The Grimm's army Razorback ATV
LEGO by: Justin R. "Saber-Scorpion" Stebbins
Weight Range: Medium
Speed: Fast
Mobility: Land only (wheels)
Armaments: Rear energy gun turret, main medium energy tank gun, plus other added weaponry
Capacity: 1 driver, 2 gunners

There are times when certain mercenaries in Grimm's Army fight so well and survive so many battles that they acquire large amounts of cash. And what do they spend it on, besides bread, boarding, booze, and babes? Weapons, of course! They're mercenaries after all. And as they improve their vehicles, the piles of junk that are created soon become new vehicles entirely. This was the way the Galapagos was created, and this is also the way the Razorback was created.

The Razorback ATV started out as an expensive but unarmed ATV owned by a merc named Hogart "Hercules" Hackman. Hercules spent nearly all of his money equipping the ATV with armor plating and a computer-controlled, fully automatic blazer turret on the rear, with the ability to shoot in almost all directions. This way, Hercules could concentrate entirely on driving. The idea caught on, and a few other mercs (who had the money to do so) copied it. Later, Hercules also added a tank turret on top (because he was tired of not being able to shoot anything himself) and two completely ridiculous manned turrets sticking out on the sides.

Now, there are certain vehicles that no sane army would ever accept. Xarkonian, Victorian, and Yavakaran soldiers wouldn't be caught dead (and certainly not alive!) in something as outlandish as the Razorback (although the Zygbarese might give it a shot). This is the kind of hunk o' junk you can only find in a mercenary army. Here's the rear turret, rotated under the bottom. It is usually turned this way to fire at any chasing vehicles without exposing itself to enemy fire by sticking out on the top.

And here's the turret rotated upward. All guns foward! Notice a little factoid: EVERY GUN uses the same base piece to attach it to the vehicle: the little Soccer flipper thingy (or Football flipper thingy, depending on where you live). I actually built this vehicle for a contest I made on my own forums, in which you were supposed to make use of this "useless" piece. So I used it in every way I could think of. Notice that each turret is attached in a different way. That's the real reason this thing has so many guns poking in so many directions.

No, this ain't Hercules. After Herc had finalized his vehicle, Grimm arranged for several copies to be created. These heavily armed ATV's now guard his personal STEG command vehicle. The Razorback is more dependable than some other Grimm's Army ATV's. No other all-terrain jeep-like vehicle named after a type of wild pig *cough* can stand up to the Razorback.

Here it is with the side turrets folded up. I think it works pretty neat, don't you? The central tank turret is actually an energy beam gun, and it has a terrible tendency to overheat after just a few shots. Grimm would have preferred a solid-ammunition weapon here, but there just wasn't anywhere left to put the ammo.

Watch out! Although Grimm's mercs aren't always the best aims, he only lets his higher-rank mercs gun on one of his guardian Razorbacks. And if you survive long enough to be a higher-rank mercenary in Grimm's Army, then you've got to be a pretty decent aim... even if you're suicidal enough to man one of the Razorback's guns. The gunners are protected with energy shielding though, by the way. Yeah. You just uh, can't see the shields. Okay?

"Call me... MISTER PIG! RAAAGHH!" You know, I have a terrible time trying to make Grimm's vehicles look "junky." By which I mean, with greebling all over the place and odd color patterns to make it look like they were welded together out of slag. So I usually have to make up excuses about the vehicles I build being his more expensive, standardized models. I'm not sure why I find it so hard to build a vehicle with more than about six studs showing these days... But then, I was kind of trying to make this one match the STEG, so...

"Hey, Big?" "Yeah, what is it?" "There's somethin' strange about these turrets we're sittin' on..." "You mean besides the obvious? What's that?" "Well, I swear those things holdin' the controls on look like... somebody's legs..."

Grimm's Army soldiers sometimes complain about the way that they can't get any life insurance. No life insurance company will even touch a mercenary, and the closest thing to employer insurance that Grimm offers to his soldiers is some halfway-decent body armor.

Perhaps you have noticed the little booster thing under the bottom of the vehicle, just behind the turret. Grimm was unsure whether or not to standardize this most questionable feature of Hercules's Razorback creation, but in the end he let it stay. Grimm likes to let his relatively undisciplined soldiers satisfy their battlefield urges, and sometimes the driver just feels the need... the need... for speed.

The rear turret isn't really all that terribly accurate. Although AI control and computerized aiming systems have advanced considerably, they're still no match for a human when on the battlefield. Most of them rely on something besides actual light-based optics... such as heat vision. And there's always a huge risk of accidentally shooting an ally. This particular gun relies on sensing the electronic signals of enemy vehicles. The sensor dish (which strangely enough reads "LEGO") detects the electronic signature of an enemy vehicle and locks onto it. The pilot then has to confirm that it is a foe before the gun can fire.

I'm running out of stuff to say here. As Patrick Henry once said, "Gentlemen may cry 'SPOON, SPOON!' but THERE IS NO SPOON! The SPORK has actually begun!"

Okay, here's how you get down off the gun turrets. This was already somewhat shown in my latest Takeover of Mordark LEGO comic, Issue 6: The War Comes to Mordark. Basically the gun just swings down like so...

And then the gunner has to make a little jump to get down. Just like getting off the Nidhogg or the Galapagos. It seems that a lot of LEGO vehicles I build require a bit of acrobatics on the part of their passengers.

Well, that's it for another LEGO model. Until next time, folks...