Painting Lore: Miniatures Inspired by the Story

This has been a labor of love for about 2 years.  I bought the Battalion Force Mat more or less on a whim, and then had to explain what this giant box was when it arrived.  After quit a bit of painting off and on, and a lot of printing of features I have a complete laydown in 3d of the BFM on the desert side.  I am unsure if I will do the woodlands side in this level of detail - there are over 130 tree hexs - but I will for sure produce some woodl and terrain. The major benefit of this project; besides being awesome, is that with the baseline desert hills you basically have all the terrain you could want for any scenario - with the new trend towards flat battlemats for place your own terrain this will no doubt be the future of even hex'ed classic Battletech. All of he terrain is from he HexTech terrain line - and they are awesome.  All the tree hexs are from my personal Cult .STL collection - available for free if anyone wants them.

With the completion of a light wheeled company of vehicles in the DCMS scheme I have completed a full battalion of vehicles in service to the Dragon... the first of what is planned to be a full regiment of Succession Wars /Clan Invasion units. This unit is conspicous in that it was made before the Merc Kick starters was released and so featured 2 sculpts of the Galleon at odds with the revised; old is new again, art.  The first company features the more tank like Galleon from HBS video game, and the second is a full company of Nu-Seen Galleons.  I may need to revisit my DCMS regiment at some point to include some of the newest Galleon models... Perhaps as a command lance?  We will see. This battalion consist of the following TO&E: 1089th Light Armor Support Group: 1st Platoon:  2x Hunter Lt Tanks; 2x Scorpion Lt Tank 2nd Platoon:  4x Scorpion Lt. Tanks 3rd Platoon:  4x Galleon Lt Tanks 3rd Strike Co. 12x Galleon Lt Tanks 11th Armored Co. 1st Platoon:...

While re-reading the novel "Heir to the Dragon" and its recounting of the 4th Succession War a mention was made of the 11th Armored Regiment, and how there light vehicles would not be able to stand up to the advancing Lyran hordes.  I decided to use that as the basis for my last light DCMS vehicle company for a battalion formation - and wanted something distinct and capturing the iconic wheeled vehicles of the Succession and Clan Invasion eras. I settled on Strikers and Hetzler variants - two designs common and with excellent new 3D renditions available. I did have to make a kitbash of the LRM/SRM variant of the Hetzer which I have published on my Cults page if anyone would like it - as always its free or you can make a modest donation to keep my resin habit supplied. As always this is my SOP for Kurita Armor - khaki base layer for all generic house armor regiments with just a touch of silvering and, where appropriate, light blue for glass and gray black on the wheels.  Kuri...

Just a little lay out of the 5th Sword of Light vs the 3rd Crucis Lancers set on there contest on Ozawa circa 3026.  This is the culmination of building both of these TO&E organizations right out of the Sorenson's Sabers scenario book.  And what better map to lay this out on than the Battalion Force Mat!