Battletech: Painting for June (Sorensen's Sabres)

Having completed 2 games of battletech Sword and Dragon campaign (posts to follow) I attempted to meet my painting resolution: 'paint one mech per game I play". Shouldn't be too hard.....maybe.
I started with a batch of the plastic mechs that I came in the introductory box (pics and review here).

Panther, Witworth, Spider, and Trebuchet (and failed to remember to paint the Hermes I have as well). Having never painted all red figs, but reading about the PITA it can be I followed some of the direction the painting guide from the intro box suggested.

First up was a dry brush of white on the black. I rather liked the effect and it was noticeable when I did the next step with sufficiently thinned paint. I'm not sure it survives the multiple later steps though.

Followed by a darker (GW scab?) red in a watered down coating.

A bit of dry brushing of 'go fasta red' (I might be mistaken on this, I kinda forget now and will need to figure it out again....go fasta certainly has a bit of an orange tint to it though).

I then washed with a red/magenta ink of some sort by GW that is out of print (and also doesn't have the label as it is an ANCIENT ink [anyone remember the boxes of paints that had the golden demon on the front?).

After I let them sit around for days and days (dare I admit to a week or two?). I finally got up the gumption to attempt to do the accents. I used a vallejo gold to pick out some lines and details. Vents and some weapon bits were based in black before being drybrushed lightly in grey (vallejo). I was unhappy with some of the gold bits I did and thought it needed some more contrast, so I added a few bits of white here and there to pop.

The panther has had some highlighting in blood red, which is subtle but noticeable as well.

Things to do:
Finish highlighting in red.
Viewing ports with a horizon effect, or slash metallic reflection
Weather the mechs: dirty feet, some battle damage/scrapes, fouling near jump jets and possibly some weapon ports.