White Dragon Miniatures - The Fiddler Mech - Alternate Loadout

While perusing a wargaming show recently (This one in fact) I noticed the stand of White Dragon Miniatures whose Shattered Void Kickstarter I had recently pledged to. While I was looking at some miniatures for that particular Kickstarter some other miniatures caught my eye. Some of these were from a past crowdfunding project but after speaking to one of the gentlemen at the stand (I somewhat rudely forgot to ask his name) he told me that they were planning on creating a game around these particular models as well as expanding the range considerably. In light of this I decided to buy one of their 'mechs' to have a closer look at...this one in fact...well this one with the alternate weapon load-out...I've also included some background material at various points that I unashamedly stole borrowed from their website...

The Fiddler Mech

The Fiddler Mech - Alternate Loadout - Unassembled

Here's pictures of both sides of the parts on the sprue.

The Fiddler Mech - Alternate Loadout - Assembled

The resin was of good quality and I only had one minor loss of detail due to some overzealous clipping on my part which is why you'll note a tiny bit of 'green stuff' filling part of the models front. The clean-up was fairly simple aided considerably by the resins overall quality and sensible placing of the joining points to the sprue meaning that none of them obscured model details. The legs had considerable posing options but I somewhat lazily went for a forward facing pose. The model also came without a base so I used a spare 60mm one I had. The model itself is in the 15mm scale.

A recent addition to the forces of the MTU, the First Incident Drop (FID) combat suit, affectionately called the 'Fiddler mech’ by the MTU marines, is a large mechanical exo suit developed to instantly respond to enemy contact. It is specially designed to be launched from low orbit in a foetal position to slam hard into the surface and quickly counter threats to MTU assets. Once on the ground, it unfurls into a bipedal mech standing some 30 feet tall, and armed with multiple weapons systems so as to best respond to whatever target the Fiddler Mech finds itself facing.

The most unusual system it posses is the prototype Self Reliance Suite - essentially two arms designed to act as tools or hands to manipulate nearby objects or repair any damage the mech sustains mid-battle. It also carries the cutting edge in multi-layer polymer armour technology, including the prototype kinetic-barrier shield. A first for the MTU, the shield works by detecting an incoming round using various sensors positioned across the mech’s frame, then plotting a solution arc. Much of the details of the shield are unknown, but essentially works by generating a ‘wedge’ of hardlight to create a temporary angled sloped set of armour to deflect the incoming round. Situated either side of the pilots cockpit are a pair of smoke launchers each containing small grenades which are launched when a incoming threat is detected, obscuring the Fiddler mech and jamming lock-on signals. In addition to these defensive systems, there are two weapons loadouts to deal with different categories of threats: 

The secondary or alternative configuration is designed to be a tank hunter. Armed with the devastating heavy railgun, it sends 12mm calibre high-density slugs which use kinetic energy to instantly penetrate armoured targets. The massive energy release is often enough to go straight through the target, which combined with the immense pressure build up is often enough to ‘pull’ the insides of the vehicle, including any unfortunate crew, out through the tiny exit hole, with expectantly grizzly results. The other arm mounts an 80mm calibre cannon designed to shred the outer layers of an enemy vehicle, steadily grinding off layers of armour until nothing is left by smoking ruin. In the forward facing mount is a close range incendiary projector to easily flush out any enemy infantry who get too close to the Fiddler mech. Lastly the shoulder system mounts the powerful folding fin area-suppression rocket, or FFAR; designed to fire salvos of rockets into enemy armoured formations or shatter occupied buildings and fortifications.

 Thoughts and comments are (as usual) most welcome.