Battletech: Infantry, Armor, Plastech

Howdie.  I used some spare time to put together a combined arms package... in the course of this I encountered some problems related to infantry in Battletech, which I will discuss towards the end of this blog post.  First, I need to display the group I painted....

Its a fairly large group, representing a decade of collection (all of the vehicles were purchased at least ten years ago).

First are some tracked tanks, 2x Alacorn (nobody ignores triple mount gauss rifles) and 2x Patton/Rommel.... these are always interesting as they can be more than one thing... and, they have the distinction of being Battletech vehicles that actually look like tanks!

Then there are the hovertanks.... 2x Condor, 2x Drillson, and 2x J Edgar.  Now, for the Condor, because of the great lapse in time since I had opened the blisters, I lost one of the turrets.  I took a spare piece laying around and just glued that on top, hoping to 1) finish the miniature and 2) maybe make it look like the Davion version with 2x AC5s.  (shrugs shoulders)

Overall, I like how the vehicles turned out, I like some of my camo color choices, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I also painted a lance of Plastech miniatures in my mountain camo scheme.... Atlas, Trebuchet, Panther, and Hunchback.  Now, the old Plastech were a bargain in the day.... and some of the sculpts (in my opinion, the Locust and Atlas in particular) are good, where as some (in particular the HUGE Catapult) are not.  These do not paint up the same as metal figures, though as hard plastic are really better than the soft plastic sets that came out at different times.  Anyway, I have a bunch of these laying around from the late 90's, figures I could knock out these 4 quickly, and I was right.

Finally, the infantry.  This is a complete old pack of Kurita infantry.  The stands include a variety of weapons, I really did not know how to split them up.  AFTER I finished painting a few bases I realized I could have organized them better, but what the hell, these will work.  Basing... well, more on basing below.  I created 7 bases of 9 figures, and 3 bases of 7 figures.  Overall, I think they painted up quickly, turned out pretty decent.  Ironically, painting huge numbers of 6mm ancients helped make painting these a breeze.

OK, so now comes the infantry rules ponderings.... as I was organizing these, I realized it was not easy to determine how to base them.  Previously, I had no trouble basing 5 Elementals on a single base, because that works out great.  Infantry, however, in Battletech are organized into 28 man platoons (or 21 for jump infantry), and a platoon is treated as a single entity. 

I came across some pertinent musings on the Paint it Pink blog... I won't link to those, I am not sure of the etiquette of doing so, but essentially there were some very similar ideas being kicked around.  Paint it Pink went with small bases of 3 figures or so, creating going with a 1:1 representation.  I think I will also go with 1:1 representation, but (obviously) I decided on squad basings of 9 (or 7) figures.

On my Battlescape terrain, it is just possible to clump 3 bases together into a hex, though it could get a bit out of hand pretty quickly as they all drift across the hex lines... this method allows the rules to work as is, but also allows a proper 1:1 figure representation, and looks cool.... Paint it Pink pointed out that infantry are the only thing in Battletech not represented properly.

Now, this will not work on the hex maps, if you do not use Battlescape.  If you game miniatures without hexes at all, it would work perfectly as well, but on the maps..... you end up with a squad base in three adjoining hexes.  In this image you can see that, and also the way the game represents platoons, a single base/counter for the entire platoon in a single hex.  It just does not look right.

What I decided to go with, as reflected in how I based the miniatures, is an abstraction where one base is designated (and will have to be marked clearly somehow) as the platoon center.  This means all firing to and from the platoon, and movement, is based solely on this base, the other bases will be in adjacent hexes for visuals only.

In the above image, the forward central base is the "active" base.  This method has the ability to work with hex maps also.  And to continue the abstraction, you can remove a base when the platoon reaches 18 men, and another base when it reaches 9 men.

But why stop there?  It occurred to me that one way to give infantry a little extra oomph in games, and it is a very little extra, is that they fight as full bases regardless of casualties.  For example, the platoon would count as a full 28 men until it was reduced to 18 men... and a full 18 men until reduced to 9 men... and a full 9 men until completely eliminated. Its an idea I have not tried out yet.

Then again, at that point, why not let squads separate and fight independently?  A platoon becomes 3 separate bases of 9 man squads....

As much as I love the Battletech-verse, I admit there are glaring problems.  Number one for me has always been the ranges... I don't care about the excuses, it makes no sense to me, ha ha.  But the arrangement of movement and range makes the game work, so not much you can do about it, and you can squint your eyes and say its abstracted instead of literal (as in, this weapon only has a 450m range... what?!?@!?).

A different glaring problem is that question of infantry.  The armies are a few thousand men, and in game terms the infantry are potentially dangerous to mechs.... so why are the army numbers not more realistic?  I get the idea that most inhabited planets have low populations, so the armies would be small.  But there are worlds that are densely populated, meaning there should be millions of soldiers, not just a few thousand.  A world unable to field mechs would raise a million men armed (on the squad level) with readily producable anti-mech weapons.  Light, certainly, but effective en masse.

Well, I am starting to board the train to Loco City, so I better stop now.  I think I have decided on how to represent infantry in my games.... now all I have to do is convince my fellow gamers to let me try these ideas out.  SO I either have 2 regular platoons, 1 jump platoon, and 1 company command squad (per my ideas)... OR... I have 7 regular platoons and 3 jump platoons (per standard Battletech rules).

Either way, I can't wait to try them out.... and looking forward to seeing how well they do against some Clan Elementals (!!!!!!!!!).

Thanks for reading.

Chalfant

Battletech: More Jade Falcons... Fast Paint!

Howdie.

I ha today off, so spent a couple of hours hastily painting some previously assembled, based, and primed mechs.

I had a group of 7 Clan mechs and they have now been painted to match my previous Jade Falcon force... included are a Night Gyr, Marauder IIC, Puma/Adder, Glass Spider,  Vulture/Mad Dog, Behemoth/Stone Rhino, and Warhammer IIC...

The Marauder IIC and Warhammer IIC were previously poorly painted in a metallic green by someone else (seen here  ), one small piece of the Maruader is missing.  I don't normally do a lot of repainting, since, I have so much unpainted  to worry about... but, in this case, I wanted a larger, consistent, group of mechs for my "Episilon" force.

Now, overall, these 7 mechs are a tad on heavy side, with only the Puma not being heavy or assault.  So, I think I need to work in a couple more light mechs to help offset the average weight.

Here is the entire expanded group, 18 mechs and 5 stands of Elementals...

So, not sure if I want to bring the force above 20 mechs or not.  I may add a Dasher and a Jenner IIC, both of which I have had for some time, but have not gotten around to painting.  Still not sure if these two should be assigned to my Smoke Jaguars, I would like to bring them up to at last 15 mechs. maybe 20.  We shall see.



Actually, we shall see when my sudden Battletech painting spree comes crashing down.... I guess I will have to ride it out until it does.  Thanks for reading.

Chalfant

Battletech: The Black Widow Company

Howdie.  Natasha Kerensky rides again.... as part of a project I painted the 12 mechs indicated in the old FASA scenario book, all of them 3020's designs pulled from the original set of 14.

Now, not wanting a grey hilight I chose to use a very dark but translucent blue to drybrush these miniatures.  What is interesting is that to the naked eye the blue is not there... but.... when under the flash of the camera, it shows up.  A curious effect, but the black looks pretty good overall.  I tried my hand at painting on representations for Wolf's Dragoons and the Black Widow Company, with less than spectacular results.  I just don't like using transfers.

This early shot shows that blue under the flash....

All of the mechs are original metal.  Most (I think 9 of them) came from a gaming friend's collection, and the plan is to use them in upcoming games against McKinnon's Raiders as per the scenario book.

Here is the entire company....

The command lance consisting of a Warhammer, Marauder, Crusader, and Griffin....

Here is the fire lance consisting of 2 Archers, a Wasp, and a Stinger....

And finally, here is the recon lance consisting of a Rifleman, a Phoenix Hawk, and 2 Stingers...

Overall, I think they turned out well.  When you paint all black mechs, it does seem to explain why its such a popular color... in some ways, its very easy, very forgiving.  But flat black never looks good as you can not note details very well, so getting some kind of hilight is key to the overall effect.   I remember a number of gamers with mechs painted for the Black Widow Company, I find it a bit funny that after all of these years its finally my turn to field Natasha in her trusty Warhammer.

Thanks for reading,
Chalfant

Battletech: Lori Kalmar at Thunder Rift and More

Howdie.

Just some more painting progress.  I painted a few more miniatures for my mountain camo battalion, a pair of mechs for my white Comstar battalion, a pair of SRM carriers, a unique scheme Battlemaster, and a Locust painted to look like Lori Kalmar's Locust on the Decision at Thunder Rift cover.

Here is the assorted group...

Some closer views of the mountain camo, Archer, Rifleman, Griffin, Warhammer, and Catapult...

I tried to pay homage to that old cover.  Its a difficult explanation, but I received a number of old mechs from a gaming buddy who is no longer with us.  The Catapult, Warhammer, and Rifleman in the mountain camo were from him, as was the Locust.  I first intended to paint it to match the mountain camo too, but for some reason decided on Lori Kalmar at Thunder Rift, based on the original novel cover, instead.  Its unfortunate that this sort of washes out in the images, because it is actually quite sharp looking in real life, one of the cleanest paint jobs I have done on a Battlemech in a long time.  Hopefully some of that carries through.

Here are the remainder, a Battlemaster in unique colors (I think its always good to have a few individuals in the mix, instead of everyone in he same colors), with a Lancelot and Catapult in Comstar white.  Finally, there are a pair of SRM carriers, painted differently than my previous pair of "brown" ones.  These "green" ones are not quite as nice, but, they will work... and its good to have these available in two different colors.

Speaking of Catapults, here is a mix of different Catapults I have... newer metal ones, newer plastic one, real old real huge Plastech ones, and old "too tall" metal one.  I think maybe I like the newer metal ones the best, but its only the large Plastech ones I don't like at all.

OK, thanks for reading  Battletech apparently is a decades long project for me, its fun to paint a few once in a while, but maybe I should start thinking about an end game somewhere here.

At this time I am in the midst of re-reading the book series, and am currently at the beginning of the Fed-Com civil war (the only book in the pre-Mechwarrior book era I am missing is Sword and Dagger... used to have a copy which I sold 10 years ago, for better or for worse)... but I think I'd still like to game the Tukayyid proxy-for-Terra battles, and/or Exodus Road/annihilation of Smoke Jaguar Clan.

We shall see.

Chalfant

Battletech: Trees for Battlescape

Howdie.  I have been working on small tree stands to work with Battlescape terrain for my Battletech games.  I started off with a mix of different (and inexpensive) small scale trees, using a hot glue gun to affix them to pennies and (for the larger trees) steel washers.  In some cases, I clumped 2 or 3 pennies together for a larger stand of multiple trees.  Included in this are some rightly colored ornamental trees... I thought putting a few out would make the woods more "alien", or at least more "festive"....

Afterwards, I affixed a mix of sand and white glue, something to give the stands more texture.  Also, this surface is more accepting of paint.  This also helps harden the stand.  Notice I have been using sheets of paper or plastic grocery bags as this process leaves a lot of little bits of residue.

After this was dry I painted the bases with a wash of dark brown paint thinned with water.  Once this dried, I applied a few different flock... starting with some earth blend turf, then different colors of foliage, making each stand more of a tiny vignette, hoping this helps sell the "woods" look.

The Battlescape terrain is a bit of work to set up, so i went with some sample shots just to demonstrate the finished look.  Appears some Inner Sphere types are tangling with Jade Falcons....  One last part I have not quite decided on is marking the woods hexes so that trees can be removed for the insertion of moving Mechs (like the Banshee in these images), and removed to be able to draw lines of sight (for just about every thing in these images).  I do have some battescape terrain sheets that you cut out, which are already marked, making this task very easy.  But I don't have a lot of that.  I think I will be using small pieces of felt which I can place in the middle of each hex, so that when a tree is removed, it will be easy to see which hex(es) it foes back on.

Of course, these trees, while on the smaller side, will still work with all larger scales of miniatures, either as full sized trees in 15mm, or understory thickets in 28mm.

Not sure when I will get to test these guys out in a game, but I will be sure to post about it when I do.

Thanks for reading, and remember, only you... and your Stalker... can prevent forest fires!

Chalfant