I’d like to start with a
short history of white…
In the early 90’s, shortly after finishing “Decision at Thunder Rift”, I decided to start an “abandoned” campaign. The general premise was that a lance of men were left behind during an invasion, when their unit pulled out without them. Having an affinity for the Lyran Commonwealth (undoubtedly because of Carlyle’s own loyalties), I decided to use an LCAF unit. For various reasons, I ended up with the 20th Arcturan Guards. I also choose to use medium Mechs and ones that didn’t rely heavily on ammunition (that way it wasn’t a case of them always struggling with no reloads). At the time the main source of ‘Mechs was TRO:3025, and I settled on a Griffin and 3 Phoenix Hawks. I painted them up, played some of the campaign, and then real life took over and everything got set aside… Fast forward to 2009… After not painting for about 15 years, I drag out all my old stuff. To my horror, my nice white Mech lance is now amber (which is what happens over time when you seal with polyurethane). Because they were ruined, I did what I never do, and stripped them to start over. But this is now the era of the internet and I have access to places like CSO and other painting forums. I learned both new painting techniques and how-to mod, and they eventually became the first four of my 23rd Arcturan Guards (side note: it changed from the 20th to the 23rd because Fighting Piranha Graphics does not have decals for the 20th). As I finished each piece, the feedback was so positive I decided to go from a lance to a company. But in the process of painting more (a very tedious color to paint), I also found myself telling a story of betrayal. One where the lance wasn’t left behind by accident, but was betrayed and instead left for the purpose of getting rid of them. This blossomed into a “who done it”, and as I posted each successive piece, I started to tell bit of the overall story focusing on that pilots’ history. The story was supposed to be about addiction (drugs, alcohol, gambling) and various other secrets. Giving each man a motive to want them dead… But time takes its toll and I lost interest in telling the story… Spoiler Alert!!! Ultimately it was meant to be this Hatchetman pilot, who simply thought he should have been in charge of the Recon lance and just wanted our hero out of the way… Oh, and technically, it ends poorly for him…
Now on to other things…
This Mech was suppose to be part of my CSO packet and is one of my Workbench Babies… One of the hard parts about picking up where you left off 5 years before, is if you were trying something different, you might not have any idea what that was… I can tell by the layering (something that almost never comes out well on camera), that I progressed fasted through the colors than normal. I’d like to say it was to help take out some of the subtle color shifts and make the color change a little more dramatic. The reality is that I think I had burnt out completely and just wanted this piece done. As I picked this piece back up and finished it, it struck me how sad it was that while white has become somewhat of my signature color, if one piece was going to ever keep me from being accepted, it would have been this one. It was a wreck… The paint on the Hatchetman is not my best, but I think I salvaged it into OK… Having said all this, of the five Mechs I was planning to submit, this one is my absolute favorite repose.
Apparently this was my last intact Hatchetman (one got mangled during the reposing of the head)... So I am using Savage Coyote's 10th Lyran Guards RCT HCT-3F from Camospec.com for comparison.
Caz
