Heavy Metal Menagerie, week 7 (2026 week 7)

If my math is correct and I can manage to keep to the schedule I've been keeping, this is right around the midpoint of this mega theme. I'd expected to take a break at some point in my Battletech backlog, but I'm playing a lot of Alpha Strike (Aces, in particular), and at this point I'm so close to the end of the backlog. Provided that I don't buy any additional boxes to fill some empty spots in my roster, we should be closing this theme out in week 14.

First up we have a pair of elemental stars from the Clan Invasion box set. These guys are big burly space marine kinds of dudes in clantech power armor. I hate these guys. Their size and smoke plumes mean that mold lines were really sketchy to deal with so mostly I did a lousy job. Their smoke trails were fun which is another example of a low effort high drama effect--my favorite! They read OK on the table but don't hold up under scrutiny.  

These guys would be the rest of the box set which I got with the kickstarter. Left to right: Adder (Puma), Nova (Black Hawk), Executioner (Gladiator), Timber Wolf (Mad Cat), Mongrel (Grendel). I went with

Jade Falcon colors (kind of) to go with week 3's offering. My airbrush basecoat was iffy on these guys so I took an extra step to hit them with a dark green wash (a mix of Pro Acryl Transparent Green which is very blue mixed with some Transparent Yellow to shift the hue into more of a pure green). Everything else was more or less the same and I think they look a lot better than the last batch. Not sure I'm going to take the time to hit future batches with a wash (I'd prefer to get it right with the airbrush) but I like the deeper saturation on these. 

2026 finished mini counter: 44

Heavy Metal Menagerie, week 6 (2026 week 6)

If you guessed we'd get more mechs this week, you guessed correctly! Probably the title was a dead giveaway, tho. This week we've got mechs from the Mercenaries Box Set which I kickstarted whenever that kickstarter was going (2023? time is a flat circle right now). I liked the dark blue base and wanted to do an analogous color scheme and I don't think it worked out. The lighter blue could have been higher value and that might have helped but...no. The orange cockpits can't carry my bad color choices but hey, that's how we learn, right?

A bunch of these are new to me fitting cleanly between the points that I stopped playing a lot of Battletech in the mid 90s and, well, today more or less. These four from left to right are: Caesar, Devastator, Ostsol, and Quickdraw. 

These four are left to right: Flea, Starslayer, Chameleon, and Firefly. Of these, I only know the Flea and mostly because I've blown up so many of them in MW5:Mercs. The Firefly is a fun example of "an airplane with legs" style of mechs which I thought were a lot more rare in the Battletech universe than they seem to be. Those dirty clanners even have some! 

2026 finished mini counter: 37 

Heavy Metal Menagerie, week 5 (2026 week 5)

Our next installment of mechs is from the main box: A Game of Armored Combat and I'm not sure that's the same SKU as the one currently available from Catalyst. The one I have came with one of the kickstarters and comes with some of my favorite mechs. It also came with a bunch of vehicles but we've already seen them at the end of last year. 

These chonky dudes are (left to right): Thunderbolt, Awesome, Battlemaster, Catapult. Aside from the Awesome which I think is overrated, the other three are some of the mechs I've used the most across all Battletech universe games. In fact, I've got a Thunderbolt and Battlemaster in my Scouring Sands company. I sure hope they survived!

These less chonky dudes are (left to right): Locust, Wolverine, Shadow Hawk, and Commando. I'm using the Locust and Command, too! I painted these guys a while ago now in a flurry of painting exuberance. I have the luxury and resources to play fully painted so when I realized that I wanted four of these guys in my force, well, I knew what I had to do. The oil wash dirtied down the light yellow some on these guys which wasn't intended. It was also (obivously) not fixed.

2026 finished mini counter: 29