[BFG] Eldar Shadow-class cruiser

Hey there.  Yesterday I had the fortune of visiting my local (well,
quasi-local) hobby shop and being asked by the owner to assemble the
Eldar
Shadow-class cruiser he'd just received from GW.  Needless to say, I
accepted, and this write-up is one result of that.

What You Get: one center section, an upper hull pod, a lower hull pod,
two
wings, and a sprue with several barrels on it.	Referring to the diagram
in
the rulebook, the center section contains the upper part of the sail,
the
main body (including the... bridge-like object projecting upward) and
cutouts where you attach everything but the guns.  The upper hull
section
is the gundeck; my only disappointment here is that you can't rotate the
turret on the top, but I guess that would nullify the forward-90 only
aspect of the Eldar's armament.  The lower hull is mostly for detail,
IMO;
there's a rectangular recess with a diagonal slash that could be
considered
the torpedo bay, but I'm not totally convinced.  The wings are
identical.
Whether there are little details that vary from ship to ship (a la the
escorts) is up for debate.  Whether or not GW will ship the full sprue
of
barrels with the ship when you only need one is also up for debate, but
we
can hope.  (Well, kinda, they're not *that* useful.)

My first thought on assembly: you're not going to get away with just
using
superglue.  Either use something stronger, or (my favorite) pin like
crazy.
 Expecially the wings, and even more especially if you don't permanently
affix the ship to it's flying stand, as I do not.  Speaking of which,
the
hole for the tip of the flying stand is grossly inadequate, but that's
fairly easy to fix.

And that's about it in the complaints department; assembly will be a
pain,
but the detail is wonderful and the ship, when assembled, looks really
nice.  Rather different from the old Space Fleet Eldar, but this isn't
all
bad.  I've even got what will hopefully turn out to be a great paint
scheme
in mind for one of these, but you'll have to wait for me to get one
before
I'll tell. ^_^

Stats (from memory, and I didn't bring a ruler along): the ship is about
3"
long, a little shorter than a plastic cruiser (this comparison was
made).
Being metal, of course, it's a lot heavier, and it has a much greater
wingspan.  Angled slightly down (there is some play here -- be sure to
get
the wings at the same angle!) the wings are... oh, I'd say a bit more
than
2" across, maybe approaching 2 1/2".  The main body is narrow, but the
width provided by the wings and hull sections offset this nicely.  The
hull
sections also provide a nice section for insignia or designs, where the
older Space Fleet models were less allowing in this respect.  (Though
there
is less room on the wings/sails, natch.)  There is a good bit of "rough"
detail on the flanks of the ships, but these aren't the drybrusher's
dream
the Impy and Chaos ships are.  The hole for the flying stand, while not
deep enough, is balanced pretty well IIRC; it was just uneven, so the
ship
wasn't sitting square.	(While we're at it, another minor nit -- the
ship
came with a large circular base, not the small one that Imperial and
Chaos
cruisers use, which can have a seriously detrimental effect on the
ship's
health.)

All in all, this is a *very* nice ship, though experiences playing the
Eldar in the game indicate (to me) that their strengths lie more in
their
escorts.  However, integration with a Space Fleet Eldar force will be,
IMO,
tough, which is why I'm planning to keep the two seperate....

(This is up on my web page at
"http://www.hicom.net/~teske/sfleet/bfg-info.html" along with other
BFG-related tidbits.  One of these days I'll get around to updating
things,
too.... ^_^;;  If anyone has any questions or comments, feel free to
e-mail
me.)

Later,
					Aaron Teske
					ateske@HICom.net