John wants Bears and Horses: A Battletech Journey

Because I want to play the Clans Vs (insert every non clan faction here) It’s clear I am going to be playing in the Clan Invasion era, 3049-3051 roughly.

So, what Clan do I pick? And why is it Ghost Bear??

Well….. They have cool colour schemes. And using Camospecs COMPREHENSIVE list of factions and schemes I picked Ghost Bears’ “Alpha Galaxy”

I love their scheme, and It gives me an excuse to pain the magical “space camo” which, if you know the joke about “sea camo” uniforms for the US navy, might make you chuckle.

Now then, on to the Innersphere. Oh boy….
The thing about Innersphere is that there is SO MUCH involved. So many factions and lore and schemes.

To that end, and looking more at what I wanted to play, I decided not to paint any of the great houses. Why?… Because they all have their pro’s and Con’s. Cool things and bad things. This is what makes Battletech interesting and very, very appealing when I look for a break from the overwritten WW2 era and the fever-dream of Warhammer Grimdark.

So, big houses aside, I became attracted to the Mercenary companies, and there is…a COUPLE of them Here ….and … here.

One that stood out to me was the Eridani Light Horse. Their lore is fascinating, in that they were part of the Star League Defense Force (SLDF) who refused to leave the Inner Sphere with Keresnski when he predicted the fall of Star League and the mess the Inner Sphere was about to become.

What’s cool about this is that the Eridani Light Horse COULD have become part of the Clans, but because they refused to leave with the rest of the Keresnki loyalists, they are now a potential adversary to the same people, whos descendants, would have been their comrades in arms.

And that really got my attention! So with the lore making the decision for me and Camospecs telling me “The Light Horse has always maintained their original SLDF olive drab paint scheme.” It was time to take some creative lisence, break out the paint and begin to bring my mechs to life!

As you can see, the initial colours are pretty simple. Dark grey with a light blue/grey for the Clan mechs.

And an Olive green with a light grey for the Mercs.

I wanted the Merc mechs to seem like they had previously been on a more arctic world before being “rushed” to a planet being invaded by Ghost Bear. And I will lean into that narrative a little more as I get further into the painting process.