Opening the box: Votoms 1/48 AG-VTM03 Chaos Space

As much as I've been working on hacking away at the queue (or more honestly, thinking about doing so), I'm far more successful at adding things to it. On the plus side, of late I've been pretty good at minimizing the genres I'm working on. As noted previously, I'm working on a VASA force with thoughts of using it as an Imperial Guard proxy (when I'm not simply using it as itself in more reasonable game systems). The other force I've been working on is another Imperial Guard type force inspired more by Kevin Dallimore's work for the Hammer's Slammers game. Today's piece had this force in mind.

With HobbyLink Japan running a phenomenal discount on shipping recently, I broke down and ordered a few items I've had my eye on for a while: 1/48 Votoms kits at 70% off. I ordered them on Sunday and promptly got an email telling me they were closed for the weekend, but they would process my order as soon as they opened on Monday. Monday they told me my order had shipped, and that Friday everything arrived. That's better than some stuff I order in country!

On my way out the door to work, the mail truck showed up with my package. I even managed to resist opening it until I got home so that I could finally try documenting one of these. So I present: the box.

From Votoms

They even have their own company boxes, so you can show off to all the other geeks who will lust after your toys!

Opening it up reveals...

From Votoms

Swag!

From Votoms

That they carefully shrink wrapped! My first order from these guys, and I'm definitely pleased.

I picked up the Saint Seiya kits because they were on massive markdown ($4 apiece, or so) and because they'll give me a little practice working with chromed plastic that I need to do before another working on another kit I have. The relevant kits for today are:

From Votoms

I'm very pleased with the production values on these. Nice, matte boxes with great photography to give to an idea of what's in the box and what the model is capable of. Today's kit: Chaos Space!

From Votoms

If only I could actually read Japanese.

Popping open the box reveals...

From Votoms

Not very much on the tray, but underneath we have

From Votoms

Bags upon bags of stuff! And the full package deal:

From Votoms

Before we get to the suit itself, let's take a look inside the baggies. The first one is the display base.

From Votoms

The pegs on the pieces and the holes on the base might lead you to think that there's this wonderful Lego-like free construction ability. Unfortunately, it's pretty much exactly the opposite situation: pegs are set at spaces to precisely fit into a couple of places. Most of the holes are more to hold things like flexible rubber smoke markers and the like.

Ripping into bag number two reveals...

From Votoms

These sprues are of a softer plastic than in the other two bags. I'm not sure how it will take most paint either, though they managed to make *some* kind of paint stick to the smoke and missile effects.

The figures are...

From Votoms

Yeah. Posing and proportions are good, but I wonder whether it was a lack of effort or limitations of the casting material that made for all of the soft detail. I still plan on trying to base and paint them, as they look like they'll be decent unarmed science fiction civilians. However, I'm not expecting to put too much effort into them.

Finally, opening bag #3, we have...

From Votoms

Everything else. All of the armor bits, additional hands, weapons, the pilot, and so on. Paper inserts include...

a datacard, pre-punched for your favorite toy collection binder:

From Votoms

a nameplate standee:

From Votoms

a catalog of other toys:

From Votoms

and the requisite instructions:

From Votoms

The sprues in this set vary in hardness of material, with some of them in styrene and others in the rubbery material shown above. Again, bits of the sprues are pre-painted:

From Votoms

The pilot figure is tucked away on one of the sprues, but it looks a bit small to me. Even comparing it to the smallest of the figures provided, it looks diminutive (though this could be an illusion):

From Votoms

But what about the Votoms itself?

From Votoms

Pretty danged cool! As you can tell, there are very few visible screws holding the thing together, and the paint is subtle, but reasonable enough that it can be left as is. I suspect that if you want to touch up the edges and corners to look a little more abused, the kit would hold it just fine as the bulk of the model is styrene. Articulation abounds, and it's designed to be able to fold forward and pop open to allow for a convenient escape. The head rotates, the lens assembly slides and rotates, elbows, shoulders, ankles, and so on all move quite acceptably.

What does it look like with everything in place?

From Votoms

As an idea, check out the feet here:

From Votoms

The spikes are retractable, for when the unit is firing its cannon. In the words of Eric Cartman, "Sweeet."

Odd details include the slots in the back for the backpack mounting brackets:

From Votoms

This is a small detail on this particular version that you might need to fill in if you want to use it without the massive backpack. (I confess, I'm not familiar with the series or any of the differences between the units.)

Lining everything up, you get

From Votoms

The model is about 3.5" high, so a little shorter than the average Star Wars figure. Unfortunately, the spokesminis seem to be on a little vacation, so comparison photos will need to wait. In the meantime, I can say that eyeballing the Votoms figures vs. an Infinity mini (the Aleph Naga, to be specific) shows them to be right on the money.

Pluses: from what I can tell, it's a spot on sculpt. Scale is quite good, even if I need to compare the pilot vs. some other 1/48 pilot models. And there's nothing saying you can't just mandate that pilots be smaller... I seem to remember the Air Force having height caps. Articulation is sufficient, and the paint is decent. At the discounted price, it's an excellent value.

Minuses: I'm not sure why they chose to model the figures with so little detail, for all of the detail they put into the rest of the set. Some of the detail bits are very fragile: note the left knee in the pics. There's supposed to be a plastic rail there that I managed to snap while getting it in place. I'm planning on replacing it (and a few other bits) with brass rod for added survivability. Finally, there's a lot of parts that are just pressed into place, like the elbow guard extensions and the bum plate. I'm planning on supergluing them in place, but I'd like to make sure that they're all secured before I use this in a game. The clips for the backpack suffer from this fate as well, and I'm not sure if I'd rather have this unit with the pack or not. If I want the pack, the clips need affixing, and if not, the slots will need filling and paint matching. Finally, since it's a pre-assembled toy, there isn't much room for customizing things like limb length (sorry, Inso)

All in all, I'm very happy with the purchase, both from the product point of view and the seller's service. I'm definitely going to have to order more of these... preferably before folks like Frothers swoop in and grab the rest :)

Next up... the Assemble Troopers Marshydog!

A question that comes up from a lot of people new to miniatures gaming is "What scale is 28mm?" Usually these people are looking to find things like model cars and other accessories from sources that are designing for markets like model railroaders, plastic model builders, and the like.

Here's the problem: 28mm isn't a scale so much as a general height that sculptors use as a reference.

So what is a scale? A fair definition that I found was "the proportion that a representation of an object bears to the object itself: a model on a scale of one inch to one foot." So when you're looking for a scale, that measurement will tell you the fraction of the real item's height as compared to the model. If you're looking at a 1/48 scale model, the real thing would be 48 times larger in each dimension. 28mm really doesn't tell you any of that.

To be fair, Wargames Factory has recently started producing miniatures that they are marking as 28mm as well as what their formal scale (1/56) is. However, most miniature manufacturers don't worry about that, and some of them will even be inconsistent in proportions between their own miniature lines (Compare Reaper's Dark Heaven line to their Warlord line sometime and you should see what I mean... Warlord figures tend to be a good 10-20% taller).

All blathering aside, the reason you're really reading this is not to get an idea of the business model or sculpting style of different companies. You want to know what you should be looking for on the shelf so that it will look good when you get it home.






The guest models in these shots are 1/48 humans that were included with some old Tamiya model kits in my collection. It's worth noting that the blue figure is supposed to be shorter than his compatriots, since he's the standard teen anime mecha pilot. You'll note that while the new figures are a little on the tall side, they're not unreasonable in context. That's because a convention of 28mm sculpting is to exaggerate some body features (like hips and facial features) in order for things to still look right at such a small scale. Because the width is similar, they look pretty good together.






Here, the guest models are 1/60 pilot models from old Bandai Gundam Mobile Suits. These models are downright tiny compared to the spokesmodels. Not only are they shorter, but they're also half as wide (if not thinner), which really demonstrates the scale difference between the figures.





The final guest models are 1/64 Farm Country figures from Ertl. There's really no way these figures could work, because they're just way too small. However, I thought it would be worth showing them, because 1/64 is the default scale for Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars. These figures will also make a comeback when I introduce some terrain pieces that were once highly sought after, and are now mostly garage sale fodder.

So there you have it... call it 1/55, but going a little bigger (to 1/50 or 1/48) should still look good for most items.

Feeling a little rusty, Tin Man?

One of my recent projects has been an "Oz" themed Imperial Guard force. I'm not going strictly for looks based on the books, more trying to tie units to names. Troop dropships will be gumps (though likely without the stag heads), mechanical troops will be Tik Toks, drop troops will be flying monkeys, and so on. This particular project was Tin Men: large power armor suits. They'll proxy in 40K as Stalkers against opponents who already don't mind the fact that I'm using as little GW stuff as possible to begin with.

The models I selected were 1/144 scale V Gundam Mobile Sumo kits. I chose them because I liked both their price and their looks, and found them to be sufficiently intimidating (not to mention feasibly holding a cockpit in the chest cavity). I wasn't sure about the kits because the only review I found complained that parts couldn't be separated after they were put together for a test fitting... and that was it. Nothing else. So at $5.50 a kit, I ordered three of them and hoped for the best.





Opening up the kits, things look pretty simple: 5 sprues unique to the kit (one of which just holds the "face") and one sprue of polycaps for articulation, plus instructions and a sticker sheet. The kits are recent vintage and well designed, so I had almost no problems with parts not going together like they were supposed to. All but one of those problems were due to the polycap pins not lining up completely.



The instructions are a one page foldout, backed with some colorful photos on how one might choose to paint up these mechs.





So the reason that one reviewer had such a hard time pulling pieces apart? It's a snap-together kit, which is hinted by the sticker sheet rather than a waterslide decal sheet. I chose to glue these kits together anyway.

Each arm took about 20 minutes to build, including clipping, filing, gluing, and cleaning. Part of the added time was because I really wanted to clean the shoulder pieces before gluing the shoulder pads onto them. I saved a little time in subsequent builds by clipping off all of the arm pieces at one go. On the plus side, the polycaps allow the arms to be disassembled easily for painting.



The legs took about the same time as the arms, mostly because I spent a lot of time trying to clean up the seams on the feet. They were just high enough to be visible (to me, anyway), but not high enough to be worth puttying. Like the arms, the polycaps allow for disassembly for painting.



The torso and head took about 10 minutes to assemble and clean.



Once all that's done, you can pop him together and survey your work. He stands many heads and shoulders over the figures that will serve as my main infantry, and I think it's safe to say that these models will be able to serve as giant power armor for figures ranging from 25mm to 40mm.



The good:

They're inexpensive! At somewhere around $7 apiece including shipping, you can quickly bulk up your forces, or just pick some up if you want to to something like have models to practice new painting techniques on. They're also a good size; big enough to intimidate your opponent, but not so big to bring complaints of cheese. Personally, I think that if their added altitude allows them to shoot things, they can also be shot just as easily. I don't claim that they have any cover from anything shorter than waist-high. With their feet close together, these models will just fit on a 65mm round base. At the moment, I'm not sure if I'll end up putting them on 75mm or 100mm bases.

The not so good:

As mentioned above, I thought the seam on the feet could be a little closer, though maybe my expectations are unreasonable. The articulation: the arms move well, but the legs could be better.



The hip connections are on a diagonal, which means that they pivot more than having the range of motion one would expect from a hip joint. Also, the knees are designed to move only through one arc. If there was a pivot just above the knee, the hips would be less of an issue. As it is, these guys are ready to ride giant robot horses, but that's about it. They can't even be posed in a reasonable run or walk. Both forearms have polycaps in them to hold the shield, but since there's only one shield included with each model, you'll probably want to do some puttying on at least one arm. There is also a significant gap between the bottom of the head dome and the the torso. It's fine if you want your model to be able to look around, but it will need a bit of putty work for best appearances.



The otherwise noteworthy:

A number of seam lines correspond to detail lines on the original design, which either means less cleaning or more line work later on. The weapons included are a pistol with a wrist halo, a curved forearm shield, and a hooked melee blade.



The pistols will end up forming the base of whatever ranged weapons I arm these guys with. I'm planning on turning the melee blades into the heads of polearms, but I'm not sure yet whether I'm going to keep the forearm shields.



All in all, fun little builds and well worth it. I'm keeping additional kits in mind in the event that I'm mad enough to try assembling an Apocalypse-level Sentinel squadron. I'm also considering a 1/100 scale "big brother" to proxy for some kind of tank.



More photos as I try out my brand spankin' new airbrush on 'em.