Gentlemen! I have built, THIS THING!: Phage Drone

 Yet another installment of GIHBTT and once again, we're looking at a robotic drone based off a real world animal (sort of), the Phage Drone!

I took less pictures of this one for some reason so I'll have to jump right into the description. This is the Phage Drone, an autonomous robotic unit designed primarily as a deep-space area of denial tactic similar to a remote mine, but with an insidious twist. The drone gets it's name from the real world bacteriophage, a virus type with a bulbous "head" and multiple radial arms attached to a stalk body. The real bacteriophage attaches itself to healthy bacterial cells and injects them with it's genome, turning the bacteria into miniature factories that create endless copies of the phage until they burst. The Phage Drone copies both the bacteriophage's appearance and method of attack, but is well equipped to defend itself in any situation. The drone is shown here in a neutral, "stand-by" stance. Deployed in large numbers from capital ships, the Phages will float in this position in a power conserving state with incredible patience, waiting for a ship to come within range. The orange wedges visible on the head module are it's primary optics, four in total. Since each "face" of the head module sports an eye, the Phage has excellent vision and is difficult to approach unawares. The light gray nozzles at each corner of the head are microthrusters that help keep the drone from drifting off it's assigned path while waiting for targets. Also visible are two of the Phage's four secondary weapons: The gray double-barreled device on the left face is a magnetic acceleration cannon modified to fire short ranged bursts of charged projectiles in a fashion similar to a shotgun. This weapon is primarily intended for use against organic enemies, but can easily punch a hole in starship armor at close ranges. The black harpoon gun protruding from the right face is a pneumatically powered projectile launcher that fires foot long metal spikes. As with the scatter MAC, this weapon is most effective against organic targets, but the Phage can electrify the bolts before firing to cause minor EMP black outs to sections of larger ships or completely overload smaller robotic targets and starfighters.



This shot shows the additional weapons present on the Phage's other faces. The orange and gray stacked discs on the left are a kinetic wave generator whose output can be greatly modulated by the Phage. At it's most powerful setting, the generator can produce waves of force strong enough to rattle a starfighter to pieces, but can be attuned to a setting light enough to merely disorient living targets or render them unconscious by rapidly altering the subject's inner ear pressure.The dark and light gray cannon on the right face is a powerful cutting laser that lets the Phage make it's own entrance into enemy ships, often hiding within the target's hull to avoid external detection.The Phage's head module also spins freely where it meets the body stalk so it can bring any of it's weapons to bear on a target in a split second. Visible in both of these pictures is the Phage's long range communications antennae, with which it can send and receive transmissions from capital ships several star systems away.



Though the Phage certainly has the means to bring the fight to nearly any unit on the battlefield, it rarely needs to use the weapon systems and relies instead on it's sinister primary programming of crippling and destroying enemy fleets. When a Phage Drone detects a hostile ship within it's vicinity, it quietly engages maneuvering jets and drifts forward until within range, sensor-baffling reflective plating preventing it's target from distinguishing the drone from other floating space detritus. Once the drone closes the distance, it extends grasping arms and positions itself above the target's hull (imagine the Phage in the picture without the black pole/gray hub cab base, I don't have any clear "hover" stands). At this point, the secondary optic sensors on the inner surfaces of the arms (the orange wedges) come online and begin scanning the target, looking for vital electrical systems close to the surface. Once such a system has been located, the drone deploys it's primary weapon, the Viral Missile.



The Phage fires the drill-tipped Viral Missile directly into the enemy ship's hull, boring until it strikes the targeted electrical relays. A high tensile, flexible cord packed with fiber optic cables links the drone to the missile and allows it to transmit a debilitating virus directly into the tethered ship's systems. This virus quickly guts the target's central computer and places the Phage in direct control, locking crew members out of the system, disabling life support and escape pods and hijacking the ship's weapons to turn them on allies. The virus prevents both direct and indirect attempts at limiting it's spread or control, even re-routing systems around infected consoles or hardware physically removed from the target. Experts have theorized that it may be possible to eventually undo the damage the virus inflicts and regain control of an infected ship, but the Phage is specifically (and somewhat sadistically) programmed to minimize the chances of such an operation succeeding.


Again, imagine the missile with no base...

Phages have the cruel tendency to open all hatches and air locks to the vacuum of space as soon as they gain control, negating a potential crew uprising almost immediately, often before any personnel realize what is happening or have time to send a distress call to other ships in their fleet. As a result, Phages are considered to be one of the most terrifying weapons in exo-naval warfare, able to lie dormant and nearly undetectable for long periods of time across space lanes before hijacking a ship with no warning and turning it against it's fellows. The drone's own intelligence and high level of independence make it even more dangerous, as multiple Phages will covertly communicate over encrypted short-wave bandwidths and work together to hijack strategically positioned ships within a flotilla secretly, only to reveal their deception once the enemy fleet encounters the Phage's allies, unleashing a surprise attack that can rip formations apart and leave the remnants easy prey for the home fleet. Some concern has been raised over the ethical use of Phages in space combat as the drones are often released in the hundreds of thousands and exact records are rarely kept of every unit deployed to a zone. This shoddy record keeping, coupled with the tendency of the drone's advanced CPU to become "bored" when left floating for long periods of time without directives, results in huge swaths of space within some systems that are incredibly hazardous to traverse to this day, decades after the conflicts that seeded the area with Phages in the first place has ended. Multiple instances of civilian ships being puppeted or outright destroyed by "malfunctioning" Phages that refuse to acknowledge command signals has led many governments to quietly retire the model from their naval forces, but they are still popular among pirates and smugglers as advanced defense systems for less than legal star bases and outposts.

And that's the Phage Drone. It started out from me just fiddling around with random pieces while trying to polish off an unrelated mech design (still unfinished mech design...) and then almost built itself once I thought "Hey, this kind of looks like the head of a bacteriophage..." Besides the bacteriophage itself, the Phage Drone is influenced by the Probe Droids of Star Wars, and to a lesser degree, by the "hovering" Imperial kill Droids of Star Wars in general. If I had the pieces, I would make all it's legs joints ratchets since the current friction joints just can't support it's weight. Also, I'd build it a clear display stand of some sort if I had the pieces because this baby's gotta float to look it's best!

Gentlemen! I have built, THIS THING!: SCUD Drone

Following right on the heels of the Terror Bird & Demon Ninja GIHBTT, I have another build I'm fairly proud of to show you. This time, we're going deep under the sea and combining several nightmare fuel ocean creatures into one laser-wielding death robot, the SCUD Drone!

This guy came about from my having a bunch of dark blue pieces from a Star Wars Tri-Droid set, the light-up brick piece from the Creator Rescue Robot set, lack joint pieces since they are mainly in use in other builds and the desire to bring all those things together. It worked pretty well.



The SCUD Drone is an autonomous, deep water military unit used for a variety of purposes, but primarily as a surprisingly form of underwater artillery. Shown here in it's walking mode, you can see the influence of the creature that inspired it's primary appearance, the Spiny Lobster. The thick, spiky body, tail and antennae, plus the lack of claws is a rough summation of the Spiny Lobster. In this mode, the SCUD freely traverses the ocean floor, surprisingly dexterous in it's ability to climb extremely angled or unstable surfaces. The four stout, reinforced legs give the SCUD a stable grip and can dig into the sea bed to anchor it when firing it's tail cannon. The long, bladed antennae contain a variety of complex sensor systems as one might imagine, but they also serve as the SCUD's primary close range weapons and grasping appendages. The antennae are complex enough to cradle and lift objects as small and fragile (in comparison to a thirty-something foot long robot) as a watermelon, but can also be whipped forward with alarming speed and accuracy to cause severe slashing damage to targets as hardened as the hull of a submarine. Much like the real world mantis shrimp, the SCUD whips with enough speed and force to create cavitation bubbles, the collapse of which creates an additional concussive force on the target seconds before the appendage actually strikes.



At the bases of the SCUD's antennae are a pair of sharpened blades that it can use as both a weapon and a cutting tool if a mission requires it, "feeding" targets into the blades using the highly flexible antennae. Shown here also is the forward weapon exhaust vent (situated between the bases of the antennae) and the third optic sensor mounted on the underside of the SCUD's body that helps it maintain a rock solid footing on the ocean floor by constantly scanning the terrain ahead and beneath it. This sensor, coupled with the powerful primary optic sensors, gives the SCUD an excellent field of vision and a variety of available spectrum scans.



Here is the SCUD's tail, where the artillery portion of it's functions come in. The SCUD's tail actually possesses it's own independent processor that is built solely around advanced targeting systems and firing the powerful particle cannon contained within the "stinger" pod. Operating alone, the tail's systems are advanced enough to gather and compile data from the amount of light reaching the SCUD's optics, pressure changes, water column movement and even the behavior patterns of native sea life to locate and identify enemy targets operating at the surface and beneath the waves and can fire a devastating blast from several miles away. If the tail's systems are linked with those of a friendly surface ship or orbital satellite however, the SCUD can lob arced shots from beneath the water to hit inland or fire precise shots at airborne targets. These types of fire require an additional ramp up of the SCUD's power core to levels that can potentially damage the unit's more sensitive systems if further stress is put on the it, so the drones typically only employ this system from a secure position or when defended by other units. The excessive amounts of heat  resulting from firing the particle cannon was a hurdle in the SCUD's development, one that was cleverly re-purposed into yet another weapon in the robot's arsenal.



From an overhead view, the primary weapon exhaust vents are visible running along the SCUD's flanks. When the particle cannon is fired, the SCUD's systems reroute the resulting heat and steam and releases it through these vents, literally boiling the sea around the SCUD a few seconds after a cannon shot. The SCUD's designers built a separate system that re-routes and stores a portion of this discharge in a mechanism nestled between the drone's antennae stalks. Though it must be used quickly before the heat can dissipate, the SCUD can release this scalding burst in front of itself to boil any biological threats alive. This ability can still be used on land, though it "merely" blasts super-heated air at targets instead of boiling them, but this is no comfort when still enough to cook a man where he stands and completely ignores the most advanced body armor.



I built the light-up brick into the tail to serve as the particle cannon and it can be activated by pressing in the button at the back of the tail pod, as seen here. This is also a good photo for segueing into more about the things that influenced me in the SCUD's design. I already mentioned the Spiny Lobster as one influence and the "underwater artillery crustacean" idea is borrowed from the Crab Cannon of the Star Wars: Clone Wars animated series, but any Zoids fans out there will surely notice another looking at the tail. The SCUD's tail design, from being a super laser to having various flaps and fins surrounding the barrel, is highly influenced by the Death Stinger from the Zoids series. Of course, the SCUD has one final surprise that also evokes a sea-dwelling early invertebrate...



The SCUD reveals the final influence in it's design when it converts to swimming mode, Anomalocaris. Anomalocaris was an early arthropod that swam in the warm, shallow seas of the early to mid-Cambrian period and crushed hard-shelled prey with it's spiked mouth parts.The SCUD mimics the smooth contours of Anomalocaris and swims with powerful undulations of it's body and tail when scuttling around the sea floor becomes boring. Also, the way the antennae fold beneath it's head when swimming is an exact mimic of how Anomalocaris' mouth parts were positioned and the two share a similar body profile. When swimming, the SCUD's weapon exhaust systems seal off their connections to the core and are used to aid propulsion by drawing water into the channels through the vent in the drone's "mouth" and forcing it out through the rear. This also allows quick bursts of movement in nearly any direction the vents can angle to, but prevents the drone from using it's particle cannon until it has purged all water from the system and resealed the exhaust.

So ends another edition of Gentlemen! I have built, THIS THING! I hope you enjoyed the exhaustively detailed account of the SCUD Drone and the mini paleontology lesson about Anomalocaris. Tune in next time for more overly thought out descriptions of Lego robots!

Silas Breakdown AM-24

Way back in my review of Cyberverse Breakdown, I mentioned my hopes of getting a larger sized version of Breakdown here in the US. Shortly afterward, I saw Takara-Tomy's take on a voyager-class Breakdown and assumed we'd see it here stateside soon enough. Well, Hasbro said we won't. Rumor has it that "not made to our standards" means "too expensive to retool to not include the roughly nine-hundred 5mm ports intended for Micron figures" the Japanese mold sports. This somewhat makes sense as the Prime toy line in Japan is heavily geared around the companion Micron figures whereas in America...it's not. Instead, we get normal weapon accessories, or on larger figures, clunky piles of junk that "transform" and light up and are still nowhere near as cool as just a little Targetmaster-style companion bot. Even though I liked the look of Breakdown, I waffled on ordering him because I wasn't sure how the mold was in hand, plus the hammer/rhino Micron he came with didn't interest me that much. That changed when pictures started to surface of a black repaint with a new praying mantis Micron, Silas Breakdown!

Now I admit, I haven't seen any episodes of Prime, but after reading up on Breakdown for this review, I really want to, as Silas Breakdown's story is quite an interesting one. Spoilers relating to the plot of the Prime series follow this picture, so you might want to skip ahead.

Besides the Decepticons, the Autobots in Prime must also contend with human antagonists, including the sinister M.E.C.H. organization that seeks to understand and reverse engineer Cybertronian technology the direct way, by ripping still living Transformers apart and studying their innards. Led by an ex-military operative with special forces training calling himself Silas, M.E.C.H. clashes with both the Autobots and the Decepticons several time in pursuit of their goals. After events lead to Silas crippled and Breakdown killed, M.E.C.H. recovers the body and directly grafts Silas' broken frame into Breakdown's systems, creating a Frankenstein-like Transformer of both flesh and metal. Calling himself CYLAS (CYbernetic Life Augmented by Symbiosis), this cyborg attempted to offer his service to Megatron as a true Decepticon and, well...it didn't go quite as he envisioned, I'm sure.

What strikes me as interesting about the packaging is that minus the obvious Japanese text, the layout is fairly close to the design of the US Prime line, the box is even the same dimensions as US voyagers. You could plop this guy on a shelf in Walmart among the Bulkheads and Primes and he would blend right in at first glance. The left side of the box showcases the toy transforming and has his tech specs across the bottom.

The right side displays his mantis Micron in both beast and weapon mode and provides a small statistics chart for him as well. This is a nice touch as most Hasbro releases that include a smaller companion figure are lucky to have a single line in the larger figure's bio mentioning the sidekick, never mind individual stats.

Even though he's packaged in robot mode, I'm going to start with Breakdown's vehicle mode to mess with you. Like his Cyberverse counterpart, Breakdown is a massive truck that still looks like lovechild of an off-road SUV and an armored car to me. Black replaces the blueish-purple of the first release with a bit more color added by a few stickers. Additional bits of blue are present in his windshield and windows, whereas silver appears on the painted mirrors and chromed grill piece. The grill is one of the three pieces that make this mold not just a repaint but a retool, as the standard Breakdown lacked this shiny accoutrement.

One thing that makes American fans (myself included) wary of collecting Japanese Prime figures is that Takara-Tomy uses an included sticker sheet to provide decos on a lot of figures that are simply painted on for US releases. This is most prevalent on deluxe class figures who often have windshields and windows that lack paint and must rely on large stickers instead, and applying these in an even slightly sloppy manner can ruin the look of a toy. Thankfully as a voyager, Breakdown has only a few stickers to apply and most of them are for vehicle mode details like headlights, side windows and the rear windshield. As I applied these stickers however, I was struck by how involved Takara-Tomy got with them as many of the details highlighted by stickers would have been left completely unpainted on a Hasbro release. An excellent example is in the decals for the headlights behind the edges of the grill piece. You can barely see these lights in vehicle mode and they're irrelevant in robot mode, but just the idea that they took the time to make stickers for them is a sign of the amount of dedication Takara-Tomy's designers put into this.

Silas Breakdown has a lot of 5mm ports in vehicle mode, fourteen to be exact, meaning he can carry a lot of weapons and Microns. Additionally, the posts on either side of his spare tire are the right size to plug weapons or Microns/Minicons with the proper holes onto, raising his potential number of weapons to sixteen. I can see how Hasbro would find retooling all these spots to be a bit daunting. I should note that there are Decepticon logos on the sticker sheet meant to be placed on his doors, but I personally think he looks better without them. The sheet also includes some extra silver stickers that resemble scratches and dings to replicate the beat-up nature of Breakdown's body when it was recovered, as well as some M.E.C.H. logos. I didn't apply any of these bonus stickers, but again it is nice to see a company offering you a little variation and the ability to customize your Transformers without needing painting skills.

Whereas the first version of Breakdown came with a rhino Micron that transformed into his hammer, Silas Breakdown includes a new purple mantis Micron. I haven't seen a translation for this little guy's name yet, so I'll just refer to him as Mantis (Toboggan.)

Mantis resembles his inspiration close enough that you know what he's meant to be just from a glance. He sports giant scythe-bladed arms and the cyclopean red eye customary of Decepticon Microns. Mantis sports about five points of articulation, having lightly ratcheting joints at the shoulders and elbows and the ability to bend forward or back at the waist. His spark crystal is on the top of his abdomen and is a light blue in color. Mantis is a bit larger and bulkier in beast mode than most Microns which fits well with the nature of his wielder.

Mantis folds up into a bladed gun of some sort. It's somewhat odd looking, but fits with the brawler nature of Breakdown, I imagine him using the blades like double bayonets to impale enemies then blast them off his gun with a squeeze of the trigger.

In theory, you could attach Mantis to any of the multiple ports in vehicle mode, but the instructions suggest the one on the right side of Breakdown's hood and I'm inclined to agree.

Before getting into the full robot mode, I wanted to point out the second mold change made to Silas Breakdown, the inclusion of Silas himself. It would look a whole lot better with a few licks of paint, but you can definitely make out Silas' mug buried in the middle of Breakdown's inner workings, nestled between two piston-like details. This is another great little touch as you never see Silas normally, this piece is only visible during mid-transformation before you lock the chest into place.

Robot mode is where Silas Breakdown really shines, the black and silver paint scheme looks great and the figure itself is nice and bulky with a air of menace about it, this is one mean looking cyborg. Articulation includes ball jointed head, shoulders and hips, outward swinging shoulder hinges, upper arm and leg swivels, hinge elbows, knees and feet and a swivel waist. Breakdown has even less stickers in robot mode than in vehicle mode, just a few added areas of silver and black for his legs and feet and some black and blue details at his waist. He honestly looks just as good without them though, making this a figure you could display straight out of the box without applying a single sticker (though Mantis would look a bit plain without his.)

The third and final mold change for Silas Breakdown is the addition of an all new head sculpt showing how beaten and battered he has become. The right eye is gone, replaced with a round lens that is incongruent with the otherwise organic design, which makes sense as this eye was ripped out by M.E.C.H. and replaced with human technology during the series. My picture is too fuzzy to see it clearly, but the rest of the head also has an asymmetrical design with chunks missing from his armor or plates of a different design replacing original parts. The effect is pretty cool and really sells the "Franken-bot" nature of the character.

Silas Breakdown can wield Mantis (or any correctly sized weapon/Micron) in either hand and can still flip his wrists around so weapons appear to have extended directly from his actual arm. In robot mode, Breakdown sports a whopping eighteen 5mm ports with which to attach weapons or Microns and even a single C-clamp rail on the left side of his backpack section to attach Dark of the Moon/Generations weapons to. This is fantastic, I'm not even sure you can have each spot occupied at once without everything banging into everything else, but you can really outfit him if you want...

Something like this

All in all, Silas Breakdown is a pretty amazing figure with a ton of play value. It's a shame that as of this moment, the only way to get one is to import him, but perhaps Hasbro will surprise us and find a way to get this mold to US fans after all (and hopefully not through a Botcon boxed set.) If you just can't wait however, I'd highly recommend importing one version or another of this figure. Besides the Silas version,  there is the  standard Breakdown with a dark purple/blue color scheme and a rhino Micron, and also a repaint/retool of the mold as an Autobot named Swerve with an awesome rescue saw Micron. All three will probably run you around fifty bucks a pop and as I write this, Big Bad Toy Store is out of all of them minus Swerve. So looks like it's off to eBay with you!

"But...but you're DEAD!"

Gentlemen! I have built, THIS THING!: Demon Ninja & Terror Bird

First off, I know it's been awhile since I've posted anything (exactly a month it seems) and I apologize. It's not that I've been particularly busy or short of things to write about, I've just been...kinda lazy. I partially blame XCOM: Enemy Unknown. I never played the originals, but this one made me drop off the map for a couple of weeks straight training my troops into psychic operatives and researching the best tech. But I digress. In the spirit of things I haven't done in way too long, I give you a brand new installment of Gentlemen! I have built, THIS THING!

Today I have for you a Ninjago-inspired beast and rider pair that I just call Demon Ninja & Terror Bird. The names are a bit generic I know, but a big part of the spirit of Lego is fleshing out the basics of a story line with your own imagination, so fairly simple names. Plus it sounds a lot better than "I'm not very good at coming up with cool-sounding fantasy names." This whole thing started with the construction of the Demon Ninja rider, so let's start with him.



This guy came about when I was just idly messing around with mini figure pieces whilst trying to put some finishing touches on a larger thing I was building (which may very well show up in a future installment of GIHBTT) and like a lot of things I build, it took on a life of it's own from there.



This guy started life as the Cole from Cole's Tread Assault, but I switched his gear with Kai from Kai's Blade Cycle to make him all black and gray. I had originally popped the Mummy head from the Monster Fighters set of the same name on just for a laugh, but it looks really cool under the ninja head wrap and gave me the idea to make him an evil undead ninja to begin with.



Kai provided "cursed" black swords which look great with him, but I still felt he needed a little more omph...



There we go! I call that sucker the Oni Maul because it somewhat resembles the clubs traditional Oni supposedly carried. It is quite an intimidating weapon if I do say so myself, but it has another surprise yet to unveil.



When things get tough, the Ninja can unhook the spiked head and let it swing from the chain, turning the maul into a long flail! Also, can you tell by the design I was watching the Lord of the Rings movies while building this? Sauron would love that thing!



A fierce warrior deserves a fierce mount and the Demon Ninja receives that in spades with the mighty Terror Bird! The term terror bird refers to a real family of giant (thankfully extinct) flightless, predatory birds that roamed South America during the Cenozoic era. These ten foot monsters ran down their prey on the ancient savannas and finished it off with savage kicks from the huge claws tipping their powerfully-muscled legs and crushing bites from their hooked beaks. Basically, they were bad news for anything not a terror bird in those days. My Terror Bird is designed to be a distant relative of those creatures with a fantastical twist.



Originally, I had wanted to give the bird full, massive wings so the Demon Ninja could survey his territory from on high (again, Lord of the Rings influence seeping in again), the long, angled vanes from Cole's Tread Assault would make perfect feather sections after all. Once I started playing around with designs however, I discovered that I did not have enough ball and socket joint pieces, nor enough large "filler" pieces to make the wings look good, but still retain at least somewhat realistic bird-like folding capability. So instead of a Nazgul-esque flying terror, I re-imagined the concept as desert dwelling evil ninjas taming and riding the native giant, predatory, flightless avians and ensuring no one ever tries to cross that desert again.



Terror Birds are close in physical build to their real world counterparts with with powerful legs, hooked claws for catching and holding prey and a powerful, sharp beak for tearing flesh and crushing bone. These Desert Terror Birds however sport a few differences: Their wings, though greatly stunted, are still a bit longer and more dexterous than real terror birds and they use them to both help secure prey and climb, plus they can deliver a nasty slash with the scythe-like claws at the tips. Terror Birds have also evolved long, prehensile tails that help them balance while running and can also serve as an additional limb when climbing or manipulating smaller objects.



Additionally, male Terror Birds have a two pronged claw at the tip of their tails. In the wild, this is used to help hold a female steady during mating, but Terror Bird riders have trained the males to utilize this claw in battle, using it to catch and then crush enemies, or hurl them long distances with a single twitch of the muscular tail. Females lack the grasping claw, but instead have a single sharp spine terminating their tails which can also be employed as a weapon with proper training, though generally fewer females are trained as mounts due to their less aggressive nature.



The Terror Bird has ball joints at the base of the skull, base of the neck, shoulders, elbows, wings claws, hips, knees and ankles and the jaw, toes and tail are also fully articulated with a series of varying joints. Originally, I was going to have the chain reins be loose at the end so the ninja could hold them directly, but they rattle around too much already as the bit is loose and just fits in the Terror Bird's beak.



Here's a close up of a leg to show off the joints better. Given the proper parts, I would rebuild the legs to be sturdier (besides giving him full wings) because they are a bit weak in spots right now and pop apart or cause the bird to collapse if stretched too far in a pose. For example, look at the knee joint. See the gray rod peaking through just below the gear at the end of the thigh? That's because I fudged a few ball socket joints by using one of those single ball pieces that only a rod can connect to (for an example see, the "ball" in the ball and chain of the recent Monster Fighters Ghost set) and attached it via rod to another piece. The result is a not very stable joint and little things like that just drive my Lego OCD nuts until I fix them. Still, the foot claws came out nice and can totally grab mini figures pretty tightly.



The saddle for the Demon Ninja has enough room for him to either sit or stand and a place for the Oni Maul to clip to on the back. There are also a spear and an ax on either side of the saddle that can be removed (with a bit of hassle) to give the ninja further armament if he needs it.



I'm pretty proud of this one. It took a while to build to my liking, and there are still a few things I'd like to iron out about it's design, but if I saw this as a set in stores when I was a kid, I would have flipped out about it. I really like the Demon Ninja's overall design and think the Oni Maul came out especially nice, it's kind of hard to build a weapon for a mini figure that doesn't look ridiculously over-sized or silly, but this one has justifiable reason for it's size and looks nice no matter how he wields it.

That's it for the Demon Ninja & Terror Bird entry, but I have two more things built that I really want to show you guys and a third that is about 98% complete so even though it was a long hiatus, Gentlemen! I have built, THIS THING! will have more coming down the pipeline soon.