I should preface my comments by saying I've never had the chance to play a BT game with actual minis, since the only other player I knew of in town moved away before I got my CAT35000 Boxed Set and its PlasTech heroes. (For the record, that's the old version with a
Catapult on the cover,
not the recently-released IBS.) The last time I painted a mini was well before I ever heard the name "Monica Lewinsky"(!), and I made a hash of it, so I've never had a chance to kitbash anything. And most of the original-generation Reseen are utterly hideous to my eyes, though I found many of the Reseen in TRO3085 a lot more palatable.
That said, here we go. For those with tl;dr tendencies, the short version is that I'm with
StoneRhino pretty much straight down the line in reasoning, although my vote was different.
The problem: You have picked one of the infamous "Unseen" units to represent your ride. For whatever reason, miniatures of the actual "Unseens" are unavailable, but--as always--the stats are useable for gameplay. Your options are: "Retcon" your "Unseen" (perhaps by bashing a figure you feel is good enough and saying they always looked that way- Example: Take the missile pods off a Catapult, slap the arms of a Dervish on it, and strap the gun arm for a Vindicator to the top centerline and call it a Marauder); Replace your "Unseen" with an era-appropriate alternative (Example: No Marauder? Okay, I'll take the Orion.); or accept the "Reseen" version as a substitute (Plop down a post-3067 model Marauder in place of the 3025 standby.)
In these specific circumstances, my preferences would be (in order) to a] Ret-con a kitbashed proxy (hopefully one as true to the original Unseen as possible without getting a visit from a lawyer), b] use a Reseen from the same type-name, c] substitute an era-appropriate alternate. Yes, I voted to ret-con
in these specific circumstances, but otherwise, I would really,
really rather not do anything so drastic on any scale larger than a single gaming table for a single night's play.
I came to BattleTech around '98 or so. I've never owned a TRO with the Unseen printed in it, and I've never owned any of the Unseen minis. I've only ever known the Unseen through the fiction, their stats, their legend, and images shown by non-canonical sources or fellow fans. But that doesn't change the fact that when you say 'Marauder', the first image into my head is that shellbacked icon of the game doing the Sexy MAD Strut
TM that we can't show any more because of
lawyers. [tickedoff] Or that to me, 'Warhammer' is always going to mean a slope-torso'd, cloven-footed collection of boxes and angles with huge tapering guns where its forearms and hands ought to be. Those units
are icons of BattleTech, and they still hold that nigh-holy resonance in the BT community's consciousness no matter what HG's legal team says or how long they say it - even for someone like me, who never met them as such! :o
That said, some of the more recent Reseen have started to get closer to 'feeling right'. I can look at the Reseen
Locust or
Valkyrie or
Archer in TRO3085 and say 'yeah, that is clearly descended from the LCT-1V/VLK-QA/ARC-2R'. Much as I miss the slope-fronted WHM-6R, the
Warhammer in '85 Supplemental is clearly its slightly-anorexic progeny.
So, yes. I'd be
MORE than happy to see new minis of the no-longer-Unseen, like the
Shadow Hawk and
Griffin and
Battlemaster. Assuming a miracle never happens and we don't get the HG-challenged Unseen back, I voted for a retcon, partly because I'll probably never actually be in the position to need a kitbashed 'Mech like the OP specifies :D, but my first preference still would be for a retcon, one that I hope/pray preserved as much as I could get of the original design's look-and-feel. Failing that, I would choose a Reseen, again one that was as close as I could get to the look-and-feel of what I was using on the game-table. Failing
that, I'd probably just proxy something as the actual unit, since their stats are still valid for play and I don't recall ever yet meeting a BT 'WYSIWYG Nazi', but if my fellow players were being uptight about matters, I'd sub in a similar, era-appropriate design as a last resort.
Of course, I'm probably misreading the OP (and misconstruing the motives and driving forces behind it) and making a lot of fuss over nothing. :-\ But if I'm not, I thought I'd best have my vote counted, and my reasons for my vote on the record, so that I know I didn't miss my chance to say something when it could have made a difference. :-X
Poll
