by Thobe Stanley Appel-Christiansen

I bought this Tactical Raiden Armor quite a while ago, it was rather inexpensive considering the price of other imported japanese kits in germany. It was specially made for this contest. I named it: "Tactical Training Unit T-13" aka "dirty yellow bastard"

The model represents a training mecha, used by a military unit to test and train their recruits. The mecha has never been in a real battle but has seen endless hours of training, sloppy repairing and has been without mercy to those recruits not skilled enough to handle it. A lot of repairing and changing of parts has been done to the machine. Some parts were not even painted after being changed and are bare metal. On the left shoulder there's a marking of the unit it serves with and on the right shoulder a worn down marking of a unit it has been stationed in before, so this mecha may be even older then some of the greenhorns riding it.

The nickname given by the recruits is "dirty yellow bastard", due to its unreliability and worn down status, maybe its marking T-13 was even reason for some recruits getting superstitious.

The kit has a high quality, the parts are exact and could possibly be assembled nearly without glue. The sprues come in different colors and there are included a lot of polycaps. The polycaps and design of the kit allow you to build a fully posable model that is not too hard to build and still top-notch in quality and detail. Also included was a standing figure and a driver/pilot which I choose not to use.

I started building the mecha straight out of the box, only little flash removing and filling was done. What aids to the painting is that you can snap off the limbs and the weapon which makes access to the parts easy.

I wanted the mecha to look as if it has been in heavy use and worn off but with no real battle damage due to its nature being a training unit. The model was primed with black primer and then airbrushed with different browns and yellows. Colors used were Vallejo Model/Gaming range and a few special airbrush colors from Schmincke.

After the airbrushing the model was shaded and then I started with painting chipped off paint with irregular spots of black covered up by silver leaving a thin black rim. Then I made the weathering; the metal parts were made up with rust-brown and some blue shades, the other parts were made up with diferent paints and the Tamiya weathering sets that can be used just like makeup.

Image: Weapons stowed

Image: Left side, deep in thought

Image: From behind

Image: Right/front, hatches open

Image: Left side, hatches open

Image: Prepare to exercise ....

Image: Push-UP!