Tomb Guardians Hobgoblin Boss

Hobgoblins have long been a low-level fantasy staple in games like Dungeons and Dragons. But in terms of miniatures, they do not enjoy the popularity of others like goblins or orcs.

Asking around on the Reaper Forums, I discovered that Tomb Guardians Inc does a line of Hobgoblins. They also had a sale around the Christmas Holiday so I put in an order for two sets.

I'll be reviewing them individually here. 

 https://www.tombguardians.com/product-page/hobgoblin-boss

First off, Tomb Guardians are doing something right. The website is straightforward and, simple, easy to navigate. The prices are low, especially for something labeled 'resin'.

The miniatures on the website have painted versions with multiple angles. I like it when companies do this, as it allows a potential buyer to see the whole image instead of just a frontal image. The paint jobs are also high-level, so they give the miniatures some pop.

So good work in terms of presentation.

I made my order, and the turnaround time was good.

That's when I noticed the problem.

Tomb Guardians are not selling resin casts.  They are selling 3-D resin prints. Nowhere in any literature on either their website or Kickstarters have  I seen mention, actual mention, that they are selling prints.

Worse, they have zero quality control when sending the figures out.

When you're a smaller company, you need to make sure to treat the customer right. Word of mouth is vital. One of the things that should mean is a Quality Assurance Program that validates that you are not sending obviously damaged products to the end user.

I am not an expert in 3D printing. However, I have owned multiple machines and made prints at home. It is a process.

One of the problems that you can have is verticle lines. Depending on how bad they are, they will be visible after layers and layers of paint.

In this figure, the axe on one side suffers from it to such a degree that the waves were still visible after five layers of paint and washes.

One could sand the lines away and hope you're not damaging the product, but again, it depends on how deep the lines are.

One of the most straightforward solutions for anyone printing at home is to throw the miniature out, adjust your settings, and print again. A humanoid figure on a 3D machine is cents per figure.  Let me repeat that. Cents per figure.

Whoever did the prep work on this miniature also did a terrible job of removing supports. There were numerous pits and damage throughout the figure's cape and other areas. This is annoying for a few reasons.

If you enjoy painting miniatures and wonder what professional-level painters think of 3d printed miniatures, one of the things they say as a positive is that because the miniature is not cast, it does not have any mold lines.

Folks, I'd have preferred mold lines. With mold lines, some sandpaper can do wonders. With broken supports? With supports that have been taken off that have damaged the model? You either need to do a lot of repair work or try to incorporate it into the figure painting itself.  

I'd have needed a lot of fine greenstuff work for this model to cover the holes and then sandpaper it to get it even. Or I could have painted the cape as battle-damaged. These would be extra steps.

Those professional painters I spoke of? Their enjoyment of 3d printed figures comes from NOT having to do extra work. Not doing MORE work because whoever did the post-processing either needed to know what they were doing or didn't care what they were doing.

There was another type of 3d printing artifact on the skull on the front of the figure.

I'm unsure what the figure is made of in terms of 'mixes'. When people print at home, they often mix resins and use an additional resin that has some flexibility or some that improve durability.

I know that this figure is brittle. 

Not that long ago, Reaper Miniatures minimized the bases on their metal models. As they initially started off with metal models, Tomb Guardians also minimized the bases. This was a cost-saving measure. Metal is expensive. No need for large round metal bases. However, this means that stability is not great.

So I pulled out some high-end clippers to remove the base so that I could just put it on its own base without building up a layer of flock or material.

It snapped the leg at the shin when I did that.

Now, if you're selling 3d prints, there are options. When Reaper moved to their 'Bones' material, they increased the base side for improved stability. So increasing the footprint and the amount of resin used to improve the base, perhaps even giving it a scenic base, is one option. The cost to the company would be minimal since it's a 3d print.  

The other option would be to off an option to sell the figure without the base. This would allow end users to quickly base the figure on any type of base they wanted.

So... the miniature suffered almost every 3D printing issue that a figure can suffer.  Waves, unprocessed parts, broken supports, and it's made of brittle material. 

On top of that, nowhere on the Tomb Guardians page does it say they're selling 3d prints. If they were stating that, I might not have ordered in the first place.

My recommendations to Tomb Guardians? First, replace every single use of the word 'Resin' with '3D-Printed'. Every single instance of it. 

Next, I'd ensure that whoever was doing the post-processing knew what they were doing. Resin miniatures in the human-size range are cheap. Literally cents. If you have something you think is salvageable but not suitable for consumers, put a new product line on your page, "Damaged Prints," or something of that nature. Do not send bad prints to your consumers.

Next, I'd put an option in the shop to not have the bases attached to the figures. By selling 3d files, you have more options than selling an actual stocked figure. Use those options.

The website uses old reviews, many of them of their metal figures, to promote their quality. This is bad business, and they should cease doing it or indicate clearly that the reviews do not apply to the 3d prints.

Tomb Guardians Inc has a long way to go before I'd trust them with another order.

Moloch from Center Stage Miniatures

Among the various Kickstarter projects that I have backed, the miniatures from Center Stage Miniatures 28mm Demons & Devils recently arrived. Among them was Moloch, one of the arch devils that has been in the Dungeons and Dragons pantheons for a long time.

The bad news for me was that I couldn't find anything that resembled this miniature in terms of design. Mind you, that isn't a knock against the miniature itself. When I first review a miniature, I tend to look it over in terms of what color I'm going to paint it. When say comparing this version of Moloch against Frog God Games and their version from the Complete Tome of Horrors, there is no match. When looking at Paizo and their version? Man, I WISH this looked like that version. That artist did a Moloch who is a gigantic armored tank.

Throwing a quick edit in here to note that thanks to a kind hearted soul, I've been informed that the look here is inspired by the Moloch from the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual II or yesteryear lore. Strangely enough, while I still have my Monster Manual I for AD&D, my II has long since passed this world. Maybe we'll get lucky and WoTC will do a premium reprint of that since they did Unearthed Arcana.

Mind you, there is nothing wrong with this version. Federico Genovese who I believe sculpted this puppy, did a great job of providing the buyer with a large resin miniature on a 50mm base. The muscle tone is well crafted and the lack of extraneous things like dozens of belt buckles, pouches, daggers, skulls, chains, and other bits that seem so common to some sculptors are thankfully missing here.

The miniature is three pieces. The main body contains head, torso, left arm and both legs. The base is a separate piece that you will need a knife to cut open to insert the tabbed figure into. The right hand holding the flaming whip, Moloch's signature weapon, is a separate piece. Because it is resin, it's a light weight piece and doesn't necessarily need to be pinned, but wouldn't be hurt by pinning.

Clean up on the miniature was minimal. I did clean the tab a bit to insure a proper fit and a few snips on the bracers but that was essentially it.

I primed the figure with Vallejo German Red-Brown and followed up with three generations of Citadel paint. I provided a almost complete basecoast of Mechrite Red, one of the 'new' Foundation paints. I then used in lesser degree, Mephiston red, the new paint. The final layer was Blood Red, one of the oldest paints by Games Workshop that I still own but still in the small bottles. The gold was done with Vallejo Alcohol gold with a wash of GW's Sepia and more GW pain for the talons and teeth and whip. I made the eyes a dark blue because I read either in the Tome of Horrors or the Paizo book of the Hells that his eyes were blue.

While I could have thrown a few washes on him to darken the red or a few coats of red ink to enhance the red tone overall, since I don't have any planes for Moloch to be a power players in any games any time soon and I just wanted a 'win' in the complete column, I was happy to finish him off at this stage.

The base is Army Painter flock with army painter tufts. I do have the Games Workshop ones, but for some reason the glue on the bottom of those continues to stick out like a sore thumb after their put down and unless their put down first, it is really a sorry site to see. I gave the dark gravel a few drybrushes of progressively lighter grays to give it some contrast.

While I may not use this figure as Moloch proper, depending on what setting I run next, if ever, I would have no problem using this figure, which fits snuggly on its 50mm base as a chaos giant say, one of the variants from Mayfair's old Role Aid line that were corrupted titans, or a fire giant wizard or even a effereti or some other type of otherworldly servant. While it doesn't scream Moloch to me, it does scream big friggin miniature.

I'm working on a few others now including the two Horned Devils and others. Has anyone else started working on their Center Stage Miniatures backlog? Any favorites thus far? Any avoid at all costs? Any assembly problems?