Launcher assembly

A wooden A-stand

This launcher was a simple device, it was built from four pieces. These pieces were supposedly wooden, I just failed to discern any woodgrain on either side of the parts. I had not had a more perfect opportunity to try another of Uncle Night Shift's tricks that he has used a few times to make plain polystyrene to look more like actual wood.

 

Before anything else I snipped the pieces off the sprue and got the large excess chunks off. On the flipside the bits were much uglier than the outside, especially the main part #1 had huge lumps of ejector pin marks and whatnot that made it look more like a Lego piece. When that was done I made some passes along the parts with my file cleaning brush.

At this point I didn't stop to clean them up with liquid cement but just built the frame itself. I started by leaving the hinges free to move so I could play with the angle. That didn't work, it wouldn't stand on its own without collapsing. So I glued it in a fixed position.

Munitions

With the frame done I built the four rockets. Two of the rockets were of the 28cm HE variety, the other two were 32cm napalm rockets. Wurfkörper Spreng and Wurfkörper Flamm in the original language. This photo here showed that especially the second from the bottom especially needed some more cleanup.

Launcher leader

The time I had available allowed me to assemble one of the five figures, and the randomly chosen one was the boss of the unit. He was looking at his wrist watch for the launching times, hand ready to swing down for the FEUER! command. Cleaning these dudes was going to take some time, and I was already stressing about painting them.

My mood was going to decide if my next step was going to be the people assembly, or the launcher crate PE folding step. My decision was also going to be heavily influenced by the time I had the next time I sat down with this kit. Another possible path was also just a simple cleanup session to get the rockets paintable, or glue-cleaning the rack's wooden parts. Ah, the excitement!

Project I/25

Schweres Wurfgerät 41

When I left my previous workplace, about 8 years ago now, I got this as one of my farewell gifts. The Soviet tank I got done ages ago, but the rocket launcher got stuck in some limbo while larger things were worked on. But now I was going to get it done.

I had built a Tamiya's two-summery-figure version (35155, Schweres Wurfgerät 41 "Heulende Kuh") many, many years ago. That one was funnily an inverted version: the rocket launcher's frame was metallic and the folding-leg crates for the rockets were wooden. Amazingly I found one (well, two, but the other one was way worse) photo of the model, that I also hadn't shared in my 2012 Nebelwerfer post:

This Dragon's set gave us a wooden A-stand where the metallic rocket crates, Packkiste, were then laid on for firing. The included cabbageheads were also in more wintery uniforms, and there were five of them. Luckily I still was bad at painting living things.

Construction instruction

Hah, this was going to be easy: just four steps! Somehow I expected the step 2 to eat a good few hours, as everything in it was photoetch and any bends I needed to do were practically not tool-assisted. The painting hints were given with codes for manufacturers whose products I didn't own [anymore]. Basic stuff in this projects.

Bits and pieces

Four rockets:

A wooden frame for the rocket cases. The idea was a bit weird to me, a fixed-angle indirect fire. In case you wanted to aim your fire nearer or further, you had to relocate the whole setup. The version that the old Tamiya kit depicted was smarter in that sense, as you could at least change the angle to some degree with the screw-feet or by playing around with the boxes' tiny legs.

And here we had the five guys in their winter coats. I think the last time I painted a human figure was for the U-Boat's captain who was much simpler to paint than these camouflage-wearing rocket artillerymen. A fun detail was that this multiskilled gang originated from a 120mm mortar team.

This amount of PE was the largest I had ever encountered in my doings. It was going to be interesting to say the least.

It was going to be a curious project, and I had no real idea of how much time and headscratching this was going to take in the end. Those five humans were going to be the biggest weirdness, that was my expected result.

Finished: Project IX/24

In the name of espirit de corps

That's the canon explanation for the Clan Blood Spirit's name. In its honor the Clan ended up being the most isolationist and grumpiest of them all, until they got destroyed in the 3080s. These things happened sometimes.

A generic medium-weight Star

With a half-serious check turning out nothing specially interesting, like a Cluster, Trinary/Binary or anything of that sort to call a home unit for these Points. I decided that they'd just be generic Alpha Galaxy units, either from the same or different units. This was fun in a way, I didn't have to stress too much about this sort of details in a Clan that has been pretty much a mention in the footnotes in most of my BT experiences.

I took a set of photos from each of the hex angles, but wasn't going to share all of each in here.

Mist Lynx

This 25-ton Light OmniMech had jump jets. The completely energy weaponless Prime config carried an LRM-10 launcher, an SRM-4 and full two machine guns. To top this all there was also an Active Probe. In the Inner Sphere the Mist Lynx was known as Koshi, the small death.

Kit Fox

Another Light Omnimech at 30 tons, without Jump Jets, was mostly known from the Jade Falcon Touman. Its primary configuration carried an LB 5-X AutoCannon, an ER Large Laser, a Small Pulse Laser, and a Streak SRM-4 launcher. The freebirths called it Uller.

Stormcrow

Getting to the Mediums, the 55-ton Stormcrow was recently seen in the previous project, so the prime config was also exactly the same: 2x ERLLas, 3x ERMLas. The space samurais of the Draconis Combine mistakenly called it Ryoken.

Ice Ferret

The second Medium Omni, a 45-ton Ice Ferret had its main punch coming from the ER PPC mated with an ER Small Laser for funsies. The other arm had a Streak SRM-2 for the up close and personal -moments, it also had an Active Probe installed. Once again the Spheroids called it in a weird way, this time we'd get to blame the Lyrans for the nickname Fenris.

Shadow Cat

Last on the list was another Medium-class 45-tonner, the Shadow Cat. Its primary configuration was built around the Right Arm's Gauss Rifle, which was supported by two ER Medium Lasers. Active Probes seemed to be a theme here, as the Shadow Cat also had one, and it was the only other 'Mech in this Star to sport Jump Jets. Of all five, this was the only one without a freebirth-assigned codename.

Blood Spirit Alpha - bases

Hexed ground

As we all knew, flat black bases didn't suffice. If my mud goo sets were still alive, they were a potential source to be mixed with the ballast. Ballast as it was wasn't going to be the base I wanted, even if it somehow fit the desert theme. Maybe I could consider something I did for Morgan Kell's Archer.

White glue and ballast

First step was to spread white glue over the ground, and let it to set for a short moment. Then I sprinkled Woodland Scenics' ballast on that. There were some odd bits of foliage in my mix, so some unplanned greenery got added.

Then, predictably, I let them to dry for a while.

Oiling the terrain

To make the terrain less schorched desert -like, I painted over it with Abteilung's Earth (ABT093) and then added some random stains of thinned down Industrial Earth (ABT090).

Once again I left my Star into the sauna to flash after I was done with the oily mess. Despite being mostly dry the oil paint glistened for a bunch of days.

There were some trash nuggets flowing over the edges and those I'd clean up before packing the minis away. Nothing larger was going to happen at this point, anyway, these were done.