Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So I recently decided to add a pair of manticores to my army. While I think the idea of cluster missiles is kind of cool, I think that the models themselves are kind of ugly. I was thinking of some way to execute this idea better, when I had an epiphany. The fluff for the storm eagle rockets is that you have four of them, which break into three smaller ones, some of the clusters of which fly off at strange trajectories and land off the board (or wherever), which is why you only actually hit with 1-3 rather than all 3. Four rockets with three subrockets means that you really have 12 missiles. Why not just make a vehicle with 12 missiles, and then just assume that lots of them fly strangely straight off the launcher?

This of course immediately led me to the idea of doing a katyusha (also known as a Stalin's Organ) style manticore.

As chimera kits are cheaper, I decided to build my manticore off of the new chimera kits (one of which I'm still waiting on as GW has been backlogged). I started by assembling the chimera with everything but the obvious chimera-bits (the turret and the passenger compartment). My purpose was to make a blank chimera chassis that could quickly and easily be converted into ANY chimera-based vehicle. As such, the hatch and the hull weapon aren't actually glued on.

Once that was done, the next part was to make a generic artillery flatbed. This easily slides into place, and is simple to produce, and provides a solid conversion base for any guard artillery model:



From there, I added more work to the flatbed. Specifically, I wanted to make it into a place on which I could mount any turret-based artillery (deathstrike, hydra, or manticore). The end result is something which will accept a plasticard tube, and allow it to freely rotate 360 degrees:



Once done, I needed to make an adapter to go between this particular flatbed, and the missile racks. It needed to fit into the hole in the tank, while also having a way of allowing the missile rack to pivot up to 45 degrees so that it can fire indirectly. I decided to use two rings on the adapter, and one on the missile rack that will be held together with an axle.



With this in place, it was time to make the missile rack itself. I still have a lot of L-angle plasticard (from when I made some anti-tank hedgehog terrain), and so I decided to use that to hold onto the missiles. After adding some plasticard support (and attatching the axle lug), I then attatched some guiding rails.



Once completed, I could insert the pin to see how it all looks all together:



Needless to say, I'm pretty happy with what I have so far. From here, I'm going to add in some more detail work, primarily of the structural nature, as those missile rails really need something to support them at the end, and the rack itself wobbles a bit in the adapter. That, of course, and make the missiles themselves. I'm pretty confident that this will all turn out, and I'll post some more pictures once I get it done.

This looks clean and precise, very impressive.

I shall look forward to further progress.

That's a fine lookin rack, as the bishop said to the cheerleader...

Very nice work. Looking forward to more.

Excellent work so far.


As this is an ongoing project, I'm moving it over to Blogs...

Thanks!

So, the next phase was to finish the missile rack. I wanted to do something that would cover for the fact that I'm not yet able to cut long strips of plasticard consistently. Other than hiding my sloppiness, it would also make sense to make the rack a little more rugged. Katyushas were mounted to trucks that weren't designed to withstand enemy fire, so they could make "disposable" missile racks. As the manticore is on a chimera chassis, they would actually expect it to last a little longer, thus they'd make racks nearly as armored as the carriers.



Once the rack was done (and a few new plasticard lugs in there, etc.), it was up to making the missiles. I had been wracking my brain for a few weeks trying to think of what I could do for the head of a missile, as small, rigid, conical plastic things were evading me (and the new HK missiles would be PERFECT, but the price of buying 22 more of them was a little silly). In the end, I found that there were some straight pins with heads that fitted snugly into some aluminum tubing I had lying around:



I like the miniature polaris look. Anyways, the original katyusha rockets looked pretty rudimentary, and I don't feel like futzing with the missiles to make them look right in the racks, so I've decided to just leave them like this. I mean, half the time they fly so far off target that they don't even land on the board, so I don't feel too bad not adding fins.

Anyways, after doing the full rack, it was all done. It all fits pretty snugly, and gravity allows it to stay down when I put it down and flip up and stay up when I want it firing indirectly (although you can feel it's pretty close to slipping when the rack is completely full or completely empty). All in all, I'm pretty happy with the results:









... and as penalty for getting in the last picture, the manticore commander decided to turn and prepare to fire against the nefarious photobomber...



Anyways, now it's on to the painting, which will basically look like my other tanks. I'm glad you like the conversion work.

Far, far better than my poor attempt at Stalin's Organ. Well done, sir.

Really well done. If the picture on the new WD is any indication, there is something coming similar, but I dare say that looks really good.

Oh yeah - go ahead and shoot that cat too!

I like the look. Simple rugged; sounds guard to me. Will you be adding rivets, or did the flash turn them invisible?

Uriels_Flame wrote:Really well done. If the picture on the new WD is any indication, there is something coming similar

Are you referring to something akin to the old epic model?

Uriels_Flame wrote:
, but I dare say that looks really good.

Oh yeah - go ahead and shoot that cat too!

Thanks, but we all know that manticores aren't good against MC's.

CommissarKhaine wrote:I like the look. Simple rugged; sounds guard to me. Will you be adding rivets, or did the flash turn them invisible?

Thanks. I knew I was forgetting something. I don't have any good riveting material. I do have a big, hexagonal riveting stuff, so I'm going to go back in and add some.

The rest I guess will have to be welded.

Really nice work.
the one criticism i have is the size of the rockets. i'd make them longer.

So, I just got done painting it, and thought I'd link to the final product:

Tin Roof Monday complete!

So, it came out about as well as I'd hoped. I could have spent more time on it, but I need to start my other one tonight, and I don't want to be stuck working forever on just these two tanks. As well, in the future I'll consider changing the missiles, once I can find something cheap/appropriate. Until then I'll just take solace in the fact that this vehicle fires rockets, not missiles (missiles being designed to fire specific weapons at specific targets like a tomahawk or a patriot, while rockets being used to lob flying bombs at something for saturation, like a congreve or a katyusha... at least, that's the distinction I'd like to make...).

Anyways, I hope you like it. Time to start working on my second manticore, "Sliding Thunder".

That looks really good. I like the clean paintjob and color scheme you have going there.