i bought the castellan from this ebay seller not knowing any better.
these are a plastic/resin type material. as a result, the detail is just as good, but it is also very brittle. lots of detail easily “falls off” as it is not as strong as the resin FW uses.
i have to say had i known this i would never have bought it. never mind it’s a blantant copy, the quality is not as good. also, the price is NOT better?!?!?! if you buy the arms, the heads and weapons, your paying FW prices and getting half the quality. NOT A GOOD BUY!!!
Same it was listed as if it were original in the original packaging, i bought a magma cannon and it arrived in a glad baggie, no instructions and a dark resin forgeworld never used. Photo was deceptively dark lit so i couldnt tell. Im still pissed i bought a recast, however, its a pretty damn perfect job. Store was mamabigbig | eBay Stores so buyer beware.
I bought a khorne bloodslaughterer from ebay… the model was a chinese recast, but the detail was much crisper, there were no mouldlines, and the miniature was packaged in a much better way than any FW miniature I’ve ever seen arrive… to top that off, it was almost 50% cheaper.
Only downside is that the resin is indeed a bit more brittle, but that just came in handy when I had to remove it from it’s ‘sprues’, and clean it up on those few spots.
I bought some shields and weapons from a different seller in HK. The casts were perfect, but very different resin. It also gave off an almost gasoline (petrol) smell when clipped. Havent painted any of them, so cant say if that will affect anything.
I would prefer to buy from FW, but wish they did a bits service. Thats why i bought these, because it is what I thought they were doing. When I got the stuff, i found I was wrong.
What do you mean? I'm sure they don't add detail to the model when they copy it.
cornixt
Having (unknowingly) ended up with recasts I can confirm this - FW quality control is sometimes sorely lacking and I've had recasts that were ALOT better than many pieces I've had from FW, which is annoying considering the amounts you're (gladly) paying for the real deal.
I think it's absoultly un ethical to buy recasts when they arethesame price that FW charges that's just rude
JonJon
The model I bought was half the price I would've paid when ordering directly from FW... If it hadn't been so damn cheap, I wouldn't have ordered. (that and the fact that I was still doubting if it was a recast).
As I’ve said in another thread, I’ve talked it over with my GW-staffer, and GW is well aware of the situation… problem is that Chinese recasts are… well… chinese… and what gets made in China is owned by the Chinese. They can’t harm the seller as long as someone in China turns a profit on them, because you have to file claims against the People’s republic, and the governement can’t be arsed… Or so I was told.
ya i didn’t know it was a knock off either until i got it in the mail.
same reason as silentbob, i bought the model because i wanted just one model (the castellan) and didn’t want to have to pay for all 3.
i agree if it’s like 1/2 the price i can see the temptation, but from what i can see, it is not half price (almost the same) and the quality of the resin is not nearly as good, although as has been said here, the detail on the model is as good as FW.
regardless though, imagin you wrote a book, printed it, was selling it to make money (and you must make money because 2 years you quit your job to write this book) and then you find out your neighbour copied it word for word and was selling it. how would that make you feel?!?!
you have to file claims against the People's republic, and the governement can't be arsed... Or so I was told.
Zuh-Khinie
More or less.
What CAN be done is making life difficult for those eBaying these recasts. If you buy fakes GW usually is good at replacing them. eBay won't protect these so GW really only needs to tell them and the auctions will disappear and accounts get deleted. And there goes all their credibility making it ever so much harder to sell more fakes. GW just doesn't see these or they crack down.
I''m not saying buying those is the right thing to do... I haven't bought a second thing from them, because I principally object to it, but in all honesty, GW/FW could learn a thing or two about quality of casts, packaging (which in my case was superb) and time of delivery.
To play open cards, I bought a bloodslaughterer of Khorne, tu use as my destroyer. FW asks £44, excluding shipping (which is 10% if I'm not mistaken). Mamabigbig (or so the ebay-store was called) sold me the model for �,�38, including shipping. I had to wait less for delivery, the cast was better (FW tends to provide you with a lot of miscats - ie big mouldlines or crooked bits)... I've never seen a (big) FW model delivered that didn't need some new parts to be sent, which sets you back another 3 weeks.
Once again, I'm not promoting chinese knock-offs, but GW could learn a thing or two
EDIT: oh yeah, Mamabigbig also provided me with all the parts to make a blood slaughterer impaler... which gives me a spare head and spare arms...
And, without turning this into a political debate, there’s a reason China produces everything much more cheaply than the West! It’s not because they’re efficient: it’s because they have incredibly lax competition laws that allow them to not only do things like infringe copyright, but also exploit their workforce. You can get anything cheaper and of the same or better quality from China because labour is cheap over there.
I’m not saying your recasts were made in a sweatshop but, you know, there’s someone being exploited somewhere in the chain. I don’t know how much postal workers or customs officers get paid in China - clearly something’s being cut out of the equation.
So, yeah, things cost more in the West. But we also prefer our population to be able to use google and not get shot for protesting the government.
I work in an industry where there is a huge problem with fake parts from China. If a company is found to be selling fake parts then the US government makes it illegal for you to buy anything from them. If you try then the parts are impounded and destroyed. This is easy on a large scale of businesses, but almost impossible on the small scale that these recasters work on through Ebay.
And I think that we have all seen recently how easy it is to get ripped off by an untouchable person in a foreign country that doesn’t operate by western laws.
And I think that we have all seen recently how easy it is to get ripped off by an untouchable person in a foreign country that doesn't operate by western laws.
cornixt
It's funny that noone here ever spoke out against his blatant re-sculpting of old GW miniatures... I didn't trust it from the start, and I'm glad I never ordered from him, but that's a different discussion that's rageing somewhere else.
Oh yeah, none of our hands are clean. I’m just saying that suggesting GW/FW could learn a thing or two from Chinese companies that infringe copyright is kind of like saying a rail company could learn a thing or two from Mussolini. It’s easy to be efficient when you just stop caring about the ethics of your actions!
I’m not saying you’re not ethical, Zuh-Khinie, just that these are not good people to be dealing with and shouldn’t be held up as any kind of standard to emulate.