Dave's Transformers Titans Return Rant: Voyager Wave 2 Astrotrain with Darkmoon (Train/Shuttle) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/VAstrotrain This is a redeco of Sentinel Prime with a new head, but it would probably be more accurate to call Sentinel a predeco of Astrotrain, since the mold is really obviously meant to be this toy. His wavemate, Alpha Trion, is an equally obvious predeco, this time for Lioconvoy. https://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/VSentinel - original mold CAPSULE $25-30 price point. Astrotrain with Darkmoon: Original mold was mildly recommended but with an advisement to wait for the Astrotrain deco. The color changes and paint apps that actually contrast with the plastic really help. Recommended. RANT Packaging: Same as previous wave. DECEPTICON: ASTROTRAIN Assortment: B8353 Titan Master: Darkmoon Altmodes: Space Shuttle, Train Transformation Difficulty: 11 steps Previous Name Use: G1, Classics Previous Mold Use: Gen Weapon: Ionic Displacer Rifle Function: Decepticon Military Transport Motto: "In confusion there is opportunity." ASTROTRAIN uses the cloaking ability of DARKMOON to travel behind enemy lines without being detected. B: STR 9 SPD 10 INT 7 FRB 6 T: STR +2 SPD +1 INT +4 FRB +4 Astrotrain's stats are consistent with his G1 techspecs. Packaging: 7 ties on the figure (including a non-obvious one around the waist), one each on the two weapons, and a long rubber band keeping the head on. Packaged with the wings pointed back rather than out to the sides, oddly. Cosells are Apeface, Wolfwire, Alpha Trion, and Soundwave. Color Swaps: Too many non-unified sprues, the only one-to-one is that the clear plastic is now purple. Decepticon Purple plastic is used for the guns, hands, panels on the sides of the legs (including the fold-down train wheels for train mode), collar, wing backpack, hip joints, and Darkmoon's limbs. The boot cores and knee joints are black plastic. Not sure what plastic is used for the faceplate or the vertical fins, as they're completely painted over in light gray, but there's no reason to believe they're the same color. Faceplate is probably black, and the tail fins purple. Everything else is light gray plastic (including the pelvis, which would be purple if all the red became purple). Paint Apps: There's a lot of light gray paint, with the faceplate and vertical tail fins being completely coated in it. Much of the shins is painted gray as well, and there's little bits of gray on the fronts of the collar bits. There's black paint on the shoulderpad borders (where Sentinel is red), raised lines on the abdomen, the tips of the toes (shuttle nose), plus on the forearm cannons where it really helps them stand out. There's purple paint on the feet (on the train parts of them) and his abdomen has red and purple paint emulating the G1 toy's stickers. The top of the helmet is painted yellow in accordance with the animation model as opposed to the red of the original toy, and the eyes are red (but so sunken-in it's hard to tell without shining a flashlight directly into his face, and he hates that). No Decepticon symbols on the front of the robot mode, but there's one on the top of each wing. (A reprolabel small symbol on the right pectoral landing skid tab would be G1-toy-appropriate.) Mold Changes: Darkmoon has a different faceplate, thus giving Astrotrain a different face than Sentinel. Otherwise, no intentional changes, although some of the peg holes don't hold the guns very well (mainly the wing root ones used on the sides in train mode). Other Notes: I'm kinda wobbling on whether to put the collar up or not in robot mode. Yes, it's based on the G1 animation model, and the package and instructions both have it up, but putting it down helps differentiate the molds a little. Similarly, make sure the wings are out to the sides on Astrotrain and fold them straight back on Sentinel. The smaller rifle is based off G1 Astrotrain's gun, but you need to have him hold it by the smaller peg to get the G1 effect, since the larger peg has the gun end up upside-down from the G1 appearance. I'm thinking of repainting Sentinel Prime's small rifle purple and painting Astrotrain's large rifle dark gunmetal so both figures can have symmetric guns. Overall: This is a very nice update of Astrotrain, although the train mode definitely feels like the poor relation here, as it did on Sentinel. Definitely worth picking up. Dave Van Domelen, off to paint the guns.