Project VI/25

The last of the Invasion miniatures

While updating the BTTracker again I was pondering where in the Empire would I assign these last seven 'Mechs. Three of them - Nova Cat, Crossbow, Kingfisher - were Heavy or Assault class, so they could move to the Jade Falcons. With this allocation my Cluster only missed full Trinary C and about three quarters of the AeroSpace Trinary E. The updated painting situation was pretty weak, but it was a self-made problem thanks to my decision of dropping Mediums and Lights pretty much completely out.

My last unstarted minis were: Cougar, Fire Moth, and a Huntsman. One older IWM-made Nova fit here nicely, as it was coming for a reassignment. I was just missing one measly 'Mech from a fresh Star for a new Clan, and as I was just admiring the latest version of my tracker I found a Pack Hunter from the Mercs set. This Star was going to find itself in the Touman of the Hell's Horses.

Apart from the Pack Hunter, Crossbow and Kingfisher they were all already primed black so I was going to be up to speed in no time! If the excitement carried me to new levels of insanity, I might even turn this into a Nova with that one unassigned Elemental Star.

Project V/25

Revell F-15E Strike Eagle

Santa brought me both a Panzer Aces set of paints and surprisingly, a 1:72-scale F-15 that I had wished for, and this was a subtype E. I didn't mind the config myself, and this was the first of the three F-15s I wanted to implement a funny (to me) idea.

This multimodel main project affected how I was going to handle the documentation of this first plane.

Most probably I'd go with a build, cockpit painting, and the priming, maybe even the basecoating of the plane would be included in IV/25, then it would be stored until the other two would have reached the same stage. At that point, with the triplet in the place where they'd diverge, I could do the actual paintjob as its own subproject.

Optionally I'd do this one from start to finish but just skip sharing the paintjob until I was far enough with the others. Some basics I would need to paint in a recognized and proper way anyway, like the titanium engine cowlings and whatnot.

Instructions

On a cursory glance the coloured instructions were pretty clear, I appreciated the colours supporting the A-Z flags. Especially the colouring of the weaponry was a very nice detail. Was I going to bother following those? We'd see.

Bits

There were three transparent pieces this time, the canopy bits and the collector plate for the HUD. Maybe I ought to paint the sides with a coloured wash instead of doing them black. I had to look into that stuff, as I had no clue right now.

All I could say about these was that they looked like pieces of an airplane.

Miniproject IV/25

Lego 10358 Soundwave

From rumours to actual items

I started hearing some whispers of the next Lego Transformer during H1/2025 and these whispers said it'd be Soundwave. This got confirmed before my summer vacation and it'd also have a sound brick and of his minions we'd get Laserbeak and Ravage. On the e-shelves it'd be on 4.8. unless you were an insider, you'd get to send them money on 1.8. already. Conveniently that was also the day when I returned from my vacation, absolutely perfect timing for a change.

Then all I could do was to wait for the delivery. Luckily there was the weekend, and a long enough way home, so I got enough things to keep me busy and away from fretting.

This time the express shipping was truly express

Early on Monday I got a message telling me they'd actually deliver it by the end of the day. That was a bit ambiguous but I was prepared for much worse. During my morning meetings the delivery window got specified to 13-15, and it was a timeslot I was meeting-free! The driver ended up having some trouble somewhere, so it was a bit later when I got the box, but I was so excited I didn't even think of grumbling.

Construction in three evenings

One and half a thousand pieces in twelve numbered bags required some time to assemble. As always, working on doubles the first arm/leg/whatnot was half as quick to build than the follow-up(s).

Mini-me

The bag number one gave us Soundwave's alt mode and two printed different minion tiles on the deck. Genious.

Laserbeak

Bag #2 had the bits for Laserbeak. Just the printed 1x1 tiles with the Decepticon insignia made me giggly. The lego version wasn't quite as complex as the Masterpiece versions so the engine-gun pieces had to be detached when transforming to the alt mode.

Ravage

Third up, Ravage. Ravage's engine things were detachable for the transformation as well.

They were magnificent! And that's as far as I got on Monday, but I wrapped up in good spirits.

Soundwave

On Tuesday I got to start on Soundwave's hips. Behind the now-fallen Play button we had a cavity for the sound brick. The infamous sound brick that I hadn't encountered yet.

Ah, the sound brick was immediately in bag #5, and over it I built a nice face mosaic. In the name of transparency, I may have spent a stupid amount of time playing with the sound chip. There was a silly amount of sounds in it, more than I felt like counting. The list contained some pew pew effects, the transformation sounds, the scene change jingle from the cartoons, and a pile of Frank Welker quotes such as "Soundwave superior". The rest of the family wasn't quite as extatic as I was.

Over the sound brick I built a chest cavity, with enough space for one minion at a time. The instructions said that the opening mechanism was the first thing they engineered.

This glorious Decepticon-decorated transparent bit was in a separate bag to avoid scratches. Now that I got another bagful of pieces assembled, the cassette bay door and its opening mechanism worked. Satisfying was the perfect word here, both for the tactile feel of pressing the button, and the sound that it made.

Interestingly the remaining pieces of this bag brought the craftily hinged bits where the arms were going to be attached to.

Now the next bag (I guess I was on the seventh now) gave Soundwave his arms. He had four fingers per hand, and they all were articulatable unlike Optimus Prime's sausages. In addition to the usual finger-pointing and fist-shaking he could do the heavy metal horns or just flip the bird. Or both at the same time. The limbs also had an amount of ball joints so they were going to be very nicely poseable.

On Wednesday I returned to the build and started with the right leg. The inside of the calf got a funky multi-jointed himmel, whose functionality only started being clear when the whole leg was closed and the sides encased the mechanisms properly.

\,,/ Rock rock \,,/

While in progress the spurlike thing was a silly floppy thing that didn't feel like it had a good real position. 

After smashing the missing leg into his hips I was already sadly far in the building proess. I didn't even think of checking if Lego Soundwave could press his own shoulder button as coolly as MP-02 could.

I had been wondering why I had to press the front faces of the legs into the leg itself as if I was partially transforming him into his altmode. Still, I obediently followed the instructions. The reason became clear after the next bagful of pieces and the subprocess of building the feet of his. Those were easy to press into their places when the receiving ends were in a sturdy position. After setting them in place the feet were then folded out for a proper standing robot pose.

The last two bagfuls and steps gave us Soundwave's head and the head's hideout in his upper back, and the AA batteries / weapons. The final bag just had the Icons set's plaque. At this point it was a bit late and I was both excited and busy, so I didn't take too many WIP photos.

For his optics I was given two options: red ones like in the early episodes, or yellow. Instead of choosing randomly, I checked what MP-02 had and installed the yellow lenses.

Naturally I tried out the alt mode and its transformation process. It worked very nicely, thanks for asking.

Photoset - coming soon :tm:

Very much unlike my usual approach to this, this time I didn't wait to get the light tent, tripod, camera, image editors and all set up and done before sharing this post. So for a change the photos were going to be dropped in afterwards. All the essentials were already shown, so only silliness remains.

Project III/25

A Second Line Star

The full content of the Clan Heavy Star had been marching towards Jade Falcon Gamma Galaxy's Solahma Cluster, being just a set of Second Line BattleMechs instead of OmniMechs in a Front Line Galaxy. My only other, and quite remote, option had been the Omega Galaxy I had used on the BanDai models.

 

I had even thought this out loud in irc as well, where the idea of painting some enemies was supported. So far I had a Star of Ghost Bears who participated in the Operation:REVIVAL, and another for the grumpy Home Clan, the Blood Spirits, so all five of these would belong to the same Clan. Story-wise the Smoke Jaguars didn't inspire me one bit, and their Alpha Galaxy's "Grey with spots" didn't make me jump with joy. Steel Viper and Nova Cat had been mostly side characters in the main storyline novels, so what did I have left beyond Wolf? I just really didn't want to add one more Clan Wolf / Beta Galaxy unit to the world, even if that was maybe the most recognized scheme of theirs.

 

Naked pictures

Warhammer IIC

Supernova

Stone Rhino

Marauder IIC

Hunchback IIC

I really really worked hard on my Clan and Galaxy choices. According to UCG the Delta looked more fun than Beta but as a term "lowland camo" said absolutely nothing to me before a good amount of ddg searches. Camospecs' Delta photos showed a yellowish torso with black triangles, which didn't sound too much fun to paint, like I didn't find those appealing when working on the Blood Spirit scheme. Then there was the command unit of Delta, the Red Keshkik, which was dark grey that faded into brown going upward. That just wasn't a thing that anyone but a serious fan would recognize as a Clan Wolf scheme.

Project II/25

More Points for Jade Falcons

After a long stint with the diorama, I wanted something simpler to spice up my life, so I checked my Operation:REVIVAL minis. I only had about two Binaries unpainted so I took the most fitting ones for the 9th Falcon Talon Cluster, and the remaining, less prominent Points would become some enemy troops or other.

Every once in a while the enginerd inspiration struck and I improved my BattleTechTracker, which I originally set up just to get rid of my A4 paper with the Point numbers and have something more updateable. As you might imagine, that got out of hand quickly and repeatedly. While writing this post, my setup had 8 sheets of which was dedicated to following the state of the 9th Talon Cluster: there was the overall painting status based on the completed minis; the positions of individual Points in the org with their variants, numbers and weight classes; and a table for the weight distribution through the Cluster. This one made me drop almost a Binaryful of 'Mechs from my original setup, which included a pair of Cougars and Fire Moths each, for example.

 

I wasn't staring at tables when I picked which minis to paint, no worries. From the Clan Heavy Battle Star box I got a Turkina and an Ebon Jaguar, and from the Clan Fire Star box I took only the Warhawk.

Partially primed init();

During some evenings last Autumn I had primed a Binary of miniatures, the other Binary or the last two untouched boxes were still waiting. So this project started with 33,333...% of the initialization already done out of the way.

Like I said, the Warhawk had been primed several months ago, mostly likely while waiting for some other paintjob to dry.

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.