XV88-2

I recently ordered an XV88-2 Broadside kit from ForgeWorld.

This is a resin kit, not plastic, but really the only difference is that the material is softer. Otherwise they are the same material.

The reason I got the kit was because it looked much more dramatic than the standard XV88 kit from GamesWorkshop. The original GamesWorkshop kit is essentially the XV9 suit but with two rail guns on the shoulders and missiles for hands. The model looks very similar to the XV9.

When the FW kit arrived the first thing I noticed was a bunch of casting problems. The upper arm plates were warped along with a few other parts. FW was kind enough to UPS replacements for them, but I had to pay for customs. I wished they had just used standard post. But it was still nice of them to put that effort in. I did them a favor myself; along with my order the post office had shipped me someone else's order. I sent that order to the intended destination at my cost and time.

Here is what the final pieces looked like:

Assembly was a little bit troublesome because of the spacing in the knee joint. A little more friction there would have made it easier to pose and glue together. Anyways, I put it together in a day and started painting it:

But that look just didn't pop for me. It wasn't impressive enough. I had recently seen District 9, and wondered if I could do something similar, particularly the rail gun.

So I decided to try two things. One was to add additional supports for the rail cannon, along with an exposed magazine rack for the ammunition. Second was to improve the back of the model.

I thought about this for a long time. Originally I wanted to have a wing like structure of the SkyRay gunship, but I think that was outside of my skill level, and it was a little too Anime'esque. In the end I decided to go with a rail that each missile pod sat on top of and would come up and down so that it could be stowed away to reduce profile/reload or whatever.

Stay tuned for pictures of the above setup. I'm going to force myself to take some pictures