Bones Satisfaction?

[JoeGKushner]

Overall, I'm pretty happy with the Bones material.

 

I've painted quite a few of the second batch already. Just finished off four of the mummies using the GW paints and guide.

 

On larger figures, it's great. There are a lot of details you can easily see. The hill giants from the Bones 2 wave for example, are great. An easy way to build up a group of giants if you need them.

 

If you need 'mass' monsters like skeletons or ghouls? Simple things? Fantastic again.

 

But my biggest disappointment is the 'detailed' figures. I was working on one of the undead rulers with the scepter and man, some parts of him, in metal/resin, I'm sure are going to look OUTSTANDING! But in Bones?

 

The armor is good, the face a little soft, some of the detail here and there lost. The cloak is fantastic. But like the sword?

 

Similiar problem on one of the vampire undead lords. The capt was fantastic! The face? The shirt itself like where the buttons are? Not so much.Mind you, it could also be I'm getting older. The Malifaux 3-D printed figures have such soft details on some of the tiny things like 'buttons' that if I put it under a lamp I might be able to spot it!

 

I think that the Bones material is going to go a long way and will only get better though.

 

Opinions?

[Rowan]

So far, I've checked over all my Bones II minis.  Very happy with them.  The detail is good, the shapes hold well, with a reasonable amount of boiling expected.  I will admit to having little experience with the material until now, but it seems to be sufficiently rigid and detail-holding.  

 

Definitely not as crisp as metal, but not by a margin that I find troublesome or even noticeable.  I'll have to do some side-by side paint comparisons with the few I have in both, but not expecting any issues.

 

Overall, very pleased with this material so far, and looking forward to the places it will go (hint, hint ... modular terrain pieces/dungeon dressing)

[redambrosia]

It kinda varies. I've noticed some where the details are just amazing, but others where the details are quite soft.

 

Personally, I'm very satisfied with them. They offer a fantastic value for the rising cost of minis. Basic mooks, repeat bosses, guards, and other NPCs can now be had in large numbers affordably, whereas before I could only justify getting PCs and the occasional "cool monster". I certainly couldn't afford dragons! Now I have oodles of dragons!  I just need to paint them

 

With bones I can afford hordes, as well as PCs and special bosses in metal.

[smokingwreckage]

It varies. Some have amazing detail, most are on par, some are a bit soft.

 

Price, paintability, playability, and ease of preparation (gluing is a breeze, and there's very little of it) are all unsurpassed in my experience. They're also easy to store. It took me years to build up my sci-fi army collection, and I've just about surpassed that in numbers with the Bones 1 and 2 KS's.

 

I have more character figures than I could otherwise have afforded anyway, plus a good big handful each of a bunch of different mooks, plus more medium monsters than I could ever have afforded, plus more large + monsters than I had ever previously dreamed of having. Like seriously, I didn't even daydream about what it would be like to own this many monsters.

 

Of that, there are maybe a half dozen models where the detail is a bit "mehh"... but they still beat the pants off, say, the late 90's Citadel plastics.

 

For my purposes, ie., gaming and gaming level painting, the Bones are the best thing ever. I do agree that a few are not great, and a couple are horrible, but I'm not disappointed, per se.

[Null]

Pretty high, I'd say, with minor caveats.

 

I missed the first Kickstarter, so I didn't have to deal with too much of the first-run quality problems. All of the KS1 Bones pieces purchased from Reaper afterward were fine, but I avoided anything that might have been too weak or bendy, based on reviews. So my satisfaction from the first run has to be considered biased somewhat.

 

That said, I was quite impressed with what I got from backing Bones II. The casting details well exceeded my expectations. A few pieces were slightly bent out of place, but the adjustments were easy enough to make. However, my pieces were mostly monsters, beasts, and non-humans, so there weren't many bent weapons to deal with in the first place.

 

From eBay, I purchased a handful of KS1 skeletons, which I knew would be bent to hell and back, with the intent of chopping up and modding. I'm sure I would have been disappointed if I didn't go in knowing what to expect.

 

Which brings up the two biggest weaknesses (in my mind) of the Bones line: bendy weapons & weapon variety, both of which could be somewhat alleviated with a decent supply of hard-plastic weapon sprues.

[Maledrakh]

I recently sliced through about 2 cms of bones material when removing basing tabs. With a simple exacto and not that much pressure.

 

I carved into another piece to make a plug of sorts, easy peasy.

 

I altered the shape of many pieces with a simple bath of hot water.

 

I glued two large peices together with a small drop of glue. And they hold.

 

Slicing off mould lines is a bit of a chore though.

[DethStruck]

For mold lines I've used a small, low-powered dremel.

[jdizzy001]

I tell you one thing, it is a darn fine material compared to high quality resin aka finecast. I've used both and i'll take the soft detail plus durability of bones over the high detail, pitted, super heat sensitive, breaks on anything finecast. Pass the bones please.

[Chaoswolf]

I'm in agreement with all of the above. My biggest woof is all the mold lines and getting rid of same.

 

For hordes of skeletons, orcs, and such they're great; cheap enough to actually get a decent sized group. For big stuff, they're awesome; it puts all the big metal monsters (dragons) into a much more affordable price range.

 

I haven't done too much (yet), but from the one conversion I've done, I think they're great. Easy to cut and glue, cheap enough that if I frag something up, I don't feel bad about it.

 

I'm a fan.

[JoeGKushner]

For mold lines I've used a small, low-powered dremel.

I will have to try that. The mold lines on some of these figures would drive me nuts if I was a perfectionist or anything of that nature. (Working on the 4 pack of ghouls and the mold line bisects each one).

[Laoke]

I was looking for some durable, low cost figures to give me enough figures to paint over a couple of decades, and the Bones Kickstarters delivered in spades.  The detail tends to look soft until you put some paint on it, but once painted they're not too bad at all.  Some figures (especially from the first Kickstarter) had issues, especially around the nose, but the majority I've found come right.

 

The biggest issues are weapons, and straight lines.  It's less of a problem with limbs and the like, but anything like a sword or spear haft that's supposed to be straight can be a real pain to sort.  Against that, pinning the material is incredibly easy.

 

I'm a huge fan, to the point that I doubt I'll buy a metal figure again.  My skills are sufficiently bad that the extra detail you get from metal is largely wasted on me, I love the durability, and the figures I have should keep me going for a long time.

[ub3r_n3rd]

High grit sanding needles removes the mold lines pretty nicely.

[Jessie]

Yeah I think either my paint job improves the ones that initially looked "soft", and other times my painting just isn't perfect so a little lack of detail here and there isn't noticed by someone at my level of painting.

I have some warhammer fantasy guys (I think they are elves or something?) that I got to have more things to learn how to paint. This was pre-bones, so it seemed cheaper than one-by-one buying reaper metal (though I had a few reaper metal). Anyways, over the years we tried to use those for generic baddies, but their little spears have a tendency to just snap off so we have to be real careful with them. Even some of the metal minis I have, the paint has scratched from minimal carrying around. The bones on the other hand have held up a lot better. I couldn't be happier. At this point it's not just price for me, I just love the material for modding/basing, for keeping paint on it pretty well, for being easy to paint, and easy to carry around. I wish I could get more of the metal reaper minis in Bones, and I don't even care about the price, I just like the consistency. Also the nice-ness of bones has held me back from branching out too much to other miniature manufacturers. The brittleness of the resin really puts me off, granted my experience is limited.

[Adept Legacy]

I'm completely unsatified with my bones.

Wait. No, I am completely unsatisfied with my collection of Bones.

I'm completely unsatisfied with the lack of time I have to spend on my bones.

 

I've had a few problems. I have a file set, and it makes everything look ugly, so I don't file things.

I got a knife set, and the blades snapped off.

If I had to say something, it's that they seem to be allergic to things that come from SOMEUNNAMEDSHOPPINGSTOREWITHAFACELOGO

[Knight of the Dinner Table]

I did not back Bones I ... but I got a couple of Bones I minis through ebay and was not too thrilled (I might have been unlucky and got all the faceless ones).

So when Bones II arrived, I expected a lot of minis for my money, mostly "canon fodder".

I was pleasantly surprised. There are still some minis that I feel did not "translate" well into Bones, but overall, I'm very impressed. There are actually not just "canon fodder" NPCs in this box, but definitely player characters and NPC "nemesis" characters. I'm very satisfied (even the "normal" skeletons in Bones II seem to be better than the Bones I skeletons, and I liked the Bones I skellies).