Similarly to the astrobotanical station, built the defense station kit as two stations, one large and one small/medium sized.
And luckily finished those a day before these things arrived.
Did a quick and rough gate/sprue removal on both, and assessing the casting quality there’s only a few spots with issues on both.
Arm guns are socket and circle fittings, large enough that getting magnets in should be alright. The large central weapon slides into the gap seen in the middle of one of the body pieces, might need to get a few magnets in different spots to get it done with sufficient support.
Only real issue with the casting on this one is that lump on the back of the generator?/exhaust?/door?/sphincter?. Luckily that will be mostly hidden from view so clipping off the biggest chunks I can of it might be sufficient. Also, the box was missing one set of the small tentacles; you can see two underneath the eight large ones, and there should be three. Getting those pieces shouldn’t be an problem, they’ve been very responsive the few other times I’ve had problems like this in the past.
Now this is the only real complaint I have with the design. The large tentacles don’t have an extra ‘spacer’ of inner bits between the rings on one end, so whichever side you put it on will have the plate rings butting up against each other. Looks visually jarring! I’ll probably have them be up towards the main body, too obvious down by the bottom. Otherwise kit seems great, just need to figure out how best to magnetize it.
No missing bits or major issues with the PHR kit. Leg assembly may be a challenge but not the worst thing. Only modeling problem was self inflicted, as I accidentally took a chunk out of the edge of the missile launcher bit in a visually prominent spot, but some putty should fix that up.
Casting problems I found, all minor. The two defects on the right are obscuring some detail, but they’re on the underside of the model so I’m not too concerned.
I had hoped magnetizing the weapons could be done with all three weapons connected as a single piece, but it wasn’t meant to be. Looks like the main gun has a few large smooth sections that’ll make it easy, and the small inner guns have a thin rectangular tab/slot that a few tiny magnets should do the trick on. The side weapons are ball and joint fittings which look completely doable, with the hassle going to be getting them to line up just the way I want.
Very happy with these kits overall, the detail is excellent and they look like they’ll be impressive once finished. First on the agenda is cleaning and magnetizing! Looks like I might have a few supplies to pick up to do a proper job on these (more magnets and replacing my liquid green stuff that’s beginning to dry) which might delay the progress a little, but I’m not going to pretend I’m likely to do anything other than the usual slow grinding hobby progress.