Sigur in Space! - Update: GM Command Space Type!

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@Rick: Yeah, I talked about that to a customer of mine at a show recently; we agreed that it's a pretty silly thing, but having that veneer of rationalizing and taking basically kids stuff as if it was to be taken seriously seems to be a very specific joy. At its core, this is how Sci-Fi always worked, right?


Right, on to the other sort of big stompy robots of the 'real robot' kind: Battletech. I finally got to write down a few thoughts on the (Classic) Battletech game I had a few weeks ago:

https://tabletopstories.net/language/en/2025/07/battletech-first-game-some-thoughts/

[Rick]

Battletech is a really great game and, you're right, it can be a bit slow (especially with more mechs on the board) and it is, essentially, a boardgame. Alpha Strike is the fast play wargame of the family - same minis, same feel, loads more dakka! You can field a dozen or more mechs a side without it bogging down.
I think that Battletech works at it's absolute best with 1-1 battles, the sort of Solaris VII duels - very much in favour of those!

[YPU]

@Rick: Yeah, I talked about that to a customer of mine at a show recently; we agreed that it's a pretty silly thing, but having that veneer of rationalizing and taking basically kids stuff as if it was to be taken seriously seems to be a very specific joy. At its core, this is how Sci-Fi always worked, right?

I've found there is a unique joy in that, indeed enough to fill a book with that kind of nonsense 

Battletech is a really great game and, you're right, it can be a bit slow (especially with more mechs on the board) and it is, essentially, a boardgame. Alpha Strike is the fast play wargame of the family - same minis, same feel, loads more dakka! You can field a dozen or more mechs a side without it bogging down.
I think that Battletech works at it's absolute best with 1-1 battles, the sort of Solaris VII duels - very much in favour of those!

I never played a full game of battletech, but participated in a couple of games of alpha strike and truth be told it felt very bland to me. I expect I lack the context given by playing the full game, but I found for example the overheat rules that allow some mechs to take heat to shoot better were simple, but in practice very few of the models we fielded were capable of doing it. The rulebook (which has been updated I believe?) was also deeply clunky with so many bit rules that evidently most people I played with never even bothered to read that it neither felt fast playing nor deep but that may be a me/us problem.
I do still want to at least get some starter box and the main rulebook pdf to play some games of it, the hex maps always catch my eye I have to admit.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@Rick: Yup, it's bascialy a chit wargame, and that's perfectly OK. Alpha Strike seems to divide opinions. Most people I talked to dislike it and prefer Classic Battletech. However, at the last event I was at in the very end I ran into a guy who very much preferred Alphastrike and lamented not being able to find any players.

@YPU: Yeah, from what I hear that's the impression many people get from Alphastrike. Interesting thing is that Catalyst seems to do lots of new boxes all the time. Right now I think the 40 years anniversary is the go-do box (unless you want the Beginner) one for Classic Battletech?

[Rick]

I think that one problem with Alpha Strike is that it is a single set of rules that has to cover Battlemechs, Armoured Vehicles, Infantry, Aerospace Fighters and Artillery over a span of several hundred years, from the depths of the Succession Wars through to the emergent and developing technologies of the Jihad through to the IlClan era's.
Now imagine having just one set of rules covering the period from the Napoleonic Wars through to the Russia-Ukraine War? You're going to have several rules that simply don't apply to some era's, but you have to have them for the players that do the later periods - I guess it's easier for those who know the game background quite well, we can simply sideline a lot of the special rules that we know won't apply. But it is a good game, far more of a Battletech Wargame than Battletech and who on earth wouldn't love to field an entire couple of companies a side in one big battle? 

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@Rick: Yes, putting it like this, it IS a very ambitious thing. Covering all that stuff from just one period is tough enough, let alone that sort of timeframe. At that level, and especially with various arms of the armed forces interacting, the focus shoud almost shift more towards communication and logistics.


Right, here we go again. I got my Battletech box!



Haven't had an opportunity to open it yet, but I'm looking forward to it. Feels like this requires more than unceremoniously tearing off the shrink-wrap, look through the components and then toss it in a corner.

Part of why I didn't have the time to open it yet is because yesterday I picked up a new glass cabinet for showcase stuff at events, visited a lovely little trading card and warhammer stuff store (Cardcorner in Krems!) and spent a disappropriate amount of time taking pictures of my robot toys.

RX-77-2 Guncannon (Kai's):








With the probably-only-on-paper-and-not-really-used missile launcher and the very-much-in-use beam rifle (which has the firepower of a battleship, we are told many times). As far as I understand, the Guncannon was Earth Federation's first full-on mobile suit, and thus also the first beam rifle capable one, even before the Gundam.







MS-06F Zaku II:


...with its masive anti-ship rifle! Not only 40k does comically oversized weapons. In fairness, this is meant to be used against space ships at great distance, so no gravity involved. But thinking further, a huge sniper rifle in space makes even less sense, so let's better leave it at that.












Yup, that's my Melonbaby project. Originally red Zaku II Command into a regular Zaku II F. Messed up the primer because I wasn't patient and wasn't thinking, so for months I side-lined it, but then came back, started having lots of fun with oils (that green looked quite different before I started applying oils). I think that I may have damaged a few moving parts with the medium; had to repair a thing or two along the process, but oh well. Now the chap looks satisfying, moves well (left leg is a bit wonky, I may have to strengthen the joint there).


...and finally some photos of the RGM-79!















Still possibly my favourite kit? I did that one last November very hastily within a week to get it done in time for Vienna Comic Con.

Hope you like them! Regular service will be resumed shortly.

[syrinx0]

Those robots deserve their own glass case & lots of pictures.

[Maniac]

@Rick: Yup, it's bascialy a chit wargame, and that's perfectly OK. Alpha Strike seems to divide opinions. Most people I talked to dislike it and prefer Classic Battletech. However, at the last event I was at in the very end I ran into a guy who very much preferred Alphastrike and lamented not being able to find any players.

@YPU: Yeah, from what I hear that's the impression many people get from Alphastrike. Interesting thing is that Catalyst seems to do lots of new boxes all the time. Right now I think the 40 years anniversary is the go-do box (unless you want the Beginner) one for Classic Battletech?

It depends on what you are looking for.  I got my wargaming start with Battletech and recently found Alpha Strike about 2 years ago.  If you want a super crunchy game, CBT is that in spades.  Running more than a lance of mechs is going to be complicated and slow.

Alpha Strike, in theory, streamlined it immensely.  I say in theory because if you want to go down the rabbit hole it has loads of optional rules.  For example it has charts for sliding if your mech runs across pavement, or fires a minefield instead of a regular salvo.  Pretty much everything CBT is there in a condensed format.

We tend not to go to that depth, and can get multiple mixed companies on the table with no issue. Our group vastly prefers it to CBT for its ease of play combined with lots of lances on the table.

It is a different beast, but the rules are well done and play relly well.  Idont know about a tourney setting, but outside of a tourney it is, imho, much better.

[Ultravanillasmurf]

Those are great models.

The weapons are not that oversized for the figures, slightly larger than the rescaled real weapons used in Patlabor (MG3/42 in 105mm, Walter MP in 40mm?).

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@syrinx0: They probably do. They're fun. But somehow nobody else but me seems to be enthused about them and I feel ever so slightly embarassed about them. Two weeks ago I was at a wargames show, had them with me - very little response. Of course it's probably just a matter of the target audience. When the anime conventions start again in autumn I'll get them out again.

@Maniac: Yeah, it definately is a different thing. I talked to people who like Alpha Strike, and it seems like it very often comes down to people either liking CBT or Alpha Strike, with not too much overlap between the two. Maybe it's also a nostalgia thing to a degree. People who played BT remember enjoying it, so they're a bit suspicious about Alpha Strike to begin with.

@Ultravanillasmurf: Thanks very much. Oh yeah, most weapons are fairly well proportioned and to-scale, it's just that huge rifle on the green Zaku that surprised me a little. But it's essentially an anti-tank rifle, and those historically were immensely huge, so it's all good.

Speaking of Battletech - I finally got to open the box (reason having been time, not physical contraints. ) and even read the rules and had a game (scenario 2 out of the three, because that's the only one you can play with the models included in the box). My worries about having to use these superspecial superdice by Mr.Laser which have all the modifiers on them being essential to play were mostly cleared; the regular system with differently-coloured dice works perfectly OK. In the scenario a damaged Battlemaster 'mech has to get across the board; a lance of three smaller 'mechs (Locust, Commando and Wolverine) have to stop him. I played the latter and got exploded. Locust forgot that mechs can walk backwards, got outmaneuvered by a Battlemaster(!) and had its arm shot off and half its torso, fell over and then got kicked. Commando, which has paper-thin armour as it turns out, got particle cannon'd in its missile storage and exploded in a spectacular fashion. Then it came down to the Wolverine and the Battlemaster. Due to heat build-up both of them soon had to resort to kicking and punching, which the 85-ton Battlemaster is better at than the 55-ton Wolverine. Strong game, that Battletech.


Right, as a birthday present to myself, I got myself the state-of-the-art RG Gundam ver2. And then, as the real present, I took the time to put together, modify and paint a 20+ years old High-Grade GM. But not any old GM, it's the RGM-79 'GM' Command Space Type, one of the sexiest GMs out there.



A kit that's over 20 years old, but very nice because the GM Command is just naturally a good looking thing. And it has a fun Super Soaker laser gun on top of that!

Funny coincidence: Just last Tuesday, I watched Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket (from 1989. Extremely good; 6 episodes, great animation and expressive faces, story with strong 80s Steven Spielberg film / Stand by Me vibes, touching story of a friendship, believable characters.), in which I think the GM Command Space has its longest appearances. Complete coincidence, but funny.



I spent most of the time carving panel lines, adding a few details, and modifying the plates on the front of the apron so that they can be moved independently of each other. I removed the antenna from the shoulder and instead built a radio thing on the side of his head and added a bit of plastic rod behind the clear visor thingy so it looks like there's a big old lense behind that. This taught me that you have to paint said lense behind the clear plastic thingy in some way so that it's visible in the end, otherwise nobody will ever notice it. Oh well.



On the other hand, I held back on weathering this time. These guys were made to be used in space, so I thought about and searched for what kind of weathering would be appropriate. Probably not much. Around the thrusters, otherwise basically just lots of tiny scratches and small impact marks from space debris flying around. But even with those I held back; on the one hand for reasons of time, and on the other because I wanted to try a cleaner look that matches the sleek design of the Mobile Suit.


This is what the chap looks like 'out of the box':





Yep, that's it. And now back to the things I should be doing. But these older, cheaper HG kits are really cool; you can do a lot with them. And I think GMs are generally great. Hope you like it!

[Easy E]

 

That is all. 

[hubbabubba]

These are all shit Sigur, really terrible.

Let me give you my address, you can mail them to me in a big box and I'll store them safely to make sure you stop embarrassing yourself with them.

(They're excellent, I love them.)

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@Easy E: Thank you!

@hubbabubba: Oops, I already had packed them all up, but then I saw your edit, and I guess I'll hold on to them. At some point I wanna play again, but first I want to make those cardboard buildings look fancier. For that I need: .) time and possibly an FDM 3d printer. Both of which being..... unlikely to fall into my lap any time soon (or better don't).

[zrunelord]

Great work Sigur.
Kudos.

Which reminds me I still have around 5 Bandai Robot kits to build.

Z

[hubbabubba]

I really really like that subtle purple shade on the white, it's beautifully done.

I've saved the pic for reference and I'll see if I can try it on something soon.