A six Lance Combat Drop

The awesome BattleTech Starter Set that I bought earlier this year had creeped to the front of my TODO-list with all its pawns. As my first task I assembled the other bonus plastic OmniMech miniature, Hellbringer. There's the amount of pieces, somehow organized for assembling:

And here's the built Hellbringer Prime:

Now that all the pieces were built, it was the time to prepare a sinkful of water and soap. Then a Combat Drop ensued to let them all be soaked and scrubbed a bit to get rid of that mold releasing agent. Maybe that was enough, I wouldn't know yet. I've just heard horror stories of how bad those plastic IS minis are. Somehow I've never had any problems with the IWM metal minis but I dropped the plastic Omnis in as well. Just in case.

After the whole set had dried I chose a bunch of them to be worked on first. My criteria was either missing or badly attached pieces, which is why Jenner and that armless thing (I can't recognize all the freeborn tincans, but I'm guessing it's a Commando) are there, or simply that there's an obvious need for modification.
For example, Atlas and Cyclops both need a new barrel for their AC20s, Jägermech needs a repose and minor tinkering and that Awesome(?) needs some tweaking as well. Obviously that Catapult of mine needs LRM opened doors to look like a real Catapult.

In a way those plastic pieces are in a horrible condition, but I'm not going to try to fix them all. As long as I get some neat details done here and there to give them a more unique look (or just to make them look better in my own eyes) before I start painting :) It could be that this project is going to take a good long while, for there's an immense amount of stuff to be done. Could take until next year, who knows how it'll go?

Warhammer IIC - a custom variant

There's not much to say about the last phase of this build, other than that the "glass" I made works pretty nicely and that cockpit jeweling / blending isn't my cup of tea. Or at least I don't do it even decently at this point in history. As a bonus difficulty multiplier I tried to do red, which turns pink with white and looks like crap. After repainting the big window that looks like a mouth and the smaller windows on the "forehead" did wonders but is still far from looking cool.
Practice makes perfect and I have a lot of practice to do (though, I have to say that my attempt at green eyes for the Atlas in my Model Expo 2009 diorama wasn't too bad). So maybe I'll use a different colour for that next time.

This beast of a 'Mech didn't end up being wysiwyg (those two guns in the head aren't in, the torso guns are all of a different size and so on), unlike the Marauder. You can't always win but you can charge them while alpha striking! That is always both Right and Beautiful.

I add the specs below, some people may find it more interesting and useful than some others:

Mass	80 tons
Tech/Era	Clan / 3055
Config	Biped 'Mech (Level 2)
Movement	4 / 6 / 0
Internal structure	Endo Steel (122pts)
Engine	320 Fusion
Heat Sinks	20 Double
Armor	Ferro-Fibrous (230pts)
Weapons & Equipment
Type Loc Heat Ammo LB 5-X AC RA 1 20 (RA) LB 5-X AC LA 1 20 (LA) SRM 6 RT 4 15 (RT) Medium Pulse Laser RT 5 - Medium Pulse Laser RT 5 - Medium Pulse Laser RT 5 - Medium Pulse Laser LT 5 - Medium Pulse Laser LT 5 - Medium Pulse Laser LT 5 - CASE Combat Heat 36 (40)

This thing ended up being nicely filled: the tons are all used and only one Critical Slot was left unused. The original design carried a couple of ERPPCs and other neat toys, but as I had originally decided that this one's an AutoCannon carrier... For some weird reason bigger than Class-5 AutoCannons didn't fit so that there was any space left for more guns. I decided to, for the sake of fun and sportmanship, to use the LBX (shotgun) variants instead of Ultra AutoCannons like the ones used in my Marauder.
Those LB 5-X's are decent for crit-seeking, even though they aren't as enfuriatingly good at it as LB 20-X guns are... My two sets of triple ER Medium Lasers are maybe a disturbing option, even though it's nothing compared to Nova Prime's twelve ERMLasers... now that's one sick config. The only thing I left is the SRM-6 launcher, no fooling around with Streaks or anything due to lack of available tonnage.

Right above the lasers on the left torso you can see the number of this unit: 825. That being the next one from Marauder (824). I'm used to pulling the unit numbers from my magical hat without any kind of a plan or anything. Maybe in the future I could do something more german, such as Trinary number (1-9), Star number (1-3), Point number (1-5) and I think that should be enough for the Clan, Galaxy and Cluster are always known and don't need to be indicated with numbers. This particular Cluster doesn't have any special logo or pattern that can be used as an identifier but then again, making the numbers even longer would end up being a bit stupid.
I've used a similar numbering (Star/Point/Plane) with my 9th Falcon Talon Cluster's AeroSpace Figthers points but not with 'Mechs. Maybe I should do something like that in the future.

First year done and slow mech progress

Oh my, I just realized that I started this silliness of blogkeeping in last August! Confusingly I've managed to keep this up for an insanely long time (in my own opinion) and at a decent ~once a week pace. That's noticeably more than those "maybe ten if that much" posts I had thought of when I started. I don't think I was doubting for no reason but apparently mumbling about these has gone nicely, anyway. How confusing.

But that's that, who cares? To the point!

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My agenda for the last couple of days has been more of playing Borderlands (second playthrough with Mordecai) than tinkering. I mostly blame the weather for that. Several details have been added, though, so I haven't been completely useless. Firstly I attacked the tools of destruction: flat aluminium to the ends of the laser guns and the insides of the AutoCannon barrels. Over those I applied a black wash to a) make the lasers look a bit different than the torso and b) make them stand out less in general.

While I was fooling around I attached the hip to the torso as I was done with airbrushing, there was no longer a need to keep them separated. Until I'm done with the logos, I'll keep the legs separately, for convenience and simplicity.

I'm not sure how good an idea this was, but we'll see. I cut a slice of transparent plastic from a bigger container I saved for this purpose. Then I did a couple of passes with a coarse sanding paper to give it a bit more interesting texture while keeping it mostly transparent. After a bit of dry-fitting and half a dozen of tiny slices I got a nice plate that fit into the "mouth" of the searchlight. Maybe it looks very cool when it's in its own place.

As the evening sun was (too) rapidly fading away I painted a bunch of areas yellow. Tomorrow I'll add the black stripes to complete the caution pattern. Because all the missile pod doors got a noticeable caution strip on them, I decided to keep the rest smaller and few. This was to avoid making my Warhammer looking like a circus vehicle (or a tank of one of those weirder Warhammer 40,000 factions)...

A calm return back to my projects

Last Tuesday I went and dug some plumber's tape from the deepest depths of the store. While I was checking how to use it I was getting slightly concerned: does this frail looking stuff work at all? To try it out I applied a single round of that tape on all the male parts of the connections and then screwed on the next piece. That was repeated thrice and it was time to turn the thing on. Himmel, it worked!

I don't have the faintest clue of why I was surprised, but I was. The main thing is that I was positively surprised. While I was at it, I painted my Warhammer's torso all green. In the end - despite suboptimal evening lighting conditions at this point of the summer - I didn't end up having too many parts requiring later touching up.

There wasn't much to do with the legs anymore, I applied the black wash on and later I added the red splashes here and there. This time I was a bit more liberal with that red than with my Marauder. The rest of the detailing, which means all the logos at this point, is still mostly not done. I had started working on the Omega Galaxy's logo by painting the yellow planet part. All the rest will be done pretty quickly, if everything goes like the last time.

AFK

Verdammt doch mal

The pieces I filed so eagerly were done so I spent a while one evening priming them with the gray spray primer. This time I learned that when the amount of paint in the can is awfully low, it doesn't do much good to the model anymore. The last areas I covered were a bit off, the paint didn't spread in a nicely thing veil as it usually does. I spent a good while filing that stuff down the following evening. Live and learn.

To my joy I noticed that the vast majority of the seams I had been working on were just like they were supposed to: unnoticeable. A couple of them needed a bit of puttying and resanding (and repriming a bit later), but in general things went pretty nicely.

Instead of marching to a hobby store to get another can of spray primer, I thought of doing that with my brand new compressor and the tiny gray primer bottle I got earlier for some reason. To begin with, I rechecked the instruction sheet just in case, attached both(!) adapters, the hose and the airbrush itself. Power on. The machine itself wasn't awfully noisy but there was an extra sound of air flowing in an unexpected way. Those bastards were leaking. Not completely unexpected, for the shopkeep had mentioned it as well as did the instructions.
Ok. I should apply some plumber's tape to the leaky parts. Obviously I don't own any and at some point I have to go to a hardware store to ask for that. In finnish it has many different names (and offensively many ways of typoing it *grumblegrumble*) so even googling it took a nice while but now I know where to go and what to say.

My quick fix with painter's tape didn't fix anything well enough. That would've been too easy I guess.

Anyway, I'll be more than busy this week so I'll do my tape-shopping on my last vacation week. I've got all the time in the world but still I'm a bit disappointed because I didn't get to try my new toy out.

To get something useful done I painted the legs and hip parts just like the Marauder. They're still waiting for a black wash and the red splashes before I get to have another go at freehanding all the logos and stuff.

The kit piece that's supposed to be an antenna and is to be attached next to the cockpit looked way too awkward to my liking, so I used a black bristle from a 0,4EUR brush I got to be used exactly in these cases. It looks like an antenna to me 8) While I was at it, I drilled the torso machine guns open so they look a bit more decent now.
Oh, the half-done searchlight can be seen in the picture! It's missing the protective glass because I'll attach it after the green has been sprayed on the torso. And when I've come up with a plan but let's not tell that to anyone.

Project 4/2011

My Marauder won't get to be alone on its shelf for too long for I started almost immediately working on the Warhammer IIC's variant "something". Let's see what happens with this one. This time I knew that there are certain things that are to be avoided because I did them with the last project. In general I should remember to fuss around less and ponder more... I should.

The model consists of very few parts and the instructions are pretty short again. If I remember correctly, the total part count is about 40 and they're divided into two sprues. Not a problem, I can fail with those if I really tried to :P

As usual, I obediently started from the beginning. First ones were the arms with their guns. The gun barrels tried to grin a bit so I taped them shut to keep them nicely, I didn't think that pegs would be needed in this kind of light bending. For a while I considered the possibility of opening the SRM-6 doors and then scratchbuilding the missile tips inside. But then I decided that my tools weren't fine enough and I'd just ruined the pieces - and I didn't really trust in my abilities in building new missile bay doors out of polystyrene just like that. So those doors stay shut this time. While I was building stuff, I glued the top parts of the legs together.

I almost kept building more and more but then I remembered that no, that's not how this goes nicely. The last time I had just assembled everything and I realized that the seams were awful way too late. Now I filed all the seams of the built pieces down, before joining them to other pieces. While filing around in general I removed the D7-text out of the back of the Torso. That place could be decorated with the Clan insignia or some other Important thing.

Fixing stuff went nicely so I went on with the searchlight that'll be attached to the left shoulder. Laurentius had told me that he opened it in his model and built the insides somehow. That was a really good idea so I had told that I'll steal it - and that's exactly what I did. I started by drilling a bunch of holes around the edges and then cut/punched the piece away. Now I just need to decide how to build the insides and how to get all this painted nicely with no more than one painting run.

Yesterday evening I assembled the rest of the legs and filed down the new seams as well. After doing things like this there shouldn't be any ugly lines remaining. Though I have to say that the cockpit has a rather psychotic "%D"-face on it... maybe it'll look more decent after a couple of layers of paint. I'm afraid that I don't have lenses small enough for those tiny flashlights, but maybe we'll survive somehow.

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Oh my, I almost forgot! Last week I visited my Toy Shop a couple of times and bought myself this, the latest warhead in my arms race against myself: a compressor to power my airbrush! Now things are looking good indeed 8)

Marauder IIC - custom variant

I'm doing my best to keep my BT builds (these models and the miniatures) as wysiwyg so I had to fool around with the specs of the Marauder. My main problem was if all the crap I wanted to have in was going to fit for real. In several posts I've been talking about the ERPPC:s in the arms, as well as the MPLasers and the AutoCannon that sits on top of the machine (not caring too much if it's a normal AC, an UAC but at least I never thought of it as an LBX varian). Oh, and the Jump Jets were talked about the last time, if not earlier.

That was a good starting point, the result was a custom variant of Marauder II C because none of the more official configs didn't provide exactly what I wanted. So this is what I ended up with:

Mass	85 tons
Tech/Era	Clan / 3055
Config	Biped 'Mech (Level 2)
Movement	4 / 6 / 2
Internal structure	Endo Steel (130pts)
Engine	340 Fusion
Heat Sinks	21 Double
Armor	Ferro-Fibrous (221pts)
Weapons & Equipment
Type Loc Heat Ammo ER PPC RA 15 - Medium Pulse Laser RA 4 - ER PPC LA 15 - Medium Pulse Laser RA 4 - Ultra AC/2 CT 1 45 CASE Standard Jump Jet RL Standard Jump Jet LL Combat Heat 43 (42)

That filled my tonnage pretty easily but there were something like eight or nine open Critical Slots. The last tons I spent on an extra ton of ammo for the UAC/2, just in case... Of course I could've fit an UAC/5 but for some reason I chose the /2. Maybe it's the plain range so it can work with the ER PPC's. As a small touch I moved a set of Heat Sinks to arms, on top of each ER PPC, so it'd be like in the model. Those JJ's didn't fit in the torso sides, so they had to go on the legs, but you can't always get what you want.

Fascinating, isn't it? I would be pretty curious in playing with that someday, I'm going to have my arse handed to me in any case, no matter what my 'Mech is. Maybe my "Death to the Freebirth scum! ROAAARGH! Alpha strike!" isn't the safest one? But then again, it's more ClanLike than a safe, cautious style. In any case: as long as it's fun, it's all good.

Detailing the Marauder

For some reason I couldn't wait more than a couple of minutes after publishing the last post. So I continued working on the details on Thursday afternoon/evening. The Galaxy logo was on its place already and I wanted to add a vehicle number and a couple of Clan logos around the 'Mech. After turning the thing in my arms for a while I decided that both sides of the torso will get a logo each and the left leg will get one. Then I just had to come up with a good place for the number (and I had to come up with a number, too). In the end that number found itself from the rear part of the right leg.
I don't think I'll start worrying about the Point insignia (from Point 1 to Point 5) nor the pilot's rank insignia :)

Freehanding the Clan logos was a bit easier on this kind of a large model than on the tiny tabletop miniatures. It's obviously not 1:1 copy of the real logo but it looks recognizable and that's what I was going for. Besides, I just can't draw that (or any other) thing accurately on any scale anyway ;)

The right side

Rear view  with the unit number

The left side

Front view, the PPC & Medium PLas lenses are installed as well

I also tried how that Tamiya's Burnt Carbon pigment works on the AC. Guess it works somehow. At this point all that's left is to install the arms properly and that's all I can think of right now. We'll see if I manage to do that before I attack the Warhammer...

As usual, I took the photo against the light, but you should be able to see the barrel's end anyway. Somehow.

Going green again

Since the last time I've painted the torso and arms of my Marauder with Vallejo's German Green and the end result looked a lot nicer than my previous spearmint-approach. Maybe the extra plates will end up bothering someone but they don't bother me so they'll stay. And I'll use the same scheme on my Warhammer, when I get that far.

While airbrushing around I noticed that the canned propellant starts acting funnily during use and the less there's propellant left, the quicker it starts acting up. I guess it's because the propellant cools down a lot and when it gets too cold it just doesn't push the paint out of the airbrush anymore. With a new can you can paint for a good while but as this one's on its last ~20% I could only paint one arm before the paintflow died away.
This causes extra pauses and excess worrying: "Do I get to paint this piece or does it die in the next two seconds?". The solution is, as I pondered last autumn: a compressor.

Maybe before I go for the second half of my summer vacation...

While I was fooling around with the upper torso, I finished the paint job of the legs. Just like Camospecs (and my initial post) says, the feet and shins need some red paint splattered on them as if it was the blood of the Steel Vipers. This time I tried not to get carried away with all the gore...

When all these key components had dried, I finally got to tinker around with the details. In my opinion, Battle- and OmniMecs just have to have some caution stripes (you know that cool yellow-black warning pattern), otherwise something vital is missing and that's never good for the model or its builder. In any case I had decided to take it easy and I chose a couple of key points where the caution striping fits. As a helper I used the surface details of the hull.
Both of the gun pods get two for each side and left/right torso, where the arms go attached, get narrow stripes on the front and rear sides. This way they'll stand out but don't steal all the attention.
While I was working, I painted the pieces I decided to call the nozzles of the Jump Jets, the thing in the rear hull I call a Heat Sink and the gun ports with Vallejo's Oily Steel. The Heat Sink I'll cover with a thin layer of brown ink, the rest will stay cleaner. As the grand final I painted my own version of the Omega Galaxy's logo on the outer side of the right leg. I think it ended up pretty neat.

That thingamagick on the nose needs something but I'm not sure of what. Because it's supposed to be a cockpit window, I guess I could paint it glossy black and maybe it looks good enough that way. Other than that there's not horribly much to do anymore, just a bit of touching up and freehanding some Clan logos and Point numbers. Oh, and the jewel-like things but they'll be the absolute last ones to go on the model after all the painting is done.