Commission: Adeptus Mechanicus Grand Magos

So this nice fellow from a far-off land had a job for me: replicate my old Grand Magos model. As you can see, one of these things is clearly not like the other. The reason for this is quite simple; me old mate there on the right was made with no small amount of discontinued parts (can you spot the RT dreadnought arm? ), which make replicating troublesome, to say the least. But, enough of the stuff is still on the market, so try I did. 

Based on the old metal Oblit body, he started out about the same, but it was devilishly hard to get servo arm bits without buying a tech marine, and some of those other things, well... they came from models that just around anymore. Luckily there bits of other things (and eBay) to take up the slack. I realized too late I could've built a claw around that assault cannon, but then again, it might not have held together anyway without a great deal of metal.

One thing he does have over the original (besides a wicked barbed power claw made from crux harpoons) are these bloody great cog shoulder pads that I wish I'd had the foresight to put on mine, but oh well, we do as we must. 

No servo harness backpacks to had out there, either (again, not without buying the full kit) so I made due with SM and Tau parts. If I hadn't been running low on Dragon Forge cabling, I would've made him a trailing sheaf of cables, too, but this way the hem of his robe is unmarred.

People ask me how I build the things and where I get my ideas, but they don't seem to believe me when I tell them I just keep putting bit on until it looks right. Things seem to come together organically. When I build copies of something (given the same parts)  the second one is rather forced and unfulfilling, which is why I suppose I'll never have a true parking lot of 18 identical Chimeras.

I imagine this fellow needs a little crew of Servitors running behind him just to fill up the ammo tins on the assault cannon. I think I'll start including big ammo drums on models that don't have internal magazines for some realism's sake. I understand the new huge bolt cannon on the IG Avenger is only a pathetic S6, which isn't going to do so much as annoy a lot of vehicles out there. S6? Really? Not even armor bane? Sad.

I contemplated giving him a pair of smaller sub arms (for fine work) but they only would've gotten in the way, and made the model look rather too busy, visually. Plus, the Admech make Titans, not landmates, dammit. Anyhoo, at last report this fellow arrived at his new (and very satisfied) owner's domicile intact. Yay postal service, and on to the next project!