Painting Lore: Miniatures Inspired by the Story

If there is one thing you may have noticed about this blog is I have a soft spot for the Draconis Combine .  Despite playing the big baddie in most of the early lore of the Battletech universe I have always liked the extreme juxtaposition of the neo-samurai ways and a dystopian science fiction universe.  Both of these things are brought neatly together in the Chain Gang missions executed by the Kuritan’s against the Steiner and Davion border worlds leading into the 2nd Succession War in 2824. These missions were a way for the lore writers to work in the Imperial Japanese suicide missions of the kamikaze into the fiction and adding a touch of heartless betrayal  The Chain Gang missions were manned by convicts, disgraced soldiers and ‘unproductives’ - the combine term for homeless, jobless, or low level criminals.  The ‘Chain Gangs’ would form up in lance size elements and be dropped off on some border world with the instructions to cause as much chaos as possible… t...

Kentares Monument The Kentares IV massacre carries a lot of weight in the lore of the Draconis Combine and Federated Suns in the succession wars era.  This war crime of incredible scale set the early tone for the Draconis Combine; giving it a feel of the unquestioning obedience, but at the same time dichotomy of samurai honor code, that is so prevalent in the pre-clan era.   The whole scenario played out in the 1st Succession war after the Draconis Combine had been fairly well succeeding at defeating its enemies.  Fate would turn the tide, however, when the Coordinator, out on what one assumes would be a routine battlefield leadership circulation to his commanders, stopped in a mountain glen to observe the beauty of the world he was in the midst of conquering.  As he strolled in the mountain meadow he was observed by a 7th Crucis Lancers infantry platoon. Taking the shot and changing history The platoon leader, Latha Pischel , ordered his platoon to withdraw...

The Original Campaign Box Set I Have always been a campaign player at heart.  As much as I love the skirmish lance vs lance games the lack of consequence to a larger narrative always made them seem less engaging.  Why withdraw your three Stingers to preserve a recon element when at the end of the game it was all forgotten?  Better to fight to the bitter end and pull out a scrappy win. Its only with campaign play, sometimes over months or years if you really want to get complex, does the small engagements really add up.  And so do the support units.  Much like my recent post regarding logistics, command elements are also important.  While the stories often tell of regimental commanders fighting from a mech and commanding all their forces, this is problematic for anyone with real world military experience.  Its hard enough to judge where your squad or platoon is under fire, let alone a hundred giant war machines across several kilometers.  No, for r...

The foundation of the early Battletech novels, the Gray Death Legion (abbreviated to the GDL) is perhaps one of the most famous of the mercenary units in the Inner Sphere, despite being rather small in comparison to other major commands like the Eridani Light Horse or Wolf's Dragoons .  Despite their small size the unit has routinely hit above its weight and generally comes very near total annihilation in the process.  It has remained a fan favorite, and somehow always works its way into the most critical of world events. Another interesting feature of the GDL is its incorporation of infantry forces in a time of the BT universe before elementals and powered armor infantry made ground pounders and Poor Bloody Infantry (PBIs) popular.  Perhaps owing as much to the need for dramatic prose in the fiction works they were featured in as to infantry’s actual game utility; the use of anti-mech and inferno armed infantry was always a feature of the GDL stories.  This was in...

In the final book of the original Gray Death Legion trilogy the GDL face off against Colonel J. Langsdorf and his 12th Atrean Dragoons on the icy world of Helm .  While the GDL tries to clear its name after being accused of a pretty over the top war crime (because something like tax evasion or fraud would be too easy and Comstar likes to play life on hard mode apparently...) they are engaged in a running battle with the FWL unit.  The good Colonel runs the show from his Warhammer , which I have represented here with the Capelan variant of the WHM-6L - because why not?  I wanted to branch out and get one of the cooler variants into my collection and it makes sense to me that Marik would have a captured Capelan machine or two.  But what really stands out in this novel, often overlooked, is Marik's prodigious use of airborne ISR.  There are at least half a dozen mentions of the GDL being tracked from high above by Boomerang spotter aircraft ; and since BT does n...