3 nice sea vehicles - the troop carrier is the simplest, but has the nice flip up flaps containing the seats. Sea team fit these great. 4 minicon ports, all inactive.
Aircraft carrier is big enough for the Air Defence team to use, nice pop up deck to raise Ramjet from the hanger bay. 3 minicon ports + one within the lift.
Assault boat is nice, active minicon port rotates the guns :-) The guns in the gun placements can be raised and lowered too. 2 inactive ports to the front which could have been used to deploy the missiles.
Combining the Dark Fleet:
Pull the 2 halves of the Troop Carrier apart to expose the robot's legs, attach to the back of the Assault Boat, and pull the legs back & fasten along the sides of the Assault Boat. Pull the front of the Assault Boat to the side and bend what looks like a pair of jet engines to the side of the Aircraft Carrier. Put the Aircraft Carrier into the front of the Assault Boat to form the Tidal Wave's Boat/Plane thing
All gimmick's are still active in this mode with combined total of 10 obviously exposed minicon ports.
Transforming to robot:
Pull the Troop Carrier's halves apart, swivel 180 degrees at the hips on each side and then turn at the waist so the panels face forward. Pull the aircraft carrier halves apart and fold (while still attached to) the assault boat's front pieces down to the side. Rotate the halves of the prow 90 degrees out to form the forearms, fold the thumbs up and bend the fingers in. Rotate the top of the assault carrier to form the chest plate, pull up the head and here he is.
Tidal Wave:
This is one VERY tall robot ! His shoulders are 1 cm lower than Superbase Op's and he towers over Gigacon Megs. Feet and heel spurs support him. Arms move at the shoulders, bicep, elbow, thumbs and fingers, waist, outwards at the hip and outwards at the knees. Nice detailed face panel, reminds me of something...
The Base Modes shown http://www.transformertoys.co.uk/images/ourcollection/prototypes/tidalwave/DSCF0 039.JPG and http://www.transformertoys.co.uk/images/ourcollection/prototypes/tidalwave/DSCF0 038.JPG doesn't exist in the instructions but looks quite nice.
The Dark Fleet can separately combined with Megatron (weapons mode in the Hasbro instructions, Burning Megatron in the Takara ones) with the Assault Boat on the left arm as a weapon, the Aircraft Carrier on the right as a shield, Meg's gun rotated fwd, and the Troop Carrier clipped onto the back as a jetpack. V heavy and bulky, but basically OK.
All in all a good toy, well worth it, lots of fun.
And again here:
Megatron & Tidal Wave
Megatron & Energon Tidal Wave
Galvatron & Tidal Wave
Galvatron & Energon Tidal Wave
Strangely enough another of the items I got this weekend was to complete a combination.... SD-04 Shockwave Part of the new Transformer Super Link series, Shock Wave Consists of 'Fleet Top', 'Fleet Rider' and 'Fleet Craft', which combine to form Shock Wave's Vehicle Mode (a really ripping jet!); and then he can transform to robot mode! Included with him is the Micron "Sonic", which can transform from Vehicle Mode (a jet) to Robot Mode as well!