A.F.S. Mk.I Kit Review
Allegiance: Mercenary Army

Kit currently in production from Wave Corporation, available from HobbyLink Japan.

I am pleased to offer a review of the Maschinen Krieger AFS Mk.I, as currently produced by Wave Model Corporation and obtainable from HobbyLink Japan (click the link above). The kit is the latest in a wave (pardon the pun) of AFS-based releases, each packaged in a box showcasing Kow Yokoyama's splendid art. This particular AFS is the first iteration of the Mercenary Army's battle suit, making it one of the oldest designs in Ma.K. hardware, and much loved by fans. It differs from the Mk.II in a few subtle (and not subtle ways), but the majority of the kit are familiar sprues. This is clever on Wave's part, by offering a parts breakdown that allows for more variant sprues, the company can offer more varied designs, and Ma.K. fans get more suits into their collection!

So let's start with the box art. Kow's painting depicts a battlefield that appears choked with dust, with a fallen Neuspotter in the foreground. I have always drawn inspiration from the illustrations of these designs, and this is no exception.

Once inside the box, we are met with six sprues. One is vinyl, four are a green-ish plastic, and one is clear (which I have kept in it's bag for now, to protect the plastic surface). While I prefer to not use vinyl where possible, as it is harder to get paint to stick to, I will build the model out of the box for as honest a review as possible. The "Mk.I sprue" is in the bottom center of the picture below, with the head, helmet, smoke launchers, etc.

Instruction booklet includes a paint guide, is in Japanese, but easy to follow and well illustrated. The decals are superb - waterslide, clean and crisp.

Here is an example of the instruction diagrams. Of the four clear pieces, only one fits this particular head. The other three are unused in this design.

As a Ma.K. fan for the last decade, I have seen many decals cross my bench. These are among the best, and have some of the art featured on my older (unusable due to age) Nitto kit decal sheets. Note the PKA "kill marks" to the right of the white "1c" markings!

The head is also a nice sculpt. The pilot wears a standard AFS cap.

The Mk.I helmet and to the left, smoke dischargers. Below those smoke dischargers are the arms laser gun parts.

And that concludes the out-of-the-box review.

Build-wise, this model just falls together. Because most of the parts either press-fit or attach via polycaps, you can build this out of the box with no glue. However, modelers who wish to add the wiring and putty seams will opt for gluing and some part prep work. For this build, I decided to use the Gaianotes paint set which are a series of high quality paints that offer excellent coverage with high pigmentation and beautiful brushability. This is an example of the paints, one coat, brushed on directly from a small mixing palette:

After only an hour, I had this:

The red on the helmet was feathered into the green color by stippling the brush work a little. I encourage you to experiment with these techniques - I am still discovering their capabilities myself! More soon as I continue to work on this model!!

Thanks to HobbyLink Japan for the review sample!

HELMET RESEARCH (as an aside)...

There have been murmurs in the Ma.K. community about a super-rare helmet variant that made it to market... I think I have one. There are two helmets below - the one on the left (in green) is the helmet that was contained in the AFS Mk.I kit as pictured above. The one on the right (in white) was a gift from Yokoyama-san, and you can see his paint marks inside the helmet (and showing through the plastic). This "variant" helmet is an artifact in the design evolution of Wave's AFS Mk.I kit, and reflects a "work in progress". However, in light of the small run that has made it into some boxes (I believe they were AFS Mk.II kits from a couple of months back?), this helmet has officially made it into canon as an "early Mk.I helmet".

From above, there is not much of a perceptible difference.

From the side, you will notice that the "mohawk" has a slightly different degree to it's face, and the sides of the white version do not have the "bump out" as seen on the green version. Also, the visor area of the white helmet has a larger field of vision, with the top of the opening being higher, the sides being wider, the angle from top to sides having a more pronounced angle, and the curves appear to be slightly more rounded.

The white helmet's cylindrical sensor greeblies are spaced farther apart, and the mohawk's walls are thinner. Note again how wide the visor opening is.

This shows the side bump outs on the green helmet - not present at all on the white helmet.

There are subtle differences on the back details as well. The back of the white helmet appears to have a smaller opening with wider circular protrusions, and the rectangular detail is more in-line with the back face of the helmet than on the green helmet. On the green helmet, it has a gentle curve along the top surface as it meets the inset area.

One more view! I'd imagine that those who want to make a decent representation of the "early helmet" can modify their Mk.I helmets by carefully enlarging and changing the angles to the visor opening, sanding down the side bump outs, and (if you want to get crazy) widening the mohawk opening and replacing the sensor tips with ones spaced slightly farther apart.

So go buy another Mk.I and get back to building!!

Maschinen Krieger © Kow Yokoyama