In the search of configuration A

Starting point

What we had was two ERMLasers in the Left Arm, another one in the forehead, and the Right Arm was practically an ERLLas (*) and not much else. On the Right Torso we also had an SSRM-6 launcher. None of this would stay in place.

According to the official paperwork nothing was going to remain in the Left Arm beyond the arm-hand bits themselves. On the Right Arm I would need to get a couple of different-sized lasers. From the head, just above the cockpit, I needed to chop off a bit more than a millimeter of tubing. On the shoulder side replacing the SSRM launcher and nothing with LRM-15 launchers wouldn't otherwise be a problem of any sort, except that the working area was so tiny that even my pin vise was way too large to get fifteen decently enough spaced holes drilled in, no matter what. Instead, I could cheat and glue on armoured doors, a bit like the ones in Catapults.

At least the Jump Jet count was the same (for the 7 hex leaps) as in Prime, so the danger of making the backside ugly as well was lesssened.

Chop chop

In my quest of making the pose nicer I rotated the Right Arm upward to make my mini look like it was aiming at something instead of just posing around. Then I chopped off the tip of the head laser and filed the resulting mess down a bit. The worst remaining offenders would melt away or at least get toned down with a drop of liquid cement.

When I cut off the RA double lasers, there wasn't that much meat left on the Arm itself, so I thought at least I was supposed to scratch some kind of panel lines there. Thanks to the torque applied by the snippers the arm had gotten quite loose, so I just plucked it off for easier handling.

From the Right Arm I just cruelly cut the Laser's barrel. I didn't start mutilating the arm any more than that, so all the little subcontainers and whatnots remained. Without any of the original details the new arm would've been a sad sight.

For my replacement parts I spent a bit of time in my bits boxes for things that looked potentially useful as laser cannons. The scale was a bit of a challenge, and the pieces I considered minuscule (like a 1:72 Apache's wing pod, or a same-scale Werfer-Granate 21) weren't that small next to the miniature but enormous. In the end I glued a fire extinguisher from a 1:35 Panzer as the ERSLas and used a short piece of a qtip to stand in as the MPLas. How would I get the jeweling painted in these? Badly, most likely.

To attach my LRM launcher doors on I had filed the Grenmongrel's shoulders a bit and cut ridiculously small pieces of 0,5mm styrene sheet into tinier rectangles until they fit decently for gluing. Of the cutoffs I cut even tinier bits to glue as greeblies onto the leading edges of the doors. Similarly I added tiny strips to stand in as hinges. There may be some tweaking in their future, but overall I accepted them.

My original guesses of the missile launcher surface area had been off by millimeters, so I had some excess styrene flakes on the cutting mat. I decided to use them in different shapes to add some three-dimensionality onto the mistreated left forearm.

While gluing these tiny bits Adam Savage's hint was worth its weight in chocolate: they were sillily easy to pick and set in place using the hobby knife's tip alone.

(*) Of course I forgot that the Right Arm also had an ERSlas that I didn't snip off earlier, most likely I was stuck in my previous mindset of UrbanMech's AC/10 non-weapon targeting laser living on top of the bigger weapon. Smarter people must have noticed my brainfart many photos earlier.

The important thing was that I fixed my mistake and now there was a correct amount of death rays and related objects. Did they look anything plausible, acceptable or tolerable? That was a different discussion altogheter and I ignored it to retain my sanity. To help me paint the lenses I used some Vallejo Water Texture (VWE:WT 26235 Still Water) in the custom-made barrels, expecting a concave and smooth plug near the end of each hole.