by Todd Wardwell

With the focus of this contest being "Legs" I knew there just had to be a Battletech entry.

I found the Madcat construction set by Joy Ride Studios to be a very basic kit of the type that was designed to get kids into building models. It was prepainted in a black and red Wolf's Dragoons paint scheme. The kit was listed as the MK II, which entailed a few minor modifications that had to be sanded and covered with plastruct stock. I wanted my Mad Cat to be a captured model used by the Com Guard's Invader Galaxy (Basically a Battletech version of the OP Forces used to train Innersphere forces to fight the Clans). While I always wanted the Armorkast kit, the lack of detail in the cockpit and the price of the kit prevented me from getting it. This kit cost me 14$ on clearance and was well worth it.

I wanted my Madcat to have the feared Gauss Rifle, which was not commercially available in any of the current production kits. The Gauss Rifle is notably very bulky, and I wanted to simulate this, by looking at other drawings of it in the Battltech Technical Readouts. I had to kit bash from the arm/ autocannon that was included in the kit and built the rest from plastruct stock. I also kitbashed the left shoulder launcher to represent an Advanced Tactical Missile Launcher (3-pack) from parts of arm stock and the LRM-15 pod.

The cockpit was an openable 2-person model that did not agree with the design from the technical readouts, but probably made the mech more playable for the younger crowd. I sealed the second cockpit hatch, and detailed the actual cockpit with decals and glow in the dark paint (my son's idea). The effect was pretty cool. The hip pods are also not from the Tech readout and were cut off and discarded. On the front of the cockpit were some really lousy machine guns,and these too were replaced with autocannon barrels that were cut off of some Mechwarrior Darkage figures. These looked far better and were inked to bring out the barrel detail.

The whole mech was repainted in gloss red and Games Workshop Bone White and Black Ink. One challenging aspect of the model was that some of the parts were actually made of metal. This became a real challenge to fill in the gap areas and sand them effectively. All the decals were printed on Testor's Decal Maker paper and most came from the Classic Battletech Website. The MadCat was weathered using my daughter's water washable black paints. The rest of the mech was coated with Future floor polish.

The Clan name for the Madcat is the Timber Wolf, hence the name of the mech on the cockpit art "Tamed Wolf".

Image: What the target sees

Image: Rear view

Image: New Gauss rifle

Image: MG's

Image: New missile pod