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Hi there, I've been planning to add a Marauder Destroyer to my army for some time - but I've always been leery of the ridiculous price. Therefore I've been looking for alternatives and believe the Airfix Vulcan might be suitable.

For those of you who don't know, here's a picture of the Airfix Vulcan.


Also a picture of the Marauder Destroyer.


It's 1/72 scale and about 40cm long.
If I buy that model, I know I'll have to do some converting; add a top gunner, rear gunner, nose autocannons and some missiles.

My question is, do you guys believe it'll be an appropriately sized conversion? I'm not sure of the Marauder Destroyer's dimensions and don't want to have something too small or something that doesn't look like it suits as a replacement. Any other opinions/thoughts are welcome. Thanks.

The cockpit on your replacement is going to be too small.

Dronze wrote:
The cockpit on your replacement is going to be too small.

Yeah I was thinking that may be an issue. Any way I could mitigate that? Possibly expand the cockpit further backwards into the hull?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Does anyone actually have the dimensions for the Marauder Destroyer? That way I can accurately select adequate replacements.

The FW one is 17" wide and 15" long according to my notebook from back when I used to build knock offs of those. A better starting point would probably be a 1/48 WWII heavy bomber - though even those will look dainty compared to GW's bricks (some of the best copies for GWs stuff are actually made using LEGOs...).

If you chop and section something like a Lancaster - (shorten the body and clip the wings) you can get it right in the ball park for size - and get close to the bulk. It will still look like it might be able to fly though...so you may want to do something about that to ruin the aerodynamics.

It might sound like I am making fun of the FW flyers...and I am, though not as bad as the GW flyers...however, it is an important question to ask yourself before you start... Do I, or do I not want to copy their design intent? If you want to make it look like something that you might be able to buy from Forgeworld - most scale model aircraft are not the best place to start. They are too sleek, and by the time you chunk them up enough to look like something they would make...you no longer have much of the original aircraft left.

You can save the money on the kit and use one of the paper models as a starting point (build out of plasticard for durability) or to be honest...on most of the FW flyers like these, I actually started with a 2x4 and a sheet of 1/4" plywood. Suitably brickish. Rough cut to the general shape - smother in greeblies and bits.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think the marauder is an aerospace bomber & as such is designed for both with aerodynamics being mitigated by sheer thrust & the destroyer variant was basically just re-engineered marauders for ground attack night missions. I don't consider techpriests to be very creative or knowledgeable about anything like physics so I doubt they could fathom such conscepts as aerodynamics when modifying existing craft.

Now as for the rest... i think as futuristic helos the valk & vulture are fine but all the rest, not so much.

In the link in my signature for my old air cav blog there are pics of the marauders I built in both variants using Eli Patoroch's templates.

 Otto Weston wrote:
Does anyone actually have the dimensions for the Marauder Destroyer? That way I can accurately select adequate replacements.

Measurements from the actual FW model:

Length: 15.5" (not counting gun barrels)
Wingspan: 15.5"
Height: 3"
Tail width: 8"
Center hull width: 2"

And here's a picture for scale (the Vulture in the picture is pretty much the same size as a Valkyrie, and the wings/tail/etc are Valkyrie parts):