I am not sure if it is just the minis i got or not, but i feel as though the minis are very poor quality most of the minis do not fit into the bases very well and if you put them into the base upside down they fit but do not stay in the base very well. I really like this game, but do not understand the idea of the removeable base. I paid a lot of money for this game (got the painted and non painted ones from the kick starter), and i just wanted really good quality minis. this being said i think the sculpts are pretty good some of them are hard to tell who they are, but that is one reason i got the painted ones. I am just wondering other peoples opion on this to see if other people are having the same problems. Sorry for the rant ish nature of this post. Looking foward to hear what people have to say.
Sentinels Tactics Minis
Minis not precisely fitting into bases is as old as miniatures. That's why every good gamer has a fine, sharp knife on hand.
Myself, I'm pretty happy with it. They're sturdy and clear to me. I didn't have any issues, apart from having to shave a couple feet slightly.
The bases are transparent so you can see the hex (and its elevation) the unit is standing on. If it weren't removable, then painting the minis would result in lots of paint accidentally splashed on the base, which wouldn't be so good. So making the bases removable seems to me like a reasonable thing to do.
I haven't found the minis to be low quality at all. Some of the details are kind of shallow, meaning that you have to be careful when laying down paint that you don't cover up the detail, but I wasn't too bothered by it.
Sounds like if you're getting the painted minis, you'll be all set in any case though, yeah?
ok i will try to get some knives ( i think i have a set) to get them to fit better. i am kinda new to mini and have never seen mini with a removeable base before, but your explaination makes sence. the details of the sculpts are fine, other than it being a little hard to tell who some of the characters are, but only some. (ie. wraith is the one who comes to mind) Good to hear other opinions though.
I am brand new to any miniatures of any kind and I think these look and feel fantastic. I just glued mine into their bases last night, as a matter of fact and couldn't be happier! Only one Proletariat needed to be told his foot was too large. All in all, though, I'm very excited that I had this practice so that when my painted ones come in, I'll feel more confident that they will hold and look glorious! I think that calling them 'poor quality' is wildly underselling them.
Just toss the minis in the freezer for about half an hour. Then, pull them out and put them in their bases. As they warm up, they'll expand to fit the bases!
Does that trick work with other things?
the freezer thing is actually a good idea thanks a lot i will try that when i get home.
That is both awesome and hilarious. 
You're just on a roll, lately, aren't you? 
Don't try it with Ice Cream, it just gets messy.
If you put minis in the freezer, what impact (if any) does it have on the paint?
Would depend on the type of paint you used, how long the mini was subjected to the deep freeze, etc.
And if you glossed or did not.
Let's say acrylic paint, topped with some Krylon sealant, for 20-30 minutes.
The point of putting the minis into the freezer is to get the plastic to shrink. The question is, how well will the paint (and the sealant) shrink along with the mini? I don't know what these sculpts are made out of and I'm finding radically differing values for coefficient of thermal expansion for acrylic depending on the manufacturing method (few of which happen to be "applied as paint" and even those vary based on the specific paint mixture).
So, the scientific answer is a bit impractical to come by at the moment. I'll settle for anecdotal evidence.
Ooh, that is a good question. I really have NO idea! So, be careful when freezing your painted minis.
What you could do is, instead, heat up the bases so they expand. Since they aren't painted, there's less that can go wrong. Obviously, you don't want to get them too hot, but I imagine a hairdryer or letting them sit in some hot water for a little bit might do the trick.
In my previous modeling knowledge. With plastic models and pewter, with a variety of acrylic paints (citadel Vallejo, primarily but many others too) there has never been a paint issue with freezing models. I’ve done it to fit pieces and to brittle glue to break them off bases. This is with primed, in glossed, but painted models just fine.
Heating the base to expand has one small problem. The hole will contract as the plastic expands. Not dilate.
I'm just waiting for Pydro to swing by again…
So put the base in the freezer =)
I'll be keeping the base/mini separate in a baggie with the cards for each character, so it's a little bit of sandpaper/knife for me.
Me too!
Heating the base actually does dilate the hole, though I it's a little bit counterintuitive. This isn't a perfect analogy, but imagine that you have a flat sheet of silly putty and you draw a circle in the center of it. Then you stretch the sheet to be 10% bigger. The circle stretches with it, also becoming 10% bigger. This is what would happen with the hole. You are probably imagining that the material at the outer edge of the plastic expands out and the material at the inner edge of the hole expands inward, but that isn't what happens. Everything expands outward.
I have to agree that the miniatures are not as high quality as I initially expected.
$40.00 for a box of miniatures is quite steep, especially considering the size. To have them made out of such soft, flexible material was really disappointing. They are going to be very hard to paint, because pretty much every part of the mini will flex and bend, cracking or otherwise separating the paint.
The bases being transparent, I can understand. The bases being very roughly fashioned so that they aren't so much transparent as translucent, I can't.
To the players saying it was necessary to make the bases out of clear acrylic in order to see through them, can you actually see through yours? They aren't completely obscured from the manufacturing process/scratches/imperfections?
I have to say that this is the first time I've been disappointed with a Greater Than Games product, and it's not a huge problem, but I do feel a bit let down with the miniatures considering their price point.
Yep
Nope
Me too. I can see right through mine and they have no significant scratches or imperfections in them.
First of all i tired the freezer trick last night and it worked...well enough. the figures now stay in the base, but the holes in the base do not seem to be wide enough for the character to fit perfectly, but it works. In response to eric.d.m.miller's post, i do have to say i love this game one of my favorites, but the minis just seem a little on the low quality side. i kinda under stand the removable base thing, but i see it as a minor downside to them. the sculpts themselves are fine. Anyways i will hold my judgement until i get the painted ones, but so far the minis are not worth the money i gave toward the kickstarter, but the game defiently is.
That’s exactly what I’m saying.
I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed.
After years of dealing with Gamesworkshop and their idea of ‘quality’ minis, I have no complaint of these. I may just be jaded. But the flexibility is a plus to me, given how rough play time can be. No chance of accidental snappage of say, proletariat s hammer top, or some of the citiziens appendages/ weapons.
Detail wise I’ve seen better, but for the price it’s not bad at all to me. Several unique sculpts in one box is pretty on par for what I’m used to.
Dozens of people have painted the Sentinels miniatures, and hundreds if not thousands have painted Reaper Bones (that are made from the same material at roughly the same level of detail), and I've never heard any reports of paint cracking when the miniature was flexed. I know I bent the energy fields repeatedly on Citizens Truth and Dare while I was painting them, and looking at the figures right now there aren't cracks in the paint.
They're 90-95% translucent to me. I can totally see through them and haven't noticed any scratches or imperfections from the manufacturing process.
Perhaps you should try painting the miniatures or playing the game with the figures on the bases before complaining?
(As a side note, the first Reaper Bones boxed set I saw was $43 for 21 figures, including a large figure about the size of Omnitron. Reaper Minis has better economies of scale than GtG, so getting 24 figures for $40 seems like a good deal to me.)
Perhaps you should stop making condescending assumptions.
Bones minis are twice the size. Probably 3 times the volume of material per miniature.
Bones are 25mm heroic scale. Which is about the standard. Not seeing where the Tactics minis are on the small size in comparison.
Calm, people.
I just scrubbed my first box of minis tonight with the hot soapy water thing, so I'm hoping to start some painting soon, myself. I'm just wondering: has anyone completed any minis, and are you going to post pictures? :)
Also, what are you folks using for color ref? Just the colors on the boxes?
See this thread https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/painted-sentinel-tactics-minis-5840 for examples of what has been done
Has anyone found a good primer for the minis? Because my Krylon Colormaster resulted in me having to take a toothbrush to Omnitron.
I just used white krylon from Michael’s, worked pretty well.
In this topic I describe my horrifying experience trying to primer my minis with what's essentially white glue in a spray can, and go on to find the bestest primer in the world.
Yep. Citadel Fo Life.