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Who on earth decided that this assembly was acceptable?!?!


Oddman

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I want to voice my opinion here as this is now the 3rd time I have stopped from continuing any further. Either the models were designed for people with tiny fingers, or Wyrd are a bunch of sadistic assholes.

I really, really, really want to play Malifaux. I've bought about 5 boxes of miniatures, starting with gremlins (so, so, so much character). Every single time I make just one miniature, I end with frustration and not going any further. I've built 3 miniatures. In 6 months.

For the love of god, please resolve these assembly issues. I'm a miniature painter and gamer of over 20 years and even early GW wasn't this bad. I'd much rather superglue and pin metal miniatures than have to put together another god damn gremlin.

Please, Wyrd overlords - hear my prayers!!!!

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Out of curiosity, which boxes have you tired so far? Maybe by some odd twist of fate you've wound up with the most difficult of the bunch. Bayou are perhaps some of the most difficult to get together. Perhaps that makes it a bit more difficult. 

I have struggled from time to time, but overall I really don't think they're much more difficult than GW stuff. For the most part they've fit together fairly well for me, but there are certainly some boxes that present some difficulty. Bayou do tend to be on the more difficult side. 

I hope you stick with it because it is a great game. If you don't want to put them together you could always buy used (assembled) models. 

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2 hours ago, Trample said:

Out of curiosity, which boxes have you tired so far? Maybe by some odd twist of fate you've wound up with the most difficult of the bunch. Bayou are perhaps some of the most difficult to get together. Perhaps that makes it a bit more difficult. 

I have struggled from time to time, but overall I really don't think they're much more difficult than GW stuff. For the most part they've fit together fairly well for me, but there are certainly some boxes that present some difficulty. Bayou do tend to be on the more difficult side. 

I hope you stick with it because it is a great game. If you don't want to put them together you could always buy used (assembled) models. 

You could be right. I have the Bayou boss box, along with a few other characters. I started on the gremlins. All of these chars are 9+ pieces, I think the boss is like 15? 

Lenny was probably the easiest so far, but even he had arms that didn't quite connect properly. I've had that issue with almost all the models so far, but the little gremlins by far were the most infurating. Not looking forward to the Skeeters.

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I take it back. The Bayou Boss himself is now the worst miniature I've ever had to assemble, in 20 years of gaming. And that's after the metal crap that was Privateer Press' jacks.

I honestly can't believe how bad some of these pieces are... Aren't they meant to be some new modern technology that they started using for these minis? Blows my mind.

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Donnot ever attempt to assemble Bayou Gators :D.

In Wyrd's defence, if you come from PP & GW, Wyrd's minis are thinner (and imho more realistic) and M2E poses tend to be less static than the average space marine or chaos daemon (it is not a critic though, I love the last chaos daemons that GW has issued).

Some minis are not revolving around a given moulding plan as some other minis are (PP miniatures and many GW miniatures mostly have the classic facing or oblic shoulders pose) so my guess is that it impacts the mould design and causes the breaking down of the minis into a myriad of pieces. But my knowledge of miniature injection moulding is a basic one so I could be wrong.

You will note that the latest M3E renders we have seen so far are much more classical in their pose and bulkier so I guess the problem will be less prevalent on new releases.

Personally, I'd rather have glued fingers and nervous breakdown than systematically having a classical pose & bulkiness on all the models but it seems that the trend now is to have simplier minis.

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Just a question though, what kind of glue do you use ?
I hope you're not using super glue, it is fine for most gw models and others whatever the material is, but with Malifaux models, it is quite impossible to get it right. We have to use plastic glue to do it.
If you already do, I can only be sorry for you,
If you did not, I probably am the one saving your life and nerves !

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7 hours ago, Oddman said:

I want to voice my opinion here as this is now the 3rd time I have stopped from continuing any further. Either the models were designed for people with tiny fingers, or Wyrd are a bunch of sadistic assholes.

I really, really, really want to play Malifaux. I've bought about 5 boxes of miniatures, starting with gremlins (so, so, so much character). Every single time I make just one miniature, I end with frustration and not going any further. I've built 3 miniatures. In 6 months.

For the love of god, please resolve these assembly issues. I'm a miniature painter and gamer of over 20 years and even early GW wasn't this bad. I'd much rather superglue and pin metal miniatures than have to put together another god damn gremlin.

Please, Wyrd overlords - hear my prayers!!!!

(0) "Welcome to Malifaux!" 😛

Joke aside, you found one of the worst places to start. The Bayou Boss, along with Yan Lo's box, are notoriously hard to put together... In general, Wyrd make some of the best plastic crack out there, but the price to pay is that they seem to pay close to zero attention to how easy their stuff is to put together. This allows them to create crazy dynamic poses, but we pay for it with hours of frustration.

A few survival tips for Wyrd plastic:

1. Always use the thinnest plastic cement you can get your hands on. I use Tamiya Lemonene cement, because it doesn't give me headaches, but I keep around a jar of regular Tamiya Extra Thin because the brush in that is fine and thus superior.

2. WIPE OFF THE BRUSH WHEN PAINTING ON THE CEMENT!!! You need cement on both pieces, but only a tiny amount. I also like to let the pieces dry ever so slightly. Too much cement and the tiny parts drown out.

3. Keep superglue ready as a backup. In Malifaux, bad things happen, and sometimes things will come loose. Most of the time a tiny drop of Tamiya cement will fix things, but sometimes the joint surface will become porous, and the new joint will be poor. Then a tiny drop of super glue, applied with an applicator like a toothpick, is your only solution. I use something called Super Attack, but any thin cyanoacrylate will do. Don't get the gel kind!!

4. Do as much of you sanding/scraping/filing with the pieces still on their sprues. Smaller parts are much harder to handle, but they still have mould lines...

5. Never, ever, EVER, use tweezers when putting the minis together, even though it will be tempting in order to grab a tiny moustache by a pair if tweezers rather than your sausage fingers. It seems like a great idea until you squeeze a little too hard and the moustache flies through the room and embeds itself in the wall on the other side of the room. Good luck getting it out again!

6. Similarly, do your assembly over a white box (avoid grey!!), and for all that is good in the world, NEVER ASSEMBLY WYRD MINIS OVER A CARPETED FLOOR! The Carpet God WILL claim his due...

When all is said and done, you will adjust, and the payoff is well worth it. GW designs their models largely to be easy to assemble. The result is not bad (I have thousands of Citadel minis myself), but they tend to be unrealistically clumpy and with static poses (though there are notable exceptions). Wyrd minis are slender, well proportioned, realistic and with very dynamic poses, but much harder to assemble. 

Good luck!! 🙂

 

 

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1 hour ago, tmod said:

(0) "Welcome to Malifaux!" 😛

Joke aside, you found one of the worst places to start. The Bayou Boss, along with Yan Lo's box, are notoriously hard to put together... In general, Wyrd make some of the best plastic crack out there, but the price to pay is that they seem to pay close to zero attention to how easy their stuff is to put together. This allows them to create crazy dynamic poses, but we pay for it with hours of frustration.

A few survival tips for Wyrd plastic:

1. Always use the thinnest plastic cement you can get your hands on. I use Tamiya Lemonene cement, because it doesn't give me headaches, but I keep around a jar of regular Tamiya Extra Thin because the brush in that is fine and thus superior.

2. WIPE OFF THE BRUSH WHEN PAINTING ON THE CEMENT!!! You need cement on both pieces, but only a tiny amount. I also like to let the pieces dry ever so slightly. Too much cement and the tiny parts drown out.

3. Keep superglue ready as a backup. In Malifaux, bad things happen, and sometimes things will come loose. Most of the time a tiny drop of Tamiya cement will fix things, but sometimes the joint surface will become porous, and the new joint will be poor. Then a tiny drop of super glue, applied with an applicator like a toothpick, is your only solution. I use something called Super Attack, but any thin cyanoacrylate will do. Don't get the gel kind!!

4. Do as much of you sanding/scraping/filing with the pieces still on their sprues. Smaller parts are much harder to handle, but they still have mould lines...

5. Never, ever, EVER, use tweezers when putting the minis together, even though it will be tempting in order to grab a tiny moustache by a pair if tweezers rather than your sausage fingers. It seems like a great idea until you squeeze a little too hard and the moustache flies through the room and embeds itself in the wall on the other side of the room. Good luck getting it out again!

6. Similarly, do your assembly over a white box (avoid grey!!), and for all that is good in the world, NEVER ASSEMBLY WYRD MINIS OVER A CARPETED FLOOR! The Carpet God WILL claim his due...

When all is said and done, you will adjust, and the payoff is well worth it. GW designs their models largely to be easy to assemble. The result is not bad (I have thousands of Citadel minis myself), but they tend to be unrealistically clumpy and with static poses (though there are notable exceptions). Wyrd minis are slender, well proportioned, realistic and with very dynamic poses, but much harder to assemble. 

Good luck!! 🙂

 

 

I'm okay with harder-to-assemble minis, it's just that some of the decisions taken on the moulds make absolutely no sense, making it far more difficult than it needs to be. Guild ball metal miniatures were some of the most dynamic I'd seen, and they didn't take me hours to put together one model.

That said, I'm very happy to hear I'm starting with the worst. lol. Only uphill from here!

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2 hours ago, Oddman said:

I'm okay with harder-to-assemble minis, it's just that some of the decisions taken on the moulds make absolutely no sense, making it far more difficult than it needs to be. Guild ball metal miniatures were some of the most dynamic I'd seen, and they didn't take me hours to put together one model.

That said, I'm very happy to hear I'm starting with the worst. lol. Only uphill from here!

There are some different considerations with plastic as there can be no undercuts at all, but I think it's fair to say Wyrd's plastics have improved somewhat. That also implies they were not exactly optimised from the outset...

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13 hours ago, Oddman said:

I take it back. The Bayou Boss himself is now the worst miniature I've ever had to assemble, in 20 years of gaming. And that's after the metal crap that was Privateer Press' jacks.

I honestly can't believe how bad some of these pieces are... Aren't they meant to be some new modern technology that they started using for these minis? Blows my mind.

Somer is one of the early plastic kits. On top of being a crew of smaller minis, it's definitely one of the worst to assemble.

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  • 2 weeks later...

After assembling many a mini lately in preparation for M3E release and Gencon i can tell you a few things that has made the experience much easier for me. 

Hope that helps as its made my life way easier and my models looking great!

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On 6/11/2019 at 7:21 AM, tmod said:

5. Never, ever, EVER, use tweezers when putting the minis together, even though it will be tempting in order to grab a tiny moustache by a pair if tweezers rather than your sausage fingers. It seems like a great idea until you squeeze a little too hard and the moustache flies through the room and embeds itself in the wall on the other side of the room. Good luck getting it out again!

Embedded in the wall?  PLEASE!  I can dig that out and spackle over the hole.  Abuela's hand brake made a single *plink* and then gone...  It has been two months now.  I still haven't found it...

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32 minutes ago, Cathaidan said:

Embedded in the wall?  PLEASE!  I can dig that out and spackle over the hole.  Abuela's hand brake made a single *plink* and then gone...  It has been two months now.  I still haven't found it...

Hoover with a tight* over it is a good trick for missing part. Hopefully it's too late for that though or I pity the state of your hobby space!

*American translation = vacuum cleaner with a... stocking? 

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44 minutes ago, lusciousmccabe said:

Hoover with a tight* over it is a good trick for missing part. Hopefully it's too late for that though or I pity the state of your hobby space!

*American translation = vacuum cleaner with a... stocking? 

Tights* or pantyhose, not that anyone owns either of those in these ever-increasing summer days—I just frequently check the dust-collecting parts of the vacuum for anything of similar size and shape to the lost bit.

I used blue-tack sticky stuff as a makeshift tweezer in a moment of desperation, but it worked well enough I kept on using it for the most fiddly bits.

 

 

*’A’ tight sounds as weird as ‘a’ scissor.

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2 hours ago, Cathaidan said:

Embedded in the wall?  PLEASE!  I can dig that out and spackle over the hole.  Abuela's hand brake made a single *plink* and then gone...  It has been two months now.  I still haven't found it...

Cathaidan, 

That's why she gets extra move after the attack...she cant stop:)

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2 hours ago, Gnomezilla said:

I used blue-tack sticky stuff as a makeshift tweezer in a moment of desperation, but it worked well enough I kept on using it for the most fiddly bits.

that's brilliant.   I lost Yan Lo's beard to blinking when I was assembling him (and my hobby desk was over shaggy carpet, so RIP).  He got a greenstuff beard instead and honestly I like it better.

I've heard good things about tweezers coated in rubber/epoxy/whatever so they don't tend to shoot parts around when you squeeze too hard, but I haven't tried a pair myself.

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On 6/25/2019 at 3:41 PM, lusciousmccabe said:

 

Hoover with a tight* over it is a good trick for missing part. Hopefully it's too late for that though or I pity the state of your hobby space!

*American translation = vacuum cleaner with a... stocking? 

I live with three young children, my wife, and her cat.  At this point, it is gone.  The smart money is on one of the kids or the cat eating it.  If that is the case, I am unwilling to go to the necessary lengths to find the missing piece.  lol

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  • 2 months later...
On 6/27/2019 at 1:51 PM, Cathaidan said:

I live with three young children, my wife, and her cat.  At this point, it is gone.  The smart money is on one of the kids or the cat eating it.  If that is the case, I am unwilling to go to the necessary lengths to find the missing piece.  lol

I have spent MANY nights laying on my dusty hairy wood floors with my brightest flashlights scanning every inch of my living room for bits that inexplicably launch into space for no reason. Good times indeed. 🤬

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  • 4 months later...

As a Bayou player myself I know the feeling of too many tiny parts that could have probably been designed better to be on the sprue.  Assembling the Iron Skeeters right now and who thought it was ok for head of the grappling hook to be a separate part.  You have to assemble two 1mm pieces to each other.   Dynamic poses are nice but sometimes I would rather give up some looks for each of construction.  WHO DESIGNED YAN LO'S BEARD! 

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  • 2 months later...

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