A Newb's Perspective

I'll take that as a compliment.

I read a crap-ton about these minis just after purchasing and I suppose my experience building the tanks counts for more than I thought. In contrast to some (most?) people on this site who have been doing modeling for many years, I consider myself a newb.

Nonetheless, I will continue to post my progress.

Jaymz, you can change the title of this thread, if you like. Doesn't matter to me.

I just talk a big game.

Meanwhile I've been hacking plastic for decades and don't wash or dry fit a damned thing...not that it doesn't bite me in the ass once in a while LOL
It'll fit or it won't, and if it won't I'll make it fit
But I know where you're coming from, Neo (in fact, you've got a hell of an apt name) I overprep like mad ehwn I start something new, then as I get confident I start whttling down my prep work until I get nice and dangerously complacent ;-)

Thanks, guys for the replies and discussion. Everyone has thier own method and mine has changed as I continue to build. Please continue to discuss, if you feel so inclined.

Sorry for not posting after the first sprue was finished, but life got a little complicated and I forgot.

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BUILDING ZENTRAEDI BATTLE PODS
I am half-way through building all eleven of the sprues I have for this model. I have developed a rhythm and will share some details of my process in hopes of helping others.

First, assemble the main body. I find I have to file down a small amount of the bottom of the back part in order for it to fit nicely. This is the part that touches the round bottom of the front piece. Otherwise, the front and back can pop apart while dry-fitting.

Next assemble the "hips". I've found that every sprue has one pair that does not fit well unless I file down the post that inserts into the middle of the opposite side. Again, I am able to force the pieces together, but they will pop apart pretty easily if I don't file down the post.

Glue the hips to the head. For almost every mating, I need to file down the hips to mate with the head. This includes filing down the nub, as well as making the flat part around the nub even (or more flat..?). Otherwise, dry-fitting shows the hips to rock side-to-side. This worries me that it won't be a good hold in the long term if I don't make them fit flat (no rocking).

Next, I glue the legs on. I do not dry-fit these anymore, as I have had no problems with them fitting. I am really having fun putting the legs at different angles when I attach them. The Revell glue I use gives me about two seconds to move the leg around before it really startes fastening on.

However, if the model will be flying (no foot contact on the base), I attach the "swoosh" stand. There is a VERY small amount of contact between this base and the model. Even with the glue that melts plastic, this is a horrible hold. So, I have taken to pinning these two pieces together. The plastic is fairly easy to drill into. With the hips being more or less hollow, this leaves a lot of wiggle room for the angle of the post. I always glue the post (or pin) into the swoosh base first, then glue the model onto this. Note: This requires super glue, not plastic-melting glue, since I am gluing metal to plastic. Also, the hips are almost entirely obscured by the legs. So, don't fret too much if this part doesn't look up to snuff while building.

Glue the mini to the base. REVELL CONTACTA PROFESSIONAL MINI MODELING GLUE WILL NOT HOLD FIGURES TO THE BASES. I'm guessing this is true for any glue that melts plastic to plastic. For this I am using Zap-a-Gap CA+ (as well as for pinning to swoosh bases). This is basically crazy glue (cyanoacrylate). Before applying the glue, I use an exacto blade to make criss-cross marks on the surface of the mini that will receive the glue. This creates a LOT more surface area for the glue to hold the mini to the base.

For the flying models, I glue the legs on after the swoosh is secured to the base.

Glue the fiddly bits. After all the major work is done, I now feel comfortable attaching the smaller, pointy elements to the model. Otherwise, I'm afraid I would ruin these little pieces as I move the model around attaching the larger parts. First, I put the head antennae on, then the "eye cannons" and finally the chin guns. Depending on whether the model is in motion or standing, I will move the "eye canons" to positions I think are appropriate (while the glue is still "soft"). This is more by feel than anything else.

Oops. I forgot the side-engines/ears. These end up going on some time after I glue the legs on. Nothing really gets in the way of these. So, you can attach these at any time. Since they aren't pointy, they don't get in the way of attaching other pieces. These often require the head to be filed down a little, to make a really tight fit. I suppose this is easier without the legs attached, but it's not a big deal. I really enjoy angling these in accord with how the legs are set up. That is to say, if the mini is flying with the legs trailing behind it, I point the exhaust of these engines at a backward angle. Otherwise, if the mini is standing still and firing, I have the exhaust port pointing straight down.

Next post will be an attempt at posting a pic
*fingers crossed*

~ ~ EDIT ~ ~
I forgot to mention that I work on one sprue's worth of models at a time (three models per sprue). This allows time for the glue to set before attaching the next piece. This also allows me to keep track of just one sprue while assembling.

Nice progress! Pic looks great! If you haven't had a go at the Battlepod command sprue be ready for some excitement! The recon pod especially has some of the most fiddly bits I've came across yet!

Glad to hear it! I will admit I was not as patient as I could have been in letting the glue set. But the super glue begins to stick very quickly and since I am taking a L-O-N-G time to build these, any easy speed-up is nice.

I will say I have had testors modelmaster glue fail when joining flight stem swooshes to bases. It'll hold, but the bond is likely to break if the mini is dropped, which is very unusual for that partoicular glue and seems to be just an issue with swooshes because of the reduced surface area I;ve had to go and redo my swoosh bases with superglue which works fine. For all other applications, including gluing feet to bases testors modelmaster works fine.

The pods are a great place to start because it lets you come up with an assembly method and perfect it.

for mine i would build the bodies, glue on laser beanies (for ones that won;t be repurposed as heavies) then assemble the pelvises then go through matching feet to legs. from there I would attach legs to pelvis and come up with a pose, then put ion the body to complement the pose and weapons aimed to follow the action of the model. Build up stockpiles of bodies hips and legs and for god's sake keep the guns on the sprue until you need them. i cut the sprues apart so I could keep them handy without having them easily lost.

I strongly reccommend building sub-assemblies for just about anything.
Put together legs for destroids (be careful to match up the feet!) and valkyries, assemble forearms for valks (I'd stop shy of joining arms and forearms just because those can get flddly fast if you;re doing two-handed gun holds) assemble bodies (but not hips) anything you can put together without involving a pose put together ahead of time, that way you can power through final assembly and focus on doing the most with the parts to come up with poses.

That's how I do it at least

Maybe our friend is referring to the possibility of magnetizing the 'beanie' lasers to allow you to swap out from regular pods to support pods. The battlepod head magnetization thread does a great job with a how to. Silly support pods don't come with enough armatures to simply magnetize all the options. They make us do extra work for it!

I built some home-made weapon stems for the heavy missile pods so that each artillery pod sprue yields 3 fully functional weapon stems, so 12 pods worth of weapons from 4 artillery pds.
I then went through and built 8 pods without laser beanies, then I put pins in the beanies and the weapon stems so that I can swap them out on the fly, so not only can I custom tailor my heavies (what I call artillery pods) but I can pull in eight more as needed, or leave them tactical instead.

For a low stress gravity-assisted mounting like this i usually just use pins (cut from paperclips) rather than magnets. It;s cheaper, easier and just as effective. Put a pin in the base of the weapon stem, drill a hole in the divot where the beanie goes and insert pin into hole. Easy peasy

The downside is that if you do a lot of swapping around they can get loose, but these are low stress mountings where they;re working with gravity rather than against it so it's fine.