Chronocidal

My personal favorite display method is usually having valks standing on their open feet in fighter mode. That usually works pretty well, except for the fact that the Yamato VF-19 feet are sloppy, and the Bandai's feet can't actually extend in fighter mode.

Probably.. but I think I still would have taken that over what we got. For all of their problems, I can still appreciate the story of the prequel movies, independently of watching them. I can't say anything like that about the sequels.

That counting the original Yamato YF-19 releases as well, or just everything released after the Fire Valk? I can definitely sympathize though, the 19 is the only mold I have almost as many of as I do VF-1s. I usually compulsively buy at least three of every release.

Whether it was a good vision or not, it was a single vision, which I still think would have come out better than what we got, especially if they had found people willing to tell him "no" when he needed to hear it. I'm really just stocking up on popcorn though, because I'm incredibly curious just where they plan on going. Taking this route now feels like taking a submarine to torpedo the wreckage of the Titanic, just out of spite.

Sheeeesh, about freakin time someone made a new shuttle toy. Looks like an ideal size, too. The last one I remember was the semi SD Action Fleet one in the 90s. I was hoping Bandai would actually make a kit of it, but they seem to have gone completely silent on producing more Star Wars kits.

Yeeeeaaahhh... Imagine they had actually just run with that story from the start. It would have actually been a story.

I never disliked Rey as a character concept.. but she got railroaded into a 30 plotline pileup and never actually got any space to develop as a character in her own right. There was never any risk of any kind to her, because it was obvious from the start that they would never let her fail at anything. For whatever anyone else thinks of all the "toxic" fans breaking down the sequels, I really do think she was written as such a blank slate to slip into the role of an audience self-insert for whoever was watching. I'm pretty much checked out at this point, so I'm past the point of caring what they do, but if they want to have any hope of making something worthwhile out of the steaming pile the sequels left, the very least they need is a single coherent story to tell before anything else happens. The JJ/Rian plot slapfight was worthy of an old-fashioned Celebrity Deathmatch.

If you think the Arcadia is complex, go watch someone try to massage the Bandai DX version back into fighter mode. That thing is next-level mecha origami. The Yamato/Arcadia VF-19 mold is a relaxing walk in the park compared to that thing.

Thanks, basically the same price across the board it looks like. Will give them a shot, and see what happens.

Can't say for the entire set, but the studs visible in the photo do have the logo, so I'm guessing they're probably the real deal.

I didn't even see this one get announced, so same here. I'll probably just go through BBTS on this one, once it pops.. or maybe try AmiAmi once they load? Would prefer the cheap exchange rate, but BBTS shipping makes up for a lot of the difference.

This is a good point, that's a huge step in the right direction, compared with all of the previous versions that just used slopes or angled vertical bricks. I do wish they'd done a little more to slope the upper surface though, it's still really flat. I am hoping someone will come up with a better option for the chunky sides on the nosecone though. I still think the custom canopy is driving everything they do though, and they really need to ditch it. It's far too shallow, and tapers the wrong way, and I think the size it is would actually be driving toward a five stud diameter on the engines, if it were to be in scale.

So, this is probably mostly my own headcanon, but I never saw the problem with having intakes in space, for two reasons: 1- The engines might be able to use an air-breathing mode in atmosphere for better fuel efficiency. 2- There's really no detriment to having them, and I think there's at least one comic that demonstrates some kind of emergency reverser mechanism using them. I'm pretty sure 1 is actually part of the canon tech used in the VF-1's reaction engines, to allow them almost unlimited operation in atmosphere.

FREAKING FINALLY. Cannot believe it took them this long to make the engines bigger than a 4-stud diameter. That actually looks almost comparable to the custom version I had started to build up in CAD. Of course.. they had to keep using that stupid single-piece canopy, and while they enlarged the engines, they also overdid it without making the rest of the ship bigger, so now they just look gargantuan. Still.. that's gotten a lot better overall. Just need the guns in 3-stud diameter to get them in scale, and bulk up the entire thing a bit.. It's got potential. I might have to grab one. This one would be quite a bit bigger.. but I'd absolutely grab at least one

Happy to say I got mine delivered, and while the shoulders were a little tight, it wasn't anything that stopped them from moving. I loosened the screws a little to give them room to breathe easily. To start, two observations.. First, I still wish Arcadia would go back to their original "premium finish" without the panel lining. It's not terrible or anything, but there are some rather sloppy spots where it looks like someone just scribbled with a pencil, and others where they just drew lines along body contours that aren't actually panel lines, and it added a weirdly unnecessary accent to that corner. I think they did add a clearcoat to the whole thing though, none of it was scratching off when I tried to clean up one of the sloppy lines. Second.. am I just missing something, or were they never intending to print the U.N. SPACY on the legs and fast packs? Or did they just forget it? Maybe it's one of those ones people couldn't decide on? I really don't care one way or another about that particular marking, I'm honestly just curious. So.. after pulling it out and admiring it, testing the shoulders, checking it out.. I started disassembling it. I was actually very happy to see that they didn't get any glue on the screw covers under the wing gloves. They were just snapped in, and I was able to pry them out with a fingernail in a matter of seconds, unlike my original release, which I probably spent an hour carefully trying to jimmy them with a razor blade. On the other hand, this one had a lot more glue between the wing glove halves, but nothing too hard to separate with patience. They came apart easily, and while the wings were pretty well glued, it didn't take much pressure to pop the seam enough to pull out the swingbars with no damage to anything. One thing I do like is that there really isn't any reason to replace the screws holding the wing gloves to the legs. Those sockets are plenty tight to hold the wings steady, and it makes them easy to just pull off if I need to. Pulled the swingbars out, swapped in a pair of my POM hinge replacements (I used my metal ones on my frequent swoosher), reassembled, and the wings are now locked solidly against the legs in fighter mode. I can't actually tell if the hardpoints are canted out at all, it's close enough that it might be an optical illusion. The only sign that I did anything at all is that the wing gloves have a small gap along the leading edge, since the parts don't stay entirely closed without glue. If I was sure I wouldn't ever want to put those hinges back, I'd re-glue them, but I like keeping the option open if those plastic hinges ever break. Overall, really happy to finally have one with all the markings, and I'll probably just keep it in fighter mode for display, and mess with the others if I want to transform one.

Speaking of overly tight parts.. Does that happen to apply to the intake covers as well? Those were always really loose, so it wouldn't hurt for them to stay in a little better on this release.

You know what's funny to me.. looking more closely at this YF-19 years later, it always bugged me that the gunpod looks like it's drooping when on the gear. But.. it's really not. The nose gear is just kind of short. The gunpod does droop a tiny amount, but it's almost level with the wings in the profile view, and considering it would probably fly nose-high anyhow, it's probably pretty close to aligned straight forward in flight.

Don't know about the shoulder launchers, but there is a hardpoint visible on the bottom of the folded wing.

That's.. actually weird. Is that molded as a single piece? That's probably the easiest one to repair though, of the three sorts of breakage reported so far.

Don't know if this has been posted here before (I didn't see it, but that doesn't mean much ) but I'm kind of amazed at what people can pull off with Kerbal.

I went digging through the archives (180 pages of posts worth ) and dug up a few key points from the original YF-19 release thread. We might want to pin these in some way to keep them easy to find. Where to file the edges of the backplate to avoid scratching the nose point: Location where the spine can get scratched by the backplate: Original post about the wing mounting solution I came up with: Shortly after that post is one that contains a link to a Shapeways version of the neck cover for fighter, in case anyone loses it.

For the things that have been shown to break, I believe both versions can be fixed by adjusting the screws holding the shoulders. The recent one that twisted off the entire pauldron should be able to be fixed by loosening the screw under the shoulder mount like I did, and the previous ones can be accessed after removing the arm from the shoulder by that same screw. If the arms are so tight that they're breaking after loosening the screws, I think that'll be an entirely different level of issue. But for now, just play it safe, and don't try and force anything to move if it doesn't want to. Edit: As a reminder, given it's been a while.. keep in mind that you may need to do things to protect the paint around the spine and front of the cockpit. The black panel behind the canopy can get scratched by the spine rubbing it, and the place where the cockpit fits behind the head under the coverplate with the 4 thrusters on it can scratch the black paint on either side of the very front of the cockpit. I filed the hinges (metal) of the backplate so they wouldn't scratch on either side of the canopy, and put a piece of masking tape on the spine to cover where it can be scratched in battroid.

Beautiful! Out of curiosity, how floppy are the wing hinges? Probably wishful thinking, but that's one thing I wouldn't mind them gumming up with weathering gunk.

Hey, they've gotta come up with some way to use all that extra internal space the Enterprise acquired. Starfleet must have made contact with Gallifrey and acquired TARDIS technology. Scale shenaniganry aside, I do have to give them credit for their handling of the visual update of the original TOS design. It's the first new starship design I really wanted a model of in quite some time.

Ok, yeah, at this point I'm highly suspicious of two things: 1. They probably gave everything a weathering coat, and it's gumming up the works. 2. The people breaking these things might be ham-fisting the transformation and trying to force things to move instead of doing the smart thing and loosening the screws first, because they're absolutely accessible. I'm not even sure I'm going to attempt to transform mine when it arrives. I always intended to display it in fighter mode anyhow.