"..the appearance of a gigantic, flightless bird."

A few months ago, I got the new Battletech boxed set. I played a lot of Mechwarrior as a teenager, and it's one of those wargames I just never got a chance to get into. The rules were always archaic, and the fluff seemed endless. There was just no good starting point.

After the BATTLETECH video game came out last year, I was able to have a more gentle introduction into the setting and was able to start digging into it.

Here we have a Locust LCT-1V. I've painted her in yellow, as for the 1st Canopian Curaissiers, Magistracy Royal Guards, Magistcracy of Canopus. The yellow isn't quite right, going from the examples at Camospecs or Unit Colour Compendium, but it might pass for an older, beaten-up scout. That's in keeping with a Locust, around 3085, I think.

She's been painted with a coat of Nazdreg Yellow from Citadel's new Contrast range, over a base of steel colouring. Iyanden Yellow might get me closer to the bright yellows we see on the examples above, especially if I bring the basecoat up to a brighter silver first. I'll try that next.

In the meantime, I'm open to feedback or suggestions for basing schemes. I was originally thinking of a pale grey, like a moonscape or a levelled city, but the Periphery has all kinds of biospheres.

Repost: Abate the Edge of Traitors

The Inquisitor and several of his acolytes, standing before the Mantis Warriors Razorback APC Dao Găm

The Inquisitor held his right hand by his side. Around him the air grew leaden, heavy. The charge that always lay in this place, that quiescent during his mundane works, a thrumming energy in potentia, began to crawl its way toward reality. His fingers arched into a complex pattern, a perfect geometric web. Points of jale light formed across points on his glossy protective gloves.

Behind the Inquisitor, his mortal servants shifted. Leth the Silent’s porcelain mask grew colder as the shadows began to flicker, blending from fuligin to sangoire. Beside him, sparks of dead colour flared on the Dimachaerus’s swords. The Exile ignored the prickling across its scalp, activating a gleaming rune on the deck panel; a holo-projector flared to life, showing a scarred planet.

Their Inquisitor master raised his left hand. Behind the soft gurgling of his rebreathing unit, he was speaking words in a helical tongue. Both hands now moved, exactly mirroring, and the unnatural lights dimmed on the hand; following a binaric chant, they were replicated, exactly, on the false-light sphere which hovered over the command deck.

The shadows returned to black. Lights returned to reds and blues; monitors to healthy green-on-black. Across the desk from the Inquisitor and his people, Lieutenant Commander Gwak Chae'u of the Mantis Warriors cleared his throat.

“I take it those are to be our targets then, Lord Inquisitor?” The distaste for the rank was concealed, to a point.

The Inquisitor’s inhuman eyes flickered. “Yes, Commander. You may inform your master.”

“I - he is uncomfortable…” Gwak’s expression flattened. “That is to say, we have made the error…

The Exile’s pointed ears flickered; some alien expression of amusement, although its oval eyes betrayed no emotion. Behind the Inquisitor, one of his more human minions coughed and shoved a cigar in his too-wide mouth.

"You have rather more recent experience fighting other Astartes than most, Mantis Warrior.” The rebreather unit hissed. “Ergo, you are perfect for this investigation. Dixi.”

Lt. Comm. Gwak held his eyes for a moment and then, bowing, withdrew.

The falselight globe spun lazily above the briefing table, witch-lights gleaming. The scarred world was in turmoil; icons indicating renegade forces blinked in and out of focus, pursued or pursuing their Imperial prosecutors. Here the crossed, sanguine axes of Orkish mercenaries grew brighter as they ravaged a promethium depot; there a white rose collapsed in pixel fire as a cathedral’s defenders changed their allegiance.

The witch-lights followed their targets’ icons, flickering only as the falselight projector’s machine spirit ran the inflow routines. Unlike the turmoil across much else on the map, the sword-and-wings icons remained steady as faith…

Project: Codename: Sothoth

When I was fourteen - o, lo! many years ago - and was first getting into wargaming, one of the local chaps showed me this cool spaceship game. This was before Battlefleet Gothic, and there was nothing like it in the local scene. It featured three different species of aliens, each more horrible and weird than the last. Humans hadn't unified, like in Star Trek, instead clumped into a handful of superpowers... which included the United States back under the rule of the British Crown.

The game was called Full Thrust and is completely awesome.

More Thrust, the first supplement book

A few years ago, I decided I wanted to get back into wargaming (or at least painting miniatures, as I didn't have any opponents and it turns out that being in your thirties doesn't prevent you from being awkward about introducing yourself to gaming groups). Ground Zero Games has always had very reasonable prices and shipping, so I decided to plump for some of those cool spaceships I'd wanted as a teenager.

I purchased two intro sets: the Oceanic Union, a federation of Australasian-Pacific states and the Sa'Vasku, an advanced alien species who use living bioships which consume their own bio-matter to power their systems and generate drones. 

Elder strike ship and strike ship See below.

I wanted the Sa'Vasku to have an organic sense, but still retain their essential alien-ness, so I looked to Terran arthropods for colour scheme inspiration. I'm hardly unique among the folks with Sa'Vasku ships for doing this, but I also wanted to avoid the drab browns and ochres that 'organic' often means in this context. Luckily, arthropods are super weird:

Blue swimmer crab. Photo from WA Fisheries.

Electric blues for the spikey bits, and white patterns for the core bodies. I went with a solid stellar black for the torso themselves. They're artificially engineered bioships, sure, but this lets me pretend that they have a natural kind of space camouflage. (Yes, I know that doesn't make sense). The underbellies are purple, as some swimmer crabs get a purple tinge. The overall effect generates a striking, science fiction colour pattern, while still showing a sort of organic realness.

Plus, I'd never worked with a bright blue, and I try to pretend to push my limited painting skills.

Drone fighters - finished 02 Aug 2019!

I've really enjoyed this project, and the folks on the Full Thrust Facebook group have been very kind each time I posted an update. During the unfortunate recent business, I managed to finish everything I had planned for this project, so I can reveal the results below. As you will see, in the past two years, the tablet I was using to background the photos perished mysteriously, so not everything looks as cool as it could.

+ excusationes +

Hey, you know how there are approximately 500 million blogs out there and in probably 98% of them, you see a single post or two, and then nothing, and then an apology for being absent for so long?

Weird.

okay okay okay

Look. My computer died, alright? I know, it's the oldest answer there is, but it's true. The poor old girl had been moaning and breathing funny (yes, that was indeed a warning sign) for months, but she gave up the ghost just after the new year. You know, about two days after I started this blog.

I had a laptop, but I find it really hard to sit and think and write with a laptop. I like a desk, and a keyboard, and two monitors and all the luxuries of modern civilisation (tea, whiskey) at my disposal as I write.

Sa'Vasku elder leader bioship, Vas'Sa'Rosh-class.
One of many miniatures completed in the last few months.

I have been able to get a lot of work done on my projects - and started or planned about twelve more, naturally - so now that I have a new computer set up, I'm hopeful we can try this again.

Onwards, as they say, and upwards.