Daleks

 

Many years ago I use to write wargame articles for a living, sort of anyway, as I mostly made my living by doing other stuff to pay the bills as such. Such is the glamorous life of a wargame author! I also wrote for club zines too, and I did a very long piece on the Daleks for Ragnarok, the magazine of the SF&SFW. Anyway, Daleks scared me as a child and fascinated me as a teenager and about 20 years ago I was given a bunch of 15mm castings of Daleks and Cybermen that were leftovers that had been produced for a demo game.

Foolishly I passed on the Cybermen, and again decided foolishly that I didn't need all the Daleks I had either. Oh how I regret that decision. Give them to me, give them all to me my preciouses. Anyway, I've recently been refurbishing my old figures, and I decided to re-base my 15mm Daleks and re-varnish them too, after touching up the odd chip of paint at the same time.

I had to convert a standard Dalek casting into a Golden Emperor, which is based on the TV21 comic series that I bought the reprint collection of a few years ago. The colours are again inspired by both the comic and the TV series. Now that they are all based I hope to be using them for games again at some point in the future.
   

Butterfly's & Ants

I have more on my plate at the moment than I can readily finish in a weekends worth of painting. Kind of stating the obvious, as most people who play wargames and paint miniatures have stuff hoarded away in handy shoe boxes. Heck I know that I have, but I'm not going to go into my shoebox collection now, as we all know that as long as you have lead figures to paint things are well with the world.

I spent the weekend painting. Two marathon stints of 7 hours each, and I still didn't quite finish the 80 odd figures that I worked on, and this wasn't the first weekend working on them either. I'm painting some 15 infantry, and I've not painted any 15mm figures in a long time. So it has been a bit of a learning curve, as I try to remember the right order to paint colours in, the correct techniques for the required finish, and practice some new techniques I've read about too.

Anyway, not ready to show any pictures yet. You will all have to be patient for a bit longer. However, when I was reflecting on my progress at the weekend, this morning before dragging my weary corpse to work, I did realise that I have a total of 16 trays of figures in progress. So I suppose it only goes to show that I'm a bit of a butterfly that flits from one pretty shiney thing to another. Rather than a more industrious ant who would stay the course until the job was done.
   

Catabloging

Some of the more eagle eyed readers may have noticed that I've been adding extra tags, and revising some of the posts I've made.The reason for this is that I write a blog to get comments, and engage in idle chit-chat with like minded people. 

Now while I don't mind writing a review and having no one comment on it, after all what is there to say other than I wish I had been able to go, or I shall try and catch that movie, I do want as much chat developed as possible, partly because this site is a relief valve from my work stresses.  

Now, while I sit at work, I sometime have idle thoughts, as one does, and in these idle thoughts I imagine blogs I've want to write, which is one reason for writing this piece on catabloging. A word I've made up, but assume that others have already thought of it before me, as it describes cataloging a blog with tags quite eloquently.

Anyway, another thing you will start to see are strange combinations of letters like WGIAGH , or WGIAWOL (edit). 

These respectively stand for War Gaming Is A Goddam Hobby versus War Gaming Is A Way Of Life (edits). This is my attempt to transfer some science fiction fandom geek speak into the wargamers lexicon.

One of my favourite authors, Robert A. Heinlein, use to do this with such examples TANSTAAFL, which stands for There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, and this has become a bit of SF fandom culture over the years. More to the point the short hand is useful in identifying those posts where I'm getting my geek on with numbers and calculations, compared to more fluffy pieces about pink battlemechs.

Edits: Yep, I mucked up the contractions, so I've edited them here as noted.

PS: OSR added to my catabloging, which just indicates an article that is Old School Retread stuff.

335th Regimental Battlegroup Retrieved

  

Breaking news is that we can now reveal that the 335th Regimental Battlegroup, lost during orbital insertion on the planet Gainsborough at drop point Whiskey Hotel Sierra, were located by a special forces recon unit today. The 335th were brought to Gainsborough on transport units from Task Force USPS.

The orbital drop point co-ordinates were corrupted by enemy operatives from the PFDS, a breakaway ComStar faction whose aim is to disrupt interstellar communications. Though the agents have not yet been apprehended by our forces a spokesperson for the Gainsborough Ministry of Defense has said that all means necessary will be brought to bear upon the instigators of this damaging action by enemy saboteurs. 

Though casualties were suffered during the drop as the 335th were expecting to land at a prepared landing site, they are minimal, and will not affect the combat effectiveness of the command.

Pink Panther History

  
 

I've never really tied myself in tightly to the BattleTech universe, but had a paragraph I wrote a long time ago for Games Master International about the Pink Panthers.

Major Gloria Mundi

Under the exchange treaty House Kurita received several of the BLR-1CJ variants, one of which went to Duke Ricol’s command and was assigned to his new “Pink” Panthers’ hunter-killer Battalion for evaluation. Major Mundi named her new mech Excelsior, and demonstrated the design’s tactical strengths during the false war of 3039.

Over the years I've kind of thought about this a bit more and here are some of my musings...

3034 Duke Hassid Ricol has to play nice because he has fallen on hard times, as outlined in Heir to the Dragon. We know he has a mech Company under Captain Tyrell from Shrapnel. So this is my draft of how the Panthers fit in.

The Red Duke saw the need for training to face House Steiner and mercenary units, and had the idea of training an OPFOR based on Steiner & Grey Death Legion principle e.g: Assault, heavy and medium mechs. A lance was formed under Captain Conrad Black in a Battlemaster, with Lieutenant Serena Griffiths as his second in command in a Thunderbolt. The lance was completed with three medium mechs. Sergeant Mundi was in a Wolverine, and Mechwarriors Lucy Morgenstern piloting a Griffin and Lara Atsuko Tachikoma a Shadow Hawk.

On paper all the mechs were good to go, but this is the Succession Wars and the truth was they were all patch jobs. To hide this orange disruptive patches were painted over the less than perfect repairs. However the lance served their purpose of giving standard Kuritan lances a taste of what it was like to face this combination, and the team proved adept at mimicking Steiner and mercenary commands tactics. The unit also acted as a training cadre and would have Kuritan mechwarriors added to it, and could be expanded up to a Company size formation. The unit was known as Black's Panthers, because it specialized in night operations.

Unfortunately, Black was killed during the false war of 3039, and Griffiths wounded during a night operation, but despite this Sergeant Mundi completed the mission. She was rewarded by a promotion to Captain and was given a new Battlemaster, so that she could used the command functions that it provides.

Both Morgenstern and Tachikoma were promoted to Sergeants for their part in the missions success. After the false war the Panthers were now an all woman unit and were nicknamed the "Pink" Panthers. As a response to this, Mundi had the techs paint a pink splinter pattern over the red and orange finish of the mechs.

By 3049 the Pink Panthers had become a training Company that were hired out as a cadre as necessary, and which could be expanded up to Battalion size for training when required. The unit was able to acquit itself well during the early stages of the Clan invasion, but their jumpship went missing during the war. If I get into the Dark Age they'll reappear in the game universe as a jump forward accident.

Pink Panther Battalion

I've been reviewing my blogs, and I see that a couple of posts have no comments on them and I kind of wondered why? I reasoned that I said nothing that anyone felt was worth commenting on, which is fair enough.

Comments really inspire me to write more, so I thought about what to do? What I thought is that rather than just post pictures of my mechs, sans pretty much anything, I would add some comments and fluff, which will hopefully generate more comments.

My favourite BattleTech mechs come mostly from the anime show Fang of the Sun Dougram, known in Japan as Taiyō no Kiba Daguramu. This is one of three shows that FASA used the mechs from for their Battledroids game, which due to Lucas Films owning the word "droid" was renamed Battletech.

The other two shows were Crusher Joe, known as Kurasshā Jō where the Locust battlemech and Galleon light tank designs came from, and the series Super Dimensional Fortress Macross known in Japan as Chō Jikū Yōsai Makurosu, which actually translates as Super Spacetime Fortress Macross, which is of course the show that was the basis for the TV series Robotech by Harmony Gold.

My other favourite mechs being the Destroids that became know as the Rifleman, Archer, Warhammer and Longbow, plus the Valkyrie's that became the basis for the Wasp, Stinger, Phoenix Hawk and Crusader. Other designs were used, or based upon Macross designs, including the Marauder, along with the Ostall series, name from Crusher Joe; the image being an interpretation of the Zentradi battle pods. All of this being old news to OSR fans like myself.

However, for now let me talk you through the Pink Panther Battalion.

The picture at the top of the post is the first Company of the Pink Panther Battalion. It looks like a standard 12 mech lance, but in fact is organised into two 5 mech lances and a command element of 2 mechs.

The mech front and centre left in this photo is a custom modified Griffin that was turned into a representation of Fang of the Sun Dougram Bushman mech. Though it is a little too large in actual fact. However, I do have a couple of Gashapon Bushmen that I intend to use in my recon lances at some point. So this mech will be re-imagined as a Griffin command variant.

Here is my Alpha lance. It has all my favourites mechs in it from the show Fang of the Sun Dougram. The Battlemaster at the back of the pictures, which was known in the show as the Soltic HT-128 "Bigfoot".

This is an original "unseen" model with no particular modifications made to it, and was originally painted up in the late 80s, so it is 20 years old. I intend to refurbish the aerials at some point on all my old models, as at the time I used piano wire, but want to use finer guitar string, as it will look better. I also have a whole bunch of custom Pink Panther unit decals from Fighting Pirranha Graphics to add as well.

 In the centre of the picture is my first Thunderbolt, which was known as the Hasty F4X "Ironfoot". This has been modified with a PPC on its right arm, and I've replaced the rather wimpy rocket launcher that came with the model with something more substantial, to make it look closer to the original design.

The Griffin, known as Soltic H8 "Roundfacer", is a newly modified model that has been turned into the 24th Battalion Custom"Korchima Special" from the show. 

The Shadow Hawk, known as the "Dougram" that the show is named after, has only had a minor alteration to it, which was to make the over the shoulder cannon rotate on a bearing. Originally I just used a pin through the casting, but after 20 years this was showing signs of failure, so I rebuilt the joint using brass bearings.

Finally, the Wolverine, known as Abitate T-10C "Blockhead", is another newly made model that has been reposed, and it has had the main weapon replaced with a spare casting given to me by Glenn Wallbridge, a friend of mine who use to make model masters for casting for firms like Akhenaton Models.

My Bravo lance is more of the same, because if one lance of Dougram mechs is good, two must be better.

In the centre is a customised Battlemaster, which has also been reposed. The Wolverine, Griffin and Shadow Hawk are all standard original "unseen" models. The Thunderbolt is a newly painted up and reposed "unseen" model that I finished last year. It keeps the original weapon, but I have again replaced the rocket launcher and done a lot of finessing to the pose of the model.

To me all the Dougram show mechs just look right. I have managed to acquire the main books on Fang of the Sun Dougram show, and I intend to post snippets of art from them in the future. It will be my tribute to this seminal "mecha" show that has not really been heard about, yet it was a big success in Japan, with model kits still being produced today, which is a real indicator of how influential it must have had at the time.

Finally, here are a few of the mechs I have in my second and third Company's.

With a total of 20 mechs painted up for my Pink Panthers, I'm not under any pressure to add more models at this time, so neither Company is complete.

 On my workbench I have an Archer and Phoenix Hawk that are awaiting some love and attention, both of which are highly modified rebuild to correct deficiencies in the original design interpretation and casting. Unfortunately my time is limited, and in what time I have I've been mostly driven by the urge to get some opposition painted up, and this has taken up my spare time somewhat.

However, I actually have two each of the Warhammer, Rifleman, Spider and Wasp that you can see in the above picture. The second Company is based around Macross Destroid designs, with odd FASA in house designs that I quite like in the third Company.