Let’s Talk Battletech: My (current) Miniature Painting Obsession

December 3, 2021

Dear Readers, I have developed, as the title suggests, an obsession with painting my new pewter Battletech miniatures. Like, I have almost totally abandoned my Dungeons & Dragons miniatures in favor of painting my Battletech ones.

And I couldn’t be more excited about it.

As my main shipment of Battletech miniatures should be on the way and arriving any day now (yes, I know I have said this before, but I’ve seen the Kickstarter update), I want to get a head start and painting my battlemech armies, both Clanner and Inner Sphere.

As I have said before, my intention is that my Inner Sphere battlemechs will be Wolf’s Dragoons, while my Clanner mechs will be Clan Ghost Bear.

Here is where I’ve gotten:

Black Knight:

Status – Done

Issues – I might have put the decals on the wrong side of the mech. Frankly, I don’t care. It looks good. If I had to really make a complaint, it would be that the decal doesn’t show up very well on top of black, meaning that I may have to put a white dot underneath the decals in the future. That will be how I do my Atlas just to see how it turns out.

Photo:

For those wondering where I got those wonderful decals, I found them on Etsy. I bought both Clan Ghost Bear and Wolf’s Dragoons. In total, I think they cost me maybe $20. Not bad.

Two sheets of stickers: red dragon symbols and blue cross symbols.

They are simple enough to apply, simply dip them in water slide off the decal from the cardboard backing, and apply it to your Mech. I will warn you, you have to do some serious finagling when it comes to the tinier decals, but as long as you cut them out well enough, they should stick just fine.

According to the coloring scheme website that I found, the decals should have been on the right side of the mech. Lesson learned, and I will be doing the future mechs on the right.

I’m not quite sure how that is supposed to work out with the zeta painted on the left leg as well, but I will figure it out.

A dark battle mech with two arms, two legs, a cannon on top, and a

That’s what it’s supposed to look like on a Marauder, but I’m not sure about other mechs.

Next, the Atlas.

Status – unfinished

Issues – he is a very big boy. He is going to take a lot of paint. I want to make sure that I have enough of the colors that I need to make sure that he is done.

I plan on having his weapons painted and a good dry brush completed this evening. That should carry me until I can figure out where and how I’m going to apply his decals.

MadCat/Timberwolf:

Status – unfinished.

Issues – still working on the atlas first. That said, I’m really hoping that the wash that I end up using will darken up the colors significantly on this mech. The simple fact is that the deep blue that I found is not deep enough. At least for this color scheme that I’ve chosen. To add insult to injury, after looking over it, I found that my initial paint job is poor, and that’s giving myself a lot of credit. I missed a lot of lines and nooks that I really shouldn’t have.

That said, I have found a great resource as to where to put the decals:

Battletech: The Return of Kerensky box art. A mech strides across a desert. Red and blue colors dominate the image. 3050 in large numerals.

That color scheme website shows slightly differently, but I think that’s because placement is depending on the shape and style of the mech. The only issue I’m having right now is the size of the decal compared to the size of the mech. According to the picture, I rather large decal on this particular model will be needed.