Carlyle's Commandos - SHD-2H, PXH-1, WSP-1A

As part of my Gray Death Legion project I reread the first book in the DGL trilogy; Decision at Thunder Rift.  While it is still 80's sci-fi and has some descriptions of Mech combat (such as stingers 'shoulder rolling') which are a little too derivative of the japanese mecha of its time, it was still a decent read with a lot of nostalgia.

To summaries (and spoiler alert - though in fairness it was written in 1986 so if you want to avoid spoilers, you may be a bit to late) a small mercenary company known as Carlyle's Commandos is stationed on a backwater periphery planet named Trellwan under contract to the Lyrans Commonwealth when it is over run by Kuritans posing as bandits.  Everyone is killed, or escapes except the son of the mercenary commander Durant Carlyle, Grayson Carlyle.  

Grayson Carlyle

Trapped on the world he scrounges together enough locals and left overs from his previous company to mount an insurgency and defeat the Kuritans with primarily anti-mech infantry.  I always liked the fact that the GDL books reinforced that infantry were still effective against Mechs - and the newer infantry rules further allow for the use of combined arms.  But thats a side discussion.

Carlyle's Commando's don't last long in the book.  The one Shadowhawk they have is sabotaged and Lt. Hauptman is left without a mech to pilot when the shooting starts.  Durant Carlyle is killed in his Phoenix hawk when he approaches what should have been a friendly dropship and gets blasted by a Marauder, and the two remaining two Wasp's are out in town on patrol... Not that they would have done much what with the Marauder and all.  This little command also boasts some infantry which do there best against an assault by other infantry units in there base, but in the end they are killed or scattered pretty much ended the Commando's as a unit.  For the actual mechs I went pretty basic with these - a PXH-1; SHD-2H and two run of the mill WSP-1As.

Carlyle Commando
Insignia

I found an entry in the Unit Color Compendium online for the unit describing them as being painted in similar fashion to old school Royal Air Force Harriers circa the Falkland's war.  I actually used to have a die cast harrier when I was a kid in this paint scheme so I was immediately interested in painting it. This is such a classic 3025 era lance it hurts; 3 basically recon mechs and a single medium with any potential to lay down the hate is the whole garrison on a planet.  Classic.  It also shows where the heads of the people running Battletech back in the day was at - low level, low intensity combat easy to play out on a tabletop.  Anyway, here is the Harrier inspired paint scheme - I think it turned out pretty well.

To paint this lance I used Vallejo grey green as a base coat and grey blue as the camo stripes.  My usual gunmetal gray, agrax earthshade weapon effects, tesserect glow cockpit and baharath blue laser glow.  In the book Trellwan is kind of a run down edge of the high desert to Army Painter basing and some wasteland tuffs provide the feel of the planet nicely.

If you want to give it a shot (and you know you do...) see links below for the paints used:

Vallejo - Grey Green

Vallejo - Grey Blue

Citadel - Baharroth Blue
Citadel - Tasseract Glow
Vallejo Gun Metal Grey

Army Painter Battlefield Brown Basing

Army Painter Wasteland Tuft

Source:  

Novel:  Decision at Thunder Rift