How to Paint Everything: BattleTech

In our How to Paint Everything series we look at how to paint well, everything, with a look at different techniques and strategies. In this article we’re looking at some basic techniques for BattleTech.

BattleTech is a game that explicitly does not require painting - or even miniatures at all. According to the rulebook, as long as you have a token with a distinct front facing you're good to go. However, we think that games are better when there's a full array of painted minis on the board, and this article is here to help with some quick paint schemes that produce good looking results.

With fairly simple details and well defined shapes, BattleTech minis take well to painting with either drybrush or one-coat paints plus picking out a few details like weapons, heat sinks, and jump jets.

Covered in this Article

How to paint simple mechs with either a drybrush or one-coat paint method.
How to paint common details and jump plumes.
How to spruce up cockpits and weapons with gem painting.
Specific paint schemes for the Great Houses of the Inner Sphere, the Clans, and a variety of mercenary units.

Painting Common Details

There are some parts that repeat across mechs, no matter how you want to paint the armor. We're covering those here rather than in each individual paint scheme.

Metal Bits - click to expand

Whether a joint, a gun barrel, or a heat sink, there's exposed metal all over a mech. Painting this to stand out helps define the shape of a mech, particularly if you're working with a single color scheme, and it generally goes very quickly.

Basecoat any area that will be metallic in black or dark grey. While not strictly necessary if you're using a paint with good coverage, I find it helps make sure there's no underlying color tint.
Paint the metal areas in Proacryl Dark Silver.
Give the entire thing a wash with Nuln Oil.
Add a few edge highlights with Proacryl Silver. You don't need to hit every edge, just the uppermost ones, but taking a few seconds to add some highlights makes things pop. On larger areas like a big gun barrel, you can lightly drybrush the upper surface with the silver to add a bit of texture, but you're still going to want to add the edge highlighting as well.

Quick Lasers - click to expand

Picking out each laser on the mech is another great way to draw attention to the model, and can be done very quickly to great effect. While there's no officially defined color for lasers, I use colors from the Battletech video game - red lasers are small, green are medium, and blue are large lasers or PPCs.

Put a dot of Proacryl Silver on each laser. You'll want to do two coats to be extra sure it's bright and shiny.
Put a drop of the appropriate one-coat paint over the silver. I use Asurmen Blue, Karandras Green, and Baal Red from GW.
After you've finished the mech and any protective matte varnish, go in and put a drop of gloss varnish on each laser.

Quick Cockpits - click to expand

Much like the lasers, cockpits are another prominent block of color that also serves as a focal point for the entire mech. Even if you aren't painting the lasers, doing the cockpit is probably the single biggest thing you can do after the base coats.

Some cockpits can be hard to find, but Camospecs hosts a pdf guide that highlights them all here.

Basecoat the cockpit in black or dark grey.
Apply Proacryl Silver in two to three thin coats. The thinner the better here, as any roughness will be magnified by the next step.
Use a one-coat paint to apply your cockpit color. I find that I mostly like using cool colors for cockpits - purple, blue, or green, though a orange/copper also works well.
Once you've finished any matte varnish on the mech, apply one or two coats of gloss varnish to the cockpit.

Jump Plumes - click to expand

The various mercenary force packs released have each included one mech that can be either placed on a base as usual or on a smoky jump plume. I think the jump plumes look cool, and using them is another easy way to make your models stand out. I've done mine in two different ways - once with a bit of a blue glow at the center, and once with an orangey burn.

Either way, you're going to want to paint it separately from the mech, as otherwise it'll be very hard to reach everywhere.

Wolf's Dragoons Thunderbolt. Credit: Jack Hunter

Blue Glow

Start by priming the jump plume with a very light grey or white.
Lightly coat the entire thing in Aethermatic Blue Contrast. Concentrate it at the top where the clouds are thinnest, but having it hit the lower areas adds some nice definition.
Heavily drybrush the entire thing with Proacryl Bold Titanium White.
From about 2/3 of the way up down to the bottom, drybrush with Proacryl Bright Neutral Grey.
Repeat step 4 with Proacryl Neutral Grey, Dark Neutral Grey, and Black. Each time you should cover less of the plume and drybrush more lightly until you're just barely hitting the very lower areas with black.
Apply basing texture to the base, then superglue the plume to the base while the texture paste is still wet. This'll embed the plume somewhat into the paste, which makes it look like it's actually there and not just sitting on top of it.

Orangey Glow

This is harder to get looking "right" than the blue glow above because it's something we have more real references for. If you look at a rocket launch, the area just outside the rocket is very very white, with just the slightest tinge of yellow, then turning into billowing white clouds as it gets further away. With paint we have much more limited dynamic range than our eyes can see, so we can focus on making either the rocket glow look right, or making the clouds look right. I've chosen to focus on the clouds, which are the biggest part of these bases, but if I wanted to focus on the rocket glow I'd use darker greys instead of very light grey and white in the clouds.

Prime with a light grey or white, then basecoat with Proacryl Bright Neutral Grey.
Airbrush Proacryl Bold Titanium White onto the top of the plumes. You'll notice there's an area that has a more streaky and less billowy texture - this part is sculpted to be the actual burning part of the jump jet, so we want to make sure it's white.
Lightly drybrush that section with a very pale yellow like Scale 75 Lilith Yellow.
Drybrush again with a Proacryl Yellow, this time further away from the tips and closer to the cloud section.
Do a final drybrush that starts to overlap the clouds with Vallejo Game Color Orange Fire.
Heavily drybrush all the clouds with Proacryl Bold Titanium White.
Apply basing texture to the base, then superglue the plume to the base while the texture paste is still wet. This'll embed the plume somewhat into the paste, which makes it look like it's actually there and not just sitting on top of it.

Gem Painting for Cockpits and Lasers

Lasers - click to expand

The most simple gems to paint are lasers, and we're going to use the same colors as we did with the one-coat method above: blue for large lasers, green for medium, and red for small. You'll want 2-3 paints in increasing brightness for this, plus white. With red lasers I generally move my highlights towards orange rather than towards pink.

Paint the laser with the darkest color you have. In this case, I'm using Proacryl Dark Blue.
Pick one of the two lower corners (yes, it's a circle and they don't have corners, but you know what I mean) and apply a crescent shape of your mid-tone, in this case Proacryl Blue.
Add another pass to that same spot, slightly smaller, with your brightest paint. Here I use Proacryl Sky Blue.
Add a tiny bit of white to the opposite (upper) corner. On larger weapons a small crescent shape is good, but on smaller ones a dot looks perfectly fine.
Once you're finished with the mech, gloss varnish over the laser.

Cockpits - click to expand

Painting cockpits is mostly like painting the lasers, just a bit bigger. Some of the complex shapes can get a bit complicated to determine where to place highlights, but I find that treating any areas where there's a harder angle as a separate pane of glass looks best. You'll want 2-3 paints in increasing brightness for this, plus black and white.

Again, if you're having any issues figuring out where the cockpit is, check out the Camospecs pdf guide here.

Mix black in with your darkest color, and coat the entire cockpit with it. I'm using a mix that's about 1:1 Proacryl Black and Black Green.
In the same lower corner as you used for lasers, paint a chunky line along the edge in your mid-tone, here I use Proacryl Green. On larger cockpits this might be too big a jump from the previous layer, in which case you can use the pure base color first.
Add another pass to that same spot, slightly smaller, with your brightest paint. Here we use Proacryl Bright Pale Green.
In the opposite upper corner, paint along the edge with a thin line of pure white.
Once you're finished with the mech, gloss varnish over the cockpit.

Basic Drybrushed Schemes

These schemes were all designed to be very quick to paint and not need anything beyond a drybrush. I used an airbrush to apply the primer and basecoats, but that's just for speed and not any particular effect - they're just a flat color. If you want to push them a little further, a second lighter drybrush pass in a color slightly brighter than the highlight used here will make them pop even more. Be careful with this second highlight that it's not overly saturated, as that can look a little cartoony (unless that's the effect you're going for) - I've recommended some highlight colors below.

I used Proacryl Dark Neutral Grey to prime everything, though if you will be hand brushing the basecoats I'd suggest a more medium grey for the red and tan schemes.

This should be the first step you do on any mech, as drybrushing is by it's nature a bit messy and likely to spill into an adjacent area. Once you're happy with the base color, jump up to the Common Details section above to fill in the rest of the mech.

White - click to expand

Crusader. Credit: Jack Hunter

Over the Dark Neutral Grey basecoat, heavily drybrush with Proacryl Neutral Grey.
Do another heavy drybrush pass with Proacryl Bright Neutral Grey, avoiding the undersides of limbs and the torso.
Mix about 1:1 Bright Neutral Grey and Bold Titanium White, then drybrush over the upper surfaces of everything.
Finally, use pure white to lightly drybrush upper edges.
Paint the details according to the guides above. For the cockpit I used Citadel Luxion Purple.

Purple - click to expand

Locust. Credit: Jack Hunter

Basecoat with Reaper Imperial Purple.
Drybrush with Reaper Malvernian Purple.
Paint the details according to the guides above. For the cockpit I used Citadel Karandras Green.

Blue - click to expand

Banshee. Credit: Jack Hunter

Basecoat with Proacryl Dark Blue.
Drybrush with Proacryl Blue.
Optional further highlight: Proacryl Grey Blue.
Paint the details according to the guides above. For the cockpit I used Citadel Karandras Green.

Red - click to expand

Axman. Credit: Jack Hunter

Basecoat with Proacryl Burnt Red.
Drybrush with Proacryl Bold Pyrrole Red.
Optional further highlight: Vallejo Game Color Hot Orange. When highlighting red you mostly want to move your highlights towards orange (or mix yellow into the red) rather than adding white, which will turn pink. Another good option is a light ochre like Citadel Tau Light Ochre.
Paint the details according to the guides above. For the cockpit I used Citadel Karandras Green.

Green - click to expand

Black Lanner. Credit: Jack Hunter

Basecoat with Proacryl Black Green.
Drybrush with Proacryl Green.
Optional further highlight: Proacryl Faded Green.
Paint the details according to the guides above. For the cockpit I used Citadel Luxion Purple.

Tan - click to expand

Supernova. Credit: Jack Hunter

Basecoat with Proacryl Khaki.
Drybrush with Proacryl Ivory.
Optional further highlight: Proacryl Bold Titanium White. If you do this, you'll want to do it extremely lightly. I don't recommend using their Bright Ivory color for this, as applied over Ivory it feels more like it's just desaturated and not actually lighter.
Paint the details according to the guides above. For the cockpit I used Citadel Luxion Purple.

Basic One-Coat Schemes

Like the drybrush schemes, these are designed to be quick to paint and get your minis on the table. For an intro to one-coat paints check out our Hobby 101 article.

These will want a much brighter basecoat than the above drybrush methods, as instead of using paint to bring brightness up you're applying transparent paints and darkening the model.

Dylon's Tan Mercs - click to expand

Griffin, Highlander, Mercury, Archer. Credit: 40khamslam.

I start by priming them with Army Painter Leather Brown Spray (it's a match to Steel Legion Drab) and a Zenithal spray of Army Painter White. I then lay on a good coat of Agarros Dunes Contrast. I paint all the metal bits with silver and wash with Nuln Oil. I add chipping with a sponge using Dryad Bark and stippling on some silver with a brush over the chips. Finally I do the cockpits, basing them black and treating them like gems, mixing in Coat d'Arms Wizard blue and highlighting up to white before putting on some 'Ard Coat. Bases are textured with Vallejo Oxide paste, painted with Steel Legion Drab and dry brushed with Ushabti Bone before a layer of flock is applied. And that's it!

Battletech Exterminator. Credit: 40khamslam.

Unit Color Schemes

While you're definitely not obligated to paint any specific color scheme, BattleTech has hundreds of different schemes described in sourcebooks and art. There are two great resources online to look for inspiration - Camospecs Online and Mech Painters Union. Camospecs is the official website of BattleTech paint schemes, and everything there is the canonical appearance for any given unit. It can be a little clunky to look for inspiration - the best use is if you've decided on a unit you want to paint and need to see how they look. Mech Painters Union doesn't immediately drill down as far - clicking on a faction will let you see everything that's been submitted for that faction immediately.

Each faction has a very wide range of color schemes - while you might associate the Draconis Combine with red, or the Lyran Alliance with blue and white, there are dozens of units within each of those factions using entirely different color schemes.

In this section we have tutorials for a variety of those different units. Click on the banners below to jump to articles about painting each.

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