Painting Battletech Miniatures: My First BattleTech Minis Journey

This was my first attempt at painting some minis. I've decided I will be painting battletech miniatures for my first minis. I've always loved the BattleTech/Mechwarrior universe. I have played every Mechwarrior game from Mechwarrior 2 in 1995 all the way up to Mechwarrior 5 Mercs. I don't plan on stopping anytime soon. I think my favorite of them so far has been Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries. I absolutely love the ability to tinker and mold each Mech into how I wanted it to be, and that was usually all the DAKKA (never enough DAKKA). I also played and really loved the BattleTech video game. Being that I enjoyed that game so much and it seemed to be pretty close to the tabletop, that felt like the natural starting place. So, I picked up a starter box set, picked out enough to make a lance, and jumped in. I got the BattleTech Introductory Box Set (which no longer exists, but here are two sets that might work Beginner Box Set and Battletech A Game of Armored Combat). The mechs I started with were the Awesome, Cyclops, Commando, and Whitworth.

Now that I picked the ones I wanted, I decided to paint them in a variation of black and red. I didn't have any reason other than I like that combination of colors, and I did kind of dig the Black Widow Company from the lore. So, I figured I could just make them some kind of Merc lance because I knew they weren't going to turn out overly great.

The first place I started was with priming the minis. I had trouble finding some primer, but ended up finding a grey rattle can primer from Lowe's. I then went out into the garage with some cardboard, laid it down, and sprayed it all around to make sure I covered the entirety of the minis.

Priming minis in the garage

Next, I applied a black base coat, doing two layers to ensure full coverage. I used some acrylic paints that my girlfriend had laying around from a regular paint set. It did pretty well, but I paid special attention to thin it out really well. This paint could be difficult to control at times though. Here are some photos from just after doing the base coat.

Black Base coat applied

Black Base coat applied

Black Base coat applied

I then took some grey and did a dry brush over them to try to add some weathering to the models. It turned out pretty good. I need to work on my brush control a little more on this part. For my first time attempt at anything like this, I was pleasantly pleased.

Grey Dry Brush

Next, I added some of the details to the mechs. I started with gold for the eyes/cockpit areas and silver for things like weapons, actuating joints, and other places I deemed necessary. I was really focusing on working on my brush control during this part. I had to go back and touch up quite a few times during this step due to losing control and hitting areas I didn't mean to.

Silver and gold added to the smaller minis. If you look at the left one you can see where I messed up on the gold and added too much.

Silver and gold added to the smaller minis. You can see on the right mini where I got silver a little too high on the knee area

I then went to add the red to the mechs. I found out, however, after putting on the coat, the paint was more orange than the red it looked on the label of the paint tube. So instead of a black and red color scheme, I ended up with a black and orange. I decided I would just roll with it since I was just testing things out, and in the end, I kind of liked how it turned out, so it was all fine. One lesson there is to try a small bit of paint out before you just start throwing it on a model if you have never used it before. I also learned here that a black base coat is really tough to paint over, so I had to use a few layers to get a decent amount of the orange to start coming out.

Here is a close-up of a model after the first coat of orange.

You can see the black really still coming through the orange.

Here is the same model after another coat.

The cover up is way better after a second coat.

The orange looks a lot better, but you can still see it's having some trouble with the black undercoat. I will probably try to stay away from a black base coat in the future. Still working out in my head how to use black for certain things. Here are the Awesome and Cyclops.

Covering the black enough. If you look close you can see where I got orange in random places.

Covered up pretty good. My control was a bit better on this one but there's still quite a few places I accidentally got orange.

I then decided I was going to put a wash on there. I didn't feel like making my wash, so I ordered some Citadel Nuln Oil from Amazon. I liked the way it turned out. I'm still trying to figure out the little details when using shades/washes because I know there are different colors. I'm just not sure how to mix the colors to get the best effect.

First coat of Nuln oil.

First coat of Nuln oil.

First coat of Nuln oil.

I decided the first coat was not dark enough, so I added another layer.

Second coat of Nuln oil.

Second coat of Nuln oil.

Second coat of Nuln oil.

Second coat of Nuln oil.

After I was satisfied with my wash, I started trying to add small details like scratches to the mech. I tried my best with this, but I'm still working on my brush control. I haven't figured out how to get a small enough line with my brushes yet. I was looking up techniques for this, but I just wasn't able to reproduce the results of others. I also used a piece of foam to try to make some chips around the edges of the orange. This turned out fairly well, way better than me using a brush to make scratches. I also did some stuff like paint the inside of the weapons. I used light blue for the PPCs, red for missile tubes, and green for large lasers. The missile tubes were the worst because they were the hardest to get a fine dot on.

Details added.

Details added.

Details added.

Details added.

From here, I decided I was done with details and touch-ups, so I moved on to painting the bases green to look like grass.

Bases painted green.

After finishing that up, I wanted a little more detail on the bases, so I painted the edge of them black and added some fletching in some bushes around the feet with a rock. I liked the way it turned out.

Added some fletching for bushes, a rock and painted around the edge in black.

At this point, I considered them finished. Overall, it was a huge learning experience. Some of the big takeaways from this for me were that I really needed to work on brush control, but I think that comes with time and repetitions. I will probably be working on that forever. I probably would have changed the order I painted things in. Instead of a black base and orange secondary, I would probably have done an orange base with black secondary. This way, I wouldn't have to fight the dark color so much. I think in the future, I will see how it goes starting with the lighter color and finishing in the darker color. The only thing that worries me is if I make a mistake, it'll be harder to cover up. I also think using mini paints is probably a better idea than using some acrylic paint my girlfriend has laying around. That will be another thing I will be looking at for the next minis. I had a really good time though and am looking forward to the next minis I paint.