Well Slin, you are right. It is possible to have around 10k poys on screen, but to have 10k polygons on little slower pc's isn't good and I believe that he's not aiming on powerfull pc's only. Those 10k polys are possible to have in such type of game but not in rts or rpg game where couple of hundreds or even thousands of characters are rendered in one frame.

Ofcours, that can be talked about alot, so to cut short: Ask your client about his poly count wishes before you start modeling because it can be hard to decrease poly count after character is finished. If your client has no complaints about this model then you have nothing to worry about.

Nice work BTW.