Battletech vs. Warmachine

So I managed to get my first real game of Battletech in this week after a fifteen year gap in playing. I have to say it was great. Now I should preface this by saying that it really does reflect some 80's game design and while that is fine there are a lot of ways to streamline this that sometime in the future should be considered. As I played I was reminded of Warmachine quite a lot. In my mind a lot of ideas for Warjacks are very similar to Mechs. The armour for instance is the exact same system but in much less detail, so are systems. However both games are attempting to emulate very different things I noticed. Battletech is a naval game, pure and simple. I was suprised I never noticed it before. Warmachine is more of a standard wargame albeit on a skirmish scale. In Battletech I find myself playing completely for position. Indeed the most important phase of the game is the movement at the start to achieve the 'weather gage' on your opponent. These opening moves determine a lot and as was seen in the game this week I had a strong advantage due to some bold moves early in the game. I rushed my opponent pinning him on a downhill slope while I was on the opposite side of the valley, also on a downhill slope but with my Mechs entrenched in a wide river providing some cover. Interestingly I committed my heavy support Mechs too far forward and having weathered their fire my opponent was able to cripple one causing me to have to abandon my position to seek safety.

Warmachine has a similar need for board control and careful positioning but it doesn't, at least for me, feel the same. The forces in Warmachine are all glass hammers. They can deal out a lot of punishment but they can't take it very well. The 'jacks will stand up to some and I mean some repeated punishment but any true application of force takes them down. In Battletech the Mechs are able to take this beating and return the compliment. It gives an interesting feeling of mighty dreadnoughts of the sea whereas the 'Jacks feel more like they are represented as six ton steampunk robots! Warmachine does a nicer job of individualising the 'jacks whereas a lot of the Mechs feel very similar. They only vary in weapons loadout whereas 'jacks have induvudual rules such as chain attacks and such that flavour them a lot better. The interaction between units, Warcasters and everything else that Warmachine has ensures that it will remain a superior game but Battletech is still rewarding to play.

So I am still looking forward to playing more Battletech. It offers me something that Warmachine doesn't that being a second gaming group. I play it in work with some colleages and it is fun even if the game takes four to five hours to resolve.

Battletech WIP

I don't usually put up a lot of WIP shots here as I find them not so interesting. People want to see the finished article! However I don't have much of an option as I am really not getting anything finished these days. I am starting a lot of new stuff but like my usual habits I jump from one to the other rather quickly. It does mean that sometime in the near future I should get a lot of things done at once. As I am using my Battletech stuff before anything else I decided to give it priority so ma Avatar, Dreadstone Blight and Mordheim Warband are all on hold while I get these models done. I just want to get my Heavy Lance finished so I can play with them. I am also doing it as an instruction exercise for one of the guys in my office that has never painted. He is slowly learning how and watching my progress helps him understand the steps he needs to follow to complete his stuff. After that I can get back to my Mordheim Band.

The Lance is nearing completion. Everything has been washed down and just needs to have the highlights built up and the camo schemes fixed. I don't do much to the grey as its fine after a light wash. I try to fix the yellow to give the model some contrast and I add some red to do the same. Again these are most definitely gaming models... nothing special is being done with them. Thankfully I don't feel so bad as they are cheap to buy from the local gamestore.

The Warhammer is based and finished

You saw this fellow last week but he wasn't finished. Since then I managed to find some hex bases and I mounted him up and finished him off. The bases are metal and they are annoying as hell to paint. Everytime I pick up the model the paint on the base comes off. Now I know this is better than paint coming off the model but still it is annoying. I have varnished the base sides multiple times but as I water down the varnish for use in my airbrush I think it might be a little too thin to paint on. Yes, I am too lazy to fire up the airbrush just for this guy. Maybe once I get them all finished! I am still debating if I should add some weathering pigmets or not but as it didn't look so great on the Blackjack I don't think I will.

The Warhammer

So I managed to get my Warhammer done overnight, I had him started so it wasn't much to do really. I was supposed to be playing some Warmachine but I was too tired to actually think so instead I put on an Audiobook (No Country for Old Men). As I have a big game next week, on Tuesday I think I need to get in gear and get a Lance finished. That means four Mechs of about the same weight category. I want to represent the Grey Death Legion but I don't really have a clue about whyt they typically might have in their armed forces. At this point I am going for two Warhammers, and Archer and a Marauder. This would be a fairly heavy lance I guess. I have no real reference! It has been fun reimmersing myself in the universe of Battletech. While I won't be investing in the game heavily, or at least as heavily as usual I am looking forward to some good games.
Glueing this model together was a pain. Firstly it is twelve parts so thats annoying already. Then the legs have no anchor points that they can be glued to systematically. No instead you have to hold four pieces together and hope it works. Having glued my fingers a few times I finally got the model to sit as you see it now... crooked. At the time I thought it gave a nice twist to the hips and made the model look a little more agile. However as I look at it now I gave it too much of a human pose and that takes away from the sense of a giant metal robot. There is just no easy way to get this model together that I could manage and I guess there are a lot of these out there that are very similar to mine. Anyway for now he is fine. Its not like I will be playing that much with him...
I copied pretty much the colours I used for the Blackjack yesterday. I did bring the camo scheme up a step. The stripes are much more visible now. I also was able to make them longer but spread further apart. I still think I should probably have gone for more distinct thick bands of colour but these are fine. I did put some more effort on the spot colours bringing them also up a little. I also made sure that the yellow and black stripes were more prominiemtly placed so that it breaks the camo scheme up. Combined with the very blue windows and the red missiles on the shoulder this guy is already looking better. I haven't settled yet on what more is needed but it is a good start!

Grey Death Legion

Here is my first mech in over a decade. It is a Blackjack painted in the Grey Death Legion colour scheme. I am really unhappy with it but I am viewing it as a test piece. This model is basically a 6mm scale one and I really haven't uch pratices with these. Highlighting the armour plates for instance presents a particular problem. In all the Battletech miniatures I have seen these small angular plates predominate. I feel like I shouldn't indivually highlight them all but I should do it as a whole across the model. This is more in keeping with a style like a 28mm model. So in the end I decided to keep the highlights to a very minimum and to just ensure that the plates were well defined. Thats easily done with a black wash! I also wantd to make the colour scheme of grey a little bit more visually appealing. I failed with this model. The camo scheme which I have to admit I have never been able to paint properly fades to much into the base grey colour. In my future mechs I will need to get this to stand out a lot more. One of the iconic colour schemes on Mechs is the yellow and black warning stripes. I put them in the rear of the model here as a test and I like them. I will go back and add these to the front I think. I didn't want to break with the camoflage scheme too much by adding a lot of these stripes but as the front of the model is so boring I guess I have to. There are some areas that immediately stand out. The top (proximal) ends of the arm mounted guns would be good. Also the prominent rounded torse has some piping underneath that would take it really well. This should break up the monotomy of the front without being overly obvious.

I also wanted some rust on this guy. The photograph has really picked out the orange colour and it is far more stark than I hope it is in reality. Looking at the photograph this is terrible... I might have to find a way to revise that rust. I just put it on in a few places to see if it looks good. At least I know now it doesn't look that good so I can be more selective in how I apply it. I managed to get my Warhammer glued together last night to with some luck I might get him painted tonight.

Battletech

So it looks like I will by playing Battletech once again. It has been about fifteen years since I played this awesome game but I am looking forward to it. I have a vague memory of the rules. Some of the guys I work with had a demo of it last Friday and are seriously considering starting to play. That would be great as it is always handier to play after work rather than going to a club.I have also found a shop that is selling the battletech miniatures by weight. The selection is huge but I really don't know half of the mechs. I have to read up a little before I purchase... I have noticed though that a lot of the models are terrible. It looks a lot like something that I would sculpt myself. They are incredibly inspired by the design ethics of the eighties. They are bulky, square and far from sleek fighting machines. The cartoon transformers even looked better... though the mechs are pretty similar in a lot of ways. I wonder if a lot of them were redesigned with a more modern feel they would be awesome. The Stinger on the right here is one of the best mechs in terms of its looks. I find that the lighter the mech the better it looks. Once they start to get heavy then they begin to just become bulky.