TT Combat Comms Tower
/I have always liked TT Combats kits, i have heaps of them, almost all their residential houses, quite a few of the commercial buildings (including ruined versions) and some of the moonstone ones. i just started with their scifi stuff and the first one i got was the Comms Tower.
Annddd, it was a pig of a kit. i have assembled worse but nothing like this from TT Combat.
The worst set of instructions ever, i had to go over it a lot, zoom in and just guess on many parts. especially as there were bits missing and the picture and instructions seemed to refer to a different version of the kit.
So lets break this into stages:
Issues
Assembly and conversion
Painting
I have not gone over the radar array, as i need to finish painting it, but suffice to say that the fins do not appear to fit in anyway so i cut it to shape myself and added texture. that will be up soon.
Issues:
As others have pointed out the kit has the floors at the wrong levels, with the bottom two being almost 4 mm out of line.
there are bits that appear to be missing, bits that are not actually cut, and extra bits that are nowhere in teh instructions. this took ages to assemble, and then ages to fix up.
some issues.
Floor:
as you can sort of see, the floors are not level, and it gets worse the further down you go. I cut all of the lugs off one side and just glued it by eyeball.
Panels:
As you can see from the left side this piece fits over teh main board, but the right one one they did not flip the piece so its exactly teh same as the ohter one, which means it wont fit how it should, unless you flip it so the jutting out bit fits where it should. i ended up doing this and then using one of the extra cardboard bits they gave you.
Extra bits:
This is a cool comms machine, but its nowhere in the instructions and no photo of it. its cool, but it also has the two side pieces not mirrored so you lose one side of the detail. You also get an extra wall piece and floor that you dont need so they are a waste of space. the big bit in the below image is the extra wall piece.
Bad placement of pieces:
So in the first pic you can see there is a gap where you have a piece that needs to go there. the 2nd pic shows where the piece is, its in the main body of the side of the building, and the 3rd pic shows it taken out. just daft.
Bits not cut out and unknown bits.
In the pic below is a panel that looks like it should go on the building to make it more 3d, but its not cut out. you also get a weird selection from the cardboard stuff, some is obvious in its use, and some is either extra or does not fit.
Assembly and Conversion;
So once i got past the hassles, i got into the groove and decided to do it up. i added a lot of cardboard for texture and to hide any of the plug holes, i added plastic card to the floor, and the walls, magnetised the doors (they sit in place but come off) and added a plastic bulkhead from an accessory sprue i cannot recall the game its from.
I made a mistake with the cardboard as it pilled a bit, but it makes it look more rundown so its ok. i added nail holes with pin in the corners and just made sure there was a lot more texture.
I rebuilt the piping on the back and made my own ladder out of card and covered most of it in card, to get around how badly it looked before, with all the big gaps.
You cannot see from these pics but the back walls have a mesh texture and the floors a hex texture. with the kit not being super well laid out some of the cardboard is a bit messy but its shoddy future scifi construction so oh well.
I also assembled and added texture to the comms machine.
I forgot to get a pic of the front of the building but you will see it in the painted pics.
After assembly i was happy with how its not symmetrical, i like the fact that its different on both sides.
Painting:
i painted this to fit with the other buildings i painted, in the food court.
I used a series of grey sprays from Molotow - started with dark grey and then xenithaled up though 2 lighter greys and then a light spritz with white. this got the textured look as the spray drys a little,
I then washed it with a burnt umber wash (very thinned out artist acrylic, mixed with some flow aid), this did not take very well (kept running off), so i ended up doing a few coats. and then i finished up with a stipple/drybrush of a platinum white artist acrylic with a stiff brush.
i used metallic on the back walls and a pearl white base for the floors to break it up. the blue is just a storm blue and then mixed with white for highlight.
The red is just a dark artist acrylic red highlighted with a lighter red. i used masking for the hazard lines, and the very faint yellow you can see on the steps was doing the same with masking tape, but it was too light i think.
So all up, it came up well, but the work required was a bit of an ass. I would not buy this again unless i knew they had fixed the kit, and had good instructions or i just wanted to convert the hell out of it.