ARX-014 Silver Bullet

Ahh... Gundam Unicorn... if you are a longtime Universal Century fan (like me), you probably have a very strong opinion on Gundam Unicorn's story. While my view of the series is mixed at best, it gave us some pretty unique designs such as the "Döven Wolf meets a Gundam" MS that is the Silver Bullet which was my favorite original Federation design from Unicorn.

I love the wire-guided hand gimmick of the Newtype use suits in Gundam and I had just gotten into building Ma.K at the time so I decided to use the brass rod inside a spring trick so common to Ma.K to create the look of the hand firing off. In retrospect, using a stiff wire would have made more sense since it is meant to just be a cable.

The back boosters from a GP-01FB Gundam were added as thrusters on the legs with extra fuel tanks as I wanted to enhance the "space use" look of the suit.

The weapon is a one of the freebies from the giveaway Builders Parts during the time of Build Fighters. I wasn't too fond of the Jegan-esque shield or rifle for a suit that is meant to be very limited and high spec.

The decals are leftovers from my very first Ma.K kit which I had just completed at the time - looking at it now, they don't really fit the clean anime style aesthetic I was going for at all.

This build was gifted to a friend who helped me during a big move and I believe it now lives in his collection next to his builds which probably outshine this thing by a decent margin.

This build, despite its flaws, somehow managed to score the theme award for SCGMC that year (my first year attending!) which was "Best Unicorn Grunt." So the best thing that came out of this kit was it helped me get more into the wider community of builders out there and made a couple of friends - and I definitely appreciate all those people.