Model Kits and Building Sets

sterling3763

So, I recently rediscovered my love of Legos. I've tried a few of the larger Lego Star Wars sets (one 1k piece set, another 2500) and I'm thinking of expanding my horizons and trying other sorts of building sets. But I've got no idea where to start.

I've built gundams before, but that was years ago and I think I never progressed beyond 1/144 scale. I'd definitely be interested in doing them again, but I want something that's time intensive. How many pieces are in 1/100 and 1/60 sets? How long would they take to complete?

I'd be interested in model planes, ships and trains (less so cars), but I really don't have any interest in painting. I'd prefer for 80-90% of the effort to be snapping or gluing pieces together. That said, I think the reason I'm leary of painting is that I've never done it before and grade school projects suggest I would not be very good at it.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

TL;DR: Looking for model & building sets. The less painting involved the better. Price isn't really an issue, but I'd like to get bang for my buck. The longer a set would take to complete the better.

MushroomStick

Take a look at the big Lego Technics sets.

As far as the Gundams go, even the Master Grade kits have never taken me more than like 2 hours (if I wasn't painting). I've never been willing to drop the cash for a Perfect Grade kit though.

RiemannLives

Head on over to the miniatures painting thread in Critical Failures if you want a ton of good info on painting.

IronKnuckle

For Gundam sets, the number of parts depends generally on the grade of the model and the technical complexity of the design. Generally the grades go hand-in-hand with size, 1/100 are usually Master Grade, 1/60 Perfect Grade, though there are exceptions. Complexity just varies from model to model. A Rick Dias has a rather smaller number of parts due to how chunky the design was in the show. A 00 Raiser has a large number since it has a detachable backpack, way too many swords, etc.

I generally do 1/100 Master Grade kits, since they hit a sweet spot of price, assembly time, and size.

As for other kits (ships, planes, et al), they frequently follow the rather ambiguous "level 1, 2, 3" scheme. Seems to be a larger variation of what constitutes a level among the different manufacturers. However since every Gundam kit is made by Bandai I'm probably just really used to Bandai's way of doing things. Also it's worth pointing out that many kits are modeled in a single color, or possibly two, necessitating painting. Gundam kits usually look good enough that painting isn't mandatory, but as was already suggested CF's painting thread has some great information although it's mainly geared towards the miniature wargaming side of models.

tehmarken

An awesome site about model building, painting, and modifying is Fichtenfoo.com . The guy has a huge gallery, various tutorials, and a pretty nice forum community.