The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

So summer classes finished up last week, and I’ve been working hard on a bunch of different things; mostly getting an army ready for Ard Boyz. But today I got a bit of all sorts of news.

The good news, a few packages came in. First, was the Zuzzy mats that I had ordered a while back. There was a small delay because of some technical issues with the production, not a big deal for me I wasn’t in a rush for them and they were good at communicating the delay. Still, as a indication of the quality of service, they threw in two small 14x11 mats as an apology. These things are absolutely mind blowing in person, I’ve seen very few fully textured boards that are of this quality. I order two mats to begin with, the Sulfur Fields and the Scourged Forest, I was a little hesitant on the price; but I’m positive at least two more mats, and possibly some of the terrain will be coming in an order soon.

Image courtesy of Zuzzy Minatures

Also on the good side, some of the models I needed came in at the local store, a stack of 20 wracks and some chaos hounds. Unfortunately, on the bad side most of the other models, which are more importantly a core part of my girlfriends army did not show up. They should hopefully be here in plenty of time still, but there is that outside possibility that they may not. We are also still waiting on an ebay shipment that will bolster her Eldar list to 30 wraithguard.

Finally, the ugly.

Packaged complete with baggy of shame.

Those 20 wracks that came in, of the four boxes three are going back to the store, with the fourth coming as a complaint on quality. Each box contains 5 models across 6 sprues, I was fairly generous on most of the sprues, but of the four boxes one has four sprues with some detail or bit completely unusable, another has three sprues unusable, the last one has two unusable sprues. The final box that is usable, not good, but usable, has a number of details that are not as sharp as they could be and a few pieces that are broken still. I understand the issues in working with resin, but this is absolutely disgraceful, a lot of the sprues have a film of resin that you need to cut through, not just break away like a thin sheet; the worst of it all, the above picture came as shown, fully half the sprue is encased, and it was the only sprue to come in the little baggy of shame. (The number was put on by me with a sharpie to mark the defects in that box).

For my first fine cast experience, I am not impressed, in the least. I’m quite glad my Incubi and first batch of razorwing flocks were in metal now, unfortunately one of the things I’m waiting on is another set of razorwings . . . lets keep our fingers crossed.