Joyride Studios Madcat- Battletech 28mm

As promised, I finished my 1/60 (ish) scale Mad Cat, an eBay find that started life as the Joyride Studios Mechwarrior: Dark Age toy line’s Wave 1 Mad Cat II (…long story short, Wizkids never did their Battletech homework). The Wave 1 version came in a pure white paint scheme, representing the Mad Cat II from the Spirit Cats faction. I snagged this thing in a last minute bid for around $40 loose, while unopened, mint condition ones tend to go for around double that.

My initial idea was to do the model in a blue-grey urban camo scheme to match my Nighthawk PA(L) Battle Armor, planning to do a Rasalhague Dominion force of mixed Clan and IS technology. However that didn’t pan out, after priming the model straight black I found that Games Workshop’s new Citadel paints are….bad. The consistency is terrible for large models, and after several attempts I gave up.

After some further planning, I decided on a purely Ghost Bears color scheme. I re-primed the model smooth white, and completely washed the model in Citadel Gulliman Blue glaze, which gave a very, very clean finish that bled into the nooks and crannies of the model, a perfect base shade. Building up from there, I spent several days applying an older Citadel Space Wolves Grey coat, which, as an older Citadel paint, has a much more even consistency, and covered the model beautifully with minimal brush stroke lines.

That in place, I touched up my shaded areas with more Gulliman Blue and began the next step. I coated all the weaponry and any blatantly “metal” areas with Citadel Warplock Bronze (the only Citadel metallic in the new line worth a damn) and then drybrushed it with old Citadel Boltgun Metal (still my chosen standard for metal colors). After that was dry I applied Vallejo Sepia Shade to the metal areas, giving a worn look that I really like.

Next came the camouflage. I’d already done a patchwork urban-winter camo scheme on my Panther before, so this time I tried a stippled-on pattern of overlapping colors on the arms and legs of the machine. For this I used Citadel The Fang, Citadel Russ Grey, and Citadel Incubi Darkness (which I may repaint). For any 40k players out there….yes I play Space Wolves.

The cockpit was my final step, which turned out decently when you view it from a distance. I’m not great at cockpit jeweling. I coated the cockpit panes in Citadel Kabalite Green, then washed it in Citadel Coelia Greenshade. This gave me some good depth, so I could build up layers to make the glass look right. I followed with Citadel Sybarite Green, and lastly used a few choice strokes of Citadel Hellion Green dry paint and a couple lines of Citadel White Scar. I then coated the whole cockpit glass with Vallejo Gloss Varnish to give it an appropriate sheen.

I chose the dark green cockpit coloration because with Citadel paints on such a small area, I wasn’t as concerned with consistency, and because the color complements the cool blues and whites of the surrounding model. For some last bits of detail (i need to order some new transfers from Fighting Piranha), I used a couple warning symbols on the gun pods and a torn, worn away hazard stripe on the back of the ‘mech, mostly obscured by leaking oil and corrosion. I’ll of course be adding a Ghost Bears symbol once I get new transfers, as well as a symbol of the Ourse Keshik to give the Timber Wolf a proper identification.

On the workbench now is my Catapult courtesy of Scott Murphy, a beautiful resin kit that I can’t wait to paint up. Unfortunately a small error saw it missing the upper portions of its legs, but I should have those down from Scott in a few days. After that? Well I’m certainly eyeing all four of the ‘mechs for sale from Tim at Battlemech Club...