Monday, December 22, 2014

XV9 Hazard Suit (How I did it - Part 5)

(Part 1 here) (Part 2 here) (Part 3 here) (Part 4 here)

Final bits for our kitbashed XV9 Hazard suit.
First we'll start with the arms. The Crisis suit arms are too small. So we are taking the arms from the XV88 Broadside. I never did like the missile-fist look, so instead I settled on a conversion that used the rifle hold position where you could magnetize the giant rifle and be able to swap it with the railguns and a missile pod (more on that in a later post). That conversion left these perfect arms.
 I started off by removing the lower-arm from them, but keeping the shoulder and joints.
Next the holes on the broadside arms are too small for the crisis arm pegs. I used a rotary tool to grind them out a bit more so it's a snug fit.
With the holes ground out a bit more, we can move on.
Since the broadide kit has no usable forearms, we will take them from the crisis arms.
You have to be careful to not cut up the crisis forearm, but you can its elbow joint, as we don't need that.
Now attach them to the broadside joints as pictured above. Where you glue them determines their pose, so experiment with some sticky take or something to make sure it's the position you want.
The original XV9 kit has all sorts of aerials allover the suit. This is an aerial that comes from the broadside kit. It originally goes behind the knee, but I found the broadside looked fine without it. It looks better here.
Once glue sets, get it on to your suit torso, and make sure it's the right pose.
Next we will move onto the head. All these parts are from the broadside kit. Luckily I never used them because I liked the other ones instead. I loved the traditional square looking head. These are very similar to the XV9 head.
On the XV9 head, there is a single aerial. It doesn't mount on the side of the head like a traditional battlesuit, but on the top in the middle. This head bit has a little peg for the aerial. I removed it and smoothed the area.
Glue the lens housing piece to the head. Then cut the aerial as pictured above.
Once it's cut, glue it to the top of the head. This completes the head.
In gluing it to the suit, you will need a riser. It can't stick in the original hole on the torso because it sets too deep in because we bulked up the suit. I used a ball of green stuff that I smushed onto the original hole, then smushed the new head into it. I made sure it was a position I liked. then I let the green stuff set and glued it in place. The hole I drilled in the middle of the jet pack is for a back flag I do on my suits. You will see that at the end of this post.
Final part to assemble are the guns. I opted to go with the twin-linked burst cannons, and I will go into why in the next post. The guns are from the XV25 stealthsuit kits, and the bit in the middle is a support system bit from the XV88 broadside kit. I had to shave the sides of the support system so they laid flat, and the guns had some little nub that helped it to mount to stealthsuit arms. I shaved those off so they could mount flat on a surface.
They glue together like so. As pictured, they are upside-down. When they mount on the under-arms of the suit, the aerial from the support system is supposed to be pointing down.
And here is this suit completed.
These guys were a lot of fun to discover and assemble. The back flags in each one are from Wargames Factory's Ashigaru Yari.

That's it! Hope this guide was helpful and understandable. When I took the photos, I wasn't sure how I was going to present the steps, I just photographed them as I made them.

Let me just say, that the XV9's are definitely worth it on the tabletop, even the basic loadout. I took them to a grand tournament in Spokane Valley Washington and they racked up the highest kill score for me aside from my Broadsides. Totally worth it.

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