Tanks! Tanks!! TANKS!!!

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Real life delayed our Şoarece scenario game by two weeks. The *official story* is that those wily Andurien rebels recaptured it before my FWL loyalists could try and move the beast to safety. So...it'll take (conveniently) about 2 weeks to recapture it, and our game will pick up from there. 

ooh, Condors...I foresee some side-slipping chaos in the future!

When I purchased that monster, I got several other used tanks in the same purchase, as well as another trio of tanks from Microworld games. I had 3 of the latter previously, but over estimating my ability to convert them into the myriad designs that my short attention span kept hopping to, I hacked 'em up pretty bad. 

Easy access to that useless, 1-ton infantry bay.

Ironically, I sold those poor wrecks for almost what I bought 'em for and used those funds to buy another three. Dunno if Microworld redid their molds or what, but the replacement tanks have even better casts than the the original ones had (and those were pretty good too)! Now though there are clearly defined rear hatches (previously I thought that area was just a gate that I filed flat), which makes these perfect for pre-3055 Goblin tanks. 

Aside from the addition of paint, these will otherwise remain as-is, not more conversion attempts/failures for them.

Proxies. Proxies everywhere...

The two Packrats are minis that I like, but with stats that I don't. Conversely, I like the stats of the Hetzer, but not it's sculpt (and despite a 20 ton difference in weight, the minis are approximately the same size). So, I sliced off the miniscule SRM off of the front, and replaced it with a bit to look like the barrel of an AC...so, they're now Hetzers. 

These are all now in the painting queue, though there's a big project coming up that'll gum up the works here shortly but I'll save that for a later post...

An Andurien Crises Scenario

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Instead of playing our usual, fight until the death or one side folds type of game, I thought I'd come up with a bit of a scenario for my upcoming game with Hoss this coming Saturday. 

First up, the setting:

It is late in the year of 3036, and the Andurien Crises has entered its latter stages. The Free Worlds League Military is slowly bringing the rebels to heel, reconquering world after world, yet the fighting on the planet Cursa has bogged down into a bloody stalemate. 

A Battledroids Demolisher. I have always wanted one of these!

On one front, the Loyalist 25th Marik Militia overran a rebel held depot which was in the process of refurbishing an obsolete, though still formidable Şoarece superheavy tank. Unsure of what to do with the monster, the Militia hastily cobbled together a crew for the Şoarece, along with a combined-arms company of mechs and auxiliary forces for an escort. 

If only I had a lance of mechs that could not only keep pace with a Şoarece, but likely not get drawn/baited away from it either...

Their mission is to guard the mighty beast on it's way to a safer area away from the front, to give upper command time to decide what to do with it.

The Scenario:

Loyalist forces are to escort the Şoarece to a safe location away from the front lines. To achieve this (and victory!) the Şoarece must move off of the opposite edge of the map sheet from which it started. As they will be driving into an ambush, the Loyalist convoy will only move at cruising speed until rebel forces launch the attack. Until the ambush is launched, the rebels have the initiative automatically. In the event that rebel forces are crushed, the loyalists will win even if the Şoarece fails to escape the map.

Until I added the third gun barrel, these two were technically the same tank. Now...one is a brutally efficient killing machine, and the other is an over-armored monstrocity!

Rebel forces (the notorious and infamous PANDA-MONIUM!! mercenaries, employed by the Anduriens), must either destroy the Şoarece, to prevent it's use by the loyalists, or else prevent its escape leaving the option for a later attempt to recapture it. 

The rebel mercs may set up anywhere on the map, so long as it is out of visual line of sight to the loyalist convoy. Their ambush will be initiated as soon as visual contact is made. Until the ambush begins, the rebels have the initiative.

*****

Sounds easy right? Get a tank from one side of the board to another? Remember though, motive crits are easy to inflict on tanks, and the Şoarece is no faster than an Urbie. The Şoarece will be part of my force, though it will only have 1 ton of ammo per AC type (still more than enough most likely), and a 5/5 crew as they'll be both unused to operating the tank, not to mention there's no telling what state of repair it is in.

Anyways, I'm hoping this will result in a fun game!

Optimizing this beast is a lost cause, but...at some point I'll probably make a variant that's regunned with a better set of autocannons. May 2 AC-10s and an AC-5 or something, see if I can find some room for an infantry bay too...

Locust LCT-1E Conversion

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The Locust LCT-1E is a Capellan Confederation variant of the ubiquitous Locust. Created with the intent to increase the mech's rather paltry firepower, while also (and conveniently) removing the volatile machine gun ammo that was lurking frighteningly in the center torso. The latter is an important consideration given that this little mech lives under the aegis of 'speed is life', and the last time I used it, Friggin Hoss' Griffin damn near tore it in half after rolling an 11 (WTF?!?) to hit it!

Big guns, little body...perfect!

The 1E is pretty much the only Locust variant I ever field, and as I'd prefer it to be WYSIWYG rather than a perma-proxy which is more often than not the case in Battletech.

The new side profile.

Digging around the bitz box, I found a pair of 'robot arms' from Hasslefree Miniatures and whilst a bit beefy, I think they work nicely! I trimmed off the chin turret (yay for soft plastic) and popped off the MG 'arms'. Smoothing the plastic out at the joints, I used an 1/8" drill bit to hand drill in two holes to serve as arm sockets, a little glue and violà! All it needs now is paint!

AC-2s, for when you want to reach out and annoy someone!

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60 - 80 tons of: yawn...

I'll always have a soft spot in my heart for the lowly AC-2 Carrier. By and large, its near worthless, though in a few, very rare instances its brutally effective. In the latter case, back when I had an Alacorn lance, I found that an AC-2 carrier parked next to said lance with all 5 sitting up on a ridge was more or less nerd rage inducing. Indeed, I think it was the only time Rob serious thought of throwing dice at me in a game, lol! 

I don't think black edging helps in any way when it comes to camouflage, but it looks good on the mini. Also, can ya tell where I pried up the turret? 

The lowly AC carrier was simply ignored, whilst he tried in vain to silence the 12 Gauss rifles that were murdering his mechs. With a sigh of relief, he realized he had survived the gauss onslaught of the 1st turn only for the AC-2 carrier (an LBX variant) to open up as well. He was kinda perplexed until the the carrier scored several hits-all of them internals, and finished off a few stricken mechs with brutal efficiency! 

This will serve in my generic PDF conventional company.

Alas, I haven't had any murder machines to park my AC Carrier next to in years. That, combined with it's cardboard armor, slow speed, and lack of a turret, its rarely used, and if it is, its easily dispatched. So, I popped off the top, turning it back into a turret, now this will serve as an AC-2 Partisan. 

Ugh, you can see where I've beat up on this old mini over the years. Looks like it needs a few more touch ups.

The Partisan fulfills the same function as an AC Carrier (though I can still use this as either), only better as it has more (though still thin) armor, and the weapons are turret mounted. This tank is converted out of an old, Clan Oro. Its been around the block many a time and it shows. Still, I dislike the canon mini for the partisan as it's thin, spindly gun barrels bend just when ya look at 'em, much less touch 'em. 

On a different note, my buddy Kushial just started a Battletech Blog of his own! Check it out here: https://kushialbattletech.blogspot.com/

Glowy Green Scorpion Mech

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Funny story: running on auto-pilot (apparently),
I almost published this post on DLWDG...

As mentioned previously, I ordered a 3D-printed Scorpion (among others) off of ebay recently. However when it arrived it came in a funky, translucent green resin that I rather liked the look of and didn't want to paint over. So...I just painted the base instead and made a 1-off, Capellan stealth armored variant of it. 

Stealth armor or not, it still has dirty feet!

Stealth armor isn't invented till the civil war era, meaning my cappies won't be able to fight in the earlier time periods that I prefer, but that's alright. It just means Rob and his Blitzkrieg/Berserker shenanigans and Screech and his overcompensating Clans will have something just as cheesy across the board from them!

For anyone who's interested in how I kitted this out, the 'DC' in the variant name stands for 'Death Commandos' as I figure this would be right up their alley!

My apologies if the record sheet is a bit lo-rez, blogger really didn't like this file...

Everything is AWESOME!!!

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Some ways back, I bought a resin-cast Awesome AWS-8T. Not because its a good design, but rather because the mini was unique. Indeed, my buddy Hoss commented 'I thought your Awesome would be a lot scarier...'. He was fielding the standard 8Q model, which is in fact, quite superior with it's 3 PPCs vs. the 8T's twin LRM-15s and 2 large lasers. Well one LL, I removed the one from the right arm as it was mis-molded making it the even less capable 8R variant you see above.

Anyways...I ought to have gotten 2 but I didn't at the time worrying about the quality of a home cast  mini bought 'from a guy on facebook' with no guarantees that I'd even get the mini in the mail. But, lo and behold it arrived in good order and I'd wish I'd gotten a 2nd in hindsight but they were no longer available. 

Skip to the present and I just bought another (also from a guy on FB, thought he's also the owner of Steel Warrior Studios so I wasn't worried this time). Not a mini that he normally sells, rather a clearing out of the basement to make his wife happy...or something like that. Likely it was purchased the same time I bought my original one and conveniently it was the same exact mini! So now I have two, huzzah!

The left arm LL will stay this time!

The left arm mounted LL looks fine so I kept it, whereas the one on the right arm has an air bubble on the end which I'll have to deal with as it's removal is not an option! Regardless, I now have a 2nd one for my TBAGers lance. I picked up a two more mechs as well from ebay: a MWO Cataphract and a 3-D printed recast of the original Scorpion. The Cataphract resculpt is...palatable as opposed to the hideous original sculpt.

The Scorpion isn't a great mech by any means (okay its garbage), but again its unique and I've always wanted one of the original minis. However those (if you can find them) are kinda awful too. This one looks alright though in the pics, will see when it gets here...

I also made an impulse purchase of a Flashman resculpt when checking to see that the Steel Warrior link above worked. I'd ordered one well over a year ago from there, but it was backordered and I cancelled it after waiting for a fruitless 6 months. However they just had a restock of all models and I got one before it sold out again!

So there you have it: my trip down Battletech mediocrity for this week!

(Clan) WOLVERINES!!!! Finished.

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Well, I guess that this is the unplanned part two of my prior post. 

The battlefields have temporally fallen silent, however at the same time the painting bug has kicked in as the allergy nightmare wanes (albeit slowly), and as such I've managed to finish all three of my Starter box Wolverines for my Clan Wolverine, Zeta Galaxy mech star (yeesh, that's a bit of a mouthful). 

The curse of starter box minis of all game systems: the lack of pose-ability.

I only bought a single starter box, traded my Shadowhawk for Hoss' Wolverine to get the 2nd one, and then bought a third off of ebay. I had considered getting a fourth but got over it. Three identical minis were enough to paint me thinks. 

Its just a jump to the left...

That and whilst well armored and quite maneuverable, they're a bit lacking in the offensive firepower department having only a UAC-5, MPL and SRM-6 with Artemis IV. They're good, but hardly a powerhouse unit. 

...and a step to the right!

(lol, sorry. But hey, have fun with the Time Warp stuck in your head for the rest of today!)

I varied up the blue and yellow trim, true it may not be proper nose art, but it gives each mech and its respective pilot a bit of individuality. Also one is stepping over the wrecked, rusted all to hell and half buried tank of some sort. Probably a victim of one of the Pentagon Wars.

Interestingly, Catapults are on both sides of the RSOK RAT tables, so this mini may go to the Wolverines as well...

Next in line is my Thunderbolt which can be seen already base coated behind my slightly converted Catapult (this pic was from a FB post I made earlier this week). 

(Clan) WOLVERINES!!!!

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No doubt the yellowy glow that is illuminating this mech has been cast by the fireball of its' latest victim...

The battlefields fell silent this past weekend due to a combination of real life (TM) interference and another savage pollen assault. However in the latter case, after ingesting a veritable witch's brew of medications I managed to clear my head enough for a bit of brush time. I finished my 1st (of 3) Clan Wolverines' Zeta Galaxy, Wolverine II. 

Oh and WestRider: those are PAULDRONS, not epaulets! ;-p

Its a starter box Wolverine, but works just fine as the Wolverine II (aka: 7H) version which is fitted with essentially the same (albeit upgraded) weaponry as the base model. I have 2 more in-progress, each with a slight variation on the blue and yellow stripes for a smidge of individuality.

Amusingly, the legs stripes almost look like pantaloons...