Last Painter Standing - The Final Round

Last Painter Standing continues to earn its reputation as a tough, grueling contest as two more contestants were lost in Round Five - gurney, who had to drop out while recovering from surgery; and Minidragon, who was voted out by readers.

Which means that we're down to the final two contestants, so Round Six will also be the Final Round!

And that brings us to our final model: Urban Mammoth's Crucifier from its VOID product line.

VASA is a technology agency in the VOID gaming universe, and its forces are a mix between colonial security units and special response teams. Heavy back-up is provided by Birds of Prey, "armoured, VR-controlled battlesuits" piloted by veteran shock troopers of the elite Black Legion.

The Crucifier is an anti-infantry Bird of Prey, armed with heavy grape guns (bulky weapons that use magnetic rail technology to fire "a lethal shower of ball bearings") and cesti (massive mechanical gloves powered by hydraulic rams, designed to punch and rip). Equipped solely with short-range weapons, the Crucifier is intended for close combat.

The model comprises 14 parts plus a round plastic base. The major components are limbs - 2 legs and 4 arms.

The rest of the parts are an upper and lower torso, a head, two shoulders, a back banner, and two grape guns.

Assembly appears straight-forward. The limbs and head attach via ball-and-socket joints, which should allow some freedom in arranging the pose. The shoulders sit on the ring around the upper arm joints. The torso sections attach with a standard pin-and-hole connection. (However, in our sample, the hole in the bottom of the upper torso was filled in, and will have to be drilled out to accept the lower torso pin.) The back banner has a disk which sits into a round depression on the torso back. The feet also have large pins, though you'll have to drill matching holes in the plastic base yourself.

Since the model comes with no assembly instructions, and isn't shown in the VASA Sourcebook (which came out first), I referred to a photo at the Urban Mammoth website to figure out what the parts were. Mysteriously, the website photo seems to leave off the grape guns. (Is there an all-cesti Crucifier variant?) My guess is that the grape guns attach to the outside of any two arms.

The deadline for this round is 31 May 2004. As the write-ups come in, they will be posted here...

Update!

Since one of our contestants has been stranded on an oil platform at sea, all parties have agreed to a deadline extension. The new deadline is midnight PST, 30 June 2004.