Scrutiny: Dragonforge bases

My severe liking for all things bases popped up again a while ago. I ordered some cultist miniatures from Otherworld miniatures. I would need proper bases for those, so I searched the web and decided on some pretty looking ones from Dragon Forge Design. I had already heard of their stuff and the talk was good.

So I ordered their new(ish) desecrated lands line multipack. That's 2x10 25mm, 2x5 40mm and 2x 60mm. The ordering proces was nice and quick, the site clean and clear. I would love to see some alternate paintschemes on the preview pictures, but most sites don't do that so I certainly won't hold that against them. It should be said that the guy running the place was behind on sending out orders by three weeks. This was clearly communicated on the main page so you'd know what you were getting yourself into, so bonus points for that.

Well then, they arrived in nice plastic baggies in a shipping envelope. Those are especially nice because they just fit in the mailbox

Here are the beauties all unpacked

First thing I noticed was the good quality of casting. There was hardly any casting left overs, the ones I did find were easily removed. The bottom of the bases is not sanded, but that is also not at all required. Where Micro Arts sand all their bases, the Dragon Forge ones seem perfectly flat on their own. Bonus points there!

Very slight casting mistakes, most of this is actually part of the design

These bases have something I have not seen on bases before. They have sections where you are meant to put some water effects (or lava effects if you want I guess). That is sheer genius! I will definately be adding this to those bases.

Notice the top section for water effects

Money and shipping wise they are a bit cheaper then micro arts, but not as cheap as for example pk-pro. The combined pack of bases was also good value.

Best of all they paint up quite nicely!

Fully painted desecrated lands bases

Verdict: Very good bases, fair pricing. Even really large base sizes are supported in some of the lines. I'd buy again for sure.

Scrutiny: Micro Art bases

Ha I am back from being sick for over a week. That was one seriously nasty fever.

After the disappointment that was the TK-PRO bases a few weeks ago my girl decided she needed a nice jungle base for a PC monkey of hers. This gave me the option to order 'a few extra' bases as she ordered from Micro Art Studio.

I decided to go with 2 packs of 25mm forest bases, a pack of 40mm and both of the 60mm designs. I have a lot of Reaper Bones coming after all. As the bases arrived I was happily surprised. Not only did the order go through rapidly, the shipping was also very fast. Before you knew it I had the bases in hand. Good stuff, extra points. This might have to do with the fact they are based in Poland, so non-european buyers should expect longer delivery times.

Let's talk about the 'bad' things first. On their site it does say that they will select five bases at random when you order some. It is unfortunate that what they mean is they grab a package of 5 pre-selected bases. I happened to get the exact same package twice. It would not have hurt that much to select two different packages. This does not matter to me all that much, but I figured I'd mention it.

The second 'bad' thing is that they are not cheap. You pay 4,92E per package + shipping. I want my miniatures to look good and I do not want to spend forever on the basing, so this is worth it to me. And they do deliver on that quality.

So on to the good. There is a lot of good! Their bases are just the most detailed I have ever seen.

 Primed forest bases

 That is just nuts. These beauties will take as long to paint as the miniature to be used with them. Very impressive quality indeed. Even better the casts are a very durable resin and they have already sanded the bottoms for you so they are perfectly balanced and straight. This is a real big plus, the mark of quality.

It also happened to be my birthday a week or two ago and the people at my job gifted me some of the Micro Art wood bases. Once again I was impressed by the quality and decided to immediately paint one of them.

Top left: Micro Art base, Top right: Ironhalo cobblestone base

Bottom: Wooden base, mainly painted on

The dungeon and wooden floor ones are nice, but the Micro Art Studios base just jumps out at you. I have ordered even more of their bases, their wastelands line specifically, for my demons.

Verdict: If you can afford these beauties, do so! Keep an eye on their site, new bases get added all the time.

Scrutiny: PK-Pro alien base set (part 2)

I managed to take some new pictures of the TK-PRO bases. Unfortunately some of those also mysteriously dissapeared. I have decided to call it quits with making new ones, figuring they are probably cursed or the like.

So I present my findings with pictures that I actually have.

The sculpts themselves are not bad, they are not incredibly detailed, but they are not bad either. I'd call them average. The shipping and shopping process was fine, simple, fast, definitely good.

This is where it started to go a bit downhill for me. Now I do not know how representable of their work the following experience is, but for me it is a reason to beware.

The casts were pretty bad. Entire flat bits of resin stuck on the edges of the bases and bases were not able to stand flat without creating extra gaps between base and floor or simply wobbling. Sometimes several millimeter slabs of extra resin were on the bottom of the bases.

This is not how a cast should be

I would have to say these casts are quite shoddy. I had to try to sand them down. Now there are a few reasons I really dislike doing that.

1. Resin dust is ridiculously dangerous if you get it in your lungs.
2. Resin is notoriously hard to sand.
3. I didn't want to take a sanding machine to them, so it had to be hand work.

This is not fun to do

The results are not all that awesome. To be specific, it is incredibly hard to create an even surface. On the picture above you can see how the darker parts on the top and lower right side are still 'higher' then the rest.

Eventually I decided to simply throw the worst away and call it a day with the rest.

I think this was not a fluke batch of bases since I ordered 25mm, 40mm and 60mm and they all suffered from this problem.

Verdict: Would not buy again. Recommend you stay clear.

Scrutiny: PK-Pro alien base set (part 1)

So... I had these awesome photos of my unboxing and my experience with getting my new alien bases ready. I say had because I accidentally shift deleted them. I am a fool. Some of them I cannot take again, because I have since worked away the problems.

So... I'll take some more photos... at a later date. There are a few things I can already say about how I intend to use the bases though. I am collecting both a devil and a demon range. The devil range is being based on lava bases from dark arts miniatures. For my demons I was looking for an alien sort of landscape that I could paint up as the abyss. Enter PK-Pro, a german manufacturer of among other things bases!

I set my eye on these (painted by the PK-Pro people)

Imagine the same, but with more purple then green. That's the plan. The box arrived this evening after a speedy delivery. Happy me! Unfortunately I did have some issues with the casts. I do not know if this is indicative of the quality of PK-Pro casts or not. I am inclined to say it is, because I ordered 25mm, 40mm and 60mm bases and they all the same defects.

I can work around it, but it will take quite some time. That is time that I would rather not spent on bases that are supposed to be useable out of the box.

More in part 2 when I get some pictures in!