Workshop Wednesday: Stormwall Part 1 Prep Work

I got my Stormwall shipped in about last week, and with the Stormwall appearing on storeshelves everywhere, it’s time to get cracking and get it painted ASAP!

Phase One: Opening the box and prepping.

The Stormwall is an impressive 48 parts (although 9 of that is technically just the Lightning Pods, so I guess it’s more accurately 39 parts), so it’s going to be a lot to build and superglue. It does look relatively straight forward to put together, in that most of the methods of how the Colossal sticks together is pretty intuitive, so I don’t think there should be much issues. The only confusing bits are the small pistons and such, and the box has a nice instructional leaflet on how to put all those things together.

And just in case, here’s a little Vitruvian Stormwall primer on how the bits go together (pistons at one side, Lightning Pods sold seperately).

The Stormwall also comes with a really nice huge-sized coaster wreck marker.

I saw some complaints about the mold lines and misalignments in the PP forums, but I’d say that my Stormwall is a beauty to behold.

The moldlines look almost nonexistent, but the multiple mold method of casting (I think a lot of them were cast using a four part mold) meant some mold lines in some weird places. I also had some bubbling issues, but all of these were minor and in hard to see areas. Still, the ones I had seem pretty easy to fix… so I did. The flash and extra sprue bits are also easily hacked off with a hobby knife. And look at that detail! Beautiful.

I hear that they’re going to be putting the legs out in two pieces in the future, and hopefully that will fix some of the mold issues that have been reported, but the legs look pretty darn snazzy to me! The only problem being that it can be easy to flip the hip as you build it, and based on the angles the hip and the legs line up, getting it wrong will lead to some very strange Stormwalls. Make sure the pegs to fit the torso and the piston is on the front. Follow the instructional leaflet if you have any orientation problems. 😉

Certain other small pet peeves include the fact that I with the torso were made out of 3 pieces rather than one (mainly for personal airbrushing purposes than any requirements). Also the hollow body (the way it floated on water means it’s DEFINITELY hollow) might lead to some complications during assembly and magging. I’ll update you guys when I do that.