1/144 Scale Tie Scimitar Master by Al Wong
Man, oh man, it was a great day for me; Along with the A-wing and the Hulk Figure, I also received the 1/144 Scimitar. What can I say? It’s another beautiful creation from Alfred’s mind. I love it; I can’t wait to build it and I know you guys will love it too.
To start with, upon ripping into your package, you will be greeted with six well-cast yellow resin pieces.
You will receive:
1x: main hull part
2x: wings
2x: bomb rails
1x: rear-end piece
First off, the biggest of the six pieces: the main hull. It measures in at 3.5905″ in length so it’s a rather small kit, but so much detail is packed into it. Where to begin? Looking over this beautifully-cast piece, I see on the top of it the epitomy of Star Wars signature “guts on the outside”. Fellow kit builders, you are greeted with pipes and panels, greeblies and knobs, do-hickeys and thingamabobs, and even a few vents galore as you glance across this beautiful piece of art. There are many noted asymmetries built into the kit purposely, several details just engineered not to match from one side to the other give this piece a leg up on the eye candy area. You can’t turn the piece at any given angle without being greeted by some new detail that was not visible from a matching previous angle. The parts that are supposed to be symmetrical are very close in general. If you were to throw a caliper on it, then I’m sure you’d find a few thousandths here and there but you have to measure it to catch it.
Moving on to the “wings”, they are what you would expect from a small-scale Tie Fighter wing; very nicely assembled frame structure, well-detailed with greeblies on the outside and frame reinforcements on the inside, attachment hub on the inside central area has some nice details to set it off. You’ll also notice a single locating strip corresponding to a forward-facing notch on either wing root for the main fusilage. There isn’t much else to say about this piece detail-wise, but a word of warning: It is a very thin piece in this scale, so be gentle with it during assembly or handling so as not to crack or warp it.
Next, we have the bomb rails: Fitting onto the lower half of the hull boasting eight bomb ports facing forty-five degrees down to the front. The pieces themselves are very sparsely detailed but they perfectly compliment the overall stylings of the Scimitar. Due to their location, if they were highly-detailed at this size, you would probably lose most of the detail just due to view being blocked by other parts of the model kit. All in all, I think these bomb rails will work very well for this scale. They are true to the design of the subject.
The rear end piece is small; I’m not really sure why it wasn’t made on the fusilage as one whole piece; maybe it was an undercut issue that I just can’t see while looking at it. The piece itself is nicely detailed as usual for this scale. You’ll see a ribbed structure that would presumably be an exhaust or engine, two round structures that could very well be the twin ion engines that Ties are named for, and a few small square details just to set it off. For my copy of the kit, this is the only area that you’ll need to sand for fit. The rear of the main fusilage appears to hold the pour stubs for the casting so those will need to be sanding and the entire rear brought smooth and flat to mate the rear piece.
The casting, as always, from Ed, is superb. Mold lines and seams are hidden very well along the center of the Tie in a very easy-to-clean area. The lines themselves are not very deep at all, there appear to be no mold lines on the bomb rails, and the mold line on the wing is set on the inside of the wing’s outer-edge all the way around so this should be fairly easy to clean as well. Once again, I give this kit a very high rating. It looks like it would be a quick kit to build, a fun kit to paint, and a kit you would be proud to display. The only thing I would say about this kit that could be construed as negative is that I just don’t like kits that are this small, but that’s a personal preference and has no bearing on the model. I recommend this kit if you like expanded universe subjects and smaller scale kits for your display.
Images:
https://s1093.photobucket.com/albums/i424/George_Waldron/Al%20Wong%20Reviews/144%20Scimitar/
George Waldron
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