I knew that I couldn’t justify doing the StormToaper without doing something for the SandToaper, but the problem was figuring out how to attach that annoying pauldron. I was confident that I could cobble something together for the backpack once I’d figured that problem out. What you see is the product of about two hours of heavy brainstorming and about five discarded ideas. I’m not thrilled with the results, especially with how it restricts the posability of the right shoulder, but there aren’t a lot of options where the orange pauldron is concerned, and I wanted to make sure that all three recognized variations were possible with the same design.

The backpack turned out to be a more interesting challenge than I’d anticipated, as the main body is only four studs wide and it had to be mounted in the center. I had three main characteristics that I wanted to included in the design. The first was the “water bottle” on the bottom, for which I was very lucky to have one blue light cover floating around. The second was the short pole attached to the right side, and while it’s a lot fatter than it should be, I think the effect still comes across. The third was the other black part that hangs down from the left side, and I ended up being a bit more limited in my options that I’d first anticipated. The rest of the backpack had to be built around these pieces, and the result is that it’s built more like a coiled snake than a solid block. It tends to jiggle when you touch it, but I’m happy with how it looks.

If it looks like he’s holding the gun a bit odd, it’s because he’s weilding a light repeating blaster rifle, and there’s supposed to be a support handle sticking out of the right side of the barrel.

Of course, I wouldn’t have been so interested in making the design usable for all three variations if I didn’t have any plans to build the other two. Unfortunately, for the time being, I had to swap parts out on Mr. Orange to build the other two, as I only had one of the rounded trans-blue piece, I ran out of 1×2 flat liftarms, and I had to swipe the white KAUKAU NUVA from my own collection to build the SandToaper in the first place. At some point, I plan to build them both as permanent pieces in my collection, but it might take some time.

Mr. White is carrying a heavy assault rifle (similar to the ones used by Dengar and 4-LOM), which I’d considered giving to the basic StormToaper at one point, but I ended up setting it aside for whenever I can get the other two built.

Mr. Black has the same basic rifle as the StormToaper, but he’s also carrying a pair of state-of-the-art macrobinoculars. As with the backpack, this piece is built in a coil, with the center piece attached only to the left piece. Given the scale of the construction, it’s actually impossible for both of his hands to be attached with this design, though it would be possible to pose the second hand as if it was attached. If I had a spare black minifig lightsaber blade, I could redesign it, but then I’d have to figure out how to attach the gun somewhere…