Sorenson's Sabers - Circa 3025

- February 21, 2023

I have always intended to do full Battlemech Companies from all the early scenario packs, with the Gray Death Legion being the first such project. Sorenson's Sabers is the second effort, and much like the GDL project once I got into it I realized there was a ton of great cannon units to be pulled from the source material. Sorenson's Sabres has a lot going for it, its classic 3rd Succession War era fluff - lots of raids and fighting the Davions; its a Sword of Light unit which means it makes my Draconian fanboy happy, and its a quirky unit. The company has both a Land Air Mech and a rarely seen Aerospace fighter in place of a mech. All things I like to see in a unit when I am developing a project.

The Sorenson's Sabers sourcebook has a number of great scenarios to draw from, its got a ton of Citytech influence as the Sabers are supposed to be expert urban fighters, but it also has two separate 3 scenario campaigns; which is always fun to see.

The unit itself is vintage, sporting Wasps and Stingers, Phoenix Hawks and a Rifleman this unit is all the big, stole your Japanese's anime IP, goodness that was early battletech. The addition of a LAM, which I used a 3d printed model this time since buying lead was getting too pricey, is also a fun addition. And the Samurai aerospace fighter was a unique choice.

The Samurai Aerospace fighter itself is stolen IP from Crusher Joe's Harpy fighter artwork and appeared originally in Dahar Draconis March Militia colors of House Davion on the original Aerotech box set. Had I waited to purchase some of the units for this project until after I had purchased a 3d printer I probably would have printed the original style, but I had already purchased the metal new sculpt from Iron Wind Metals, so I used that one instead. I do intend to do a Galtor campaign project with the Dahar March Militia which will get some Harpy clones, but for Sorenson's Sabers they get the new-seen version.

I love the old school scenario packs, ton of great lore nuggets in them - and Sorenson's Sabers is particularly good for this since it was not one of the original releases like Black Widow or Fox's Teeth. Those are still good - bu they lack unit names or references which is key to what I like to do. Increasingly I am looking at building lore compliant complete battalions, or at least representative battalion of scattered companies and lances from a brigade of regiments. In this case Sorenson's Sabers offers us the chance to get a lore compliant Battalion of the 3rd Crucis Lancers. I intend to do the complete battalion eventually, but it can be sources completely from this scenario pack.

Of note I will be adding OpFor details in this scenario book for the Ozawa Campaign and the Markab invasion, both of which involve the 3rd Crucis Lancers. Keep an eye out for those.

For this project, in addition to my SOP of laser, gun metal and cockpit highlighting you can find in older posts, I used Games Workshop contrast Blood Angel Red. This turns out really well when you use a spray on light grey primer, gives it that old school succession wars look - not to bright, but still obviously a mech and not an organic texture. Bonus is its fairly easy to paint a lot of minis with, so doing a whole company is not a major time suck. Obviously with the Sword of Light its a super simple paint scheme, so this one was straight forward. I did the basing with Games Workshops Astrograde technical paints for that ferrocrete city block look since the Sabers are known city fighters. Basing these scenario based companies can be a challenge since I generally match the basing to the battle or planet I am drawing from but here since they are the focus of multiple engagements I went with a more general basing scheme.