BattleTech - Clan Invasion

A mystery moment

Some three weeks ago I got a delivery notification into my inbox. There was nothing unusual about that, I just did not expect anything at that moment. Being slightly tinfoil-hatted I checked the message a couple of times but nothing, besides it being unexpected, raised any red flags. The next day I went by the kiosk to ask if I actually had a delivery. I did indeed, and I received a simple brown cardboard box.

Late from the Kickstarter

The situation was as clear as day as I moved away the first half of the lid. A couple of years ago I had in some incredibly perverse way missed the Kickstarter project altogether (my false memory claimed I had taken part in it, but as BTCI was not in my Backed Projects list, I clearly had not). Luckily I had found somewhere a link to the "you can still take part" thingy and in my frenzy participated at a Star Captain level.

After that I forgot the whole project, and as I was not in the Kickstarter list, I also did not get any of the "the shipping starts in the late summer" messages and whatnot. Not that I had a habit of actively following any of my Kickstarters anyway, as I was not running out of stuff to tinker with or listen to. This led to happy random news every once in a while, when a Project was done and shipped.

I think I was wishing that Catalyst was going to do a Clan Invasion box back in the day when I bought the BattleTech 30th Anniversary box. Now that I was thinking of it, I checked my old posts from a decade ago and could not find such a comment anywhere. How uncharacteristic of me, to leave obvious things unsaid.

Invasion box

A Timber Wolf busy blasting the Freebirth scum, what else would a sane person want and need as the cover art of Operation: REVIVAL -themed box?

Funny thing, the Anniversary box from ten years ago contained those six Lances of strange material -made BattleMechs (24 + 2 awesome Clan OmniMechs as an extra) with sturdy maps, posters and such. Comparison was easy to start with the minis: this had a Star of OmniMechs and two Elemental Points. At a first glance the material of these minis seemed good.

Starter Star

Dictated by the weight classes of its units (it contained all four) this Star was, also checked from Sarna.net-provided table below) an Eyrie Star. It would have been fantastic to get a Nova out of these, but one could not have everything.

Talon	Assault Star (Heavy to Assault weight Battlemechs)
Beak	Battle Star (Medium to Heavy weight Battlemechs)
Eye	Striker Star (Light to Medium weight Battlemechs)
Eyrie	Mixed Weight Star (Sometimes classified as Beak)

Executioner

This 95-ton Assault OmniMech had never been high on my "cool Mechs" list, because instead of their specs I have based my opinions of the hardcore metal truth on their feel. I was the first to admit that to me a cool (or symphatetic) look and feel ranked higher than a spreadsheet-requiring throughput. Perhaps there was noticeably more of a RPGer or a storyteller than I had dared to admit to myself.

Despite my complaints I already had some Executioners and their siblings, Gargoyles. These things fit into the Touman, so I have obtained them.

Executioner Prime

Timber Wolf

If the Point above did not make me excited, the 75-ton Timber Wolf that had been a top name for me since I first saw the box of Mechwarrior II. This one also has a versatile weapons setup, so it has never been a boring one to play with. Besides, it looked fantastic!

Timber Wolf Prime

Nova

From the medium levels the fifty-ton Nova was strongest in my memories with a narrow torso twist arc, and a single encounter with a Nova Prime and clicker-counter that we used to keep track of 12 MLas volleys. Especially the declarations of "Alpha strike!" and suffering mutterings of the pilot were something to enjoy.

Nova Prime

Mongrel

Another medium, this 45-ton thing was a new entity to me, but I really had not memorized all the lists anway. Sarna.net knew to tell me that this model had its first combat operation in Tukayyid. Maybe one of those would have ended to my Jade Falcons via active Merchants, which was to me a plausible explanation for a yet another unusual OmniMech.

Mongrel Prime

Adder

Lightest of the five, the 35-ton Adder was somehow familiar to me but it had not been on my shopping lists/baskets, as the Cluster I had chosen so many years ago leaned to the other end of the weight scale. Anyway, the Prime had a double ER PPC and a flamer, always a pleasure, on a runner. Nothing to sneer at.

Adder Prime

Elemental Points

The pleasantly dynamically posing Elementals were clearly redesigned, the battle armour was much more modern now. These two-meter-tall muscular gentlebeings with their jump packs, twin SRMs, SLas + MG setups were instantly recognizeable. I really liked the two jumping pointmates to also visually remind that these people were not just plain armoured infantry.

The rest of the box

Clan Invasion Primer

As the name suggested, this was a booklet that gave background for this whole invasion business. Among many other things it also shed light on who was to be thanked for the Operation to finally begin, after years and years of fleabags trying to prevent it.

Rules rule

In addition to the BattleTech rules there was also lots of fun background stuff. That was always pleasant to read, this sort of stuff fleshed out the universe. I had only really hazy remaining memories about the Clan Honour rules, so I ought to take a good look at them again. We never fully used them when playing with the full gang, for whatever reason.

The Bonds of Battle

This short story by Blaine Lee Pardoe I dropped into my "to read" queue, even as I had this idea that I was not specially fond of his BattleTech novels when I read the main story. Then again, comparing anything to the Blood of Kerensky or The Legend of the Jade Phoenix trilogies, the results were going to be gently skewed.

Tokens

In addition to the plastic OmniMechs there were some two-sided carboard OmniMech tokens, because you really could not get much of a fight started with just five units. With a total of three Stars the amount of warwafe would be completely on a different level. The map-modification hexes were also a neat touch, you would be able to improve or "improve" the basic maps for variety or challenge.

Maps

The two-sided paper maps were: Hilltops #1 / Barren Lands #1 and Rolling Hills #2 / Barren Lands #2. I really could not remember what the 30y-box contained, but these looked familiar, nice terrain for some stomping and shooting. Comparing to the decades-old copies of these maps these had the height differences much more clearly marked.

Alsø

There was also a stack of pre-printed Record Sheets, Alpha Strike and pilot cards (for quicker gaming, I understood), dice, always a very handy quick reference guide, and a Map of the Inner Sphere -poster. None of these were specially photogenic so I did not take photos of them here.

Extra stuff

This main invasion box was not all that the Postnord box contained, there was a small invasion of tinier boxes as well. This was the rest of the crowdfunding campaign stuff, of the physical variety (I had a handful of ebooks and other digital goods that I just had not had the time to check in all this time).

Tukayyid the accursed

Of course I could not remember what kind of a general multistage selection process I went through when I chose what I got as extras, but I remember incredibly clearly was that at the Map Pack step I stopped reading further when I reached Tukayyid. For simple and I guess obvious reasons the wolf team -specific Pozoristu Mountains and Robyn's Crossing for Clan Jade Falcon were the most interesting maps for me. Of course I had been interested in seeing a vision of Olalla and Humptulips designed by a map artist, but as this set was divided as a map per Clan, maybe the most epic corners were the clearest (and popular) choice.

In my honest opinion the Robyn's Crossing over the river Przeno really needed a map-scale Overlord-C or Union-C DropShip. I did no remember from my last read what class and especially how the DropShip for the Gamma Galaxy was named. At least I thought it was mentioned, but after all these years I may have gotten that bit wrong. edit: The Falcon Guards alone had the Raptor, an Overlord-class DropShip for them, so the Gamma Galaxy had a number of Overlords worth of transport capacity available.

Of course there were additional rules for this set of special battles, and to emphasize the hellishness of the landscapes after weeks of fighting there was a set of firestorm/smoke tokens. Only observing these little details made me feel like taking up a new run of the trilogies following the lives of Aidan and Phelan.

Half a dozen posters

If I was honest, I could have lived happily without these. The posters were neat, but in this life situation I would have had much more use out of these as high-res desktop backgrounds as I really was not going to frame them and hang them on the walls. These nor any other posters I had, that is.

Cards and stuff

There were three stacks of cards. Mercs of the Inner Sphere, part II, and a couple of MechWarrior stacks. I did not open them up, so I just expected them to be ready-made pilots. A mysterious Challenge Coin showed the Jade Falcon emblem, as if I had any other choice. Perhaps there were a couple of different varieties of the keychain, but I evidently went with the Daggerstar. Again, as if there were any other choices.

Additional units!

At last we got to the most important business instead of silly yapping. The box contained these smaller extra boxes, three of which were complete mysteries to anyone and everyone.

SL 17 Shilone

Being a Inner Sphere AeroSpace fighter the Shilone was familiar only from the novels. Only when I opened this box I figured out why the name sounded somehow familiar. The pilot card had Tyra Miraborg, who smashed her fighter through the nose of the Dire Wolf. These sort of details had a nonzero chance of staying even in my memory.

Shilone

Randoms +1

Right, here we had four Salvage Boxes. The first one contained a Legendary Mechwarrior and the other two a random OmniMech each, while the last one had an UrbanMech (that one I chose out of pure curiosity).

A legend: Morgan Kell / Archer

My random legend ended up being the main dude of the Kell Hounds -merc in his Archer. An Archer enhanced with some fancy Star League tech. Lasse had gotten the last Timber Wolf of Aidan "Jumping Fool" Pryde. This series apparently consisted of four people, the other two were Natasha Kerensky in a Dire Wolf and Grayson Carlyle in a Marauder. Whinewhinewhine, the Archer was clearly the most boring BattleMech of the lot.

ARC-2R Morgan

Stormcrow

There were a couple of Stormcrows in my collection, now I got one more. At least there was no worrying about ammo consumption in a concentrated light -themed OmniMech.

Stormcrow Prime

Mongrel A

Nice. The Invasion box contained a Mongrel Prime, at least this one was an alt. config A. Double LRM-15s, an ER MLas and a flashlight were included, and I had not yet checked if this one was a WYSIWYG miniature as I had built mine or more like a "let us all agree it is that thing on the record sheet" version.

Mongrel A

Mongrel A

Comparing to the Mongrel Prime photo I copied from up there: no changes. It remained to be seen if I was going to start customizing this to look different enough.

Mongrel Prime (again)

Urbanmech

These thirty-ton things I have mostly heard referred to as walking trashbins. I, too, wanted an armoured, walking trashbin armed with an AC/10 and a flashlight.

UM-R60

A heavy Star

Five glorious Pointfuls of heavy metal. Three out of five were classic IIC machines, I had absolutely nothing to say about the Supernova, and the best mental image of the Stone Rhino was as far as from the screenshots of a local games maganize from Mechwarrior II: Ghost Bear's Legacy. And that was getting somewhat old.

Stone Rhino

Yes. A hundred-ton Assault BattleMech with a pair of Gauss Cannons on the head (technically the side torsos). LPLases in its arms, and somewhere around the head area a silly little SPLas as a cherry on top. A ridiculous amount of weaponry that was, but maybe it could be a funny thing to try out somewhere (and get my ass handed to me by a dirtily laughing Fire Moth pilot).

Marauder IIC

This Reseen Marauder was quite a bit more angular than the original that was copied from some anime show and then banned (therefore Unseen) thanks to the lawyers of some company. Just like the one I built a couple of years ago.

Warhammer IIC

This Reseen Warhammer was also heavily modernized (or americanized?) from the original Japanese look to be more blocky and heavier on the paneling. The left shoulder-mounted searchlight was maybe a bit smaller and more tactically-sized. Of course it was very different from the larger-scale one I built only ten short years ago.

Hunchback IIC

After the same modernization process the Hunchback was like it had escaped from the artwork of MWO, which I thought to be the most likely source of these new designs anyway. Or MW5, but as I had not tried that one out yet, I could not really say. Somehow I have never known (or bothered to learn, more like) how to play with UAC/20s, as I was always immediately out of ammo. At least on the computer. Most likely on the board I would be paranoid and blow up after saving the precious ammo too long.

Supernova

Supernova was a clear Nova++, which might not be a bad thing. It was clearly recognizeable, just like its smaller sibling. This one just had, instead of a dozen medium lasers a half load of larger blinkers: six Large Pulse Lasers. Mmmmmmmmm... a saunalike warmachine.

An even heavier Star

If the Star above was heavy on the classics, this gang was something else. I recognized two directly, as I had IWM versions in my collection.

Turkina

Turkina as a choice of the just about heaviest of Assault OmniMechs was a surprise to me, according to my (most likely not too reliable) memory, it was supposed to be practically a CJF unit. This new sculpt was a bit less strange than the old one, that looked a bit more like a special toy than a scary 95 ton OmniMech.

Ebon Jaguar

If I had to really decide which of these Smoke Jaguar OmniMech versions I liked more, the old one was maybe a bit cooler, but this plastic one was insanely more stable and durable. For some strange and twisted reason Ebon Jaguar was maybe the only one that allowed the freebirth name to escape my lips more readily than the correct one.

Huntsman

Now we had reached the true mystery machines in my books. The Huntsman was originally developed by the Diamond Sharks, but due to some Trials it ended showing up in the Nova Kitties ranks in numbers. The Prime variant had a neat configuration, I was really happy to see it was carrying Artemis IV on it.

Crossbow

The Steel Snake -designed Heavy BattleMech was peculiar. It "only" had LRM-20s in its arms, pleasantly linked to Artemis IV. This sort of a machine would allow a pilot to do something truly strange on a battlefield.

Kingfisher

2nd generation OmniMech, from the production lines of the Snow Ravens, this was surprisingly an Assault-class OmniMech. It was supposed to be solid in close combat, which has been a bit of a splitter for me on an Assault. Either the insane amount of armour was a thing of genius at short ranges; or the slowness of the heavy machine was a practical suicide. The truth most likely was out there and these things were best to be used according to the situation at hand.

Egine room's continuous improvement

Small but large steps

Now that I had rammed the motor into the warmachine, I thought I had no more excuses to keep being slow with the insides. Besides, there wasn't anything to be saved for later, what'd I do with loose boxes and radiators, anyway?

Behind the motor

Just behind the Maybach I installed a vertical plate, that with a couple of other bits created a handy shelfless installation shelf. Had I recognized while painting, what bit should've been left unpainted and what not, my progress would've been even nicer. But I had chosen my methods myself.

To the left corner of the shelf a tank of some usefulness was installed (guessing by the tap on top, the heavy-duty pipe from its bottom went directly into the underside of the motor). Somehow I thought it'd be related to the radiators/coolant, as the engine-circling pipe setup visited the sides of the radiators in my reference photo.

I really tried to hunt down the details of what any of these pieces were, but either I just sucked at that, or even the best material I found was difficult to read at best. If you knew where the exhaust pipes lived and that in German they were called die Auspuffröhre, you had no problems with fuzzy text recognition. But when you were wondering what that one silly box was, your brain just couldn't fix the artifact-ridden text into familiar words. See below:

The remaining shelf space was eaten by an 85-litre refill tank. Based on what I read the fuel tank experience with its seven tanks (the two 170l tanks in the combat compartment, the more or less trapezoid-shaped 80l and 85l tanks residing just above the torsion bars in the rear of the tank, the rear edge-located 145l tanks and this last one) worked so that they all were connected in a series for refilling and airing so that all the other tanks were filled up via this uppermost tank. Made sense.

Fixpainting

At this point it was a good moment to stop installing more crap and fix the weakly painted pieces. I went through all the "hard" pipes with red-brown and the soft ones with rubbery tire black. Each of the attachment points I poked with a metallic one, so that the mechanically worn things would show some weathering and most likely they were generally distinct, like the ones in home radiators.

Fuel lines

Excitingly before installing the remaining big bits in the rear hull I got to install the tiny fuel lines. Installing them in place was interesting, to say the least, but they settled in after a few well-chosen words. While gluing I was thinking that this was the way, as if I did these later, the scoop of the fan/radiator would've been on the way more than nastily.

After the glue had flashed, I fixed the pipes with the rubber black and the connections with copper. At least I checked the central pipe, the one that travelled along the small tank's edge.

Fans and upper edge tanks

Everyone who's ever played Battletech knew painfully well how engines and especially running them brought up the heat, so some sort of heat sinks were more than important. On this model these puppies caused no problems of any kind.

As soon as the glue on the heat sinks dried, I glued the final fuel tanks of the series (the aforementioned 145l tanks). It was pretty full back here now, but they didn't leave much empty and unused spaced in these machines.

These photos were left missing the last fuel lines from the side tanks to the top-center refueling tank. Two silly lines didn't really bring much added value to this one post, so I postponed showing them to a later post.

Maybach HL 230 P 30/ installation

The motor into its slot

Squeezing this massive block into this narrow place was a bit stressful. First of all the side plates were (of course) a bit misaligned, so not all of the motor's pipes found their attachment holes. Another reason for this was that the motor itself was a bit askew (see my previous complaint about the V-angle's tightness). A couple of flimsy pipes also pointed "about that way", but those I managed to force into place.

I was exitedly installing the next two dozen bits, when I noticed that my earlier priming rounds had managed to skip a couple of important bits that just didn't catch my eye in time. Pressing forward I installed the shelves that went between the motor's walls and the hull to improve the sturdiness of the assembly. After the glue dried I painted them by hand. While I was on it I also prepainted the first outside-the-engine pipes (I assumed they were cooling-related, being such large-diamater rubber pipes).

Let the pipe circus begin

Once-pained pipes didn't want to settle into their places. The one on the right in the photo was easier, even though the upper end was pretty complicatedly located behind a couple of earlier installed pipes. The leftmost pipe was almost off from the upper end (thanks to the installation tolerances of the wall plate), and pretty difficult to get into place with the motor's own pipes playing spaghetti nearby.

The pipe complex that lived around the outer edge of the motor slipped in quite nicely. Again I first glued the left side first, and allowed it cure for a while before pressing the right side in. This was yet another time when Iwas swearing about ambigous attachment points.

In the following two photos the bits and pieces were installed, but with incomplete painting. Obviously I wasn't going to leave anything here as bright red.

Radio painting I

A generic fixing round

After I pulled off my masks I was wondering and lamenting the results. Nothing had overflown badly, which was nice. The radio stack and the floor in the back needed some poking. This had gone pretty well.

All the accidentally whitened pieces I painted by hand back into the red brown style. Quickly but carefully.

The radio equipment as instructed

My knowledge about the radio setup of tanks was mostly limited to a: all German tanks had a radio, and b: the higher the rank, the more radios they carried. From this model I of course could not find any sort of a description of what sort of a role it was to play, so I had to first search around what these three, four boxe were and even more importantly, what they were supposed to look like.

These bits were not modular, so the idea wasn't to build either a common tank or a command tank. A bit confusing, as I'd expected that sort of option would excite some hyperaccurate modelers (and myself in principle). Perhaps it was a costs issue, as if the radio bits took four slots instead of two in the sprues it'd taken both more space and a bit more modeling.

No matter, I painted them all white from the driver's side, as I painted the edges of the driver's instrument panel. Of the radio operator's stuff I painted the frames white but left the faces to wait for a darker paintjob. This way they'd show the "stuff those boxes into the rack" ideology, and as far as I knew, the radio covers were usually pretty dark.

A new toy (again)

A light tent

Again I received something interesting to celebrate myself starting another orbit around the nearest long-running fusion reaction. Good thing I hadn't gotten the light tent ordered in the last weeks before the event, despite my best intentions :D Packed up this was a convenient briefcase-like setup, which carried two lamps, and a camera stand with a heavy base that also kept the background in place. There were two background sheets, a white and a blue one.

Testing testing

I was working on the Königstiger's power source, so that's what I used to take the first seriously planned photos. Just to see how these worked out, I took a bunch of photos, out of the sheer fun of testing.

Imperial TIE pilot

Taken with phone #2

Taken with phone #1

Megatron

An unweathered panzer motor

I was almost burning to take some photos of the tank in progress, but as it was so badly in progress, I didn't want to wait until I reached a particularly good stage for photos, not to mention the full tank being completed. For this business the Maybach motor was a great subject, as soon it was going to be sealed into the tank's hull so that the details would be lost in my awful memory. Only small glimpses of it could be seen anymore, if even that much.

These photos looked much better than what I have been taking for a bunch of years, in the living room, relying on the sunlight and the ceiling lights, trying to avoid blocking everything with my shadows. Now I'd only need my own work to improve as much as the photos...

Eleven

Tightly on the second decade

Charts, charts, charts. I hadn't checked the Stats page in ages, and it took me a moment to find the more useful view (which, IIRC, was clearer in the old UI). The first pic showed the all-time views, apparently the peak for 'Mumblings was in the early '17.

The graph for the last 12 months was less exciting: some little squiggles with inexplicable random spikes. Weird stuff.

Latest year's accomplishments

Since the previous one I had the posts to finish up the Atomic cannon, at some point I built the Imperial TIE Pilot's bust and painted the wonderful Megatron statue. Risking my neck-shoulder area with my frozen shoulder I also added Bumblebee and Optimus Prime to my row of Metal Earth Models models. The months after have been spent inside the King Tiger.

Apparently slow progress and long individual modeling projects, that's how I could sum up my latest years, regarding this hobby of mine.

This has been affected by the time available. For example this year's modeling hours have been also disappearing to WiiU's Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (I found two Divine Beasts (Vah Medoh and Vah Ruta) in the summer, but as the little guardian bots in some Shrines ("Mild Test of Strength" already made me go "yeeeeeeah, I'm going to exit and ignore this annoying thing forever"), I imagined that these expected boss fights would not be something I was going to enjoy or want to grind through. Instead I've used my time adventuring and just wandering around the impressive world. Both of the Project Assistants have enjoyed the game a lot.

I also finally got myself together and started playing Fallout (the first one, which I had managed to avoid so far, along with Fallout Tactics). So far I've replaced the Vault 13's water chip and I believe I was just going to look for some trouble in my freshly acquired BoS Power Armor. Most likely I'd march to punch some Super Mutants, with aimed punches/kicks into carefully targeted locations. My screenshots are in a hideout of GoG Galaxy, those that I've remembered to take.

So there's been stuff going on, not all of it has ended up here. Not yet at least.

Maybach HL 230 P 30 / painting

Basecoating

Getting the motor into its proper look started by airbrushing a layer of grey (VMA 71048 Engine Grey) over the bright red. The instructions were talking about black grey, I chose to cover my back by doing a layer of something else first. If not for no other reason but to prepare for my black grey paint having dried a bit too much and causing some painting issues.

Darkness

I painted all the almost black bits with a paintbrush (VMA 71056 Black Grey), trusting on the earlier engine grey layer to cover everything properly. In my mind this gave a bit of a nicer shading too. The exhaust pipes and whoknowswhatpipes I left alone. To avoid making a mess, I left the engine's painting to dry overnight.

A clean-ready motor

Once again I didn't take any work in progress photos when my painting excitement took the driver's seat. My third engine-painting evening I spent on the details, as the bulk of the engine didn't need anything else at this point.

The air filter's lid on top of the motor I painted off-white. I didn't care to attempt to make it incredibly clean-looking or as if it was untouched. That'd been unnatural. Instead I let the white coat to look imperfect.

Both exhaust pipe chunks I painted rusty (VMA 71080 Rust), even though the red brown would've also worked just fine, especially if the motor was a new one. In the front of the motor a central bit, and on the rear part the double magnetos (as far as my image comparison skills took me) were painted as flashy metallic bits (VMA 71065 Steel). Finally those narrow, liquid-carrying pipes I painted red brown, in accordance to the rules of the tank's interior.

Testing the interior colours

Correct shades

Just like I started with the red primer, I tried first the red brown (VMA 71271 German Red Brown) onto the rear hull's large fuel tanks. Using these small volumes as the first layer on top of the red primer the change wasn't that incredible.

Moving on I started painting the tank's insides and spent most of my time ensuring that the countless shadowed areas got painted. Here the red primer was helping, because it wasn't going to jump out as badly as something like, say, white primer. Damn, I had been smart.

After the red brown paint had cured the paint was browner than I had imagined. Of course it was still missing details and all possible weathering. This large amount of pretty dark interior paint was still a bit confusing to me, as I had thought that off-white was the key in the interior walls.

While I still had a few minutes to spare, I used it to start working on the drive sprockets, idler wheels, the engine's friends (tanks, pumps, whatnot) and the cooling setup. As always, these were going to need a couple of sessions from different sides.

First maskings

My next evening started with masking tape. I sealed off the red brown areas to get the thing in line with the painting instructions. The firewall's human side and the floor of the ammo shelves became white.

These creamy white (VMA 71119 White Grey (grauweiss)) insides were almost blindingly bright compared to the earlier bone-coloured primer. The contrast between these and the red brown areas was also somewhat steep. While I was on this I also painted the insides of the upper hull and the turret's main piece.

In addition to these I also took a moment to paint the equipment living between the driver and the radioman. This was mostly a simple reminder for myself to go through these objects properly instead of forgetting them brown.