Old Is The New New

Before I get to the meat of this post I’d like to make an announcement. Shapeways recently made two new materials available for products, Frosted Detail (FD) and Frosted Ultra Detail (FUD). Both of these materials are great as they offer a thinner minimum thickness for models. While the FD is the same cost as the White Detail (WD) the FUD is nearly twice as expensive, but does offer twice the level of detail compared to the other materials.

Unfortunately the way Shapeways has set this up means the FUD material is selected as the default purchase option and it is the price of the product in this material that you will see when browsing the store. In all cases any of the other material options are significantly cheaper so please do not be discouraged by the initial high cost of the models on the store.

There have been a number of requests to allow people to manually select the default material and Shapeways are working on a way to provide this option. Once it is implemented I will ensure you can see the best price available for all the products for sale.

In most cases the White Detail, Black Detail or the new Frosted Detail materials are ideal for the miniatures. At present only two models will benefit from the Frosted Ultra Detail material, the Bifrost that was in my last post and the Black Heart. Both are very highly detailed so I strongly recommended the FUD material for them.

Okay with that over, let’s move on shall we?

OLD IS THE NEW NEW

I think it's fair to say everyone has a design in BattleTech that they love, it may not be the best unit around but maybe it is the look of it that draws you in, or maybe it is the background for it that captivates. There's certainly no shortage of iconic designs within the game, be it the BattleMaster, the Atlas or the Clan Mad Cat.

For me however, it's something a little unusual. My earliest experiences come from one of my oldest friends of mine who I suspect will read this at some point (he really should check his email more often by the way). He first showed me BattleTech in the form of MechWarrior 2 on the PC and that's when things got out of hand on my part. It was when he later introduced me to the table-top game I found my first love, a Clan built machine based on a flawed prototype. The thing was ugly and yet I just fell in love with it.

Maybe it was the background, a critically flawed prototype that actually broke during testing, but the Clans had taken the designs with them and corrected these problems.

This leads me to where this rambling is going. We know General Kerensky took the design documents, but here's the hook, they didn't take the prototype. The information presented in the published works state they took the records of the design, there's no mention of them taking the prototype. So let's assume some on in the Inner Sphere found this prototype. Say someone within ComStar, or more specifically a covert Com Guard unit masquerading as a mercenary command (biased maybe, but do I care? Not a bit). Such technology would be valuable. All its problems aside, the design is viable. If it wasn't the Clans wouldn't have resurrected it.

So here they have a 100 ton BattleMech that doesn't work and under threat of annihilation from their former brothers, better know to the I.S. as the Word of Blake, they spend some time fixing these mistakes on the original, after all technology has moved on in the last 300 years and these flaws can now be fixed and behold the prototype works.

What would they do with it? They'd use it of course. Sure it's ugly and slow but it's well armed and armoured, and boy can it make mess of anything in the Inner Sphere that goes up against it.

That's an idea I've played with for a few years and proxied an old Ral Partha model for it, but there is Shapeways and I can make one now. So I did.The BHM-07X Amaris X.  

And here it is, 100 tons of guns and armour. As big and as ugly as it ever was and just as much fun to use in a game. Oh and if 100 tons of death stomping towards you isn't enough it has Jump Jets too. Now that's a real headache waiting to happen when it DFA's a Celestial!

BHM-07X Amaris X

BMH-07X Product Page



BHM-07X Assembly Instructions

I also have a couple more instructions done and both of these are a commission piece from Steve Satak's TRO: 3063 project.

There are two versions of this model which is a new design, the Privateer. First it the PV-1K which is the DCMS model.

PV-1K Privateer

 PV-1K Product Page

PV-1K Assembly Instructions

The second version is PV-2L, which is the CCAF model.

PV-2L Privateer

 PV-2L Product Page

PV-2L Assembly Instructions

For those of you who don't wish the hassle of assembling the feet for either of the Privateer models, there is an upgrade pack available which contains a pair of pre-built feet.

Privateer Pre-built Feet Product Page 

That’s all for now, more soon.