Absolutely, and feel free to modify the colour scheme; I just went and followed the scheme on the Defense Tower for consistency’s sake.
I do have a few other ideas in that line as well, such as Mahi-drawn catapults and maybe something similar to the Visorak Battle Ram for example. There’s a fair bit of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings in my thinking, yes. Not that I want to skew the theme of course. There’s designs for an Ash Bear and a Mahi in Oomatu’s thread if you’re interested, but feel free to do your own thing - given your trend with that Gukko it’d probably be pretty brilliant!
I have a design for a bear based on the Bear-Dog from this Lego ideas submission.
Mahi-Drawn catapults sound awesome! Can’t wait to see what you’ve got.
I have new Rahi designs I’m working on but they’re for large battle pack type sets, one could be considered a battering Rahi, but it doesn’t have the function.
Edit: Actually one of my battle packs has got WAAAAY too big, I may put Mahi catapults in them, If you wanna design them, I’ll use 'em. I should really look at the battle pack piece counts.
Actually, the bear does look a lot more official. As much as I’m loathe to admit it, LEGO seem to be phasing out limbs joints for such models (the Ninjago Fire Mech and the Fenris from Thor Ragnarok being prime examples) in the name of stability. There’s also the fact that I’ve based the model purely on the G1 Graalok (seriously, can we make that the name, I prefer such names to English words) rather than a more adaptive design like you, Sokoda, and Oomatu tend to do.
I’ll have a muck around and see what I can do. It shouldn’t be too hard; I’ll just have to remember not to make it to large and complicated, seeing as this is a battle pack we’re talking about. Might watch that podcast again too…
EDIT: Since I’ll be busy tomorrow, I stayed up way too late to cobble this together.
I reckon I’ll have to edit it a little, in my experience the limbs are great but of course, piece count. The Bear designs are modified from the one in the link but it is heavily based on it, I have recently designed a brand new Rahi based on a real animal, you’ll know it when you see it and I’m seriously proud of the design.
In the story bible, there were references to a section of Tiro’s population who yearned for the days when it was a major military power. Anyone think this civil war plot could be a good place to bring them into the fold? Maybe the actions of a fanatical leader could be what push the rest of the region to join the war?
After the episode 3 script discussion, I realized this version of the map is no longer accurate (they saw Kanae on the outskirts of the Tiro forest). This would likely change a few of these war details. I made an updated version of the map, so feel free to use that to tweak any pre-war details.
I’ll check out that map and restructure my design of the events, of course these events are not set in stone and are still just shouldercanons (if you don’t get that joke… pls), but I should be able to work with it.
@A2B2C2 I like the idea of a fanatical leader but the war is primarily Ihu vs Mangai and the idea is they both go to war at the same time, not sure how to fit any fanatical rulers into that yet, if you have any more ideas, I’d love to hear them.
What I was thinking is that in the original civil war plot, the Onu Matoran were one of the parties that tried to remain neutral. Tiro is established as thinking of the Mangai and Ihu rivalry as being petty, though secretly disliking Ihu at the same time. Some of Tiro’s youth is established as having formed a pro-militia faction and perhaps a few of them could’ve been erratic enough to try and attack the Ihu factions, drawing their ire. The Tiroan council tries to disavow itself from these warmongers but to no avail and end up being forced into the war.
Naho might likewise try to stay isolationist, wanting to protect their borders, but perhaps part of the Ihu faction ends up getting forced into their territory and are forced to form an alliance with Mangai if only to protect their own borders.
As for the Kanae region? Maybe they were fed up with inept rulers and thought the only way to achieve prosperity was to side with the Merchant Kings and Ihu’s nobles?
Speaking of which, I could see Ahkmou running some kind of black market through the Dark Hunters supplying by arms to both sides. Ahkmou would probably regard Hafu as a kook trying to protect his statues and Veilka as a fool who likely doesn’t know what he’s saying. Maybe he hopes to usurp them and become a supreme ruler of the Motara region?
Perhaps building off of the Pro Military faction of Tiro, Ahkmou sells some weapons to them, then through their own rash actions use the weapons to attack some random Ihuan patrol that ventured a little too close.
There have been incidents in history that were started by something as simple as a snowball. It would be ironic for Tiro, the most intellectual of the village to be dragged in by impulsive behavior of a few boisterous youths who forced their hand.
It could certainly be expanded beyond that too. Tiro could at first merely step in to protect their own, which keeps them involved in the story, yet remains relatively true to the concept of them staying out of the war, at least until they join later.
