What do i do with this grey Battletech stuff?

So battle armour. The eagle eyed of you will spot that there is a base with a Fa Shih and IS standard BA on it. This is because this is spring clean and i dont have more than 3 Fa Shih. So i’m making do.

Also because im making do with what i have its bases of 2, even though an IS squad size is 4. Its a marker, its for a specific project, im okay with this.

They are being painted the same way as the rest of the army…..just smaller.

And there are the finished units. Black Knight legs for scale 🙂 For very obvious reasons i have not painted unit symbols on them and they are rougher as they need to look smaller than the mechs and tanks. If they are too detailed they will look super weird next to the larger pieces.

And thats the last lance!

Jackalope, Wasp, Phoenix Hawk, Wolfhound.

So that is a full company of Eridani Light Horse, with attached Battle armour platoon and combat armour recon lance.

What’s next? Well I need to get a group shot of them, get an outside shot for the spring clean and then i think I will add individual touches to each mech to get that Topgun vibe going.

If it wasn’t for the spring clean i’d probably go out and buy a pair of aero space fighters to add an attached wing.

So now i’m going to take a little time away as i’m currently away with my partner and its Empire larp the weekend after. But that will give me time to think things through.

However i might do a ‘what i would have built if i could choose the miniatures list.’

Because some people cant leave well enough alone….

If you look at the rest of the project the Lament looked brighter than the others and certainly looked like a very different style of paint job.

I think partly because i has less detail to pick out with oil washes due to it being an old metal sculpt. In fact the Jackalope, also metal suffers from the same.

So what have i done? I’ve used black oil paint in recesses to add depth. Its really easy. Put a tiny bit of oil in and then with a separate brush and just rub it in.

I’ve also, as you can see, done the same on the RHS vents and radiator on the back to give the impression of smoke and super heated metal.

Other than that ive added a tiny free hand skull to the left hand shoulder. This is to give a bit of story.

During the Jihad the Stones brigades, who later went on to become the RAF of the republic, had skulls as their predominant symbology to identify them.

The Lament being an RAF mech and with the fall of the Republic to Clan Wolf it feels right that the pilot is ex RAF, took his mech with him.

The pilot wouldn’t have been in the jihad as it ended 3081, which with the current timeline hitting 3151, however they would have been part of the Brigades during late republic and dark ages. I imagine because the Lament is a very technical and hard to maintain mech they probably also took their tech team with them.

No a skull isn’t going to tell you all this, but it gives me more of a feel for the unit. After all if your playing classic your running about 4 mechs so why not name them?

So Pier Duchamp callsign: Errant

Oh god I’m doing this aren’t I?

As an left field ‘wtf? my dude?’ I’m also in real life and artist and i’ve had a whole punk battletech thing going on with my mixed media collage.

Enjoy.

Last one for a bit….promise……

So going on with my personalising each of the mechs. The company commanders mech, a Black Knight. I decided that the pilot was from the Draconis combine and the big ol’ shield section meant i could add a decal.

The decal itself is a dry rub decal from an old Gundam kit. Once it was down it was time to sponge on some black and metal to give it a worn look and then back in with my base green to break that up and give it a more irregular pattern.

All in all i like it a lot.

Captain Alison Tanaka

Okay it took a week for me to notice the shout out, and it’s really appreciated.

In real life i teach kids with autism, as you can guess i dont have a huge amount of free time and motivation can be a pain in the backside when you’ve worked 10 hours and you still have planning for a lesson to do. In fact i should be writing an assembly right now.

So things like this matter i think. It’s not bragging rights. Its someone taking a moment and going ‘hey thats cool’ and it builds motivation. I think its why community is important. Having folk around you, even if its just a clicking a button to say thumbs up, being positive pushes you to keep going.

So next weekend my plan is to add some more personal details to some of the machines, and do a bit more work kicking my 40k idea around (I wont look at the spreadsheet that lists the mechs i need for the assault trinary for my Ghost bear project…..which is suposed yo be a week and done….stupid hob.)

Anyway community good, recognition gooderer (i mentioned i educate people right?). Thanks!

Well ‘someone’ asked for it. A ELH poster. 🙂

In other news, i discovered today that my childhood art hero likes my paintings which is nice. Some more mini work this weekend.

So added arm tattoos to the Dragon. I imagine the pilot is copying his own tattoos onto their machine as a personal touch.

Call sign ‘Demon’ has painted a demon in their hip. Simple and works i think on the Wolfhound.

I would have probably personalised a lance today, however i had a sudden ‘can you write a proposal for an art book’ message and my entire day got, in a good way, turned upside down. Not going to jinx it by giving details, but serious happy moment today!

I think its important that when we work on projects not to make the assumption that if you have only done a little its not worthwhile.