BATTLETECH MECH

This month we asked Mike Whitaker, chairman of Peterborough Wargames Club about his gaming odyssey: ”I keep threatening to resign as club chair, but no one else wants the job!” he jokes. As a gamer, he describes himself as a computer programmer, dominantly right-eyed and thus has no depth perception and so can’t see in 3D. That won’t keep a good painter down though, and hare’s an example lf his painted BattleTech mech.

“I’ve always been a believer that painted toys on the table make things look so much better, which – given my eyesight – is a bit unfortunate. I could pay folks to paint stuff for me, but I’m kind of keen to have something of me in the figures I play with, so I rarely do that. I aim to pass the ’twofoot test’ - if figures look good on the table from my normal slightly myopic viewpoint, that’s just fine by me.

“I used to play BattleTech in the ‘90s,” he says of the miniature he photographed. “I had forgotten how much fun it was until someone at the club offered to run a short campaign earlier this year.” As for how he painted it, Whitaker describes discovering

‘Slapchop’ – “Not as new as people may think” he explains, “As it’s based on a Renaissance painting technique called

Grisaille.”

“Essentially you pre-shade the model in greyscale before applying translucent colour (i.e. Contrast or Speedpaint or equivalent). So undercoat is Army Painter

Matt Black, followed by a heavy drybrush of AP Uniform Grey and then a rough edge highlight in AP Matt White. At this point, you essentially have a greyscale sketch of the mini with the panel lines still dark, not having picked up any of the dry brush steps. The next step for this one (working from the BattleTech CamoSpecs site for a Clan Wolf Beta Galaxy ‘mech) is AP Sand Golem Speedpaint above the ‘mech’s waist, and AP Runic Grey below. Normally I’d let the Speedpaint work its magic and call that done, but the upper torso came out a bit darker than I wanted, so I reached for the trusty AP Skeleton Bone (not a Speedpaint) and did a quick drybrush once the Speedpaint had dried.”

And the final steps? “AP Fire Giant Orange on the tip of a cocktail stick to pick out the lasers (as I have no depth perception, it’d be very easy to mess this up with a brush and so much less risky to do it by feel with something rigid). Then Vallejo Gloss Black (if I’d wanted to keep it all AP I could have used AP Gloss Varnish over Matt Black) in the cockpit windows, allow to dry, and then Vallejo’s Turquoise Violet from their new ’Shifters’ range for the glass effect. This needs a couple of coats, and it does seem to darken a bit as it dries.

“To finish off, a 50/50 cheap HobbyCraft Burnt Umber acrylic and PVA mix on the base, a dip in Geek Gaming Scenics Arid Grasslands scatter and we’re done. I’d guess, not counting drying time, that was well under half an hour, and a testament to some of the amazing new paint technologies that are out there, as well as Catalyst’s superb sculpts.”

As for what’s next Whitaker explains he’s got several thousand Epic Battles ACW miniatures waiting for him. “I acquired two complete starter boxes from a friend who was downsizing his collection… Pretty safe to say we’re going for the slapchop/two-foot-test approach again!”