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Yeah, I saw that "expansion" kit for this and didn't realize that it was in some ways necessary to fully complete the model. I think I'll pick it up just 'cuz. The Architect is one of the other kits coming my way (and I think I need more, just because).

Hey, it's better to be too into your hobby than not at all, right?

So, some readers might be wondering, 'just what the hell is the Karasawa cannon that he keeps rambling about?' That would be THIS gorgeous laser-enema waiting to happen:




In case you missed out, the Kobold is roughly the size of a Knight, making that one really, REALLY big gun. It's one of the iconic weapons of Armored Core, and much like the Hollander from Battletech, you really have to build your mech up around the giant cannon. It is also rather difficult to mount on a model, because look at the damn thing. But hey, never let it be said that I allow my builds to remain under-gunned.

This sucks. There are SO many good kits that I want to buy now. These Japanese models are addictive like that, especially when you realize that they can mostly be interchanged with one another.

BLLAAARGGHHH. Those stupid giant hand-guns from AC bother me so much. I mean, yeah, gyroscopes and weight balancer parts and everything's hovering anyways, but still. Why not just put the giant cannon on a shoulder mount, or have it stuck to the hip like Megatron's gun? Heck, even a no-arm direct-to-the-shoulder mount would make more sense than having this GIANT FRIKKIN CANNON mounted via 3 joints and meters out from the body proper.

Well that's simple: because the direct to the shoulder mounted guns were always terrible. You'd see them a bunch at the lower levels, but later on there was never a decent one that was worth a damn. And despite freeing up all the weight of the arms and such for extra magazine space, they never had very much ammo. And the same was true for the back-mounted weapons. By the later levels, the only decent thing to put on the back was missiles. The chaingun and such became irrelevant by that point. There was always the one big back-cannon in every game, but it never had much ammo so it became dead weight pretty quickly.

In the end, it just came down to the fact that the dev team really liked giant hand cannons. And laser swords.

Well, the other one isn't really necessary to complete it. It's just that they went with a combiner concept of them. The combined robot looks like something out of Super Robot Wars.

I'm gonna be honest. I think that big ass gun is kinda fugly. But hey, looking at all the other stuff in this plog, you'll make it work

Isn't that the cannon opposite the machine gun on the Aaliyaah (Rank 1 Next) from AC 4?

I missed your return Boss, so, here, have some sammiches and beer.

*throws*

Holy gak, yeah, that is one big ass gun. But on another hand if you compare it to the size of the weapons used in devastator squads, it ends up on scale...

Plus, it draws the attention away from that one red part ^^ !

I'm not talking about why people didn't use, say, the Grenade Launcher arms- I'm talking about why the Devs didn't make frakkin' huge weapons like that a little more physically possible.

Heck, even if you just had it being held like a rifle or long-gun instead of a pistol (that is, two hands instead of one) it would be better, in my mind.

To be fair, the Karasawa and weapons in general weren't always so huge in the AC games. That didn't really happen until the Ps3/360 era games came around. The PS1era games had very reasonably sized weapons.

Anvildude wrote:
I'm not talking about why people didn't use, say, the Grenade Launcher arms- I'm talking about why the Devs didn't make frakkin' huge weapons like that a little more physically possible.

Heck, even if you just had it being held like a rifle or long-gun instead of a pistol (that is, two hands instead of one) it would be better, in my mind.

This pose was more of an experiment to see if it would balance at all with that huge thing on there (for science!!!) I wanted to use a two handed rifle grip on it but the arms on the Kobold are all out of proportion (thing is like Mighty Joe Young up in here). I'm gonna mothball the Karasawa for now, but pull it out later when I have a more reasonable, humanoid and stable kit to work with. Just like in the games, trying to fit the gun on a model precludes you from using certain parts combinations. Score one for realism, I guess?

There are so many freaking kits that I want to order. These things are like crack to a builder. There's even one with a freaking cape and a cross-shaped rifle. Giant robot paladin, yo. So not fair!

I, for one, would be perfectly happy if your thread turned into experimentations with all of these kits.

 bossfearless wrote:

"Say hello to my little friend."

Anvildude wrote:
I, for one, would be perfectly happy if your thread turned into experimentations with all of these kits.

I think that's how it's going to be for a while. But, there's a slight hiccup in that shipping from Japan takes forever to get to Saudi, since it has to go the long way around. I won't get more kits for a while. So in the short term, I think I might experiment a bit with some Marines. I have a tactical squad that's been sitting around not doing anything, and I'm getting a bit curious at what I would do if I really dug into a one-off super-squad. So between that and fabricating some additional gun mounts for the Kobold I think I'll be set for a little bit. Now I just need to not be stuck at work all day long while inspiration is striking.

It's great to see you back in full swing, having fun and making awesome.

You weren't kidding about the bright red robodick, though. Subtle!

 bossfearless wrote:

Anvildude wrote:
I, for one, would be perfectly happy if your thread turned into experimentations with all of these kits.

I think that's how it's going to be for a while. But, there's a slight hiccup in that shipping from Japan takes forever to get to Saudi, since it has to go the long way around. I won't get more kits for a while. So in the short term, I think I might experiment a bit with some Marines. I have a tactical squad that's been sitting around not doing anything, and I'm getting a bit curious at what I would do if I really dug into a one-off super-squad. So between that and fabricating some additional gun mounts for the Kobold I think I'll be set for a little bit. Now I just need to not be stuck at work all day long while inspiration is striking.

Could always make some Renegade marines that decided to join up with your Tau...

Actually Kepora, in my fluff it's the Tau that joined the Marines, who joined Melvin in going renegade. There's also a Guard regiment that came with the marines, a fair number of Eldar pirates, and just about everything under the sun in some number or another--everyone who heeded the call to euthanize the Emperor. Basically it was a vague idea that gave me license to tie together all my various armies over the years, and it ended up sounding a lot like the Cabal from the HH novels that eventually came out, only it was Crimson Fists instead of Alpha Legion who were trying to kill the Emperor. Eh. It's headcanon, that stuff's gonna be weird every time.

Okay, back on track with some modeling goodness. The Kobold still needed more guns, but I decided not to go full Karasawa (you never go full Karasawa). Instead, I modded up another legendary beam weapon, this time pulling leftover bits from Wing Zero and putting its twin beam cannons to good use.






Credit to my incense burners for the smoke effect. I had to patch over a few gaps where the guns originally had pistol grips and such, and I added the big blocky bits toward the rear as counterweights a well as ammo hoppers or power cells, depending on what I ever decide to count them as (probably chem-throwers full of brothel runoff). Shoulders are from Gundam Nataku, which has been sitting around getting carved up for bits for a while now. A while back I bought a couple of the lower grade kits just to use for building materials, so this is about what I was hoping for. Both the shoulders and the guns are removable so that I can swap them with other bits or kits.

Now I think I just need to add some extra armor plating here and there. While I like the general shape of the model I'm not a fan of the way some of the armor plates look. Too many pointy protrusions.

Oh, and I finally succumbed and ordered another kit. Or two. I cant recall. But I definitely ordered that one with the extra hidden arms because it was totally gangster.

 bossfearless wrote:
But I definitely ordered that one with the extra hidden arms because it was totally gangster.

If you can position one of the arms so that it chokes some random enemy of the Greater Good.

@Stardrop- heh, like, the Mech's not even paying attention, and the leg-arm just came out and face-slammed a goon into the pavement on its own.


Lovin' the quad-gun look- how articulated can you get those shoulder mounts? Because it would be kinda keen if you were able to have all 4 guns (in a dynamic! pose) trained on the same target precisely, instead of all over the place- though I suppose a sort of 'bullet hell' look could be cool, too, with them all pointed at different enemies.

Anvildude wrote:
@Stardrop- heh, like, the Mech's not even paying attention, and the leg-arm just came out and face-slammed a goon into the pavement on its own.


Lovin' the quad-gun look- how articulated can you get those shoulder mounts? Because it would be kinda keen if you were able to have all 4 guns (in a dynamic! pose) trained on the same target precisely, instead of all over the place- though I suppose a sort of 'bullet hell' look could be cool, too, with them all pointed at different enemies.

Unfortunately right now the shoulder guns only rotate on the vertical axis. I can adjust their height and tilt (on 3 separate angles lol) but they only wiggle a tiny bit to either side, not enough to really "aim" them. Now, I could go in if I had the right pieces and add another joint to the mount. That's the nice thing about these peg/socket pieces, once you get the right bits you can totally remake the build. But I'm not sure if I have the right pieces at this particular moment. Now that you have me thinking about it, I might look for a Kotobukiya or Bandai builder's kit that's nothing but joint pieces. There are plenty around, and I could probably use them at some point.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and hey, check this thing out:

http://hlj.com/product/KBYMG-01/Sci

This is coming out in September. Unlike my wind-up gatling gun, this is a battery powered motor that will spin whatever part you require. Kinda badass, no?


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Also, they make a spinning chainsaw! It has a wind-up motor like the chain gun, but I bet I could easily replace the wind-up motor with the battery powered one.

http://www.amazon.com/M-S-G-Weapon-Unit-Dynamic-Chain/dp/B006LF348S

Badass pose, you get a giant broadside look this way.
Glad to see that the extra arm mech will soon be arriving here too.

 StarDrop wrote:

 bossfearless wrote:
But I definitely ordered that one with the extra hidden arms because it was totally gangster.

If you can position one of the arms so that it chokes some random enemy of the Greater Good.

I really want to mess around with that thing. It's not just the kit itself that I want. I want to examine the parts themselves, the arrangement of the joints in the legs and these extra arm modules so that I can replicate them from raw bits. I'm not a huge fan of humanoid legs on giant robots. I prefer the reverse-legged or dog-legged style like the IG Sentinel, but it's always a challenge to alter existing pieces to fit that shape. So with the Frame Arms kits, I want to figure out how to consistently and reliably change them to a leg style that I like, and then perhaps transfer some of that over to 40k modeling when I get back to it.

Speaking of 40k, now that I'm through with the Kobold, I guess I need to do some big, angry, bulked-out Spess Mahreens with this tactical kit I have laying around. Not gonna truescale them, though I've considered that for a few models here and there. Just gonna add some putty to space out a few of the joints, and build each individual as a character rather than rank and file.

Without any new and exciting kits to fiddle with, I naturally defaulted back to a bit of 40k, in this case the bog standard Space Marine tactical box. I've had a kit laying around for a while on sprue, and I gotta say, it's been forever since I got the chance to assemble a decent SM kit from the actual sprue, not second-hand, glue-bathed paint-crusted remnants from Ebay or a trade. So it was nice having the base parts to work with, and the new Tacticals box is a massive improvement in quality (if only they'd do the same service to Fire Warriors and Crisis suits). So here's the sarge for a new random squad.






I have no clue where or in what list this would ever be useful, maybe as an RPG mini or just a part of the vast army display that I'll eventually have when I have a home of my own. On a side note, I long for the day I can actually have a big fancy display cabinet and put all my crap up like you see in a lot of gamers' places. Three more years and then maybe, *maybe* I can consider having an actual home. Ugh. Freaking Saudi Arabia can eat a dick. On the bright side, I came up with a few fun ideas while piecing this guy together. So now I've got ideas for a knife fighter, a demolitons guy, etc. There can be some fun times.

Also, there's a Defiler in my closet and I had completely forgotten about it. I think there are some parts missing from the torso...box...thing. Hideous thing to begin with. So really I just have crab legs and not much else lol! I'm sure I'll figure something out. Later today I'm going to go out and get some kind of folding table, anything to give me a little more work space so I'm not trying to build on this tiny TV-tray.


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Wow. When you blow it up really big, the bullet hanging off his pauldron really looks like some kind of dildo.

 bossfearless wrote:
and the new Tacticals box is a massive improvement in quality (if only they'd do the same service to Fire Warriors and Crisis suits).

Well, if the rumors are true, you and I will be very happy men this October.

Is that a Pretty Marine?

Awesome looking miniature. The greenstuffed hair adds so much more character to the space marine head.

Where is the cape from or did you make that as well.

I think the cape is from the cadre fireblade but don't hold me to that. I just picked that one because it matched the sense of motion that I was going for.

@Kepora: I am ignorant of these rumors. What's going on in October?

@Anvildude: Don't make me come through the internet and shank you with a broken KFC drumstick.

Well what else was I supposed to think with such beautiful flowing hair, flawless skin, and what looks to be a tiny fairy on the end of his eyebrow?

It's two carved battle scars but yeah goddammit now I see the fairy too. Navi is perched on his brow shouting "Hey! Listen!"

I mean, I figured with your whole "Order of the Plume" that you were bound to have some badass pretty-boys in your army, you know?