Yeah, after looking at some of the awesome IWM minis, I must say I am tempted to revise my stance :-) I have files and stuff for dealing with mold lines/flash, so should be good to go.
IWM designs have become really good in recent years. Their website’s online photos have a year on them, but keep in mind that if it says “2008” it could be a 30-year old model and it’s just the photo that’s eleven years old. The old models are… old. You might as well look for the Alpha Strike plastic mini on eBay. Antiquated designs, less attention paid to scale, iffy interfaces between parts, mold lines in all the wrong places (like through louvers)... they take some work. The problem is that a lot of the 3025 mechs are still old models.
I’m a fan of using newer models even when they don’t represent the right variant. They tend to have more pieces, which might be intimidating, but they fit together better. Sometimes it’s a straightforward substitution - the Cataphract -0X has a similar weapons layout as the -1X and is a more modern-looking sculpt, plus its aesthetic fits in with at least one other Capellan-designed mech (the Raven). A bit big, but I’m glad I bought it over the -1X.
The Raven II looks more modern than the Raven, but it has its missile launcher on the wrong side if you want to run it as an old Raven. (I don’t yet have a sense about how much people care.) In the same vein, the latest Rifleman model is the -1N/-2N, and it’s missing the autocannons of the more common versions but I’d rather start with that model.
And then there are cases like the Lu Wei Bing, which appears to be Mechwarrior Online’s Victor redesign with a modified arm and a new name to escape legal issues. It makes a great Victor… if you ever find out that it exists. I only found out about it through sheer luck, shortly after ordering an old Victor model.
