Clanmech binary

Some more battlemechs, this time from the Clan era. As an old-school Battletech player, I'm not much of a fan of the Clan Invasion storyline, but between the Alpha Strike boxed set, some Salvage Box purchases, and a couple of donations, I have amassed 10 of these miniatures. First is the Clan star that was included in the AS box (l-r): Nova, Pouncer, Fire Moth, Warhawk, Timberwolf/Madcat.

Painting was straightforward, if a little messy. I painted the base color with a light tan Krylon spray paint + primer, then used an old toothbrush to spatter various maroon, orange and yellow craft paints onto all of these at once. I then brushed over some Army painter strong tone, picked out the cockpit windows with pearlescent white, painted the bases, varnished them, and called it a day.

The second star came from two blind purchases, a gift of two extra mechs, and the Blood Asp salvage box (l-r): Nova, Huntsman, Linebacker, Warhawk, Blood Asp.

For this unit, I hit them all with a light blue paint + primer, splattered various greens and yellow with the toothbrush, and covered them with green tone before covering the bases in gray and detailing the cockpits, then finishing the bases and clearcoating.

I like this painting technique, although it does take a while to notice whether any paint is actually landing on the minis, and it isn't as fast as you might think. But combine the haphazard drops of color to emulate a random camouflage pattern with the way the wash picks out the details on these castings, and it has an overall pleasing effect. Has anyone else tried something like this on their wargaming minis?

More battlemechs

Here's a trio of mech miniatures I recently completed. Since these came from the blind-purchase Salvage Boxes, they each have a different paint scheme. 

For the Enforcer (left) and Stinger (right), I used Army Painter speed paints. I like how the former came out, but the color scheme on the latter makes it look like a toddler in an outfit —so I gave it the callsign "1-Z".

I'm pleased with how the Atlas (center) came out as well. Another easy task: I hit the bottom and top haves with two different hues of spray primer, then applied green and blue tone to each. I picked out some weapons in gold, applied decals, and sealed with matte spray varnish.

So, that's three more battlemechs ready for our Alpha Strike games, for close to 40 total. Only about two dozen left for me to paint!

Some toasters

Another batch of battlemechs, which my wife christened "toasters" because of their resemblance to the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica.

These guys were simple and quick to paint: Gloss black spray primer, and sucessive drybrushes of metallic black, metallic gunmetal gray, metallic silver, and metallic white (all craft paints).

I applied some color-shifting black to the cockpit canopies, then picked out a few weapon muzzles in metallic red to give that Terminator vibe, and I was done.

From left: Commando, Wolverine, Shadow Hawk, and Locust.

Some UrbanMechs

As you may have noticed, I recently got back into Battletech--or more accurately, Alpha Strike. The game plays extremely quick, and I really like the look and sizes of the plastic minis from Catalyst Game Labs. 

I've got nearly four dozen battlemech figures, but not enough of the light 'mechs, so I decided to pick up an UrbanMech lance to supplement the more substantial combat walkers in my collection. 

Painting was super-simple, thanks to my set of speed paints: One solid color for everything but the weapons (black) and windows (just craft paint pearlescent white with a blue wash). Now I have another quartet of units for Alpha Strike!

6mm civilian vehicles

Having recently returned to Battletech via the more streamlined Alpha Strike rules, I find myself in need of some 1/285 scale terrain suitable for the battlefields of the future. But even the 31st century has a need for construction equipment and delivery vehicles.

 

These castings were originally player tokens for Monopoly City that I had acquired in the process of building my Monopolis. For some reason, likely to resell them on eBay, I put them aside years ago. They came to light a couple of weeks ago as I was cleaning out my game room, and I noticed they fit in perfectly with the new battlemechs from Catalyst Game Labs. 

Some spray paint and a few details later, here we are! Anyone else using these minis?

GaMExpo pix

GaMExpo was kind of a bust as far as people who wanted to play minis games. The wargaming room was upstairs, away from the rest of the convention, so foot traffic was sparse. On the bright side, I got to see some other games that people were GMing, like this setup for Sharpe Practice.

Although the rules are more aimed at an earlier period, the person running the game was using it for a Napoleonic scenario.

And the semi-historical pirates game Blood & Plunder had a nice Spanish settlement set up.

There was also a superhero game, X-Men vs. Avengers, so everyone could play the good guys.

This had nice modern-day town terrain. I think that's Nightcrawler from the X-Men on the roof.

There was also some BattleTech--more precisely, Alpha Strike, a sped-up, stripped-down version of the game that gets rid of the rivet-counting but still feels like playing giant stompy robots.

The scenario was a king of the hill-type game, where you got points for keeping near the objective markers.

I also set up my Monopolis map, but I didn't get that much use out of it. More in a later post.