Transformers: Age of the Primes Micronus Prime

We are a few waves into Age of the Primes now, and it very much seems to have been business as usual. Aside from the Primes themselves, we've been getting a lot of G1 characters, Menasor style combiners, a splattering of other continuities, and a few more repaints than you might like. Yeah, it's basically Legacy again, but not that glorious first wave of Legacy United. The Primes themselves are doing alright, but they were definitely playing things safe. I mean, it's hard to look interesting or cool when you are in the same line as The Fallen, but being an alien carformer with an understated colour scheme wasn't, ahem, gonna set the world alight. Not when The Fallen did that just by standing still too long. Guess which two toys I might be referring to. Anyway. With Onyx Prime that started to change, he's a centaur BTW, and with today's subject we have possibly the most interesting deluxe of recent times. Unfortunately, Micronus gave me a wee case of Buyer’s Remorse, because he simply does not live up to that potential.

Now, Micronus Prime is the god of little guys, and a little guy himself, approximately core class in dimensions and complexity. As the name suggests, his domain is Mini-Cons and any small transformer that partners with another larger one. He's actually the third supernatural entity to have ties to Mini-Cons as a creator, the original being Unicron, although he's the one that's stuck. Micronus appeared in the 2015 Robots in Disguise series, which is now old enough to count as nostalgia, and this toy is very close to that depiction. He's got that very distinctive Prime-era face design, lacking a nose, and his translucent build evoking his look on the show. As a toy, he's somewhat basic, turning into what resembles an Armada style Mini-Con Storage Panel, an Arc Reactor, or less romantically, a hockey puck. The fact the the god of little guys and murder pets transforms into an abstract shape isn’t a shocker. RID2015's Mini-Cons often transformed as such so they could be launched from larger toys, see also cassetteformers, and especially those data disks from Fall of Cybertron. What brings it down is a design/production flaw on my copy that prevents his legs from lining up exactly right in disk mode, but there’s enough give in the plastic to make you think can get there. I would discover during the photoshoot that my attempts to do this seems to have caused stress marks in the knees; I should have known better. Then again, maybe it wasn't me, I've seen a report since that a toy came with that damage.

Anyways, Micronus is otherwise nicely articulated for his size, nicely presented, and has this little Chimera Stone artefact in lieu of a weapon. It plugs in via a 5mm peg, and I honestly kinda forget about it. He’s a lot like that Eject toy from a few years ago, and in isolation, you might wonder where the money is going if he just turns into a shape. The answer is, an exosuit.

 

If Micronus himself looks like a hockey puck, the exosuit he is packaged within looks like the goalie. This seems to have been created from whole cloth to justify the pricepoint, and my initial thought that this was a new take on the Apex Armour from Transformers: Prime, and while that is a stated influence by the designer, it's not actually named as such. There's apparently a bit of Pretender in there too, but I am reminded of a Prime-era exosuit playset in the chest. Visually, it makes for an interesting contrast between it and Micronus, or indeed Transformers in general. It's got a faintly anonymous head, gun fingers, and perhaps more a piloted mech look than Cybertronians in general. It's got a similar build to Micronus, so it's short for a deluxe, but it's stocky. It's also a lot more functional than Micronus is, because this is not only a deluxe-ish robot mode, it's also a bike for him to ride, and a weaponizer mode for use with other toys. It's the meat of the set. What I did notice though as I came to write this post, is that each mode has a  disappointing near-miss quality to it. The robot lacks a waist joint, which I'm inclined to forgive under the circumstances, but the back kibble I'm less fond of. In a stroke of absolute genius, the legs compress into a single big wheel, but the resulting monobike lacks a kickstand and absolutely does not balance by itself. You have to bend the arms down at the elbow for balance, and that's about as involved as the arms get in the transformation. So, while having Micronus ride this is rather adorable, it's flawed. The weaponizer mode meanwhile is simply four chunks, which goes completely unmentioned on the box, and I'm not surprised. I can't be arsed to photograph it. And I can't be arsed to take better photos.

I want to like Micronus Prime more than I do. He's tied to one of my favourite Transformers concepts, and after dozens of routinely competent deluxes, he's actually interesting in concept. He is not, however, that great. Or good at anything in particular. Or interesting in execution. He's passable in lot of things, some of those things being notably unusual, but he doesn't excel at any of them. And its not even failing in any interesting way; I've written about some uneven toys in the past, but at least they sucked in memorable ways or charmed me beyond that. Micronus Prime falls instead into the pit of apathy. There is not some fundamental misunderstanding, a glaring fault, or a lack of creativity. Its a matter of mediocre execution, being neither good enough or bad enough to hold my attention. Mostly alright overall, but wait for a sale, and be careful of the translucent plastic.

Plamo: The Astra Militarum Hydra

 

While I now have a non-trivial number of armydudesmen, I don't have that much experience with the official vehicle models. Aside from the occasional indulgence or bargain, everything I have like that, is some form of kitbash/salvage job. While I have  previously dabbled with the Chimera type vehicles, today's subject is my first new build example, a Hydra.

As a unit, a Hydra sits in a awkward place. Its an anti-air flak tank, designed to inexpensively defend against aircraft. 10th ed, as you may observe, has not been kind to aircraft. They were always an odd fit for 40k anyway, something best saved for the biggest possible games or Epic, so it's perhaps not a shocker that GW is seemingly phasing planes out. It's 28mm scale after all. Perhaps they should take the Knights too, but I digress. So why might you want a Hydra then? Well, in addition to being a relatively cheap tank-shaped object for doing tank things, it gets bonuses against Fly keyword targets. That list includes a great many nuisances that deep strike into your lines and any number of advanced xenos vehicles that think floating is cool. Under ideal circumstances, those autocannons reroll to hit, possibly with Lethal Hits, and then wound on a 2+, with a reroll. Said autocannons do not get as many shots as it looks like they should, which is sad. But these do have a 72 inch range, so it can cover an entire board. I've been thinking of acquiring one for a while, and then I saw one cheap at Brum Toyfair, and here we are.

As a kit, the Hydra is a revised, call it second generation, style of Guard vehicle. The base hull and tracks are visually very similar to the plastics we got in the late 90's, but refined and rationalised. There's no faffing with individual track wheels, which is nice. That's all on its own sprue, with the version specific stuff on its own separate sprue, which in this case involves the Wyvern as an alternative build. This does look like a simple thing to magnetise, but I couldn't be arsed. The Wyvern is currently a solution in search of a problem, and while hoards may well come back into fashion soon, I'm not short on blast weapons. While a largely straightforward build, two odd flaws presented themselves. The first was that while the Hydra sprue had numbered parts, the track/hull sprue did not. Odd, if harmless. The second is more involved and takes a moment to explain. The Hydra features crewmen models and an open structure, with the ability rotate the business end as a big turret. Now, the sensible thing to do in such a build is to paint the crew separately, you don't have the space to do otherwise, but here comes the problem. The gunner is holding on to the controls and acting as a linchpin for the rotation. Odd, and annoying to work around. As a kit its fine, inoffensive, but maybe 10% more involved than it needed to be. But then again, I’ve never been a fan of exposed crewmen on vehicles anyway, so maybe I’m being unfair?

I made a dumbass mistake with this one, I assembled the guns in the wrong order, which is why the barrels are a bit shorter than usual. I kitbashed a crude hunter killer missile, but only built one crew model, which received a headswap and green stuff rags. You only really need one for this tank, and the other looks good for use in a command squad or similar.  Painting was then achieved via spraycan, drybrush and wash techniques. I’ve got nothing especially interesting to say here, these methods work well-enough, despite my mistakes. Which unfortunately include the crew controls, as that big screen was a problem.

I’m not especially happy with this model as a project. But I suppose its good enough for the gaming table.