Years ago I painted my first Battletech miniatures up like one of my favorite mercenary units, the Kell Hounds, I passed on the Wolf's Dragoons, not because I didn't like their story or think they weren't cool, but they seemed to be almost too popular. Now that I am working on building up two solid forces to represent one Federated Sun and one Draconis Combine force, I wanted to bring in some mercenaries, specifically House Davion sided mercs. I planned on Kell Hounds of course, but realized they looked far to similar to the 5th Sword of Light mechs I was painting, so I decided to go with the Wolf's Dragoons and their most common paint scheme, black and red. After painting up my first lance, I can't believe I let their popularity turn me off of them years ago, I really like how they turned out!
My first Wolf's Dragoon lance consists of a Stalker, Awesome, Shogun and Catapult. The Stalker is one of my favorite mechs but the plastic model is posed awfully, as though it is falling over backwards, so I took a hobby knife to it and re-positioned it the be standing upright. The Shogun and Awesome a straight out of the box, but I added some missile pod doors and bulked up the catapults legs.
Here are a few comparison shots between the new IWM's Stalker II and the re-positioned plastic Stalker from the Alpha Strike Lance pack.
