It's got an axe! RUN!!

 o/

lol, these three are the latest to cross the finish line. The Axeman is painted to match my 5th Donegal Guards, and the two Howlers are for my newest faction: Clan Fire Mandrill Kindraa Mattila-Carrol (yeesh, that's a mouthful!). I also tried out some of my new AK diorama (basing) paints on these and am really happy with the results. 

Applied to a sacrificial base, it looks good as is.

However I added a sepia wash and once dry again, I drybrushed it with wraithbone and I really like the final result. So much so that I did just the same on my Howlers below.

First up the: Fire Mandrills. These howlers were previously painted in Jade Falcon colors, but were stripped and repainted. the rest of that JF star will go to the Desert horde where I will be able to field a stupid fast, second line binary.  As for the Mandrills, I just liked the color scheme, yellow with black & red trim. Though you have to be careful not to add too much red trim, or else you start to get McDonalds' vibes...

The outlandish, yellow, red and black almost work as a sort of camouflage in the desert scrub landscape of their bases.

The side of the Howlers that you most often see as these little fuckers run away at lightning speed!

Saving the biggest for last: the Axeman AXM-2N. This mech joins the Steiner Scout squad, and matches them reasonably well. Especially after I truncated the disasterously difficult painting of the 'scouts'. As such, I will add 3 more assault mechs to fill out a second lance, if not expand them further to an entire assault company (because Steiner).

Folks like to try and get in close to missile boats, but not this one!

Mech #6, I had to look up the number on the Steiner Scout Squad post to make sure I didn't duplicate the numbering.

Note the Jade Falcon Hunchback IIC-turned-stepping stone and the 'concrete' AK diorama paint.

 

An Army fights on it's stomach!

Neither mech is mine...

Nick 2.0 and I got together for a game this past Friday night after my tentative Bolt Action 3.0 game got postponed by a week. It was my turn to pick a scenario and after perusing teh interwebz' multitudes of fan-made scenario offerings of 'Use these pre-selected mechs, with these mechwarrior skill values and then basically just kill each other' I was getting pretty annoyed. However I did find one that had potential, and after some heavy editing it came out like this:

An army marches on its stomach:

 A convoy of 4-6 disabled mobile field kitchens (MFK) are equally spaced along the map along the center line. Any mech or vehicle can drag/tow a target MFK back to their board edge. A mech or vehicle unit must be in the same hex at the end of their movement phase as the target MFK with at least 1 MP left to be able to start dragging/towing it. Mechs without 2 hand actuators and vehicles must use 1 turn to secure/attach the target MFK. Mechs & vehicles cannot attack enemy units while securing an MFK. The dragging/towing unit suffers a 50% reduction in their walking/cruising MP and cannot run or jump. A dragging mech cannot fire weapons in either arm, nor can a towing vehicle fire from the rear arc while towing an MFK.

A unit earns 1 VP for each MFK returned to their home map edge.

This ties in nicely with our convoy escort scenario game as we would be using the same heavy tracked APCs and trucks for the immobilized field kitchens. Game size would be the usual 4K points, except we went for Clan Invasion era mechs rather than our usual Succession wars as I wanted to use some of my Clan forces. Overall I didn't think the scenario wouldn't be too difficult. I mean, it ought to be easy enough for us each to at least drag one or two off successfully.

But then...

Anthony was in attendance at the FLGS and he is a recent convert to the Battletech cause, has some mechs, has read the rules, but has never played a game. With no other players present he was going to just watch, but instead we made it a 3-way scrum. His role in the above scenario? He would be defending his field kitchens. Simple, easy, no problem. 

Oh wait, everything I have is only 20 tons and now there is a defending force to contend with. Fuck.

Nick's Marik force wasn't nearly as perturbed by this new addition that they would to have to contend with.

Anthony's Lance. In the backfield he has a Griffin checking out an MFK's menu.

The Battlefield with the convoy in the middle. We determined that the board edge would be 12 hexes from the center line. 

What follows is less of the usual battle report and more of a highlight reel as I only took a few photos. 

My Piranha decides to go out with glory running at the Axeman that was trying to grab an objective. Due to my high defensive modifier (my mechs were averaging +3-4 all game), the Axeman missed with everything including its axe! I did some damage but nothing too major. 

The Death of one of my Howlers. I believe it survived this exchange, but in the next turn as it was running on by it took an ERLL to the CT rear and that was all she wrote. 

Having survived somehow, the Piranha gets behind the Axeman and sandblasts it a little bit. I believe that I ground all of the armor off of one of the rear side torsos, but nothing went internal. The piranha had to go & hide for a bit as expecting to die at any moment, I kept alpha-striking and it ended the turn at  +12 heat!

Nick's Griffin was trying to get away with an MFK (and made it about half as far as my dead Mercury did on the other side of the board). However unable to shake the piranha off of it's tail for 2-consecutive turns, the massed MGs got several possible crit rolls and I rolled a boxcars, taking off the side torso and inflicting 3 engine hits in the process! 

The last turn of the game, Anthony's Hatchetman goes in for its first ever swing in close combat only to miss. I don't recall if the Catatphract landed a punch or not in return, but both mechs survived the encounter. 

This is about par for the course for the whole game, little green mechs running in all directions. They didn't do much damage, but was the first time I've had Nick flip off my mechs in a game, lol! I believe the Wolfhound blew one of the side torso off of the Dasher in this pic, totally disarming it after it had lost its other arm previously. 

In the last turn, Anthony commented that his Griffin was untouched. I clipped it with a single, lousy LRM. However, Nick's Axeman connected with it's LPL & AC-20 and thoroughly ruined the Griffin's previously pristine state. 

Due to time we had to call it there. No MFK's were captured giving Anthony the victory by default. Nick & I each managed to drag one a short distance before our mechs were each gunned down. My 'Fast & the Furious' star ended the game as more of a triangle with the Mercury and 1 Howler down, and the Dasher reduced to a free roaming torso.  That said, my Piranha's pilot earned a future spot in an Omni-mech for being the first time I've ever had a Piranha take down a mech in a game of Classic (whereas doing that, is standard practice for the Piranha in Alpha Strike). 

As I continue to be a Thorn in your side...

 o/

Yet another Thorny prospect...

As the year winds down, not all has been quiet on the Battletech front. Earlier this month, Kushial and I played a pair of Classic Battletech games on his birthday. Being bloggers the two of us, we naturally forgot to take any photos of said games. 

The first pitted my son Frankie's Fast & the Furious Alpha Strike Jade Falcons vs. Kushial's 'Yowza! Brigade'. The Falcons lasted longer than I thought they would, but ultimately could do little vs. a bunch of Rommels and Goblins and I eventualy ran up the white flag. I took out two goblins and a lone Urbie in exchange for the loss of three Clan light mechs and several elementals. 

The second game featured my new Rasalhague force (still sans Axels) vs. his ELH. This one was more of a traditional brawl with heavy losses all around. My FFR troops gave a good accounting for themselves (well, aside from the worthless LRM carrier), including a headshot from my Catapult K2 which dropped a Thug. Ultimately however my forces started to crumble towards the end leaving him two victories to savor on his drive home. 

Kicking a Flatbed truck off of the road is about as threatening as thing will likely get. 

Lastly, the aforementioned Axel tank lance and a lone Thorn FINALLY arrived after having to send an inquiry out to the Etsy seller a month after purchase. 'They'll go out tomorrow' read to me as 'they've been done, I've just been sitting on them as I've gotten more orders than I can handle.' 

Regardless they're here. The tanks look too big (Ontos sized), but the new Catalyst plastic vehicles look bigger as well, so may not be an issue in the long run. The tanks came with magnets and pre-molded holes for the same which was a nice touch. 

As for the Thorn, its not pretty, but far better than the cannon sculpt. With twin medium lasers and an LRM-5, you can expect this to be lobbing Thunder munitions down range and generally trying to avoid getting shot. I know the fluff states that thunder munitions aren't an honorable weapon, but the Fucking Wobblies are unconcerned by such niceties. 

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year folks, I'll see you again in 2024!

Clan Jade Falcon Omega Galaxy

 o/

Blinded by the light!

I painted these awhile ago and sadly didn't take photos of them when I did. Thanks now to daylight savings, its usually dark when I get home now from work. When I took these pics in my basement this evening...well, you can see just how lousy the lighting down there is. Indeed it took a lot of tweaking to make the photos not look completely dark or any more horribly washed out then they currently are.

This star is another of my son Frankie's Fast & the Fragile...Furious units. The pair of Howlers in back are the slowest mechs in this star (as is befitting of light fire support units) clocking in at a mere 14" of movement in Alpha Strike! While he likes the speed he was incredulous when he noted that his star contained a total of just 15 points of armor and structure combined!

I swear that it felt like the dopey little van on this base took as long to paint as the mech itself did!

That said, they faired quite well in their battlefield debut against Screech's...unpainted mechs. I forget what he was playing (clans of some sort I think) as it was a few weeks ago and its easy to forget when everything is bare plastic. I don't recall who won that game though my Goliath Scorpion star was almost wiped out early on as despite being more resilient. The problem with teaming up with a bunch of little speed demons like these, is that you end up being a lot easier to hit! 

One of these is not like the others...

 o/

Here ya go, some more mechs fresh off of the panting queue:

Don't eat the green one, its not ripe yet.

The green one is a clan Baboon (AKA: Howler) painted in the colors of Clan Jade Falcon's Omega Galaxy. This is my first mini for the Falcons and will soon be joined by four more mechs for another Fast & the Furious, Frankie-styled mech star. 

I just love how all of my minis are invariably adorned in cat hair. It like its just plowed through some sort of colossal spider's web!

This Baboon, as well as another of the same in the coming batch of light clan mechs will be the slowest moving units in this new star, as is befitting of a (light) fire support mech. That said, it still will be moving at up to 14" per turn!

It doesn't look so bad when it zips past you in a blur!

Speaking of fast, next up is my Jenner which is easily the UGLIEST mech in my inventory! This mech did take out a clan omnimech in it's last game. While that sounds impressive, the mech in question was a Dasher which has barely enough armor to withstand a collision with a tree branch when moving at full speed. 

This urbie earned it's paint in that same game.

Here we see it crossing what was once runway 67 A.

This Rifleman on the other hand, ought to have been tossed into the flames of my backyard firepit given its last, stunning battlefield performance!

The Rifleman got lucky in that I was painting red mechs this week, as when it last saw the table top, it shutdown due to overheating. I was fielding it as a C model refit (which is prone to overheating) all while failing to hit most anything with the clan pulse lasers that it was mounting. It was awful.

These three bring the Combine's painted total up to 7 mechs.

Nonetheless, all I have left to paint for my (current) DCMS' Sword of Light demi-company is a recently purchased Catapult K2. Unfortunately, I'm out of the correct shade of primer for the K2 (as are the local FLGS').