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Finished the last four Mechs from the Battletech starter box! Having a blast playing this game over beer and pretzels. My friend got some awesome 3d printed city terrain and we've been playing a 5 person merc campaign. All of us are almost bankrupt.


Battle-master (died from an SRM ammo explosion. Will be a long time before I can buy another.)


Thunderbolt (solid workhorse brawler. It's slabs of armour and jumpjets have served me well.)


Shadowhawk (yet to be fielded, though I'm not expecting great things. Inferior in pretty much all ways to the Wolverine.)


Locust (Cheap as chips and annoying enough to be useful, unlike it's garbage starterbox counterpart, the Commando)


For posterity, the rest of my stable.

Nice camo job. Your lances are oddly mixed ... wouldn't you want all the heavies in one lance and the fast lights in another?

As for the Thunderbolt, I like it too, but the original datasheet which was released in BT 2nd ed did not have jump jets. I'm guessing that there are more variants of mechs now than when I last played (about the turn of the century).

As for 55 jump capable, I prefer the Griffin as I've had good luck with it. "Boom! Headshot!" So it punches well above its weight class as it keeps spitting out golden bullets.

Since you can't count on luck, a 55 jump capable mech with lots of medium pulse lasers would be good, if such a mech exists.

Thanks!
These arent the lances I field them in, just the two sets I painted them in (wanted to do one of each weight class).
My groups games are just organized by tonnage limit, so our lances are all over the place, doubly so for our campaign where it relies on what's available rather than what's good.
I also only have these 8 starterset mechs, so my choices are pretty limited (no Griffin for me, I didnt get the smaller starterbox that has it). We're also playing level 1 tech as it's a bunch of our first foray into the game, so no fancy pulse lasers for us.

The Thunderbolt 5SE readout that comes in the set has JJ and slightly more armour than the stock, swapping out the SRM2 and switching to an LRM10 from a 15. I find the extra mobility a lot more useful than a few extra rockets.

Came out nice. those new plastics are really great quality, can't wait till the kickstarter unseens get released.


Hamster

You always want a fast mover in a lance. as long as most of them are heavies/assaults it still counts as a heavy or assault lance. with the alternating movement you always need a flanker in there to go last..........

of course that is also a matter of perspective......my desert assault lance for the 10th lyran guard is an atlas, viking, fafnir, and a fast mover... a battlemaster (it's lyran so they need a scout right?).

 McGibs wrote:
Thanks!
<snip> We're also playing level 1 tech as it's a bunch of our first foray into the game, so no fancy pulse lasers for us.

The Thunderbolt 5SE readout that comes in the set has JJ and slightly more armour than the stock, swapping out the SRM2 and switching to an LRM10 from a 15. I find the extra mobility a lot more useful than a few extra rockets.

Nothing wrong with lvl 1 tech; it is the original stuff the game was based on, and what I own. For a while we had a host who provided later tech and the Clans, so that's how I was exposed to the newer stuff. He moved, which is why we have not played for so long.

Agree with you on mobility. Unless the battlefield is as flat as the central U.S., there will be terrain too high or too dense for Heavies & Assaults to run through. Jump Jets can be a literal lifesaver.

@aphyon: Not famiilar with the viking or fafnir, The Atlas is 100tons, and the "fast mover" is 85tons (3-5-0?), so I guess the other two are 90+.

i am making a little battletech humor. house steiner is known for their love of the biggest mechs and biggest guns (they made the heavy gauss rifle )

the fafnir is 100T, the viking is 90T and the battlemaster is 85T, but it is fast for an assault at 4/6 where almost all other assault classes are 3/5

the steiner scout squad-battletech humor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73zK-PjmyKY&list=PLR5zhFCFVb9Ul5DLGzgQ6k4OeYjy2daZ3&index=7

Beautiful paintwork, and it's so nice to see Battletech miniatures finally being worth painting...

 aphyon wrote:
i am making a little battletech humor. house steiner is known for their love of the biggest mechs and biggest guns (they made the heavy gauss rifle )

the fafnir is 100T, the viking is 90T and the battlemaster is 85T, but it is fast for an assault at 4/6 where almost all other assault classes are 3/5

the steiner scout squad-battletech humor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73zK-PjmyKY&list=PLR5zhFCFVb9Ul5DLGzgQ6k4OeYjy2daZ3&index=7

Ah, ich sehe. The backgrounds weren't that developed in 2nd ed, and of the 2nd ed. supplements I only have The Fox's Teeth: Exploits of McKinnon's Raiders and Tales of the Black Widow Company.

Aww, good ol battletech! I have a Clan Star in storage somewhere.

Those are looking great!

 Elbows wrote:
Beautiful paintwork, and it's so nice to see Battletech miniatures finally being worth painting...

Ironwind has done a fine job over the past few years re-doing alot of the older sculpts making them more visually accurate and larger.

it took 3 sculpts but they finally got the blood asp right.

All that line work must've driven you crazy.

Great looking mechs, really liking the new looks.

The only problem is that the new figures don't really have a well defined front hex.

Most of them at least have the torso pointing towards a flat-side, except the shadowhawk. I had to cut him at the waist and rotate it to make it a bit more clear.
If all else fails, can always paint the front side of the base a different colour.

Really beautiful. I didnt know such nice miniatures existed. I find the grass Tufts jarring because of the size/scale of the battlemechs. They look like infantry models walking around in the grass instead of giant battlemechs. I might have tried regular flock or used something on the base to remind the viewer of scale. Also I like the sculpt but is the size kind of off? Shouldn't the battle master be much bigger than a locust? They look nearly comparable in size. Isn't it four times as heavy?

The scale of all battletech minis is wildly inconsistant across the board, but the game treats them as abstractions (one hex is 30 meters). Designs are also all over the place: Compare the cockpit size on the battlemaster to that of the thunderbolt. Easier to not think too hard about it and just get on with punching other robots in the face.

I've been meaning to go back and cut down the tufts to be a bit smaller. It's what I had on hand, but I agree some foam flocking or something would probably look better. Maybe I can get some tiny trees from a hobby-train store...

That's just some gorgeous white-painting.

How are you doing the panel lines on these bad boys?

The AP dark tone I'm using for the wash doesn't flow very good to darken the panel lines later after dry brushing or panel painting

I'm using Taimya Panel Liner (an enamel wash) over a glosscoat as a starting point, and then using whitespirits to clean off excess. This would normally be good enough for things like tanks or vehicles, but because these models are so small, and the details are a bit squadgey in places, I went over with a dark brown and just painted in a lot of the panel lines.
Takes a long time and a very tiny brush. Basically the reverse of edge highlighting.

Love it.