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Hello Dakkites, one & all!

I've found on the UK Amazon website a 1/35 scale Tamiya B1 Bis model kit - a mere 'snip' at ~£30 inc P&P. It should arrive next week, the gawds of postage permitting.

What prompted me to purchase this is that after I made a Forgeworld Shadowsword & GW Hellhammer I have a large assorted box or two of gubbins left over, including a complete Baneblade turret. Given the B1's overall look is very Imperial Guardish I can see a lot of potential for adding it to my superheavy armoured company.


Any suggestions gratefully appreciated!

One thing you might run into trouble with is the size of the turret ring preventing you from adding a very large turret, but I'd say it's still worth a shot

I expect I will probably have to heavily modify the top of the tank / turret, possibly even turning it into a superstructure.

This may lead to the potential for a scratch built Vulcan mega-bolter set towards the rear of the hull, similar to a Macharius Vulcan tank.

I won't really know until I get my hands on the kit itself but the Bis just screams steampunk 40K goodness all over it.

If you have access to a good Japanese model shop in person or on line there's a weapon upgrade pack for Armored Core that has 2 perfect vulcan megabolters. They're about 4" long and cost me 300 yen, you should be able to get them for 5 UKP or so.

There is plenty of space to put sponsons on the sides.

Its pretty nice, But as has been said you may have diffuiculty attaching the turret.
VH

I'll keep you all updated when I start this project (however it turns out).

I assembled the baneblade turret last night but left off the ammo storage bins at the back, so the turret is not especially huge (cannon notwithstanding). From pics on t'internet of modern day tanks in real life it's quite normal for the sides of a turret to be flush with the side of its hull. GW & FW tend to go for the small turret in comparison with the vehicle hulls.

I began pulling out assorted tank related gubbins from my bitz boxes last night & have plenty of twin linked heavy bolters, armour plates etc to add to 40K the basic model kit. I suspect I will have to trim & cover the kit's turret ring but thats not a big issue.

Well, the 1/35 Tamiya Bis arrived today & I've added some piccies of the sprues. The model itself is nicely detailed, has next to no flash & offers plenty of opperchancities for some Imperial Guard conversion goodness.


It's not going to make an alternative Baneblade any time soon, but I think I may be able to make a Macharius out of it.

Very good start!

Can't wait to see the next wip!

It's looking good so far!

How about a Russ or Predator for scale?

Hello one & all,


well, a weekend spent modelling & painting has resulted in the following 'counts as' Macharius Vulcan variant; the Heavy Bolter Landship.


It uses the Tamiya 1/35 scale B1 Bis chassis, the side plates & turret from a Baneblade & the spare heavy bolters from when I built my Hellhammer (shown for scale comparison).


For game play purposes it will cost the same as a Macharius (325 points) armed with a Vulcan mega-bolter (+80) & with the hull twin heavy stubbers replaced with a single heavy bolter in a fixed forwards mount (paying the +10 that would have gone to upgrading the sponson stubbers to bolters).


My rationale for dropping the overall fire power of the heavy stubbers & the sponson weapons is to make up for the lower profile & silhouette of the vehicle overall. You don't get nothing for nothing, after all.



Overall the kit was easy enough to put together given that I just had gubbins lying around my bitz boxes & no real overall plan (much like my games of 40K).


I think the Tamiya kit has the potential to make decent alternative Leman Russ or Chimera variants for any given Imperial Guard vehicle. A <1/35 scale version would be nice, but does not exist that I can find. A 1/16 scale version awesome!

I love it.

Your bolter "VMB" seems a bit awkward, but still looks good and original, to say the least.

Smashotron wrote:Your bolter "VMB" seems a bit awkward, but still looks good and original, to say the least.

Cheers for the feedback. I appreciate it's not the most attractive armoured vehicle, but in my Imperial Guard regiments fluff they have a mind-set of field-expediency when on campaign. Form following function may not be the Mechanicus way, but massed heavy bolters on an armoured tracked chassis aren't to be sniffed at!



The 5 x heavy bolters haven't been fixed in place (the joy of blu-tak) so I could always re-visit it at a later date & work on a few different configurations of weaponry for its main armament.

Oh they were Heavy Bolters! Oh well then the math works out for a VMB aaand its fluffy. I am sold.