Battletech terrainfest2023 turns into spring clean challenge 2024

Now chat GPT is quite scary and oh so quick and great for scenario building. you ask it to do stuff and hey presto quicker than you can shave a cat its only gone and done it.

I gave it a general idea and with only a few tweaks for my available figures it did the rest, id like to take full credit well it was my idea, but sadly no the computer did 99% of the work. pilot names call signs the lot so im going to just run ith it and enjoy the scenario and game.

if there are any error it will be in the planetary forces my mercenary company will be assisting on this contract as i did that, the soft squidgy human.

now bar for a few mechs and infantry to finish painting im ready to let battle comence.

Mainly contrast paints nothing hard fancy just colourful

Painting the dropship was easy,

black undercoat

dry brush metallics

stipple on the colours, wash with Agrax earthshade, stipple on another layer of colour lightened slightly.

hit it with all the washes technical paint and weathering powders you can find

This was painted in exactly the same way as the main airborne dropship although there was more metallic and less paint as I was going for the dirty rust bucket look. The thing literally had lots of washes, technical paints and dirty down thrown at it with just a tiny few patches of paint here and there. Nothing fancy or hard to do especially as it’s me doing it.

The rather angular printed core of the blast just didn’t do itself any favours so out came the hot glue gun and the tedious job of glueing clump foliage to the core to make it more organic. Where the dropship was to join the base I drilled a hole in the plastic core of the base and inset a magnet with a hole in it. The dropship was then also drilled and a metal rod discretely glued into its base. The dropship then sits quite snugly atop the base without the risk of falling off, plus it can also sit on its own undercarriage.

Obviously hot glue isn’t sufficient on its own to keep the clumping foliage from breaking off.

my first job was a heavy prime with a rattle can then once dry I started building up the layers of stippled on colours mixed with PVA letting each dry as required overnight. White, yellow, red then orange. It’s a tedious task but seemed to work

Long story short my father was diagnosed with an aggressive form of Prostate cancer, which meant being whizzed through the testing phase and on to treatment. His specialist recommended i too went through the testing period so blood test and physical examinations where undertaken and luckily for now im clear although i have to undertake this yearly from now going forward.

If nothing else folks if your getting on in years or have any problems with your water works, going more freequently, etc. etc. Go to your doctor and request a test likewise if a direct family member gets it do the same. Its a finger up the bottom to feel the prostate and a simple drawing of blood nothing scary or invasive but it could save your life.

My dad if he responds to treatment and a secondary infection from a weakend immune system as a result of said treatment doesnt get him, has been told hes only got a 30% chance of living another ten years. so moral of the story get tested at the first sign of trouble.

The old boys an ex marine quite stoic and tackling it head on a fighter to the last. The family are rallying round my travelling for visiting has increased hence the suspension of hobby. Even so hes told me to treat him normal and get on with life so hobby resumes and video chats increased. So this project come hell or high water will be finshed and discussed on one of our scheduled chats. work has already comenced…

Well you didn’t think it was going to be a normal dropship did you? I thought about normal and that seemed too easy so back to Thingiverse I went for the backbone of my new plan..

Yes that’s right I wanted it airborne!
but how?

well after much deliberation and looking at things from very strange angles I formulated a plan. I took the stl file for a rocket launching enlarged it and set it to print. It took a while and had to be watched as I didn’t want the attached rocket. I manually stopped the print as I only wanted the smoke plume bottom.

this I mounted onto a piece of hardboard with gorilla glue but it doesn’t really truly represent my vision at this point so I’ve another step yet to do apart from painting. The next step will be to glue clumping foliage as a layer over the contours of the 3d printed smoke plume to make it more realistic and less like Minecraft then once I’m happy with the paint effects the dropship can have its undercarriage fitted and i essentially have two models. One which is the landing/flying model the other being the grounded/parked dropship. I’ve embedded a strong metal spike into the smoke plume with a corresponding hole in the bottom of the dropship hidden inside a jet nozzle.

with the end of October rapidly upon me, days lost to a parental summons its not going to be a finished project. i tried even while  at the parents but trying to write a back story for my merceary force whilst lying in my childhood bed with a jack russell between my legs fighting for his share of the single bed it was difficult especially so for a chap with a fuller figure. All i can do now is reveal what i hoped would be painted and look amazing on the tabletop for our scenario, something different and not usually seen..