By the way, you can find a more detailed comparison of 8 hobby grade cutters and nippers over on my Patreon. The alternatives:

The new version is improved by its much thinner nose, I always found the old model cumbersome and for finer parts, you could not even get this into the details. Now we can get into much finer parts with the new tool and that is a huge blessing. It’s mostly that, for a Premium Brand, there’s little of that shown here. Other than the price tag.I would love to sit in a room with the person who designed this, and the person who signed it off for production. I’d love to know if either of them used it. Oh no, I’m not going to go easy on this at all.

Whilst I’m referencing that, I also want to draw attention to “ Bump-stopping design makes it impossible to mash the blades together with too much pressure, which means they’ll stay sharp for longer“ Who signed this off? I totally understand the simplification of the tool names in the case of the other products. This is an entry-level set. Keep it simple because that’s perfect to onboard hobby beginners. But if you are gonna do it, For the last couple of years, there has been a cheaper version of this, If you collected Warhammer Conquest Mortal Realms or Warhammer Imperium partworks magazines, your first issue would come with a micro mould-line remover. this was basically the old citadel mould line remover with the handle removed – Thankfully garfy from Tale of Painters made a simple 3D render you could print to recreate the handle. The new notch for cleaning bases sure does exist, though I’m not sure how useful it will actually be. The flat side of the blade does just fine at cleaning bases so I don’t know who was crying out for this feature but it’s there so you can use it if you want.

GW was kind enough to send over a set of all four for review, so I’ve given them all a whirl. I’ll get into each in detail in a second but right off the bat there are no weird gotchas. They all do what they say on the box and they do them to various degrees of good. The clippers clip, the remover removes, the knife slices, and the drill puts small holes in things. Super Fine Detail Sprue Cutters I would consider this a strict upgrade over my basic hobby knife and I’m happy to have it in the tool box. Parting Thoughts I’ve not used the existing Citadel Knife, but having seen the existing one I would be hard pressed to understand the price. Ergonomically it is no different than a basic cheap Xacto knife and it uses the same blades. Much like the new Painting handle, the 2022 refresh of Citadel’s Tool choice represents an overt cheapening of their Hobby Tool range with only a slight improvement to function – see there is some positive improvement here. The mouldline remover is still best in class for what it does and not the worst price in the world.

But if you are of an appropriate age, you’ll soon replace that mouldline remover with a knife, if it’s the Citadel Knife, cool. That’s not a bad choice. The rubbery shell is an addition to comfort. The rounded body has a comfortable girth to be held for hours. (grow up) and less to a flat part at the tip so that you can pinch it snugly between your fingers. (seriously, grow up) So what do you I think? I really liked my Micro-Mark seam scraper and if you live in the US, I recommend getting this, as it is cheaper and is able to reach small gaps as well. The Citadel Mouldline Remover is perfectly servicable, with minor limitations. It doesn’t come cheap, but I think it will last a while and when you compare its price tag to specialist hobby tools from Tamiya, it’s not too bad actually. The sharpness is average, the cuts are alright, but I found it difficult to get really close to the components, so there was still a lot of excess plastic I had to cut away. That’s probably because the blades are still rather large, which makes it hard to reach tight areas in a sprue. Still, the build quality is pretty decent, but for the price they’re asking, I would probably invest in a pair of single-blade nippers. Dual vs single-blade

I’m happy to report that in all ways except one, the new mouldline remover is an upgrade. The handle is more ergonomic and less prone to slip. The “blade” of the tool is also narrower, thinner, and has a more swooping curve. This makes it better for use on arms, muscles, pauldrons, etc and makes it easier to dig into crevices to get the last little nibs and nubs. Given the issues with the sprue cutter above, I found myself using it more often than normal on removing leftover sprue and it worked just fine. I have little negative to say about these, they are in every way an improvement over the previous generation, and since no other company out there makes one of any significant merit. (Trust me I tried a couple and they are all rubbish) This is now the best tool out there dedicated to mould-line removal. Despite it’s cheapening. This is perfect for this review as we have a few not-positive things to say. But I also need to apologise to GW, because I’ve been humping their legs for the last 4 years trying to get included in this exclusive club. Only for my first review to be their tools. And whilst I don’t hate them, I don’t love them either.