HGUC 1/144 P-Bandai Titans Research Prototype Mobile Suit RX-124 "TR-6 [Woundwort]" (XFS Knockoff)
My build for AoZ April - the Woundwort from Advance of Zeta - Flag of the Titans!! I was flirting with picking up a TR-6 for a few months but the shipping price on top of the already high P-Bandai markup made me reluctant. Luckily XFS had a knockoff for less than a quarter of the price!
I've built a kit from XFS before, the GM Spartan. Just like that kit, this bootleg is pretty high quality, definitely on par with Bandai, with pretty much no flashing and no more mould lines than an actual Bandai kit. However I did find that the tolerances were a lot worse, with some pegs being a little too large for their slots, requiring a decent amount of glue to hold everything in place. Unfortunately this messed up part of the Mobile Armour transformation but it doesn't prevent it luckily.
Just like the GM Spartan, the XFS Woundwort comes with a set of high quality water decals, although I couldn't find an application guide and so just made up my own placement which hopefully looks balanced.
The kit itself is a really neat design, with some cool features that minimize parts-forming for the transformation and lend the suit a unique silhouette.
Lorewise the TR-6 was a test platform for a lot of technology that never made it into later designs and the unique look helps to emphasize this. The small dainty feet with fold-down sections resembling an Armored Core's landing gear rather than feet, the twin Minovsky Fusion power plants in the thighs rather than a single one in the chest, and the massive Long Beam Rifle/Claw make the Woundwort unlike anything else in Gundam.
It's not a particularly big model, standing at around the height of the Mk-II, but the Long Beam Rifle/Claw definitely takes up most of the kit's display space.
The colour separation was pretty good, only missing some purple on the heat blades on the beam rifle and the tips of the shoulder stabilizers. There are colour correction stickers for these but I opted to just paint them. I think they turned out really well, you can't see the brush marks at all. There's also enough shiny foil stickers in green for all the sensors as well as eyes (which are unfortunately hidden behind the nose-cone), and a yellow one for the federation "v" on the front skirt, which I also ended up just painting. I also painted the red details on the arms and booster nozzles, as well as the really cool red fingertips, and the red targeting sensor on the beam rifle (which is gloss coated to look like the metallic stickers). There are also some yellow details on the legs that need painting on, which are visible in the Mobile Armour mode.
This kit comes with two open hands and two open fist options, as well as the Long Beam Rifle/Claw in its Rifle Form, with extra parts and a stiff wire to convert it to the sub-arm mounted Claw Form.
There's also an extra "folded" torso that allows the parts to be folded and rearranged into the TR-6's Mobile Armour mode. I painted some of the details onto this, but it's really not visible at all, unfortunately. The little extra winglets also slip on for Mobile Armour mode but I'm not sure where they're supposed to be stored in Mobile Suit mode.
Overall, I had a lot of fun with this knockoff. It's almost as good as I imagine the P-Bandai version is, although I'm sure it'd be a lot easier to pose with better fitting parts. If you're willing to put the work into it, and spend some time figuring out how to put the decals on without a guide, it's a great alternative to the office version and it'll provide a really cool looking addition to any collection.
Happy (Advance of) Zeta April from my Zeta display!!
I'm hoping we can get AoZ April a little more popular on Tumblr, I'd love to see what people come up with.
