Friday, February 22, 2013

Volks A3 F-15E Strike Eagle Review


The leading 2nd Gen TSF is here!


This makes the 6th Volks A3 that i reviewed which makes only Type 94 Shiranui left to be reviewed. F-15E might seems underwhelming TSF compared to the 3rd Gen but it has significant influence in Altverse even greater compared to F-4 Phantom to some extent. I won't talk much in this review but at least i will cover all information that i know about this Strike Eagle.






F-15E is one of the 2nd Gen TSF which are seen into production due to the inefficiency of the 1st Gen TSF against BETA. The main feature of F-15E is less armor compared to the 1st Gens which allows greater mobility which subsequently allow TSF Eishis to survive longer than before, another characteristic of F-15E is the usage of Operation-by-wire control system which makes the TSF control more responsive compared to previous gens. These 2 main features of F-15E represent the main characteristics of 2nd Gen TSF. F-15E fares quite decently in BETA Warfare but it is rather weak against other TSF as 100s of them are defeated by YF-22 in one of the test simulation.

Among the 2nd Gen, F-15E is the most well known due to its widespread use in the whole world across the frontlines against BETA. US Army sent the specs for F-15E across the world which subsequently prevent the American soil to be BETA frontline at that time. While there are couple of previous 2nd Gen TSFs, F-15E is popular due to its rather cheap to produce and less complicated maintenance. To the present Altverse settings F-15E is still widely used despite the emergence of the 3rd Gen because of these qualities. Due to its wide usage, several countries have their customized version of F-15E like Imperial Japan's Kagerous and got upgrade prototype into ACTV.



In Muvluv Alternative, F-15E is first seen in the Coup d'etat arc which several units of them serve as cannon fodder in the infamous event "English can eat shit" which is particularly hilarious due to the Engrish voice acting. In TE Anime, F-15E got into spotlight since it is seen quite often in action considering 2 of the Argos team member use this TSF in the practice simulation. However the F-15s shines the most in the terrorist arc where the prominence team members use F-15 to stop the Red Shift to trigger while fighting against hordes of unmanned TSFs as well as released bunch of BETAs.












Initially i was planning to get the UN version of the F-15E but i realized there is none in Volks A3 lineup thus i decided to get the regular F-15E. The default color scheme is the one used by US Army in Alternative. Personally i find Strike Eagle is one of the better TSF design and it is convincing enough serving as backbones of TSF Squad.


While there is no UN version of F-15E in Volks A3 lineup, apparently TMCs feature the UN version which i happen to got it in possesion and i will definitely provide some review soon in the future. Kotobukiya is planning to release 1/144 Strike Eagle around this year which is good news if you like the F-15E but unable to find the Volks A3.

2 comments:

  1. I just got my A3 Strike Eagle as well. May I ask whether TMC's plastic color is really dull or not? I've seen reports of people matte coating it.

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  2. The surface is glossy and feels like cheap plastic. Certainly Flat matte coating required to make the figure look better.

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