HardlyNever

Yup. This is the cardinal sin of Delta. I'm still working my way through it, but if I had to name absolutely one thing where it went wrong (and there are many things wrong), it is this. You don't take the action away from the mechs in a freakin' giant robot franchise. Hopefully Kawamori or whoever is doing the direction for future Macross entries will not repeat that mistake. But given the popularity of Walkure in Japan, I'm afraid we might be in for more in the future. But like others, the mech designs are still really good, and there is still some good mecha action in there if you are willing to endure the crap.

As others have said, the non-valks are the real star of the HMR macross line. I don't think I'll ever give up my enemy mecha, they are just too cool. I'd definitely recommend the glaug while you can still get it under MSRP. The valks have the double problem of being an older design than most of the rest of the line (although it has been tweaked), and having a great 1/60 scale line to compare against, so they don't stack up as well. They are still well made and fun, though.

Man, if supply of the 31A really is this low, and demand stays this high, this will be THE grail piece of the last 5 years or so (definitely from the Delta line-up). The speculator in me feels like grabbing one even at the gouge-tastic prices we are seeing now could be a decent investment. Or Bandai could release more and your investment would be bust. I genuinely hope that everyone that pre-ordered from NY gets their valk. I know I'd be frustrated if I had reserved such a hot item and the retailer didn't come through. I considered pre-ordering one myself, be I'm not as enamored with it as some of the other members are (I do think it looks cool, though). I probably would have gone with NY and gotten hosed, too. I do have an Arad (from amiami) preorderd, though, so I hope this isn't a sign of things to come...

Don't worry about NY guys, I'm about to give them the money for the arcadia PF sdf-1. That should keep them afloat for another few months. On a more serious note, didn't someone say there is going to be another wave of Kairos from Bandai? Maybe that is all NY is waiting on (ofc, they should communicate that, if that is the reality)?

Grabbed a couple from CDJapan. Thanks for the heads up.

I believe there is a Tamashii Nations event at the end of May. The possibility of more info about the new "1/48ish" vf-1 is probably the big draw there. I could personally go for a non-valk announcement.

Hmm... I was staring at the VT-1 preorder half the day at work today, wasn't sure how many I wanted to get. Now it is closed. Hope it opens up again soon.

I bought one at a pretty steep discount last month and really enjoy it. The transformation, particularly to Gerwalk, is rough, but as long as you go into it knowing it will be a challenge and approach it with the appropriate patience, it isn't too bad. Going to battroid mode is much easier. I wouldn't pay full price for one, but there are plenty of places that have it at 15,000 jpy or cheaper. It is definitely worth that, just as a display piece, as the paint and tampo on this are great. Be advised, even though the valk is heavily discounted, the optional lill draken kit that was a web exclusive is still going at or above retail price. So if you want the "complete" thing, you'll have to shell out a little more.

The all black box is definitely a let down. I know the aesthetic they are going for there but... no. They aren't pulling it off. You usually need some kind of silver accents or something to really nail that "premium" feeling. I'm guessing the PF sdf-1 is going to get the same treatment, and I'm already a little disappointed (not that the regular box design is anything special).

Decide for yourself. That price does seem a tad high, especially for a pre-order price.

Well... I hope you have some deep pockets. When I was a grad student I was broke AF most of the time. Grats on the collection, though. You might be disappointed with the Toynami's.

This probably belongs more in the why do you collect MISB thread (but I think you've posted in there as well). Like I said in that thread, if that is how you enjoy the hobby, more power to you, I'm not here to judge. What does seem to always baffle me with any MISB/AFA 100/ PSA 10, whatever version of "purist" collector is that they don't seem aware, (or more likely, want to acknowledge), that no matter what you do, things still degrade, especially paper and plastic. No matter how you store it, no matter what plastic/metal tomb you create for that plastic collectible, paper card, or whatever it is, it is still degrading. Right now, as you read this, your collection is degrading, too. Literally nothing can escape the wear of time. In some cases, the mint box isn't even the best storage option for some of the plastic toys. Will these safely kept toys last longer than opened versions? Sure, almost definitely. Will they last the lifetime of the collector? Probably, but you might be surprised how much some of the toys from the 80s have degraded just sitting in their box (then again, I'm sure you've seen the carded GI Joes that are falling apart in their blister). It sort of seems futile to me. I say enjoy it while it lasts. Nothing lasts forever. But then again, maybe the goal of the "mint" collector is just have the collectible last their life-time. Or have the most pristine versions available (even if they aren't as pristine as they were 20 years ago).

I'll grab one in case Arcadia never re-issues these (like I did with the VE-1). Can't hurt to have an HMR one as a fall-back. Hopefully Arcadia will get the go-ahead to make the ve-1 and vt-1 after Bandai has had their chance, but if not, these will have to do.

IIRC, some of the production team that worked on Orguss also worked on SDF Macross, and they put one of the mecha in SDFM as a sort of cameo/easter egg. So, yes, it appears(briefly), but it isn't really canon/offical. It is more of an inside joke.

@sh9000 asked basically the same thing in the HMR thread, I believe, so you could check there. There are some video game insignias that aren't official canon but look pretty good. If you dig through my comment history you might be able to find them. I could probably find it if you really want.

There is this, not sure if it is the only one.

I have a similar issue with my Arcadia DYRL Super Roy. There is one hardpoint that has slightly thinner notches/ledges, whatever you want to call them, for the hard point locking mechanism. What this meant was that reaction missiles would stay on fine, the missile pods were mostly ok, but a little loose, and the TV-style missiles would fall off from the slightest bump. There was only one hardpoint like this. What I ended up doing was thickening up one of the TV style missiles (with nail polish) to use on that hardpoint when I wanted TV missiles there. I think the hardpoints are generally a point of weakness in the design, regardless of the manufacturer, where even a slight variation in production can result in a flawed hardpoint. I think the whole "locking mechanism" is probably more trouble than it is worth.

I'm guessing those parts of the armor are going to need extra support in battroid mode, long term. Probably those little tamashii stands with claws, or maybe a custom support piece that secures it to another part of the valk (maybe the weapon pod?). I still won't mind, it is going to look great on display. Might be a bit of a pain to handle, though.

The confirmation bias in this thread is overwhelming. QC problems happen, no company is immune to it. A few people reporting a problem isn't nearly enough evidence to declare something like "the mold is degraded, RIP Arcadia vf-1s." Sure, mold degradation is a thing. It could even be a real thing that is happening, but drawing that conclusion from so little evidence is ridiculous. It could also just mean that the failure rate for the mold is going to increase from something like 1% to 3% (I'm totally making these numbers up, but you get the idea). Now we could argue forever about how the increased cost should be accompanied by an increase in quality control, and that horse has been beaten to death in more than one thread (and nearly everyone can agree to that). But it is what it is at this point; I think buying either Yamato or Arcadia valks is a bit of a gamble at this point, for different reasons, so it is up to you which you feel more comfortable gambling on.

I just got mine yesterday, pretty similar experience (I've only done 4-5 different valk types). This one is definitely tough, it honestly took me almost an hour to go from fighter to gerwalk. Had to look at several videos, haven't even done battroid yet. The good news is, I think you can skip the hardest part of gerwalk (connecting two pegs into a bracket) if you only want to go to battroid. The vf-31 looks significantly easier, but I won't get to try that until the Arad version is out.

That's what she said? (couldn't resist) It does seem odd they aren't taking advantage of the removable nose cone, though.

Damn... I didn't know I was the one holding this whole thing back... Let me go buy 5 and kickstart this whole thing so we can all be 3D printing this stuff next year... Get serious, man (but I am considering buying a 3D printer for our workplace). Maybe I'll buy an oculus rift, and a vive while I'm at it, because me not buying that is definitely holding back VR. Back to the hardpoints, is this simply a bad QC issue? Not to beat a dead horse, but me and 3-4 other people had part of their backpack break on the super Focker release, and no one was calling the mold dead then, it was just bad luck. This looks to be a similar situation to my eye, only this is getting more attention because the people speaking up are being more vocal about it.

Right, I guess what I'm saying is, we were "supposed" to be at this point already, if you were to believe some of the proponents of 3D printing. It was supposed to be super cheap, super accessible, and nearly ubiquitous at this point. I know we can (and in some cases do) make replacement parts, but the cost is still pretty high, and thus limited either to a really common problem (like the v2 shoulder), or someone who already has access to the rather expensive tech. There really isn't an answer, I guess we just have to lump it in with flying cars and jetpacks. It just seems like 3D printing was going to become more accessible a lot faster, but I guess not.

Yeah, that's what I figured, 3D printing will probably never realistically match mass producing from molds once you hit a certain production number. Thanks for the insight. Kinda shows that the "experts" that predicted we'd be 3D printing everything we own by now didn't really know what they were talking about. That said, I'm still surprised we can't 3d print our own replacement hard points or even wings. I guess the v2 shoulder breaking was such a common occurrence that it was worth someone going through the trouble and scuplting(?) one (digitally, ofc). I'm a bit surprised no one has 3D scanned all the major parts of the v2 by now, though.

Not to derail the thread too much, but since we're on the subject of rising cost: wasn't 3D printing supposed to "save" us from all this? Shouldn't this hobby, as we know it, be radically different? Shouldn't we be buying blueprints/designs and 3D printing and assembling all this stuff ourselves by now? What happened? I know there are people 3D printing home-made kits and designs, but those tend to be very high in cost. It's also nice to have 3D printing to replace broken parts here and there (like v2 shoulders), but we were supposed to be 3D printing cars by now (by some estimates). 3D printing has been the "hot new thing" for 15-20 years now, and it still hasn't radically changed what should have been one of the very first industries it killed (plastic toy manufacturing). It seems like it still can't keep up with the economy of scale of mass producing specific molds and having (relatively) cheap labor put everything together. Is there something else going on? Also, to keep it a little more on topic, why can't we just 3d print replacement hard points? Or replacement wings even? It was supposed to be so cheap and easy by now.