By Chris Coxon - images & text © 2006

Scale: 1/24 - over 15"/380mm long when built

Parts: 34 resin, 6 lengths of brass rod, 1 length of Perspex.

Instructions: Clear and concise, with several pages of full colour CGI renderings

Decals: 1 small sheet with normal Cylon insignia, or a roughed up version

Molding Quality: 10 - One of the nicest resin castings I have ever seen

Detail: 9 - Very nice details beautifully captured.

Accuracy: 10 - As far as I can tell, certainly looks as menacing as the CGI models on screen! Looks good compared to the reference I have seen.

MSRP: $150.00 USD (~$170.55 CAN/ € 121.12 EUR) available from Federation Models

Overall Rating: 10 - A beautiful kit, an absolute must for Battlestar nuts and an excellent companion to the studio scale Viper.

The Cylons were created by Man……

Image: Main parts

Image: Smaller parts

Image: With parts for lighting the 'eye'

Image: Mostly built

Rather than carrying a Cylon crew, the new Cylon Raider is an entity all on its own, complete with a brain and other organic materials. Upon seeing it for the first time, I thought the Cylon Raider was kind of cool. Like many others though, I found the more Battlestar I watched, the more this design grew on me. When I learned someone was doing a large scale kit of it, I had to have it!

What You Get

The kit arrived in a nice sturdy box with a photo of a built up example on the front cover. I opened the box and grabbed one of the wings, eyeballing it thoroughly. This kit is resin cast and done beautifully so. The original was sculpted by Kip Hart and he has certainly captured the unique look of the raider. There are six main parts, the 'head' section, wings and the supports for the engines and cannons. Several smaller resin details for the wings and fuselage are included, as well as the engine nozzles and optional missiles. Also included are several pieces of brass rod for other details and reinforcing weak joints. Decals are supplied and consist of four Cylon insignia, two normal and two chipped. The instructions are clear and include several lovely Zoic renderings of the raider to use for colour reference. A display stand in the shape of the Cylon insignia is also included.

Assembly and Finish

The fit is quite good and I found very few mould lines. The wings are solid resin and therefore reasonably heavy, but the mating to the fuselage is reinforced with resin plugs and brass rod. The only problem I have encountered with this kit is that one wing was slightly shorter that the other, but this was fixed with some repositioning. There were some very slight chips on the inner wing edges, these were easily filled though.

The kit also comes with the option of having the missile bays open or closed and three missiles for each bay are included. There will be some filling and sanding to do, especially on the wing to fuselage join. I intend to paint it up in Testors metallizers.

And They Have A Plan………..

Whilst this kit would be absolutely stunning built straight from the box, I decided to make a couple of additions. Firstly, I had to choose which version I wanted to make, a run of the mill Raider, or, do I put a bullet hole on the side of the 'head' and tape STAR BUCK onto the underside of the wings??? In the end, I decided upon a normal Raider, but, with some alterations. I saw a great idea for the missile bays on a built up example at the Square Models site. So, using some old tank cogs, I have built up a rotary launcher for the missiles, similar to the ALCM launchers in the B1 and B52 bomb bays. The biggest change I have made is drilling out the solid 'head' and installing an LED chaser unit. This unit is made up of six red LEDs that go back and forth with an adjustable speed control. Hopefully it will be coming to the SSM Gallery soon!

Conclusion

Overall, this is a very nice kit of a cool subject. I can't recommend this kit enough and I look forward to Kips' latest effort, a 30 inch Cylon Basestar!! Special thanks to Federation Models and the lengths they went to.