I’ve finally completed my second ..Lance? Squadron? of Battletech Mechs. I don’t know enough of the background to really know the parlance properly. The chosen colour scheme for this set were inspired by a painted model on reddit. I was looking for WWII-inspired aircraft schemes due to the front cockpit of the Mad Cat and found an image where a poster had painted a Mad Cat in a military green with a red-painted cockpit.

I can’t find the original image now, but I took it and then combined it with the yellow/hazard stripe trim which I’m quite fond of (and have been since the original Rogue Trader-era 40k Marine Teminator Power Gloves). The military green also fits perfectly with another semi-related future project I’ve got planned. I probably need to go re-highlight the red on these. It was looking a bit washed out due to the highlights, so I glazed it back down, which certainly resaturated the red – but at the cost of the highlights! I could shade that yellow on the rocket pods down as well, but it looks fine in hand compared to overly bright in photos, so maybe/maybe not.

I of course chose the Mat Cat as the start of this Lance(?) because it’s one of the few non-Robotech-associated Mechs I easily recognise, along with the Atlas and maybe a couple of others. Second on the scene was the Catapult, chosen entirely because of it’s visual similarity to the Mad Cat. I’m not building lists based on synergy or power. Just aesthetics and Alpha Strike Point Costs.

Alpha Strike Point Costs? Well, yes. Since my limited tabletop gaming time often happens at home, I’ll typically collect assemble and paint an OpFor for whatever I’m painting. I wanted to roughly match the points value for my first set of Mechs, and I wanted the Mad Cat and the Catapult, so adding two more mechs with a total cost that totalled to “close enough” to that group gave me a few choices, and I selected the sort-of-aircraft-ish-cockpit Jenner, and the “works OK as a green army man” Commando as my second pair.

I think decals add a lot to military figures on top of freehand, etc, and so these got a simple Allied Star each, and some swedish number decals from my stash of WWII and Team Yankee stuff. I’ve got plenty of German/SS and Soviet decals, but I’m not so fond of using those symbols and icons outside of the historical context. Perhaps one day I’ll use some of the more generic symbols from there on some mechs, but not today.

I now have two little forces with which to learn how to play Alpha Strike with. I’ve aquired the next pair that will go to the Desert Tan group – a Rifleman and an Archer – both of which also have the Robotech connection. Then again, the deep green of today’s group fit the Archer’s Robotech “Gladiator” scheme more closely, so maybe things will paint out a little differently?

One final little “Easter Egg” in my paint schemes for both is that they’re linked by the hazard stripes – so if I end up playing against other people, there’s a visual link between my figures even if they have broadly different colour schemes. Once again, these models count towards Dave Stone’s Paint What You Got Challenge 25-26, (Don’t worry, Anne! – I’ve got assembly stuff coming up!)