It begins ....

Alright, here we go!

Let me start by echoing some sentiments I've seen around a bit ... WHO DESIGNED THE UEDF SPRUE?!?!?!?! Ignoring the general issue of the sprues being extremely tight, the UEDF are particular part heavy for no apparent reason. The Veritechs are the worst, though - everything split in half. Legs, arms, torso ... all split. Worst of all, for some reason, the cockpit is a separate piece from the main body of the battloid.

Okay, min-rant over. Here's what I've got so far.

The Guardians went together relatively easily. I gave them all 1-handed weapon poses to make life easier - even with sprue reference images provided by others it's rough trying to see how the arms go together!

Guardians

The Battloids aren't quite as bad as I mad them out to be. The cockpit really is the worst part.

Getting a solid base to work from - these are gonna be the mooks of the squad.

After doing some additional research, and picking up some sticky putty to make dry fitting easier, I finally managed to get the 2-handed pose to work. They're still rough, but not that terrible.

Standing guard ...

Here's the squadron, unpainted, in my display case. The guy on the left is the squad leader - hence the more dramatic pose. I will say this - those swoosh flight stands are crap. There is enough room - barely - to fit the arms, legs, and swoosh. It does not look good. It does not feel good. I'm seriously debating the Litko solution and get some custom stands made.

Rabble rabble rabble ....

You'll notice that they're headless and ordinance ... less. I'm looking at magnetizing both, but the more I look at it the more I'm leaning towards not. We'll see. Really, I'd just need to be able to swap out for an R head. We'll see. I'll post an update when I'm done with whatever I decide. Same for the ordinance - the wings are fairly thin and I'm not sure there's enough material there to survive drilling. I may just put all the ordinance on and just let my opponent know which ones are active. Alternatively, I'll model them without ordinance and do the same.

Moving on to the destroids! These guys aren't as big a pain in the ass as the VTs are, but they are still high part count.

One gripe I have, more for the Tomahawks than for the Defenders, are the week hip joints. There's not a lot of contact area. So, back to the old days of pinning for added structural support! If anyone's curious, I just use paper clips and cut off lengths as I need them.

Hip replacement surgery!

The Tomahawk is the only destroid of the base game that warrants any magnetizing. The spot light and the command upgrade are both designed to plug into the left side of the mech at the same place. So, I'm going to try and magnetize them. This is the spot light with the 1/16th holes drilled and the magnets inserted - let me tell you, this was a pain. There's not a lot of material to work with so if you mess up, that's pretty much it.

Pictured - a pain in the ass.

The following are pictures of the finished command Tomahawk complete with pinned legs.

Finished Tomahawk with both options magnetized and shown.

A look at the magnets in the mech itself.

Tomahawk with spotlight attached (front).

Tomahawk with spotlight attached (side).

Tomahawk with spotlight attached (rear) [good view of the seam].

Tomahawk with command upgrade attached (front).

Tomahawk with command upgrade attached (side).

Tomahawk with command upgrade attached (rear).

As you can probably see, the command module did not work quite as well as the spotlight with the magnets. What I'll probably end up doing next time is just magnetizing the core hull and putting a strip of metal in the connected pieces.

Here's another look at the Valks and a full group photo of the Area Denial Squadron:

Avengers, assemble!

'sup?

I've still got Zents to do, as well as the bonus material baggies from the kickstarter. Oh, and a whole other base game box. So, hopefully I'll be updating more frequently. My goal with the second box is to really give the reader a step by step look at the process I use to put things together ... as well as an appreciation for the "what the hell" aspect many of us are running into.

I make this look goooood .... not really. And that's a failed thumbs-up - I suck at selfies >.<