Industrial mechs, people either seem to love them or hate them. More useless than a useless thing unless you need a mech. Above is a modified Forestry mech with additional rocket pods added to supplement the cutting arm.
A much modified industrial mech with a beefy (it's all relative when one is dealing with converted industrial mechs) combination of gun and missiles.
Another custom modified industrial where I've slapped on some machine gun pods and a missile pod. All of these were made up for my Mummerset Operation Sandbox campaign, which you can access by clicking the link or looking under the Labels in the left hand column.
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The danger signs on the bottom one are perfect! :)
ReplyDeleteCheers for the comment.
DeleteConceptually they're great. In the traditional-tech "one 'Mech makes you a knight, two makes you a king" era, they make perfect sense for people who can't get access to a full-on BattleMech. And the bolted-on-weapons look is perfect for them. But I thought the rules were always kind of clunky, especially BAR; if they'd been designed in from day one it might have worked a bit better.
ReplyDeleteIn my campaign I constructed all the industrials using 3025 tech, the players mechs using Clan tech and the bad guys got later Inner Sphere tech. It worked for us.
DeleteAlso, once you put an internal combustion engine in a mech it pretty much borks it as an effective design. Add in limitations to how big or how much armour they can carry is sufficient to produce designs that are different enough that the BAR rules are redundant.
DeleteAre these modified Mechwarrior minis? How do they scale with your other Battletech figures?
ReplyDeleteNo they're modified Iron Wind models.
DeleteI meant to ask the last time I posted but forgot... do you use water soluble or enamel paints? Your robot models have a bit of a shiny "my paint won't ever chip!" look to them and I wasn't sure if it was the paint itself as it reminds me of testors model paints or if you protect them with varnish after painting. I use both gloss and flat varnish on mine but the colors don't seem to pop as much (which could admittedly be due to the limited palette I use).
ReplyDeleteIt's all in the varnish, and truth be said these probably need another blast of Testors Dullcote. I've found that the first coat doesn't always have a truly matt finish, but that if you wait a while (a few days or a week) and respray the finish does look more matt, but then one handles them and the grease off one's fingers leaves a trace of glossiness, and my miniatures do get played with.
DeleteJust to add – I prime use matt enamels (Humbrol) and paint over the top with acrylics, then gloss varnish so I can make sure the model is properly coated, then matt varnish over the top, which makes it easier to see if the model has been fully covered by the spray.
DeleteThanks for the quick reply. Sounds like we have (except for priming) the same technique roughly. I gloss first a few times (both to avoid decal edging and to avoid the dreaded fogging with matte varnish) with a final single coat of matte to finish it off and reduce the shine. I guess I have to just expand my color choices then!
ReplyDeleteThat's a hard question without actually seeing the paints, the models and getting some idea of your process. I might hazard a wild guess that you're muddying the colours with your wash and not going back and highlighting with pure colour to make them pop. But OTOH what do I know, and quite frankly I'm not all into the whole miniatures as pieces of fine art approach that is sold as the bar we all have to attain.
DeleteAnd one other thing that might be letting you down is your pictures. Just saying. Personally unless it bothers you I wouldn't worry about it.
I'd never thought of the idea of industrial mechs, but really, that's how a lot of military technology works, it's often generated by a civilian application. And vice versa, if these giant stumpy lifty walk things exist, why wouldn't companies, particularly ones doing resource extraction in remote areas want them?
ReplyDeleteI like the danger signs too. The first time I visited a farmer in my rural parish in civvie ministry, he gave a ride on his combine. I had never seen so many danger signs. As he said, "Lots of ways to kill yourself on one of these." And in fact, most of the old folks in the county had a story of some relative or friend who'd been augured/crushed/threshed to death in a farm accident. But I digress.
Brilliant model.
I think of them as BattleTech's equivalent of "Technicals."
DeleteOh yeah! Now I'm King of the Hamlet!
DeleteIncidentally, Ashley, I tried to email you this earlier but Demon flagged it as spam: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8YjvHYbZ9w