Jabberslythe is a brand new Games Workshop model following the “We-need-big-monsters” trend assumed some time ago by that company. It was released as a part of their (in)famous Finecast range of resin miniatures.
FineCast or not so fine cast?
This huge beast, barely fitting the 100 x 50 mm base it comes with, is packed in the standard GW box. Its size is also well reflected in pricing. You can buy Jabberslythe for 40 GBP (66 USD, 52 €). For that price you will get 14 pieces requiring cleaning and assembly; and a plastic rectangular base. These bits are of course attached to few sprues. Frankly speaking, all the stories about quality of Finecast models caused that I was pretty nervous while checking my copy of Jabberslythe. After all, that’s a lot of money I paid for it. The first quick look was actually pretty reassuring, but then I’ve started to check every single piece.
As you can see, there are no problems with the cast. Bits are clean, details quite crisp, no air bubbles. What happened to the frame though?
It’s so heavily deformed, that in few cases resin bits connecting elements within the sprue were broken. I’m pretty sure that all this had an impact on shape of individual pieces. We’ll get back to it later. Another frame, another issue. Lots of flash requiring cutting off. Nothing really problematic, but it will add some time during preparation of the mini for painting.
More examples of deformed frames and flash:
There are not many mould lines, but some of them will be annoying to remove, especially one across teeth of the beast. I haven’t seen any air bubbles on bigger surfaces, but it is really clear that GW has problems with smaller, thinner elements.
You can see that spikes are cast poorly. Such imperfection could be found on almost every similar piece of this model. My first thought was that this is not a real problem, as it is a chaos monster. Casting mistakes like broken spikes can easily by justified or hidden (e.g. air bubble is a wound leaking with blood). What would happen though if I bought a slick eldar tank or elven mage? I guess I wouldn’t be too happy in such case. After checking quality of the cast I tried to fit few elements. There are several pieces with pegs or slots which should make assembly easy.
It should, but it doesn’t. Gaps between different parts are sometimes extremely wide. I wonder if deformations shown above contributed to this problem.
Man, you will need a lot of putty to fill these! Many companies already proved that you actually can cast a multi-part model which requires just a minimal amount of gap filling. GW, please, ask them how to do it or at least add some green stuff to every box!
The sculpt itself is nothing special. I usually like big monsters, and this one is no exception, but some of the painters may be looking for something more… sophisticated. On the other hand, it’s a model provided for gamers and it will sure look impressive on the gaming table.
Jabberslythe review: conclusion
So, do I recommend this model? Well, if you’re not a gamer, there are more interesting alternatives for your collection on the market. If you’re a gamer (with a WFB Beastmen army) you’ll probably get this one no matter what I’ve written here.
As a final word I’d like to repeat my request: GW, get to work and improve the quality!
— Nameless
I spent hours prepping mine using traditional and liquid greenstuff. It’s absolutely one for the serious modellers rather than the casual gamer. I think it’s a reasonably good model with some real potential for painters – but the quality of the finecst resin in general is WOEFUL – detail is good but fit is atrocious. How can GW still be getting it so wrong? Here are some of my experiences with the Jabberslythe so far… http://themarienburggazette.blogspot.com/2012/01/jabberslythe-out-of-box.html
My experience with Finecast is summed up right here
This is picture of one of the latest fantasy releases
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b383/chinenovy/Krell2.jpg
Always nice to see another failcast review.. especially on one of the larger models. I have a few mates that might have been interested in this model especially, but since I would be the one working on it, I doubt I would recommend it after seeing the photos, and your review. I am not a fan of having to spend more time assembling than painting a model. Just does not make sense to me.
Cheers for the review. Much appreciated.
OMFG, do they have any money-back-guarantee? Because this is the case I will return the model back… I think you were too kind to them Nameless! Would you buy and use TV or car with so many serious defects? Hardly, I say…
I believe they have a replacement/refund policy, but frankly speaking I didn’t want to waste my time. Corvus had his finecast mini replaced few times and each time he got another faulty copy.
My plan was to buy it, have fun painting it and then sell it to get money back. If I started exchanging e-mails with GW, waited for replacements etc. I’d loose any motivation to paint it 🙂 I preferred to spend some more time on assembly and just execute my plan (I had fun, now I’m praying to e-bay gods for at least one bidder 😉
@Davey, Yurii – thanks for photos , they just confirm my review 🙂
DarkTower – I bought the mangler squigs on the day they came out and found them to be badly cast, so I took them back to the shop and they opened ALL the boxes they had at the cash desk to try and get me a well-cast set. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they couldn’t. However, the staff at the GW stores seem as exacerbated by the whole thing as we do. One manager told me that he just replaces, exchanges or refunds immediately.
Thank you for review!
I didn’t want to buy it, but it is good to know what kind of quality you get from them 🙂
This should be a case of immediately taking back for a refund. If people just accept this, then where is the incentive to make things better.
Though from the later comments it sounds like many people do take them back, and it not helping much.
should be, indeed 🙂 but, I explained my reasons above.
i know im months late on replying to this trhread but with finecast, it responds perfectly to hot water…..boil a kettle get some rubber gloves on, put both pieces in, leave for a minute then press both pieces together whiklst still in the water. they will fit perfectly, or near perfect as the heat will effectively make them mould around each other
thanks for the tip!