Finished: Project X/26

WAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

Here we had them, two teams for a strange sporting event to celebrate Orktober.

Santerz lil helpaz

The name for the red team came from the very coca-cola-santa look that I came to accidentally. As the orcish decorations they had chessboard marks wherever they fit.

Player / Troll-yeti

Red team's anchor point was this Troll-yeti in their leather pants.

Player group / Ulfhethnorc

These fellas were clearly meant for bone-breaking.

Player / Stoutswiller Gorksson

Mr Gorksoon was the Stretch Goal 4, and looked like he was smasing a fallen competitor in the head with a beer barrel. Apparently that was cool in the rules.

Player / Beerzerkork

I glued this guy onto the base to have him kicking something fiercely. In the kickstarter's demo pic he was standing on the other one, but that was ok, I found this pose good. The teeth were left in a bad state, they were a bit too small for my limited detailing skills.

Support / Apoth-orc-ary

The field doctor's role in the game was a total mystery to me but there had to be an explanation for it somewhere. This one had steel-reinforced boots in their feet, and I couldn't help thinking that steel-capped sandals would've been even funnier :D

 

My white painting wasn't great this time (again), those blood splatters would've stood out better from the blue team's stuff. Again the final photos revealed misses: the forehad lamp's leather band was left undone. That got sent to the post-processing.

Player group / Lineorks

I really had no idea what the lineorks were but here we had five of them. Those two rightmost ones were clearly to stop any opposing player, the two in the middle were kicking the not-ball into the distance, and the leftmost guy with his barrel was already talked about above.

Jerkz in jeanz

Being orcs and wearing blue pants I felt that this was a fitting name for this group of characters even if I only tried to paint anything denimlike on the one troll. 

Player / Mork Frostfur

Blue team's big walking piece of wall was also the stretch goal #5 but also the centerpiece of the team, a tall troll. He had a team scarf and I thought it was a huge risk, a quick opponent could just pull him down from it.

Player / Igor Ripgutsson

Igor, being also the stretch goal #3, clearly was caught in the middle of a pre-game posing.

Player / Beerzerkork

This Beer berserker had his own mead for the game. I was assuming them to be a player and not a fan on the sidelines, but it was a bit difficult to tell with the British sportsfans, who was a brutal player and who was just a brutal hooligan. I didn't follow sports myself so I relied on hearsay.

Player pair / Valkyrork

For the blue team I had the super special characters, these two Valkürenorks. The figures were glorious, which wasn't what one could say about my white painting skills. As a fun detail these two had steel-reinforced kicking boots.

Player / Alternative thrower

Another stretch goal (#2) the alternative thrower of the not-ball also had their own horn to toot. Or had they just stolen it from a referee?

Player pair / Beer Bork

In my miniature splitting process I gave the two Squigs with beer barrels belted on them to the blue team. I was especially happy with how the helmeted one's eyes ended up. They didn't have much blue, only the beard-ponytail-wrapper of the other one had a distinct blue on it.

Player group / Lineorks

These five line orcs formed a cruel-looking wall that I expected being difficult for the opposing team to get through of.

Player group / Throwers

This happy group of four were marked as throwers even if only one had anything throwable in their hand.

Player pair / Gobbos

Last and least the blue gang had two tiny goblin-gretchin chaps in their steel armour, running in the opponents' feet.

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.

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.

Finished: Project V/26

Fiery monkeys in the Kerensky Cluster

Apparently I got excited about this stuff as the project practically flew from start to finish. This also happened with the recent Diamond Sharks so maybe new and different was a good motivator for me. Of course I was boosted by my decision of not attempting to do roundels or any such difficult things.

Point 5 - Fire Moth Prime

As we have seen these before, the somewhat speedy Fire Moth with its normal top speed of 160km/h, not to mention the MASCed 200+km/h rapidity was also the lightest of the lights with its mere twenty tons of mass. At least it had a bit more varied weapon than its Starmate Howler: two ERMLas in one arm, a SRM-6 in the other, and a SRM-4 on one shoulder. Being the Point number five it was the Star's commander and quite likely the MechWarrior in question was also ranked a Star Commander.

Point 4 - Howler

The only actual BattleMech of the Star was a totem 'Mech of the Fire Mandrills, or one of them at least. This twenty-tonner ran almost 120km/h on good terrain and as a stroke of genious had a triple of LRM-5 launchers installed on the right shoulder, along with three tons worth of long range missiles. Yes, the Howler sported fists, too, but Truborns abhorred barbaric melee fighting so they didn't count as actual weapons.

Kit Fox Prime

Each of the three Kit Foxes were super boringly configured the same exact way, so the only way the visually differed from each other was by their highlights. These three were both heavier and slower than the two more senior Points and they didn't quite reach three-digit speeds. In the Right Arm the Kit Fox had an LB-5X AutoCannon and a Streak SRM-4 launcher. The opposite arm had, in addition to a fist, an ER Large Laser right next to a Small Pulse Laser.

Of course I could claim, had I painted the lasers differently, that some of them were B configs where the LB-5X was actually an UAC/10 and the SSRM-4 an SRM-6, while the ERLLas was downgraded to ERMLas and the SPLas to an ERSLas. But I had not thought of this that far.

Point 3

Point 2

Point 1

The Star's Point 1 was the unit's lowest-ranking Warrior. Maybe this was also depicted with the Kit Fox looking like it was about to fall. Or maybe it was just taking a nickel-ferrous Gauss slug or a PPC blast into its front left corner. That could happen to anyone, regardless of rank and experience level.

Finished: Project IV/26

Panzerfeldhaubitze 18M auf Geschützwagen III/IV (Sf) Hummel, Sd.Kfz. 165

♬ Gimme dat gimme dat gimme dat shell now ♬ sang the artillerymen at some point in history. This post was very clearly missing the singing red-collared dudes, even if they were on their way to fame and glory for a few days.

Building process with surface texturing

The model was a guaranteed Tamiya kit, no problems except when my own limited spacetime awareness caused them. The first fork-up came from the racks of the spare road wheels that I installed the wrong way and they ended up being just extra stepladders for the crew. Another forkup was easier to hide and concerned the little bars that kept the gun's shield in place. The third and most irrelevant of them was that at some point I managed to get the gun glued in place and the neat elevation mechanisms became useless. That wasn't a problem because I wasn't going to use it for much more than posing for some photos, and with the scrapped diorama would've been for a store loading, not a firing mission.

This time I remembered to poke the armour plates with the thin glue and an old dedicated paintbrush. Surface texturing does work, this approach didn't show up that strongly as in the DAK Panzer IV either because I was cautious, or my painting, or for some other reason. Of course it wasn't supposed to stand out like a clown nose so maybe this was good.

Failed diorama attempt, snapping tracks

In the actual post I didn't complain that much but in the real world I did grumble quite a lot and worked on it much longer than what one might assume by the photos and texts. I was pretty close to falling into the trap of sunk cost fallacy but managed to drop the triplet into a guillotine after a few fixing attempts.

This was my third Panzerwerk Design aftermarket tracks project, and my fourth articulated AM tracks -using project ever. The first was the Panzer IV that went without a hitch, the second was the StuG III that had one track link breaking in some transfer operation, and this was the third one where both of the tracks simply snapped when closing the loops. Maybe if I had added a link per side more this could've been avoided, but my predictive weathering had made them stiffer earlier and I had been a bit concerned about their flexibility. My worries turned out to be realistic and I had to fix my stupidities later. Still, I was very happy with them and would get more in future projects. Next I'd have to try some other hull than a Pz III/IV like a Tiger or a Panther, or something not-German even if that was heretical.

The joy of camouflage and oil paints

My airbrushed camo pattern was an example of underperformance, and I could blame no one else but myself. Instead of tweaking the shapes I added the Hinterhalt-Tarnung dots. I wanted to find real life examples of that pattern on an actual Hummel but I went with my feeling, and it wasn't a hyperserious paintjob anyway. Again, this was for my own amusement and enjoyment, and especially after the waste of time and effort with the figures I found the dot painting immensely nice and relaxing.

Time consumption

To get any kind of a clue for time used I checked my photo naming convention and even if I knew that it wasn't accurately tracking 45min hobby sessions but it gave me an idea. Just using the grouping this would've been a 21h project, but I had compressed some sessions together, a full 24h day was a plausible amount of time spent all around. An amount of that was lost with the figure failure but I had been spending lots of time on small things again. I couldn't remember if I had marked this much time on any other project so far, but we were quite high in the list in any case.

Captured photons

My photos ended up pretty neat this time, even as I didn't spend an our in Krita to turn the backgrounds to #FFFFFF. Instead I left the A4 backgrounds as they were.

Continuation thoughts

Interestingly 75% of my last four German vehicles were build on the Panzer IV hull. What would be the next one? From the Flakpanzer series the Wirbelwind has always been interesting, mainly for its looks, but a Kugelblitz or a Coelian would've worked, or even a funky-looking Möbelwagen. Just the Ostwind didn't catch my interest.

Of course it was possible that the next tracked vehicle had to wait, as I had now a ridiculous idea of going for a larger scale (1:32) flying machine soon. This smelled like a 109, 262, or a Stuka depending on what the nearest shelves had available when the time came. I had had some discussions earlier, and neither Salamander nor Komet were being made in that scale these days.

Finished: Project III/26

The first Merc Lance

Finally I had the first Lance of the ISD's Devastators mercenary company painted and ready. The silly jokes for all the namings was still in progress, just like the composition of the other Lances. I really wanted to fill one Lance with LRM boats or dinghies at least. If I couldn't get four legged LRM platforms, one Arrow IV 'Mech would be also very fitting. The important thing was to get an indirect fire group into my gang.

This Lance was a heavy hitter that intended to make the enemies' ears ring with the sounds of their armor plates crumbling under the relentless barrages. You could almost hear the staccato thud of the Marauder's AC/10 slamming into a Davion 'Mech, heat sinks rupturing. 

I left the MechWarrior names unpondered because I didn't have delusions of being an author, or even good for fanfics. Should the inspiration strike me for more than the boss' name, I'd share them and probably update here as well. For any potential later tweaks I predicted redoing the canopies, for the purpleish things didn't work at all like I hoped. I'll try something else with the upcoming two Lances and then retrofit these.

Devastator DVS-2

As the boss and owner of the merc unit was captain firstName lastName, who roamed the battlefields in the cockpit of his DVS-2 while not drowning in paperwork. The captain's 'Mech's left shoulder had an american-style II as his rank marking. Of course the number 1 painted on the left shin also was some sort of a hint when you had to find your ride from the ground.

Both Devastators were of the same variant: a Gauss Rifle in each Arm, a PPC in each side torso, and with two Medium Laser in the Torsos and one in Head, and a fourth one in the back facing backstabbers. Just painting the Head and back -mounted ERLas red to turn them into Small Lasers this could've been called a DVS-11, but I tried to stick to the Classic timeline whenever the pieces allowed. Also, if blue was good in general, and the PPCs were a bit differently jeweled, this could've also been a DVS-1D with AC/10s in arms and Large Lasers in the side torsos.

Devastator DVS-2

The shop's second in command, a lieutenant firstName lastName also operated a DVS-2. This MechWarrior recognized their 'Mech, if not by the different camo, from the left shoulder's I rank bar and the left leg's number 2.

 

Marauder MAD-3D

On the much better-looking half of Thunder Lance was sergeant firstName lastName in their Marauder MAD-3D, its top hull had a <<< marking and the left leg carried a number 3 for recognition. MAD 3D carried the typical PPCs paired with a Medium Laser in both arms, and its dorsal gun was a Large Laser that removed the 3R model's problem with being reliant on ammo.

 

Marauder MAD-3R

The optional dorsal gun was, of course, the aforementioned AC/5 with its ammo load. 

KUVA 

Marauder MAD-5R

The other Marauder, decorated with a number 4, was driven by a lance corporal firstName lastName, their ego was also stroked with their << rank painted on the hull. This Marauder was recognizeable as the 5R variant by its different kind of a dorsal gun, a RAC-5 that was somewhat less ridiculous than the awful RAC-2. In its arms it had the more advanced ER PPCs but still paired with MLas rayguns. To the outside you couldn't tell it was also loaded with a Guardian ECM, a C3S system, and some additional armour.

Rear shots

 To accompany the more frontal and front-side shots I added here a few side-rear views to show the caution stripes better, and the Devastator back-facing death rays.

Now I didn't spot any more masking tape pieces on the minis. Took many enough rounds, that!