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Chronocidal

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  1. Chronocidal
    Yeah, the incompletion is annoying, but that's part of why I wound up grabbing two of the armor pack sets. Worst case, I can just put them on Arad and Chuck, and call it a day. I'm not even sure if Chuck's armor pack was repainted compared with Arad's. The orange always felt like a better color match for him anyhow. Bandai really just needs to re-release the super packs for all of them, and include the sound booster. Including it with a third re-release of Hayate's plane is just ludicrous.
  2. Chronocidal
    The only experience I have with the Mecha Colle series is one of the Sv-262Ba kits I picked up, which went together very easily, but the decals are (as expected) a screen-printed mess of stickers that I'm going to ignore. From my measurements, that one is very close to 1/200 scale. I also grabbed a few of the VF-171s they made, and just plan to decorate them by hand. These TomyTec kits from Macross Delta though are all 1/144 (same as the small-scale Star Wars fighters), and the VF-31s all come out to about 5.5 inches long. These kits are completely pre-printed with all of the paint and markings. That's part of my reason for not wanting to mess with gluing them, since I would have had to scrape away paint on the contacting surfaces. Fortunately the fit is good enough to not need any sanding or puttying, or it would ruin the printing. As a side note, I grabbed a pair of the Ace Combat Morgan kits from the HLJ sale, which are also in 1/144 scale. Those are each almost 7 inches long.. that plane is just huge.
  3. Chronocidal
    What's actually more interesting to me from that angle is how many joints and individual panels are visible. The way the upper spine looks like it's designed to collapse in on itself is pretty fascinating, whether I like the look or not.
  4. Chronocidal
    I think the key difference for me tends to be the line between "visible underneath" and "visible from the side" (or even, visible from everywhere, in some cases). If you can see parts of the robot from directly underneath, that's really not a surprise. Very few transformers of any type can hide everything if you look at them from underneath. It's the fact that this plane has another plane's worth of thickness underneath dragging on the ground that puts me off the design, I'm glad people enjoy it, and the bot is fantastic, but the chunk of robot dragging underneath just kills it for me.
  5. Chronocidal

    Hi-Metal R

    Chronocidal replied to joppewo's topic in Toys

    You know.. zooming in on that pin makes me curious. Don't the teeth on those spring pins usually mesh? That one looks like it might have been oversprung, or twisted, and the teeth colliding meant the pin was forced to a larger diameter than intended.
  6. Chronocidal
    Not sure what platform he's on, but my guess would be the forum update caused some shenanigans. I know the forum has not been able to load properly on my phone for quite a while, but that's my own fault for owning an old phone. Decided to keep going on my small scale marathon, and build up the Tomytec Delta kits I bought ages ago. Nice little kits, and some really fine detail for such tiny models, but not without a few little drawbacks I decided to forego any glue on these, mostly just because I need to buy more thin glue before I can attempt gluing anything this small. For the most part, they stay together without it. What I did with a few key parts on the 31s was to add a layer of cellophane tape around tabs or pegs to get enough friction, and that was enough to hold any loose parts in place. Hayate's and Mirage's came out pretty well, though the paint work was a little sloppy on both. Hayate's had one of the blue stripes on the side of the nose quite blurred, while Mirage's had issues with paint colors, and there are at least three or four distinct shades of pink, red, magenta, maroon, or whatever else you want to call it on her plane. The 31A is just beautiful as always, though the fit around the nose isn't quite as good as the other 31s. Unfortunately, the 262 is not at all capable of staying together without glue. The parts just don't have anything substantial to stick together without actual glue, so that one will have to wait until I get some thin cement. Detailing on all of these is absolutely exquisite, but I think the biggest drawback to these little kits is that the stands are... insufficient. The bases are so tiny as to be questionable whether they would hold up against a stiff breeze, and the choice to mold the mounts in clear plastic doesn't help, since the tiny ball-jointed pegs tend to cause stress fractures in the sockets, and leave them too limp to even support kits of this miniscule size. The off-center mounts on the 31s don't help either, leaving them prone to tipping back until the noise is straight up. This is definitely making me look forward to putting together the Hasegawa 31A I picked up, just need to ship it from HLJ once I get another pile of stuff ready to go. I did cave and pick up a couple of the Ace Combat models on sale, so I might put up some pics/details about those once I get the parts trimmed and fitted.
  7. Chronocidal
    Clearly, since if he'd landed, he'd be a meteorite.
  8. Chronocidal

    Hi-Metal R

    Chronocidal replied to joppewo's topic in Toys

    I want to say it's kind of fortunate that the breakpoint is mostly hidden? If you can disassemble the joint, it's not a complex mechanism, and you might be able to just mount a metal clip of some type in there to hold that bar.
  9. Chronocidal
    Yeah, the vocal mixes aren't the greatest, or at least don't match what they're trying to do with the 3D bits. They turned Mylene into a dancer rather than a bass player, and it messes with the band setup somewhat. That being said, I never felt Mylene's singer was a good pairing with Basara's. Their singing styles felt too different, and he just overpowers her in almost everything they do together. I know Chie Kaijura can absolutely sing from her solo pieces, but Fukuyama is just crazy powerful, and her more subtle harmonies get lost in the blast. This is one very strange case where I actually like the Fire Bomber American voice mix better. That Mylene had a deeper voice, as I recall, and her harmonies came out much stronger.
  10. Chronocidal

    Bandai DX VF-31

    Chronocidal replied to UN Spacy's topic in Toys

    They definitely all had them throughout the series. The comments are more that Bandai has just ignored that they exist, and never released them.
  11. Chronocidal
    Has Bandai even hinted at any new Delta merchandise in the past year? Ignoring the (third) re-release of Hayate, of course. Really feels like they just straight up abandoned that line (and the HMR, even) to focus on the VF-1. I'd straight up take a 1/72 31A transforming kit and call it a win at this point, because it seems like kits are all we're going to get.
  12. Chronocidal
    Really a beautiful job, I love how cleanly this kit goes together, and it is definitely quite swooshable. I'm still in the assembly stage of mine, and needed some spare parts after the clear warp grilles and deflector cracked, but I also made a few structural tweaks to the nacelles to get rid of as much sag as possible.
  13. Chronocidal
    That just makes me even more sad that the Airwolf one wasn't real. I think I need this, the Airwolf, and an A-Team van..
  14. Chronocidal

    Bandai DX VF-31

    Chronocidal replied to UN Spacy's topic in Toys

    I'll be in for more 31As, but the armor is just a heavy mess of too much junk. Random goofy question by the way.. how many super pack releases do we even have? I know I've got Hayate, Mirage and Messer.. did we ever get Arad's set? I'm pretty sure we never got Chuck's, but I honestly can't remember Arad's, since at that point they started including the reaction missiles with the base valks.
  15. Chronocidal
    So here's another unique item I picked up, kind of a crossover between hobbies. This little 3D printing group has licensed several of the designs for Star Citizen, and is making some official kits of the ships. Not what I would call "cheap," but I think they're competitively priced for what you would see with resin garage kits. They've gone all-in on the sort of in-universe marketing typical of the game, and packaged this more like a collectible, with custom foam layers to support each of the major printed part groups. Maybe overkill, but I received the kit shipped from the UK in perfect shape, so I'm not going to question it. I'd love to know what printer they are using for these, because while I can see some of the typical layering artifacts on some of the smaller parts, they are very subtle, and the model has some of the finest printed detail I've ever seen. Yes, that's a 1/100 ejection seat with an attached ejection handle. The kit came with a stack of tiny magnets and alternate parts to allow you to swap the wings and landing gear between flight and ground displays. The only work I've done so far was some minor print support cleanup, and gluing the magnets in place. Really looking forward to detailing this one up. Only disappointing thing I can say is that the printed resin canopy is fragile. I managed to snap the rear portion in half very easily with minor pressure trying to get it to seat properly. Fortunately the printers were quite happy to send me a free replacement, but I may actually try to make my own from another material. It's impressive that they were able to print something as transparent as this one is, but the material is far too brittle to hold up to any polishing, and I think the shape is angular enough to make a fair replacement with either clear styrene or something like clear bubble packaging. I'm really hoping they'll make more of these. This is probably my second favorite ship in the game, after another of the light fighters called the Gladius, which looks straight out of the classic Wing Commander games. I'm going to see if I can't request that one, and possibly offer my help in producing these kits.
  16. Chronocidal
    I know some folks like the pope hat, but I never think it compares to how intimidating the Hs anubis head is. Really really want the Ba version released. That custom looks like it has a hybrid Hs/Ba wing design, so I'm thinking he clipped off and filled in the stock wings to make that design. I'm starting to wonder how difficult it would be to make a custom replacement set. The other big question I have is whether anyone has found a paint that matches the gold on Keith's to touch up the inevitable flaking from transformation. It's got more of a copper tone than most gold paints I've tried.
  17. Chronocidal
    See, I would too, but honestly, I think the 262 has one of the best battroid modes in the franchise. The design really stands out against all of the others, partly for the head design, and partly for the overall proportions. The beefy legs remind me a little of the VF-17, and it looks like a bruiser, especially with the sword and shield. If we ever get a Mirage 262, I'll definitely buy at least two, plus a few of the other Windermere knights' fighters, especially if we get the Elvis versions.
  18. Chronocidal
    Update on how these Mirage 262s built up, you can definitely get a few nice variations based on which parts you use, but there are also some limits due to certain parts only being available in one color. Here's a pair of pics of how I built mine up. The "official" arrangement of parts depends on reading Japanese labels for the colors, but these two were built using specifically either all the white, or all magenta. This can't quite be done with a single kit. The overall scheme is a pattern of magenta on top, and white on the bottom, and while some of the parts have extras of the opposite set, some of the white and magenta parts came with only one tree of what would be a matched pair in one of the other kits. There are a ton of smaller black/charcoal components that make little details, but no major fuselage components you can see from the exterior. The largest black components I could make are the cockpit fuselage area, and the tail. The way this is broken down is that one kit was using as many white components as possible, while the other was made with as much magenta as is possible. The wings, nose/head section, and cockpit frame came only in white, while the intakes (and the parts making the connected stripe) and arm cannon details only came in magenta. I think the white scheme works out the better of the two, but I think a purple canopy frame would be nice, and blend into the stripe on top. Comparing this to the official scheme, I think I actually like the white one better. The purple is okay, but the white wings stick out. Oh, and because of the extra sprue shenanigans, here's the pile of extra pieces. This is primarily the exterior bits, since the internal structure of the kit is mostly contained on separate sprues made from ABS, and didn't have any reason to be duplicated. I do wish there was room to get built-in hands on these kits, but overall the transformation is just smooth, and I find myself fiddling with these quite a bit... Except for the head. The head transformation is ridiculous, and sends pieces flying everywhere. Given the option, I would replace all of them with the anubis head version, since it just works better, and looks great.
  19. Chronocidal
    I've picked up a pair of each of the transforming 262 kits, and partsforming aspects aside, I find them all really fun to transform back and forth. They really need smaller hands though. The thing to keep in mind is that the mold has a few pretty serious weak points that can lead to parts snapping due to stress. I detailed a few of those in the dedicated model topic, but the biggest to be aware of is the long thin piece that attaches the wings to the hinges above the intakes. Those have a tendency to develop a stress mark along the thinnest cross-section, and are very susceptible to torsion and flexing from transforming the wings, especially while rotating the outer wing panels around. The panels are hollow on the backside, so there's some room for reinforcement. It's pretty easy to cut some sheet styrene to fit in the hollowed-out area. Far as the DX goes, I really was hoping that even if none of the knights was popular enough for a Ba release, at least Mirage is (nominally) a main character, right? Yeah, I don't know what Bandai is doing at this point. Hayate gets release after re-release after re-re-release, and it seems like Bandai has no interest of giving two shakes about any other character now. I honestly wonder if Mirage would out-sell Keith, if they did release her 262 at this point.
  20. Chronocidal
    Forgot about the VF-27s.. and they made multiples of those, so who knows... actually they made four of them, because they made the original Brera and Grace, and then did a revised version of each. After building Mirage's 262Ba kit though.. I'm re-convinced that at least one of the reasons we haven't seen a DX of it yet is because the head transformation is just a freaking nightmare. The model kit is just a disaster of tiny intricate parts that pop off if you look at them sideways. I'm not at all sure Bandai could make that transformation workable on a toy.
  21. Chronocidal
    So this is a little wacky, and a bit late, but I just had my pair of Mirage Sv-262s shipped.. They're each about a kit and a half. So.. in order to get the proper parts coloring breakdown for her particular scheme, this kit includes multiple copies of several portions of the kit, in different colors. I'm counting four and five copies of some parts sprues, scattered between light gray, black, and magenta plastic. I think there's going to be a lot of interesting ways to color this kit, just from mixing and matching the extra parts. I think I can almost get a primarily gray 262 out of it, or a fully magenta one. It will be interesting to see what combos I can make.
  22. Chronocidal
    I don't think we can call any of these releases a post-armistice version until we get a dual-audio remaster.
  23. Chronocidal
    Ok, that takes me back. My first sim was F-15 Strike Eagle II. In this age of hyper-realistic sims, it's really interesting seeing them basically do a straight engine and performance upgrade from the old games, but not really change the look at all.
  24. Chronocidal
    Definitely a crazy price, but I believe that's at least partly due to the size. If I heard correctly, it's 44 inches long. Don't know why the dimensions got left off the images, they're clearly meant to be labeled. That's a massive chunky centerpiece of a toy. The Polar Lights 1/350 kit? That one's only 32 inches. This is roughly 1/250 scale. I honestly would give it a pass anyhow, because I don't care for the proportions, but despite the playset features, this really can't be called anything but an adult-focused display piece.
  25. Chronocidal
    Oh. Whoa. Ok.. I might not bite on Frontier stuff, but I would be all over Macross Plus.
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