Lego Set 01 — UrbanMech
Starting today, I’ll start posting instructions for Lego BattleMechs. Tell me what you think of them and if you find them useful and/or fun.
I’ve been a BattleTech fan for a long while. I’ve read my first novel almost 25 years ago. At the time I had no idea there was a franchise behind it or even a wargame for that matter. Only that those few books I managed to get my hands on were pretty awesome. They sparked in me a life-long interest in military sci-fi and mecha.
Years have passed and I eventually got into the hobby of wargaming. However, in my placid country of Portugal, wargaming supplies were hard to come by for a long while. So, the first wargame I got myself into was Mobile Frame Zero (MFZ). This was a neat little game, with simple and streamlined rules that anyone could learn in 15 minutes or so. Best of all, the models are made with Lego parts. Given that I had a sizeable collection almost thirty years in the making, I decided I would give it a shot. It was a success with me and my friends, and we played several sessions for a few years. During this process a good friend of mine donated his own Lego collection to me, so I could create more models, which is still one of the most generous things someone ever did for me — thank you, David!
Then, Harebrained Schemes’ BattleTech videogame debuted, and the sheer enthusiasm of the community around it brought me back to the incredibly deep universe of the Inner Sphere. I started making Lego models based on BattleTech’s BattleMech combat robots to use in Mobile Frame. The first one was a Centurion CN-9A. Eventually, I tried out BattleTech’s own Alpha Strike ruleset and fell in love. I haven’t stopped making Lego Mechs ever since.
After showing some of my models around the Internet, and seeing them pop up on social networks on occasion, I decided I could forge some instruction sets for those who would like to emulate these little plastic toys. So, here they are. If nothing prevents me from doing so, I’ll keep posting instructions for as long as I can — hope you follow me on this endeavor.
These models are meant mostly to use in MFZ, so they are between 150% to 200% of the size of actual BattleTech minis. I made efforts to keep them in scale to each other, but they will be a bit cumbersome if used in BattleTech proper (I advise you to use the actual minis for that). Maybe one day I’ll try to make true-scale models, but we’ll see.
Because of the MFZ roots of these models, their equipment list describes the unit, but is meant as a way to convert it to MFZ systems. Size and faction do refer to their BattleTech connection, lore-wise.
I’ve decided to start with the UrbanMech, a simple design that uses very few parts. If you have a Star Wars set, for example, you may very well be able to make this one in a few minutes.
Anyhow, this is enough for now. Hope you like these and have fun. See you in the next one!
