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I was just looking through my space marine Codex, when I noticed this abomination.



For both the Land Raider and Land Raider Crusade pictures by the stats, they've got the guns lined up like this (although the Land Raider Prometheus has the flamers properly mounted) where the lascannons or bolters are mounted behind the access doors. Now, this defeats the entire purpose of a Land Raider, where it suppresses the enemy and space marines bust out of the side doors to take advantage of the covering fire. Instead, you can't even lower the door with the lascannons mounted behind without pivoting them a full 90 degrees, meaning they can't event shoot at anything important. Or with the bolters, the poor sods inside kick down the doors and run the risk of accidentally getting shot by their own guns.

Now, if you put the guns in front of the access doors on the flanks of a Land Raider, you can safely exist and get covering fire. But what the hell is with GW mucking up their own models and displaying them the wrong way? Or players messing up and putting the guns in the back mount? You might as well mount the sponsons pointing backwards. Neither the Codex itself or 40k art seems to be able to make its mind up about the placement.

Impractical gun layouts are a cornerstone of Imperial military design. Though it's worth pointing out that there are many depictions of Land Raiders with the side sponsons mounted where the forward hatch normally is. Imperial Armor 2 has several examples of that, and there are even a few Heavy Metal pictures lurking around in some GW publications which have forwardly-mounted sponsons.

They look cool placed at the back.


By which I mean they are more aesthetically pleasing at the back of the tank than at the front. I have an idea of making a predator style turret with the lascannons mounted there rather than on sponsons. I may get around to it one day...

It also has the additional use that you're able to deploy your models in coherency when deploying from multiple doors.
This isn't an issue anymore due to 6" disembarking but the range used to be far smaller.

The main point is the assult ramp dead centre though. Drop the ramp and deploy the marines quickly into the fight.

Side doors, harder to assult from.

 jhe90 wrote:
The main point is the assult ramp dead centre though. Drop the ramp and deploy the marines quickly into the fight.

Side doors, harder to assult from.

Except an RPG can't fly up the side doors while they're opened and terminators or veterans are shuffling out like the front access. The better deployment is that the Land Raider blows through the enemy bunker, lights up with the sponsons and front weaponry while the embarked troops shuffle out the sides safely covered by suppressive fire.

Putting them on the back means you get to write pithy and/or witty slogans on the front hatches.

Like: "and the word shall be 'DUCK!'"

Or "Warning: DO NOT STAND IN FRONT OF LASERCANNONS" - like I do on my las landraiders.

Well smart people put the guns in the front slot

 chromedog wrote:
Putting them on the back means you get to write pithy and/or witty slogans on the front hatches.

Like: "and the word shall be 'DUCK!'"

Or "Warning: DO NOT STAND IN FRONT OF LASERCANNONS" - like I do on my las landraiders.

Smile for the Hammerah!

 Wyzilla wrote:
I was just looking through my space marine Codex, when I noticed this abomination.



For both the Land Raider and Land Raider Crusade pictures by the stats, they've got the guns lined up like this (although the Land Raider Prometheus has the flamers properly mounted) where the lascannons or bolters are mounted behind the access doors. Now, this defeats the entire purpose of a Land Raider, where it suppresses the enemy and space marines bust out of the side doors to take advantage of the covering fire. Instead, you can't even lower the door with the lascannons mounted behind without pivoting them a full 90 degrees, meaning they can't event shoot at anything important. Or with the bolters, the poor sods inside kick down the doors and run the risk of accidentally getting shot by their own guns.

Now, if you put the guns in front of the access doors on the flanks of a Land Raider, you can safely exist and get covering fire. But what the hell is with GW mucking up their own models and displaying them the wrong way? Or players messing up and putting the guns in the back mount? You might as well mount the sponsons pointing backwards. Neither the Codex itself or 40k art seems to be able to make its mind up about the placement.

Silly Ultramarines doing it wrong.

Look at the creators of the LRC, the Black Templars:

Personally, that doesn't offend me as much as this meme-worthy idiocy.




Oh look, someone spent 2 minutes thinking and fixed it...

I've always put mine towards the front.

The smurfs are so badass the canon would refuse to fire if they opened the door.

On the flip side, it does keep people from waiting outside the door in an attempt to ambush the marines when they come out.

If you put them at the back you can't get blind points where enemy's with grenades can burst open the weakest amour point (doors) with out being turned into red mist.

you need an additional pair of smaller side facing guns to protect the hatches, not put them in front of the main guns

Not to mention the fact that the Land Raider's side sponsons can rotate a full 220 degrees to point backwards at their own rear hatches if needed.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Personally, that doesn't offend me as much as this meme-worthy idiocy.

Well, to be fair, that's not all that stupid, unless you have a game where all your guns have to shoot at the same target....which we do.

If you could have a Land Raider rumbling around picking off armored targets left, right, and center, then that might be pretty sweet. Of course, I still don't understand why you twin-link three sets of Lascannons, but leave two of them 'lonely'.

Da Butcha wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Personally, that doesn't offend me as much as this meme-worthy idiocy.

Well, to be fair, that's not all that stupid, unless you have a game where all your guns have to shoot at the same target....which we do.

If you could have a Land Raider rumbling around picking off armored targets left, right, and center, then that might be pretty sweet. Of course, I still don't understand why you twin-link three sets of Lascannons, but leave two of them 'lonely'.

Personally, I'd put all 8 lascannons onto one huge 360 turret!

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

Da Butcha wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Personally, that doesn't offend me as much as this meme-worthy idiocy.

Well, to be fair, that's not all that stupid, unless you have a game where all your guns have to shoot at the same target....which we do.

If you could have a Land Raider rumbling around picking off armored targets left, right, and center, then that might be pretty sweet. Of course, I still don't understand why you twin-link three sets of Lascannons, but leave two of them 'lonely'.

Personally, I'd put all 8 lascannons onto one huge 360 turret!

Your saying turret, but all I'm seeing is helicopter rotor.

The lascannons require a considerable amount of space to hold their power supply, and the crusader would require spare ammo for the hurricane bolters. If the people inside want to be rushing out through the assault ramp it would be much easier for them to do so without squeezing between the gun batterys or ammo crates.

 Wyzilla wrote:
But what the hell is with GW mucking up their own models and displaying them the wrong way?

They're not. From the release notes in White Dwarf when the kit was first unveiled, it was specifically designed to allow players to choose to put the weapons on either hatch.

Yes, the weapons on the front make more practical sense. But the weapons on the rear look better.

And as others have pointed out, in combat, the assault ramp is supposed to be the primary access anyway.

kingleir wrote:
The lascannons require a considerable amount of space to hold their power supply, and the crusader would require spare ammo for the hurricane bolters. If the people inside want to be rushing out through the assault ramp it would be much easier for them to do so without squeezing between the gun batterys or ammo crates.

The lascannon capacitor argument never made much sense since the thing has an onboard reactor... it's made even less sense since this little guy came out;



Yes, that's a battery powered dune buggy (Sorry, 'long-range scout car') with a twin-linked lascannon.

The battery, by the way, also has to power all six wheels individually.

To be fair, the same arguments apply to the Taurox Prime, which has side-mounted guns that will be blocked the moment the side doors open. At least the land raider's doors open by 'dropping' and there's a forward ramp - the Taurox Prime is unable to fire half its guns with the doors open...

The original Land Raider had its weapons in front of the doors. So did the Epic models. If we're looking historically, that's the "correct" place for them to be.

Historically the British tanks, that the landraiders are based on, were designed to crush barbed wire entanglements to allow following infantry an easier walk. Once the tank reached enemy trenches the sponson mounted guns could be fired along those trenches, keeping the enemy down until the infantry caught up. Post ww1 nobody fancied another trenches war, and it was found that 1 gun in a rotatable turret was just as good as 2 in sponsons. Tanks could still flatten wire etc, could still shoot up trenches when found, but mostly got to kill other tanks.
But it IS 40k we're talking about......