ORIGINAL: TimBle
I'd steer clear of 3d planes if you want to fly scale. It WILL teach you bad habits and get you used to easy landings. Not a direction you want to go if Scale warbirds is were you want to end up.
Warbirds tend to tip stall easily, land fast and don't glide very well. You wangt a plane that will take your flying skills in that directionand 3d planes will not help. Sure they're a lot of fun but they don't assist with any skill required for flying scale warbirds.
FYI diversity is your friend in RC, I personally fly 80% scale planes in my hangar, but having a floaty fun plane right after finishing learning with the Nextar is not a bad choice as a second plane, my second plane was a Gizmo a highly acrobatic stunt plane, with symmetrical wings, that I enlarged the control surfaces so it would 3D if I wanted to go in that direction, matter of fact the Gizmo is way quicker and agile than any of my warbirds and is my first flight of the day plane just to get my hands warmed up.
truth is most of my scale planes are stable and not the most maneuverable planes out there they require power on landings is all, and are allot heavier in general, much is made of the dreaded tip stall which comes from flying too slow, mainly on landing approach, like any particular type of RC plane they all have there "rules " of successful flying if you have some help learning the basic rules, once you master these basics the transition to a more scale type plane is really not that hard, with a little assistance.
here is my Gizmo as I originally built and covered it, and after I crashed it and rebuilt it again my second plane after the Nextar