by Parallax
I’ll open with a few things that are not news: I like BattleTech, I like miniatures, and I like making things. Now for something kinda new: I like custom terrain. Few things are really as cool to me as a big diorama built with intent and skill.
For what is distressingly looking like close to a decade now, I’ve been watching YouTube channels like Boylei Hobby Time with my kids. I’ve always loved watching things slowly turn into a complete canvas—what I feel is about as close to art as miniature painting gets (without getting into mini-painting-as-a-canvas, like the crazy freehand work on Imperial Knights or Titans). Up until now, I’ve only ever done small work. You’ll find some of it on the Legion website in the Dorfortress archives. I’ve made small pieces—solitary moments or tiny scenes of combat in what I called “micro-dioramas” built inside snow globes. The largest piece I’d ever tackled was a single combat scene with a big explosion backlighting a Battlemaster tearing the arm off a Shadow Hawk.
THIS year, though, I finally got up the gumption to do something properly big. I’d been building ideas and techniques up for a while, learning appropriate materials and how to make them in the least expensive way possible. I started poking around for ideas and initially landed on the Siege of Fort Cameron during the Amaris Coup. That idea rapidly changed when I remembered Fort Cameron was nuked into non-existence, so I shifted the setting to Mount Baker outside of Unity City. Several people asked me during the build if this was inspired by the last mission in the original MW5:Mercs campaign. The answer is: it kinda had to be. There are shockingly few artist renditions of any ‘Castles Brian’ at all.
Good art often tells a story, and the moment I settled on is ‘the final line of exterior defense for the fort’, assuming the Amaris Dragoons have already penetrated the outer perimeters.
To run through the build process quickly, the whole frame is built out of 2x4s for rigidity, topped with XPS insulation foam. The mountain started as upright pieces of foam creating a hollow profile, which I filled in with crumpled craft paper and wrapped in improvised plaster fabric using burlap and plaster of Paris. There was a lot of plaster of Paris in this project. I reinforced the form and built up volume using DIY Sculptamold (plaster mixed with paper pulp), along with various rock textures.
For the rock faces, I used broken slate tile, smooth rocks my wife found at the Dollar Tree, and mostly large-nugget pine bark mulch. (Pine bark is great for rocks—just make sure you dry it first to kill any bugs hiding in it.) When it came to paint, I started with wash colors that were not intuitive at all. As I was sharing progress with some Legion folks, Lady Red was less than sure about where I was going with them. But you gotta trust the process; it’s an undertone color. It all came together with subsequent paint passes, drybrushing, grass flocking, clump foliage, and coconut fiber. The paved surfaces were then textured using thin plaster mixed with baking soda for a bit of grit.
The buildings mostly come from Thunderhead Studios’ Hextech line, though I modeled the freestanding walls and reinforced terrace myself. I added LED lighting in various places, smoke made from cotton batting, and greebles here and there. The mechs come from a number of sources—a few are mine, but most aren’t. They’re all painted in either SLDF standard field green or Amaris Dragoons black/gray.
Ultimately, I’m not a photographer. I know I could have done better with the pictures and angles, but I tried to capture the little vignettes across the scene. This kind of diorama isn’t just one story—it’s several stories being told at once. AA platforms are shooting at VTOLs, tanks are exploding under fire, and buildings and craters are actively burning.
After four months of on-and-off work, I think I’m finally finished. I don’t know where else I can change anything without just tinkering for the sake of tinkering. All that said, I’m mostly happy with it. It’s 4’x4’, a nebulous height I haven’t bothered to measure, and it’s just plain cool. It wasn’t cheap to build, even with me homebrewing a lot of the materials, but that’s ok. Sometimes you need to create things to prove you can, not because it’s cost-effective. Of course, now I have to figure out what to do with this monster…
…anyone wanna play some Battletech?
(some WIP shots)
Parallax hosts the New Marik Workshop Thursday evenings on WBPL-76.
