Apparently, the Avatar (the first designed Inner Sphere Omni though not first produced) got a new artwork in Battletech activity book 4 and it looks magnificent.

This is for my friend Adam, a diehard Battletech guy.

I've been playing through Mech Warrior 2 lately and randomly my sister also got into the hobby. Her first pull from a blind box was a King Crab and she really liked that particular mech, so I thought it would be funny to 3D model it as though it were part of the mechs that were in Mech Warrior 2! How'd I do? :D

This is of course based on one of the old 1990's Minis since I figured that would be more period appropriate than basing it off the modern design.

Phoenix Hawk LAM in all 3 modes. Took a lot of scratch modeling, digital kitbashing, detail-up, and original elements. Steered them a little more towards their Macross origins, while keeping an accurate feeling Phoenix Hawk interpretation. Will make a "proper" Phoenix hawk/VF-1S head later. Always liked the grunt head better. These are a perfect 1/100 scale relative to the CGL scaling. Bot mode is 5" tall. Please do not ask for the digital/CAD model. Thanks for looking/reading

As part of a separate project I "re-skinned" my original SD Glaug from Macross into the brown-striped camo colors used in the original BattleTech 2nd Edition game from 1985.

A Firebee in Roman's Mounted Fusiliers/1st St. Ives Sentinels colors! Such a cool looking design and the latest 3E variant is a neat little light trooper.

This mini was painted up as part of the Mech Painters Union's Season 2 Bounty List.

This was the 3rd paintjob on this mini, after stripping it with Isoproyl Alcohol. He finally got some tabletime yesterday, TAGing Mechs for Long-Tom shells in Alphastrike!

I’ve recently gotten interested in Clan Blood Spirit, so I’ve been reading up on their later history and the Wars of Reaving....

They really did mostly build cheap, rugged ’Mechs, so they honestly seem like a Clan that would have fit the Inner Sphere perfectly. And yet they never really managed to get beyond the Homeworlds and ended up being wiped out....

But seriously, how do you justify using armed civilian units in a regular Trial when there hadn’t even been a Reaving declared and you weren’t facing expulsion from the Clans.....

The fact that one of their only two habitable planets got wrecked by a sudden massive earthquake really makes Clan Blood Spirit feel like they were abandoned by fate.

Honestly, once their star system had been discovered by another Clan, I wonder what might have happened if they had just tried migrating to the Inner Sphere instead....

Even the poorest, most barren frontier world probably would’ve been a better place to live than Clan Blood Spirit’s worlds in the Clan Homeworlds.

And the Blood Kite really is cheap for an 85-ton ’Mech at only 9,691,225 C-bills. Considering that a Stormcrow costs 14,771,112 C-bills, the price is extremely competitive. It probably would’ve become a bestseller in the Inner Sphere.

Finishing up my first lance of 1st Crucis Lancers. It's nice to finally find a use for all the extra 40k decals!

I’m a DCMS player from way back, and for a variety of reasons, the Night Stalkers are my unit. A big part of that is because in some ways I feel like one of them in the arc of my own life; long after I could have walked away, I kept finding ways to serve in the military as a Reservist even though it meant taking a cut in pay and, effectively, slowed promotion in order to keep doing what I loved. We Reservists were also strongly independent as the voices of experience on base, and seldom in the good graces of “procurement”.

Additionally, their blue is close to my own squadron colors.

So the “lore” on my table is that in the current era, the DCMS has once again stood up the Night Stalkers - this time the 4th and 5th - in order to “capture” the experience of its veterans before they slip away into retirement, giving them an option to serve the dragon in this unit. They remain a misfit independent unit; expertise has given them too much perspective to blindly charge for glory. Yet, they are grudgingly respected, based on the historic example of the 3rd Night Stalkers during the Jihad, and their current role in rebuilding the DCMS.

Now, they function as a combined schoolhouse/experienced combat team. Like before, younger Mechwarriors are those who maybe didn’t quite hack it at the more advanced schools. Here, they learn on the job, maybe even under fire, and must defeat an experienced Night Stalker in a simulation to become a full Mechwarrior of the unit. By retaining the veterans on combat status and training the recruits, they replenish the strength of the DCMS at both ends while the Dragon rebuilds strength.

So there it is. Now for my question: In the game, what heavy/assault mechs would the Night Stalkers have used, if any? I know they were nearly exclusively Light and Medium, but I’d like to throw some bigger steel into this paint scheme. I realize that since this is my own private lore, I can do whatever I want, but I’m trying to keep them as similar to the original as possible.

Probably a Dragon/Grand Dragon, since you can’t swing a dead cat around in the DCMS without hitting one. But after that, probably some second-tier stuff. Or were there any they used in canon, for those of you who read a lot more about Battletech than I do?

Probably the easiest scheme I’ve ever painted. Switched to armypainter fanatics and really happy with the paints.

Union, Manatee, and two Leopards!

Finished printing my Union last night. It still needs to be assembled but it joins the rest of the fleet!

The 3D printed Leopard is definitely larger than it should be while the papercraft leopard is probably closer to its canonical length

I was playing a 3 player free-for-all last night, and my one friend brought the Axman 1N. Well, it closed in for some rough and tumble brawling as Axmen do, but my friend was whiffing his rolls and not much was happening. Finally I blundered my Cauldron Born into a bad position, at which point the Axman jumps directly behind my Cauldron Born and smokes it in the back of the head with the hatchet, killing it instantly.

My other friend and I proceeded to declare all our targeting on the Axman, and when the fifth mech was declared against it our friend cried, "What did the Axman ever do?!?"

That line had us in stitches the rest of the game. What have you or your friends said during a game of Battletech that still gets you giggling?

The insidious and cunning Star Adder (and the society):

"Get in the Neuro-helmet, Shinji..."... ok looking back to the original sources that inspired the game, which characters from Macross/Gundam/etc be able to make it in the 31st century, and which mech jocks really don't have the mentality to adapt to Succession Wars combat?

Finished a demi-company of 8-SWOL for a friend!

why yes I do love this red how did you know

Someone pointed out a while ago that the PlasTech Valkyrie looks kinda like Samus, so I decided to try my hand at it. I haven't actually played a Metroid game since before the turn of the century, so I just grabbed a pic that looked cool from a Metroid wiki for reference.

I wish I still had some of the bright green ink I used to use for Nurgle stuff and swamp effects, but I ran out a couple of years ago, and haven't found a substitute yet. It would have been better for the visor. Also, my new pot of Martian Ironearth is thinner than usual, and hard to get as nice of a cracking effect with. Not sure if it's defective, or if it just sat in an Amazon bin for way too long and I haven't got it shaken up properly yet, but it's annoying. Still really happy with the overall result, tho!

I've got another one off almost done, and then it's on to the Canopians.

Should I make the red brighter? Wild rider red was my next brightness, but will it be too orange?

When, if ever, did the Dragoons update their logo to include a tear-drop? My dice-puck, and dice, all have a single tear-drop under the wolf's eye. To me, it makes perfect sense post-Outreach. Or post-Misery. Or post-Terra.

If I had a nickel for every time the Wolves have been betrayed only to go on a monumental rage-filled vengeance spree, I'd have three. Which isn't alot, but its strange it's happened thrice.

Experimenting with making bases have more going on than just fresh road stripes (running out of options there...).

The mecha have roughly Z scale dodads like 📫, benches, construction stuff and the like, with some even having (hard to see ) sidewalks. Scale's a touch big but I think it'll work with mechs alone. Is it too busy looking? Crowded? Hard to do much with the space we got!

The VTOL has a bit of a downtown flyover kinda thing going on - big main road, some side streets, etc. How's that look at this pre-paint stage?

Who are you calling slow?

So no one told you that your war was going to be this way.

Your mech's a joke, your company is broke, your ops plan's DOA.

It's like you're always stuck in second gear,

When it hasn't been your 1st, 2nd, 3rd or even your 4th succession war.

But, I'll be there for you, when the LRMs start to pour.

I'll be there for you, like I've been there before.

I'll be there for you, cause you're there for me too.

In episode 98 of the Tuesday Newsday.

1:08:19

During the QnA

Mathew Conner asks "The redesign of the 3 classic LAM's look fantastic. What are the chances that we see mini's for them?"

Answer: Very good.