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Description
There are three lances of this that I made, so you'll notice the first three paragraphs are largely the same for all three lances.

Something that everyone and their mother has been making lately, but I'm no exception. Like many others, Decision at Thunder Rift was one of my first Battletech books, and I grew up rooting for this little merc unit that could. For as long as I've even known about BattleTech's existence as a miniatures game, the unseen have been off the table. While these Catalyst Game Labs plastics aren't the original 3025 look of the minis, this is the first time in my life that I could make the force without paying close to 100$ per oop pewter mini. This force was intended to be an easy-to-paint army that would be on and off the table in the blink of an eye, but as always, ended up crawling.

With so many players already making the GDL, some also using the exact same book from the 80s as their guide, I wanted to find a way to differentiate my own. I decided to use the scenario book as a guide to adding additional details to the mechs. As is common in the 3rd succession war, many of the mechs had preexisting damage or other quirks. I wanted to try to add the appearance of bolted-on armor plates to reflect the irreparable damage taken by some of the mechs that reduce their armor below normal levels. Initially, I thought of using plasticard and using superglue to add rivets, but that didn't yield the results I wanted. Instead, I ended up using bits from a model kit of a WW2-era German anti-air gun I already had (I'm sure the mini I had in mind will get uploaded in the future), and cutting those down as they came with rivets already on many of the metal sections.

Mechs were base coated using Tamiya (XF-20) Medium Grey for its warmer qualities. Masking stickers were applied, and then I experimented with some Vallejo (72.748) Game Air Sombre Grey (I finally found a shop that sells it, so I figured why not try it and see what all the fuss was about) to make the base camouflage pattern. Weapon sections were painted with Tamiya (X10) Gunmetal, and the bolted-on armor plates were painted with Tamiya (XF-16) flat aluminum. The minis were given a wash of Citadel Nuln Oil, and then drybrushed with Tamiya XF-19 Sky Grey, as well as spot drybrushing in Vallejo Game Color (72.001) dead white over the medium grey sections. Weathering and rust effects were painted on, mostly using colors already used up to this point but also some blacks and browns, as well as liberal use of Citadel Agrax Earthshade for rust runoff. For the cockpits, I masked off an area around each and applied several airbrushed coats of Green Stuff World 1556 Chameleon Nebula Copper for the first time, and I'm honestly quite happy with the results. The chameleon paints they produce are hit and miss, but this one in particular has clear transitions between the hues, usually looking pink but from beneath the copper hue is strong. Decals from Fighting Pirannha Graphics as well as some other sources were applied. Several clear spraypaint gloss coats were added, the cockpits were masked off, and then flat spraypaints were added.

Above is the Grey Death Legion Command Lance as depicted in the first sourcebook. It's not fully clear as to which year it represents, but it should be some point between 3025-28. They are Grayson "Death" Carlyle in the Marauder, Lori Kalmar in the Shadow Hawk, Delmar Clay in the Wolverine, and Davis McCall in the Rifleman. Grayson's Marauder is said to have "Additional armor plating to protect the vulnerable rotation ring between the chassis and leg assembly, and at the vulnerable linkage for the dorsal autocannon", so armor was kitbashed onto the sides of the autocannon, as well as on the rear of the mech in a way that covers the hip joint. The front was too snug to properly fit it. Lori's Shadowhawk has reduced armor on both the left arm and left torso, so plates were added there. Delmar Clay's Wolverine has a number of internal flaws, but of the cosmetic damage, the center torso has been reduced to 18 points. McCall's Rifleman is also flawed, but since they're weapon based I left the miniature stock.

Description
There are three lances of this that I made, so you'll notice the first three paragraphs are largely the same for all three lances.

Something that everyone and their mother has been making lately, but I'm no exception. Like many others, Decision at Thunder Rift was one of my first Battletech books, and I grew up rooting for this little merc unit that could. For as long as I've even known about BattleTech's existence as a miniatures game, the unseen have been off the table. While these Catalyst Game Labs plastics aren't the original 3025 look of the minis, this is the first time in my life that I could make the force without paying close to 100$ per oop pewter mini. This force was intended to be an easy-to-paint army that would be on and off the table in the blink of an eye, but as always, ended up crawling.

With so many players already making the GDL, some also using the exact same book from the 80s as their guide, I wanted to find a way to differentiate my own. I decided to use the scenario book as a guide to adding additional details to the mechs. As is common in the 3rd succession war, many of the mechs had preexisting damage or other quirks. I wanted to try to add the appearance of bolted-on armor plates to reflect the irreparable damage taken by some of the mechs that reduce their armor below normal levels. Initially, I thought of using plasticard and using superglue to add rivets, but that didn't yield the results I wanted. Instead, I ended up using bits from a model kit of a WW2-era German anti-air gun I already had (I'm sure the mini I had in mind will get uploaded in the future), and cutting those down as they came with rivets already on many of the metal sections.

Mechs were base coated using Tamiya (XF-20) Medium Grey for its warmer qualities. Masking stickers were applied, and then I experimented with some Vallejo (72.748) Game Air Sombre Grey (I finally found a shop that sells it, so I figured why not try it and see what all the fuss was about) to make the base camouflage pattern. Weapon sections were painted with Tamiya (X10) Gunmetal, and the bolted-on armor plates were painted with Tamiya (XF-16) flat aluminum. The minis were given a wash of Citadel Nuln Oil, and then drybrushed with Tamiya XF-19 Sky Grey, as well as spot drybrushing in Vallejo Game Color (72.001) dead white over the medium grey sections. Weathering and rust effects were painted on, mostly using colors already used up to this point but also some blacks and browns, as well as liberal use of Citadel Agrax Earthshade for rust runoff. For the cockpits, I masked off an area around each and applied several airbrushed coats of Green Stuff World 1556 Chameleon Nebula Copper for the first time, and I'm honestly quite happy with the results. The chameleon paints they produce are hit and miss, but this one in particular has clear transitions between the hues, usually looking pink but from beneath the copper hue is strong. Decals from Fighting Pirannha Graphics as well as some other sources were applied. Several clear spraypaint gloss coats were added, the cockpits were masked off, and then flat spraypaints were added.

Above is the Grey Death Legion Command Lance as depicted in the first sourcebook. It's not fully clear as to which year it represents, but it should be some point between 3025-28. They are Grayson "Death" Carlyle in the Marauder, Lori Kalmar in the Shadow Hawk, Delmar Clay in the Wolverine, and Davis McCall in the Rifleman. Grayson's Marauder is said to have "Additional armor plating to protect the vulnerable rotation ring between the chassis and leg assembly, and at the vulnerable linkage for the dorsal autocannon", so armor was kitbashed onto the sides of the autocannon, as well as on the rear of the mech in a way that covers the hip joint. The front was too snug to properly fit it. Lori's Shadowhawk has reduced armor on both the left arm and left torso, so plates were added there. Delmar Clay's Wolverine has a number of internal flaws, but of the cosmetic damage, the center torso has been reduced to 18 points. McCall's Rifleman is also flawed, but since they're weapon based I left the miniature stock.