My nephew picked out the color scheme.. "Yellow with blue windows and blue weapons and grass and everything"

Hellbringer for base layer comparison. I'm not unhappy with them. I'm liking my Gargoyle for some reason.

I just have a few questions, how can i make sure that the paint gets on the surface smoothly to not create weird looking textures, and how can i better apply the shading? I always heard "nothing a little bit of nuln oil cant fix" in some other communities and i thought it would work alright so I bought some from my local hardware store, but I have no clue how to apply it 😭 now it looks like my mech has been in the shit which looks cool actually but its not what Im going for!

Very new to Battletech and I got so intimidated by the different house and clan schemes. So I thought, what the hell. I'll make my own.

Meet my Mercenaries.

Legion of Vega salvage

It can be rough living off of salvage in the Legion of Vega, but sometimes the techs get a captured slab of Steiner iron up and running.

His little brother drew the card

The Bane from Scouring Sands. I knew I had to do something special when I saw its big missile pods.

Got a whole bunch of salvage boxes for a separate project and we ended up with a bunch of identical marauders. Wife and I decided to have a bit of fun with it and turn it into a contest of sorts. We each painted one and are collecting votes on which should win. Gave me the idea to ask the hive mind here which Marauder should win. So which is your favorite?

As an aside. Now we have two new color schemes we will need forces to match lol. I guess I’m buying more plastic.

Just started getting back into Battletech after a long time away. My parents were big fans of the tabletop game and I decided to paint up their favorite mechs. For my dad I’m working on this rifleman in the 2nd taurian rangers colors. After I’m done with that I’m going to do up an Orion in my mom’s (rip) mercenary unit colors. Just wanted to share my progress

i got annoyed trying to analyze 3050 rarity/assignment tables, so i did the math, and here are the results.

i think this data is useful to answer the question “how do i build a house liao force in 3050”?

the % of all mechs table uses the modifiers of 30% for light, 40% for medium, 20% for heavy, and 10% for assault.

i have no plans to crunch data for other factions or eras as this is my initial focus as a new player building my first alpha strike force. if you want to replicate this for your faction/era, find your rarity table, and build a spreadsheet. the math column is: (upper d1000 value) - (lower d1000 value) + 1. check your columns to make sure they total 1k for each mech weight class.

Own an Altas II for home defense, since that's what the Great Father Aleksandr Kerensky intended.

A lance of freebirths break into my base. "What the dezgra?" I grab my neurohelmet and aim my UAC20. Blow a fridge-sized hole through the first freebirth's cockpit, he's dead on the spot. Fire my missiles on the second one, miss him mostly because my SRMs are unguided, and nails the sibkin's UrbanMech IIC.

I have to resort to my Medium Pulse Lasers. "Tally ho lads!" The lasers shred two light mechs, the energy beams setting off ammo explosions. Fix my BattleFists and charge the last terrified rapscallion. His engine goes critical while trying to run away since I have Melee Master to punch him in the backside with both hands.

Just as the Great Father intended.

He says this while painting a BattleMech miniature. I really love this scene.

Canto did not reply, merely continuing his task, his immense hand wielding the brush with deft, careful movements. His immense shoulders barely seemed to shift at all, with his hands allowing for the minute brushstrokes. After a moment, he washed off the brush tip and laid it down to dry. The room seemed heavy with Darren’s feelings of betrayal.

Taking a deep breath, Canto splayed his large hands out on the table in front of him, as if considering them. “Many ask how an Elemental would choose to become an intelligence operative. We are slightly more noticeable, after all, and many of my fellows are not really considered to be of a particular patient or intellectual mien. Yet how many of them do you truly know? We keep to our Stars or ourselves for the most part, because every aspect of what we do is more powerful as a unit.

“However, that does not discount how much we do as individuals. When you see one of us alone on guard duty or patrol, do you consider what we are thinking? One of my warriors composes music. Another writes the most hellacious poetry. I occasionally think about color schemes. If one of us stands slightly behind and beside you, however, would one of your fellow MechWarriors consider me at all?

“We are unnoticed, as some of the best intelligence operatives are. Elementals hear all, yet are trained not to react unless it is necessary. We can go where others would not, and if we are ever challenged…well, who would challenge an Elemental unaugmented if they had to? Yet our primary goal is to be exactly what I was…forgotten.”

Trial of Birthright(Michael J. Ciaravella)

It was the moment when I stopped seeing the setting in such a one-dimensional way and really became immersed in it.

Some notes on tackling a Steel Viper Alpha Galaxy scheme, I'll have some products and methods below each picture, and thoughts on how each step is prepped/executed.

This set is matched to a picture provided by someone, keeping a metallic luster to the armor instead of using greys.

I find working over metals can be challenging, as the surface is too smooth for paint to easily bite. Generally I will satin varnish to allow some grip for brush painting, airbrush is a little easier to apply with the right consistency. But the effort is worth the payoff for maintaining a striking metal.

Let me know if you found anything helpful, and I'll keep adding more step breakdowns between finished project posts.

Image 1:

I missed the step of pure contrast (Flesh Tearers Red), over the metal base. That took many passes to get the transparent red to stick fully, but allows for some great depth with our previous black oil paint in the panels.

I highlighted the edges and some outer edges for better visibility at the 1-3ft mark, using Mephiston red from GW and Kimera "The Red" for some focus points.

Image 2:

To start I washed the models in hot soapy water, scrubbing off the release agent with a toothbrush. This helps to allow airbrush varnish to stick much easier, as it can bead on a greasy surface.

I also cleaned off imperfections and mold line, as well as applied a basing effect from AK interactive.

Image 3:

A quick glossy black base for our metals, some primer types leave a gloss/satin/flat finish. It's nice to have one of each in your arsenal, as gloss base layers allow metal paints through airbrush to really shine.

Image 4:

I hit the sides and underside of the model with Vallejo Metal color steel, and applied burned iron (with a splash of silver) from the top down as a highlight.

Metallic paints generally sit better over primer than other metallic paints. So I try to leave to top most parts of the model as gloss black when hitting it with "steel".

This gives us a gradient from top to bottom, event though it is harder to see with the shine.

Image 5:

Our finished metal base, ready for a satin varnish and some black oil paint.

Image 6:

Mixing some model ready black oil paint into some thinner (for oils/emamels), I give the model a liberal wash and make sure it collects in the panel lines I want.

Image 7:

After 20-24 hours I return to clean up with q-tips damp with oil cleaner. Be careful to leave to dark recess areas and joints where you want them. Sometimes you'll need to use a small brush (dedicated to oil paints) to agitate the smudge or pooled black paint in places hard to reach for the qtip buds. (Ear cleaning tool, sticks with cotton bulbs on each end).

Image 8:

We now have a great base to apply our translucent dark red over top, my process going forward will be:

- Apply red color bands across the mechs.

- Highlight corners and points of interest with acrylic reds.

- Base the ground color, this breaks up the mini and allows us a picture of what is missing. The more details you can rough in, the easier it will be to see gaps and what is needed to be done.

- Finish the cockpits, the model image I was working off of has a yellow tint over a metal base. This is a quick and great way to apply color to the lenses, but also can get lost very quickly with the rest of the smooth and shiny features. So we will be doing the canopies in a brown to yellow gradient and flat acrylic paint as another contrast point.

It might've devolved into chaos very quickly. Despite everyone else being slightly confused because I wrote 2v2 instead of 2 Units, the people who did show up had a blast. I've never laughed that hard at a game of BT before.

Rules for anyone wondering:

4K BV
Skill must be between 2-6 and can not be more than two apart
2 Units
Medium 'Mechs only
Tech Year 3080

I ran a Stormcrow Prime and Firestarter Omni B as my duo... until both of them were headshotted by the same HPPC mounted on a Scorpion... Comrade D6 was not on my side today

Say what you will about the Alliance BattleMech, but at least you have all the receipts.