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I’m back! After mentioning I had a Tomahawk in the works in my phalanx post and then proceeding to do nothing with it for months, I can finally show it off. The Tomahawk has always been my favorite of the non-transforming stompy Macross designs ever since I was young. This may explain why I have wound up with multiple. In my defense, I started an ARII kit (we’ll get to that later!) long before I knew the Wave kits were even a thing. But that got set aside for a long while, and then I found the Wave kits. I really like the Wave kit, even if some of the gimmicks come out a bit too tight once paint is applied. I think in total it’s something I can be happy to have on my shelf. And I appreciate the face has a lot of detail. Hi ho, Kermit the Frog here But as mentioned, I did have an ARII tomahawk, and after finishing the Wave design I thought I’d finish up that gray-blue menace and compare the two. Presenting, my ARII tomahawk. Honestly it holds up great for an old kit. The two are very comparable. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I’d say they’re- Oh. Yes, I’ve deceived you (which you hopefully realized when you read the title of the post). As it turns out I have not two tomahawks but THREE. the ARII design is saddened by the deception. When all I had was the ARII kit I decided to paint it closer to the show I knew. It wasn’t 100% the same but I wanted something like that tan design I thought I remembered from the show, even if it was basically a color swap of the ARII manual. So I repainted it. I ALSO swapped the legs on the IMAI defender kit I was working on simultaneously with the ARII legs because I liked them better and, as previously mentioned, the Tomahawk has always been my favorite. I got it all together, ready for detailing…and then stopped. And then found the Wave designs. I built a wonderful new tomahawk. And then I got a bundle deal for a defender and another Wave tomahawk. It was the cheapest option I could find for a defender somehow. So, inspired by the ARII art and the decals I still hadn’t applied, I wound up with a blue Wave tomahawk. I styled it as an early variant since the art had a red visor and I found a Mecha manual tidbit stating that earlier variants were deployed with red visors. Then I decided to style it as a Marines unit like the VF-0C Hasegawa made, deployed to the Daedalus. All the UN MARINES logos were individually assembled from third party decal letters, while the numbers were individually assembled from numbers that Wave at least included as optional decals. Fun times. Meanwhile, the decals I stole from the ARII kit were old and very much disintegrating on me. Even more fun times as I tried to fix those with paint. Still, I like the result. You’d almost never know the “VAM” in the leg art is hand drawn from fragments of decal that were still available and paint marker. By the time I was decalling and panel-line-ing the ARII design I already had one wonderful completed Wave kit. So I didn’t use as much care as I could’ve to finish it. That, plus decals that I decided not to fix meant the end product is much more rough. But hey, better a kit I decided to quickly finish than one I never finished at all! Anyway, this post is way too long now, so from all three of my tomahawks, farewell and thanks for reading!

a friend of mine bought this kit... made a rush job of putting it together and "accidentally" glued some of the parts without first painting the hard to reach parts.. he then gave it to me and said "fix" it.... i instead bought it from him for a symbolic price... i needed a couple of days of from my other build, and this was a perfect little project to do so with... i dissembled the parts as much as possible... then primed and preshaded the parts... didnt like the flat grey some of the parts was to have... so i painted them black, and then used Tamiya weathering master Dark gun metal and snow. gave them a very thin coat of Matt Varnish... another layer of snow and Matt Varnish next was two thin layers of the "desert pale sand" and "muddy dark green" that i mixed now some detailing with black ink....

Working on a mini statue, I wanted the hatches to open but it's making the head dress too wide... probably would topple over...

From about a year ago, I started working on the 1/100 Armored Factory rerelease. The assembly of the "factory" itself was pretty straightforward, but I got bogged down on the vehicles (old school kits have some truly small parts. E.g.: side mirrors!). This past weekend, I finished the Armoured Valkyrie. It's a major milestone, as I've been working on it for a good chunk of the year. The kit itself is alright, but lacks any gimmicks such as missile hatches that one can open (or are glued open). The possibility is also extremely limited, and the lack of a gun pod is also a shame. It's truly a kit made to be displayed as something waiting for/just completed maintenance in the hanger. After a few times moving the limbs in the limited range that they can move, some of the joints have become floppy... that said, the feet have a good range of movement, giving it stability in the full range of limited poses the legs allow. The head and beam guns also move - though, as I painted the kit after assembly, the paint prevents the guns from moving. On the subject of paint - the light gull grey that I used is a major pain! I didn't realize it when I purchased it, but its from the Mr. Hobby Water based line, and it caused no end of trouble, especially when putting acrylics on top! Suffice to say that there are layers of paint covered by layers of clear coat. Even then, some of it has come off from friction, etc.. Gah! Looking back, aside from not starting to paint it on the sprues (lesson learned), my one regret is not having filed down the seam lines. After so much sweat and tears with the paint, those seem lines bring the kit down. >.< On the other hand, I had a bit of fun mixing paint to get some custom colours for the first time (light blue forearms, green sensor on back, light green visor). Though, I almost cried manly tears when I noticed a chip on one of the forearms! And as this topic is geared around the Armoured Factory, here is the Armoured Valkyrie in the "Factory" itself (its still a work in progress - I'm waffling over painting the entire thing, painting only a few spots, or just laying on the decals!) With the 1/100 Phalanx and Tomahawk (another work in progress), it's actually become quite an interesting diorama!

The guy who built these is エムロボ, and he says the Tomahawk is an Arii, but the Spartan and Defender are based on Bandai models. All of them are scale 1/72. Tomahawk Spartan Defender Maybe this has been posted already, if that's the case please close the thread.