The Griffin's Crier

Reaper has announced a new minis line: "Bones"

https://www.reapermini.com/#683

From what I gather they're the unpainted versions of the Legendary Encounters range (basically bendy plastic pre-paints versions of their Dark Heavens line) I never bought a LE mini before, so I have no idea what exactly to expect. I ordered a bunch of these (prices are dirt cheap: purple worm for $3???), so I'll know more when I get them...

Damon.

It looks like maybe they're doing a modified resin recasts of the old LE figs. I'd love to see this idea catch on, and I hope they expand the line to include more non-unique stuff (like the skeletons) and horde stuff (kobold 6-pack).

The purple worm is cool, but are you ever going to need more than one of them on the table? Same for ogre chieftain.

From what I understand hanging out on their forums, they are actually the unpainted LE plastic figures.

I agree, how many Purple Worms are you going to need. But then at $3 I bought one without a second thought (IIRC normally it goes for $30)...

Damon.

So I received my first order of Reaper "Bones" today. Initial impressions are that these are pretty bendy, and are of a soft, vinyl like material. Although I don't have any of these figures in metal, just with general knowledge of metal casting, it looks like these were taken directly from the metal masters, but cast in a soft plastic-like material. I have no idea how exactly it was done, as I cannot see any injection scars or casting marks. Some of the figures have very faint mold lines. I tried cleaning up the mold lines with a needle file (flat, semi triangular) and they can be filed, though it seems like you have to put a bit more work into it. I didn't get any "tendrils" of material you sometimes get with soft plastics.

I did some simple preliminary tests with the material. As I was working on a model at the time, I tried to glue 2 figures together by the bases with MEK. The MEK seems to have little to no effect, so not conducive to conversions or assembly. Incidentially, one of the figures I got was the Werewolf model, and it looks like the tail was cast seperately, but glued on at the point of sale. So multi-part figures are definitely a possibility.

In terms of painting, I did not have any brushes with me when I did the preliminary tests, but as usual Reaper supplies a bottle of MSP sampler, and I simply scraped some on the bottom of a base. Results look encouraging so far!

Tonight I'm going to try some primer on the figures, and paint one with GW acrylics, to test the claim they can be painted directly.

Damon.

I'd bet they used linoleum - the same material that you find in floor tiles and in first gen WizKids plastics.

It stinks that they're bendy, but if they take primer and paint then it's probably OK. I'm surprised they got here so quickly!

Re: primer. My first subject I sprayed with Testors flat black, which I use often as a primer on plastics. Figure is still a little tacky after letting it dry for some 36hrs. In comparison I started priming a plastic model last night, and this morining when I checked it, it was less tacky than the figure. Vinyl tends to react badly to enamel based paints (i.e. they never dry completely) so this may be what's going on here. Also Wal-mart valu-cheapo flat white and Home Depot super-cheapo flat black paints are not drying (latter is the worst). So the moral here is don't prime...

Damon.

I bet this is why they advertised them as not needing primer.

Ugh. I think what happened is that whatever solvent the pigment is dissolved in is is also really good at eating linoleum / vinyl.

Pigments don't dissolve - they are a fine, suspended solid particle. The stronger solvents in enamels are there to dissolve the enamel polymer (film former).

If the solvent in the paint does have an affinity for the plastic the mini is cast from, that will likely increase the time for it to evaporate away.

When you're doing your primer coat on these plastic figs, try to put on much lighter coats than normal and give them time to dry in between successive coats. When you put on a heavier coat, the surface layer will dry first, and the "skin" that's created at the surface will greatly slow the evaporation of the solvent in the wet paint beneath it. With nowhere to go, that trapped solvent will have more time to attack/absorb into the plastic substrate. Instead, go with successive very thin coats - even with primer.

Not a chemist mind you, but one very well known problem in modeling circles is that vinyl (often used to make large-scale figures, from movies and the like) and enamel paints don't play well together. When enamels are used, they never completely dry and stay tacky until they attract enough dust and cat hair to form a barrier. Not sure exactly what the process is that causes this, but my little experiment in priming shows that the Reaper Bones figures may have at least some vinyl in their mix...

Damon.

I finally picked up a package of the Bones Kobolds. They're not bad sculpts, and I don't mind paying less-than fifty cents / model. I did one without priming, and the paint stuck but it fought me. Maybe it was the humidity, but it seemed to take an eternity to dry.

I'll probably wind up getting some more since everybody loves Kobolds and you can use them in anything, but I'm a bit disappointed that the cheap multi-pose, scrub monster range starts and ends with them. There's orcs and skeletons, but mostly it's just one pose. (Or two in the case of orcs.) That gets boring quick.

The single-pose figuires is probably because of the legacy from metal sets. The kobolds were originally a multi-pack when released in metal, but there were never multi-packs of orcs to my knowledge, not in the main line anyway. The original gnoll set was a multipack, so there might be hope there yet...

Damon.

WOW this kickstarter is something that is going to eat a lot of money.

You have to wait until they're done, but it looks like one of the best deals out there. It also addresses the issues we talked about when they first started the line, especially with the hordes of orcs, skeletons, goblins, and rats. (The kobolds are already out!)

Would it be ok to use a matte finish on them?

The RPG geek in me LOVES this and wants to immediately go and fund the kickstarter. But the realist in me notes that I have minis from 1998 that I still haven't painted...

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NukeHavoc wrote:The RPG geek in me LOVES this and wants to immediately go and fund the kickstarter. But the realist in me notes that I have minis from 1998 that I still haven't painted...