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SpaceCowboy

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Everything posted by SpaceCowboy

  1. SpaceCowboy
    Oh yeah, it's not the actual physical cost of the plastic for the minis - it's designing them, proofing them, iterating on them, shipping them, making minimum orders, ensure you have factory time, etc - I think all of those other aspects are what makes me nervous about adding minis from pressure of the crowd. But then again, they've been selling macross/robotech minis for a while without the board game, then have sold the board game itself (core), so it seems like they have the experience to make a reasonable call here and not get in over their heads. Which is why I backed them.
  2. SpaceCowboy
    Found out what happened with Dragonball Z Smash Battle after reading the comments in the kickstarter a bit. Basically the license holder in Japan pulled KidsLogic's ability to release anywhere other than Japan. And that was for a game that wasn't made yet. So I'm hoping that they really tried in good faith to deliver and these issues won't be a problem for this game because the base game is already made and has already been released (even stateside). My only concern is that 1) their funding goal is too low (low margins means if anything goes wrong, they end up making less money than they spend) 2) They are caving to making more models for transformation modes they hadn't initially planned. I think a lot of these miniature kickstarters screw themselves by over promising the number of miniatures they can really deliver (see: Palladium). Hope that is not the case here.
  3. SpaceCowboy
    @Chet What happened with the DragonBall Z Smash Battle project? I see that they couldn't deliver, but I can't figure out why. I have a vague notion of not securing licensing rights in certain regions, is that what it was? I'm wondering if this is going to be another Palladium...
  4. SpaceCowboy
    I think the core game (4 minis) came out last year: https://www.bigbadtoystore.com/Product/VariationDetails/156292 But BoardGameGeek doesn't have any reviews on it.
  5. SpaceCowboy
    Has anyone actually played this game yet? I see that it actually came out last year in the core set. It appears to be a Macross coat of paint over an X-Wing Miniatures like game. Is that accurate? Any word on how it plays?
  6. SpaceCowboy
    Anyone see this? Looks like X-Wing mixed with Macross...could be fun. Thinking about backing it, though I never ended up playing the paladium minis game...but this is very tempting.
  7. SpaceCowboy
    I see some of you are into hot wheels/die cast. I bought a few ERTL General Lee's off of ebay and fixed them up. Pretty happy with the results. General Grant could be a bit better. Cutting the water slide decals was a pain. Looks better not so blown up as the picture. I have an idea of doing another one that I think will look a little better.
  8. SpaceCowboy
    Ah, apologies. I can post there if admins can delete this. Thanks!
  9. SpaceCowboy
    So I got into hot wheels recently, which then lead me to wanting to put together a diorama. Then I realized that hot wheels were a bit smaller than the 1/60th scale macross stuff, but probably not noticeably so. So I thought I'd like to make a little street battle scene. Not really sure if I had the time or dedication, I decided I wanted to put one together as cheaply as possible, and I didn't want it to require too much skill. I found some free buildings online. Found some street tiles. Then with some cardboard and a color printer, went to work. The color printer had crappy toner so the buildings have some discoloration in them. Then I don't really know what I'm doing with photoshop, so this is the best I could come up with. But wanted to share nonetheless. If you have tips on building better dioramas or using photoshop, post them here. Otherwise, I just wanted to share what I built up, as I figured some of you might get a kick out of it.
  10. SpaceCowboy
    You can even do it with over the shelf hydrogen peroxide, it just takes longer because the concentrations aren't as high. (that's what I did)
  11. SpaceCowboy
    I've done the peroxide treatment twice - in both cases, the paint mostly dissolves, but I was leaving it outside for weeks to let the sun whiten it enough (I bought some badly yellowed takatoku's off ebay cheap for this purpose). It was fun, but one of them yellowed again a few years later, because it is the chemicals that the plastic was built with, the bromide mix in particular, that causes the yellowing, IIRC. At this point, it might be an interesting experiment to whiten it, then paint it white. Then when the scratches occur, they are more likely to be white on white, so harder to see, and the paint will hide the yellowing.
  12. SpaceCowboy
    I bounced off of War For Cybertron pretty hard. The background music feels unfinished, making the whole series feel a bit flat. But what really is annoying is how dumb Prime is. He makes stupid mistake and moves out of desperation that don't call back to the heroic/wise figure he is in the much more juvenile G1 series. You are watching and thinking "he deserves to get his ass handed to him for walking into such an obvious trap". I only got 2-3 episodes in, so maybe it improves, but it feels like light years ahead in production value, with writing that is straight out of a junior high fan fic notebook. It _really_ wants to be dark and brooding, but the writing just makes it feel try hard.
  13. SpaceCowboy
    I have next week off, I'll see if I can't print off a set, but I nearly guarantee you your shoulders will be loose once you fix it. Maybe others have had better results, but I find separating the shoulder pauldrons to be extremely difficult without breaking them (they are glued together), and once the peg is snapped off, you lose a lot of the tightness that the pauldrons used to secure the shoulder to the body tightly. The swing bar is just stupidly designed. I think you would have to form this in steel or something to prevent breakage. ABS is definitely not strong enough to prevent a millimeter diameter rod to not break with all the torsion that is applied to the arm during transformation. Nevertheless it shouldn't take long to print these parts as they are so small.
  14. SpaceCowboy
    yeah, I think the Yamatos are over hyped on this forum. They look great, but they are so fragile compared to other offerings that they aren't really a good purchase considering how much they cost vs how likely they are to break (and I own a _ton_ of yamatos). The Garland in particular was never great build quality to begin. I remember the first one I got I had to reglue the piece that held the cockpit/handlebars on because it just popped off (the tiny gray piece on either side of the dashboard). I stupidly bought 2 more and kept them in the box and have finally sold them just recently. I've kept my 3d printed shoulder version as a desktop toy, though I question whether I will ever transform it again, as it will most assuredly break.
  15. SpaceCowboy
    I realize this was a while ago, but the shoulder file I posted are recreations of exactly this part. Getting it tight is another issue, and one I never completely solved. (or is this the new Arcadia Garland that this happened to?! :O )
  16. SpaceCowboy
    Yeah, I'm going through my CC now to get it refunded. Don't really care if NY bans my account, they were already on thin ice with me after extremely long delays on previous orders. I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt (MAYBE that was a one off and they really did try) especially after others here said they always came through, but I can't take the lack of response ( starting really politely, staying polite, then only starting to threaten after my claim was marked as "resolved" with no response from them) I feel like we need three tiers of merchants White List - Good to go - these are the ones you want to buy from (HLJ, AmiAmi, etc) Grey List - Questionable. They aren't actively trying to scam you, but they also can't gaurantee you will get what you paid for, and they might keep your money too. I think NY goes here. Black List - Scammers, Avoid at all cost. Essentially, I've realized that NY sort of operate as "pre-scalpers" if that makes any sense. They will sell you product they don't have at a mark up, in the HOPES that they can find some source that is charging less than you paid them to acquire the item. If they can't get it, well, they still have your money, so frakk you.
  17. SpaceCowboy
    So I still don't have my strike parts from Nippon-Yasan - are others still waiting? I opened up a help ticket in July, politely asking when they might be getting stock. No response. I asked again a month later No response. I checked back a few weeks later - they had marked the ticket as resolved. Still no response. I reopened it, asked why it was resolved when it clearly wasn't. No response. I check again a few weeks later. It is marked as resolved again. No response. Paypal won't refund because it is outside their window. I'm going to try to see if Visa will now. Pretty pissed about this. The only "good" thing is it was _only_ $100 strike pack instead of a several hundred dollar valkyrie. Seriously - don't do business with them.
  18. SpaceCowboy
    @Rhubarbarian - THAT makes a lot of sense! Thanks for that piece of info. Now that you mention it, that's exactly what it feels like, a hodge podge of clips from different episodes crammed together to roughly tell the story (a bit like Macross DYRL <ducks>) I need to pick up Part 2 as I've never seen that. Then again, I wouldn't mind just waiting for the new Megazone as well.
  19. SpaceCowboy
    "The new teaser trailer for the current Megazone project just dropped" I'm curious where this is as well. I just watched (rewatched?) Megazone 23 Part 1 last night, and boy is it a mess. I did watch it once like 15 years ago (and also as a kid a la Robotech the Untold story), and this time I really made an effort to pay attention to what was going on, and picked up more of the story, but there are so many scenes that aren't developed properly so that the viewer understands what is going on, nor are scenes given time to breathe so that viewers can take in what is happening. We get like a 2 minute scene where the bike is introduced, a new character is introduced, G-Men come in saying he shouldn't have the bike, but our new character works there, but maybe he's getting in trouble for showing it to Shogo...but apparently that mistake is a death sentence, as they start pulling guns out, then the lights are cut off, and Shogo realizes he needs to steal this bike...while the lights are out...oh, and new character is dead now....it all just happens so fast with no space or probable motivation that if you blink, you will have no clue what is going on the rest of the movie. Shogo and Yui romance seemed very forced and unnatural. It was like watching a Junior High kid write about how romance worked. And then it just...ends. Yes, I get that it is "part 1", but it's essentially a movie. We can have some closure and still set up for a sequel. But alas, it was an OVA, in the mid 80s, so a bit less refined than strides we've made in the last 35 years. That said...it has some really cool ideas that were WAY ahead of its time re: The Matrix, but jesus christ is the writing, pacing, and character development just absolute crap. My wife watched it with me and she commented that the Wachowski's MUST have seen this prior to the Matrix, and that she really liked the ideas behind it, and was happy to hear it might be getting a modern update/retelling. The Garland scenes were an absolute blast to watch. I'd love to see more Garland action in a movie that builds up to make these scenes more emotionally impactful rather than the random distribution we kind of get.
  20. SpaceCowboy
    Got it today! I'm happy to see the new hinge design on the wheels. After reconstructing the 1/15th swing bar, I was thinking about how it could be improved, and this is nearly exactly what I came up with. Looking pretty good. I'll have to keep an eye out if they reissue a 1/24th garland, as I think I'm probably going to sell the 1/15 MIB that I have as I am just assuming that if it isn't broken, it will break the first time it is transformed.
  21. SpaceCowboy
    So here the garland is back in action. As mentioned above, because of the permanent way Yamato attempted to assemble the shoulders, it is very difficult to get them apart without destroying some of the structure that keeps everything tight. The replacement swing bar makes me very nervous, as even in ABS I can easily snap the whole thing with my fingers. I'm curious to see how Arcadia dealt with this with the new Garland. The two engineering problems I see are that the entire weight of the arm is supported only be the swing bar and a magnet. And by swing bar, I mean a 1mm diameter piece of plastic or metal. And both of these are sort of towards the bottom of the wheel. Anyways, here are the STLs if you want to give it a try. The shoulders are the same on each side (at least mine were), but you'll need to mirror the swing bar. leftshoulder.STL swingbar.STL
  22. SpaceCowboy
    Here's my attempt at redesigning the swing bar and shoulder. Jesus is this toy poorly engineered....I'd upload the STL files, but as I was putting together the left arm, the pin broke off in the same damn way that the original piece did. It just has way too much rotational stress on that point. The swing bar really needs to be cast in metal. The shoulders are annoying in that they are all friction fit, and friction fit parts are hard to get right on a home 3D printer. My printer is about 7 years old with a 0.3mm precision, but the difference between something friction fitting and not friction fitting is somewhere between 0.1 and 0.25mm. So I can eventually get this, but it is a very trial and error process. So the arms are able to hold fine raised from the side but not being held straight out in front (holding a gun, for instance). This also might have to do with it being next to impossible to disassemble the shoulder without breaking tabs of some sort. There is a screw underneath the front circle bit on the shoulder(green), but everything is so tight, it's hard to notice that while trying to take it apart. I ended up breaking the cylinder off on both my shoulders thinking it was just the peg glued in that was holding it. Still, I think I'll be able to have it transforming tomorrow. I just need to reprint the left swingbar, then I'll probably post more pictures and the STL files if anyone else wants to take a crack at them.
  23. SpaceCowboy
    Have you posted these files anywhere for those of us with a 3D printer to try out? I just busted out my old Yamato and man, you guys weren't joking about how brittle this plastic has become. But yeah, both swing bars on mine busted immediately on transform, and the shoulder sockets crumbled.
  24. SpaceCowboy
    Awesome - took the plunge - any idea how much DHL shipping will be on that? They have to send me an email to know the shipping amount. I couldn't find dimensions/weight to figure out what it would be.
  25. SpaceCowboy
    I'm just reading up on the Arcadia Garlands. I skipped out on these as I already have like 3 Yamato (1 I've opened and 1 in the box, 1 proto in the box) and felt I didn't need more. But I just read the reviews about how the quality is much improved. However, the cheapest proto garland I can find is $344 which is a bit steep. Do we still think there will be a new release in a year or so? If I could save $100 just waiting for a reissue (of either garland or proto-garland), I think that's what I'll do.
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