MWO Battlemechs Parte the Thirde....

Didn't I say something like "I should probably stop building and start painting"? Well at some point I did. Anyways, my notes to the sculptors in bold. They said they wanted feedback. They're getting feedback. Post replies on here if you want, maker guys.  

Natasha Kerensky's famous Destroid Tomahawk Warhammer. The original had absolutely wretched tiny arm guns that had to go. The Tau fusion cannons get the point across much better, don't you think? FASA made a half-assed attempt to have Natasha as their poster girl, but they could never quite decide (or care) what she looked like, nor did they make a lot of material featuring her, so it never took off. In an ideal world, you'd have "character models" with special stats, just like.... well, certain systems. When I win the lottery and publish Near Future Battletech 2085, this will be so. You'd play the heck out of a Battletech game set entirely on Earth between nations, right?

A Destroid Defender-Rifleman in classic colors. I left the arms on this one be, despite how damn short the barrels are. (I suppose it could be the AC-10 version). Of course, the long slender barrels on the old ral Partha models bent and broke all the damn time, so it's a bit a of a trade-off, I suppose. 

The ever-popular Urbanmech gets not one, but two incarnations: the regular version (painted as the excellent Chopper from Star Wars Rebels) on the left, and the sllightly kitbashed K-9 "hero" version on the right, with an armor-busting rotary autocannon. Did anyone else think these are what AC's were supposed to be in the first place? 

I like the new take on the classic Ostall Locust, although for some reason the chin turret wasn't pronounced or there at all, really, so I was obliged to upgrade his stub with a stikkbom bit. 

The Jenner now looks like something that actually makes sense, (well, relatively)  instead of just some model kit no one wanted to bother finishing. It actually has a waist now, for pete's sake!

A  Soltic H8 Roundfacer Griffin in desert colors. I still don't dig the PPC sculpts on these, but I do like the common "built into a gauntlet" look of the guns that were formerly rifles. Note to the sculptors: please make the missile drum on this one and Thunderbolt separate pieces. Arm variant weapons for for this and the Wolverine would also be nice.  

Two Commandos, in desert and forest camo colors. The arm missile boxes are a bit small, and I had to go in there with a pin vise and drill some SRM tubes. Also, the ankles are a little too thin, (Note to sculptors, thicken these) so I was nervous modding the pose, but they seemed to come out okay. I do love this version of the plucky light mech, though. I keep seeing them in 1/60 scale and I would LOVE to work on one, so if anybody knows where they can be gotten from let me know.  

An Enforcer painted in night attack colors. This one was a test model for a paint scheme I refined a bit for another model you'll see later. I'm rather pleased with the way it came out. Yes, I did give it a Zeon mobile suit-style mono-eye. It is, however, taller than the Warhammer, Note to sculptors: reduce the size by like 20%

Oooooh that Urbie's gonna get it. 

Last but not least, some terrain. There's a lovely set of Gregster's Lab shanties over at Vanguard Miniatures that gives you quite a few buildings for a song. I wish there'd been a few more 3- and 4- level ones, but oh well. They are AMAZING sculpts, with their own dumpsters, garbage cans, stacks of tires, and so on. Gregster really does some fine work. My one nit, Gregster, if you're there, is that there aren't enough multilevel ones. In the future I may buy another set just to shave the roof detail off and stick them together to make more shantypartments. I wonder if I should try to make some hex map bases for them as well. Hmmm..

I was kinda sad that the TV show Defiance ended, so I made a Need/Want bar for my shanty town. Mechwarriors need some place to relax, you know. 

Still to come: a Zeus, a Firestarter, a Vindicator, a Cataplut-K, and a Dragon. Also a small city. Oh, and the first of those builds from the WIP posts!

Also, I'm still looking for the older RAFM 1/87 scale Heavy Gear models, so if anyone's looking to sell, drop me a line.