The Walking Dead: All Out War publisher Mantic to start producing resin miniatures in-house

British miniatures firm Mantic is to begin producing its own resin models in-house with the opening of a new casting facility.

The Walking Dead: All Out War, Deadzone and Kings of War publisher already produces metal figures in-house, but has until now outsourced plastic and resin production.

Explaining the decision behind the move in a detailed blog post, Mantic said that plastic miniatures are “initially expensive because of the tooling cost to actually create them” while metal is “more expensive per set” and adds “a considerable weight to products” – as well as suffering some quality troubles with more complex sculpts.

“The advantages with resin are that it can hold fine detail better than other materials and also handle complicated shapes that would not be possible in the other materials,” the company wrote. “Finally, it allows us to create large models with less consideration for weight than metal and far less expensive tooling than plastic.”

The article goes into the specifics of the method of casting miniatures and is well worth a read if you’re curious about the realities of bringing figures to life.

Mantic said that its first in-house resin models had already been released as part of Trident Realm, and would be followed by the Eeny Meeny Miny Moe diorama for Walking Dead title All Out War.

Looking forward, the publisher hinted that the new operation would potentially allow it to create larger models for its miniatures games – suggesting a tree herder for Kings of War – and also teased the opportunity to resurrect older resin models that have since gone out-of-production, including the marauder stuntbot and urban pattern ancestor for Deadzone.