(Lead) Mountain Musings - "Battletech” February 2022

"We Beat 'Em Before... We'll Beat 'Em Again!"

With the sudden release of several new “Battletech” miniature box sets by “Catalyst Game Labs” I thought it would prudent to dedicate the majority of this month's hobby time to painting the quite sizeable backlog of 1:285 scale plastic models I already own from the range. This should not only mean that my hobby table is significantly clearer (at least temporarily), but would also mean that the vast majority of the mechanical figures would be eligible for both the Twelfth Annual Analogue Hobbies Painting Challenge (AHPC) and Dave Stone’s Paint What You’ve Got Challenge too.

In addition, I already own enough finished models to finally start gaming my Weird War Two campaign, so hope to include a handful of Battle Reports covering the initial Invasion of Poland in 1939, featuring a combined British-French force of war walkers taking on the Germans and Russians. Such battles may well encourage me to pigment the odd Polish giant vehicle or two, as well as finally start working on some the jet-packed infantry figures which “Catalyst Game Labs” also produce…

"Warlord Games" WIPs - These ACW Confederates have had all their main colours blocked in

Ideally, alongside these monstrous mechanical mechs, I would also be beavering away at some of the Epic 15mm Napoleonic British Infantry miniatures I recently received by “Warlord Games”. However, I’m still currently experimenting away on some plastic American Civil War strips I own, which came free with Issue 393 of the magazine "Wargames Illustrated".

Long-time followers (sufferers) of my hobby postings will know that I am not a particular fan of putting a brush-tip to the range’s ranked ten-man stands, as I am not a fan of batch-painting and resultantly don’t feel I’ve actually accomplished much until the entire base of twenty models is finally finished – something which actually took me almost an entire year to achieve in 2021. This time though, I’ve been pottering on my remaining ACW sprues to identify any ‘quick wins’ I can achieve with various painting techniques, and hope to then use this experience to ‘motor on’ through my Napoleonic soldiers in a month or two’s time.

January 2022 - "Games Workshop" dominates my hobby time due to Blood Bowl and Epic

Perhaps unsurprisingly, considering I am once again waist-deep in the AHPC, the past month saw me almost double my output in comparison to this time last year. Disappointingly though, I still didn’t paint anywhere near as many models as I probably should have done, and much of this is probably down to me spreading my hobby time somewhat thinly across several scales/projects rather than just focusing upon one or two – albeit I did complete a “Games Workshop” Dwarf Blood Bowl Sevens side, and add some additional infantry teams to my ever-increasing “Flames Of War” German Beach Defence company.

Over the next few weeks I’m actually hoping to continue building up my 15mm World War Two force by “Battlefront Miniatures” by completing even more Panzergrenadier Infantry bases, as well as a sMG34 Machine-Gun Platoon. I’m also hoping to get at least one more Blood Bowl Sevens team completed, using long Out Of Production (OOP) second/third edition 28mm metal figures…