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Hello everyone.

I've been looking around for some time but can't really find anything, so I'm turning to you for help. I'm interested in knowing if there are any metal vehicle miniatures available that could be used (with additional work if required) as stand-ins for some Space Marines stuff. Like Rhinos, Land Raiders or Nemesis Dreadknights? Anything metal even approaching that size would probably be massive but I'd really like to know if there's anything like it out there.

I know that Dreadnoughts were originally in metal and that both Land Raiders and Razorbacks came with some metal parts, but for the latter I'd like to find some all-metal alternatives if possible.

Thanks in advance!

There are all metal land speeders.

Very old bikes, and slightly less old metal sidecars for attack bikes.

Go big, go rare and get a metal thunderhawk.

That’s all GW stuff.

Short of die-cast I haven't seen anything approaching a full metal tank - from anyone. Dreadnoughts, bikes, speeders, and a lot of turrets and optional bits.

Having had plenty of experience with those, all I can say is: don't.

Metal is not fun. I bought some of the Juan Diaz Daemonettes a while back and ended up having to do massive amounts of drilling. I would guess that a full metal tank will be much harder than just slapping a limb on a daemonette.

The old Ven Dread was metal not thaaat long ago (5th) but as I recall he was the last metal vehicle going out of production apart of the Immolator.

Also I strongly support Iliu's mention. The bigger the model, the worse it is to work with metal. Just ask the Fantasy players who had to put together these damned dragons...

 Shadox wrote:
Also I strongly support Iliu's mention. The bigger the model, the worse it is to work with metal. Just ask the Fantasy players who had to put together these damned dragons...

<froths and twitches>

I’m glad those days are over. Every time I look at my wood elf dragon I expect it to explode in a pile of shrapnel.

I echo the sentiments here. Large metal models are a bit of a nightmare. I love metal infantry and small models but large stuff is terrifying. Large finecast stuff is worse of course, and resin is as much of a nightmare as metal to put together but less prone to sudden explosive collapse. Quality plastic is the way to go imo

I never really minded metal models (though I never tried to put together something as big as a Thunderhawk) you just had to realise that 1. Glue isn't sufficient (especially superglue because parts rarely mated well, epoxy works better), you needed pins. 2. Use power tools. If you try and hand drill a 1mm hole in metal of course you're going to have a terrible time, start it by hand then swap to a power tool to deepen it.

But yeah, I don't know of any full metal tanks. There are some companies that did resin WW2 tanks, but I don't think they did full metal ones.

I'm not in the industry, but my understanding is that metal is a more expensive material, so if you can't recoup the material costs with cheaper manufacturing it's not worth doing metal, so for big models companies tend to swap to resin.

I used to quite enjoy assembling Ork Deff Dredds, even after the molds went to crap and you had to file for hours to make the parts fit.

 Shadox wrote:
The old Ven Dread was metal not thaaat long ago (5th) but as I recall he was the last metal vehicle going out of production apart of the Immolator.

Also I strongly support Iliu's mention. The bigger the model, the worse it is to work with metal. Just ask the Fantasy players who had to put together these damned dragons...

.

The Immolator's been full plastic since 2003 mate...

Well I still have some packs of metal Killa Kans, whether you would call them 'vehicles' is debatable though.

 Nevelon wrote:
There are all metal land speeders.

Very old bikes, and slightly less old metal sidecars for attack bikes.

Go big, go rare and get a metal thunderhawk.

That’s all GW stuff.

Oh yeah, I actually knew about the speeders and bikes but had no idea that the thunderhawk was once metal. That's awesome, hahaha!

Otherwise, I'm a bit saddened that tanks and most other stuff like that was never made in metal, although not too surprised. Warhammer Fantasy had plenty of the monsters made in metal and I would've hoped that 40k had a similar backstory. If anyone would happen to stumble across anything we haven't seen yet, please let me know.

I didn't intend for this thread to become a topic of "metal vs plastic/resin for miniatures" but I can summarize it for myself pretty quickly: as a collectible it gives me endlessly much more joy when it has a substantial weight and presence. The increased work required to assemble is outweighed by the long term satisfaction.

Thanks for your input, everyone!

If you're after additional heft then resin tanks are plentifup and weigh quite a bit more than GW plastics.

 Shadox wrote:
The old Ven Dread was metal not thaaat long ago (5th) but as I recall he was the last metal vehicle going out of production apart of the Immolator.

Also I strongly support Iliu's mention. The bigger the model, the worse it is to work with metal. Just ask the Fantasy players who had to put together these damned dragons...

Forget the dragons.

Fething steam tanks from WHFB were absolute bas***** to put together.