Sedition Wars Gnosis Battlesuit and THI Utility Power Frame First Impressions.

I got my second, and I believe final, box of minis from the Sedition Wars Kickstarter today and spent a little time tonight putting together two of my favorite miniatures from the set, the THI Utility Power Frame and the Gnosis Battlesuit Kara Black. 

I love armored suits so I was really looking forward to these. And I'm not disappointed by them in the least.

There has been a lot of downright anger towards Cool Mini or Not and Studio McVey about the Sedition Wars Kickstarter that seems to be at boiling point on some of the forums that I frequent. Part of it is unhappiness with the material that these miniatures are cast in and part of it is accusations of miscasting and overall shoddy production.

The material complaint really seems to come from the fact that these miniatures are made from a plastic that doesn't clean up the same way as styrene or more traditional resin. The mold lines need to be cut off using a hobby knife since they don't want to scrape off as easily as they would with styrene. This is not a satisfactory method since it takes far longer than scraping and still leaves a lot of fuzzy plastic around the moldline.

I have found that using a fine bristled brass brush takes away a lot of this frustration and combined with basic scraping with the edge of a hobby knife can really make a nice clean miniature. Vigorous brushing with a brass brush removes any fuzzy bits and smoothes the line even further without destroying any detail on the mini. These miniatures do seem to take a bit more time to clean than other materials but I think that part of that is just getting used to them. I also used a fine sanding stick to further smooth them.

I went through the other miniatures included in this set and didn't find any that I would describe as miscast or incomplete. Yes some of them had a good amount of flash on them but using the method I've described really helps get them ready to paint. And I am really looking forward to painting these.

The miniatures industry is in a massive growth spurt and with all of the Kickstarter campaigns, all of the promises, and all of the disappointments it is easy to forget how amazing this hobby is currently. We are in a golden age.

There is always a place for solid criticism and trying to make things better. But the level of anger that I've seen towards this project seems disproportionate to the actual situation and just gets in the way of enjoying our hobby. And that seems very counterproductive when we're all just trying to have fun.

The Gnosis suit without the Kara Black head.

With a GW Space Marine.

I always see flash that I missed when I take close-up shots. Rats.