Dave's Dark of the Moon Action Set Rant: Wave 3 Autobot Ratchet Lunar Crawler Shockwave Fusion Tank Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/DotM/Action3 These guys have sat in my To Be Reviewed stack for a while...I'm kind of glad that there's supposed to be a two month gap before the next wave of Transformers hits, I have a lot of catching up to do! Ratchet is a retool with new vehicle, Shockwave is a new Commander figure with a smaller vehicle. So now we have three of each size in the Action Sets. At least for now, Shockwave is only available in this set. http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/DotM/Legion1 - Ratchet figure mold CAPSULES Autobot Ratchet Lunar Crawler: Recommended Legion figure, and while the design of the Crawler is pretty clever, the execution is weak. Mildly recommended. $15 price point. Shockwave Fusion Tank: From a design standpoint, both the core figure and the action set are both pretty cool. The engineering, however, isn't up to the demands of the design, and a lot of bits don't quite hold together. Mildly recommended. $15 price point. RANTS Packaging: Same format as previous two waves. Ratchet's backdrop is a lunar landscape with Earthrise in the background, Shockwave has a burning Chicago. AUTOBOT: AUTOBOT RATCHET Altmode: Hummer H2 Ambulance Accessory: Lunar Crawler Accessory Modes: Lunar Combat Vehicle, Repair Station, Lunar Crawler Series: 1 Number: 005 Licensor: GM Transformation Difficulty: Intermediate (2) Previous Name Use: Uni, Uni2, Movie1, RotF, DotM, TF:A Previous Mold Use (figure): DotM Function: Autobot Medic Motto: "You'd think a lack of atmosphere would make my job easier, but the damnable dust gets everywhere!" Harsh lunar conditions make TRANSFORMERS [sic] repair close to impossible. Thankfully, AUTOBOT RATCHET is in command of a cutting-edge converting Lunar Crawler. With its multi-axis repair claw and high-output emergency satellite, this rescue vehicle can tackle even the most difficult repairs. STR 4 INT 9 SPD 6 END 9 RNK 5 COUR 10 FRB 3 SKL 10 Avg 7 Packaging: Ratchet is in robot mode, the accessory is in Lunar Crawler mode. One of the solar panels popped loose on mine and was rattling around the box. A mini-crawler is held in at the front of the blister. Three strings secure Ratchet, 2 strings hold the crawler, none on the mini- crawler. Action Scene: A lunar landscape showing the old Apollo rover, and with an Autobot symbol banner replacing the U.S. flag. Color Swaps: Green becomes white, black becomes gunmetal gray. Paint Apps: The vehicle mode has a lot of metallic chartreuse paint, on the front end and most of the roof. The windows are metallic black, and a faintly metalflake dark blue is used for stripes along the sides. A dark gray Autobot symbol is printed on the front bumper area. In robot mode, there's gunmetal paint on the face, dark metallic blue on the eyes and shins (where the paint layer is a little thinner, and looks lighter), and more metallic chartreuse on the thighs. Other Changes: The spare tire on the roof has been replaced by a gunmetal gray plastic instrument package with a 5mm peg hole in it. A pity it doesn't also have a 3mm hole, to let him mount the mini-crawler's gun mode. The peg hole is made for the crawler's arm to mount, either as part of the Lunar Combat Vehicle mode, or just as a comically oversized accessory for Ratchet's vehicle mode. Mini-Crawler: A cute little tank-treaded crawler made of dark taupe (a sort of grayish brown) plastic with the metalflake dark blue paint used on its solar panels. (Customization suggestion: repaint these solar panels and those on the main accessory with a shinier metallic blue.) 1.25" (3cm) long with small cannons molded on the front, and a 3mm rod along the back end. If you assume it's Hot Wheels 1:72 scale, that makes it about 2m (6') long at scale. It has a hinge along the centerline that lets it fold up into a gun. The whole 3mm rod section is part of the right side, so the left half now sticks down as a handle. There's no movable wheels on it, but given that this is already a transforming weapon/vehicle, I don't mind the lack. It's sufficiently clever already. Lunar Crawler: Like Rollbar's vehicle mode, it's a solar panel on treads with a manipulator arm and a sort of antennae array...it's just a lot bigger. In fact, if this is meant to be of Hot Wheels scale, the solar panels are not nearly enough to power it. The main body is 4.5" (11cm) long and 4" (10cm) wide, with the interconnectivity rod and clip on the ends of the solar panels. With the arm extended all the way forward, the total length becomes 9.75" (20cm). The color scheme is a mix of white, gray, dark taupe and dark metallic blue. The upper deck and most of the arm are made of white plastic, the inner frame and the arm joints are silvery gray plastic, and the tread pieces are dark taupe. It has little silvery gray wheels on the bottoms of the treads, but they don't turn very well (will need to be popped out and any flash cut off). Dark metallic blue paint is used for the solar panels (same repainting caveat) and a dot on the manipulator arm's trigger. The claws of the arm are painted silver. There's some metallic chartreuse paint on the sorta-antenna, but it's mainly meant for the combat vehicle. A sensor thingy accessory with 3mm rod connectors is stuck on the shoulder of the arm, but it can be pegged into other places as well. The top of it is painted metallic chartreuse. The arm has a swivel-hinge shoulder, a hinge elbow, and a hinge-swivel wrist that together allow pretty good range of motion. Pulling back on a sensor package on the back of the "hand" makes the claw snap shut and pull back, letting go allows it to snap back open on springs. The entire arm can be popped off, the swivel at the root is actually a 5mm peg. It has a wide 3mm clip on the shoulder piece. Each solar panel has two 3mm holes, plus each of the four tread segments has two more 3mm holes near the bottom (mainly meant for the other modes). There's a single 5mm hole at the front for the arm, plus one on each of the rear tread pieces (these are almost useless in this mode). In theory, the undercarriage has several 3mm rod sections, but they're blocked by the treads. The base of the claw has a shallow 3mm hole on either side, flat-bottomed pegs can go in but round-bottomed ones won't stay very well. Stability is...poor. The treads peg together, but the pegs hold very loosely. The undercarriage is held only by hinge friction, which isn't very strong. You can improve this by storing Ratchet in vehicle mode on the underside, using the clips for combat vehicle mode. The sides of the solar panels have a tendency to pop off easily, as demonstrated by the fact one was flopping around in the box. Lunar Combat Vehicle: This mode integrates Ratchet, you can't connect the claw arm without Ratchet's vehicle mode being in place. It's a little less floppy than it seems at first, but you have to position Ratchet in just the right spot to let the gunmetal railings snap onto his roof and lock things together. The intended design appears to have the clips rest entirely inside the roof rack, which is loose. But if you can get them hooked onto the rooftop lights it's a lot more sturdy, albeit a little warped-looking. Otherwise, the treads swivel around, turning the solar panel sides into spoilers. The sorta-antenna folds over Ratchet's front end, integrating visually pretty well. The 5mm peg holes on the treads are now usable, although the 3mm holes on the treads are still too close to the ground to be useful. The weapon mode of the mini-crawler is meant to sit on one of the solar panels. This mode is 6.75" (17cm) long. The metallic chartreuse on the antenna array now becomes additional armor for Ratchet, and a sort of cowcatcher with gun barrels that aim at the ground. A gunmetal Autobot sumbol is printed on this part, making up for Ratchet's own being covered now. Repair Station: From combat mode, open up the frame flat, and fold out the main solar panel (that's on the underside now), then flip it over and tweak the positions of the treads. The arm goes back where it was for crawler mode. What makes this a station are the ramp in front and the fact that there's now over a dozen places to put 3mm pegs, plus the 3mm rod sections of the chassis are now accessible. The result is 8" (20cm) long and 6.25" (16cm) wide, the largest of the base modes. The rough-textured metal plate ramp is painted silver, no other paint is new for this mode. Overall: An interesting design betrayed by corner-cutting. It has the unfortunate feel of a knockoff of itself, with bits that keep falling off or flopping around...and this isn't really a quality control lottery issue, it seems to be an inevitable consequence of their choice of materials. Worth picking up if you see it on the shelf, but not worth pursuing via online sources or other resellers. DECEPTICON: SHOCKWAVE Altmode: Cybertronian Tank Accessory: Fusion Tank Accessory Modes: Battle Base, Ground Weapon, Tank add-on Series: 1 Number: 006 Licensor: None Transformation Difficulty: Intermediate (2) Previous Name Use: G1, Cybertron, TF:A, DotM Previous Mold Use (figure): None Function: Counter-Intelligence Motto: Subterranean Warfare SHOCKWAVE stealthily tears through the Earth in order to avoid detection by the AUTOBOTS and their human allies. His ability to emerge from the ground and attack anywhere has put the AUTOBOTS on alert! Where will he strike next? STR 8 INT 10 SPD 4 END 8 RNK 8 COUR 9 FRB 10 SKL 7 Avg 8 Packaging: Three strings hold robot mode to the blister. The Fusion Tank is in Battle Base mode (more or less), and held in with two strings. A rubber band keeps the missile from launching. Action Scene: Burning, partially ruined Chicago. I'd have preferred a Chernobyl background, but I suppose this works too. Robot Mode: Well, it's Shockwave, movie-style. Cyclopean techno-organic thug with a flexible cable connecting his gun to the small of his back (when it's not falling out). The advantage of having an altmode that doesn't look like anything real means that the robot mode can be kept pretty on-model even at smaller scale. 3.5" (9cm) tall and mostly pale grayish purple with some silver and gold. There's actually two purple plastics, one variety slightly lighter. I expect the differences are meant for mechanical purposes (i.e. they tried to match colors, but the different physical properties of the two plastics caused the dye to express differently). The shoulders, forearms, thighs and backpack are definitely of the lighter purple. The torso and gun have so much paint on them that it's hard to tell what the underlying purple plastic it, it might even be a third shade. The flexible cable, external ribcage and toe spikes are rubbery gray plastic. Everything else seems to be the slightly darker shade of desaturated purple plastic. Oddly, the gun pieces are riveted together rather than just glued, I can't see why that step would be necessary, unless it had to do with the painting process being hostile to glue. Silver is the main paint color. The blade weapon is entirely covered in it, while the gun has a combination of solid painting and airbrushed silver. There's also silver on the eyeslit, tank treads on the boots, and the wheels on the backpack. Dark gold paint covers most of the torso front, some details on the gun and backpack wheels. The barrel of the cannon is very dark gray and the eye is red. There's a silver Decepticon symbol on the upper right arm, but it's rotated out of the way when the cannon is attached properly. The head turns, the waist does not. The shoulders are ball joints on hinges that can swing back, and the arms have both upper arm swivels and ball joint elbows. Normally this would come under the heading of gilding the lily, but you need to be able to rotate the bicep independently. The hips and knees are ball joints. Other than the whole cable falling out issue (see below), it's very well articulated and proportioned. There's 3mm peg holes on the upper arms and forearms, plus the claw hands have 3/4 holes molded into them. The hand clips don't hold all that well, though, at least with the included accessories. There's also a 3mm hole in the small of the back and another near the front of the cannon, intended for cable connection. Present but not very useful are two 3mm holes on the insides of each boot, these are for vehicle mode and combined mode. There's a 3mm rod sticking out of each elbow, meant for transformation pegs but long enough to hold a C-clip. The backpack also has a couple of rods. While the cannon can be held in many ways, it seems intended to plug into the 3mm peg hole on the right bicep, which rotates to be on top. That way the hand is nicely concealed inside the cannon. The cable connects from the small of the back to the 3mm hole near the front of the cannon. This restricts the range of motion of the right arm, he can't point it forward without the cable popping out. If you ditch the cable, the 3mm peg on the cannon can be used to attach the blade as a bayonet. And if you peg the cannon on to the forearm hole, the elbow still can't bend, but you could plug the cable into the bicep. As with the Voyager version, the blade weapon is an odd and almost arbitrary shard with a 3mm peg in the middle and a 3mm rod segment opposite it for attaching other weapons. Transformation: The backpack flips up to become the front of the vehicle, the arms swing back to form the turret-ish segment. The boots split to become the treads, with the heel spurs sliding into slots in the front end, but not locking. There's actually some tabs and slots along the sides of the torso that are meant to help lock things in place, and they do a decent job as long as you don't squeeze the rear treads together (which has to be done for combined mode). It doesn't really matter which side you put the cannon on, it'll looks badly hollow either way, but if you want to be able to just plug into the Fusion Tank combined mode you need to put the cannon on the right side and the blade on the left side. Vehicle Mode: Well, it looks about the same as the Voyager version, albeit smaller...except for the top. The arms don't have an obvious positioning, and the instructions lack any clear view of how they should be angled, skipping ahead to putting the weapons on top of them and obscuring the view. As far as I can tell, you want the shoulders touching at the front of the not-quite-turret, while the forearms are parallel with the treads. Attaching the "trailer" mode of the accessory helps force everything into the right alignment. 4" (10cm) long, and at a wild guess I'm gonna call it 1:120 scale (the TT scale in model railroading), although that assumes a tread length comparable to an Abrams. 1:160 (N-scale) would be reasonable as well. The main color is a sort of desaturated grayish purple, as noted in robot mode. the silver and gold paint of the weapons is still visible, and silver on the treads and front wheels stands out. The hubs of the front wheels are sloppily painted dark gold as well. The Decepticon symbol from the shoulder is visible on the right side of the not-turret, but it's sideways. The flexible cable is visible to the point of being a nuisance, but the ribcage and toe spikes are hidden. It rolls on the "cowcatcher" wheel chunk in front and a pair of small caster wheels in back, although the casters don't roll very well. There's no articulation to speak of, but since the cannon is pegged on it can be turned. Stability is very good once you know where all the angles are, but if you don't have the arms in just the right positions it's pretty wobbly. The front parts of the treads don't lock into place, but as long as you don't squeeze the rear treads together the front ones will stay in place well enough. There's five 3mm peg holes. Two on the top for the main weapons, two on the tread fenders (a bit limited in what can go there without the turret getting in the way), and one in the interior that's intended only for plugging in the flexible cable. The forearm holes are hidden, and the claws are in an awkward position that would only work for something with a rather long rod. The central axle of the front wheels is 3mm in diameter, so weapons can be clipped there as well. The elbow rods are part of transformation. Fusion Tank: This is effectively a trailer after the style of G1 Rodimus Prime, partially wrapping around and becoming an integral part of Shockwave's tank mode. The cannon cable on the tank gets in the way of the missile launcher in the trailer section, but there's a few other holes of the right size in various places that will let you connect the cable differently. The tank's rear caster wheels are off the ground in this mode, with the front tank wheels and a new set of caster wheels in back supporting it. There's some molded treads almost completely hidden between the casters, not sure why they bothered since they're not pointed in useful directions in the modes where they're visible. The combined length is a little over 6" (16cm), and the color scheme pretty much continues onto the trailer. The darker of the two grayish purple plastics dominates the trailer (the lighter shade is absent, as far as I can tell). Medium faintly metallic gray plastic is used for the arms that peg onto the tank, the trigger of the main cannon, the rear wheels and some internal structure. There's a darker purple plastic on the rear underside that's visible from the back. The front of the main cannon is painted silver, and there's dark gold paint on the sides. There's also some silver visible on a part that's meant to be a deckplate in base mode. It holds together very firmly, the only problem being the tank's front end. The other stability issues of the lone tank are fixed by having the trailer arms bracketing the tank, but the front end is made worse. It rolls along pretty well, but has no other articulation. The cannon cannot traverse or elevate, and it fires pretty weakly. In fact, at least on mine, it doesn't even fire straight, instead deflecting downward by about 20 degrees, which doesn't help its already flat trajectory. The tank's 3mm peg holes on top remain accessible, but the ones on the fenders are used for attaching the trailer. The trailer has three 3mm peg holes on the cannon sides (one on the right, two on the left), and you can see some on the deck that are too covered up in this mode to be useful (one of them does work as an alternative hose connection, though). The right side hole seems intended for Shockwave's sword, as it fits so snugly against the outline of the cannon that it HAS to be on purpose. There's 3mm rod segments on the sides and rear of the trailer for either mounting borrowed weapons or having Legion figures hang on for dear life. You can also store the missile on one of the side rods, but it doesn't so much clip on as stress the plastic, so it might pop off randomly. The missile end is 3mm in diameter, so it can be held as a club or stuck into one of the other peg holes for storage as an antenna or something. As shardy-organic Cybertronian movie modes go, it looks pretty good when attached. On its own it looks like some sort of chibi drone with ineffectual arms and a big cannon-head. Battle Base: A little bigger than Megatron's trailer base, mostly due to the big gun on top. However, it sort of cheats on the interconnection element, as the rod and clip pieces have to be lifted up on hinges to connect to something else. It has a small platform behind the cannon, and a sort of repair/torture bay in front. There's a 3mm rod under the barrel of the main gun that can be used to attach other weapons (it was pretty much covered up in trailer mode), and a 3mm peg on the interior that doesn't seem to serve much useful purpose. There's 3mm peg holes in the platform deck, and a 5mm hole in the bay deck, as well as on each of the connector arms on the sides. Colors, size Unfortunately, it has almost no stability. The base depends on a hinge that doesn't lock in position, and it takes very little to make it fall over. And if you put a Legion figure on the platform (Shockwave himself is too big to fit) it'll fall over the other way. Exosuit: If you lift up the cannon to point straight up, that mysterious 3mm peg on the interior of the bay can plug into the hose-connector hole in the small of Shockwave's back. This may be a legacy of an abandoned exosuit mode like the one Optimus Prime's trailer has. Ground Weapon: The package photo of this mode is not only mirror- flopped, it also has a feature that the final toy can't pull off... connecting the arm cannon to the side of the main gun. Well, you can sort of connect it, but not the way seen in the picture. The idea is that you can connect the flexible hose. Anyway, this pulls the main cannon forward on a strut, pulls down the rear wheel assembly as rear legs, and uses the connector claws as front legs, making this a sort of gun-table. It also has a 5mm peg on the front underside that could let this become a weapon for a larger MechTech figure with sufficient arm flexibility. There's also a 3mm rod on the underside that I suppose could let a Cyberverse figure hold it up, but the main control rods are the bits from the back of the tank. 4.5" (12cm) long without the missile loaded, the base deck's 3mm peg holes are usable, the left moreso than the right. There's no paint specifically made for this mode, but pretty much all of the applications from the other two modes are visible. Stability is iffy, it tips backwards way too easily. The hinge at the back is simply not very strong, causing problems here just as in base mode. Mechabeast mode: This isn't in the instructions, and it's not too different from the ground weapon mode, but I get the feeling that the claws molded onto the rear part were intended to evoke those big mecha-cat things seen briefly on Cybertron. Have the rear claw piece folded almost flat, just down enough to keep the 3mm peg on the bottom from touching the ground, and fold the front claws at a similar angle...and you have a mechabeast ready to pounce. Or take advantage of the hinged strut connecting the two halves and you can get it to sit (the "hip" joint is too weak for it to hold a begging pose, though). Mind you, the huge head makes it look more like a duck than a dog. Overall: I rather like a lot of the design elements of this set. It takes good advantage of the "Cybertronian modes don't need to look like anything" issue. Unfortunately, the actual construction falls short in several places, as the design seemed to assume better quality and therefore didn't take additional steps to compensate. Dave Van Domelen, now owns CostCo exclusive Battle Ops Bumblebee, but not sure if he'll ever review it.