Following the discussion, another user mentioned that E2046 used to be a scam site, selling low quality fakes instead of the advertised real deal. They even brought up examples. Unfortunately for them, there was no way they could prove that the products were indeed from this dubious website, so I decided to go and have a look myself.
It gave me an overall good first impression. They have tons of stuff, though you can still browse products that are out of stock (though they sometimes get a restock of something). The pictures all carry their watermark, the customer feedback looked genuine, garage kits even have pictures where they laid out the parts... In other words, it didn't seem like the scam site people were talking about. I browsed through some of their range of garage kits, and even found the GK version of the Castanic Berserker (one of the TERA popular figures), which everyone was ordering as pre-painted, and decided I would go for it. Buy the kit, assemble and paint it myself. The price and shipping costs were fair so, let's say I do get scammed and I find a pile of junk in my mailbox, I'd only be a pizza dinner short for that month.
The berserker wasn't in stock at the time, so I had to pre-order and wait for quite a long time (mainly because I bought other products and decided to have them all shipped at the same time). The wait however, was definitely worth it.
This is what the box looks like. Yellow, with their logo and the product ID code on the side. There is no way of telling what's inside, aside from the ID code on the label, so I took the shipping manifest and wrote the contents on each box. That's why there's handwriting on it.
Upon opening, I noticed that all the parts were individually packed and sealed, and that the whole batch was wrapped in bubble plastic. Very orderly and neat. Assembly instructions and reference color card were on top, so it's always the first thing you find when you lift the lid. All of the kits I ordered had the same packing quality and order, which says a lot.
The cast smells like your typical garage kit resin, but the quality is very high. The parts have a polished look, there were no bubbles at all, no cast faults, practically no mold lines... There is always some degree of cleaning that needs to take place, even if just for the mold leftovers, but this is absolutely the highest cast quality I have ever seen. It surpasses even the cast quality from Kallamity Models, which was so far unmatched.
There's also a good deal of clean detail on the parts. One or two (mainly the axe shaft) parts will need to be bent straight again, but I do hope the old hot water trick will serve for that.
Yes, that's a very big axe. The blade is bigger as the torso!
In conclusion, I am delighted and surprised. This was much better than I expected, and by far.
All the kits I ordered share the same high standards. I also had the pleasure of seeing the pre-painted version of this model, and it lives up to the picture too.
Now it's my turn; let's see how well I can get this one painted.
