The Progenitors were one of the first few organizations that utilized reFrame technology but have been lagging behind in recent years. Deciding to revitalize their reFrame division, they’ve designed the X03 Mosbach.
It is essentially an overhauled version of the X01 Type B, offering overall performance upgrades and equipped with a whole new set of weapons. With excellent performance test results and positive reviews from test pilots on handling and general combat output, the Mosbach will soon be put to mass production and become the Progenitor’s standard unit for reFrame battalions.
Classification: Mid range Combat
Armaments:
(1) SMG-BP201
(1) SH-RCAS01F
(1) AC-AM3001
(1) MS-VM4A02
(2) EMP-001BD
Build Notes:
As described in the mech’s backstory, this started out as the dismantled reFX01. I had put up a poll on my Facebook page and out of the 4 old builds presented, this was picked to be dismantled first 😛
Actually, looking back at the reFX01 design, I wasn’t completely solved on it and felt that there were tons of things that could be improved on the design. The level of articulation it also had were limited in some parts due to the excessive industrial greebling I wanted it to have and the design itself felt lacking (I knew that I was designing it to be a first in the reFrame series but still felt the actual design wasn’t that great). This was a key thing that I wanted to address with the remodel, taking the original reFX01 Type B design (I really liked the Type B’s visor head) and evolving it a step further and this time, with the new reFrame version 3 inner structure.
WIP Process:
As with all my builds, the first thing that has to be designed is the head build. Originally, I wanted to simply retain the visor and keep the same forehead shape as the X01 Type B, similar to what I did for the X01 Type D, but somewhere along the design process I decided to scrap that idea and just keep the visor. This then forced me to find a new way to build the forehead while retaining the nested visor look and luckily, I had this control panel piece in DBG that was just perfect. The two extra studs on the sides also allowed me to stick some tile modified with clip to place these blade pieces and I instantly fell in love with the new look. There was a leftover hole in the control panel piece and I decided to just plug it with an ice skate piece.
The next thing to rebuild was the body and all I did was essentially take the shapes of the old chest design (divided into 3 sloped areas) and rebuild it with the new frame’s cockpit cover. It actually got completed faster than I expected so there’s not much WIP pics for that.
The shoulders were even faster with just having to apply the same design into a newer, more compact mixel joint based shoulder. Notice that there’s the same T-bar + Bad Robot Arm connection where I connect the shoulder attachments / sub weapons.
The legs were the next thing to update and I really didn’t feel that I had to completely remodel the legs. I just moved a few things around and made the whole lower leg more compact as the old build was too wasteful in construction and had an odd shape from the side. The lower legs were also made chunkier by widening the shin area, just above the ankle, to give the legs a more robust look.
The feet however was a different issue and badly needed an overhaul. The old feet were nice to look at but felt so separated and fragile and given that these are combat units, I wanted to change the feet to look sturdier and more solid. I ended up having a more compact build with these wheel heels and the new design was much lower than the previous, also giving the Mosbach this more stout-grounded look and vibe.
I also decided to adjust the hip section to match the overall widening of the whole build. The old X01 felt too lanky looking back at it so with the X03 being a little more chunky, everything had to be carefully expanded for consistency.
I ended build day 2 by swapping some of the chest’s pieces to red and DBG to give the whole build some accent and sectioning via color blocking.
Day 3 started out with small adjustments to the shoulders as I realized my initial remodeling of the arms left the elbow joint too near the body. I needed to shift where the elbow joint would connect to by a half stud and it was a simple rebuilding of the inner shoulder structure.
With the shoulders fixed, all I had left to do was to finish plating the back and design all the weapons. The back part was easy as I simply copied over the 2 horizontal cylinders the X01 had and decided to also attach the boosters to them.
For the weapons, I had decided to build a sub-machine gun, a physical shield, a vertical missile launcher (back weapon), and an auto-cannon (back weapon). Most were fairly simple in construction as the X03 wasn’t a special unit but was designed to be mass produced and would serve as frontliners or at least staples in the Progenitor’s reFrame ranks.
From the above picture to the final version, small revisions were introduced such as changing some parts of the gun (SMG’s ammo was changed to the LBG ingots) and repositioning the ankle joint on the lower legs as the whole build kept tipping backwards too much. I would also like to give thanks to ManilaBrick for providing me with the red minifig visor in such short notice when I was building this 😀
The X03 Mosbach was a fun build to do as I had the chance to improve on an old build 😀 I’ll probably be doing a few more versions of this in the future like a special ops version.
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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