Ok, so the run down is this:
Palladium are currently a year late on delivering their Wave1 product. They "finished" sending out all their North American Backer products (I say "finished" because the timeline is actually bogus and at the time they still had many canadian backers still to ship) and Preorders from Gencon. At this point, they decided that they had fulfilled their "Backers get it first" and shipped out to North American Distributors.
(actually, they decided that since they had product on hand, they would ship to distributors in time for black friday, and screw everything else. The timeline is such that claims they sent all parcels to canadian backers before sending to any distributors is bogus, as shown by atleast one backer whose tracking info shows the parcel lodged the day before his LGS had the product on shelf, and 7 days before he actually got it, so unless the distributor has a teleporter to pick up product and then get it to LGS, those parcels were shipped atleast 4 days before backers were done, most likely a week or so)
Anyway, meanwhile, plans are that they're now shipping to Europe, but comments from the kickstarter provide emails from palladium showing they have not actually sorted out distributors for Europe yet.
After they finish doing Europes stuff (which I very much don't believe will be done before February, I actually expect March or April) they will then get around to doing Australia (I can personally confirm that as of a month ago they did not know who would be shipping their Australian stock)
Oh, and these products will apparently be shipped by slow boat, which means that when they Do get around to shipping to australia, it will take probably two more months for the first of those shipments to arrive at the backers doorsteps. Me, I'm expecting mine later than that. Meanwhile, I could buy from the US and get it delivered here in time for christmas, at slightly higher than kickstarter prices. I also pretty much guarantee that Australian LGS's will have it in stock by the end of the year, because I know for a fact that several used to use US distributors, and I don't believe that has changed.
So it boils down to this. Palladium decided that "All Backers Get Theirs First" meant "All Backers In North America Get Theirs Sent Before (or slightly after) We Send To Distributors, Who Will Sell Around The World But We Will Pretend That Doesnt Happen, Meanwhile, Australian Backers Will Get Theirs 6 Months After It Went On Sale In America, But They Probably Cant Sue Us So Whatever" (or I guess, just "Palladium Lies About Everything")
As for the models, here is a better rundown (along with pictures)
http://www.wargamerau.com/forum/index.p ... 73793&st=0have also heard from many other sources (as yet, I don't think anyone has claimed to be able to get a Recon Pod assembled without breaking it)
But it boils down to: "Parts are incredibly small and fragile, connection points to sprue are very big and very closely packed making it very hard to clip from sprue without breakage. huge number of parts (17+) often with recessed seams in bad places, no instructions, no parts numbers, plastic is not good quality, detail is a bit soft and plastic itself is brittle (contributing even more to the fragility issue)"
It basically looks like fairly cheap model sprue from 15-20 years ago
