Project: Recovery

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Covid recovery always involves working on minis for me. 

The past week good ol' Covid decided to stop by & ruin my week for a third time. While I powered thru the best I could at work (I work remotely, so can still push buttons on a keyboard despite feeling like death warmed over). Luckily the fam didn't get it, though they did get...something. The Mrs. was none too happy as my telehealth visit got me some really good drugs whereas hers, not so much.

Anyways, despite the glorious weather outside this past weekend, I didn't do a whole lot out there aside from chilling in our adirondack chairs. When in post covid recovery you tend to get really tired, really fast as so many folks know. That said, I did do a fair bit of painting as you can see above and below. 

You'll note that several photos were taken out in the yard. Why yes, I did lay down in the backyard to take these as any, self respecting 49 year old gamer would. The Mrs. rolled her eyes and the teenager ignored me outright & the dog thought THIS IS GREAT! Or rather he did right up until he got yelled at for stepping on my toys. Clear coat for the win!

A Patton/Rommel for my generic Desert Force that is sucking in units like some sort of fucking black hole!

A second Patton/Rommel as well as a Drillson for my 1st Chisholm's Raiders which is once again a home or my orphaned units and random paint jobs (as the Raiders lacked a coherent color scheme). 

A point of Elementals for the Desert force in case I run my lance of  old Star League mechs as a 2nd line star. Likely as Nova Cats as all of their Galaxies always use appropriate camouflage. 

The Raiders' mech lance made up of survivors from my defunct Comstar/Wobblies and St. Ives formations. I opted to try and tie them together with repainted base edging and a shitload of decals!

40K Ork checker and triangle stripe decals work GREAT on mechs!

Hit 'em Hard The motto of most any Hunchback variant. The Space Wolves paw looks nice on there too. 

Vulcan, not seen in this pic though you can see it above, are the checker stripes across the tops of the shoulders. Also on the MG arm is says Buzzsaw in the same script as the Hunchback's Hit 'em Hard. 

This mini was actively on eBay when is was saved after performing admirably in a game where it was used as a primitive Archer. The decals came out great on this one!

Holy Camouflage Batman! It is a good thing this has blue markings & a brightly colored base, otherwise it would disappear into the background!

Three more models are also in-progress, but I'll save them and whatever else for a fututre post. I'm also hoping to reschedule a campaign game this week coming after cancelling last week due to my case of the black death. 

Alpha Strike: Hell's Horses vs...St. Ives?

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Typical.

Frankie actually stayed home with us for once this weekend. Thus, we got a game of Alpha Strike in Friday night. Looking thru my current collection of pre-existing lists, I found two which were roughly equal in points, with Frankie's being the requisite fast & the furious type of force. Points were 125-ish per side, and here's how it all went down:

The battlefield. 

The St. Ives Cheveau-Legers with 'Little Orphan Urbie' in front. The Jagermech was my CO with Hoss piloting as he always liked Jagers. 

Hell's Horses Iota Galaxy, on what their Khan was no doubt hoping would be a one-way trip.

The Stinger C & Hoss trade fire early on, inflicting 2 points apiece.

Vowing to be more aggressive this time, Frankie's locust charged up into point-blank, rear armor territory on turn two. He inflicted 3 points of damage to the Swayback, whereas the Enforcer missed the damned locust entirely!

There he goes again, doing the same amount of damage to my Vindicator, though at least the Enforcer managed to squash the little bug this time.

Hull down in the burbs.

Frankie checking lines of sight and trading long ranged fire.

The near-crippled Swayback making a glorious suicide charge into short range!

The Piranha makes it into MURDER range, fuck.

The Urbie and second, still surviving Stinger snipe at one another with minimal effect.

Meanwhile, Hoss and the Piranha took each other out. 

I really dislike the fact that in Alpha Strike you can't reverse your guns like you can in Classic.

The hellhound held the middle for most of the game. 

Flushed out of hiding, the Urbie and Stinger would also kill each other in this exchange.

I got a little annoyed at Frankie here, as he was trying to see if his Hellhound could get rear armor on my crippled Enforcer which was hugging the ruins. I told him No, and to quit being a dick, and just take the 2 points of damage to the front and win the game. 

Which he promptly did. 

In the end, the Hellhound was the last mech standing. Aside from getting annoyed with his rear armor shenanigans at the end, it was a good game. 

The myriad array of notes that Frankie adds to his lists always amuses me (which invariably includes a doodle of a dog because reasons). 

Seven more mechs cross the finish line!

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Huzzah! It should be noted that the Wolfhound in the middle finished first. 

Its always good to get some more minis added to the finished painting stage! As you can see above I finished up the last three mechs in my army for the Lyran Alliance's Dixie CTM. While in back is a medium lance for my St. Ives Cheveau-Leger (Light Horse). 

First up the Cixie CTM:

No Lyran formation is complete without a Hatchetman (some would say Atlas, but I don't currently own any of those monsters). The Wolfhound is in the middle, my first ever for one of these mechs, and a Hunchback rounds the unit out on the right.

This is a custom refit of the HBK-4N. Arguably the worst of the original Hunchback variants, This 3D print came with a pathetically wimpy AC-5 gun barrel (more akin to the Uziel's machine guns). So I swapped it out for a Team Yankee minigun out of the bitz box and came up with a record sheet that swaps out the AC-5 for a RAC-2 (which conveniently is both the same weight and has the same range!).

My apologies for the crummy lighting in my basement, but...well it is a basement. Here is my entire painted Dixie CTM force, a combined arms, reinforced company. This by far the largest painted formation in my entire Battletech collection!

Next up is the St. Ives' Cheveau-Leger:

This lance is the first of three planned for this army. Left to right is an Enforcer, Jagermech, Vindicator and lastly another Hunchback, this time an HBK-4SP.

The basing on these three look like the ruins of an aerospace port, or perhaps a mech staging area. The Hunchback meanwhile has the ruins of a bricked building on it's base. 

The camera's flash doesn't really do these any justice (again in the basement). I wanted to show these with the originally painted Urbie, which is the first of four. Depending on the era, the St. Ives Military Compact can either be fielded as a stand-alone nation, or as part of the Capellan Confederation's Armed Forces (which requires LOTS of Urbies!!). 

The first Urbie is painted!

Just taking in the fall colors along with all of the other tourists...

Shut up Kushial, nobody wants to hear about the battalion you painted in the same span of time it took me to paint just this one! (...sigh...) This is the first of my fourteen Urbies and unlike Kushial, I doubt I'll have anymore than a single lance in the same color scheme.

Rather it'll be more like: AN URBIE FOR EVERYBODY!

As for this one, it's painted in the colors of the 1st St. Ives Cheveau-Legers (Light Horse). Originally I had intended to make a unit of the St. Ives Lancers, but I liked the blue trim more than yellow. So onto the light horse it is!

Nothing stops traffic like an Urbie!

Being a Capellan unit first, and then of the later independent St. Ives Compact arguably at least one more Urbie ought to join this one, but we'll see I guess...