My entry for the 20th Anniversary Exo-Force Contest - the Blotted Sapper!
The Blotted Sapper is an unusual sight and never good sign. These specialized battle machines are used by the robot army to dig new tunnels, collapse old ones, build or collapse bridges, and some even believe to cause minor quakes in the mountains. If another hole suddenly bursts through the mountain wall and a bridge extends, at least one Blotted Sapper is behind it.
Relatives of the Sentry battle machines, Blotted Sappers are more heavily armored and armed. Though typically equipped with a Titanium Jackhammer on the right arm, this sometimes swapped for an Obsidian Drill or another tunneling implement. Their left arm is equipped with a Rotary Bolter Cannon, firing either rivets/bolts or small explosives. Though some reports indicate it can swap to using traditional lasers as well. Often has a couple of missiles attached on that side for more long range explosive options.
Due to their work requiring more thinking, Blotted Sappers are always piloted by a Devastator. Leaving future historians to assume that this machine was the basis or transitionary machine for the later Claw Crushers.
Turnaround:
Alt Shots and Verticals:
Designer’s Notes: …So what happens when someone who primarily builds with Bionicle and Technic makes a System mech? Evidently, ditch System as much as possible and stick to my happy comfort zone…Until I looked back at the old Exo-Force sets and realized that’s basically what most of them did too. It really is just some Technic, hinges, and some System coverings.
I never had any of the Exo-Force sets growing up. I still haven’t had one in my hands to this day. But I loved looking at Exo-Force online, following the story, and playing the web games, so I wasn’t going to say no to an Exo-Force contest. And what stuck out in my memory, especially since it was supposed to focus on the Split-Mountain Era for inspiration, was the use of chunky parts from other lines. Like the KKII armor, Hockey dude shoulders, etc. Whatever I was going to build, I wanted to use those parts.
Originally, my plan was to use the longer KKII leg armor. Making some sort of crawling or climbing machine. Think something climbing on the underside of bridges, with the long armor reaching over and skirting along the top of the bridge. I couldn’t get it quite to work the way I wanted, so maybe I’ll return to it one day.
Though I was always going to build something for the robots. I got a Devastator minifig off eBay as a kid (my brother got the old red Ninja, can’t remember how the rest of the Minifigs were split) and since then…I haven’t gotten anymore. So I don’t have any Iron Drones, meaning whatever I would build needed to fit use by a Devastator. And that eliminated some of the other KKII armor pieces in ways I didn’t account for previously. In that most of the others are too round, friend shaped, or bright. Which resulted in using the same spikey shoulders as the Sentry II, but oh well.
Oh. And as an additional challenge to myself, I was limiting myself to parts (discounting minor mold variations and colors) from 2000-2006, mainly sticking in the 2003-2005 range. Wanted to capture that era’s feel, even if I’m using design standards from 20 years later. This not only eliminated so many useful Technic parts but a lot of my chunky armor options, both in constraction and System. The most anachronistic portions are likely the Throwbot heads as its entire library was seemingly retired in 2002 (with exception for one limb and the socket) and the Hordika weapon. But I hardly use them and this looked good.
Color-wise, this thing was almost pure black for the longest time. I wanted something that wasn’t sharing a highlight color already with year 1. And since it already looked similar to year 2 sets, I also wanted to avoid that… But burnt orange didn’t look good, metallic sand blue was too drab/silver looking, lime green and regular green looked wrong, I wanted to avoid red and dark red, normal blue is too bright and dark blue was invisible. Didn’t have enough purple for that to work and yellow looked too Blacktron. So my favorite color of orange it was…And since Claw Crusher and Iron Condor are the two robot mechs that my mind defaults to, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised this is the color scheme I went with.
And I think that’s everything. As always, comments and criticism are always welcomed. And if you’re thinking about entering, there’s still time left! It closes on April 3rd.
