Miniatures Set 2 Assembly Notes

[offsides]

I got my sets (2x Many Minis in one box - the outer carton was dented to the point of breaking the heavy cardboard, and one of the inner boxes got a little battered, but the contents are fine so who cares :)) on Saturday, and have already assembled one of each unit from the "standard" colors to put with my set 1 stuff for display, and am almost done with assembling an entire "reverse" color set as well. Everything looks pretty good, but I found a couple interesting tidbits during assembly. Here are my thoughts on assembling the various units.

Fencer:

Amazingly, every single piece snaps in tight enough that there's no glue needed. I expected that with the turret, since it's interchangeable, but all 4 treads snapped in solidly as well. Neat!

Superheavy:

It turns out that the guns are NOT identical - each side of the sprue has a coaxial gun on a different side of the main gun. Therefore, to make the SHVY symmetrical, you need to use one gun from each side of the sprue. Not that it really matters, and you could even use the 4 different combinations to designate different SHVYs to a limited extent, but it was an interesting thing to note.

Mobile HWZ:

I'm a hair disappointed that I had to glue the turrets rather than letting them rotate like most of the HWZs do (a couple were too loose and had to be glued), but it's not a big deal. And if you value your sanity, install the radar dish first :)

GEV-PC:

The simplest assembly of this set, it's just like the regular GEV.

LGEV:

Straightforward, though those fan tails are a hair small for my fingers. The only tricky part is that the left slot seems to be a little tighter, and require some extra force to get the fan fully in place.

Light Tank:

Okay, while I have to admit that the assembled unit looks great, holy smokes is this one disproportionately complicated. First off, it's the only unit other than Ogres to require 5 (yes, FIVE!) pieces. Second, it's the ONLY unit that requires installing one piece on top of another (I'm not sure why this was necessary, though I'm sure there's a good reason for it). Finally, after installing the gun platform on the back, you really want to install the remaining three pieces in this order: radar dish, gun, antenna. Again, your sanity will thank you :)

Mark IV:

Another straightforward build, especially since the secondaries are identical (unlike the Mk III and V). Although, the scaling feels a little off - the Mark IV is longer than the Mark V, and the secondary guns are noticeably bigger than the Set 1 Ogres even though the primary is the same size (and may even even the same sculpt as the Mk III). The tower is also shorter and stockier, but I can't say that's off given that each Ogre's tower is different. Plus the tread units are bigger, but that at least makes some sense due to the Mk IV's increased speed.

So there you have it. Overall, beside the order of parts on the MHWZ and LT, there aren't any real gotchas. Even the slot tightness on the LGEV is no biggie, you just have to pay attention to pushing it in a little more. And once again, the sculpts are just plain gorgeous. Thanks a bunch to SJG for another very well done project!