Contest Winner AND Rocinante Warjack Conversion

First of all, I would like to thank everyone who has joined this site and entered my contest and an even greater thanks to those of you who have been here all along :) With that in mind I am pleased to announce the winner of this competition IS...... (Drum Roll Please!)

"PAUL OF THE MAN CAVE"

I will be contacting Paul ASAP with a list of limited edition figures to choose from and will let you all know what he chooses in a future post. On a related note I have since checked out Paul's own The Man Cave blog - A great variety of things and lots of consistant posting. I am now following him as well :)

Now onto building the fantastic Merc character warjack named Rociante!

9 points of BAD@$$itude. I love this pimped out nomad chassis. I don't particularly love the style of his usual partner Damiyano, however, and just cant bring myself to play him..... but fear not! There is another caster with whom Rociante has decent synchronicity - the lovely Miss Ashlynn D'Elyse.

With her options to quicken this badboy into the midst of the enemy or to admonition him into position for assassination, defensive strikes and such. PLUS with her Quick Draw, already high def and ability to boost it herself with quicken... his Guard Dog ability puts her into a significantly more comfortable position  on any battlefield (caster def 19 to 21 vs melee yes please)!

So it is that I decided to build Rociante.... and to make a few tweaks to the model to both make it my own and to add some of the distinction that ought to be afforded to this character 'Jack.

I picked up the plastic Merc heavy kit and the upgrade pack. They cleaned up fairly well with little in the way of mold lines, but as I got into assembly I found the way the chains for the gun go together to be a real pain. Eventually I assembled the arm and gun and then set about really giving consideration to pose and detail.

I removed the "gilded" textures from both the face and the gun and smoothed them out with a microfile and a ball burnisher. I extended the barrel of the gun itself with a piece of plastic tubing to bring it more in line with my other merc 'Jacks and to give the barrel a bored out look which I find much more pleasing.

I added some cast metal gears from the DragonForge gears set to the hip joints and a few thin watch gears to add a bit more visual interest.  I also chose an "Ancient City Ruins" Dragonforge base that would fit in nicely with the bases on my other models from Ashlynn's force.

Finally I added the HUGE metal classic Nomad sword because of its more beefy appearance - more worthy of a character like Rociante. Besides I can use the plastic one when I make a custom wreck marker to match.... I then also magnetised it so that the whole figure would be easier to store in my case....

This is when I thought to myself "What if I ever wanted to run a 2nd mule?" A magnetized mace hand completed the assembly and would make for a distinctive 2nd Mule! SWEET.

 Well on we go - To my new readers: I usually aim to update every Thursday morning with the odd extra post now and again in between. So until next week and the next installment!