Wargamer Resin Review (is Fauxhammer Resin That Good?)

The miniature space is a funny one. We use a ton of hobby tools and different instruments. But often these tools are not really designed for the specific hobby we have. So whenever someone designs a product specifically for miniatures, I very much look forward to testing and using it.

Now you might think that there are tons of resins designed for printing miniatures. But you would only be partly correct.

Today I am testing out the Wargamer Resin by Yes, That’s 3D Printed made in collaboration with Fauxhammer. They designed this resin because they thought they could make a better product that what is out there.

They did that by making a resin that has good details, is very though, and is water-washable. That last part is weird, but it ends up being what ultimately takes this resin from being a good (but expensive) resin to my current favorite resin, bar none.

As you can hear, this Wargamer resin review is going to be pretty positive. But when someone makes a product to make resin printing easier for beginners, there should be room for some positivity.

If you are just here for the highlights, here is my TLDR Wargamer resin review:

• My thoughts that this was a “white-label-influencer-product” have been put to shame
• The durability is on par and maybe even better than GW-plastic
• Washing in water is a much simpler process for beginners and something I personally much prefer
• Expensive resin, but the savings in IPA plus ease of washing with water go a long way to remedy that
• Details of prints are on par with other resins. Maybe slightly more detail than the good “cheapo” resins, but do not buy this thinking it will magically make your prints much better
• Extra care needs to be taken with your timing, as leaving the minis out can make moisture seep in and make them crack
• If this is the first time you are printing with a tougher resin, you might need to be more meticulous when dialing in your resin settings and when handling it.

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Water Washable resin is the future of 3D printing

One of the big costs in printing, and something that makes it more toxic than it needs to be, is the Isopropyl Alcohol (IPA) used when cleaning prints. Most resin will clean best with IPA or some other similar cleaning agent. Some resins can be cleaned just fine with water.

IPA has some extreme downsides compared with using water to clean prints.

• IPA costs a ton of money and in some parts of the world, it is hard to get your hands on.
• Over time the alcohol gets mixed with resin goo and will be rendered useless. It is a consumable that you constantly be trying to minimize the use of.
• It is extremely toxic and flammable.

Because of the cost of IPA we need to go a route where we try to save it is as much as possible. If you dunk a print with a lot of resin goo into a container with IPA, it will quickly be rendered useless (soon it will be like washing a floor with extremely dirty water). To remedy that I have personally gone with a method where I use two jars with IPA to “pre-clean” and then dunk the print in a wash-machine with a lot of IPA in it. It works, but it is not elegant.

But if it is so much work, why not use a resin that can be washed with water? Sounds much simpler, right?

Well, all water-washable resins I have tried are extremely brittle. For some use cases that is a fine compromise, but for miniatures it is not great. Having them break and snap the second you look at them is neither good for painting nor for playing with them.

So I have shied away from water-washable resins and not recommended them for printing at all.

That is until I tried the Wargamer resin. I was extremely skeptical, but it is a game changer.

The design philosophy behind Wargamer and using it in practice.

I reached out to Yes, That’s 3D Printed because I had heard the hype around their Wargamer resin. I was skeptical, as it is a small company. How could they do better than the big players?

Fauxhammer has had a finger in the design process. While I certainly trust Fauxhammer, my thoughts was that this would be an “influencer” product.

And by that I mean a product that is good, but is ultimately an overpriced white-label product with marketing hype behind it.

Upon chatting a bit with Adam behind That’s is 3D printed and getting the product in my hands, it turns out I had was pretty wrong.

What these guys set out to create is the perfect resin blend for miniatures. In my head, that means it needs to be very durable, detail rich and the price must not be too high.

But I missed a key part: it needs to be easy to use as well. And while the cost of Wargamer is high, it is easier to use and over time the price is lower because you cut out the cost of IPA. Let us get to the sticking point here: price

Price of the Wargamer Resin

One of the first things we need to talk about is the price of the Wargamer resin. The price is $60 for a bottle with 1 kg or 5 bottles for $240 – so best case $48 per bottle.

Now compare that to another resin that often gets thrown around as the best resin for miniatures“, like the Siraya Tech Fast Navy Grey which I have gotten for $32 for 1 kg when it was the cheapest. Paying $16 or what amounts to % 50 more pr. kg is a lot in the long.

The price gets even worse if we compare it with a cheap resin like the Sunlu Standard Gray that you can get for as low as $10 for a kg. The cost of each miniature you print will be way higher when paying $48 a bottle compared to $10 a bottle.

The first question you need to ask is how much you saving by using water instead of IPA. And the second question is if the other benefits of the Wargamer resin justify spending that much more on your prints.

Looking over my printing logs, my spending on resin and on IPA I have tried to measure how much IPA I use (how much IPA I have to throw out in the end). When I have printed 10kg it looks like I have wasted about 1 liter of IPA. So the cost pr. kg. resin printed is about 100ml of IPA (for me and how I do things). In my country and for what I pay for IPA that is about $1.3. Not a ton of money saved, but it is something. This will be, of course, be lower if you use a cheaper cleaning agent and thurn through less of it.

So now we have concluded that Wargamer resin is expensive, even when factoring in a potential saving on cleaning agent. But remember something here: this is a small company, which means they are likely paying a higher price pr. bottle from the factory (lower units runs and so on). Also, this is not just a white-label product with a logo on it and a bumb in sticker price. I have tested a ton of different resins and no, nothing has the same properties as wargaming does.

Strenght, durability and flexibility of the Wargamer Resin

If you have never worked with tougher resin, it is worth talking a bit about the benefits but also how it changes the printing process.

When working with resins like Wargamer you will find that it is very viscous. That means it flows slowly, a bit like syrup. If it is your first time it might be a bit weird to handle. Things to be aware of:

• When you pour it in the vat it will go slow. When you need to clean your vat it will go slow.
• When you want to drip some excess resin from the build plate before you move it, it drips off very slowly. But that also means you can quickly move the build plate, get the print off, and get the build plate back in the printer without any drips. Overall, when you learn to work like this I think it is a better way than pre-dripping the build plate.
• The UV-light will have a harder time penetrating the liquid resin. So compared with a less viscous resin, it will require more time to cure the same layer height. So you need to tune your settings to the resin.

But the biggest benefit of the thicker resin is that it can give a more durable, flexible and stronger print. And oh my gawd is this a strong resin. I have a stone tile floor in my office and if I drop a print on it, it will shatter. Even when I make a mix with a stronger resin or use ABS-like resins they tend to break.


The Wargamer resin? Well, I have dropped models without any issue. And I have bounched them off the wall as hard as I could without any breaks. And I can bend stuff in a way I could do with something like GW-plastic.

So yeah Wargamer resin is strong. It is also flexible. But small parts they can still break on you. Think of it more like you would a good plastic miniature.

One thing you should be aware of is to dial in your printer exposure time very finely with the resin. When I did my dial in of the resin, I noticed that the under exposed resin was just as brittle as other resins.

If you over-cure your supports and you use big auto-supports, they will be a pain to remove. Since you are already using water for cleaning, you can use warm water and make it easier for you. But overall, you can get the resin to a stage where the supports break off easily when using good supports and the resin is dialed in correctly.

Details of the Wargamer resin and miniatures printed with it

Now everything else we have talked about is a bit moot if the detail of the prints from the resin are not great. And, the prints do look great. When tuned with the right settings, it delivers crisp details.

Now I have a hard time with this subject: looking at prints straight out of the printer sure is fun, but comparing them to prints with other resins and from other printers it starts to devolve a bit. What you might think is a better resin print might be because of the light, how the image has been taken, a defect in specific print, different not-fine-tuned settings, the colour of the resin and so on. To compare resins, they should be printed on the same machine and primed very lightly the same colour and with a blind test.

That is not what I am doing today. But you can look and decide for yourself.

Note: I have printed these on a Mars 4, at 20 microns and dialed in to be just perfect.

Post process of the water-washable Wargamer Resin

So far the Wargamer resin has made a good impression. But without any more benefits, I think I would be hard pressed to recommend it with that price tag. That is about to change when we talk post process of the prints.

I did this review after having done a ton of printing with the cheap Sunlu basic. That resin is damn cheap, but it is so runny! When moving the build plate out it was I had to let all the liquid resin drip from it, or I would be sure to spill somewhere. That is not the case with something like the Wargamer resin. That resin on the top of the build plate? It stays there while I take off the print. Less wasted resin is good.

For most other resins this is roughly the process I would go through:

1. Don protective gear
2. Gently get minis off build plate
3. Get support off gently. If pesky I use a heat gun.
4. Dunk minis in jar with extremely dirty IPA
5. Dunk minis in jar with less dirty IPA
6. Maybe dunk minis in jar with even less dirty IPA
7. Throw minis in the wash-machine – which is essentially an even bigger jar of IPA with a small motor at the bottom that turns the IPA around.
8. Airdry minis (goes quick as IPA evaporates very fast)
9. Put them in the cure machine (leave them outside in the sun for final UV curing if no curing machine)

It is not complicated, but it is messy and not very elegant. What I am essentially trying to do is waste as little IPA as I can, since it is extremely expensive. Over time it will end up being so filled with resin residue, that it is useless for cleaning. I am spending some extra time to save some money.

In this process I am also letting out a ton of toxic VOC’s from the IPA, making it even more wise to don the equivalent of a full-plate protective suit.

So this process with IPA is messy, expensive, wasteful and toxic. But I have lived with it because the alternative is water-washable resin that is too brittle to be used for miniatures. But wargamer is water-washable and not brittle!

The post process of water-washable is similar in what we are trying to do remove (remove supports, remove liquid resin and fully cure), but it is simpler in some ways

You can Yes, That’s 3D Printed step-by-step approach here.

So here is the process I have found to be the best when using water-washable resin:

1. Don full protective suit
2. Fill a spray bottle with warm water from the tap
3. Get the printed minis off the plate in a timely manner. Because the resin is water-washable the prints can take in moisture from the air (which changes the properties of the finished print)
4. Hold a print over a container and do a few quick sprays on it. Let the water fall down in a container below.
5. Because the water is warm you can now very easily remove the supports. This cuts out the need for a heat-gun, which I very much do not like to use.
6. Now spray the print without support some more. The pressure from the squirt will clean off the liquid resin very efficiently and the wargamer resin goes of nice and easy. You need to get everything off, but you need to be quick about it. We do not want the minis to be soaking water, as it can damage the resin. Let the water flow down from the mini into the container below.
7. Once all minis are clean I put them on something to dry and gently tap them with a cloth
8. Here I have tried just letting them airdry or using a hairdryer. The hairdryer is more work for you, but you get to the end result faster. Also, there is less risk of the minis soaking in moisture. Water evaporetes more slowly than IPA, so it needs more time to air dry than you might be used to.
9. Cure in curing station or outside in sun.
10. Leave the bucket with contaminated water outside (in safe space) to let the water evaporate

The beauty here is that you do not have to spend any money on IPA nor do you have to worry about dunking in different dirty-jars or getting rid of that contaminated IPA once it is used up. You can also save yourself the hassle of a wash machine, which I feel are kinda of a trap for beginners (the bottom fun gunks up quickly and are a pain to clean).

I have a small air-checky-thing and the VOC spikes on it are significantly higher when using IPA.

The end result is a cheaper and more streamlined experience. I think it is a much better for beginners, much less toxic and more simple to get started. I BIG win for people who want to get started 3D printing.

I still think a curing station can help you out, but cutting the wash-machine and different jars of dirty IPA is the way to go.

Color of the Wargamer Resin

We have talked about the most important aspects of the Wargamer resin, so now we have just a few less important details to go over.

A thing that gets talked less about with resin, and that matters a little but not a ton, is the colour out of the printer.

The darker grey resin looks really good in photos, so I think that is why a lot of people think that those prints look “better” or “sharper”.

The colour of the prints here is this lovely darker grey colour. Not super dark like some resins, but dark enough to look enticing to paint.

The prints have this shiny finish. At first it kinda confused me, because it can look a bit like the minis where not cleaned good enough before curing. Because one of my prints was a bit sticky, I thought that is what was happening. But it turns out it just has this shiny finish.

I am a bit like “whatever” about. For me, tt is a print that needs to be painted anyway.

Smell of the Wargamer Resin

It is not something that I spend a lot of time on as it does not bother me as much. Also, I am of the firm belief that the smell from resin only indicates that you should wear a mask or not be in the room with the smell right now.

But I know some people print in different ways, might have a setup that is different than me or take less precautions than I do. So I have to talk a bit about it.

The smell from the Wargamer resin is strong and but I would not say that it is unpleasant. It is not an odour that makes me want to go away, which can otherwise very well be the case.

Print fails using the Wargamer resin

I have seen quite a few bad reviews about this resin, mainly due to fails or not being sturdy enough. It has worked for me. So what might be the difference?

It is a resin you should take more care with. It requires you to fine tune your printer much more, because of the viscous resin. I was also told by the producer of the product that it can react a but funny if under exposed, so do dial in those settings correctly.

With other resins I have been able to let it sit in the vat for multiple weeks without any issue. When I tried that with the Wargamer resin, the resin had separated in a way where it had left the heavy parts of the resin down at the bottom. I tried to stir it up and print, but as I expected the hard resin at the bottom made sure that my settings did not work and only 1 model on the print made it through, everything else failed. After cleaning up and shaking the resin better it worked flawlessly again.

As for brittle miniatures? My best guess is that the minis have soaked moisture somewhere in the process. Also, it is recommended to seal the print after curing to make sure it cannot soak moisture in. I have not done that and have not seen any issues, but maybe it will happen over time.

Another reason: too high expectations? Expect GW-plastic like durability and you will be on the right track.

For reference, I have used the Wargamer resin on a Mars 4 with a layer height of 20 microns and the exposure time seems to be best at 1.7 seconds.

Is the Wargamer resin the right resin for you? (Wargamer Resin Review Verdict)

If you are a beginner and have not invested in IPA and a wash machine, my recommendation will be using Wargamer exclusively is the way to go for miniatures moving forward. It is rare that I can recommend something as the best product for something, while also being the most beginner friendly product.

I think the wins in durability and the streamlined process with water-washing is worth the high premium price tag of the Wargamer resin. If I was you, I would try out a bottle and then buy in bulk from there on out if you like it. I am certainly considering just getting rid of my IPA+wash-machine setup and going water all the way.

What sells this even more for me is that it is a resin I can pour in the VAT and know it just works once I have it dialed in. I have spent way too much time trying to mix up a good blend of resin, changings settings slightly and so on. A good “out of the box” experience is something I really appreciate.

I would not buy this for the insane details. The different resins are essentially on par when it comes to details. But it certainly helps that the details are not bad here, they are just not significantly better than anything else.

A bit of info that might surprise you: many small shops that print and sell resin prints are changing to Wargamer resin once they have tried it. While the cost is higher, on a mass scale it saves time and gives more happy customers because the prints are more durable.

So what you need to ask yourself: would water washing be better for you? How much money is it worth for you that your minis are more sturdy?

And the answer is different depending on how much time you have and how much money you have. For me, my time is worth a lot. So spending more money to save time and pain is worth it for me.

What I really like about Wargamer Resin

Very durable resin

The details of the prints are good (but not much better than other resins)

The water-washing experience is great and especially good for beginners

Cutting IPA out of the process feels amazing from a money, waste and toxicity standpoint

Things I do not like about the Wargamer Resin

High price point

Extra care needs to be taken with moisture around the finished prints

So where can you get Wargamer resin?

• US/UK: Wargamer Store
• US: Amazon
• CA: Miniwargaming shop
• EU: Wargamer EU Shop
• AU and New Zealand: Upcoming