Dave's Transformers Kingdom Rant: Core Class Wave 2 Starscream (jet) Megatron (tank) Permalink: http://www.eyrie.org/~dvandom/BW/Gen/CoreK2 CAPSULES $10 price point. Starscream: Perhaps not the perfect Starscream at this scale, but very close. Strongly recommended. Fingers crossed for redecos. Megatron: Okay in both modes, seems to use an unusually dark color scheme to hide problems with the tank, but at least it's not a rehash of previous Tank Megatrons in this size. Recommended. RANTS Packaging: Same as first wave Core. While there's room on the cardback for a Command/Division/Rank sigil, they don't bother. Both have the "crashed Nemesis" backtrop for the card art, although Starscream's has him a bit closer to the ship. Nice subtle point of Megatron leading from the front. DECEPTICON: STARSCREAM Assortment: WFC-K12 Altmode: Jet Transformation Difficulty: 17 steps Previous Name Use: Yes Previous Mold Use: None Packaging: Two ties hold the robot in the blister, and one tie on each of the Null Ray cannons. Robot Mode: It's a little Starscream, minimal issues with vehicle kibble, good proportions, good color. There's tail section bits on the outer faces of the boots and a jet nose end on the back, but that's not too bad for a Starscream (as with a lot of designs, the cockpit window on the chest is fake). Minor hollowness issues in the limbs, so someone's probably gonna sell a gap-filler set even though it doesn't really need one. A lot of the surface details are based on the Earthrise mold, if shrunken and simplied (e.g. the 3mm nipple studs are now significantly smaller, but still there). 3.75" (9.5cm) tall, although some of that is the intake scoops flanking the head, so it's not quite GIJoe scale or anything. All the plastic is very light gray, the paint apps do a good job of making it look like some of the pieces are other colors. There's red paint on the shoulder scoops and the fronts of the right and left torso. The forearms/fists are coated in bright blue paint, as are the feet and the tail fins on the boots. The helmet is painted gloss black, with dark silver on the face and the turbine pecs. Red eyes, yellow fake canopy windows on the torso front. The back sides of the wings have red stripes and purple Decepticon symbols, but there's no paint on the front-facing (underside) parts of the wings. The neck is a swivel, the waist does not move. Ball joint shoulders, elbows, hips, and knees. The hands can hold 3mm pegs, and there's 3mm sockets on the outer faces of the shoulders plus one on the center of the backpack (which takes the place of a pelvis 3mm socket in this mode). Despite only having 9 joints, it can do a pretty good job of most of the classic Starscream poses. The Null Ray cannons are identical unpainted pieces of light gray plastic 1.75" (4.5cm) long with 3mm peg grips and 3mm stud barrel tips. Transformation: Technically you can leave the cannons on the shoulders while transforming, but odds are very high they'll pop off, so might as well remove them on purpose. This is a pretty clever transformation, and unlike a lot of clever transformations it also works well. The core conceit is that the chest splits open (the center fake cockpit stays with the left side) and the entire wing section with the torso shell and arms rotates around a swivel in the small of the back, then snaps shut around the knees, neatly avoiding the "what to do with the legs" problem that small jets often have. There's a fair amount of fiddling needed to get things at just the right angles to snap shut properly, and getting the nose end together requires a bit of force and some practice, but the rest is intuitive and fits solidly. Be sure to turn the head around before finishing up the nose end, or Starscream will be looking down from under the cockpit and that's weird. Altmode: To be honest, I was expecting something like Authentics Starscream with creative photography hiding that from us, but aside from some unavoidable undercarriage junk it's a properly proportioned F-15-style fighter jet. I am impressed. It could stand a little more paint detail, but that's always true, the only place where there's an unaesthetic bit of missing paint is on the back of the cockpit, where the strut holding the nose end cuts through. 4.5" (11.5cm) long with a wingspan of 3.25" (8cm), making it about 1:160 scale, give or take. A little too small for 1:144. Mostly ghost gray with blue tail and thrusters, red wing stripes and intakes, yellow cockpit, and purple Decepticon symbols on the wings. There's no wing attachment points, the Null Ray cannons go on the shoulder sockets. The socket from the small of the back in robot mode is now under the nose end, and I suspect it was put there so he could carry Megatron's pistol in this mode. Overall: No particular flaws, a clever design that actually works, about as good as one could expect for a Starscream in this size. I actually hope they flood the market with Seeker redecos of this mold, it'd probably have to be multi-packs for the exclusives market, though. (As of this writing, very few of the store exclusives have been revealed, and the only Seeker is a G2 redeco of Earthrise Ramjet.) DECEPTICON: MEGATRON Assortment: WFC-K13 Altmode: Tank Transformation Difficulty: 12 steps Previous Name Use: Yes Previous Mold Use: None Packaging: Two ties hold the robot into the blister, one holds the handgun. Robot Mode: Like, it's G1 Megatron's head and chest stuck onto an otherwise black and dark gray tank-former body. They didn't even try to get close to the G1 color scheme (toy or animation), even though it would have been relatively easy just by using lighter gray. And it's a kinda lazy design as well, with the front third of the tank just hanging off the back as a single chunk. 3.5" (9cm) tall at the head, the shoulders rise a little higher. As mentioned, it's mostly black and dark grays, but with silver for the head and torso front. Black plastic is used for the head (I'm pretty sure), the collar, the tank tread backpack, the torso front, the pelvis, the left forearm, the right fist and forearm armor, the arm cannon, the boots, and the struts inside the boots. Dark gray plastic with a faint metallic sheen is used for the shoulderpads, the upper arms, the left forearm, the thighs, the pistol, and a panel in the center of the back. Dark silver paint is used for the helmet, the front of the chest, the top of the chest, and the fists. Bright silver is found on the face, the abdomen, and the treads (on the backpack and on the boots). It's subtle, but the little forehead triangles are painted in the darker silver. The eyes, the sides of the abdomen, and a detail on the belly are painted gloss red. Bright blue and yellow details are also on the belly. A borderless Decepticon symbol is printed on the center of the chest. The cannon on the forearm is on a swivel, mostly useful for tank mode. The neck and waist are swivels. Ball joints on the shoulders, elbows, hips, and knees. The right wrist is a swivel, used for transformation. The hands have 3mm sockets, and there's a pair of 3mm sockets on the back, plus the usual back of pelvis 3mm socket. No 3mm studs on the figure. The muzzle of the cannon is a 5mm socket. There are other holes in the toy, but they're not 3mm or 5mm in diameter, and are just for joint pegs. There's a wider than 5mm peg on the inside of the left forearm, which goes into a same sized socket on the cannon in tank mode. The pistol is very loosely inspired by G1 Megatron's altmode, but with a very short stock and enough details changed to not look like any real pistol. It has a weird trigger guard bit that looks like a reversed trigger, but is placed far enough forwards to only look like a proper trigger guard if held by a much larger hand. It's 1.5" (3.5cm) long, with a 3mm tip to its scope but the actual barrel tip is wider than that and has an iron sight (it can be crammed into a 5mm socket). The stock is made to fit into a 5mm socket. The grip is a short 5mm peg with an off-center 3mm peg on the end, so it can be held by either kind of hand socket size. It can be stored on the back, either pointing up as per the barrel of Megatron's gun in G1, or sideways to keep it hidden. Transformation: Much like the much-reused Siege Voyager mold, the arm cannon only forms the root of the tank gun, and without the pistol the tank looks somewhat lacking. Lift the backpack up over the shoulders, the collar lifts up a bit during this process but you don't actually hide the head inside the chest. Fold the arms back and rotate the left wrist 180 degrees so that the right arm peg can go into the cannon socket while both forearms have black armor on top and slots on the bottom to go into pegs on the small of the back. Rotate the waist 180 degrees, and the knees bend sideways on struts so that the treads of the boots can connect to the backpack treads. Finally, attach the pistol to the arm cannon muzzle to be the tank cannon. (Without this, it looks more like some sort of mortar tank.) Altmode: Well, it's like...the chassis has good detailing, if lost in all the black. The feet stuck on the back end are to be expected these days. But the turret is mostly just arms with a few armor panels on them, with lots of gaps both between them and under the turret. The pistol on the end of the arm cannon really doesn't work well as a tank gun. Maybe repaint one of Airwave's tower pieces and use that instead, assuming there isn't already a replacement barrel on sale at Shapeways. There's no cover on the rear deck between the fenders. Oh, and as usual it doesn't look like any specific real world main battle tank (the turret is too tall for a modern one in any case), it's clearly meant to be an MBT rather than a lighter or heavier type. The chassis is 3" (7.5cm) long and 2" (5cm) wide, putting it in the 1:100 to 1:120 scale range. It's mostly black, with some of the dark gray in the turret and bright silver on the tank treads and drive wheels. A bit of the front deck is also dark gray. The only paint visible in this mode is the silver on the treads and the dark silver on the fists. There's no wheels under the treads, so it doesn't roll along. The turret can rotate 360 degrees, and elevate about 30 degrees. All the 3mm sockets are on the underside, and there's nowhere to store the pistol other than as a barrel extension. Overall: Leaving aside the weird color choices, it's a decent variant on the Megatron Tank idea that doesn't just tweak the T30 Legends mold or the Authentics mold. Maybe it was made so dark to make the gaps stand out less? It's okay, but I won't mind if they don't issue any redecos. Dave Van Domelen, should probably go to some Studio Series or RED next.