Eden prime MDF kit from Misfire minis and The State of Play
This one hit me at exactly the right time. Just a few weeks ago I played Mass effect 3 for the first time, finally crossing the last of the four main games off my backlog. This isn’t a review of Mass effect 3 but I think the game is over-hated, though the “choice” at the end was disappointing (Team destruction represent).
Shortly afterwards the youtube algorithm in all it’s wisdom suggested a video to me from one “The state of Play”, called “The EDEN PRIME Miniature Terrain. Now Available as a commercial KIT!”. Of course, having just completed ME 3 I was mentally primed to buy this kit, and so I did.
This was my first time handling an MDF kit and if I had to describe the assembly process in one word I would use traumatic. There are no instructions included with the kit, so you can either rewind and fast forward though the state of play’s development video (which is what I ended up doing) or puzzle it out yourself. The design of the MDF kit is very clever- too cleaver by far I would say. Many parts are nested within one another, presumably to minimise the amount of MDF used in construction, which is of course appreciated. The most important thing to understand about this kit is that despite having the silhouette of a regular hexagonal prism, the internal skeleton of the build is NOT symmetrical. If you do what I did and mindlessly plug parts together, you will quickly find that peg holes on either end of a part do not align. During the assembly process I broke about half of the internal frame, which has many thin parts, use a knife to separate the kit from the sprue. Mercifully, this is almost entirely hidden in the finished product.
I also broke the doorframe intended to retain the door panel, whilst attempting to unpeg it after installing it incorrectly, so I opted to glue the piece in place. Upon rewatching the development video I see that I have glued the door in upside down, the tab at the bottom should be at the top. Luckily this is mostly irrelevant, as the risers provide sufficient clearance that the tab position makes no difference to the glued on door.
The walkways went together painlessly and really add a bit of extra playability to the kit, which is appreciated.
Overall, most of the negative experience that I had wit this kit can be attributed to being inexperienced with the properties of MDF as well as a lack of instructions (or perhaps my own lack of planning, hm?). If you watch the developer video TSoP originally did not include instructions both because he himself never uses them and because the original plans for this kit were intended to be used to create templates for user specified buildings, not a single kit, which is fair enough. Having assembled this kit once now I can see how once you know the score there is no need for instructions, but I think it could be beneficial to at least have the contents of the “sprues” etched onto the sprue itself.
The finished product looks great, both TSoP (designer) and Misfire (manufacturer and seller) have done a great job and I would recommend that you pick one up if you like the mass effect aesthetic. Hopefully I will get around to painting this in the near future.
