Zander Brandt is back with an all-new, all-awesome Mass Effect 2 prop rifle that looks like it could take a Krogan's head clean off.
Zander Brandt, the guy who put together the amazing M-29 Incisor rifle we showed you back in October, is back in action and this time he's brought some serious Mass Effect firepower to the party: the M-96 Mattock heavy rifle, a semiautomatic assault weapon the offers the low heat production of an assault rifle and the punch of a sniper rifle. Brandt's version doesn't actually produce any heat - it's made of wood - and although it could probably mess you up pretty good if someone clobbered you in the face with it, the relevant point to our story is that it looks fantastic.
As he did with the M-29, Brandt documented the M-96 build process from the wood cutting to the final paint job, which includes just enough artificial wear and tear to make this gun look like it has some serious miles on it. Not that his breakdown is really going to simplify the process for anyone; rather like those old "learn how to draw Yogi Bear" things from back in the day, this project seems to suddenly transmogrify from a pile of wood scraps to a space-age machine gun, more or less magically, about half-way through the process.
Brandt said the complexity of the construction is intentional. "I chose [the Mattock] because it is arguably the most complicated rifle in the Mass Effect universe that still looks like it was made by human hands," he wrote on his blog. "I like a challenge. And headaches, apparently."
Headaches or not, the final result is brilliant and about as spot-on to the original concept art as you're going to get. This is the kind of gun I'd be proud to have mounted over my mantel.