Wolf's Dragoon Lance (Battle Tech)

Today's post is of a recently finished lance of mechs for Battle Tech. These are plastic miniatures from some of the Battle Tech Alpha Strike lance packs. The lance packs are a great deal for around $15 online, you get four plastic mechs, and double sided stat cards for each mech with an additional unit card and hero mech card. I really do recommend them as the quality of these Battle Tech plastics are much higher than those of the introductory box set from five or six years ago.

For this lance I chose heavy and assault mechs for my Wolf's Dragoons force. I went with the very distinctive black and red paint scheme of the Wolf Spider Battalion but figured they may work for the Zeta Battalion as well.

Since the Shogun was only used by the Wolf's Dragoons in 3050, had to include it.

The lance contains (from left to right), an Awesome, a Catapult, a Shogun and a Stalker. All of these are assault mechs except for the Catapult which is a heavy.

I did decide to do some work on the Stalker as it is one of my favorite mechs but the original miniature looks like it is falling over backwards. I ended up chopping off its legs and added a slight waist. It was a quick fix and really turned out great!

Here you can see the plastic stalker compared to the new metal Stalker II miniature that was released last year.

I have finished a rather large amount of BT miniatures lately and will be getting some more up on the blog.

Mi-24 Hind Helicopters (Team Yankee)

Today's post is showing off the new Mi-24 Hind miniatures for Team Yankee by Battlefront.

When I was a kid, 8 or 9 years old, I found an old Mi-24 Hind Helicopter model kit at the local drugstore. It was 1/144th scale and was like Skill Level 3, but I loved the look of the helicopter and managed to talk my mom into buying it for me. I just remember it being an abject failure as it was completely beyond me to assemble, however my love of that weird looking helicopter remained.

When deciding on the Soviets for Team Yankee the Hind was a big factor in going with them! The pictures below show off my first two M-24's. One is done in a light green with dark green blobs painted on and the other is done similar to BF's paint scheme. I really like the light green base coat and the rest of mine will be done in that manner. I haven't found much online about Soviet helicopter paint schemes in the 80's, so I just choose based on what I liked.

I will go ahead and apologize for the quality of the pictures, my light box failed me, or I failed it...

 Overall I really liked this kit from Battlefront, it goes together rather well and is huge and imposing on the battlefield! My main issue with the kit are the rotors, they are a mess. The rotor blades are molded with three blades together, then you glue on two more. The five blades are very big and heavy, this is not necessarily a problem except that there is very little surface area connecting the rotor hub with the rotor mast! I ended up drilling both out and pinning them together, however I still do not feel comfortable with its sturdiness.

Otherwise there is a little wonkiness (technical term) around the cockpits but its not that bad and the rest goes together well. As I mentioned above these are huge helicopters, as they are 1/100th scale instead of 1/144th like BF's planes. I really like the size, but some have mentioned wishing they were the smaller 1/144th scale.

 I did finish the flying bases and added small removable markers to show when my missile pods have been used up. Also one was assembled with the landing gear up and one with landing gear down.

Horus Heresy - Loyalist Dreadnoughts!

A quick update today. We will venture back to the Warhammer 30k universe with a couple of loyalist dreadnoughts I finished recently. I have been working concurrently on Raven Guard and Salamanders space marines using the new 30k plastics.

On the right is the Contemptor Pattern Dreadnought of the Raven Guard that I have shown before. I really love the plastic Contemptor from the Betrayal at Calth box. I added very little to the kit, just a little Raven friend and a few seals. I enjoyed this so much I looked for someway to get a Salamanders dreadnought quickly, and then remembered I had an old one gathering dust in the closet.

On the left is a Castraferrum Pattern Dreadnought that I customized for the Salamanders legion. This was a speed build in every sense of the word. I woke up one Saturday with the Grey Knight Dreadnought you see below and was entirely finished making it a heresy era Salamanders Dreadnought by that evening. That included striping the paint and additional bits and then adding the Salamander bits, priming and repainting. It was a fun build and while I am not entirely pleased with it, the dreadnought does capture the feel of what I was going for.

Since finishing these, I've completed several squads of Salamanders. As well as made a custom Praetor for them that I a really happy with. I hope to post them soon.