From DaveS: Heavy Metal (121 points)

This week has been a week of two halves.  I started with a plan to work lots on my Florence Army, and got started with that.  I managed to turn out a unit of Mounted Crossbowmen, a light cavalry unit, made, as is becomming traditional, from the Perry Plastic sets, with a few bits from the Warlord Landsknechts.  These are in teh same Red and White colour scheme that I have used for all of the regular forces for the army, and are, as usual, based for Basic Impetus II.

While I was waiting for an ebay order to get the Polearms I need to finish the last of the "regular" units that I have to do, I moved onto a unit that both inspired me to choose this project, and scared me a little.  THe Landsknechts.  I decided to start with a small "Skirmish" unit, the Zweihander armed models.  These, I think, are skirmishers only because they roamed in front of the main units.

I knew that I had to make them "colourful" and not uniformed. I think that I might have taken this a little bit too far with this unit, but will jusitfy it to myself by claiming that these are the most flamboyant of their troops.

At this point, my cunningly laid plans were thrown apart.  I love battletech, as may have been obvious from the number of my posts that are about it so far this year.  Unfortunately, it's been quite difficult to get hold of some of the new sets, and some of them have not yet been released.  So when I found out that the local shop had gotten in not a couple, but 5 new sets, I had to go shopping.  They also had the beginner box in.  Now, despite having been playing this game for nearly 30 years, I needed the beginner box simply because it is the only place that you can get the Griffin, a really rather useful medium Mech.  When it turned out that the other FLGS had got in some supplies of some of the models that had previosly been out of stock that I needed, I was like a kid in a candy store.

The goal for me, with Battletech, has always been to try and restrict my choices of mech to the force I am playing.  Rules wise, this is not required, but to me, it seems logical.  To that end, I spent a few hours with a list of models, the rulebooks, and both the "Master Unit List" and "Sarna" websites.  This, plus some planning, has led to me now having plotted out a Battalion of Mechs for the Capellan Confederation.  A lot of these had been painted, but I had 16 to do, to have the whole force painted.

To that end, I now present the first 8 of the "reinforcements" for the Battalion.

Cataphract

Centurion

Cyclops

Griffin

Highlander

King Crab

Of course, one small consequence of the plan to only use time and faction specific mechs, and to build to Battalion size is that it leaves me with left over mechs........Oh well, lookks like I'll have to learn to paint Lyran Alliance and Draconnis Combine as well..... and then there are all the new clan mechs....

Points wise, this is 4 cavalry (10pts), 5 infantry(5pts) and 8 mechs(7pts), for a total of 121 points

I do like your flamboyant swordsmen. The King Crab is a mech I don't think I've seen before and it looks kind of cool. Now you must paint an opposition with the leftovers!

Barks

From DaveS: Heavy Metal (25 points)

Having finished the Hundred Years War French, and while waiting for the bases for the next project to arrive (preparedness is for other people), I decided to pull some more Battletech models from the pile.

I have been building up a Capellan force, using the newly released Catalyst Games lance packs.  I've shown some of those already.  In the background, one of the developments that the Capellans make, is to start to deploy reinforced units, consisting of 4 mechs with 2 supporting vehicles.

With all of my Battletech stuff, I have used the rules to almost roleplay my collection.  This means that while my Mechs are chosen based on what comes in the Lance packs, things like the quality of the pilots, and support vehicles have been randomly selected.  This means, that having rolled them on the appropriate tables, I added them to the lances.

First up, we have the vehicles supporting my recon lance.  This consisted of a pair of Pegasus Scout Hovercraft.  In game, these are at the heavily armed end of light hovercraft, and fortunately fit with the slightly slower, better armed scout lance that I already have.

Next, we have a pair of Long Range Missile Carriers.  These are incredibly slow, and lightly armoured, but pack an huge number of missiles, with some of the longest ranges in the game, and can be fired indirectly.  These support my fire support lance

Supporting my Assault lance, are a pair of Short Range Missile Carriers.  These are basically the same vehicle as the LRM carrier in game, but with shorter missiles.  In Battletech, SRM's are excellent at causing critical hits, and the 10 of them (60 missiles) that each of these carries is excellent for crippling mechs that have had their armour stripped by the Assault lance.  Their slow speed doesn't really hinder them, since they can keep up with the slow Assault Lance

At the heavy end of the range, we have a pair of Demolishers  These are absolute beasts, and HUGE as well.  They will support the command lance.

Finally, we have a pait of Condor Heavy Hover Tanks.  These support the Light Battle Lance that I have, and provide a nice mix of mobility and firepower.

Finally a group shot, showing all of the vehicles together.

These are apparently 8mm scale, which doesn't appear on the points.  I've scored them as 6mm vehicles, although they are quite large for this.

This gives me 10x6mm vehicles for 20pts.

This is a good coherent unit of hard sci-fi armour. I like the asymmetrical turret on the LRMCs, and the Demolishers look cool. I like the mix of tracked and hover. I'm going to award 2.5 points each here, as 6mm and 10mm vehicles are 2 and 3 points respectively.

Barks