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Cheap forgeworld wannabe leman russ conquerer battle tank....
A forgeworld tank that I didn't get from forgeworld, specifically, a leman russ tank with the coaxial battle cannon (shorter version of a main tank battle cannon)
I bought a starter kit for gaurd so I had spare tank (basically to throw money at my favorite flgs) and converted the plastic tank into a forgeworld varient.
Basically, I made up a cannon to emulate the coaxial battle cannon (short) of the vanquisher tank, by using a few parts I often don't use (spotlight and the normal cannon barrel).
Very simple technique.
1. Build the leman russ and have magnets on hand.
2. Take the short part of the battle cannon barrel and put magnets inside it. Green stuff them in place and using green stuff to attach it, cover the end of the short barrel (the half without muzzle brake) with the light panel of the searchlight (only flip that backwards so it looks like a gun barrel front).
3. Take the stormbolter from a nearby taurox kit -- cause that is the weapon that "coaxially" rides on the barrel. Place 4 tiny magnets (whatever you got that fits) inside the bolter and check that they are polar to match the one inside the short, sawed off battlecannon barrel you just made. Then glue the stormbolter halves around it.
4. Take the hatch from the tank turret, and put a quite strong magnet in the same orientation on that turret, so that you can use a metal screw of the appropriate lenght to hold the turret top onto the turret bottom. This means you can swap the LRBT weapon out -- and that oyu can put the stormbolter on top of the turret when you want to run (for example) a LRBT with lots of plasma cannons, instead of the forgeworld "vanquisher battle cannon tank".
Viola. Its a simple, 3 minutes alteration to your tank that uses a part often left lying aroudn. You can still have that stormbolter painted in a color that also matches your taurox or taurox prime -- because its easy to paint a single pintle weapon in a color that isn't quite the whole tank's. So you can even play your scions with their full load by swapping that one stormbolter over.
If you are playing death corps of krieg, you can use a heavy stubber with a magnet on its bottom the same way (I use the ones from my armiger warglaives that usually ride with meltas instead).
By magnetizing a few spots in the tank, you can also make an easy on, easy off version of the hunter killer missle as long as you do that before you seal the whole tank up. (Even if you are doing it later, use crazy glue and careful positioning with tweezers to stick the little magnet inside the main tank body, on which your hunter killer optionally can be put, or not, each time you pick your tank out.
This one leman russ can vary in price from 107+15+8 (cheapest bs4+ heavy support russ) to 123+22+8 (cheapest vanquisher with rerolls) to 142+22+15 (tank commander with lascannon and hammer of sunderance) .. .and you can fine tune the price of each tank with as many as 36 more points in various side weapon and pintle mount weapon and missle options.
So basically, these tanks become a really versatile part of list building, if you have even one or two of them.
While I don't know what will happen to forgeworld tanks in the new edition, I am an optimist and wanted to build a few LRBT today.
An alternative buildout (that I am not doing this time) is to put a similar magnetic attachment in the one variant of the LRBT that first s6/-1/d3 and ignores cover. Its so underuseful an option that I cna't remember its name, but its a shorter, wider cannon. Since it HAS a different name and role in the 40k-averse, however, you would have to be clear that its proxying a different weapon here.
I appreciate the technique isn't incredibly sexy from a "I builded this thing that is sooo cool" but its a sharp looking little tank you make, and any tank that comes with a battle cannon would work -- as GW raises their prices, we gaurd folk got to strech every purchase for as many functions as we can get out of them. The starter kit tank may be 90 bucks, but you get a squad of gaurd and a character with it, and a heavy weap squad. So you can make 8 guys into a pair of command squads (I recommend the plasma rifles for marines, sold 5 for 10 bucks) and give them a platoon and a company commander to lead, and that kommisar with a different head can emulate a wide variety of fleet advisor or psyker functions, just takes a bit of fixing up. With the right things in his hands (chainsword and a book) he might even become a very believable priest from the ministerium, striking a pose as he chants his vitriolic hatespeach to inspire the troops... Or whatever.
Anyway. These little tanks may be only BS4+, but under half range of the stormbolter, they can reroll their misses, so they work out to be basically a way to bring a couple extra tanks that shoot "as good as" the average tank commander. It opens up a wall of tanks with better than average hitting skill, even when you aren't running just tallarn or cadians.
I promise to take a pic when I get it painted -- by god I wish I could open my balcony doors!
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