Misrule

great work, very retro

been a while since the thread updated, honestly not a huge amount to add The last series which remade the first series of Yamato had a veritable sea of ships following it, they recreated all but one vessel in 1/1000 scale and to an excellent standard. But with this current series releases have been far slower and there have been more variants than clear new releases. There has only been three completely new kits, plus two major variants in 1/1000. Been a reasonable selection of palm sized mecha kits but even then not tremendous. Bit of a shame really has there has been some decent ship to ship action with more on the way. Also apparently there won't be any aircraft kits due to poor sales. On a positive note a basic Andromeda without the expensive light and sound option is due next year, and a twin set of the Dreadnought class again presumably eliminating the light option for budget fleet building. These are good kits but more variety would be nice. SHow itself is decent enough, but it has strong competition from Gundam Origin and Legend of Galactic Heroes for space opera

From what I've read it's because Japanese collectors don't have a huge amount of space so they tend to make smaller scales, when they do monster kits it tends to be because the fans petition for them or there is potential foreign demand. I suspect they'll sell more Falcons abroad than domestically for instance.

The bombers still annoy me Not so much the concept of them, and they did do their job, but why did the have to get so close? Why did they have to fly over at thirty feet to drop their payload? Why not just stand on their tails as there is no up and down in space and spam all those bombs from a hundred miles away? The Dreadnought is too big to dodge and even if it tries it only takes one bomber to kill it and you have a dozen spamming bombs. Even if 90% miss you still kill the target with zero risk. Just throw them out of the bay and let Isaac Newton do the rest It's a minor niggle in the big scheme, but having enjoyed shows like Babylon 5 where they get the physics of space pretty good and still make the show exciting, it bothered me. I thought Solo was decent, Rogue One was good and got very good toward the end, the prequels were rather enjoyable, but these sequels just strike me as a lost opportunity. They had great potential but no ideas on how to do anything. It does strike me a lot like Disney bought these things to make tons of cash but had no ideas other than just churn it out and get rich(er). Lucas at least had a unified story idea and a desire to recreate the old pulp sci fi shows of his youth, I can't really see any similar story goals here.

They have been putting lighting elements in their Yamato kits lately, bumps the price up quite a bit so I can see them applying the same business idea to other kits. Usually an integrated led unit designed for their gundam kits. Guess we'll see, but it looks a lot like one would fit in the engine bay.

It wasn't half bad, it didn't exactly push boundaries or deliver any grand revelations or powerful emotions but it was fun. I did appreciate that it largely treated its cast with respect, it didn't throw them away or completely assassinate and ruin their character. Mentioning no names... Han spoke and acted like I'd expect a younger less cynical Han to act, Lando was the same charming but not as good as he thinks he is kind of guy, and the new additions were inoffensive enough. The droid was a bit controversial but I reckon it was played as a parody of a certain section of the fanbase, one review suggested it was meant to be a dig at KK herself. Not as good as Rogue One but better than TFA. Did get a bit of a nostalgia pang once or twice, and great to see the regular army of the Empire instead of just stormtroopers.

I'd say Thunderbolt too then as it is set in the final stages of the war but in a different location to the main show. More of a revenge and destruction theme to it but has some good duels and the place where they fight is the ruins of some destroyed colonies which are quite chilling and very dangerous with all the debris and junk floating around.

Origin is worth a watch, sort of a grand prequel that explains the build up to the war and the story of the big players in it. Quite a lengthy story and ongoing, the latest release was the opening of the war itself with some suitably massive space battles. Thunderbolt is worth a look too, though it is quite a grim story

As I read it if your stuff is less that £20 you don't get charged, or if it is marked as a gift. Though I guess if you order from a business it'll be hard to say it's a gift from a friend or relative. If its more its a 20% base VAT on whatever you have, plus a rather unfair charge for checking. Been about £8-9 for my last couple but it could go up to £11 I think if you are unlucky. If you are buying a few small things it may work out better to send them separately so the total value is less than £20 per package. More postage but no customs charges so can work out cheaper. If you buy big things I just group them, its an expense but at least it is only once. HLJ does a private warehouse service which helps a lot when it comes to grouping items for postage, good sturdy boxes too!

I love these kits, go together well, look great and scale with conventional military kits If you can score the M61 Tank for a reasonable price I highly recommend it, absolute joy to build. They are not cheap, but they are massive when finished.

Great looking work Calls for a little Jazz maybe All too often they were the cannon fodder ships of the series, nice to see they can win a fight when not facing named characters!

Have a few of the Megami Device girls in the stash, lot of articulation on them and work out at about 1/12 scale so works well with SHF and Figma products.

So when Lando shows up in Empire Strikes Back and yells 'What did you do to my ship!?' I guess he's got a good reason to be angry!

Bit late but if it helps... there is a helpful site here that has translations for a lot of these Japanese kits. Mainly Gundam but bunch of others too. http://www.mech9.com/

Big fan of these sort of near future jet designs, definitely going on the list