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kristus

Doom miniatures are back.

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MysteryG said:

Damn...I missed this one. Oh, and this is my first post here. I've been lingering around for a while...thought I'd finally join the party. I've been slowly collecting the Reaper figures for a while now. I remember having a few of them when I was younger but I haven't found them yet. I'm pretty bummed I missed out on the reissue. I emailed Bethesda asking to be put on a waiting list/notified of future releases and received this reply:

[/b]Thank you for your DOOM enthusiasm. There were only 100 made so unfortunately, we have no plans to restock that item at this time. [b]


Only 100!? I can't really think of a good reason for them not to produce more.

100 is a ridiculously short production run, though if true I'll be keeping my set well out of reach of small children. They're also no longer listed in Bethesda's store.

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MysteryG said:

Only 100!? I can't really think of a good reason for them not to produce more.

the original sculpts are often totally ruined by the mold-making process. You get one mold and that's yer lot. I'd be amazed if this was a new production run; not worth making new molds for a limited edition (molds are fucking expensive) and the old molds are probably cracked by now - I'm led to believe they get increasingly brittle with age.

Are the miniatures lead-based or tin alloy? That might put a date on when they were made.

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darknation said:

Are the miniatures lead-based or tin alloy? That might put a date on when they were made.

Good question. Reaper do both so I'd probably have to rely on the Archimedes' principle to determine their composition. As for the date, each figure has ©2013 on its base.

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darknation said:

the original sculpts are often totally ruined by the mold-making process. You get one mold and that's yer lot. I'd be amazed if this was a new production run; not worth making new molds for a limited edition (molds are fucking expensive) and the old molds are probably cracked by now - I'm led to believe they get increasingly brittle with age.

Interesting. Maybe this is why they switched to the "beta" version of the Arachnotron: perhaps the mold was cracked?

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fraggle said:

Interesting. Maybe this is why they switched to the "beta" version of the Arachnotron: perhaps the mold was cracked?


But didn't do cyberdemon with protocyberdemon mold and I think that beta arachnotron and protocyberdemon were made at the same time. I wonder if there were unspoken proto versions of some other doom miniatures too.

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Waffenak said:

But didn't do cyberdemon with protocyberdemon mold and I think that beta arachnotron and protocyberdemon were made at the same time. I wonder if there were unspoken proto versions of some other doom miniatures too.



Proto Cyberdemon (both versions) were destroyed via reworking them into the current Cyberdemon.
Proto Arachnotron was not destroyed.
Why - I can't answer, and Dave/Ed @ Reaper didn't really remember either (consider its been almost 2 decades).

There are no other unspoken proto versions of any other DooM mini.

Regards,

Dusty

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GreyGhost said:

Good question. Reaper do both so I'd probably have to rely on the Archimedes' principle to determine their composition. As for the date, each figure has ©2013 on its base.

lead is significantly heavier and darkens over time. Tin alloy is lighter, harder to scratch and will eventually develop a light white tarnish across the miniature.

Melting point of lead is much lower than that of the tin alloy - you can melt lead on a household stove for your own casting projects / making yourself infertile. The higher melting temperature of the tin alloy is probably what cunted the spin-casting molds back in the old days.

Anyway, if the miniature incorporates an embossed copyright on it then it must be a new production run made with recasts of the original lead miniatures; I'd bet the reason that they used the prototype arachnotron is because it was the only miniature they had to hand to make a second-generation copy from.

People do that on ebay all the time, to the point where there are third - forth generation copy of a copy of a copy realm of chaos miniatures floating about out there. But it shits up the detailing, smooth surfaces become pretty pock-marked and you get get deformities and double mold lines cropping up.

Seems like an awful lot of effort, especially since the original reaper sculpts were second-tier quality to begin with.

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fraggle said:

I complained to the store and they sent me a replacement Arachnotron. Awesome!


Strange that they still had miniatures in stock

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GreyGhost said:

Congratulations, though it still looks to have one foot off the ground.

The figure is based of it's second idle frame.

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GreyGhost said:

Congratulations, though it still looks to have one foot off the ground.

It's a tiny bit wobbly but close enough.

Waffenak said:

Strange that they still had miniatures in stock

They told me that "we have a set of the figures in the office" - presumably spares in case of this kind of occurrence, or perhaps just to decorate their office with? Either way it was pretty nice of them.

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The old one has more fundamental problems: I disassembled it and found one of the leg struts is bent out of shape, hence why it ended up in that weird twisted shape. I might yet be able to bend it into shape, but there's a chance it might snap if I try: that's why I contacted the store people first to see if I could get it replaced.

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fraggle said:

The old one has more fundamental problems: I disassembled it and found one of the leg struts is bent out of shape, hence why it ended up in that weird twisted shape. I might yet be able to bend it into shape, but there's a chance it might snap if I try: that's why I contacted the store people first to see if I could get it replaced.


I got experience bending mancubus hands and its fragile material and it chip away if you try to bend it. If you wonder why I have bended miniature hand it was because I bought mancu from seller who had done it and I tried to realign them but ended up keeping them that way so it looks like its shooting directly. That original pose looks goofy where he is just dangling his arms/weapons at his sides

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fraggle said:

leg's bent

this is fixable actually. The metal will become less brittle as the temperature rises. heat it (hot water, leave it on top of cardboard on top of the radiator, place it on the windowsill and wait 'til summer) you should be able to bend it back into shape.

Even if you do break it, it's easily fixed. Pin-drill + soft wire + two-part epoxy resin fixes everything. In fact, if you break the fucking thing, I'd gladly buy it off of you.

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darknation said:

place it on the windowsill and wait 'til summer

fraggle is from the UK. Summer will not be hot enough. :P

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I live in the US now and from what I've seen it would probably be hot enough :)

I might try the hot water approach. I guess I just put it in a cup of hot water for a few minutes?

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fraggle said:

I might try the hot water approach. I guess I just put it in a cup of hot water for a few minutes?

Don't recycle that water for a cup of tea/coffee before we have some idea of the miniature's lead content. ;-)

Took delivery of some digital scales this morning, if 100mg resolution's good enough I'll try doing some suspension tests to determine the mass of my miniatures.

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fraggle said:

I live in the US now and from what I've seen it would probably be hot enough :)

I might try the hot water approach. I guess I just put it in a cup of hot water for a few minutes?

yeah, but make sure the metal is heated all the way through before you attempt to bend it; if the core is still cold then snappage may occur.

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darknation said:

Are the miniatures lead-based or tin alloy?

Tin alloy, if my test results are anything to go by. If anyone's REALLY interested in my test methodology I'll explain it when I'm a little more awake, for now here's the results I obtained using some more sensitive scales.

			Weight	Volume	Density
			(gram)	 (cc)
					11.340		Lead
Lead sinker		89.40	 8.07	11.078
Mancubus (1997)		69.04	 9.35	 7.384
Mancubus (2013)		69.38	 9.18	 7.558
					 7.310		Tin
EDIT - I shouldn't attempt to calculate the volume of a length of fishing line while half awake, amended the volume and density figures.

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I'm preparing to sell my prototype Baron of Hell on eBay, I've identified a #5 scratched in above the word "sample" on the base.

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