Finished: Project VIII/26

Catapult K2K

Just for the fun of it I checked my previous DCMS paintjob's post and chuckled: in 2012 I thought I'd paint more of them. It only took me about 14 years to reach the same area with my paintbrushes. The eighth Regiment was nicknamed the Jade Dragon and it, or at least its name did, represented the economy of the Draconis Combine.

The other four pillars were steel (military), ivory (religion and philosophy), teak (art and culture), and gold (the sociopolitical structure). Five pillars, thirteen Sword of Light Regiments, the last of which was logically numbered the fifteenth.

With very superficial sarnaing I assigned this one and its three non-present siblings in arms to the fifth battallion's second company's heavy Lance. None of this was actually meaningful, I just documented these for my own strange amusement.

As everyone knew, the Catapult was a Heavy 'Mech, massing 65 tons and its base model was also nicely jump-capable. Kuritas tore the Jump Jets off for their K2 model, probably to keep the heat management somewhat simpler. K2K's armament was pretty clearly visible: two ER PPCs, and also the ER Medium Lasers somewhat more hidden under the cockpit.

To keep the Particle Projector Cannon -provided heat buildup in some kind of check this 'Mech had 20 Double Heat Sinks and carried 13,5 tons of armor for protection. I gave a personal bucketful of style points, as you may have expected.

Photos

Being the first and currently the only one of its Lance there were no group photos to be taken, so individuals is what we got today.

A Kuritapult from start to finish

Colouring pondering

My map was completely open and I could've assigned my murderous tin can anywhere, there were many groups in this universe that I had not poked at yet. My own Merc band also had two Lancefuls of spots open. In my mind I got taken to a red space, as I like the colour in general and I had used red as one key colour in all the possible BT games (Mechwarrior:Online; BATTLETECH; Mechwarrior 5:Mercenaries). The title revealed it already, I went with the Kuritapult theme and chose a sibling unit for a Lance I already painted: the 8th Sword of Light or "Jade Dragon".

A red-sponged surface

Coating all the armoured parts I brushed a layer of reddish brown (VMA 71105 Red Brown RLM26) and left the joints and barrels clear. I did not stress too much about the coverage, as you could see.

Somewhere I had encountered an idea of bringing brightness and noise to the paintjob by poking the paint on with a sponge. I thought I could give that a shot, sponging around instead of trying to paint individual panels in a gradient using a paintbrush. Very shockingly I used a bright red to be dabbed on (VMA 71003 Red RLM23). As usual, I concentrated on the top and most noticeable surfaces, where I thought the light would hit most. This got repeated on gradually smaller surfaces two, three times.

Next I mixed some Lemon Yellow (VMC 70952) into the red for brightness. This stuff got dabbed on a bit more cautiously than on the previous red layers.

Finally I mixed one final serving of even brighter yellow-orange and touched a few key points with it. Looking at it this close made the effect look a bit strong. Black Grey bare metal parts didn't look too fitting so I started thinking of making them somewhat lighter.

Metallics

Apparently I went insane and thought that I could try to do something as deranged as having a go at the NMM effect. Simple on paper: narrowing cold and stonewall grey bands over the black grey base. I even got a reference for the gloom from the dark barrels, but it definitely didn't work out :D At least I had now tried it out.

To get them forward I painted the bare metals in Stonewall Grey and then highlighted with Greyish White. That ended up a tiny bit on the overbright side so I washed them darker later (Citadel Nuln Oil).

 

To highlight them somehow I added narrow horizontal lines along the ER PPC barrels. They would not really stand out but I had them done now.

Lenses

Each of the four lenses and the cockpit's panes got based with flat black.

 

The underjaw ER Medium Lasers (Escorpena Green) were a bit tight to paint, but the ER PPCs got a friendly coating of Electric Blue. For the cockpit panes I used the slightly darker Magic Blue. This photo here showed that I had forgotten the opposite reflection spot from the main viewport pane, I fixed that much later.

 

I especially liked the particle cannon lenses, this time they succeeded pretty nicely. A nice change from the usual mehness.

Hex bases

Having no specific idea I just used a random amount of blobs of Vallejo's Mud for the base and left it cure overnight. The next time I covered the dips with a Light Green for grass.

A contact who does lots of minis and shares their stuff online recommended using some brighter colours like pinks and such as drybrushed alien flora on the base. I gave a shot at a pink (VGC 72013 Squid Pink) and Lemon Yellow, and yes, they did add some fun variation. Now I had to remember this when painting anything else to accompany this one here...

Looking at the sizes and shapes of pieces available I decided that I did not feel like trying to freehand the Jade Dragon or a flaming sword on this bugger. I sealed the miniature with AK's Super Matt Varnish, and then did the seven glass bits with Vallejo's Gloss Varnish. This was good and I had a really good time painting the beamy Catapult.

Project VIII/26

The only reason I immediately bought the GDL ForcePack

The box had one of my greatest favourites: Catapult's K2 version. Otherwise the same old but instead of LRM launchers it had PPCs on its shoulders. Sarna also listed a CPLT-2K2 that had the PPCs upgraded to ERPPCs, and the machine guns and their ammo replaced with two ERMLas. Running this sort of a cooker without ammo was maybe a healthy life choice. At some point after buying it I primed the mini black, but hadn't bothered taking a photo of it.

Finished: Project VI/26

Gray Death Legion - Hassan's Assassins

The Gray Death Legion, Second Battallion, 5th Company, Battle Lance. That's what I came up with as assignment for my four miniatures and I didn't check the credibility of it from MUL or anything else. As weight classes went, this was a Heavy Lance as the birdies compensated each other. The weapon loadout had variety so while they were waiting for the next payday, the Phoenix Hawk IIC was the only one who was in an actual risk group for "out of ammo, all I have left are my fists and there are no resupplies coming in". Even the Shadow Hawk had one energy weapon, as long as it wasn't shot off.

Warhammer WHM-6R

A true classic, the Heavy 70-ton Warhammer stalked around the battlefields with the searchlight turned off this time. Both arms had a PPC each, the side torsos both had a Medium and a Small Laser, and a Machine Gun (2x PPC, 2x MLas, 2x SLas, 2x MG). On the right shoulder was the only non-redundant weapon system, a SRM-6 launcher. Somehow I simply didn't find a spot for the Small Lasers in the side torsos, so I didn't just add red dots at random. I was bothered enough by the close enoughness of the two Medium Lasers already.

Ostsol OTL-4D

Another Heavy, a 60-ton Ostsol was armed only with energy weapons so it had absolutely no worries regarding the expendables. All the weapons were installed symmetrically: both side torsos had Large Lasers and Medium Lasers, the torsos also had rear-facing Mediums, while the fists were good for punching or picking up legs or trees as clubs (2x LLas, 2x MLas, 2x MLas[R]).

Shadow Hawk SHD-7H

Lightest of the gang was this 55-ton Medium 'Mech. The Shadow Hawk was somehow set up for each range bracket: for the long range it had an AC/5 on the shoulder and an LRM-5 on the Right Torso; for medium range it had that Medium Laser in the arm; and for the short it had the head-mounted SRM-2 and of course the fists. Three Jump Jets carried it for a maximum of 90m away from its starting point.

Phoenix Hawk IIC

Treacherously stolen from some Clan's Second Line unit the lucrewarriors had an 80-ton Assault 'Mech to compensate the lightness of its cousin. This one probably acted as a damage sponge while the others punished the enemies. Somehow this loadout was 100% ordnance-based and when the shells and bullets were done, all its pilot had were the fists and 80 tons of mass for DFA attacks with its five Jump Jets. Just for the closest of ranges and mostly against infantry it had two Machine Guns. For the actual enemies it had two UAC/10s with three shared tons of shells.

Gray Death hexes

Maybe suffering on Hesperus II

Once all the small stuff was out of the way this was going to be a much quicker subset. Most of the time would go to drying paint.

Mud texture

Three of the 'Mechs got a Vallejo mud texture paste stippling treatment by their feet. I didn't even think of doing footprints or anything so this was just to make the ground look not-flat. Then I painted the edges in dark grey, and when that was dry I painted some cold grey stripes on the front-facing edge.

Brick red oil painting

The difficult question was the colour of the ground that would work nicely with the deadly mercenaries. I felt that something on the red side of the spectrum would do well, so I covered the bases in Dark Brick Red (ABT220). After a couple of days of curing in the sauna I could tweak them more if needed.

After said drying time I drybrushed the bases with black grey but that felt a tiny bit weak. I let them be and applied a layer of AK's ultra matt varnish on the minis and then gave all clear pieces two layers of Vallejo's gloss varnish.

A colleague of mine suggested drybrushing the bases with black, his idea was a black-rock covered world with some red sand/dust in between the cracks. I thought I'd give it a go:

Gray Death detailing

Detailing rounds

Ah, it was the time for picking out details and tinkering on absurdly small things, and that was glorious. The cockpits, energy weapons, and all the individual bits on each mini - just the stuff I enjoyed the most in painting these little pieces. Of course I always came up with something new to fool around with so I never got very quick at this stage.

Reddening the cockpits

I liked to have the cockpits standing clearly out from the rest of the paintjob, and quite often I've ended up painting them in red. That being said, they ended red again. Over the flat black bases I painted a red-brown (RLM26) layer, then into the lower right sectors a red (RLM23) inverted L-shape or a blob if I was low on space. Into the red corners and their opposite corners I painted a white (VGA 72701 Dead White) dots or shapes as reflections, as space allowed. Like every other time, some panels succeeded better than some others.

Everything looked so much nicer in the Lance photo than in these individual supercloseups:

Energy weapon lenses

My process hadn't really changed since I started with this silliness. First I wrote down a list of what I actually needed to get done and in which colours:

1. Small Laser / Bloody Red (VGA 72710)
1. Warhammer 2pcs [LT,RT] even though I hadn't found out their places yet
2. Medium Laser / Escorpena Green (VGA 72732)
1. Warhammer 2pcs [LT, RT]
2. Ostsol 4pcs [LT, RT, LT[R], RT[R]]
3. Shadow Hawk 1pcs [RA]
3. Large Laser / Magic Blue (VGA 72721)
1. Ostsol 2pcs [LT, RT]
4. PPC / Electric Blue (VGC 72023)
1. Warhammer 2pcs [LA, RA] 

I didn't take the intermediate photos again and just took the "and now they're done" shots afterwards. My reasoning with this was that I had documented it many times enough and it didn't make sense to repeat the same substeps with photos every time.

The Warhammer was supposed to carry two Small Lasers in its torso but I simply didn't find them marked. That CT grille definitely didn't work as a palceholder so I skipped them. I decided not to worry with the gloss varnishes at this point on any of the surfaces but to do that much later.

Jump Jets

We had two jump-capable 'Mechs, Shadow Hawk was obviously one of them and the similarly named Phoenix Hawk IIC also carried a load of JJs in its back. This time, like I've done for all the nozzles, I painted them with electric blue and added some diluted white to the outer edges. I didn't paint the Shadow Hawk's nozzles as they were holes for the jump effect's plumes, so I just drybrushed them gently on the edges.

A chipping session

For the chips I used a piece of a plastic sponge and greyish white in various wearable-looking spots, mostly edges and other easily damaged areas. Into some of the larger or more noticeable chips I mixed my black grey with red for the deeper scratches. Basic stuff but more bothersome than on the 1:35 scale.

Replacement armour test

Foolishly I jumped into my silly idea of painting some fixed battle damage. I did that by painting some random panels and armour blocks in a grey I have always disliked a lot (VMA 71276 USAF Light Grey). As opposed to the novels, I didn't go for half-limbs or anything large like that even if it would've fit the theme pretty well.

The Warhammer had been shot here and there, no concentrated clusters of PPC damage.

Ostsol's Left Torso looked like it had gotten a healthy amount of damage right next to its head and I started thinking if I should also paint the left chest piece next to the Large Laser, it'd cover quite a bit of internal damage. As if it had taken a nickel-ferrous Gauss slug right next to the cockpit. That would've been an ear-ringer.

Shadow Hawk had also been just nibbled at.

Soot from the projectile weapons and more replacements

Getting back to the weapons, the foursome had three AutoCannons and a couple of Missile launchers. As they were they were quite clean so I drybrushed their firing ends and edges with black. Of course I could've used a black pigment but that was less easy to control than drybrush, and I didn't want to make them look like Soviet hardware either.

In my excitement of fine-tuning I also painted a few more panels as replacements. Especially Ostsol's left side called my attention.

To wrap this up for this week I had a photo of the Phoenix Hawk IIC's Jump Jet nozzles that I had completely forgotten to share earlier: