Painting Battletech (part 1 of 2)

Ok, the new arrivals are here. Eight new mechs and an artillery piece are ready to go. I didn't snap pictures of the new mechs prior to starting, just the Battlemaster and MadCat below which are left over from the big Battletech Boxed set. The MadCat is just getting primed for now, as we don't play Clan Era games, but it's too cool not to paint, so I'll get to it later. The Battlemaster I will save for another time.

I thought I'd take some pictures as I work and post this tutorial-style as painting yellow is a real trial and someone might find my method useful. All these mechs are destined to join the 1st Argyle Rangers, my Davion force.

Step 1:  Priming.  There's a lot of debate about which color primer to use. However, since we're painting yellow, white is literally the ONLY option. Anything else will turn green immediately.

A MadCat Clan mech, just to show what a primed mech looks like. I don't actually play Clan Era though.

Step 2: Pre-shading.  Some people call this technique "zenithal shading", but I'm not going all the way with it.  Rather than black, I'm using a reddish brown which will look very dark next to bright yellow, but will blend without turning green.  Pretty much anything with any blue pigment will green the whole thing out. Careful which brown you use!  My favorite brown for this is Flat Brown, but the Flat Brown Air color from Vallejo isn't quite as red as the regular, and the regular gunks up my airbrush. Instead I mixed Beasty Brown and Burnt Umber which ended up nearly identical.

Longbow

With the airbrush, I spray from beneath first, getting the undersides of everything, areas where the shadows are likely to be strongest.

Bombadier

I also get the joints, especially the knees, and anywhere where I might want a little extra definition.

Step 3: Dial it back. In order to get the brown into the nooks and crannies, there's going to be some overspray onto areas that are raised and should be highlighted.  The yellow I'm going to use isn't going to turn green if it hits the brown, but it won't fully cover it either.  So, in step 3, I go in with regular white paint, and reclaim the highlight areas, taking a moment to also spray from above, inverting the preshade method. Now the brown is far more subtle, and we're ready to base coat.

Note: If I weren't using yellow, this step probably wouldn't be necessary.

Step 4:  Primary color.  In this case I'm using Vallejo "Gold Yellow" which is darker than I'm going to end up with. It blends very well with brown however, and is my mid-tone.  Here I get full coverage, painting anywhere that remains white and overspraying a bit onto the brown.

Crusader

Step 5:  Back to White.  Turning the air pressure down a bit, I went back to white, spraying only the areas I want to highlight with a lighter yellow color. This is mostly the top of the model, but also in a few targeted areas.

Again, if I weren't going to a super light yellow for highlights, I might have been able to just spray right onto the previous color. Not with yellow. Here's my rule: Don't paint light yellow on anything except white.

King Crab, 100 Ton Assault Mech. It's coming for you Fritz.

Back of the Bombadier.

Step 6: Highlight color:  In this case, Lunar Yellow, also Vallejo Air.  Lunar Yellow struggles to cover even another yellow, but unlike Gold Yellow it turns green when it touches just about anything else.  So, carefully, I go over the white highlight areas.  The highlight is hard to see in the pictures, but it is there.

Hussar Light Mech

Step 8:  Back to White, Again.  This time, the white is for it's own sake, as the final highlight.  I dial the air pressure way back, put in some extra thinner and flow improver (white tends to clog up the airbrush, especially with low pressure), and very slowly apply the highlights.

These look a bit brighter than they do to the eye, as they're under a strong light, but once we apply the wash and detailing it won't be so obvious.  The wash we're going to use (just in the cracks) will break up the surfaces and give the overall mech a darker look.

And that's all for today!  Painting all these with the airbrush took about 2 hours and change.  If I'd chosen another color it probably would have taken half as long, but in my opinion yellow is worth it.

A brief aside... some people out there talk trash about bright "candy colored" mechs. Obviously, I like bright colors for Battletech.  Part of that is the practical fact that the smaller the model the brighter the colors need to be for it to stand out on the table. Battletech is 6mm, and I think it's great to have them in a light color.  I have friends who do 6mm Cold War and paint camo, and the final result is them kind of fading into the table.  Things get forgotten.

But beyond that...  Say you're in the field facing a lance of Battlemechs.  Do you really think you're not going to see that 6 story tall monstrosity because it's painted in a drab camo scheme?  Well, the 1st Argyle Rangers want you to know

NEXT UP:  Wash, detailing and decals!

Indirect Fire - Battletech

 Fritz has been busy.  He's got a new lance concept he wants to try, and before this game I knew nothing about it. I refrained from watching his excellent Battletech vlogs, but couldn't help thinking about our last few games.  I took a guess that he was building a force specializing in short range weapons, perhaps with some fast hovercraft as a flanker.

Building a lance to cover this force, I thought about experimenting with the rules on indirect fire of long range missiles. I took an LRM carrier, a Stalker, a Catapult and as my spotting force a Karnov Transport VTOL and three platoons of infantry.

Turns out I was wrong about Fritz's plan. The flankers were Locust mechs and the force was a long range missile carrier, an archer full of LRMs, and for close combat, a Charger.  It was likely to be interesting.

The 1st Argyle Rangers, loyal to House Davion, march straight into the town and take cover behind the buildings. The VTOL drops off the infantry on the top of the tall buildings at the center of town.

 The mechs line up under cover and start firing into the woods at the approaching enemy mercenaries.

 The infantry spotter zeros in on the LRM carrier. Taking about 60 LRMs worth of damage, it explodes without even so much as seeing the enemy.

A squadron of four Locusts move incredibly fast through the forest, positioning themselves behind the Davion force.

The enemy mechs move into the town, taking fire all the way. Finally, an incredibly lucky shot sees an LRM 15 pack take off the head of the approaching Archer, killing the pilot instantly.

Left alone, the Charger did what it does best, it charged. Running towards the Davion Stalker down the town's main road, where all of the assembled infantry opened fire on it from the windows of buildings. 

As the Charger ran the gauntlet towards her, the Stalker's pilot, Marissa Howard-Davion, was forced to turn to face the four Locusts poised to pounce at her back.

For a moment, she lost sight of her allies, and suddenly felt very alone. Charger rushing her back, Locusts swarming at her front, the Stalker went for the weaker prey, killing one of the locusts with a barrage of missiles.

Meanwhile the fast and deadly Jenner mech ran straight at the Charger's rear and unleashed everything it had. Pieces of the charger's armor flew everywhere as the laser rifles of three infantry platoons, the medium lasers and short range missiles of the Jenner, and indirect fire from the hidden Catapult concentrated fire on the mech from all directions.

Nearly reaching melee range with the Marissa's Stalker, the assault proved too much, allowing Marissa to finish the mercenary off with perhaps unnecessary enthusiasm.

The mercenary force was defeated, with the three remaining Locusts fleeing back the way they came, with a Jenner hot on their heels.

So yeah, indirect fire. It works, especially when you use Infantry and fast moving carriers, like a VTOL. They're cheap and they can allow you several turns of uncontested fire if you have the right cover and range. I was worried about fighting LRM to LRM, but deploying into the city allowed me the right cover to drop round after round of long range missiles onto the enemy.

All of this Battletech is giving me ideas of my own for some new lances.

You know, I told myself that I had enough Battletech minis.  Why do I lie to myself like that?  Why?

More Battletech to come.

Imperial Ambitions: A Megagame

It's been a while since I've posted anything no this blog, but I just completed an absolutely insane project I'm very proud of.  Imperial Ambitions is a game I designed and just playtested for the first time with 30 players and 4 GMs.  Set in a pseudo-historical empire loosely based on the Holy Roman Empire of our world, the players were divided into teams of three to guide 8 duchies, the Emperor's house and the church towards their disparate goals.

Watch the Skies is becoming something of a craze among gamers.  Games are popping up all over the United States, and I had the opportunity to play this past December. By about turn 2 I knew I wanted to design my own game like this. Watch the Skies is indeed awesome and fun, but in the US there are few other options for large scale game/simulations like this. Imperial Ambitions is my attempt to design a "megagame" of my own, and oh my god it went great!

For three months I worked to design the rules, painted over 200 miniatures, made tokens, three decks of cards, and a massive 6'x4' map on Photoshop which crashed my computer numerous times but looks great.

This past Sunday, I finally ran the thing with an amazing team of GMs and watched as the plots grew and the Emperor brought the noble factions into line to centralize his authority. The pace of the game was so intense however that I was only able to take a few pictures. I'll post more, including a look at the cards and tokens, in another post.

For anyone interested, I'm planning to run the game again in the fall (NY area), set 20 years after the events of this game.  

Outworld Alliance Police Action

Bested by the Federated Suns, the Dogs of War mercenary company fled into the hills as their enemies departed the planet. Almost as soon as they were gone, the Outworld Alliance authorities showed up. Taking one look at the wreckage strewn about the landscape, they designated the pings on their sensors as hostile and marched into the hills after the Dogs.

Landing heavy forces along with a command HQ, the Alliance had, as usual, plenty of air support. 

The dogs of war moved to meet them, fielding heavier mechs, along with a Rommel tank and one of their fighters.

The Alliance took an aggressive stance in the air, flying circles around their adversaries, but unable to do much more than harass them with light fire. When they got a bit closer, they'd release their bombs.

Fritz still doesn't have his damned fighter on a stand, but there it is, apparently skimming the ground dangerously.

When the enemy had reached the center of the area, the three bombers let loose their payload...

A solid hit, but the return fire was nasty...

...Sending the Alliance's transit crashing to the valley floor.

Still, the enemy was weakened by the attack, and the Alliance felt bold enough to advance.

The enemy was more cautious...

As the ground forces maneuvered for advantage, a high stakes dogfight lit up the sky, with the Alliance's two light fighters always seeming to wind up in the enemy's kill slot, but a single large laser made it difficult to finish the job.

But when the heavy fighter was chased into the path of the Alliance's ground forces, it was knocked out of control, crashing into the mountainside. Unfortunately not before severely damaging the heavy tank. With its motive system damaged, it became not much more than a heavily armored bunker.

Unopposed in the air, the Alliance still felt confident of victory.

The ground forces waited for the enemy to advance.

And slowly, through the smoke, they were sited cresting the hill, avoiding the immobilized vehicles and making for the mobile HQ!

The Alliance's lone mech was the only force that could pivot to meet them.

Things were starting to look grim...

And indeed, the ended quicker than anticipated as a lucky headshot killed the mech's brave pilot!

With that, the HQ sounded the retreat.

The air force fought hard to slow the enemy down, but it could only do so much.

Faced with an approaching battlemech, the command staff bailed out and dissolved into the forest, leaving behind valuable information on their forces' deployment throughout the sector.

The Dogs of War, noticing that the force sent to attack them had left only a skeletal garrison on their home world, saw a rare opportunity. If they could manage a landing on that planet, they could seize the supplies stored at the  local militia base, which according to the captured intelligence would be enough for them to repair their badly damaged force. It was risky, but that is the nature of war.

To be continued...