The recently released  Mechanicore Zerstore arrived last week so now that I’m back from my travels I was eager to get inside and see what the kit is like.The kit is double-boxed with an outer printed cardboard box with carry handle that has a cut-out to show your limited edition serial number. I’ve got to think this is a bit cheesy for a model kit, but it does show an attention to detail. Opening the outer box we see the nicely printed metallic sheen on the inner box which also has a clear protective bag around it.  And because of the nice metallic printing, I’ll need proper lighting to get a nice photo of it! On the top of the box is your souvenir poster.Covering the kit pieces is a cardboard insert that reminds me of the old Master Grade boxes.  Inside are a lot of well packed runners, instructions, decals etc.At the bottom are three boxes which contain the pre-printed plastic parts for the armour. This is a special feature for the limited edition run.  The boxes have the pieces removed from their runner but not de-nubbed, and then pad printed. This reminds me of the Elyn Kshatriya and I’ve got this feeling that Mechanicore is a reincarnation of Elyn. The metal thrusters are in this box along with LEDs and other pieces to assemble.There’s some lovely metal photo etched parts.  I opened up the pad-printed parts to get a better look. Nicely printed! But that means I’ll not be painting the white or blue armour pieces on this kit and instead go straight to top-coat and panel lining, concentrating the paint on the internal skeleton and other details. Not sure when I’ll get to assembly on this kit, but it’s certainly looking like it’s going to be interesting!

Update

Looking through the pieces, it seems there’s basically just a small amount I’m going to be able to paint if I’m keeping the pre-painted armour pieces as-is. There are red piece (which are moulded in an interesting orange colour) and I’ll do my usual red on them (Createx red with a Tamiya clear red top coat), unless they’re red pieces for the hydraulic pistons for which I’m thinking a candy red will look best. There are yellow pieces that Tamiya yellow will look great on, and for the inner frame I’ll use Tamiya gunmetal.

It’s going to be a bit of a challenge to make the armour look great without painting it! But I’ve done this before where I’ve painted some of the pieces on a kit and left others that were already a good colour alone. I did this on the Elyn Kshatriya where I left the white pieces as-is, and on the very first Gundam I built – MG RX-78-2 v1.5 where almost all armour was left as-is and I used paint just for some details.