Dave's Transformers Siege Rant: Netflix Deluxe Wave 1 Autobot Chromia (redeco of Chromia) Decepticon Scrapface (redeco of Refraktor) Decepticon Mirage (redeco of Mirage, not reviewed) Autobot Hound (redeco of Autobot Hound, not reviewed) Sideswipe (redeco of Sideswipe, not reviewed) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/DeluxeNet1 https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/DeluxeS1 - Sideswipe and Hound https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/DeluxeS2 - Chromia https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/DeluxeS3 - Refraktor https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/DeluxeS4 - Mirage Yeah, that's four of the five regular waves of Siege. I guess they didn't feel like making Crosshairs or Spinister easier to find a version of. CAPSULES $20 price point. Autobot Chromia: Original version was recommended. This one...even if I got really unlucky on the QC side and most are better than this, it's just not worth much effort or any more than retail price. The wear pattern paint deco fails pretty badly in vehicle mode (the official renders cheat and redo the colors). Very mildly recommended. Scrapface: Original version was recommended. Note, while you can still make a camera with three of them, it's probably not worth hunting the extras down unless your store gets a lot of 'em. Still, it mostly looks pretty good, although I plan to modify mine. Mildly recommended. RANTS So, Netflix has a CG War for Cybertron cartoon coming real soon now ("June" according to Wikipedia), made by Rooster Teeth, Polygon Pictures, and Allspark Animation. As I noted in the review for Hotlink, Walmart has exclusive tie-in toys, which are all redecos of some sort, mostly just new looks for Siege characters, but a few new names in the mix. The silver spatter patterns are replaced by more of an airbrushed burn/wear pattern. This wave is mostly same-character stuff, with one new character who is predictably shortpacked. I passed on Decepticon Mirage and Sideswipe because I already have two versions of each of them and I don't like these new color schemes (gray and purple for Mirage, grungier regular colors for Sideswipe) as much as either of the ones I already have. Hound I waffled on, but I decided it didn't look enough different to bother. Technically Chromia fails that test as well, but I'm armybuilding variants of that mold at this point. The only one I was reasonably sure I wanted was Scrapface, so of course he's shortpacked scalperbait. But I found one after checking a few stores. Packaging: Same basic trade dress as Hotlink had (see the review at https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/VHotlink) but at the size of regular Siege Deluxes. The backdrop cards are red with the spraypaint faction symbol acting as a window into a closeup of the grayscale headshot from the outside of the box (purely grays, no accent colors). Behind the backdrop tray is a section of a Teletran-1 backdrop. Obviously, I'm not going to get the whole thing, although it would've been nice to get two pieces that connect to each other. Given the looks of the two I do have, though, I have to wonder if you can even assemble the whole thing from just five pieces...this might continue into wave 2. While there's instructions for assembling the modular weapons, there's no names or stats for the weapons. Nor are there techspecs for the character. For Chromia, presumably all the numbers are the same as for the regular Siege version. Scrapface has a different Unit in his sigil, so no guarantee his gun and shield have the same names. Note, just looking over the three I didn't get in store, most of the plastics are some shade of gray, with paint used for the brighter colors. The exception seems to be Hound's green. AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT CHROMIA (inconsistent, box has the AUTOBOT, instructions do not) Assortment: E9504 Altmode: Cybertronian car Transformation Difficulty: 15 steps Previous Name Use: Energon, Gen:T30, Gen:CW, RotF Previous Mold Use: Gen:PP, Gen:Siege Fireblast: None Weapons: RT-5 Anti-thermo Blaster with SR Hushfuze silencer, EMP Grenades (presumably) Function: Bodyguard Division: Ground Command Unit: Special Ops Rank: Sergeant Packaging: Three ties horizontally across the robot mode. The two grenades are attached together with two ties crossing over them, and the gun with silencer is held with another pair of crossed ties. Leaving the grenades connected in package led to one having a much looser 3mm socket. Comes with a piece of wall with some monitor screens, D tabs on the left, E slots on the right, and L tab on the bottom. The package renders cheat and recolor the vehicle mode to have a nicely unified color scheme rather than the mess that the actual rear fenders are. Color Swaps: The very light blue plastic becomes a slightly grayer very light blue, the clear colorless becomes clear medium blue, the medium-light blue plastic becomes somewhat metallic dark gray, and the tires stay more or less black. ALL the opaque medium-light blue on the toy is due to paint. Paint Apps: Quite a lot, since they decided to go with gray plastic instead of blue. A medium-light blue glossy paint is airbrushed onto the shins, toes, forearm panels, and the wheel fenders, which is intended to give a sort of "paint worn off in battle" look. The head, collar, torso front, and bikini bottom appear to have been first dipped in this blue paint before other colors were applied. Some airbrushed gunmetal paint on the left side of the chest and the bottom of the collar give her more battle wear. The face, "ascot", top of the helmet, and waist are painted very light blue, and some very light blue is airbrushed onto the shoulder fronts and backs, and kneecaps. The ascot vent and a bit on the abdomen are painted red, there's black paint on the forehead details. I think the eyes are simply left unpainted. In vehicle mode, the unpainted "wear and tear" effects don't quite line up. It comes close, but the rear fenders have unpainted bits where they meet the robot torso, and the forearm panels are painted along the wrong axis, so it tends to spoil the effect. The canopy piece is painted bright blue most of the places it's not left clear, but with gunmetal paint along the lower edges to go along with the wear pattern theme. The front end of the middle piece is also painted gunmetal, but looks obviously different from the plastic color on either side. There's some other gunmetal bits on the hood, which look like the designer couldn't decide between "patches" and "paint burned off" for the effect. A pale blue U shape is painted on the hood, and the wheel hubs are painted dark silver. And then there's the most nonsensical battle damage paint WfC has had to date...printed silver scrape/ splatter patterns on the canopy, complete with pixelated dots. How does damaging transparent material reveal shiny metal? It ends up looking like someone sputtered metal onto her canopy, making me wonder if the Netflix cartoon will be TV-M. Oh, and there's a big red Autobot symbol on the canopy as well. Mold Changes: None I could find. Other Notes: The vehicle mode doesn't roll very well, but I think mine got some sprue gunk in one of the axles. Mine also has super loose thigh swivels, and the riveted knees make it impossible to disassemble the thighs for a proper fix. Taking the legs off and soaking the hips in soapy water for a while removed enough mold release oil to make the problem relatively minor, but it does seem like there's still a bit of a loose fit inside. Folding the fenders on the lower legs down to act as heel spurs helps, though. The pelvis armor is, if anything, easier to accidentally pop off than in the regular Chromia tooling, probably because it's coated in paint. I didn't speculate about this design issue in my original review, so here's my best guess: they originally tried securing the new bikini briefs more securely, but it tended to break in ways that would fail a choke gate test, so they made is so that the whole thing would fly off in one piece instead. So, she drops her panties at the least provocation...Transmetal Blackarachnia no longer has the most scandalous potentially removable armor. Overall: Eh, even for someone armybuilding the versions of this mold, this is pretty skippable. The aesthetics aren't great, especially in vehicle mode. If they'd decided to make an actual gray femmebot character from this mold and use the paint for more than compensating for the plastic colors, it might be worth the bother, but as it stands, pretty skippable. DECEPTICON: DECEPTICON SCRAPFACE (same inconsistency as Chromia) Assortment: E9506 Altmode: Spaceship, one third of a giant camera Transformation Difficulty: 17 steps (spaceship) Previous Name Use: None Previous Mold Use: Gen:Siege Fireblast: None Weapons: HPR Telefocal Shield, EMM Distortion Blaster, Bioscale Compression Rotor (maybe, maybe not) Function: Shock Trooper (guessing) Division: Ground Command Unit: Infantry Rank: Raider Packaging: Five ties on the robot (chest, wrists and ankles), two on the gun, one on the shield. The shutter piece is in place on the belly. Comes with a piece of the Teletran-1 diorama floor, with slots for H and K, plus a tab for G. The promo renders and the renders on the package show more extensive and better-done scarring, with a scar over one eye (the scrap on his face, I guess) and two-tone chest scarring that looks more realistic than the black lines we got. The instructions incorrectly give him the espionage Unit symbol. Color Swaps: Purple becomes a slightly warm slightly metallic dark gray, the clear plastic is mostly smoky clear plastic (some with clear paint over it), and some of the silvery gray plastic becomes about the same color as what the purple became. However, the hips, landing skids, elbows, upper arms shoulder struts (but not shoulderpads), and collar area are a very dark brownish gray. Under UV, that plastic glows a sort of light muddy brown (to be non-scatalogical). Paint Apps: The main paint here is metallic blue. The helmet and fists are dipped in it, and it's airbrushed onto the shoulder fronts, belly shutter front, outer faces of the boots, the toes, heels, and most of the shield's front face. The face is painted white, and there's a white border on the chest window. The chest window itself is painted with clear red paint. There's dark red on the eyes, the stripes on the sides of the head, and the belt buckle, plus more sloppily applied to the wrists and ankles. The shins have a lighter slightly metallic red paint that looks like it was slopped on quickly with a physical brush, rather than an airbrush (maybe to avoid getting any on the 3mm studs?). A black movie-style Decepticon symbol is printed on front of the left shoulder, and dot-feathered black scars are printed on the chest...they're almost invisible against the dark red clear plastic. (I intend to physically add scrapes and then paint them more clearly. Plus give him the facial scar.) In vehicle mode, all that gets added is the cockpit area and behind it. The windows in front have white painted borders and red clear paint on them, but the roof section is left as smoky clear plastic (although this isn't obvious unless you shine a light from underneath). The exposed chest behind the clear plastic is, oddly, not painted metallic blue. Rather, it's given a good airbrush splat of Chromia's blue paint. Other than the bit on top of the torso, though, it's really only visible during transformation, since the shield covers it up in vehicle mode. The painted fists showing through the forearm sockets make for nice vent details in this mode. http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/scrapfacemod1.JPG http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/scrapfacemod2.JPG http://www.dvandom.com/kitbash/scrapfacemod3.JPG Go to the links above to see what I did with it. I toned the bright white paint down a bit with very light gray, carved scars into the face and chest, plus added a divot to the chest for good measure. I neatened up the red bits (the wrists are actually printed to look sloppy) and added a bit of metallic blue to the gun. Mold Changes: None. Other Notes: I can't believe I didn't think of this when reviewing Refraktor, but if you fold the arms down in ship mode, you get a sort of half-assed pistol mode. The landing skid is a bit too far forwards to be a trigger, though. Overall: It looks decent, other than the shin paint, and at least we got a new "character" out of it instead of it being just a color variant like the rest of the wave. If you can get it for retail price, it's worth picking up. Dave Van Domelen, finished this review and then decided to wait until the Scrapface touchup was done before posting it.