SAFS Mk.III R-6 RENEGADE

 

My first "original" SAFS suit variant! The Renegade is clearly based on the design of the Raptor and Racoon suits (and the majority of the base kit is the Wave Rapoon), however rather than a recon type, it is meant to be for close assault on the Strahl unmanned weapons such as the Gans and Oskar. Similar to WW2 style tank destruction teams who would use satchel bombs and shaped charges to destroy tanks up close, this is meant to sneak up to unmanned units and eliminate them at close range. With this in mind, the kitbashing was under taken with functionality in mind rather than just "well it looks cool".

A backpack was added using the Racoon engine cover and blended using polyester putty into the back of the Raptor hull. The shaped charges on the right arm are 1/100 Zeon shoulder spikes as is the basis for the hatch infrared searchlight. The dazzler (which is meant to blind the sensors of a Strahl unmanned unit) is made from a mix of various Ma.K spare parts.

The Raccoon style pod is made from parts of an AFS arm and represents a ECM jammer - it makes a close range pulse disabling the turning radius of an unmanned weapon as the suit runs up to place a shaped charge on a vulnerable area. The barrel is a 3D printed accessory and was done very weathered in order to hide the somewhat rough print resolution.

This was a really fun exercise in lore-building while kitbashing. While of course the first order of the day is to create something visually compelling, which I hopefully did, it is very fun to let the imagination fly and think of "in-universe" explanations for why things look the way they do. The Ma.K universe has a lot of great open-ended room for creativity since there isn't too much hard and fast canonical material - I think I might have to create a Strahl counterpart to this suit with an original PKA variation! Thank you for your readership and hope you enjoyed this build.