One of my mid-decade hobbies was buying Battletech 2nd and 3rd Edition boxes on ebay. They were like grab-surprise-bags for a while. Interestingly, you don’t find them as often as five years ago. Though I gained several things I never thought (MechCommander 2 + Manual, half used crayons etc.) I would, the important part were the plastic minis.
One box was terribly beat up and the rest of the plastic figs looked like that:
Although I could refit some Mechs with parts from other ebay-boxes, two Riflemen, a Shadowhawk a Warhammer and especially a Marauder were mostly junk.
I couldn’t throw them away, and planned to use them as „destroyed Mech“ templates. But then I was pointed to Steel Heroes! With Steel Heroes, I thought I might restore those beat up LosTech machines.
The Marauder also needed a stable footing, and prior glueings had not worked. So I went for drilling two holes in the leg and using part of an office clip as ersatz-skeleton. Drilling in plastic in that kind of plastic is actually easier than drilling lead, which surprised me, I thought it might splinter.
…and the result!
Now we applied ample amounts of spray-can base colour…
…and after it had dried, US-Army green was chosen as base for the Davion Camo.
Add some dry-brushing with a white/US Army green mixture and some highlights with whote and olive, and…
Voila!
The Rifleman variants are easy to come by, the Marauder might kust be perfect for a MAD-3L. I’m not sure I know of a matchng Warhammer variant. If you wonder where the SRM of the WHM went, look here.
Auch ich hab schon diverse Battletech-Miniaturen bei ebay ersteigert. Die defekten Figuren mit den Bauteilen von Steel Heoes als Zombiemechs zu gestalten ist ne gute Idee! Und schaut auch gut aus – so kann man wirklich Ideal die verschiedenen Varianten darstellen.
Nice work.Now go get some Vallejo Sepia Shade or even better Vallejo Smoke/Smokey Ink and ink the Mechs, then re-brush them. This will add tons of aw and extra-depth.
I’m not a fan of ink shades these days. On Photos and close up that looks great, but in actual use, it makes the minis too dark for my tastes. Or am I missing something?
You should always water the ink. Make it thinner than milk so it concentrates in the pits and slots. After inking you brush the fig again with the brighter color. The figs don’t become darker, you just get way more contrast.If you don’t want to buy the mentioned washes/inks, just water down some mixture of acrylic brown and black to try it.
I did many a mini that way with thinned black, but always they came out darker in the end. Maybe brown will be worth a try.
Not necessarily. You want the shadows dark, so thin(!) black should do (of course brown works , Vallejo Smoke is best suited). The easiest way should be to apply the (thin!) ink after the base color, then re-apply the base color and brighten it.
Hey there– This is off topic, but I recently came across your post to my blog again about wanting to build a Lensman Beholder-kin. I found a great way to do one, which is use the Heroclix White Martian, clip the head off and use greenstuff to modify. Do a blog search for Lensman over at my blog and you can see the tutorial.Hope I’m not too late!