#Mechamonday for September 16th - Locust Again and Home Improvement

As mentioned before, Locusts are one of my favorite mechs. In the image to the right, the painted Locust sculpt is from the Battletech Alpha Strike Boxed Set. There is no official source for more figures, so I purchased a few from Etsy.

Here is the link I used. I am not an affiliate of Etsy or this seller. I just like the product. I gave it 5 stars, I honestly couldn't be happier with these mechs. 

You'll notice these are variants, with long gun barrels on the arms and no chin cannons. When they arrived, I thought of cutting the guns off to match the other model. The obvious bend in the barrels bothered me to. 

I couldn't do it. I want them as they are. 

I decided to fix them. These are obviously resin printed, so fixing them is relatively easy and the technique works on many types of plastic models. 

Step one: get a cup of very hot water. I've seen people say it must be X degrees and then they name some arbitrary number below boiling. 

Stop. Let me offer some free home improvement advice then tell you about using hot water to bend plastic. 

You have three basic choices of water heating: on-demand, electric, or gas. If you have on-demand hot water, you can skip this because that will make as much, and as hot as you like water until the fuel runs out. If you heat water by gas or electricity you have a hot water battery in your home called a hot water tank.

Modern hot water tanks have two heating elements, one at the top and one near the bottom. The cold water comes in from the bottom of the tank and is heated by the first element. The hot water rises and is kept at temperature by the upper heating element. Cold water comes in to replace it and the process continues. This is actually kind of neat. When not in use, the water starts as a column of cold to hot and turns into a column of nearly uniform temperature water. 

Have you ever noticed that your water comes out cool and warms up over time? That is two different processes at work. The obvious one is the water in the pipes is cooler than the water in the tank. The second process is as the tank replenishes the flowing water, and eventually, both heating elements turn on. 

This is very efficient. This is also why I say not to use the hottest water possible for bending plastic. You won't be able to control how hot it can get consistently because of the heating elements. 

If you notice you burn yourself at the sink when the dishwater or shower is running, turn down your hot water tank temperature. It's too hot. Remember, the shower will dump water over your head even if it's too hot. Second, turning the temp down can save you enough over a month or year to buy another mech. 

This ends my home improvement section. 

Ok. Get a cup of hot as you can tolerate water. You'll be holding your fingers in it for about 30-60 seconds. Plan accordingly. 

The reason for no specific temperature is, I don't know what kind of resin you are dealing with and I don't want you to melt it to slag. Repeating this process several times is better than destroying a model with very hot water. 

Also, get a cup of cold water. Again, not as cold as you can get it, but cool.  

Initially, I held my model in the water for a minute. Next, I bent the gun outwards and dipped it in the cool water. In the picture to the left, you can see the guns are less bent but not entirely fixed. 

I repeated the process. Since the water didn't damage the models, I felt comfortable dropping all three into the hot water and repeated the process. 

After the next dip, I thought they looked good enough. I might do it again before priming the models. 

This technique works well with bent airplane landing gear, drogues, and antennas. You may give it a try on slightly warped larger pieces, but only if you can press the model's complex shape against an opposing shape. I have yet to fix a model where 2 halves of the model are warped by pressing them up against each other. 

It is always too much flex to work but you may have better luck. 

As always, you can pick up a copy of this game on DrivethruRPG, but if you hit up brick-and-mortar stores, you can get the physical copy with minis. I will be doing a review of my favorite place to shop and play Battletech soon. 

#MechaMonday for September 9th - Commando

The Commando is a light mech and missile boat. It's an interesting option, as it pairs a single laser with two different missile racks. The range is short and shorter, but it's cheaper than a Locust. And there is something to be said about a low-heat mech. 

The Commando Gallery

You can pick up a copy of this game on DrivethruRPG, but if you hit up brick-and-mortar stores, you can get the physical copy with minis. 

#MechaModay for September 2nd - The Archer and The Locust

 #MechaMonday is here and I am leading with my two favorite mechs - The Locust and The Archer. 

It's been years since I have painted and I started right in with camouflage. We'll see how that goes. I'll get better pictures up soon. 

The reason I like these two mechs is you can get a 2:1 movement ratio. Sure there are pairs of variants that do not have this ratio, but you have to look for them. You can start advancing with the Locust zig-zagging while the Archer lumbers along behind. 

Thanks to the variants, you can pretend to be something you aren't by moving slightly slower. This shouldn't work by the rules, but it sidesteps the rules by repetition. If they see you move 8" and 4" every round, they will assume that you will in the future. The rules don't assume for player assumptions.   

This creates many possible attack positions for the pair: 

• The Locust can move in lockstep with the Archer, forcing your opponent to pick between a sure kill on the closer Locust or trying to kill the distant Archer.  
• The Locust can dash through the enemy and end up at their rear or better, a flank. 
• The Archer can dash forward and end up slightly in front of the slowing Locust.  
• The feint is a good gambit, where the Locust moves to one side dragging the enemy around so the Archer can turn to face a different foe or objective.  

This combo is costly in terms of Locusts but you can wreck formations, cut off individual mechs or make fancy powerplays with low-end mechs. Personally, I like the satisfaction of getting the Archers in front of the Locusts because my opponent has to sweat the dice to kill an Archer while worrying about what the Locusts are really doing. Even if they aren't doing anything.  

The Archer Slide Show

The Locust Slide Show

You can pick up a copy of this game on DrivethruRPG, but if you hit up brick-and-mortar stores, you can get the physical copy with minis. 

Content Preview - August 2024

I am back from hiatus and led with a post about the laser I purchased. My intention for the laser is to come up with new and unique content to support my gaming habits. I have no intention of transitioning to "Laser Dude", but the laser will help me transition to new types of content. Models and such. 

Here is a content preview which is my guidepost: 

As you can see, there is a lot of game content there. On the right is Dungeonland hiding under B1 and L1, a trio of favorites. On the other side of the image are the DragonLance modules. I would expect to see a couple of module reviews soon.  

Next to these are two Battletech products. My game plan is to alternate Mech Monday with Module Monday, so I don't burn out on one type of content. This will also drive me to do some painting. I hear some people actually paint models and figurines. I figured I'd give it a try and see if it's as rewarding as I hear. 

If you take black and white pictures,
painting skills don't matter.

Since I lost all of my game books, I have been carefully replacing the best of the best. I was mad at the loss of my D&D 3.x books. I took a step back and rather than replace them with difficult to find, out of print books, I figured I'd dive into Pathfinder. 3.x was my favorite generic ruleset as it was a toolkit for every 'verse. Yes, it's D&D but it can also be Star Wars, Farscape, Top Secret, or anything else you'd care to do. It's a very nice set. 

This isn't say my B/X content will disappear. I am hoping to get a weekly game going using the modules and my OSE sets to supplement content. 

As I figure out how to use this laser, I can squeeze laser content into my gaming and modeling posts. It seems reasonable. I have also signed up to be an affiliate for Creality company so there is an aspect or two monetization here. If I am able to crank out some nice gaming products and accessories, I would be happy to sell them to you. 

There is another aspect of monetization here. If you look to the right, you can see a small image of a game and a massive image of a bottle of wine. Unless something interesting happens, that large image will disappear. These types of links don't perform at all. 

I am formulating an idea for that space. Future you will see a bottle of wine in that space, but it won't be an ad. It will be something else. 

I hope you join me on this new adventure.