Felt like spicing things up, so I knocked out a couple of ‘mechs – Yen Lo Wang and Legend-Killer from the Battletech Essentials box.
I’m happy enough with them, despite them being weird. It’s bizarre to me that YLW, explicitly Capellan (read: unsubtly coded as Chinese in the most problematic way) has a giant Imperial Japanese rising sun on it. Legend Killer has the most ridiculous blue edge lining that came out better than I expected but still manages to be very goofy.
They’re done, though.
I took on too large a batch of battlemechs. I forget why I chose these: I think they were to get some boxes fully painted, but they don’t all clearly map to them so who knows. Point is: I took on too many at once, and then once I got them ready for decals, I added a few more, which slowed things down even more. They’re done, now.
This guy’s a printed mech: it’s an objective marker.
So back a few weeks ago, when I played Alpha Strike with Dave, I learned that Alpha Strike has an optional rule that is, effectively, Infinity’s Silhouette rules, wherein every model of a particular type has a specified volume which can be substituted for the actual model. This offsets the tendency of models that are intended to be about the same size but often have wildly different poses and shapes, which can make Line of Sight… strange.
I think these rules, particularly Infinity’s implementation of them (of course), are Necessary and Very Good.
Alpha Strike doesn’t have a specific Silhouette stat per se, but if we look at the table:
That table reduces down to 5 categories:
| s | Shape | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 1″x1″ | ProtoMechs (All) |
| 1 | 1″x1.25″ | Infantry (All) Combat Vehicles (1-4) Support Vehicles (1-3) |
| 2 | 2″x 1.25″ | BattleMechs (1-4) |
| 3 | 3″x1.5″ | Superheavy ‘Mechs (4+LG) |
| 4 | “It’s complicated” | Support Vehicles (4+) |
So, of course, I doodled up some S markers for these.
I’m not deep into Battletech, and Catalyst isn’t making Protomechs in plastic, so I’m not going to worry about them (that’s why I started numbering at 0). Support Vehicles 4+ defy a simple shape (seriously, there’s a 15 item table with footnotes to cover them and there’s “use model” in the main table), so I’m not worrying about them.
Honestly, S1 and S2 are probably the only ones I’d ever see on the table, but it’s convenient for me to have the S3.
S1 and S2 are magnetized, so they can snap together, and they fit comfortably inside of the S3. I can just tuck them in or I can set the S2 on an A-Case tray, the S1 on top of it, and the S3 on top of them both, and they should be reliably stay where I’m asking them to: even though the S3 isn’t sticking to the tray, it’d have to slide up the 2″ length of the S2 to fall off and in the meantime is holding the S1 in place.
Printed these at .2mm layer height with organic supports. I ironed the topmost layer, but I suspect that made the text less legible. If you use supports, I recommend a support blocker covering the magnet holes on S1 and S2; support material isn’t needed for a 6mm gap and goes a long way towards making those magnets maybe probably not fit properly. Use 6mm x 3mm magnets.
I’ve put these up on Cults for the nuisance fee of $1.
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Not really following official color schemes here, just doing what I felt like. So: the Clan Invasion ‘mechs with my Crimson Fist color scheme.
Wolf’s Dragoons were painted red. That’s close to the right color scheme? The green canopies feel great.
I finished up the Battletech: A Game of Armored Combat box this weekend. I’m pretty happy with it, but I do have some thoughts.
The plan had always been to tackle these the way I blew through my Aeronautica Imperialis: just basecoat with the main color, oil wash, done. I decided to complicate it with edge highlights, and I think that was really effective and even went in and did points of an even lighter color on the corders.
Where things went a little south, though, was with the oil wash. On a whim I used a bottle of Mig Dark Brown Wash for Green Vehicles instead of making my own with oils and mineral spirits. I’d bought the bottle at a Historicon ages ago but had never used it. The results are fine but I don’t love them. The result’s a lot darker than I’d prefer, and it made it difficult to streak and filter with it. Lesson learned.
I also apparently had some issues varnishing sufficiently post-decals. You can see where parts of the decals came up; in some ways that’s fine but it’s notable.
I’ve got a bunch more Clanner mechs, but no Inner Sphere mechs to paint. They’re in the backlog.