemed obvious to Kraken to try a kind of plastic that had not yet been used for our passion. This plastic has many advantages, combining respect for sculpted details, simplicity of manipulation, good adherence of paint, and ease of transport.
Altogether, its a material that has seduced both the hardcore painters and the gamers of the Kraken team.
- Plastic is much lighter than metal, so easier to carry and transport, especially if you use magnetic bases.
- It has better compatibility with cyanoacrylate glues and better resistance to accidental rough treatment.
- Compared to resin, plastic has fewer mold lines to remove, and these mold lines are easier to remove than with metal miniatures.
- In case of damage or rough treatment, the paint adheres much better than on metal miniatures. These miniatures require therefore need less (if any) protective varnish.
- The surface of plastic miniatures are naturally very smooth, there are no pits or roughness that need to be filled or smoothed as is sometimes the case with metal casting and there are no tiny bubbles like you usually find in resin miniatures.
About the packaging of the Alkemy miniatures: Each miniature is sealed in its own plastic bag with all its associated components. So you will not lose any time finding or sorting parts for your miniatures.
The photos show you how the plastic was able to reproduce the details of the original sculpt and how the mounting will be easy.
The miniatures are already separated from their sprues. You will just have to remove the last parts of the sprues with a small cutting pliers or the blade of an x-acto*.
When designing how the miniatures would be separated for molding and casting, we tried have all the separations located where it would be natural (collars, armbands) so that the separations would be invisible on an assembled miniature.
A very fine and easy to remove mold line runs on the miniature.
The plastic is sufficiently hard to remove mold lines easily with an x-acto* blade without the extra effort that would be required on a metal miniature.
For the most perfectionist among you, using some fine grit sandpaper (~600) will finalize the complete removal of the mold line and ensure a continuously smooth surface on the miniature.
Blades and other sharp objects can be edged / trimmed using an x-acto* blade.
A mere drop of cyanoacrylate glue is enough to thoroughly glue the miniature onto its base.
On these pictures you can appreciate the ease of assembly of the arms and the tail. Large assembly tenons and deep holes guarantee a very strong assembly of the miniatures.
As the plastic is very light, there is no need to pin parts of the miniature.
Exactly as for resin miniatures, our plastic material is easily reshaped under the heat of a hair dryer. A few seconds under a hair dryer will allow you to change, for example, the curve of the tail. (Don't worry, the tail is already provided curved).
Even if plastic sometimes has a less noble image than metal for some miniature fans, we hope that you will not be insensitive to the advantages of this material, be it whether through the quality of the details or by the reduction of the usually long and off-putting preparation time for a miniature.
*: Handle with care. This tool is very sharp and must be manipulated with close attention.