It always comes back to the robots that transform, doesn’t it?
So for my second Acid Rain purchase, I decided to screw all that test the waters crap and just go for the one I I’ve been eyeing since its release.
Stronghold, or “Quad Eyes” as the grunts know it, is the first of the big mechs, and I believe the first transforming one. Carrying four huge artillery tubes with projectiles in them, Stronghold can swap quickly and easily from tracked artillery to bipedal mech in a few easy moves. And he can do all this while looking incredibly awesome.
And that really could sum it up for ya. The paintwork is everything I was told it would be — gritty, realistic, but durable enough that I’m not getting paint chips in my hand when playing. I went with the 303rd Marine deco here too, for obvious reasons, and I like the cohesion the markings and colors give these two.
The compression into “tank” mode is simple and satisfying. The real-world application of this type of vehicle would practically necessitate a straightforward change for it to be even remotely possible, and so that nice form+function thing makes for two pretty simple-but-effective modes that you can drop in and out of quick and easy. While the mech mode is the more impressive, this little configuration is no slouch either, with all the features, save the articulation being still usable in it.
That includes things like the rotating gun turret, the cockpit, and a maintenance hatch that gives you access to the battery housing.
The big artillery pods make convincing “arms” as well as armament, and little features like opening doors, removable “shells,” and the fold-down utility step really make you realize just how much thought and design went into this thing.
The cockpit is a fairly utilitarian design, with controls, some buttons, and the aforementioned-batteries light display screens on each side. While the Acid Rain driver I borrowed from Laurel does fit in here, I do kinda feel like there’s a lot of fiddling involved to get him situated in what you would think was a fairly roomy cockpit.
It works, though, and you get just enough of a peek at his head through the turret dome to sell that function.
The cockpit door is adorned with an “Amifa Break” poster. Pop star, pinup, or maybe both? I like the personal touch.
Scale-wise, the Stronghold is a beast in both modes. While it is somewhat compressed in vehicle mode, I think there’s still some intimidating enough size next to a figure to sell it.
Mech mode puts him in the 9-10-inch range, and thanks to his bulk, he could damn near hide in my bigger scale collection without arousing suspicion.
Acid Rain is definitely not a line for the faint of heart, as even the smallest vehicles will run you up nearly a hundo. But what I’m increasingly seeing here is that the price is warranted through sheer design and finish alone, and that’s coming from a guy who avoids this scale like the plague. To put it another way, they could have done this line in 1/24 scale, and I probably would still have eventually caved on it. Or to put it another-nother way, if the quality is there, the price, and even the scale, can become somewhat negotiable.