Finished: Project II/26

Altmärkische Kettenwerk GmbH Sd.Kfz. 142/1 - StuG III Ausführung G 10.5cm

At least in my home country there's a number of these Alkett-made assault guns sprinkled as decorations. One can be seen facing west-northwest in the Parola junction (roads 3 (E12) and 3051) while a Leopard 2A4 poses on the southern side. They weren't all in museums or where the conscripts get trained. With its different variants the StuG III was also the most numerously built tracked vehicle by the Germans.

This individual had a 105mm gun, based on the sources it might not be a StuG III but a StuH 42 aka Sturmhaubitze 42 aka Sd.Kzf. 142/2, even though the Sturmhaubitze should have a muzzle brake that this one didn't get. I used the name in the box, chosen by the manufacturer. They ought to know.

Method madness or the lamentations part

When I started on this I was so excited about trying the armour texture again. Then I completely forgot it in my excitement of priming the model, and caught myself a tiny bit too late. Perhaps I would remember all this on the next armoured model.

I was following the instructions to the letter and skipped all the opportunities for PE because I had not looked at the PE sheets before and spend a few moments thinking where they'd belong. I trusted blindly in the instructions telling me the options, or marking the photoetch bits like the sprues. Now I was in a situation where I had kinda bought an aftermarket set and not use any of it. Probably the only things I would've realistically used were the engine intake grilles, I really wasn't a fanatical tool clamp person.

With the oil paints the recommendation has been to have a layer of gloss varnish to protect the acrylics. As a bonus the capillary effect works better on the supersmooth surface of the shiny coat. On a couple of projects now the matt varnish applied over the glossy one hasn't gotten stuck as expected, as there have been annoying spots of shininess in places despite multiple reapplications of matt varnish. Maybe all those would behave better through an airbrush, maybe not, but these ones I had didn't go through the tool anymore and were strictly brush-only anymore. I had new stuff in the future pipeline.

I also made some silly choices with my paints, more accurately with the red brown. This one was too red for camouflage and I ended up with a circus candy bag. That was stuck in my mind for the remainder of the project and most likely caused my general displeasure with the painting in general. At least I could tone the redness down with a brushed-on Panzer Aces camo brown, the VMC paints were not directly airbrushable and I didn't feel the need to swear with the dilutions either so... brushwork it was.

 

Photos

When taking the photos I tried a different approach with the lights. They ended a bit overexposed. Maybe I'd retake the photos and update them later, but we'd start with these today.

Miniproject I/26

Mass-priming

Having all this freedom of choice was surprisingly bothersome. I didn't have the faintest clue of which BT miniature to poke next and nothing really jumped out as the next item. My cleverest idea was to just take the whole untouched mass and prime it all in a batch.

When the inspiration would strike, I could just take anything and start working on it. The latest minis I have painted recently had mostly been primed at some random calm moment, and that had made me happy. Now I'd just do that in a planned way.

VSP red

Surprisingly I still had a bit of the red primer left. I wanted to use it before it got too thick with age to go through my airbrush.

Mercenaries

I started with the most numerous of the lot, the default Company in the Mercenaries box.

Legendary MechWarriors II

Going on I had enough red primer to coat 66,666...% of the units in the Legendary MechWarriors II set. The SM1, the Devastator and the Charger got red, then I was out. It was a handy primer, and it lasted for years, and most importantly it remained perfectly good until the very last drop.

VSP black

When the red was done I switched to the large bottle of black primer and continued with the second Legends.

Legendary MechWarriors II

From this set just the Marauder - without its rooftop guns - and the Caesar went black.

Legendary MechWarriors III

Also the third Legend set's Marauder was primed without its dorsal gun options. I just didn't feel like fighting with them while priming rapidly. The Marauder was also the last one painted and was still a bit damp when I took the photo of the rest already in their storage blister. This was a nice set with a good amount of nice rides.

Clan Direct Fire Star

Probably I mentioned back in the day that the Rifleman IIC I knew first in MechWarrior II was the reason to pick this box. Not that the Highlander IIC was bad either. The rest just happened to be sideshows that I wasn't familiar with. Finding a home for them all was going to be an operation of its own.

Clan Ad Hoc Star

Pack Hunter had been painted a while earlier. The Kodiak was eager to get painted as a Ghost Bear, but I already had five of them.

Battlefield Support: Objectives

This photo showed the MASH truck's right side using the extended bit, whichever operating theatre module it was. There was just one of these modules, and it could be set on either of the sides - or left completely off.

Salvage: Battlefield Support: Vehicles

Galleon / Maxim. On the vehicles I was most concerned about the undersides, I didn't want unpainted plastic shown when taking photos from the ground level.

Salvage: Battlefield Support: Vehicles

Hetzer / Maxim. Same approach as with the previous duo, undersides first and foremost, the rest would be much easier.

Salvage: Visigoth

I didn't bother taking a separate photo of the bottom of the Visigoth.

Salvage: Blood Asp

Blood Asp could've been a good candidate for the Blood Spirits had I not already painted a full Star of them much earlier.

Salvage: Mercenaries: 'Mech

Dervish. No idea what to do with it yet.

Salvage: Savannah Master

For priming I set the tiny hovercraft on the hex base in a way that should, hopefully, maximize the underside coverage. Doing this with anything this size was a bit funny, but at least they stayed on the bases just by their pegs instead of flying away like autumn leaves. Or a five-ton hovercraft after taking a gauss slug into the side.

100mm Timber Wolf

This was the pretty and pretty large miniature. Great details.

Mass-operation operated

This all took three evenings. Somehow this made me more inspired, with all the bits and pieces being at least primed and I could just pick something up to work on it for real. Small things made a huge difference sometimes. Still, I felt like doing something else than miniatures for a change, even if it was just one scale modeling project.

Finished: Project VIII/25

Sharks of the black seas (2985–3100)

This Clan that had changed its name a couple of times during its history was a very merchant-minded, like the Lyrans. Politically these folks had been also visited both the Crusader and Warden camps, unlike my Jade Falcons. As an Invading Clan it got to my painting table despite being occasionally a softie.

Piranha

Piranha, a 20-tonner, was the only ClanTech BattleMech in this group. It was armed with an ER Medium Laser on each arm, an ER Small Laser in the middle of CT, and the side torsos were packed with 12 Machine Guns. If it wasn't anything but a very-close-up evildoer, it was doing it quite heat-efficiently.

Cougar B

My modified 30-ton Cougar was armed quite like the Puma, but looked so much cooler in my books. Both arms had an ER PPC, and the nose carried a single ER Medium Laser. To make it clear that this was a victorious Warrior, a shark mouth was painted below the cockpit.

  

Stormcrow Prime

Bringing the Star's average weight up was the first of the two 55-ton Stormcrows. This one was configured as the Prime variant, carrying two ER Large Lasers and three ER Medium Lasers. To help a bit with those, a dozen additional Double Heat Sinks were installed.

Stormcrow C

This C config was built around an LB-10X AutoCannon. To accompany this munitions-hungry tool there was a Large Pulse Laser and two Medium Pulse Lasers for medium and short range fighting.

Ice Ferret E

In the lower range of the Medium 'Mechs we had an Ice Ferret, from a newer end of the timeline, an E configuration. The Left Arm was replaced with an ATM-9 launcher I had never used in a game. To help with the expendables-reliance it carried an ER Medium Laser and a Small Pulse Laser.

Finished: Project VII/25

Overlord-C CJF Quatrefoil

Clan Jade Falcon's Gamma Galaxy had about ten Clusters, and each of them required transport capability to get to and from places. Attached to "my" Cluster was CJF Quatrefoil that Sarna's wiki declared to be a plain Overlord or maybe a Command variant. I didn't care about that, I modeled mine as the C version.

My five-Trinary Cluster would fully fit in an Overlord-C, and its mothership, an Aegis-class Battle Cruiser CJF Scabbard could then carry four DropShips in its docking rings. No worries, I wasn't going to go that far and also implement AeroTech.

Weaponry

I mumbled quite a bit about this while painting. Not all was modeled religiously so there was space for just for storytelling. All in all I found a place for six ER PPCs, two ER Large Lasers, two Large Pulse Lasers, and trusted that the rest of the long-range fury was provided by cleverly hidden triplet of LRM-20 launchers with the Artemis IV Fire Control System. The closer-range punch was provided by a dozen Medium Pulse Lasers divided into four rotating turrets, and also turret-installed UAC/5 and UAC/20 sets.

Despite being modeled in vastly different scales the OmniMechs and the Overlord-C looked neat posing next to each other. I didn't fish out my maps for these photos, that stuff had to wait a bit. 

Using the white background cloth with a light grey target was me begging for problems in the photo editing stage, so I skipped the swearing part and didn't even try to flatten the background. This was easier with the blue background but I still needed to improve on my process quite a bit. While cleaning up the photos I was thinking that if I had a couple of A3 sheets it'd be simpler, as long as I managed to keep them smooth and crinkle-free. The fabric background left plenty of artifacs in the jpegs at least in this scale, the normal 1:35 scale models were much easier.

These insignia made me unspeakably happy in general, and I was also surprisingly happy with something as simple as painting an oversized Kinder egg grey :D

Finished: Project VI/25

Two Clan people

This was the first time I did this sort of a mass operation. Painting two very different schemes in parallel wasn't specially time consuming or more complicated than concentrating on one. Maybe this was slightly more productive, as I could work on one gang while the other one was drying instead of just packing my stuff away until the next painting session.

Hell's Horses

A Star of Hell's Horses 'Mechs brought more colour to my odd collection of BattleTech minis. Each of the Clans were not represented by a minimum tactical amount of units, I didn't see a reason to paint singles or less than five Points on purpose. My main reason for choosing the Hell's Horses was the peculiar paintjob and that they were politically Crusaders.

Fire Moth

The fastest of the Light tripled was a Fire Moth that ran over 200pkh with its MASC-powered legs. It originated from the Ghost Bears.

Such a fast one was naturally a bit lighter on the offensive side: two ER Medium Lasers in its praying mantis -like arms, and both SRM-6 and SRM-4 launchers. The larger launcher was in the Right Arm and the other one above the cockpit.

Cougar

On the opposite side of the Light class was stolen from Jade Falcons at some point. The Prime configuration had ER Large Lasers in both Arms and LRM-10 launchers on shoulders. I liked the twin ER PPC -carrying B config so much more myself.

Huntsman

The first Medium 'Mech was a Diamond Shark -designed jump-capable 50-tonner whose production rights ended up at some point to the Nova Cats. The clearly heavier weapons load was much more punchy on this one: four ER Medium Lasers, a Streak SRM-6, an LRM-10 with Artemis IV, an UAC/2, an unmodeled Flamer, topped up with two AP Pods against infantry.

Pack Hunter

This Star's second jump-capable unit was a one-trick dog from the Wolf-in-Exile. On its right shoulder the Pack Hunter carried a lone ER PPC, and it was a pretty quick one on its feet to make the most out of its one weapon.

Nova

Nova was designed by the Hell's Horses, this invididial had been marching in the Jade Falcon Touman for a couple of decades before returning back home. The Prime config was, as we have admired before, built around 12 ER Medium Lasers. Alpha striking with those got your Omni shut down pretty quickly. In case that wasn't enough heat for the pilot, it also sported Jump Jets for a true sauna session.

Jade Falcon

No excuses were required to paint Jade Falcons, maybe I needed some motivation to keep completing the three Trinaries instead of painting individual Stars halfway quickly. This triplet was at this point, for record-keeping, in the second Trinary's third Star. I'd get to the actual assignments when the whole Cluster was done. Each of these Points was gloriously won Isorla.

Nova Cat #232

Nomen est omen, the Nova Cat was a Totem 'Mech by the Nova Cats. This kitty had long and sharp claws: one hand had two ER PPCs and the other one three ER Large Lasers.

Kingfisher #231

This over a hundred year old 90-tonner was designed by the Snow Ravens, and its design was based on an even older 'Mech from the Not-Named-Clan. So, we didn't talk about them much. Being an Assault unit it carried a fun array of tools with somehow funny placements: one of the Large Pulse Lasers was in the arm, while its pair was in the middle of the torso. A pair of Medium Pulse Lasers were installed in the shoulders, an LRM-10 in the side like on the Atlas, and an SRM-6 in the Left Arm. Below the SRM was a single ER Small Laser.

Crossbow #234

This model was a couple of centuries old as well. Designed by the Steel Vipers, a second generation OmniMech was funnily armed only with LRM-20 launchers in its arms. At least they had the Artemis IV fire control, but it was a bit weird considering the Clan style. The reason for the weapons living only in the arms was that the development team couldn't make the OmniPods work anywhere else. For this same reason the older Crossbow frames couln't use Jump Jets.

Finished: Project V/25

Starscream

The number two guy of the Decepticons, their Air Boss, and the fool who was constantly trying to undermine mighty Megatron's power, always failing in his coup attempts, Starscream was immediately recognizeable. Or he was if you were at least a fraction as excited about Transformers as I was in 1987 when I got my hands on the first Finnish-translated issue 1/87 of Semic's comic (mostly Marvel's US stories with some random UK stories here and there). I had never got myself any of the original three Seeker toys, not even from the flea markets, so while continously pondering on ordering the Masterpiece I fulfilled some childhood dream by painting a scale model to look like Starscream himself. And as you all very well knew, if it was worth doing, it was worth overdoing, so there were going to be two more of these models.

"My time will come, Megatron."

While slowly working on the remaining two F-15s I had to come up with a good storage solution for my unique Strike Eagle variant. One that didn't end up being full of dust. The other core requirement was that it had to be safe from our cats. Safer than it had been so far, I meant.

Photoset

Here we had them, a set of photos. Some of the shots I took suffered from my image editing methods and that I didn't get a flat enough ground set up in the light tent, which ended up with the canvas being wavy. That led to the bottoms of some shots being cropped due to half-visible wheels and such. This, clearly, required something else :tm: to solve my issues.