After my somewhat mixed success with the Command Lance, I resolved that I would back go to a green paint scheme. Its always good to try something new, I just wasn’t happy with how they turned out. So, I went back, checked the article where I wrote down the paints I used, and decided to practice on a lance box I would not feel too bad about messing up: the Support Lance. Consisting of three Star League era designs of increasing rarity and one flagship product, the theme of this set is a little harder than usual to tease out. It's support in the sense that here's 3 heavy dudes with a little guy for spotting, although beyond that it's a touch generalised. So, to start in order of increasing chonkitude.
The Spider is a notably agile scout, known for its jump jets. These take up most of its back, with eight visible thrusters, bulking out what is otherwise a stick-thin machine. Otherwise, I find it a bit strange. Occasionally, you get some quite oddball designs in Battletech, and the Spider puts its armaments in the chest. That makes some sense from a game mechanics standpoint, but I would have put something in the arms, if only to increase the fire arcs. My regular readers, somewhat hypothetical as they may be, might notice I’ve based these like the UrbanMechs. That is so say, Citadel Technical Astrogranite over plastic scraps. I opted for this as I do an awful lot of mud with my Orks, and since it works quite well, why not? I also used Liquitex Acrylic Ink “Transparent Raw Sienna” as the wash for these models, something which seems to have been a boon to the lance as a whole. It looks to have helped their finish.
Up next there is the posterboy of the Draconis Combine, the Dragon. A solid performer in its class, this is a good all-rounder with some good quirks. I can see a Lance doing well with a pair of these. My only concern is with, well, the entire concept of the Draconis Combine. Not a nice place on the surface, and the ethnic coding in play needs a proper unpacking. Anyways, this was quite good to work on, minimal fuss.
With the Thug we're back to relatively rare Star League vintage stuff. This was designed to rival the venerable Warhammer, and in the process popularised the idea of a "zombie mech". The Thug can absorb a frankly unreasonable amount of damage, but much of the technology that enabled this became lost. Comstar is the only organisation to really hang on to them, and that was a bit of a surprise to folks. I regrettably didn’t notice a mould imperfection on the head until it was too late, but the Citadel Technical Soulstone gave the PPCs a real nice glow.
Finally, we have the Cyclops, a 90 ton assault mech whose job description implies it probably shouldn't be getting its hands dirty. It's a dedicated command vehicle, and good in that role, but as with the Thug, the technology enabling this was lost during the Succession Wars. People only tend to want one if its got a working battle computer. Personally, I'm less than jazzed about this one as a concept; you generally don't want your enemies to know where your command centre is, and this appears to be a flashing neon "shoot me" sign. Mind you, the eye came out really nice. My usual method of Citadel Contrast Iyanden Yellow over Wraithbone is admittedly a touch random, but it worked very well here.
So, here’s the thing, I really like how these turned out, and this was basically a light warm-up for me. I’ve produced nice, table-worthy, results with simple techniques. But I don’t wish sound like I’m dismissing my own work by saying it simple. I put the effort in by finding/perfecting those techniques, and while I’m not entering a Golden Demon or nothing, I’ve got my confidence back with respects to BattleTech.
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