Fighters

Nial

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This is the 1/72 garage kit of the Minbari Nial fighter. Manufactured by Controlled Energy Designs and available through Federation Models, it is marketed as the "Bonehead Fighter", obviously to avoid copyright issues. For the most part, the casting is decent, and the pieces capture the basic shape of the Nial fairly well.

The only real downside of the kit is the cockpit area. The resin cast details are brittle and sparse. I can't fault the sculptor for the lack of cockpit detail, as very little was ever shown to be visible in the episodes of B5 where the Nial was shown. The pilot, though, is a generalized shape of a prone Minbari. He seems to wear a cloak, which obscures most of the details, and has a prominent bone-head. I suppose it's sufficient. One other inaccuracy is the number of fairings around the cockpit. Based on my online research, there are too few on the model.

I had to soak some of the pieces in hot water to bend them into proper alignment, and a decent amount of sanding was required to smooth over some surface irregularities. The small number of large pieces made overall assembly simple. The cockpit area required some creative seam filling, but was easy enough.

Though the resin is cast in a light blue, I went ahead and primed the kit white anyway, which revealed a few assembly flaws, which I then fixed. Final painting included a base coat of light blue, followed by veins of darker blue and Tamiya transparent blue. The insides of the gun ports and scoops were painted flat black.