Ghost Bears

So upfront its already started. Bank holiday weekend and all that. But I thought it was worth showing my working out as it were.

I decided I wanted a clan invasion Clan force. So where did I start?

I started at Sarna. Sarna has every bit of information you need about the story of Battletech. Including mech profiles, histories, profiles or people and forces.

For example here is the page on the Clans.

Once i had a list of the Clans that took part in the invasion i went to another great resource. Unit colour compendium.

This has every official colour scheme for nearly every unit in the game. Its missing the units that are brand new to the Ilcaln era, however its a great resource to use.

https://unitcolorcompendium.com/

Going through it i decided that i liked the Ghost Bear Beta Galaxy. See below.

If you look at the page, a bit further down their is a link to the relevant Sarna article for the unit.

This gives the history, tactics, leaders and composition through each era.

Having a look through the various clusters that make up the Galaxy, i picked the 33nd Assault cluster.

https://www.sarna.net/wiki/332nd_Assault_(Rasalhague_Dominion)

Specifically I decided on the 2133rd Striker Trinary and the 23rd Elemental Support Binary

This means i need 15 mechs and 10 stars of elementals.

Also interesting facts include i need at least one Fenris Omnimech as the CO of the Trinary has one as her ride.

All of this done, off to master unit list to plan the army.

Right this will be part tutorial with links to master unit list, but before we get there we need to get a list of units that are typical Ghost Bear units.

Now Battletech is weird because there are very few mechs that are faction specific, but in the world of Battletech some mechs are produced by or thought of as iconic for certain factions.

Want to know where to find thease? Thats right Sarna. On the landing page there is a section called Battlemechs, drop in there and there are links by faction, for example this is the Ghost Bear iconic units:

https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Category:Clan_Ghost_Bear_BattleMechs

Now of course you need to make sure they are available in the era you are playing in. But for me it will Dasher, Vulture and Viper. The Dasher isnt listed as its a really common Omnimech in the clans, but it is a very Ghost Bear mech.

Right Master Unit List.

http://www.masterunitlist.info/

This has every unit in the game and has the alpha strike card for them. It also has an army building tool that allows you to print your army and will alter PV based on the skill level you set. This is your friend.

Here’s the army builder bit.

http://www.masterunitlist.info/Force/Build

Cool huh?

Right so i have a faction, an Era and 3 mechs i want to include. Lets go to the search tool. The section is called units.

http://www.masterunitlist.info/Unit/Filter

In the faction section i put ‘Clan Ghost Bear’ and ‘IS Clan General’, this gives me all the Ghost Bear specific and the general mechs used by Clans in the Inner Sphere.

Next I use the availability tab to chose ‘Clan Invasion’, giving me 493 units….

Its intimidating to start with, but as i decided on a plastics only army, that limited what i could take. Also a Striker Trinary should be fast, so i decided nothing with a speed slower than 8, 8 being the lowest speed a mech can have to qualify for a heavy striker star.

Things that i owned also limited it.
I had the following:
Mercury
Exterminator
Lancelot
Warhawk
Dasher

The first 3 are not omnimechs, however they are star league high end models that are extinct in the inner sphere and the clans use them so they went on the list.

All i had to do is choose and copy them over to the army builder and add them.

So what did we end up with?
Alpha Star:
Fenris
Warhawk
Loki
Vulture
Viper

Beta Star:
Vulture
Gargoyle
Exterminator
Lancelot
Fenris

Charlie Star:
Dasher
Dasher
Viper
Mercury
Uller

As for the Battle armour? its two stars of 5 battle armour points, all elementals with different load outs. 2 of those points are Headhunter points, So i will be cutting SRM packs off.

So they are tiny, really really tiny. You have no idea….well you probably do to be honest.

Grey under coat
Lighter grey dry brush
white highlights.
To contrast and tie into the base visors as guns are orange with a yellow dot to give them a tiny glow.
Across the legs i used rust powder to put a coat of dust from the ground on them and the base of the trust clouds were also brushed with it to simulate the dust kicked up and swirling in the smoke.

That was the east part. The hard part was getting them off their bases so i could then lay down some citadel crackle paint. That was then dry brushed in the same orange and yellow as the lenses.

The elementals were then stuck back on……I can recommend tweezers, I didn’t have any. This is why I recommend them…..

You might note some blue. These indicate Headhunter stars. or in one case the Binary commander who is in all blue. The choice of the blue ties to the blue on the mechs arms and torsos.

I will add that Headhunters (see the Sarna entry below) Don’t have SRM packs, so i took them off, Only cutting myself with a scalpel once.

Next? Beta Star.

Sarna Elemental Entry – https://www.sarna.net/wiki/Elemental_(Battle_Armor)#:~:text=The%20standard%20against%20which%20all,Mechs%20and%20survive%20the%20encounter.

Charlie star is the fast moving recon star.

A pair of Dashers for dropping off elementals, grabbing objectives and backstabbing. The Mercury cant deliver elementals, but is also blisteringly fast and is all backed up with the Viper and Uller to provide fire power, they arnt slouches when they come to speed either.

I chose grey undercoat with a lighter grey over the top, white for random edge highlighting. This gave them a bit more of a worn look, rather than falling back on my usual COVER IT IN RUST tm style.

To get the shattered ice camo i used masking and a brush to lay down some blue and white, edge highlighting with a lighter blue.

To finish it off i put a black oil wash into the panel lines, added the Ghost Bear decal and then glued them to the base. Like the Elementals i added a brushing of rust powder (did i mention i like rust? I have a lot of it). and then done.

I’m pretty pleased with them. I think they have the look of the piece of art i’m working from below and the shattered ice leans more towards camo than something you would see on a space marine for example.

Next up, Beta star.

Beta star is a very meat and potatos star built around 3 movement 10 strikers that hit relatively hard along with the lancelot and the speedy fenris.

Same colour scheme as the Charlie star.

Now i still have to paint alpha star, which will include another vulture and fenris. So those will need reposing, and the Fenris will need some sort of custom paint job as it is is Jilian Snuka’s ride. The star captain in charge of the Trinary.

Last star is the alpha star which contains the Star Captain in charge of the cluster. AS a side note, isn’t the term Star Captain or Star Commander fabulous? something you would expect from an 80s sci fi show?

Anyway. Heavier hitting with:
Really heavy War hawk
A Loki, which is a real force recon glass cannon
Viper, a fast hitter.
A Vulture for long range fire power
And the Fenris, which if I’m being honest isn’t as competitive as similar weight mechs, but historically it was the CO’s ride, so its there. I’m a horrible person who treats Battletech like a historic wargame….unfortunately the scale isn’t big enough to count the rivets….

What you cant see on most of these mechs, other than the Mercury below, are the heat sinks.

I decided that i wanted to paint the heat sinks actually heated up. This was to give more contrast to the cold grey, blues and whites. But ALSO if i’m playing the game im looking at the backs of these minis and a wall of grey is just upsetting.

The commanders ride.

Jilian Snuka is listed as using a Fenris during the Clan Invasion….so she gets a Fenris. As she was a hard line crusader clanner rather than a warden i wanted to give her mech something that gave a) that character and b) made her stand out without going full 40k.

The Fenris has some struts around the cockpit. So a bit of mummy robes and burnt umber she has a skull face. Because of how it looks it has a cyclopean vibe with the jaws around the central sensor package and the cockpit window as the eye.

Rather than lost of ‘make it look like bone’ i tried not to. Its a Battletech mini and that would be painted on. Its not 40k where you wear Sargent Bobs skull as a codpiece (I dont hate 40k and i have a Robot Chaos Space Marine army in my head atm! promise!).

So can you paint a full Clan Trinary and support elements in 7 days? No, not if you actually enjoy hanging out with your partner, which is why i didn’t finish them Friday night.

8 Days? Yes.

So what did i learn? masking is fun. I haven’t used it with Mini’s before. I do for paintings, but its weirdly medative.

Cutting Elementals from bases is stupid and annoying. Initially I cut myself more than the base. In the end i cut the cases with clippers and then used clippers to cut the elementals from the remains. You lose bases, but not fingers! This is a positive.

I really like these, the colour scheme has a real naval vibe. i think the cold majority with points of orange tied to the base colour works really well. Are they the best paint job i have ever done? God no. Are they table top ready? Yup and i think they will look amazing on a proper table.

So what next? Well i could add the other 2 Trinaries of the cluster, but that maybe a long term thing as to get the plastics i would need that fit Ghost Bears it will involve a lot of packs with a lot of spares, so i will need to figure out the project after for those spares. Yeah im weird i dont like grey plastic sitting around the house. Maybe in a future blog i’ll explain why and how it ties to giving up smoking. But for now it is a mystery for you to ponder.

I need to add a group shot to this project, black rim some of the bases. But then its done.

Really what is next is a 40k Chaos army for the new Ed once i get paid. I’ll give you some concept art for the idea i have below. 🙂

2133rd Striker Trinary and 23rd Elemental support Binary. 332nd Assault Cluster of Clan Ghost Bear beta galaxy.

Enjoy