Dark Eldar Sslyth

I love scaly aliens!  The Sslyth were both fun and aggravating to work with.  They strongly resemble the old 3ed WHFB Chaos Snakemen which was nostalgic but, where the old snakemen were metal minis, these were Finecast...

The Finecast has great detail but on kits this articulated it was just plain fragile. 



Accidental contact with a sword or other protrusion resulted in the minis either catapulting across the room as the somewhat rubbery material behaves like a frail spring!   Just a little tap and the figure practically achieves orbit!  anything stronger than that and the limbs would just break... as the glued joints are actually sturdier than the casting itself the break would often be at someplace other than the actual join. 

An additional issue is that one of the swords has a stubborn curve in it which resisted my "working with resin" attempts to straighten.  It did recover from its letter "C" original curve to one that it much less eye catching but it was never fully corrected and so one of these fellows is likely to be a hazard to his mates!




The figures are also very light in the sense that they do not have sufficient weight to stand on their own except under ideal circumstances.  Since I've been playing with water effects for this unit I had the happy coincidence that the depth of water effect I've been using actually adds weight to the bases making these minis very stable! 

While I'm happy that they ceased falling over if looked at or, god forbid, brushed while moving a neighboring miniature I still have some concerns about their durability as playing pieces and their storage/transport survival rates.  On the plus side I do still have a lot of old metal Chaos Snakemen so if these don't survive I can always re-purpose some of those!   Who knows... maybe even a unit or two of mercenary Sslyth are in my future!