Robotech Tactics arrived too

While I was very happy to dig through the box of on time Super Dungeon Explore goodies, I was a bit less thrilled by Robotech due to the extra 5 months we had to wait to get it in Australia compared to it being available to retail. So unlike SDE and Zombicide where backers got theirs 1st the backers of Robotech have been looking at copies on store shelves since last November and being more and more annoyed. This being Wave 1 also makes me worry that it'll be a year before wave 2 arrives if they follow the same crappy pattern.

Anyway here's stuff that I got. 

I went in for 2 copies with a friend. He sounds like he's going to try and sell the box and just keep the bag of extras though. 

Really nice looking box. It's got great art around the bottom half when you lift off the lid too. Shame everything inside is just kinda jammed in there, loose sprues and the rulebook.

Bag of extras was almost the contents of the starter set again but with the other 2 types of Destroids.

Let's look at the sprues.

DAMN thats a lot of parts. This is just from the extras bag of extras. There's this much again in the box.

Now some close ups of the different sprues:

This is a Zentraudi artillery pod with options for 2 types of missile pods or a pair of big guns.

The standard pods come 3 to a sprue. These despite the tiny chin guns are the easiest models on the box to assemble.

The officers pod that Battletech players may know as a Marauder. Also on the sprue is a recon pod. So many sensor bits on that thing.

Quite an odd one this, a recovery pod. It's huge compared to the other mechs but has very little surface detail to it. Kinda feel this was probably a vehicle that only appeared in the background of a few scenes of the show so it's just not very detailed.

Here is the Spartan Destroid sprue or to Battletech players the Archer. Lots of parts here to build two mechs, with optional arms, guns, maces, open hands and one with closed missile racks and one open. Interestingly the Destroids seem to be scaled to the same size as the old Battletech minis. I can see them trying to sell this to them as cross sales but I wish they'd made everything a bit bigger instead. I'll post up later my efforts at building these mechs but I can say now they have been designed and sprues as if they were much bigger kits, they are super fiddly and time consuming to build for their tiny size at current form.

The Tomahawk missile launcher Destroid, I think the only Destroid that never made it to Battletech. They've included 2 types of missile pods for these. The round ones from the show and bigger squarish pods that I think got added by Paladium. I'm just building mine with the round pods.

The 3 different sprues for the 3 forms of the transforming Valkyrie fighters in Fighter, Gerwalk (Guardian), Battroid (Battleloid) forms. Lots of peices agains with all the different head options, different arms and different missile load outs for the wings. I couldn't help pulling out some MACROSS trading figures I'd gotten from Hobby Link Japan a few months ago and comparing.

And just to compare number of parts

Though the trading figure has some parts pre assembled like the main fuselage with movable wings. Really can't help feeling like they could have simplified the sprues to less parts and maybe made the things a bit bigger. Also wish they'd used say light grey or white plastic instead of this odd brownish colour.

I've heard people having problems with the instructions. I guess some bits are a bit ambiguous to people when only shown facing the other way on the sheet. Probably wouldn't have hurt showing a step by step assembly order too.

Lots of useful decals that need to be carefully cut out.

The feel of the minis is much more that of very tiny Gundam and MACROSS kits from the 80s rather than gaming minis.

Will post up some built ones very soon.

EDIT: Well it seems I wasn't the only one to think that the instructions could be much better, I'm just 5 months behind the curve complaining about it. Better step by step instruction that can be downloaded from here: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/2627/Palladium-Books/subcategory/4816_22530/Robotech-RPG-Tactics?hc_location=ufi