Saturday 5 March 2011

Prism Break

My son got an Eldar Fire Prism for his birthday the other month [and another 4 pack of Guardians]. I've tried to approach this with him doing even more - I gave him the clippers to remove the Guardians from the sprue which immediatley he responded with 'I can't do that!' I said 'well I'm certainly not' so he went at it and I cleaned any extraneous bits and mould lines with scalpel.

Now I did do some of the removal for the Fire Prism as he was busy gluing the Guardians so by the time he'd finished some of the Fire Prism was ready to construct which prompted a bit of shock on his part because he thought there was too much to glue and he only wanted to do the 'little things'. I said tough, he'd decided he wanted the tank and he'd be putting it together. Now I know this sounds a little harsh but heck I could make this thing all by myself and we'd be right back in the same situaiton as the 'nids. So if he complains then he's doing it and meanwhile I can still help out unobtrusively, like trimming the parts out while he was busy, and he still feels it's his project.

Now this isn't helped by GW, the Fire Prism sucks. Not in a major way mind, as you can see below we haven't made much of it but already I've had to make compromises. You get these extra bits to go in those engines if you want to represent Star Engine upgrades. I asked my son if he wanted them, allowing his decision making alone, he said yes, I go to put them in and there too big. There seemed two ways you could mont them inside the engine cowling, the diagram wasn't very clear. Both ways spread the cowling apart so there was a 1-2mm gap between top and bottom. So I had to deny his choice of adding the Star Engines. That's not my fault but it still feels like I've said 'what do you want? OK that's nice. We won't be doing that!'


As you can see in these two pictures elastic bands are a useful tool here. GW's moulding once again lets us down. The hinge cup that holds the back door is not big enough to house the door rods that go in it. This puts pressure on the join to the back of the Fire Prism and effectively rips it off the chassis. You can see above the poly-cement 'welding' I had to employ in the corners to join these suckers together.


On top of all this the hinge mechanism and the weight of the back door means this thing won't stay shut. There's all sorts of little nubbins on the thing that you'd think would hold it in place, but no, if flaps open like someone was 'born in a barn'. So we may well just glue the thing shut, it's not like it has transport anyway. A shame though as having something open and shut is just that little more interesting for a nine year old. Even bigger shame are the compromises made so early in it's construction, ruddy wraithbone!

3 comments:

  1. First of all let me say how awesome I think it is that your son is getting into the hobby and game. Secondly, I think you are doing it the right way with getting him to the hands on part!

    With that being said I think all of my vehicles (rhinos & preds) all have the loose rear door/ramp on them. I have magnetized a couple and then on the rest I ended up just putting a small amount of poster sticky tack at one of the top corners and it is just enough to hold them shut when I want them to.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cheers Chad. I think he's taking a bit of hiatus on the old GW front. We've discussed it again and he says he's not so fussed on the painting side but would like to learn how to do it properly [although what I've been trying to show to him up until now must be anyone's guess...].

    However, he also said he'd like to learn to draw better and got some 'How to draw' books, mainly Manga, from the library and his drawing has improved massively, so there's hope. Meanwhile he'd just prefer his Nintendo DS or to play pointless Flash games on the computer.

    Still I'm patient and kids are fickle so we may be back to gaming at some point in the future.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh I have no doubt you have planted the seed well. The hands on portion is the kicker I think. I even encourage other people to do similar stuff to get other people into the games. A gaming buddy of mine in Australia only had him and his father to play with. I told him to have a couple of friends over and get them involved in the game. Even if it was only helping to roll some dice. He said before he knew it they were already asking when they could come over next and play again. LOL

    You are right in just feeding your little fella anything you can to draw him away from the videos games. I can only imagine it is quite the battle but I think you are doing it the right way with little nudges and patience! ;)

    ReplyDelete