STICKER SHOCK !!!!!!!!!!! Free Time hobbies just listed their retail price for her $417.00 Well its back to buying the Lionroar conversion set for me. Hobby Link Japan had a fair deal....but they aren't taking any more pre-orders and I am having great difficulty getting into their site lately.

Wow,that's sad,I just can't drop that much cash on a model.

Now we are back on.... Lucky Model is showing it for around $250. Expensive yes,,,,but not outrageous

$417,- for some sandbags on deck around the AAA sounds like a great deal Think I'll wait for the second coming a little longer until some reviews tell me what has been updated Julian

Well Hobby Link Japan re-opened preorders so i placed mine for $235. As to what was updated The bow was reshaped, the main gun turrets corrected. The AA mounts on the turret were reshaped to the hex. They added more of the shields around the smaller AA. They added the rear twin triple 25mm platform and as mentioned the sandbags. That is all I could spot from teh limited pix I've seen. I guess the alternative is get one of teh old ones for say $75 tehn jbuy the Lion raor superset for around $165. Then spend all those hours cutting away plastic and bending those 20 sheets of photo etch, to correct it. Not trying to be insulting...but I love this ship. I have built it twice so far ...OOB with just some photo etch rails put on later. And I did a backdate conversion to original configuration.

Ii ordered mine from HLJ and got the three detail sets included for the $235 price,,

Not problem mate, imho it is one of the most beautifully lined battleships ever built. I built the Nitchimo 1/200 scale Yamato about 20 years ago and I have the Tamiya 1/350th Yamato with Eduard PE set up in my stash, (old version now of course ). the price seems pretty hefty for some changes that will only be noticed by hard core Yamato fans though, just my 2 Euro cents. Cheers, Julian

Probably right about that Julien....unfortuneatly I fall into that category....LOL

Oh, and that was with three detail sets... And I would not be worried about Tamiya, They have people lined up around the block for any of their releases and their RC stuff is the icing on the cake.