OK well as everybody knows I love my mecha so when I saw that Fil Dunn, creator of awesome Tau mecha kitbashes was releasing his own kit I just had to have one! The FDV1 Mako kit is pricey but it has a cool dieselpunk style going on and is really massive at 9″ tall.

I was lucky enough to receive kit number 4 of the initial limited edition run (of 25 kits). It arrived just before Christmas in this cool box:

Here’s a shot of the contents:

So over the Christmas break I did some cleanup and as much assembly as I could do before painting (it’s best to leave all of the armour panels, etc. off for ease of painting). Sorry but I don’t have a pic of that for you.

One thing I did decide however is that I’m not a big fan of the fact that it doesn’t have a right arm (take a look at this painted one to see what I’m talking about). Instead it has a drum containing a sensor suite (as described by Fil himself), which although it makes sense, just doesn’t do it for me visually. Although Fil has toyed with the concept of a version with a gun on each arm in the future! But because I’m a hobby masochist I’ve decided to scratchbuild a right arm for it. More to come on that in a future post.

My one big complaint with the kit is the leg design. Fil has proven he can design cool mecha legs in the past but the legs on this one are just odd. They certainly don’t look very functional and leave the model in a perpetual “taking a dump” pose. I don’t know if some reposing would help, but the legs are intended to be assembled in one position only, so reposing would be a real bitch.

Highlight of the kit: that armour plate around the gun arm shoulder. Man it’s sexy! Although really the entire gun arm is a pretty nice design

Watch this space!

In other news my Superheavy Assault Walker Diorama is 99.9% complete so I’ll be taking some pics this coming weekend!

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