Chronocidal
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Same, I was minorly disappointed that it wasn't the 31A order, but still happy to see progress on this one.
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The VF-31 armor packs are like someone spent an entire day looking at the VF-25 armor, and browsing for "more dakka" memes, thinking, "What else can we glue on this thing?" It's ridiculous, and completely excessive, but I think that's what makes me want it. My favorite parts are the heavyarms-style gatling cannons, and the missile launchers they mounted on the.. other missile launchers.
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It's also far easier to capture the shape of Slave I's hull when you use the correct orientation of slopes.. the UCS version's construction of the lower hull is just a disaster of misused pieces. It would have been incredibly easy to stack slopes and panels in a more shapely manner than what they used. Similarly, the Y-Wing is great, and really beautiful.. if you ignore the cockpit. It's misshapen, undersized, and just badly proportioned compared with the rest of the ship. You know there's a problem because both the tip of the nose and the cockpit are the same width as the smaller minifigure scaled Y-Wing set (which actually looks in proportion for the size). The nose really needs to be at least a stud or two wider, and the cockpit needs a re-design from the ground up, especially the flattened fairing under the nose that could have easily been built from a multitude of other sloped elements. It's really the same issue with Slave I.. the designers seem obsessed with using giant sloped panels to do the job quickly, instead of properly shaping and contouring a model using smaller elements that will look better. I've got a business trip coming up, maybe I'll see about reworking the nose as something to pass the time at the hotel.
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CD Japan started offering proxy service for certain items now, which I didn't know about until this whole issue started up.
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Frankly, the only reason I've used them in the past couple of years was to acquire exclusives. Now that other shops are carrying those, I've got less of a reason to bother with them. On the plus side, I won't have to be concerned about their freaking half-screen porn figure ads popping up on my account page.
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It certainly looks like they remodeled them, but the reason they're a problem is because the heels on the VF-19 Advance were actually too thin to be used on the YF-19, and it's simpler to just replace the feet than redesign the entire foot to work correctly. The toe and heel are just both out of proportion. I tested it with my Advance, and you can actually realign the foot somewhat by pushing it down so that the exhaust duct is more centered in the leg. It means the foot isn't pushed all the way inside, but doing that leaves a gap above the heel that might result in a streamlined and centered foot on the YF-19. If all else fails, the plastic heel covers on the Advance are very easy to remove, and unless they drastically redesigned the entire heel block, it should be simple to either modify or replace the heel covers.
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Yeah, Bandai are fairly notorious for not offering replacements. What I would recommend though is asking your dealer to open up and check the replacement to make sure you don't get a repeat. In the case of the swapped boxes though, the good part of that is that it's a fairly unobtrusive piece, and relatively easy to either modify or make a full replacement for, compared with getting a complete duplicate leg armor pack. I think it might be a good start to just mount new pegs to mount the leg armor on the opposite side of the box, but the boxes aren't quite symmetrical, and the mounting pegs and holes for the legs might need some work as well. You might be able to just get a 3D print and paint it to match, though, if modding it doesn't work.
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Avengers: Infinity War - in theaters April 27, 2018
Chronocidal replied to azrael's topic in Anime or Science Fiction
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I only ever had one leg break, but it was absolutely catastrophic. That knee shattered into a pile of splinters that is never going to function again. I actually purchased a pair of broken and battered CFs to use as spare parts on my original pair.. Between the four, I've put together two completely functional ones, and one with replacement shoulder triangles from Shapeways that's good for battroid.
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Your most recent Macross or toy purchase! General thread.
Chronocidal replied to Gakken85's topic in Hall Of The Super Topics
Yeah, the VF-17 and VF-19 releases all fell around $250 roughly at release. Exchange rate fluctuations around that time played havoc with it too, and some of those came closer to $300, if I recall. -
Your most recent Macross or toy purchase! General thread.
Chronocidal replied to Gakken85's topic in Hall Of The Super Topics
Honestly, that's what, like $100 off the original retail price? That's nothing to sneeze at! The 17S is a beast, you can put one in fighter and one in battroid that way. -
Your most recent Macross or toy purchase! General thread.
Chronocidal replied to Gakken85's topic in Hall Of The Super Topics
I definitely follow this strategy for certain releases, especially if I intend to modify anything about them. One to keep mint, one to mess with and zoom about, and one to modify. That way, if I mess up anything on the modification, I don't feel bad about disassembling the second copy to assist in coming up with a fix. For Bandai releases in particular though, my experiences with the 171 drove me to purchase doubles. I figure out of the pair, I should at least be able to put together a single functional valk. That's been borne out in practice too, since it seems like one out of every pair has some flaw, or missing piece, or misprinted tampo, or something. Those "duds" are the ones I transform and play around with; since they're already flawed, I don't worry about messing them up further. -
So, I almost had the same thing happen, or thought I did at first. When I went to put the first leg panel on mine, it wouldn't go, and I realized the mounting block was backwards. Fortunately, the blocks had just been flipped, and I just had to swap them back. It does illustrate the issue though. The simple fact that they can actually be attached backwards means that someone didn't think through the potential for this sort of screwup, and should have made them only snap on one direction.
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Your most recent Macross or toy purchase! General thread.
Chronocidal replied to Gakken85's topic in Hall Of The Super Topics
If you don't mind a different display angle, and the shelves are high enough, I've had some good success standing a large assortment of valks on their feet in fighter mode. It just takes a little experimentation with the angles of the feet and ankles to make sure they balance well, but they're usually pretty sturdy for me, even on carpet. -
So, that video highlighted something I suspected.. those little probe details around the domes are actually assembled incorrectly, compared with how the designer video shows them. They're supposed to be pressed together. What'd be even better is if they were capped by a slope to blend the front edges in, and I have some ideas about that. I think aside from the nose shape (too thick and not wide enough) and the wonky dome details, this one really nails the look. The hull details are almost a part-for-part match of the Bandai kit, and I actually really like how well those wheel structures work for the trailing ends of the engines. Looks like they were even able to put the vanes inside the back ends of them.
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Forget the stands, I just want them to release the TV style fast packs. I need about eight sets to outfit all my plain CFs and Hikaru 1Js (and 4 more to replace all the miscolored M&M packs )
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Same here.. think it's time to make up a shipment from HLJ soon, I was waiting for this before requesting my PF Milia and Wave VF-4 kits. That's gonna be a big expensive box.
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HG hasn't been able to lift a finger for people buying from shops in Japan, but they pitched a fit when BBTS tried selling the Bandai Frontier valks. They got pulled off sale pretty quick.
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Those gear really wouldn't work in real life without some sort of over-technology suspension joints. The entire shock of landing would need to be absorbed by a torsion joint that's the same diameter as the strut itself. Not to mention, any sort of hard landing would be sending the entire door and strut assembly colliding with the micro missile magazines in the leg. Paint looks great though, love it in VX-9 markings!
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That is an interesting take on the English subtitles. You think Big West might be sowing the seeds of HG's downfall by spreading official Macross material to the world to establish a precedent, and possibly brand recognition apart from HG, even before their licenses run out? I don't know whether that would have any legal effect, but it's going to make HG look even worse if more and more new material starts leaking out of Japan, while they sit twiddling their thumbs and re-releasing Robotech for the umpteenth time.
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Bleh.. I think I'll pick one up just for the base model and parts to use, but it needs some heavy modification. The domes don't look as bad as I thought they would, but I know there are a multitude of other ways to build the engine struts that wouldn't look so ugly as those.. the probes laying alongside the domes are particularly obnoxious to me. They're too big, at the wrong angle, too far apart, and need an end cap to join them. The nose section is kinda okay-ish, but it doesn't look wide enough, and the random plates sticking up for the markings just look sloppy. Aside from those issues though, I think they actually stepped up the detail on the main fuselage quite nicely. Just at a glance at the Fine Molds kit in that pic above, it looks like they've done a ton of work to get the overall shape and greeblie pattern looking accurate to the studio models. Much more so than the cockpit or domes, anyway.
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I want to say, legally, probably not. But unless you have a law degree to defend yourself in court with, I don't think that's going to stop them.
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I've also gotten a couple teasers in my email that we'll be getting a new UCS Y-Wing this year around May 4th. Will be waiting to see the actual details, but it's clear from the teaser that they are still using the dumb blocky printed canopy for it, and the layered plates visible on the nose section really aren't impressing me much. I might grab one as a base to rebuild into something better, since I don't have a Y-Wing yet. Edit: Oh, and they're using a cluster of 3x3 corner dome pieces instead of a single bubble dome for the engine pods. I'm thinking that's going to look lousy in profile, those things are nowhere near the right curvature.
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They've been slowly photoshopping out the error in all their original images with the reversed colors. If you go back through the thread, the early pics sourced from Bandai sites have all been corrected.
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Honestly.. they kind of did. They did such a thorough job of wiping out the Resistance, it's like they only took two movies to wind up right back at where they were at the end of Episode III. I almost wish they would just do another ~20 year timeskip. Maybe by then the First Order will have had time to mature as a whole, and actually live up to the reputation they're supposed to have as bad guys.