Ragnarsdóttir holds the reputation of being one of the most ruthless military organizations in the region that was previously known in old history as Northern Europe. Their most known trait though is having all female members in their ranks. Practicing strict military code accompanied by superior tactics and skilled warriors, these battle maidens or Valkyries ride highly customized reFrames that excel in close quarter combat skirmishes.
The Skalmöld model in particular is equipped with the SW-SKALSO, a cleaving heat sword that penetrates the toughest of armors, and the SH-SKALRO, a shield that offers superior deflection and blocking given its compact size.
Build notes:
This was actually my first mech build in over 4 months of not having access to my LEGO as I had to go away for a while for work. The LUG that I’m part of had an upcoming event last October that was tied to the local Danish Embassy and as a LUG, we wanted to show our support by collaborating with them via LEGO builds. Being the mech guy that I am, I decided to build a Norse-inspired melee mech with a winged helmet design and had roughly 2 days to work on it (because I was procrastinating :P).
Starting with the head design that took around 3 hours, I was able to complete the rough version of the build in around 10 or so hours. The body assembly didn’t take too long as it doesn’t have as many angled connections as my usual builds and the legs were mostly taken from my H’Da and previous Ascendant Lord builds (Vzir’ Rin / Vzir’ Ran). I also had a vague idea on how I wanted to do the arms and shield. What really took long was making the sword as I wanted to utilize the garage door piece I’ve been using for my swords in the past but in a new and interesting way. I’m pretty happy with the result on the look of it even if it does look a little clunky.
Unfortunately, the Skalmöld was done prior to my improvement of the reFrame skeleton so I had postponed uploading it until I finished upgrading it to the 2.0 reFrame. Upgrading it meant it now has a minifig cockpit, double jointed elbows, and had the opportunity to clean up the torso and leg design.
P.S. Since this is a new faction in the Mech Wars universe, had to spend some time making a new faction logo.
WIP Process:
I knew from the conceptualization phase of the build that I wanted a winged helmet, a round shield, a single handed weapon, and these curves that would go around the legs. Originally, I was going for a hammer weapon but since I went with Skalmöld for the name, I had to go with a sword 😛
I actually kinda zoomed through the helmet and body design with the pieces just fitting and shaping where I wanted them. I was really pleased with that tooth piece at the top of the head that really fits well with the 1×2 roof piece that serves as the front helmet of the head design. The red accents were also just right for me, just enough hints and felt good seeing that splash of color variation for the body.
I’m really not fond of using big Bionicle / HF pieces for my mechs but was willing to make an exception for the shoulder here if I could have made it worked. Sadly, the piece was in “milky white” (as its BrickLink color category) and I felt it wasn’t a perfect fit as I had initially hoped. Seen here is also the initial “lazy” way of doing the knees since I was running out of time.
The early version of the Skalmöld completed 😀
For those interested in LEGO mech building, I put out an eBook over at Amazon Kindle a while back called Mech Wars Instructional Primer. If you’re looking for a resource that could help you start or even improve your mech building skills, you might find this eBook useful 😀
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