Classic Battletech "Snord's Irregulars" 3025

I've been getting back into Classic Battletech a bit which is a great wargame for anyone pressed for time since the setup is minimal for a basic game. For the most part I've been using my friends mechs because I've been playing with them at the FLGS and their homes but I decided to dig out my old mechs to see what I had. I found I had about 32 Inner Sphere 3025 era mechs mostly old sculpts and also mostly plastic from the various box sets that have come out over the years.
Having no particular loyalty to any of the great houses I decided I wanted to paint my mechs as mercenaries and pirates. A friend of mine had ummm "found" several Battletech pdfs on line and a file folder with said pdfs just happened to end up on one of my portable drives. I set down to do a little "research" on existing mercenary and pirate units to decide if I wanted to use and existing unit or make up my own. After a bit of reading I started to remember just how in depth the Battletech Universe was and how hard it would be to write a decent back story for a new unit with my sketchy knowledge of the setting. I opted to pick and existing unit or rather units to pattern my mechs on.


The unit I chose to re-create was "Cranston Snord's Irregulars". This unit as written in their sourcebook was made up of a single company of mechs. 12 figures seemed like a reasonable painting project and a company sized game is a fairly large battle in "Classic" Btech. Another thing that made the unit a good match is that I owned all the mechs required to build the unit as they were written for 3025 and they were all in old sculpts which matched the artwork in the sourcebook. One of the things that really burns me out when painting up "armies" is that painting the same uniform color scheme gets dull for me really quickly. That often causes me to bounce around from project to project which makes painting armies a painfully slow process for me. Fortunately "Snord's Irregulars" have no set color scheme on their mechs. Each mech is unique and the unit has three alternate badges as well so that's a lot of variation I can bring to the mechs. Also from the artwork and background it seems that the mechwarriors of the unit do quite a bit of customization to their mechs paint slogans and such on their machines. I think this will be a fun unit to paint.

From the back cover of the sourcebook:

"Cranston Snord's Irregulars have widely different reputations, depending on who you ask. Katrina Steiner thinks of the unit as one of the most effective, if unorthodox, units in her employ. House Marik would like to rid the Inner Sphere of the unit and has been trying for many years. Jaime Wolf sees the unit as a band of looters who have made good. One way or the other, the Irregulars are probably best known for their ability to get into and out of tight spots created by their never-ending quest for the lost artifacts and/or treasures of Mankind's past. Whether called looters or not, they are still a unit to be reckoned with."

Processing plant primed and more

Well I did a little more work on my spaceports refinery/processing plant. Here is a shot of the primed model. It's always nice to get to this stage so you can see how thing thing holds together. I'm planning on doing a lot of weathering on this project. Most of the Venture Star equipment is going to look heavily used.

I'm also pretty sure I'm going to change the name of my setting. The setting as a whole will be called 3031 A.D. and this outpost will be called Station 42. I decided Star port 69 sounded a bit too "swinging" for how the project is turning out. Don't be alarmed though because I still plan to do a seedy dive of a bar with pole dancers and the like for part of the project. Eventually I might put in a fancy star port but for now I'm going for more of a truck stop kind of feel.


As I said in previous post I'm planning on making this a kind of "living" setting and I'm building it and developing the setting for various games and game types. I've been considering various different role playing system to try out first including Savage Worlds and Traveler but I decided on D20 Future which is based on the D20 Modern system.

I chose this system for a few reasons. For one thing I own the books. D20 Modern, D20 Future, and D20 Modern "Future Tech". I don't own Traveler although I do have a somewhat questionable digital copy of the rules I'd rather have a book to sit down and work the game out. Savage Worlds is a great game system but it's pretty basic when it comes down to it. Pretty good for beer and pretzels but I wanted something with space combat rules in it so I didn't have to do all that work myself.

Pretty much everyone in my group has played some kind of D20 game so it will also be easier to pick up especially since I'm not using any kind of magic or psyonics in this setting. I'm also tired of buying new books at the moment and it is unlikely that anything new will be published for this system. So I have just enough of the work done for me to get me going, a familiar system, and some decent rules to expand with new equipment and vehicles.

Ore processing plant for spaceport WIP

I'm trying to wrap up this little ore processing plant for my spaceport. I've added a couple small details since I took this picture but this is pretty much what it looks like. I've got a couple more details to add and then it will be ready for a base cote. Scratch builds like this always look like a mess until you get the base cote on them. I think it's going to look pretty good.

I tried not to go overboard with the detailing but I wanted to change the shape of the containers I used a bit because so much scratch built terrain out there is made up of easily recognized containers. Sometime this produces good results but a lot of times the tables end up looking like they are covered with nothing but painted soda cans and food containers. Of course those items are good for terrain building but it helps to dress them up a bit so they don't look so mundane.

Star Port 69 "You'll never find a more yadda, yadda"

We've finally got enough buildings far enough along to set them up and a table and see how they look together. We decided to elevate many of the buildings so we could easily place them in any kind of terrain without having to worry if the bases matched. Also I think it helps lend a more sci-fi feel to the project.

I have to credit my wife for making all the building pictured except for the ore processing platform in the upper left of the table. Most of the building pictured are a work in progress. The only "finished" building is the small workshop in the lower right corner of the table.

I'll be adding more post soon with construction details on the individual projects. I'm really happy with the progress so far.

Rectangular cargo containers from disposable razor guards.

Ever since I did my cargo containers from coke bottle caps (pictured in the back) I've been looking for a super cheap way to make rectangular containers. Round containers are fine for chemicals but most items are not shipped in barrels. I've searched high and low for something cheap and easy but with little luck until I happened on these. I was needing a shave and I was out of razors and low on money so I ran into my local Dollar General store and picked up a 12 pack of Dollar General brand razors for $1.00.

To say the least it wasn't my best shave but I did discover that the blade guards for the DG brand razors would make great little cargo containers with a little work. The little U shaped divots you see in the containers were voids in the plastic guard. I knew I would have to deal with these open spaces to make effective containers. My solution was to super glue short lengths of round toothpicks on the back side of the guard before I glued two guards together to make the container.

After putting them together I simply base coated them with some primer and painted them up. Not quite as simple as the coke cap project but cheaper when you think about it. I got six crates for a dollar and the plastic handles of the razors will also make nice bits for terrain projects.

After buying the first pack I went back and and picked up two more packs. I'm sure I'll be picking up more in the future. I'll have a whole hold full of these things for just a few dollars. If you have a Dollar General in your town you might want to give it a try. I wouldn't bother using the razors for shaving. Between the containers and other useful terrain bits I think it's a pretty good value as is.

"Spaceport 69" the plan so far.

Well I've gotten pretty stuck in on my space colony project. I've got a few ships done and more in progress. We've finished one of the buildings and have another on the way. I've started some of the dedicated minis and other vehicles for the project so I thought I would lay out some of my ideas on the project and where I'm heading. Mostly because I'm away from the house right now and I have time to kill. :)

The major inspirations for this project come from Skank Games "Zombie Town" and Matakishi's "Off World Colony". I liked the playability and completeness of Zombie Town and the repetitive forms of the Off World Colony and the fact that I've been wanting to do a space colony for some time. I wanted to make something of a combination of both projects. I want my outpost spaceport to be as playable as Zombie Town yet simple and futuristic looking like the Off World Colony. Another inspiration from Zombie Town is that every building has a purpose. My idea for the spaceport is that not only will every building have a purpose but a population of citizens and employees. That is every business will have employees and every house an owner. Of course there will be cross over.

Another major concept I'm going for is that the spaceport will be a living setting for multiple games. What happens at the spaceport and surrounding area in games will effect the development of the project. As I add new buildings and colonist they will become part of the story line. This way the project will expand in a hopefully logical or at least interesting manner.

As far as the setting goes I'm doing the spaceport set somewhere in our solar system some time in the 31st century. Like 3031. I don't have a lot of background on the setting done yet but man has basically been colonizing the solar system for 1000 years. The colony will be on one of the moons in the outer solar system but I haven't decided which one yet. There is no FTL but there are several terraformed planets (mostly moons actually). Imagine the Firefly/Serenity setting but in our solar system instead. Most of the "planets" probably won't be as heavily developed and the colonies will be a little less "down home" and more self sufficient. Less trees ect than in Firefly. Mars is a communist state. The Jovian system is a monarchy. Earth and the other planets have a loose "Alliance". The Vatican has moved from Rome to a massive space station near the asteroid belt.

Although they colony will grow and develop during game play I am going to start with a few established facilities. One will be the "Venture Star Prospecting" base. Another will be "Rosie's Scrapyard and Repair". The third will be an as yet unnamed fuel station which will be set up kinda like a truck stop in space. There will also be a few "habs" mostly for the fuel depot and prospecting employees. Outside the colony I will be adding a pirate base, Martian outpost, and some ruins of failed colonies complete with "wasteland" scavengers. I will probably start using the outpost for games after I get the facilities of the outpost itself done and then I will try to get some of the surrounding stuff like the pirate base done shortly after that.

Anyway that's the plan so far. I've been wanting to do this kind of thing for a while. Wish me luck. :)

Venture Star Prospecting: Team 1's excavator.

Another piece of Venture Star's heavy equipment is done for the spaceport project. This is team one's excavator. This little piece of machinery came from the same Dollar General toy set as the dump truck I just finished.

Here is a shot of it with the dump truck. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. It's a little more in scale than the truck itself and the weathering turned out pretty good. I didn't put as much into this one as the dump truck because I didn't name this vehicle. Still I think it stands up nicely with the truck.

I used approximately the same formula for the rust spots on the excavator as I did the dump truck but they of course came out much more orange looking on the lighter colored excavator. I don't think it looks bad but if I could do it over again I'd darken it down a bit more.

I'm planning to start working on the mole machine tonight and get the buildings for the Venture Star base cut out at least. My wife is working hard on the scrap yard. She finished the first building for that project last night. I'll probably post it tomorrow.

I did a bit of work on the team 1 minis today. Not much but I have some time to work on them tomorrow. I was planning on working on them tonight but it's getting pretty late and with the other parts of the project I'm planning to work on I'm just not sure if it would be worth while.