Various scriptures from the Old World mention of an agreement between a Divine One and a certain unnamed king. The promise was that in order to save his land and his people, the king would have to sacrifice his most beloved. The sacrifice was made, and the king went into a sorrowful slumber yet awakened to the glow of righteous gold. And on that day the Covenant was born.
Deity
Classification: Melee
Armaments:
(1) SP-RHONGOMIANT
(1) SW-CARNWENNAN
Build Notes
This is actually a spiritual predecessor to the Aztec Deity Reborn which was the first golden mech I built back in April 2015. The Deity faction was actually established a few months later for my Mech Wars universe as the Aztec build didn’t really belong anywhere (and had to put it under a faction). Most builds under this faction would be some kind of spiritual entity build and might all be in gold haha 😛
With my first build being inspired by old Mayan imagery, I wanted to go for a more European religious imagery for this one. Something along the lines of the Crusades, King Arthur, the English Church, Saints, etc. Growing up, I was actually exposed to a lot of the religious imagery from my Catholic upbringing (studied in a Jesuit school actually). I also found stories of Joan of Arc and King Arthur quite enchanting and visually loved the art revolving them from various sources like game art, paintings, illustrations, etc.
This was also built for the Mocer League Anniversary Boss challenge where I’d be a guest boss for the week as we’re having a crossover event with them (BMD x ML). Basically there’s a boss build with stats and people can challenge that boss with builds of their own with scores tied to people’s reactions to builds. The last two weeks was Kelvin’s bosses and it was all good fun so hoping to continue that with my Covenant 😀 I highly encourage checking their FB group out and they’re also a Registered LEGO Online Community with a ton of great builders. Just make sure to check their rules before applying to join and it’s mostly a Chinese community but they’re welcoming to other language speakers as well 😀
WIP Process
I was back to my normal build process for this starting off with the head build. Now the hardest part with working in mostly gold was how limiting the shaping parts were. There were no 1×2 curved slopes which is a staple piece in most of my mech builds and not having it at all for this build was definitely proving to be a challenge.
The first head design ended up being too wide and chunky looking and reminded me a lot of the Gelgoog from the Gundam UC universe. It would have been fine for another build but this build had to look slightly feminine with a thin facial profile and this wasn’t cutting it.
So I was able to pull off the two sword horns I’ve wanted to do and in the angles I wanted to do them in. That wasn’t the hardest part of the head build though. The face took forever to do and since there were limited pieces, I ended up using these gold ingot 1×2 tiles to get some unique shaping for the chin and cheeks.
Being satisfied with the head, I moved on to the front chest cockpit plating. The first version just didn’t have the sleekness I was looking for. The shaping gave it a big chest but that was all there was to it so I scrapped it completely.
Good thing I stocked up on these curved round tiles in Pearl Gold a few months back and had that initial shaping that I wanted to do. I was contemplating on what to do for the grills and originally used the same modified tile + pot handle but it looked weird. The middle trans light blue pyramid was initially just a cheese slope but swapped it for the pyramid since it had more “polygons” to it.
The hands were built next and was aimed to be a simple yet sleek design. I really enjoyed doing that elbow detail as it gave a good visual break from all the gold while still looking like a realistically functional element.
Also did a quick test of the head crown halo from the back weapon attachments of the reFrame V3 which turned out much better than I expected, especially with the addition of the gold flags that had almost the same length as the skip pole – clip assembly on the rigid flex tube 🙂 This was one of the key design elements that I wanted highlighted in the entire build and I had to remove the horns on the head as they were competing with the halo. The perfect fit of the chromed hexagonal half-sphere from those old space sets made me so happy as that wasn’t part of my original plans. Finished up the back by adding more detail pieces but nothing too much.
I added in the thighs just to see how the proportions were currently looking. The gold Infinity Gauntlet hands were experimental but turned out visually okay so kept them there. I did like how the wheels on the side just gave it a sleek silhouette and the details there just added to the overall engraved European knight armor look I was going for.
I actually really liked how the shoulders at this point looked but the assembly was too delicate and limited the sidewards movement of the arms with the top plating hitting the torso. I eventually replaced them at the latter part of the build with the spiked shoulder look that reminded me so much of certain Five Star Story mech designs.
The finished build and some minor changes to the arms. The old arms were actually proportionally too long and made the whole build look lanky so had to shorten them by about 2 plates. The lower legs were actually really difficult to build as there wasn’t a lot of gold pieces to plate the sides of the legs with so had to find a way to connect the 1×4 curved slope plates while keeping a thin leg assembly. I also had issues building the feet due to the lack of the 1×2 curved slopes but I managed with the bad robot arms haha!
The last part of the build was making the weapons but that didn’t take too long. I did decide to use two Bionicle weapons with a pearl gold handle and a light blue blade that I just found so cool when I found them in BrickLink a while back.
Pretty happy with how the build turned out and I was able to apply new techniques I learned from building the Ikaruga and Fulgur especially for the lower leg build. Now I just hope the folks over at ML get a kick out of this boss and hope it gives people a hard time beating it haha! Until the next build 🙂
reFrame Version 3.0 frame (instructions / full kit) now available
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For those interested in LEGO mech building, I also have an eBook from 2015 called Mech Wars 2015 Instructional Primer. It contains some things I wrote about basic mech building, a bit about my Mech Warsuniverse, and all my early models from 2014-2015. 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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