Wow, that's bigger than I thought it would be...

...words rarely said by gamers after an online purchase and likewise said by no woman ever and invariably on a completely different topic, but that's a subject for a different blog, not this one.

I was perusing teh inerwebz looking for something to use as a machine gun (MG) variant 10ton APC for Battletech (the actual mini is kinda hideous). The MG variant has 4 machine guns and no troop capacity, making it a dirt cheap militia scout tank. Going forward to the Jihad era you can swap the machine guns for light machine guns for no point differential, getting twice the range for half the damage. At least that's what I was aiming for...

The 6mm listing pic.

The 15mm version's listing pic.

Lots of metal for $14!

I had no idea on the size of the mini as the actual listing's pic is about 1.5" square on screen and not too detailed. Actually I was going off of the 15mm version's listing photo. Given the price of (2) for 2.5 GBP I figured they'd be tiny. A lance of four, with shipping came out to about $14 which is on par the usual Battletech blister pack of two tanks (ebay seller price wars usually drop that average drop by $1-2).

This is on a 1" grid.

Perhaps I should send these to Ground Zero Games to use for their listing...

Scale is always a bit vague and anything but consistent when it comes to CBT minis, but as you can see below, side-by-side with a 60ton Bulldog tank, this won't pass as an APC one 6th that weight!

I'll most likely glue the turrets in place so as not to lose the tiny things!

So...not sure what type I'll use these as, but here are the most likely candidates:

First up: it could easily pass for a Tokugawa were it not for the minuscule turret. That said, mucking around in Skunkwerks I found that if I move the Tokugawa's SRM-6 to the front, it doesn't effect the BV making that an option.

The another likely candidate is the Schiltron C. Weighing in at 80 tons, the C variant dispenses with the bulky missile launchers and just mounts four large lasers in its also minuscule nubbin of a turret. The internal C3 master computer will be wasted, but not utilizing that again has no effect on BV and only wastes 5 tons, so no real loss there. Schiltrons are also packaged individually in their blister packs which really makes this a bargain substitute!

Or, I could just use it as a Hetzer variant. Let's face it, that mini is just an ugly box with a fixed forward weapon mount (quite fitting if I glue on the turrets) and despite this minis's size, a good bit of it is wheels and suspension, so if anything that's less of a stretch than the 80 tonner above.

Guess I'll have to ponder it some...