“The Standard Against Which All Battle Armour Is Measured.”

“The Elemental battle armour was first introduced in 2868 by Clan Wolf."

These six 1:285 scale plastic Elemental figures are made by “Catalyst Game Labs” and can be found inside the company’s “Battletech: Clan Elemental Star” boxed set. The pre-assembled miniatures are actually supplied in groups of five miniatures on five hexagonal-shaped stands. However, as I plan to use them as power-armour wearing super-soldiers for my upcoming Weird War Two campaign utilising some homemade rules, I decided to rebase them in threes on some “Citadel” 25mm round bases.

Due to wanting all the 6mm sized infantrymen to represent the Polish defenders of Warsaw, they were all primed in “Vallejo” Heavy Brown and subsequently shaded using “Citadel” Agrax Earthshade. I then dry-brushed them with (more) “Vallejo” Heavy Brown and ‘picked out’ their anti-personnel machine gun using a combination of “Vallejo” Gunmetal and “Citadel” Nuln Oil.

"Catalyst Game Labs" WIPs - An Ebon Jaguar and some Elemental battle-suits

I also decided to apply some “Vallejo” Heavy Bluegrey to their twin-tube short-range missile launchers, shaded them with a splash of “Citadel” Nuln Oil, and later give them a delicate ‘once over’ with a smidgeon more “Vallejo” Heavy Bluegrey. Lastly, I layered some “Vallejo” Sombre Grey to the super-soldiers’ smoke trails, washed them with “Citadel” Nuln Oil and dry-brushed their jet-streams using some (more) “Vallejo” Sombre Grey and a touch of White too.

Having completed my meagre 1939 Polish force, unless until I can acquire an extra Jenner Inner Sphere BattleMech figure or two, I’ve begun working on some reinforcements for my invading German Heer army. I’ve previously already painted quite a large collection of models to use on the tabletop as the Wehrmacht, but thought that the sculpt of an Ebon Jaguar would mix in well as a slightly heavier, more advanced model of the Stormcrow miniatures I’ve been predominantly using as Heinkel Flugzeugwerke class War Walkers. In addition, the move has given me an excuse to assemble some German super-soldiers too, which I can easily pigment alongside their much larger killing machine, as they’ll all share very similar colour schemes.

"Only two cuirassier regiments were raised during the English Civil War."

Lastly, I have actually found and resultantly repainted a small stand of old Cuirassiers by “Pendraken Miniatures” so that they’re actually fighting for Parliament rather than the King using a dollop of “Vallejo” Heavy Orange and dash of “Citadel” Casandora Yellow. These 10mm English Civil War cavalry models were actually finished over a decade ago, and have been doing little, except gathering dust, in a small box until I recently encountered them.

Somewhat shockingly, I’ve also discovered a rather large contingent of fully-painted Pike and Musket accompanying them, so have spent a little time trying to work out whether I own a useable “Black Powder” army or not. All of the figures, including nine Cuirassiers, all wear the predominantly red colours of the King’s Guard. However, having perused my copy of “To Kill A King” it would seem that only the likes of Lord Essex’s Parliamentarian army of 1943 used the pistol-carrying heavy cavalry units (and then with only a “maximum of one unit in the army” during its early incarnations).