1089th Lt Armor Support Group - Galleon Lt Tank ca 3025

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The Galleon Light Tank is one of the OG units of Battletech.  Right up there with the mobile Long Tom, the Hunter and the Vedette, this unit appears in a lot of the original lore before more home grown units like the Demolisher or the Shrek took center stage.  The Galleon first showed up in the original 3025 technical readout, and like a dozen or so of the most iconic Battemechs from that TRO, it was stolen from a Japanese anime called Crusher Joe.  They even kept the name - Galleon.

Original Crusher Joe Art
In its original imagery, which was basically identical to the Crusher Joe anime version, it had a Medium Laser basically jutting from its top without any real turret and two side laser barrels in effectively sponsons.  This classic light tank showed up in all kinds of early lore, most prominently in the Gray Death trilogy when a company of them assaulted the Legion on there landing at Verthandi.

In its later era revamp the artwork was redone to avoid copyright

3025 BT Artwork
issues, and followed that eras esthetic of bulbous and bulky tank bodies; though this one did mount a small turret instead of a pintle mounted medium laser.  The file I have chosen to use over the last several projects is the HBS turn based video game artwork version which captures the tank nature of the turret in a great way, really carries an old school tank aesthetic.  I do like the latest artwork which will be for the newest Mercenaries kickstarter miniature, and will definitely use that one in the future,
but for now I am sticking with this version.
3058 Update Artwork

To help tell the tale of the Galleon Light Tank I choose to dig into the original TRO and use the 1089th Light Armor Support Group of House Kurita and the DCMS as a base.  For those who are just seeing some of my work I have a pattern of using a US Drab khaki style paint for all generic DCMS armor units - really captures the old imperial Japanese's feel from the original fiction I think - and matches the uniforms of the infantry and tankers from the source materials. The 1089th is mentioned as having a

HBS Video Game Edition

Galleon named Doris after the commanders mechwarrior sister who had been killed in action.  I have also represented these as the GAL-200 Variant which is in service to House Kurita which replaces the Small Lasers with Machine Guns - not sure its much of an improvement really, but seemed fitting lore wise.

The Galleon will be represented in future projects - I have a mercenary armor battalion in mind already

CGL Merc Kickstarter art taking it back 
the original feel.


- so other incarnations are sure to be captured here in the future.







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