Painting Lore: Miniatures Inspired by the Story

This was a quick project I wanted to knock out between larger efforts.  I had always like the idea, from a campaign stand point, of the Kurita Recon Infantry being scouts with demo charges to blow bridges, power stations, generally wreck all kinds of infrastructure in the path of an invading force.  So I went searching for minis to proxy these forces and found some Brigade Models PacFed infantry models which I then painted in my Kurita SOP colors of tan and grey helmets.   The rules for these are a bit wonky in that they are written as 'mechanized' infantry when they more closely resemble motorized infantry - but I guess the fact that they use hover bikes makes it a bit squirrely with the rules - so there you go. Nothing to crazy here, just a company of recon infantry out to blow up every bridge, communications relay and railroad between you and your objective.

This is a quick project to flesh out some of my aerospace transport assets.  I love campaigns and if your going to do a campaign on a regimental scale, then you need enough dropship assets to move your forces on world... or lose them in orbit.  The landing process is the most hazardous moment in any campaign; the fiction represents most drops as being lightly opposed but in actual game play much of the time you lose a dropship on the way in.  This project was a reinforced battalion raiding force - 3 unions and 3 leopards in Draconis Combine Admiralty livery.  Two leapords are derived from the Gray Death Legions work on Verthandi - the Xao and the Subotai (Source is Mercenary's Star).  The third is the 'Foxhound' which you can read more about in the original 3025 TRO.  The Unions are also named from units in the lore.  The Hi No Kumo was taken by the Grey Death Legion in a raid on Imbros III in 3028 as part of the recon raids in preparation for the 4th ...

 In April 3026 the 5th Sword of Light invaded the world of Ozawa, quickly overrunning the worlds planetary garrison and seizing control of the planet from House Davion.  It did not take long for the Federated Suns to send one of its best units to retake the world from the Sword of Light regiment.  The 3rd Crucis Lancers landed and made short work of the 5th - forcing there withdrawal. Here we have the complete Battalion of 3rd Crucis Lancers as represented in the Ozawa and Markab campaigns detailed in the Sorenson's Sabers scenario pack.  

During the Markab Campaign in July 3026 the 5th Sword of Light had come calling against its old stubborn foe the 3rd Crucis Lancers.  As part of the attack the 5th SoL had secured complete air dominance, owning the skies and paving the way for a route of the 3rd.  As the Crucis Lancers fell back the 5th Sword fought a rolling rear guard of Lancers as they bought time for the rest of the regiment to make it off world.  It was just such a fight that Sorenson's Sabers stumbled on when they encountered Orion's Company dug into mech fox-holes dubbed 'Rat Traps' and holding the line. This project is the last company of the 3rd Crucis Lancers battalion as detailed in Sorenson's Sabers - which is a nice counter-point to the complete 5th Sword of Light Battalion I have in my collection.  This was a fun one to paint since it included some nice assault units such as the Awesome and Victor - both have nice sculpts to them.

This was a fun little project that let me use a few  unique elements and recreate one of the more famous scenes from the early novels of Battletech.  Here I did my best to recreate the early hours of the Gray Death Legions landing on Verthandi - nearly shot down in there Danais class dropship the legion was attempting to unload as many of there supplies and war machines as possible when they were attacked by a lance of Duke Ricol's household guard, as well as an aero-lance of Slayers.  To make matters worse they also had a whole company of Galleon light tanks assault there position. In the end they are able to slip away with a group of rebels and keep there dropship intact - mostly.  A fair amount of plot armor in this one I think. The slayers are both 3d Models I picked up at some point and scaled up by about 10% with a little thickening of the model to bring them in line with the current CGL scaling.  The Galleons are all the modern version, these printed real...

  Following the Ozawa Campaign in which the 3rd Crucis pushed the 5th Sword of Light back from its conquest of that world the Lancers withdrew to Markab for rest and refit.  The respite was short lived, as the 5th Sword of Light sought to erase the stain of there defeat in another action against the 3rd Crucis.  A bitter fighting withdraw took place as the 3rd Crucis struggled to maintain its unit cohesion under the surprise attack. In the last moments of the retreat the Crucis Lancers were in a difficult position and there regimental commander Colonel O'Malley decided to lead a last ditch defense against Sorenson's company to hold them at bay long enough for the dropships to finish loading.  As last stands go, having an Atlas handy is a pretty good way to do it. In the scenario presented in Sorenson's Sabers the defending forces are described as basically what ever survived the previous battles; the previous two scenarios have Sorenson's sabers fighting already dama...

Mercer Ravannion had a bold idea.  Maybe not a good idea, but a bold one.  Use cheap inexpensive 20 ton mechs like the stinger, wasp and locust, to just swamp heavier more expensive machines.  Since these machines were still being made, were easy to replace and the Draconis Combine values machines over its men, well - maybe it could have worked.  But it didn't - most of the time. I had done a single Stinger a few years back for Mercer in a camo pattern, but since then I wanted to start building out more complete units - in this case my generic House Kurita battalion in house colors - so I decided to revisit this one and do the unit as it appeared in the Fox's Teeth scenario on Fallon II.  This is the exact TO&E of the test unit - 2 wasps and 4 stingers - who went up against the recon lance of McKinnon's Raiders.  I did choose to buy the premium IWM Wasp and make it a Kurita variant for Mercer's ride; the remainder I printed myself. Unleash the Bugs!