Gunpla: The GAT-X102 Duel Gundam With Assault Shroud (HG)

OK, it had been a while since I’d done a gunpla or a 30MM kit. I've done a lot of those, and even the best ones can get samey after a while. So, the ones I do get tend to be impulse purchases, or when I need to kill some time. As I was cat-sitting that day, and having done a lot of 40k stuff in a weekly format, an idle evening putting together a robot seemed like a good idea. For me, this is like sitting down with a good book. Hence the Duel Gundam.

 

Of the original batch of Gundams featured in SEED, and pinched by the eugenics teens of ZAFT, the Duel is the odd one out, and I do like the odd ones out. It was the first prototype, and of course a high-end machine, each subsequent creation had a major gimmick, while the Duel was more of a grunt. This makes it very influential as a test-bed, but its dramatically overshadowed by the others. I mean, simply being the no frills option in a squad that includes a transformer and a mech that turns invisible, is no way to win fans. The ZAFT engineers apparently agreed, and slapped a set of armour and weapons on it with almost indecent speed. You see, the Duel actually had a gimmick all along, the old Full Armour deal. This sees a machine originally designed for agility to be fitted with external armour, something which is usually noted in universe as having the predictable downside, but often you have the option to purge the parts when they stop being useful. I can only assume somebody took a look at the battery powered Phase Shift Armour, went "fuck it", and created a hybrid technology unit from their bitzbox. Armour plates usually don't have a recharge time.

So, I'm not gonna say this kit is bad, but I am gonna say that its very outdated. The box set says 2011, but its actually a 2002 kit with new transfers and a slight tweak to one of its plastic colours. The 'Remaster" the box refers to is a re-release of the anime. And this one hasn't aged gracefully. Articulation is functional, but the elbow and shoulder design is basic even by the standards of polycap builds, and the armour of course gets in the way when applied. Colour separation and accuracy is lacking, especially on the "Assault Shroud" bits. These aren't necessarily fun colours either. Yellow atop blue and sombre grey? I would have preferred you'd done it all in white and let me sort it out. And, of course, we have a the parts-fit and plastic quality of a kit that's two decades old.


This disappointed me somewhat. Whatever am I going to do with you?

Project Chem-Dogs: The Conclusion

Well, this feels like a natural conclusion. Ten weeks of non-stop Astra Militarum, this was a proper hyper-fixation. So, while I gently tap the breaks, what did I achieve with Project Chem-Dogs? 

 

Well, I put together a heavily-themed Guard force, worth approximately 1000 points. Of those, the vast majority of the models feature significant green stuff and kitbash work, the vehicles being the least involved, and infantry being the most. I have achieved a passable Caucasian skin tone, and honed in on painting techniques that allow me to do these quickly and effectively. I figured that I'd be doing a unit a week, but I was doing two overall. The matter of skin was always something that intimidated me, its why I went for gasmasks, but at least I'm in "good enough" territory now. Similar comments can be made re: my troubles with waterslide transfers. I hate them, but I seem to be learning. I also achieved something that just wasn't on the original plan: a gender-balanced force. I suppose doing something like this was inevitable while taking a break from Orks, whom are lads to a boy, trying actual girl models for the first(?) time. This was another thing I'll admit to being a bit intimidated by, as such things as “boobplate” exist, but I find myself leaning into it for the sake of variety. Plus I’ve yet to attract any comments along the lines of “Hur-de-hur, army of thieves and hoes!”, which helps. Finally, I’ve played 40k. I haven’t done that since 8th edition, and I will admit to having a bit of a complex about that given the circumstances of how I stopped playing and the cost angle. I've yet to win a game, but I'm having fun, and I feel I'm doing better each time.

So, I’ve achieved a lot, many things I would not have been inclined to try only a year ago. I’m happy about that. I’m not gonna say that I’m as good with humies as I am with Orks, or that I’m a Golden Demon entrant, but I’m better than I thought I would be. Win. Especially after Project Sulaco not working out. What do I want to do next? Well, in the immediate future, I’m working on a Hellhound, which I’m gonna spin-off into its own article, as it felt natural to do so. You can see it in the picture above. I want to build towards another 500 points, but I want to take a break from the weekly format on Guard, to prevent burnout. As for my next major project? I’m still mulling that over. I do want to something involving the new Ork codex eventually, but my prior issues remain. It feels a little bit like house-keeping just now, and doing a Dread Mob would be repeating myself. Fun, yes. But repeating myself. I need to think a bit more.

Watch this space.

Transformers: ROTB Core/Voyager Optimus Primal is Something That Exists

The 1996 Beast Wars Optimus Primal toy

So, I'm just gonna ramble for a bit here. I picked this up basically because I needed something to do that wasn't, in some way, Project Chem-Dogs. A change of pace. Things were going OK with that, and real/work life was a bit bumpy, but objectively not bad. I have to remind myself of that sometimes. I felt the need to write a Transformers article, but my my most recent Legacy toys were fine, but not blog material. I had also been awaiting that new Tidal Wave, and I certainly would have had something to say there, but the it was starting look like the dispatch was gonna go from May to July on the pre-order. Boo! As a result, I allowed myself the gorilla counterpart to that Optimus Prime toy I liked and painted up. It was similarly a mass market core/voyager release, at 12 quid, so whatever happened, at least I was being borderline adult about it. As it would turn out Tidal Wave would dock later that week, but no harm done.

ROTB Optimus Primal’s wiki picture

 

Now, when it comes to Beast Wars characters, I do not consider myself to be especially familiar. Beast Wars was outside of my nostalgia window, I did watch a lot of Beast Machines on cable, if that counts, and I was mentally elsewhere during Kingdom. But I think I have a pertinent observation to make regarding Optimus Primal. He works best if he's allowed to be fun on occasion. Both as a character and in plastic. As his name implies, originally he was intended to be your basic Optimus Prime archetype, but the Beast Wars cartoon made him a totally different chap, a freighter captain with much less baggage and actual room to grow. And potentially be funny in a way Prime hadn't been allowed to be since the 1986 film. This was important, as when you get right down it, he's a humanoid robot that turns into a humanoid animal, which is kinda underwhelming as transformations go. So the toy needs to do more than that in order to justify the price. And frankly, if you're not playing the silly monkey card with this guy, at least a little, you are only highlighting the problem. Unfortunately, they treat him very seriously these days. The question becomes then, how fun is Rise Of The Beasts Optimus Primal? As a character, I'd say probably not. Its not a fault of voice talent, I want to stress that, whom I’m a fan of. Ron Perlman has his qualifications as voice actor, as well as a regular actor, has done the character before, and his depiction of Hellboy proves he can do fun. The problem is that the writers seemed to take their lead from the relatively recent Machinma cartoons, which Perlman voiced, rather than the 90s cartoon. This leads me to conclude that the writers were idiots, but this sort of crappy adaption is par for the course for the live action movies. Are the toys fun though? That's an interesting one. Most of the mass market toys tend to be more colourful than the animation models at least, and have more fun focus. Is this core/voyager fun? Let’s find out.

 

This toy is packaged in robot mode, so I'll start there. Its based on early concept art, like a lot of these things are, but it passes the glance test. They went for the mouth-plate look, not my first choice, although the piercing blue eyes make up for it. He's mainly grey shades with metallics for robot bits. Animal bits are textured like fur, although the detail is gets a bit lost with the colour choices. There's an unpainted maximal symbol on the chest, that would have benefited from the highlight. Its not a bad look, but I feel an ink wash would do a lot here. There are also has two buttplates, I just wanted to mention that. Play value isn't bad either, there's two swords with dedicated storage tabs, these are very similar to the 90’s toy above, and a level of articulation matching the Legacy standard. So, its a quite acceptable robot mode, with all the joints it needs for sword poses. A Darth Maul is entirely practical, as is a one-legged pose, and this aspect of the toy did grow on me. It moves well, and certainly isn’t unattractive in its way.

 

Putting Primal into beast mode is a topic of legitimate interest, as there is a spark of actual innovation in a scheme that is likely familiar to Primal fans or otherwise guessable. You open up the chest by moving aside two sets of panels, to reveal a block that you pull out and rotate to switch the heads. You then, and this is the clever bit, you close the panels in reverse order, completely changing the look of the torso, a nice touch. Stowing the robot mode feet is less elegant, I find these are tricky to pull out after, and the arms do basically nothing. And the resulting ape? Well, its got much of the same strengths and weaknesses as the robot form. Its just its crouched down, and the articulation in the legs is hampered as a result, and you can’t really move them much without breaking the illusion. The head sculpt is nice, good blue eyes again, and the organic elements are more noticeable, if still downplayed by the greys, but its largely the same experience. And that's adequate given what the toy is based off, but its not much more than that.

 

Adequate is probably the best word to describe this Optimus Primal toy. Its doing the basics with competency, but unlike that Prime, I can't say its punching above its weight. It needed something a little more to justify its original £30 price tag. Maybe different hands for beast mode, more accessories, more paint, a bunch of bananas, I dunno, something. Granted, they are presumably aiming for superficially-screen-accurate-non-gimmick-toy with this, and he's certainly OK by those metrics, but the basic design hits the fundamental issues I discussed above. If your source material is a grey robot whom turns into a grey gorilla, and doesn't have a hugely memorable screen presence, you aren't starting from the best position. It exists, and it was £12. I think I got my money's worth.

To close things out, here's a nice picture of Ron Perlman I found.

 

 

Project Chem-Dogs: Part 9

So this week, I finished off my first 1000 points, and had a game on the Monday.

 

I'll start with the tank. As mentioned, this is a proxy model by Ramshackle Games, the Battledog, assuming that I'm not mixing up the names again. This was built as a Leman Russ Demolisher, and the bulk of it was done last week, what I mainly did here was apply waterslide transfers and weathering. I loathe these, and despite some cautious optimism last week, I lost at least five trying to get them on this tank. You can't rush them, and if they get folded, you are in real trouble. I will likely seek an Aquila piece to recast, and maybe some generic number transfers too, because my failure rate is frankly unacceptable. On the plus side, the use of matt mod podge to smooth the surface and seal the things seems promising. My first tank has also had its numbers replaced with an Aquila which went much smoother. Otherwise, this tank went pretty well. Sufficiently well that the speed of painting is getting pretty near to one of my Orky rust buckets. That's good. Its relaxing.

My main task this week was the three kitbashed/green-stuffed Ogyrns. These are Wargames Atlantic's Landsknecht Ogres, which I can say is another good, versatile kit, but I needed to make them more sci-fi. The work I did to make them fit my themes ended up rather involved, and frankly a bit rougher in sculpt, than I intended. I was leaning into the rags over orange jumpsuit theme, but the trousers had to go further than that, so I ended up adding crude knee-pads and pockets. These models are very fancy by themselves, and they needed to look more like prisoners, and those puffy pants were a challenge. By comparison, the gasmasks were easier, as where the kitbashed bayonets, the larger size of the models making some things easier. I had some issues with the undercoating, I got too close on one of them, but once that was sorted, I painted them in the same manner as my infantry. These came out table worthy, but the larger size seems to highlight weaknesses in my techniques. People seem to like them, though.

Having got these chaps together, I was able to have my first 1000 point game in ages, and it was a rematch with the same guy. One hoped that my Demolisher closely followed by the Ogryns would give the Orks some trouble. We only managed to get three turns in, but it was a close draw when we called it. I made a few rules mistakes, but we both were learning, and I think we both had a good time with it. Having tanks on the table made my force work, and I was pleased to see the Ogryns perform the "bouncer" role with some talent. I think I might retire the autocannon teams, or reshuffle them into infantry squads, but I'll see how I go. My 1000 point list seems workable, but I have ideas to further tune it.

On that subject, I also worked on a Hellhound using parts from my hoarder-level bitzbox, but I’ll save that for a future article I think.

 

Up next: The conclusion, but probably not the end.

Transformers: Legacy United Tidal Wave is Something that Exists

And is huge. Unreasonably, impractically huge. Almost too huge to photograph. Hence the crappier than usual photos taken in my kitchen.

Tidal Wave’s wiki picture, a screen capture from the 2004 Transformers video game

As a casual browse of this blog will quickly reveal, I dig giant robots. But not nessecarily the most giant of giant robots. Over the years I've had a fair few of the modern Titan Class Transformers. The biggest of the big boys, without going to HasLab. We're talking toys with robot modes exceeding 18 inches in height. The novelty of these was high at first, but eventually reality set in and it became routine. I started to run out of space, inflation happened, Predaking was pretty awful, and then Hasbro started to run out of characters that justified the pricepoint in either fame or size. Eventually, I donated most of my titans to Toy-Fu, and swore off the pricepoint as something I couldn't justify to myself. Then this one was announced, and I was pulled back in. In much the same way as Armada Optimus Prime. I sold a BotCon boxset to buy this... So I'm glad it doesn't suck.

A composite screenshot of Tidal Wave in animation

But, I'm getting ahead of myself, who is Tidal Wave? Well, he's another character from Transformers: Armada, the fifth such release to appear of late. He was a big, physically powerful, Decepticon famous for chanting his own name. Not exactly a thinker, he was however noteworthy for having naval-themed altmodes, which is rare, and combining with Megatron, which was unprecedented. How big he actually was a bit variable. The famously shoddy cartoon was inconsistent but generally made him on the large side, while comics and video games made him gigantic. The simply-titled Transformers for the PS2 console had him be both an end of level boss, and the level itself. This was awesome. Much later on, Nick Roche would bring the character back for his Sins of the Wreckers comic, where he was similarly huge. And a whale. This was also awesome. The toy was pretty well-regarded too, people liking its transformation and play features, as while he could split into three seperate boats, it was not mandatory for the transformation to do so. Its actually one of my faves, I dunno if its top 3 material, but its definitely A tier for its line. So, I was very pleased to see him back. And I think I would have been happy for him to be simply adapted into the Commander class with functional knees. But they went Titan for him. And they kinda made him a mixed representation in that he's in Cartoon/Japanese-toy purple and huge, rather than Hasbro/Western-toy green and huge. Maybe there's planned repaints, I don't know. But if he's a titan now, surely he can't combine with Megatron any more? He’s lost that along with the Mini-Con gimmicks these remakes all cut? Well, brace yourself.

Something very odd has happened here. They've created a bunch of integrated accessories that Tidal Wave can pass to Megatron/Galvatron. I refer to these collectively as "miniwave", as these are patterned off Tidal Wave's altmodes, with the addition of platform shoes. There's shades of Astrotrain's coal tender with this, or Blitzwing's hulk-hands, but it is much much sillier than either of those. The whole idea of miniwave is so utterly, utterly dumb, I can't quite decide if its just dumb, or so dumb it ends up being awesome again. Given Tidal Wave is now so big that he's socialising with citiformers, no would of begrudged the designers for dropping the Megatron combination. I mean, they've already dropped Mini-Cons. But no. We have Tidal Wave break off bits of himself, in the likenesses of his altmodes, so Megatron can go to the Met Gala in style. On the one hand, it works, and probably better than the original toys at that. It explains Megatron's odd shoulders, its working off the 5mm port system with ratcheted pegs for stability, and Megs' articulation doesn't suffer really. On the other? Well, Tidal Wave is giving up his fingers for this. You end up with some big gaps, although you can work the thumbs into a claw arrangement. Its also worth admitting that "Burning Megatron" wasn't the most dynamic combination in the first place, and you may only do this once. I don't know if we'd honestly have a better toy if they left this gimmick out. Maybe they could have pushed things further and had those parts do more. Like be a partner robot. Or just having Mini-Cons. But this is just such a weird thing to do, I can't help but respect it.

 

The mini-wave pieces also end up playing a part in the base mode, which is also new. Its one step above a fan mode in terms of complexity, in that it looks unintended until you realise that there's dedicated joints in the thighs to allow for it. There's no ramps or such, although its making good use in of the turrets, which use 5mm pegs. The base mode is also the only form you can go to from robot mode without substantial disassembly, Tidal Wave's old party trick being lost in the embiggening process. While not a selling point, I feel this looks OK, in a low-key, just throw it in sort of way. Most base modes tend to be robot yoga anyway, and its not bad by those standards. Better than Titans Return Fort Max, at least. I will however mention that this form does expose certain hollow bits in the torso block, and a transformation joint that likes to separate on my example. 

 

The robot mode by comparison is ideal. It is, as near as makes no difference, perfect. Like most of these modern remakes, gimmicks have been swapped out for articulation, but in so far as mass market toys go, I don't know how you could do better. I mean, he's a big effing guy, he's covered in details and paint, being excellently presented. He moves better than I expected, with a waist joint, articulated skirt armour and ankle tilts. Ankle tilts! The chest guns all move, and can tilt up so they can fire usefully in robot form. Lots of 5mm ports too if you need more. His hands now feature blasters, and are posable in an industrial robotics kinda way. The head rotates, and can unexpectedly look up, although not down. His hips also took me a bit by surprise in that these give enough to look natural, but no more. In what I can only assume is a concession to his weight, the hips are a limited to about 45 degrees forwards and back. A walking pose is doable, he has knees now, but you can't have him sit. This, combined with the hollowness of his feet, is however as close to an actual flaw the robot mode has. He has an immense presence. He's not trying to be a gymnast. This guy is a juggernaut, no, a dreadnought, striding implacably towards you with no concern for fancy moves or your feeble attacks. If you're not onboard with that, I don't know what I can say to convince you. 

 

Then there's the Dark Fleet modes, yes, modes plural. I did mention that, but that was a few million words ago. Tidal Wave comes apart to form three distinct naval vessels with sci-fi elements, and then be recombined into a very anime space battleship. Following on the original toy, these tend to be a bit simple, with castor wheels on the underside, although obviously larger and more visually pleasing than the source material. Of the three, the battleship segment is the most functional if the weakest in appearance. It looks the least like an actual vehicle, as the head isn't well obscured but its got eight moving turrets, so fair enough. The landing craft or troop carrier is the most scifi, and generally the best looking too, if not having a huge amount going on. Finally, the aircraft carrier is something of a slab, not doing much by itself, but put a couple of core class jets atop and you'd be laughing. I do find the loss of the highly individual play features these previously had to be a bit sad, if not unexpected. I would have fought for that aircraft elevator...

 

Oh, Jesus, this is actually heavy.

 

Ahem. Anyway, putting Tidal Wave into the combined ship form is simple on paper, but there's a lot of mass to manage, not to mention tabs. Once together however the ship is completely solid. Little new is revealed, but it is making the best of what's there, the weaknesses of the battleship being minimised even as the hip joints poke out if the back. The colours make a great deal of sense, the flight deck contrasting nicely with the rest, while the landing craft and battleship match closely. Its got very much the same dreadnought energy as the robot form, which is only more appropriate. This looks like something that would warp in and change an entire battle just by turning up. Perhaps less convincing than say the immediately-preceeding Nemesis, but much much cooler.

As you can probably tell, I rather like Tidal Wave. There's a number of imperfections, but mainly these fall under the heading of personal preference or artistic licence. Its very much what it looks like, a dramatically scaled-up version of the old Giga-Con class toy, which removes gimmickry in favour of articulation and modern engineering. It also goes out of its way to maintain the Megatron combination, which would be harmless and forgettable, if it wasn't so daft. So its harmless and daft instead. If you're an Armada fan, you likely have this already, but if you're not? Well, he's an expensive chap, but he's doing nothing wrong. So if you want something huge and memorable, Tidal Wave is worth considering. And should this end up on deep discount, as Titans can do? Jump on it.

 

This picture is here because I like it.