Plamo: Scratchbuilt Ork Terror Ships (Battlefleet Gothic)

 

Way back in the before times of 2016/2017, I was blogging about model-making. The more things change, the more they stay the same. One project that stalled before completion was my attempt to build an Ork fleet for the long-dead spaceship game Battlefleet Gothic. I think it was the playing of Warhammer 40K proper that did that one in. However, I did not share on here anything of the 2^nd completed Terror Ship, and I'm slightly better with a camera these days, so here we go.

 

Its been a while, so maybe I'm misremembering, but my basic approach here was not to mimic the official models and just make it obviously Orky. I.e. ramshackle and loads of engines, while evoking Ork walkers like the Stompa. Part of that was simply a lack of skill, but also an influence from Gurren Lagann and its big faces motif. These are built a core of knock-off lego and misc plastic, and then dressed with bits, some naval in origin.

So,why am I bringing this up again? Well, I thought I'd tempt fate and try again. I've been in a BFG mood of late, and got lucky with some cheap ships as conversion fodder.

 

Either I'll have something new to show in coming weeks, or I'll never mention it again.

Gunpla: The PFF-X7/J5 Jupitive Gundam (HG BD:RR)

 

 

As previously stated, I was rather impressed with Build Divers Re:Rise. So much so that, yes, I got a version of the protagonist's customised gunpla. Making this model of it both 1/144 and 1/1 scale. And also the most modern gunpla I've attempted, and possibly my favourite. In terms of build quality, engineering, and the process of assembly, the kit was almost flawless. Bandai went all out with this one.

The "Jupitive Gundam" is the Space combat loadout for the otherwise tiny Core Gundam, a suit which prompted some confusion when revealed. Unlike the vast majority of Build, there was no clear inspiration for it, and wasn't obviously a retool in waiting. No, the Core Gundam is "based" on a 1/200 scale version of the old RX78-2, with a selection of planet themed equipment designed by a boy that wanted to be prepared for anything. I suppose I'd personally describe it as not a mere custom so much as a highly ambitious scratchbuild, and/or a toyetic concept Bandai had been itching to try again. This means I should probably break things down a bit. 

 

 

So, the "Core Gundam" is a small and compact mecha, perhaps a third smaller than most gunpla. You build it first, and while construction offers few surprises, it's a pleasant process. Stickers are used for eyes and sensors, but colour separation is otherwise ideal. Joints are a mix of plastic and polycaps, but everything feels fine. I used a grey gundam marker here, and I'm quite pleased with the results. There's limitations around the waist, but otherwise it moves well. The Core Gundam has slightly awkward proportions, like a teen mid-growth-spurt, but it's an entirely satisfactory project by itself. Minor complaint: you only get two hands which like to come apart, but you do get a stand, and small beam blades just for this form. There's an awful lot of beam effects, actually. Bandai must have wanted this to be a show-piece release. 

 

The Jupiter Armour is, as mentioned, rather toyetic. Its a storage rack crossed with a drone, and on those terms, it's OK. It has its own little stand, and the Core Gundam can happily ride it. It however pales in comparison to the Jupitive Gundam, which I did not attempt until after I'd finished photography for the other modes. The armour segments can be *carefully* removed and attached to the little guy, increasing its size/bulk, but with no real loss of mobility. The resulting creation is a space combat behemoth, evoking the RX-78GP01Fb, or perhaps something the Crossbone Vanguard made. There is just an appearance of lithe speed, while still carrying a notably large gun. It's also got its own spin on "bits" remote control drones, which are pretty cool given the beam effects, but you'll need additional stands for best results. 

 

 

This was almost too good.

Plamo: The 30 Minute Missions Cielnova (Dark Grey, + add-ons)

OK, you know how it is. You get money for your birthday, so you indulge in something you wanted without thinking too hard. Hence, a new 30 Minute Mission kit.

 

There's no getting around it, the Cielnova is unusual, or as one mutual commented “baggy trousers”. The top half and bottom half seem to come from different machines, and the accessories are a pistol and a radar disk. All conspire to make for a somewhat awkward look, and possibly my choice of colours don't help. The influence of the Portanova comes mainly in the legs, these taking "interlocking plates" motif to greater extremes. The arms by comparison are long and thin, with offset elbows. It's head and torso are also simpler and proportionally smaller than the Portanova. It's still an easy a build as 30MM kits are, although I found myself having minor issues with polycaps that hold things together. That said, a good pose comes very easily to this thing, as the arms are quite unrestricted, so you can do the James Bond pistol thing. The armour sets for these both add and detract from the unusual proportions. These bulk out the upper body, but add a really big hand for asymmetry. That's both more and less conventional than the Rabiot. I went for the "defensive operations" set as it has a knightly motif going on, with an opening visor. Beyond that, I didn't I have a plan for that beyond complementing colours.

What I ended up doing was more-or-less the same approach I took with my first Alto, using black paint to smooth the differences between parts. I realised that it was possible to bodge some adapter pegs from sprue leftovers, thus allowing me to stow the pistol on the lower leg. After playing around for a bit, I decided to dump the pronged section of the shoulders, and glued the sensor gubbins in their place. Feeling that dakka was needed, I applied a spare weapon from the Loto kit. Detailing was then applied with grey and sepia markers. I seem to have inadvertently created Gundam Seltsam in monochrome, but that's got some style. If something is strange, you lean into it. You don't try and make it normal.

WIP pictures for reference

 

Gunpla: The O Gundam Type A.C.D (Gundam 00)

For the most part, I can take or leave Gundam anime. Sometimes it because the anime is pants, but others it's just me. Gundam 00 hit when I was preoccupied with other stuff, and was neither interesting nor terrible enough to hold my attention. In so far as I have gathered, 00 sounds a fair bit like the core concept of Gundam Wing, except they swapped out the romanticism for real politik, and brought back some of the Genetic Engineering stuff from Seed. That said, I could be wrong, and I'm mainly here for the robots. And the 0 Gundam is that robot, something I got for purely superficial reasons, only to find there was an in-joke at play. Also: photography was a pain in the arse.

The 0 Gundam is noted for being the first of its kind in its universe, and serves as a callback to the original RX78-2 Gundam. This wasn't immediately obvious with its original colour scheme, a rather boring all grey job, but a refit and change of pilot saw it sport parade colours and it became inescapable. This makes it an interesting mix of styles, the overall form evoking the simplicity of the 1979 version, but you also have 00 elements like the chest, and the optional GN drive. There's also a chunk of GM in there too, given its weapon loadout. To hammer the effect home, the 0 Gundam is most famously piloted by a character actually voiced by Tōru Furuya, aka the original Gundam pilot. As that character is the the main antagonist of the show, and uses it in the finale, its hard not to see it all as a meta joke or subversion. This is the sort of trivia that fascinates me. 

 

As kits go, the O Gundam is quite satisfactory but perhaps flimsy. I finished primary construction in an afternoon, and was pleasantly surprised by the joint design, which I felt was better than it needed to be. I do like how some armour segments are cast as one piece, sliding around joint assemblies. The separation of colours is generally good too, with only a modest sticker sheet. There's several places where you'll need to go in with grey or black to offset the sea of white, which I attempted to mixed success, but nothing was really a nuisance. I was actually trying out a new type of marker with this one a “0.05 Unipin Fineline”, which makes a reasonable stand-in for Gundam Marker, but I think I should try it on a less white gunpla. Meanwhile, those long limbs have a good range of motion, and the plastic colours pop. However, the skinny portions and relative simplicity of things mean that the model feels light, with the gun being loose enough in the hand to prompt some irritation. Also, and I mention this as a curiosity, not a criticism, there's two different ports for a flight stand. One actual criticism easily made is that the kit has relatively few accessories for what amounts to a final boss. This is true to the source, but some dynamic hands wouldn't have hurt.

 

In many ways, I didn't appreciate what the O Gundam was. I mean, I got visuals, but I didn't get the history, and I didn't get Bandai was going for with the kit. Its essentially a no-nonsense kit for beginners, where they went simple, but not cheap. The colour separation and engineering is too good to have been phoned in. As such, I can honestly recommend it on those terms. I kinda want to build another as a custom project...

 

 

Remembering: Gunstar Heroes

Gunstar Heroes is amongst the most highly-regarded games of the 16 bit era. Easily a top ten contender on the Genesis/Mega Drive platform, and undoubtedly a must-play for the retrogaming scene. This is mainly due to its creators, the somewhat legendary programming team Treasure, whom broke off from Konami to make some serious games. Games that arguably helped sell a console, or would be discovered as genre classics later on. And the odds are, you've ready played it. Sega published the title and has made it a regular feature of its retro Compilations. The merit of Gunstar Heroes as a run and gun shooter is unassailable at this point, but I want to talk about why I found it awesome. 

 

The game boots up with immediate cutscenes. What's the plot? That's complicated as somebody rewrote it for English speakers, and it's presented in media res, which is a bit high brow for a game mainly about blowing shit up. You get the impression that some bad stuff is going down, only for THAT title screen to hit like a comet, and if you wait a bit you get more exposition, but you're probably none the wiser. Basically, everyone is named after a colour, and bad guys want gems to repair some kind of doomsday robot, so stop them. Cool. So, you press start, choose your control scheme, your starting gun, and 1 of 4 levels, while two characters natter flavour text and tips. You go for the leftmost level, and immediately you have to stop robots from destroying a jungle village. Then you fight a killer plant. Then you climb a pyramid. Then you fight a boss made of boxes. Then you slide down the pyramid. Then you fight a construction robot boss, with a dramatic end of level announcement. Then there's a comedy cutscene where its crew fly off, Team Rocket Style, and your character strikes a pose. Then you're back at the level select screen. Phew.

All the above happens in under 7 minutes. By 16 bit standards, you have what amounts to an entire games worth of action set-pieces, and several games worth of "narrative" in what is the first and least impressive level, plus skippable text. It only gets better from there. This is awesome.

Gunstar Heroes is a game that is at once an easily assessable spectacular, and a mechanically nuanced system for experts. Unlike a majority of its genre, it actually provides numerical health meters for characters and bosses, thus avoiding one-hit kills. This should make the game easier, but it doesn't feel easier. Rather it means that mistakes are yours, and the game is kicking your arse fair and square. Play is more a matter of learning and skill, finding what works for you, rather than rote memorisation and twitch reflexes. You get a huge amount of freedom, from your characters firing stance, the starting weapon, the way weapons combine, and a surprisingly complex melee system. Body-slams, sliding kicks, throws, and an easily missed block, are there if you need them. The game won't punish you for experimenting, but also takes terms like "hard mode" very seriously. It's not cheap, in other words, and the creators clearly wanted you to play this repeatedly because you want to, not because it's so difficult to complete you couldn't do it in a weekend rental. R-Type, I'm looking in your general direction. Everybody can enjoy this, and it's two player co-op, where you can throw your mate as an improvised weapon. 

As a final note: while it does not shine by modern standards, Gunstar Heroes was a significant technical achievement for its day. This is best represented by sprite-scaling masterpiece that was Seven Force, possibly the single greatest boss fight of the 90's. This 7 form monster was almost unreal by Mega Drive standards, and it's obvious how proud they were with it. It's in level 2, where everybody could see it.

Go play Gunstar Heroes, you muppet.

Gunpla: The RX-75-4 Guntank (SD)

I'll admit to not quite getting the whole "super-deformed" thing, especially in relation to mecha. That is to say the Japanese merchandising practice where a character or concept is given the proportions of a toddler and generally cuteified for the purposes of low cost toys and ancillary media. Maybe it's the same cultural phenomenon that gives us mascots. Maybe there's a technological aspect, such things being much easier to make than a completely faithful recreation, at least at the time, and it stuck. There is a prolific and venerable series of video games "Super Robot Wars", and many lesser known Gundam games that started around the Super Famicom days, which stick with the style. I don't know, perhaps somebody whom actually has lived in Japan could comment? I do however know something about the Guntank, and how it is simultaneously a good and bad candidate for the SD treatment.

So, first a word on this kits background. The Guntank is a self-explanatory mecha from the original Gundam TV series. It was very much a transitional design, having been made by Federation engineers who'd heard of Mobile Suits, but not actually seen one. The Guntank was effectively a scaling up of a tank into something big with arms, pre-empting Battletech, via the whole Core Fighter business omitted in kits like this one. As you might imagine, it wasn't a concept that caught on, although it has its fans. There is after all a place for self-propelled artillery. The reason why it is both a good and bad candidate for SD is that it's not humanoid. You can make it a little cuter, but you can't make it a baby, so what you end up with is an inexpensive model that isn't too far from the serious ones do. SD kits often end up compromising on stuff like articulation, but a Guntank doesn't really move and is a torso atop a rhombus, so no loss? 

This isn't the first SD kit I've messed with, but the last was a very long time ago, so the experience was novel. Dated 2001, it's a very simple affair, both when building it, and from a model -making technology perspective. The quality of the materials for example is notably worse than HG, so watch those pegs, this did not do well when it hit the floor, but you get what you pay for. Plastic colours are largely on point, although it's got easy source material. The main difficulty proved to be chest vents, which defied markers, resulting in the application of stickers instead. There is also a surprisingly detailed cockpit with transparent canopy, although you'd have to paint the dude, and the box demonstrates a rather impractical example. I managed to knock this out in an afternoon, most of that time being panel-line stuff and fixing the chest. And it was a good time. I think I get that appeal: small, cheap, easy builds. Would have another. 

Mini-Review: Bomber Crew (PC)

On occasion, I am lucky. I'd been eyeing up this game, Bomber Crew, for a while. I'd felt myself in need of another habit-forming distraction as socialising remained impossible, but I wanted to at least try being financially responsible. So I walked away, patted myself on the back for not wasting money. Then, the very next day, it went on sale. OK, if I were religious in any way, I would have considered that "a sign". So here's a ramble about my experiences. 

Putting aside its adorable, miiverse—alike visuals, Bomber Crew is best described as a game of panicky crisis management. While the control scheme hands you rope to hang yourself with. You're a middle-manager, following set objectives and then delegating, never quite having direct or instaneous responses to your instructions. You have to do stuff like mark targets and waypoints by hand, and your crew will then attempt them. Enevitably, this will involve you ordering someone to switch seats or otherwise run about the plane, as things break and ammo runs low. Or possibly climb out onto a wing to fix an engine. The actual matter of bombing is simple but a little obtuse; just enough for it to become tricky under fire. Things can snowball out of control very easily, as crewmen get hurt, navigators get lost, and engines drop off. Unless you can already micromanage well, this makes for something of a steep learning curve, and I restarted the campaign several times before I found my rhythm. Things become much easier once ammo feeds and a few special skills become availible taking some of the labour out of proceedings. With that in mind: I recommend taking on those Intel Photos where possible, as these advance the tech tree, and that you remember it's easier to replace a plane than its crew.

Long term strategy meanwhile comes from selecting which missions you attempt and in what order. In addition to obvious stuff like difficulty, some target enemy supply lines whose destruction makes future missions easier, or have an Ace turn up and utterly ruin your day. There is a element of procedural generation to this, which can get samey, although important missions are scripted. Notably, you can't save during Missions either, so the game can be unforgiving, but not nessecarily frustrating in this area. In one memorable instance, I completed a mission only for the plane to crash with all hands lost. The campaign however continued with a crew of understudies and a slightly downgraded bomber. I had to spend a few missions getting back in condition, but I wasn't annoyed, and this reflects well on Bomber Crew. That said, in the latter half of the campaign I soon found myself trapped in loop where by a bomber would have a life expectancy of about 3 Missions, with maybe a couple of crew surviving into the next iteration. This makes me wonder if if the game was trying to tell me something about the nature of human life in wartime, or I'm just crap at it? 

Acknowledging my horrific crew turnover, one criticism I could make of Bomber Crew is its sanitisation of World War 2. That's a weird sentance to write, I know, but bear with me. While nobody should need or expect a history lesson from a game visually similar to Funko Pops, a pinch of home truths, and a spoonful of satire would have helped. Bomber Crew doesn't acknowledge the more controversial aspects of strategic bombing, or why you're doing it. The creators were clearly walking a fine line, and have created a fundamentally good natured game, but they didn't take any risks. So it's not Cannon Fodder, but at least it hasn't mistaken angst for art. Incidentally, there's a scifi spin-off in the works, hopefully that won't have a similar issue.

Matters of tone aside, Bomber Crew is a good little game, that offers fairly distinctive gameplay. While I got this on sale for under 4 quid, I wouldn't have been disappointed at full price.