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So, I've finally caved and built a list that includes an executioner. I've got the russes, but, as I'd purchased russes, and not demolishers, I obviously had no bitz for the main cannon. Not that the actual model would fit on a regular russ turret anyways.

So I hit the drawing board, trying to think of ways to do a giant, three-shot plasma cannon. Obviously, I could scratchbuild something similar to the actual one, but, honestly, I've never really liked the proper model. I did have an option for making a single largish cannon, though - I could use the plasma cannon from my sentinel. It's way too small, of course, but perhaps I could throw a bunch of extra tubing on it and say that it's a plasma cannon that is supercharged to fire three times faster, and just has a bunch of cooling. The more I thought about the technicals for this, the less I liked it, though. It just wasn't going to execute all that well.

While I was thinking about it, though, I went back and painted up my first pair of plasma cannon sponsons. While I was doing this, an idea struck me. I have a LOT of plasma sponsons, surely I would be willing to sacrifice a few for a turret.

Things quickly gelled from there. Instead of having a turret weapon that was as if it was three plasma cannons, I'd have a turret weapon that WAS three plasma cannons. Not only would this be pretty easy, but I love the idea. It fits the sort of grimdark idea of just welding a bunch of guns together and hoping for the best, and it fits my army's theme of having to bodge things together in specific.

As such, I just pulled out three of my many sponson weapons, hacked them down, and glued them together. I mounted everything on a simple plasticard box to which I added some rivets.



As you can see, it doesn't QUITE fit, what with the box being square, and it sticking out at the upper corners because the plasma cannons are too wide (the demolisher turret handles this by making the front of the turret wider), but it's certainly good enough.

Then it was a simple matter of painting it all and throwing it on the russ.







I love how crude and ugly it looks. CLEARLY it was the result of a few enterprising guardsmen and a reluctant techpriest throwing together a bunch of salvaged plasma cannons.

Will it work? Who knows? Guess we'll have to just grind into battle and fire it a few hundred times and see if it blows up our own tank or not.

that sir is very cool !

Amazing! I love the plasticard work on it!

The only problem I'm seeing with this is that you didn't make a poster of it.

That's going to ruin someone day...

Awesome.

I like the different turret style good work

Young Logan

That is very nice! If I ever have an armored company, it will have a tank just like that. Always liked your army, original without being over the top.

Your executioner turret looks sick! Great job mate, as usual.

Yo dawg! i heard yo like plasma cannons?....... so I put plasma cannons on yo plasma cannons so you can plasma cannon while you plasma cannon!

I actually really like the look of this conversion! it just appears more mean and brutish over the single big cannon! your conversions as usual are top notch and this looks pretty close to factory to me :-)

Wow, showing that inner big mek aren't we? Nice work as always.

Now that is awesome! Very original. If I didn't already own the executioner turret and had the spare plasma cannons I would totally do this. Keep up the great work!

Awesome work, a mean machine.

Nice Gun!

That is SO COOL!

Haha, very nice and very IG - got a problem? Throw more guns at it!

It looks excellent and scary too. All those plasma guns staring at you across the field is for you opponent...

I also love the fact you give Greek names to you tanks . I am sure you are asked a lot what they mean.

Very cool, well done.

I actually far prefer your version. The official one looks stupid.

Looks good! Only thing I would do is maybe change the color on the plasma coils to break up the color a bit.

That's a good idea, but pulled off excellently! Definitely adds a a more brutal outline to the silhouette of the russ. Well done!

Far less phallic than the Standard Template Construct.

I like it, nice little conversion.

Thanks, everyone!

Zefig wrote:The only problem I'm seeing with this is that you didn't make a poster of it.

I'm still trying to get my camera to play nicely with my light box. I think I've got it now, but the original picture I took for the poster came out terribly.

With a little work, I just got something better.

Bobthehero wrote:That's going to ruin someone day...

So, I actually got to play this a couple of days ago against an adepticon eldar army. It spent 4 turns hammering on a 10-bot fortuned wraithguard unit in cover. It turns out a rerollable 4+ from cover isn't as good as a rerollable 3+ from armor, and wounding wraithguard on a 3 was nice for something with so many shots. Of the ~650 points I killed, 400 were from the executioner. Over the course of 5 turns, it bagged 3 fire dragons, wounded a quadcannon (manned by a BS5 crack shot tank hunters exarch), took 2 wounds off of an avatar (who isn't immune to plasma), and then, of course, got himself 7 fortuned wraithguard (well, a few died before fortune got off, but still).

Really, the fact that they were small blast weapons didn't matter at all (my opponent was smart enough to displace to the point where there was only one dude under the blast template at any given time), but the fact that it had 6 S7+ Ap2 weapons was what did it.

Also, I took a picture of the tank in the game. This gives you a better idea of what it actually looks like:

nerdfest09 wrote:I actually really like the look of this conversion! it just appears more mean and brutish over the single big cannon! your conversions as usual are top notch and this looks pretty close to factory to me :-)

High praise coming from an extraordinary riveter.

I still can't believe that I'm approaching the point where I might be a better plasticarder than a painter.

Any problems from the Gets Hot!?

Hah, so.

Turns 1-5. Zero gets hot. The thing chugs out 24 shots (one of the sponsons was blocked one turn).

Then, turn 6, both of them overheat, and both of them cause a glancing hit. The tank hadn't even been shot at, I think, so it survived, but I guess I now know that there is exactly enough sponson coolant for up to, but not including 25 plasma cannon blasts. Then it just stops.

Tactically speaking, in this particular game I wasn't all that impressed by the plasma sponsons. Really, they were more just a pair of ~BS3 S7 Ap2 shots. I could have saved 10 points and a pair of gets hot rolls by having switched them over to multimeltas and wouldn't have really noticed anything, killing power-wise.

That said... 36"... You might not think that those 12" are worth -1S, +1Ap, loss of melta, and inability to shoot at fliers, but on a slow vehicle... I'm nearly convinced.

I may steal this for my queue Ailaros. Awesome conversion work! Amazing stuff.

Amazing how any thread with Ailaros turns into a tactics thread . Very nice work on the plasma executioner, I just used a sentinel cannon, twisted it 90° and called it a day. Your version looks a lot more brutal!