Has anyone tried battletech in 15mm?

[ichwillauch]

Hi,

because real life at the moment leaves me no time to play or paint I thought about a new project, Battletech in 15mm. The reasons are simple:

- 15mm is large enough for my 3d printer to catch most of the details.

- I always wanted to order some models made by Ground Zero Games.

- I only want to field a lance and some vehicles and infantry for a small game.

- I want to game with the old stuff 3025/3026.

- Deep Cut studios can print a hexgrid (10 cm ) on a gaming mat for an reasonable price

If anyone has any experiences gaming Battletech in 15mm, I am eager to hear about it.

My first test print, radar needs some redo…

[Cypher226]

Crazy, but looks fantastic. I've seen quite a few people using the old clickytech minis plus new 3d prints to play alpha strike at 10mm - no reason it won't work at 15mm - but a 6'x4' table will basically be a single mapsheet at 15mm!

Looking forward to seeing where you go with this - any ideas on unity paint schemes yet?

[sundayhero]

Is it printed from a standard FDM printer ? The result is great !

[Ultravanillasmurf]

That is a great idea.

Nice work on the mech.

There used to be a range of Macross mechs in 1/100 in plastic.
http://ultravanillasmurf.blogspot.com/2017/09/macross-models.html

[Hobby Services]

I've seen people play it with various proxies in both 10mm and 15mm scale.  Works fine, and if you use the "gridless" rules you don't even have to get a rescaled mat/map.  If anything, I'd think 15mm is more appropriate than 6-ish for the usual 2-3 lance battles you see.  Game's got enough detail and few enough units that bigger figs feel right, especially with the superior sculpting allowed by today's improved casting and printing tech.

[War Monkey]

I have never played Battletech  yeah I know, but I am sure interested in this thread.

[DivisMal]

That looks great! I have zero playing experience apart from computer games, but this should have great potential.

Doesn’t Battletech work with hexes? Then you wouldn’t even need such a large table, but simply upscale the hexes slightly.

[Cat]

The original 1984 game was Battledroids and came with a pair of 1/144 Dougram mecha by Nitto/Doyousha and extra types were sold separately.  Lucas films stomped on that title, and in '85 it was re-branded as BattleTech.
 
I have a number from back in the day, and scored this full set when it was re-released:
https://hlj.com/combat-armor-dougram-collectors-box-1box-10pcs-dys00095

[Ultravanillasmurf]

@Cat - what caught my eye was the Macross Destroid Tomahawk on the cover.

All part of the nightmare licence briar that was Macross, where different companies claimed various IP holdings and sold licences to different people.

[Daeothar]

Excellent idea; great minds...

I started an on and off 15mm Battletech project many years ago, using mainly an ecclectic range of model kits, some of which quite old and obscure, to make my miniatures/models.

This list here is the result of months of research into the matter. So most, if not all, of the mechs I'm building are, by neccesity, the unseen ones.

Which suits me just fine, as I'm pretty much solely interested in Classic Battletech anyway



Like I said though; it's an on and off project, and I usually take it out once a year or so. Ans as a result I have yet to finish a single lance.

Some mechs are done, others almost, while most are still kits on sprues...
I'm at a point though, where I'm going to have to decide which faction I will paint my first lance as.

Now, my progress is this slow, because I'm a bit of a stickler for scale, and I have to rescale a lot of the kits to fit my intended scale.

This slow progress is also why I have never posted any of my progress yet. And now my glacially slow modeling has been overtaken by technology, and all of my beloved conversions could now just as easily be 3D printed... 

Anyway; here are some WIP shots I took last year. They are a finished Warhammer and Wasp, a WIP scratchbuild of a Locust and a WIP biggerization of a Wolverine.

There are quite a few more, but I have yet to photograph them...

[tomrommel1]

nice project

[Tactalvanic]

Glorious work, the conversions, the 15mm idea, oh damn I don't need another project

Stop inspiring me! Or is it tempting?

Nice all regardless

[DivisMal]

The conversions do look really good!

[Ultravanillasmurf]

Nice work,

[ichwillauch]

Many thanks for all the input, especially the scaling hints!!!

I have ordered a winter map with hexgrid on it, should arrive in the next days, since the hexes are 10cm wide it would fit with Kallistra terrain but you were right, its only a single mapsheet at 15mm.

Using old plastic mechs from the japanese animation series would be great, I must dig in my lead mountain, somewhere I should own some gundam models.

Yes, the mech ist printed on a FDM printer with medium settings, I am using the 10mm models upscaled to 15mm on thingiverse https://www.thingiverse.com/Minimalistix/designs.

Meanwhile I found Sarna.net https://www.sarna.net/files/media/3d_models/ there is a large collectioon of dxf files. These can be converted with Google Sketchup to printable STL-files.



An other source for files I found on https://mwomercs.com/forums/topic/148875-mountain-of-battletech-models/. These files are in Lightwave format *.lwo and much harder to convert. In fact I failed to convert the mechs, only fighter and some vehicles were possible using this online converter http://www.greentoken.de/onlineconv/.



Meanwhile I printed and primed another Mech, this time a Jenner.


and two Savannah Master for infantry scouting missions.