Bob’s Battletech

When I came to do the rest of the hils , realised I was running low on the Fleshtone, so found a bottle of Army Painter Soft, tone which I think I preferred.

Anyway here Re the finished hills on the board.

Having made my test hills, time to paint them. I decided to use Vallejo Texture paint, I already had a tub  which I’d been using for my mech bases.

I didn’t want to go to heavy with it as I wanted the hills to still fit together reasonably snugly for alt layouts..

Last night I did a test piece,  before doing the bulk of hills this morning. After above I coated in a GW Reichland Fleshshade, then lightly drybrushed with MP paints sand. Just to bring back the hex lines I pin washed the lines with GW Agrax Earthshade.

I did put some grassy tufts on it  but carefully picked one that would sit under the mech bases.

Doesn’t look to bad  though I might thin out the Reikland wash on later hills.

Well after not too long cutting out the levels, I have all the hills done for the base game boards, only had to produce 2 x single hex peices.

1. Last night I began laying out hill templates, based on hills on the base boards from ‘A Game of Armoured Combat ‘ and found:
2. There are some only shaped hills

The hexes bases are smaller than hexes on maps!

Point one is got round by stating other than depth and sublevels ignore map height levels if 2.5 terrain is used.

Point 2 , this was a sample attempt at terrain and as long as don’t make hills too big won’t make much of a problem,  Warbase do custom sizes so it can be adjusted with later purchases.

So with some idea of what I’m doing( as a concept I’m not sure it will ever catch on) I stuck using Wilko’s Pva Glue Sealant, the hexes on top of the Amazon Mdf .

This I hope will help in providing guides to help in cutting out the hills.

Having let the glue dry I then cut out my 1st hill.

I actually stuck the the level 2 bit on for this hill and may do with other hills that have odd hexes of higher levels on.

I’m still pondering whether to put any texture on the hills or just spray them Zandri Dust. Texture would be nice but may look odd if extra layers are added.

SO WHAT DOES THE TEAM THINK?

Well last might  I had a look at doing the hill layouts from the map at in ‘A Game of Armoured Combat ‘, and realised a couple of things .

• There are some funny shaped Hills
• The Hexes I brought are not as big as the hexes on map board.

On the 2st point I rapidly realised that when using 2.5 terrain , the game rule will.be ignore height levels on map other than the terrain depicts , excluding sublimely.

On the 2nd ,this is trial mark one, Warbases do do custom sizes so next order I can get them right.

Anyway I got some idea of base shapes which I layer out on the mdf boards I got from Amazon

With some trial and error I got how I wanted the 1st test hills layer out and stuck the hexes on with Pva   a big tub I got from Wilko’s

And now for my experiment!

Map terrain For battletech!

After today I have 3 days off, so intend to have a go at above. One of the problems with the mapscale hill terrain (not buildings, 6mm from various sources will cover most and if model is bigger than a hex its a big building) is that most I’ve seen try to do them to cover the vertical scale, as in 1/285th and to me they look frankly stupid. I see where they are coming from in it helps with line of sight, but that i feel was never really a problem with the maps, often the problem was actually telling what height level things were. The newer maps are better on this and levels are easer to see, though I brought the latest desert set and there were still odd bits hard to spot. Some of the old Fasa maps particularly the Solaris set, some hex maps are virtually unreadable.

Really all I want are hills that I can easily determine the height levels. Now if you scale your height levels to fit in with the hex map scale I think it will look better plus still make it easier to determine levels for movement.

The hexes are 30mm across and if I remember rightly represent 30 metres in scale so 1mm to the metre, most mechs are between 8 and 10 metres tall. A level is suposed to about waist high on a mech so 5-6 metres appox , or in map scale 5-6mm .

now how to do it?

The thought of trying to accurately cut the ape boards out of any type of material was a no no, and I don’t have a laser cutter to hand , so I thought use hes bases, as it happens Warbases do pre cut 3mm thick 30mm hex bases, at about £1.50 for 15 so I brought 10 packs to start with.

https://warbases.co.uk/?term=&s=hex+bases&post_type=product&taxonomy=product_cat

As a base to stick them to and get the correct 6mm height I found Amazon did bundles of A3 and A4 3mm mdf  sheets.

Ok this still will involves some cutting but figger That if I stick the bases on top of the sheets in the hill shape I want I can use the cut bases as a template to cut the the lower sheets if I have a sharp enough knife.

Plan is to try making the hills form the Game of Armoured combat maps boards as a start, so will hopefully post pictures tomorrow!

Well having got the plan for painting both my Inner Sphere and Clan forces I have been squirreling away painting more.

It is nice that there is only some slight removal of mold lines needed as prepping before you can start painting, and absolutely no model building.

So 1stly the Inne Sphere additions

And Clan

Now for anyone wondering what the differences are between the Legendary models is, here is The Black Widow vs standard model.

I will post the others when I have the standard. There are other variants in the Wolf Dragoons box but so far that’s only avail at Barnes and Noble in the States.

The Black Widow

With that completed I started on  ‘Natasha Kerensky ‘ formally of Wolfs Dragoons but returned to the Wolf Clan in her Dire Wolf.

Traditional balck livery for her, used GW contrast Black Templar, though in hindsight should have thinned it out more, as had to do a bit more dry brushing 1st with Mp paints Bastion Grey then Blue Grey to highlight the black.

Morgan Kell

Originally was not going to do him as I hadnt much success with red and black on mechs, I now know it was the fact I used GW Blood angels Red, Using GW contast Gryh-hound Orange I get a more Scarlet red, and it worked fine.

Oh and for anyone who wants to know his special ability, he has the Ghost mech skill,  which makes +2 to hit at short and med ranges and +4 to hit at long. The real ability is he can fire at any time during the movement phase!

oh and I think he is 2/0  pilot/shooting!