Return of the Opinions/feedback on IWM sculpts

[Sartris]

where do those two little bits go on the marauder?

[Luciora]

Directly under the knees along the back.  It has a really kind of guide, split at the top and step at the bottom

where do those two little bits go on the marauder?

[Death_from_above]

Hah, an OG Glaug^©™ paintjob !

[Sartris]

Directly under the knees along the back.  It has a really kind of guide, split at the top and step at the bottom

ah, that's it. thanks. at first i thought they went on the back on the "jet pods" but they were too poor a fit for that to be it.

[Sartris]

also the marauder is now my favorite classic iwm sculpt

[Luciora]

I should have a picture of the finished magnetized marauder tonight after work.

[speck]

where do those two little bits go on the marauder?

Sorry, I meant to have pictures up after GenCon and then was distracted by life and other things that came up. I will add some to the product page soon.

[Sartris]

put together a couple of the wasps and a valkyrie today. valk is five pieces - legs (one piece), arms, torso, and head. arms are on ball joints so they can be positioned in more dynamic ways. the wasps are four parts - legs (one piece), torso, and arms. the weapon sprue has three additional pieces - the two-tube part for ether the srm-2 on the 1A or the dual small lasers on the 1K, the flamer for the 1K, and the MG for the 1D. pretty quick assembly and no serious casting issues.

the one recommendation i might make is if you plan to build the 1K or the 1D, glue the weapon onto the little slanted plane at the bottom of the torso before affixing to the legs. it's not a huge issue if you don't, but it makes life a bit easier.

[worktroll]

So I got my Black Friday order of IWM goodness; some stream-of-conciousness while assembling some of them.

- Lightray. Not the newest sculpt, and a bit weird looking. Only 5 parts - legs & hips on base, torso, two arms, chin turret. The chin turret went on fine - I'm afraid the only bit that did. The waist socket had no relation in size to the ball under the upper torso; ended up having to pin it. And the arms sticking out & up made it hard to fix them in place; did not drill, used blu-tak support to do one at a time. Nice looking overall.

- Gestalt. Four pieces - head, torsos & legs on base, two arms, and the "backpack". The backpack took a lot of widgeling to get into position - it had probably warped a little, but fit well enough when pressure applied. Only problem is, it's very featureless, when the rest of the mini is well detailed. Left arm no problems, right arm with the HPPC - the contact point is a little small for the weight, again used blu-tak to support until set. Overall looks very nice when assembled (from the front ;) )

- Celestials. Man I love these! Lots of bits, but great big contact disks make for easy positioning & firm setting. Have assembled the Grigori & Deva so far. Each has upper torso, lower torso, two legs, head, and then two upper arms, a few choices for lower arms, and multiple bits to fill four bays in the torso (omni done right! :D ) Easy to do one leg to the lower torso, then when set, add the other leg. Did I mention those glorious big contact patches? Did the Deva Invictus out of the blister, and the Grigori Numinous with an left-over HPPC from earlier Celestials. While I would love plastic Celestials, the ease of modding different configs won't be the same, I imagine. Plus lots of left-over missile launchers, the odd gun, hatches, erc. Highly recommended, will buy again ;)

- Toyama. Only flaw in this one is the static pose - the plastics have spoiled me for no-assembly dynamism. Conversion to the 2C easy - replace the LB-X barrel with something beefier, file off the three lasers, leave the ERLLs (which aren't very large) to sub for the MVSPLs. 5 bits - head/torsos/feet/base, two arms, two shields. Good contact patches for all, great looking mini.

- Raptor II - weird looking but I'll go with it. Mainly two pieces - feet/lower torso/waist, in running pose, and body which looks like a small craft. Then there's bits for the two SSRM-6s (hatches going on the torsos) and two ERMLs. These would probably go on well, but I wanted a 2X - two MVSPL, and a 'Mech Taser. So I glued the laser barrels on the dimples in the torso hatches, and used bitz for my taser. The mini came with a weird one medium/one small barrel piece, which I suppose was meant to be the taser, but I went with something more greebly. Arm mounts on this thing? Tucked it under the right wing. Easy to assemble, what it looks like on the tin.

BTW, all look like they'll fit in nicely with the nuplastics!

Still to assemble for this unit - Seraph, Preta, Nexus II.

[worktroll]

Okay, some more.

Lightning (the Thunder bro) - almost ideal. Two lower legs, two upper legs, two arms, lower torso, upper torso, iHGR barrel, and head. Everything goes together well ... except the knees. Bad contact patches - low relief, not great fit. You'd have gone better with simple cylinders like the Hel or Grand Summoner. And beware - one of the feet is skewed forwards, so despite the potential for posing, you're more or less committed to one pose. The head's on a ball joint, but there's not a lot of room for turning it. But looks right.

And if you're looking for something to mod into a less static Thunder, and are prepared to do some sawing & filling, this should do you nicely!

Emperor EMP-1A (the primitive) - gorgeous. It''s my go-to for all Emperors from now on. 5 pieces - right leg & lower torso on a base, posable left leg, torso, two arms. Goes together easily, looks magnificent.

Dola. Two legs (separate feet? Can't recall), lower torso, upper torso, antenna, two arms, two jetpacks, antenna for the head. I question the ball mounts on the jetpacks - all examples seem to show them mounted straight up. I suppose one could experiment, but I didn't. The left arm went on easily, but I had to hack a bit at the inside of the right arm at the shoulder to get it mounted in a good position, as shown in pics on the web.

Lao Hu - it's an old sculpt, and it shows - it's in an old-man shuffle. But it's authentic to the art. Base/feet & legs/lower torso one piece, upper torso, two arms. What it says on the tin, and quite easy to mod if needed.  It's also the first mini I ever dry-brushed, and it's got great details & relief.

Nexus II - what it says on the tin. 3 pieces - body, two arms. Simple, small.

Raven 5X - two feet, two legs, lower torso, upper torso, laser arm, MML pack, TSEMP (I guess?). The ankles are not luxurious contact points, but they work well, and the rest just goes together. For your sneaky ECM needs :)

Lu Wei Bing - two feet, two legs, lower torso, upper torso, optional MML pack open or closed, two arms. Ankles have good contact patches, goes together well. Good details. Unfortunately, is going to look small next to a nuplastic Victor, which it theoretically outweighs. Will probably mount it on a tactical rock to give it some "lift" :)

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

I just picked up a Lightning mech and I have to ask, is there a way to put it together without having to pin the legs?

Because the knees are not going together.

[Sartris]

huh. didn't have that issue.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Got it assembled.  Required gluing the feet to a hex base, then gluing the knees.

At least it's a good looking mini.  Really puts the old Thunder to shame.

[worktroll]

Schwer has two now, intending to convert one to a Thunder. Should look great!

[Schwerpunkt Prinzip]

Schwer has two now, intending to convert one to a Thunder. Should look great!

I do hereby confirm this rumour.

I also confirm that I pinned everything. I managed a few swearwords assembling the legs of the Lighting/Thunder but the hassle was worth it. Such a gorgeous model.

[worktroll]

Post pics!

Meanwhile ... the Nisos.

Now I'll say the mini is an excellently accurate representation of the art. But I'm not a fan, and unlikely to buy more.

So it comes with six pieces - two turrets (one for SRM6, one for ELRM10 versions), body, tail, front foot, and support cone. Problems:

- The front foot has a poor attachment lug - very shallow, and provides no support while gluing it in place. A simple post & hole would have been superior.

- The tail unit does fit on in place, but it's very loose. Would it have hurt to make the underside of it fit more snugly into the gap in the main body?

- And the dimple into which the support cone is meant to fit is ridiculously small & shallow, and provides no support at all. I ended up drilling out the hole, snipping the point off the support cone, drilling, and fitting wire. The provided connection is likely to break with normal handling.

I'd also comment on the turrets - they're small. They match the art, true. But looking at the new plastics, and the new larger metals, the plasma rifle looks like a small laser, and the 10 tubes on the ERLM plate are cramped & crowded. Okay, too late to go back, but something to consider in future, please?

So very faithful rendition, annoying to assemble.

[Schwerpunkt Prinzip]

Post pics!

]

Schwer has two now, intending to convert one to a Thunder. Should look great!

The Lightning is a wonderful miniature but I agree with worktroll and MoneyLovingOgre4Hire about the knees. I tried to vary the poses but really struggled.





The separate head and heavy gauss were really useful.

[Prometheum5]

Woah, those are gorgeous. How much work did converting the Thunder take? I haven't grabbed a Lightning yet because I'd probably want to do the same thing!

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Just got some Ironhold Battle Armor today and while I know that it's an old sculpt at this point, I hope that in the future if IWM decides to make any multi-piece battle armor figures, they'll at least stick them to two pieces maximum rather than forcing us to glue each individual gun on.  And make sure that the contact area for gluing is bigger.

[Sartris]

the new archer sculpt has *clenches fist so hard i could shatter steel* missile bay doors

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

How many pieces are they?

[Sartris]

Four pieces total (top and bottom). Not the horror that was the 8M at least. These new doors slot nicely over the LRMs so you can have or or both closed if decided (I went with one open and one closed)

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

We don't talk about the Phoenix Archer...

[Luciora]

Still waiting for my archers and riflemen to show up to do the side by side pics.

[speck]

We don't talk about the Phoenix Archer...

How bad were they, I never saw them.

[Luciora]

So, the Archer was a decent press. Only nitpick was removing the bay doors from the sprue.  Felt like the attachment was a bit thick, removing them with snips was a bad idea, so used my hobby saws.  Still needed a bit of shaping.  No distracting slippage on the major parts.

The Rifleman on the other hand felt like a rushed release.  There was a noticeable slip on the center torso, and feet as well.  The feet didn't take to much to fix, but the center tosro loses a lot of detailing to fix.  Maybe it was the batch I got, as it was present on the 3 that I built so far.

Overall, it's still presentable, but bad for a new release.

[Joel47]

This is mine. (Wow, does that paint look terrible close-up. In my defense, this was painted almost twenty years ago.)

https://photos.app.goo.gl/327pPwgVQc7PoxLd8

The bay doors are fiddly, but not bad if you have good glue. It doesn't get handed out to random people at demo games, though. My only issue with the sculpt is that some of the small parts cast separately were done so not for poseability but, rather, because that was the only way to get the molds to work. IWM has learned a lot since these, and now parts are often sliced in such a way that they can actually go together in a variety of orientations.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

How bad were they, I never saw them.

Wasn't the worst Project Phoenix mini, but not good.

[Joel47]

Wasn't the worst Project Phoenix mini, but not good.

* Joel47 stares daggers at Marauder 5L...

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Yeah, the MAD-5L is one of the most universally reviled minis I've ever heard of.