Monday 25-Jan-2016, 10:01 AM
Hey Phantom, will be great to have a few more mandos here 
Ive been an approved member of the mercs for a few years and have designed a few for friends. Let me explain a bit of their reasoning behind the no-foam, no blades rule.
Foam - mostly the reasons they dont want you to use any sort of foam is because eventually the foam will seperate from whatever you bond over it - even fiberglass, leaving you with issues or even destroyed or warped plates. Given this has happened to members in the past, they now have a total ban on using any type of foam as a base for your armour. Youre better off going with metal plates or even cut them out of thick PVC pipe.
If you havent come across it yet, the mercs also have rules around modifying nerf blasters (acceptable only if you mod it to hell and back, there cannot be a single thing that still identifies it as a nerf) and also they don't permit modified sporting equipment (if you do then it must be completely unrecognisable).
Modding a toy sniper rifle is fine, its a great place to start. If I may make a suggestion though - being an adult, any toy sized weapon is going to look strangely miniature. I use two majorly modified kids boba fett blasters as pistols. One easier way to go about it is to buy several toy guns and strip them for parts, buy some pvc and hose parts from Bunnings, scrap a few computer parts and stick it all together. Repainted and unmodified kids toys usually arent accepted because they look like a modern day sniper rifle. They'll generally knock back anything that doesn't look in-universe or out of proportion with the rest of you.
With retractable blades or projectiles built into the costume goes - there is a firm rule that they must not be functional.. in otherwords, the blade can't be spring loaded and the darts must be fixed and not able to be fired. If you want a blade in the gauntlet like the others you mentioned, thats fine, but in their case, it is probably fixed in place for effect, or able to be pulled out for posing, not able to jump out at the push of a button. The main reason for this in Australia is a general rule against projectiles/spring loaded items at conventions.
Id highly recommend starting a progress/build thread in the main area (and duplicate it in the Sandhawks area) and post up your ideas or sketched concepts. That way you'll have the feedback on whether or not youre on the right track rather than finish and then be told your kit is not up to approval standard, nothing worse than being told "nope sorry, do it again!"
Good luck!
Ive been an approved member of the mercs for a few years and have designed a few for friends. Let me explain a bit of their reasoning behind the no-foam, no blades rule.
Foam - mostly the reasons they dont want you to use any sort of foam is because eventually the foam will seperate from whatever you bond over it - even fiberglass, leaving you with issues or even destroyed or warped plates. Given this has happened to members in the past, they now have a total ban on using any type of foam as a base for your armour. Youre better off going with metal plates or even cut them out of thick PVC pipe.
If you havent come across it yet, the mercs also have rules around modifying nerf blasters (acceptable only if you mod it to hell and back, there cannot be a single thing that still identifies it as a nerf) and also they don't permit modified sporting equipment (if you do then it must be completely unrecognisable).
Modding a toy sniper rifle is fine, its a great place to start. If I may make a suggestion though - being an adult, any toy sized weapon is going to look strangely miniature. I use two majorly modified kids boba fett blasters as pistols. One easier way to go about it is to buy several toy guns and strip them for parts, buy some pvc and hose parts from Bunnings, scrap a few computer parts and stick it all together. Repainted and unmodified kids toys usually arent accepted because they look like a modern day sniper rifle. They'll generally knock back anything that doesn't look in-universe or out of proportion with the rest of you.
With retractable blades or projectiles built into the costume goes - there is a firm rule that they must not be functional.. in otherwords, the blade can't be spring loaded and the darts must be fixed and not able to be fired. If you want a blade in the gauntlet like the others you mentioned, thats fine, but in their case, it is probably fixed in place for effect, or able to be pulled out for posing, not able to jump out at the push of a button. The main reason for this in Australia is a general rule against projectiles/spring loaded items at conventions.
Id highly recommend starting a progress/build thread in the main area (and duplicate it in the Sandhawks area) and post up your ideas or sketched concepts. That way you'll have the feedback on whether or not youre on the right track rather than finish and then be told your kit is not up to approval standard, nothing worse than being told "nope sorry, do it again!"
Good luck!
![[Image: jImnAK.jpg]](http://imageshack.com/a/img538/154/jImnAK.jpg)