Armored core: another 1/72 model

Last week I teased some upcoming new content, so I think that this week it is time to deliver on a previously hinted at project. Today I have another Armored core model kit for you, representing the craft piloted by Zinaida in Armored core: Last Raven. When I last wrote about armored core here I was looking through rose tinted glasses. This kit has caused me to re-evaluate my previously mostly favourable opinion on this line. Full disclosure, part of this is my own fault, leaning hard enough on the back of my hobby knife to cut myself, making the rest of the build an exercise in frustration, trying to protect my index finger.

A major source of frustration can be seen in the picture below. For the most part the poly caps in this kit work well, even if the wrist sockets are ship in a bottle tier fiddly. The hip poly caps however are absolutely unforgiveable. The plastic of the cap is so soft that rather than slot into the (square) peg holes, they fold over on themselves. I did attempt to whittle the peg down a bit, but this didn’t improve the situation. In the end I simply discarded them and resorted to gluing the legs in place. You can see some fairly bad discolouration from my attempts to activate the glue with baking powder whilst still using the caps. This will need to be sanded down and painted over.

There is a fair amount of gap filling that will also need to be done, especially on the front face of the thighs. One interesting thing about this kit was that one of the pauldrons came with a pre-applied decal or printing of the fascinator emblem. This is a bit of a strange choice to me, as any primer will cover this up, but it is a nice gesture for those who won’t be painting the kit.

While I would like to say that I will not be buying more of the kits in this line, the fact is that the assembled model does look very good. Having only built 2 of the kits in the variable infinity line I can’t say how much of my negative experience with this kit is purely a product of this being older than the previously reviewed Tellus. However, there is only a a 2 year gap between kits (2008 vs 2010) which makes me think that significant advances in design are unlikely.

Even if the variable infinity line doesn’t appear on this blog again, I doubt it will be the last Armored core content hosted here. Until next time.