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That bridge layer is the business!

You've merged the bridge equipment onto the Chimera really well.

Thanks Oldmate and Flinty for your comments on the AVLB.

A few more mutilated Chimeras for you. My first ever Chimera conversions the Chimerax, Chimedon and Chimerro, copied from the Citadel Journal and based on the Epic Chimera variants released for Titan Legions.



I only ever took the Chimerax in one game, way back in 2nd edition. It fired once and then jammed for the rest of the game. The Chimedon looks really clunky with the small turret and the battlecannon, if I was building it today I'd use the Taurox battlecannon in the slightly larger current Chimera turret.

WH40K didn't have many vehicles with missiles as their main weapons until relatively recently. The Whirlwind was the first, the Guard didn't get anything until the Manticore in Epic. I sought to change that.
First is a setback Chimera with a turret mounted heavy stubber and several missile racks, based on a conversion done by the blogger Admiral Drax.



Next is a Chimera inspired by the British Army FV438 Swingfire antitank missile carrier. I didn't build this myself,I commisioned it's construction and the painting is mine.



This last missile launcher is a counts as Hydra. A Chimera with the lasgun ports filed down, a Razorback turret mounting plate integrated into the Chimera roof, a cut down commanders cupola replacing the Chimera turret and a Forgeworld Space Marine Hyperios missile launcher. Again this was copied from a blog. In this case Corbania Prime.

@ Sentinel: all very cool vehicles. I have a bridgelayer waiting to get sprayed (much to cold here at the moment and I have to spray outside), but it has admitedly much to filigrane bridge... thingies. Yours looks much more functional.

By the way: As often mentioned I haven't had the opportunity to play yet and only collect, but should this ever change I hope to find a group with some people like those posting in this topic here. The conversions are great and there's so much thought and love going into these tanks. Would be great to see a bunch of them together on the tabletop and battling it out...

Some really cool missile vehicles, i particularly like the swingfire inspired conversion, some pretty big big missiles there, can imagne them packing a punch. Nice work on the chimerax, chimerro and chimedon, a neat set of fire support options! I was aware of the vehicles, I used them as some of the inspiration for some of my conversions and loadouts, but its really cool to see them converted and painted!


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Finished the light tanks, they might just need a bit of dusting up! Named Nemesis(2xHbolters), Duke(ATGM) and Dauntless(acannon and Hstubber) because why should baneblades have the monoply on badass names?

Okay so 2 projects ready for painting:

First off the Kapros (boar in Greek) 6x6 wheeled IFV.

Okay so this is a mainline wheeled alternative to the chimera. It'd have similar armour, a higher speed but worse ability in crossing terrain. The vehicle is intended to cross large distance at rapid speed and be able to fight, its a 4x2/6x6 wheel drive with central locking, the wheels feature run flat tires, and a spare is mounted on the rear roof of the vehicle. They can be filled with an expanding foam to further their durability at the cost of cross country performance. The vehicle has its engine placed on the front left hand side next to the driver and is acsessible by a large armoured hatch on the front. The turret is usually equipted with a heavy bolter and additionally either a multi-laser, heavy bolter, or auto cannon, or 15mm machinegun(my very ballistic army's multilaser equivalent from the imperial knight kit). The vehicle has 2x clam-shell style doors at the front of the passenger compartment and a large ramp at the rear, on the roof of the passenger compartment is 4 large hatches to allow troops to fire from, whilst down each side of it are 4 sets of firing ports and vision blocks for the infantry to be able to fire from. Two additional firing ports could be added to the frontal plate, as seen with Soviet vehicles like the BMP 3 or BTR, i could imagine this improving the firepower on the frontal arc dramatically if a special weapons team was mou ted in the vehicle.

Secondly my baneblade variant, the vehicle in question is named Tyrant, and it is not actually a baneblade, as it has sorta grown into something else. It can do some things better than a vanilla blade, it can't do other things the vanilla blade does, so I find it hard to reconcile as the same thing.

Okay so Tyrant, has a bit of the lore behind it.
When the vehicle was commissioned it was the first baneblade line super heavy comissioned from the Dragonforge on Karsk and has served with the 81st Klomn Cuirassier regiment for hundreds of years at this point and has been recovered from wreckage twice, it is the pride and joy of the 81st Klomn Cuirassier regiment and their oldest and most storied vehicle as such the small imperial chrine on the back off the vehicle is bedecked with honours and tokens of gratitude acknowledgments of assistance from other imperial forces. The vehicle commands A platoon 1st company of the 4th assault battalion. From the start the vehicle was designed to dominate the battlefield as a super heavy tank and the centrepiece of a squadron of smaller vehicles. The Karsk pattern chassis is of cast construction and Tyrant, being a commision from the Dragonforge itself boasts adamantium fronted hull and turret making it considerably heavier than either the Mars Pattern or Lucius Pattern vehicles, it mounts a colossal cast turret and its primary weapon is a massive high velocity cannon and coaxle hydra auto cannon, on top of the gun mantle a heavy machinegun is mounted and it is zeroed to hit in the same place as the primary up to a kilometer past that distance you might be using the auto cannon. The chassis boasts standard smoke, optical and grenade launching pylon turrets on the front hull and twin heavy bolters recessed into the hull armour. A pair of remotely controlled sponsons on the side of the vehicle are mounted with a las cannon and a heavy bolter each to counter both armoured and unarmoured threats.

So unlike a regular baneblade it was never intended to be used as a command or observation platform, it was never intended for a commander to command a tank regiment from, or for forward observers to operate from, it was never intended to have space for an inquisitor to come on a ride along, the huge turret basket and stocks of high velocity shells in its hull and propellant charges has never allowed such, the vehicle is an exceptional super heavy tank but in order for greater protection on the frontal arc all vision ports in the upper hull of a regular baneblade were not even considered in the Karsk pattern chassis. Tyrant has never been commanded by anyone over the rank of Captain, and is regularly crewed by a veteran NCO or junior officer, and it has always gone into battle alongside a squadron of the 81st Klomn Cuirassiers or in more dire circumstances allied heavy and super heavy tanks.

As mentioned elsewhere: great projects Oldmate. Amazing to see all the thought and work you put into your models.

To not spam everything twice, here is a link zu a couple of fighting vehicles I just finished:
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/777465/11367927.page#11367927

Okay I have finished my Kapros IFV photos! The vehicle is part of 1st platoon Bravo Company of the 132nd Commonwealth Combined Rifles


I also had a spare baneblade turret sitting around (because of course I do) and I decided to see what they looked like on my Macharius tank chassis as an additional option. Its not really much a conversion, but i personally think it would be an interesting model of tank. I did not put the back bin on the baneblade turret, as for some unfathomable reason I actually like the look of a rear facing machinegun mount, its going to be extremely situational but I like the look of it.

I see it as a good example of making the macharius a more versitile super heavy tank, such as mounting the collosal laser cannon(the blood and skull's sunfire laser cannon) for engaging heavy armour at long range; hellhammer cannon for urban warfare and busting bunkers; giant punisher cannon(Blood and skulls long rotary cannon) for MOAR BIGGA dakka; or just as a more harder hitting gun tank with a baneblade battle cannon rather than two regular battle cannons. I imagine the macharius to be a cheaper and quicker manufacture than a baneblade and would likely require nearly half the crew, all up it would be a good choice for imperial commanders, there is no reason why the turrets should be incompatible, but that is me the tank tinkering tech heretic here speaking.

Okay so a few weeks back I got another macharius vanquisher, (I already have one 1st hand from forgeworld and it was pretty good, anyway, back to the main article) it was 2nd hand and relatively cheap. Someone had genuinely enthusiastically had a go at converting it. I can sorta see why they lost enthusiasm, this is an example of one of those 'forgeworld nightmares' you occasionally hear of, many details were not properly filled with resin and many edges were pinched outwards, nothing fit right, and large amounts of material had to be removed for the sides of the hull could actually fit together, edges and tracks were thin and brittle and broken/ragged. The hull gun mounting had not been modified and it straight out was way too small and did not fit. Not sure what the guy did with the hull gun but it would have just keep falling out how the hull was and there was something weird going on with the front of the driver's compartment.



So the conversion already on the vehicle, as you can see seems to be some heavy suppression platform, it carries a single HK missile to protect itself from enemy tanks and mounts 2 auto cannons in the hull, 2 sponson mounted heavy bolters and a pair of punisher cannons in the turret(mounted to what would seem to have been the macharius's battle cannon', so it was the base model tank). Additionally there was a small baneblade turret with twin heavy bolters mounted where the driver's hatch was. The vehicle also mouted a large ammo hopper mounted behind the back bins on the turret for additional ammo for the primary weapons and the some kind of engine shields/flaps(mudflaps).

So I wanted, by comparision a rather standard vehicle, but most of the work as going to be fixing the base kit so it was not a forgeworld nightmare.
So I needed to put some milliput down and line that hull mounting and line it up, and make a new machinegun mounting, which was made from 2x victoria miniatures heavy weapons wheels, a machinegun from Mortian and miliput and styrene sheet and dowl. I glued the housing back into place and then filled all the gaps with putty, this is pre clean up. I also made e new driver's hatch with a chimera one and glued some perescopes to it. Syrene strips and sheet and dowl I glue the dowls on and trimmed them off to make rivet heads and filled the sides of the hull in after in fitting the hull sides I found some pretty substantial gaps so miliput was used to fill them. I also used the strips to restore the bars that come along the hull on each side of the turret mounting, on the kit these were more like T shaped bars and were brittle and fragile. I also used some small pieces of plasticard and putty to make the engine plate mounting and to build some hinges on the matle plate on the top of the turret. I also cut some doodads off and positioned a loader's hatch onto the vehicle an as you can see I could not resist giving it a big ole spot light next to the gun mantle and some smoke launchers. I also hacked some Victooria miniature vanquisher cannons from their mounts and fitted them to the battle cannon stubs i managed to part the punisher cannons from.

No doubt it still needs a tankie commanding from the hatch and more stowage and machineguns. But essentially the working up process is complete to my satisfaction. The gun mantle is magnetised and I have a vulcan mega bolter in the post for this vehicle in addition.

Wow.
i know exactly what you're dealing with there; i had the same thing with a storm eagle gunship kit.

The original owner bought a kit from forgeryworld.
They tried to build it despite the obvious shoddyness, but took the L for whatever reason.

It's so much effort to 'fix' that stuff and i see your pain here.

big up the home-brand rivet posse etc...

That storm eagle must have been a fair project to fix then? I can see a lot of room for, mischance, At least mine was a giant block with some other big blocks LOL.

Yeah, my first macharius(that I brought 1st hand) was perfect. asside from a few minor breakages from small components being packed floating free with some big chunky chassis parts. So I had that for reference which was a massive help.

I really enjoy tinkering with my little(and not so little...) tanks and came into this from a modeling background so its not so much an issue to me, I just feel sorry for the poor guy who got it originally.

Vulcan Megabolter on the macharius. For Bbbrrrrrrrrrt.
I do like the look of the weapon mounted in the front of the vehicle over the mounting on the sides of the turret on the official model. It also gives me the option of it being a vanquisher and vulcan and it gives me room for loader's hatch. Which is extremely important.

OK so a mortian tank ARV crane project, all the recovery equipment here is magnetised so I can run it as a gun tank as well and the 3rd armour pannel on the side is magnetised for a sponson. Recovery kit includes 2x cable drums, 2x ridgid towing bars an oxy-aesceteline cylinder on the back and the big ole crane turret, it is armed only with a hull gun and a single medium machinegun in the 2nd turret hatch. For cable I have used waxed nylon thread for leather working so it should be interesting. I just want a pair of towing hooks and they will be mounted on the rear just behind the cable drums.

Ok so another completed project. This is a pretty simple and small conversion for my Praetorians, a Rolls Royce armoured car from Empress miniatures. The conversion and project was very much inspired by the Palestine campaign in WW1, where the Rolls Royce was in a class of its own, enough strength and power to run down any enemy car, let alone horsemen, whilst being completely bulletproof to small arms fire and shell fragments, and in an age where artillery was not expected to have to hit a car sized target with direct fire.

The Royce pattern armoured car is part of the the Praetorian 82nd Long range reconnaissance group, the reconnaissance vehicle akin to an armoured sentinel in role and armour. The Royce pattern armoured car is armed with a single heavy stubber and a melta gun, the vehicle is much faster than a sentinel and excels at long range strikes and fighting reconnaissance on less rugged terrain. The vehicle has a tray and running boards to enable it to carry additional supplies such as fuel in jerry cans, or food and water(also in jerry cans) to somewhat support its own crew or other units in long range operations, when commencing operations the running boards can also be used to carry a squad of infantry to the battle area. The Royce pattern armoured car is held in high regard with Imperial forces for its rugged reliability, hauling power, and versitility.
When it deployed to the surface of Ardus in support of the defence of the planet the experienced desert fighting 293rd Praetorian Division was equipped with many of these tried and tested vehicles.

I got a Killdozer and painted/weathered it today. Note: it came base painted (yellow body and blade, grey superstructure, black tracks).

I'll post more pictures here: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/806501.page#11452047

For your consideration my Ork Kill Rig, very much still a work in progress, and still have to populate it with a suitable crew.

Really cool killdozer Cpt Jake. Nice job weathering on it.

Is that dinosaur a chop and change job or is it a and impressively inaccurate?
Really cool conversion. A fearsome beast!

I'm not sure if this counts as an AFV, but I saw this TMNT Turtle Van toy at a local thrift store, and decided it needed to become something else. Something... greater. Something... GOFF.

A battlebus that is excellent. I like the crane and the side gun and housing looks cool.

 OldMate wrote:
Really cool killdozer Cpt Jake. Nice job weathering on it.

Thanks, got it on Etsy and am very glad I did. I doubt I'll use it in an accurate Killdozer scenario (too political and depressing ending), but it will make a great breach vehicle or assault vehicle for insurgents in some modern gaming. 'Fluck your hesco barriers Yankee!'

Yeah, an interesting piece for wargaming, and it'd certainly fit for any modern, post apocalypic, or any kind of civil upheaval style scenarios.


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Okay so 2 new WIP projects for y'all
The Primus Pattern Leman Russ
The first and the best. She's a bit dirty folks so apologies.


The Crocodile Assault tank
For reasons that will become apparent really quite quickly.
Also I really like crocodiles. They are badass animals, giant planks of jaw and muscle bound in heavy armour. Deceptively sophisticated and prehistoric at once. Make of these random ramblings what you will.

This thread has been going on and off since 2020 (often with gaps of several months between posts), so I hope no one minds my addition.
But I finally found something to contribute here!


Yes, the whole army is done in classic 'stealer colors so that includes the camo patterns on the vehicles.

 KidCthulhu wrote:
This thread has been going on and off since 2020 (often with gaps of several months between posts), so I hope no one minds my addition.
But I finally found something to contribute here!

Spoiler:

Yes, the whole army is done in classic 'stealer colors so that includes the camo patterns on the vehicles.

Spoiler:

Very cool!

Great work, very vivid.

Okay some more new WIP projects:
Wheeled assault gun

Russ based self propelled gun.

Completed the militia self propelled gun
.This vehicle is a tank destroyer based on a leman russ chassis, more robust and less sophisticated stabilization equipment can more easily be fit in the hull of the leman russ making this vehicle cheaper and easier to produce and arm than a leman russ vanquisher. The weapon is effective and versatile. It is much cheaper and easier to maintain than the laser destroyer and is more effective against armoured vehicles and targets at long ranges than the Thunderer. This vehicle itself has been pulled from a local PDF storage facility on Ardus and was palmed off to a local defence unit(militia) as the local regiments believed they had no use for the vehicle. The vehicle itself named Faithful bears some battle damage to the front of the hull and the gun mantle and it bears a lot of untreated corrosion from improper treatment prior to going into storage. The vehicle has been mothballed for fifteen years having previously served to defend Ardus from an Ork incursion.

Not super well armored, but my latest vehicle:

Technicals are pretty classic though so that is a pass.

Okay so I have a new project. And a update on an old one from here.

Firstly: Tanks from A Squadron 7/29th Armoured/cavalry!
Firstly, all vehicles have excessive stowage and excessive machineguns. All the gun tanks have a twin of heavy stubbers on the commander's hatch, These are from Mortian and look super nice, they're quite similar to some cold war AA mounts the US army and marines slapped on their patton tanks. Next every normal gun tank turret has been given a loader's hatch, where they might not have had one and this is equiped with a medium machinegun(this is inspired by the real world practice imlemented on IDF tanks), the idea being lorewise, that if the tank needs to be abandoned and the crew finds itself in a hairy situation the gun can be dismounted, and they are at least a fireteam with a machinegun rather than a few chaps with only with carbines.
Dakka tanks, BMPTs, suppression tanks,- call them what you will heavy vehicles for fighting infantry with.
I got these turrets from Mortian, but already had a flak tank turret with higher velocity auto cannons and SAMs, so these were a bit puny in comparison. But I do like the idea of the Russian BMPT in real life, it is of questionable utility in a modern army where combined arms are employed but I think the idea has real potentical in 40k, where many targets get hammered by auto cannons, and they want to get in close, so having a fully armoured battle tank or two in your troop that can lay down a hailstorm of shot at close range, and against jump troops/ slower flyers/flyer blobs and enemy units higher up in buildings. I slapped a pair of HK missiles on each ball turret so the vehicle can defend itself against heavy enemy armour.

I really love the cast look of victoria's matlida boss(churchill mk1/2) turret so slapping them on a Mortain chassis was a pretty easy plan. Especially when Mortian went to selling the medium turrets and chassis separately. The mineplow was a must have. Used a drill to make a grid of holes out of the loader's hatch and made the hatches up out of platticard as faithfully as I could, so I could have the loader above the hatch too(because I did not already have enough tank commanders to paint) Slapped some milliput in the mangled hole to smooth it out a bit.

I really like Mortian's turrets as well, so I got a bit of a mix, his medium and battle tank only come with the commander's cupola, so some detail was sacrificed, and hatches were added with plasticard and rod for the hinges. Again I wanted a loader above the hatch, so I drilled a grid in the top of the turret and made the hatches up with plasticard and slapped some milliput on top of the mangled mess of resin.





Some squadron support vehicles. The repair vehicle's equipment is all magnetised. The Hydra turret is from Maximin, although the guns that came with the turret originally were huge, they were almost battle cannon calibre, so I made new barrels out of tubing and some muzzlebrakes from blood and skulls industry quad autocannons(which I had turned into quad mortars for another project), I also slapped some SAMs on it from blood and skulls industry, figuring that the simple way that SPAAGs have been upgraded in real life is to slap more SAMs on them so I'd do that here, give it some longer range punch. I used a massively oversized mushroom shaped turret from blood and skulls industry (which came with a turret I purchased from them) as a RADAR, and the ever useful arm from the goliath truck kit to mount a big ole spacemarine vehicle command upgrade satellite dish on as another RADAR.

So that is the outgoing project, and the incoming one?
Well I was looking at the Iserali Nagamachon and the WW1 German A7V, The Nagamachon is a heavy IFV, it hosts a box full of machineguns that somehow 10 soldiers can cram into. The A7V, reportedly had a crew of 18, but this is somewhat misleading as 8 of the 'crew' had a flamethrower and happened to be stormtroopers. In today's language they're dismounts and the A7V was essentially a heavy IFV.


And I was also thinking that my 84th Karsk Assault Grenadier contingent is an elite assault formation, they want transports that can take a beating, punch through the enemy defences, maybe obliterate a strong point or two, lay down a heap of dakka on approach, and drop the big(as lorewise they're all big guys I use spacers to make them half a head taller than regular guardsmen) boys in flak coats and carapace armour into the enemy lines to rip and tear, secure the objective till less important troops arrive to consolidate it and then remount to rinse and repeat. And I thought to myself the Malcador Defender and the the old Dracosan do not fill these roles. But if one were to aquire Dracosan sides, and slap them on a Defender, then you have the ultimate murder bus for the angry dragon boys. I have also got regular malcador tank hull weapons on the way, so the vehicles don't need to be toting a demolisher around (the force already has a pair of vindicators, so they're pretty good on bunker busting guns at the moment.) and lore wise can probably carry a few more troopers.
So today the Defenders have arrived, they're in temporary storage for a little bit. But super excited for this project. It's better than I thought, as I will likely not use the sponson weapons, I can magnetise them to the superstructure weapon points, so I can then have a rolling hedgehog of auto cannons or rather excessively; las cannons).
The vehicles will carry around half a platoon of Assault Grenadiers, a pretty vanilla Dracosan (ableit with standard malcador battle tank guns magnetised to it) will round out the platoon carrying another 2 sections of stormtroopers(it has not arrived yet, so when it does I'll play around with the filter and see if it'll fit onto the Defenders, if so I can get one 3d printed, I'll post pics of a mockup Malcador when it arrives too.).
I'll have to come up with a name for the vehicle, although I do like the ring of Malcador Dauntless Heavy IFV, alternatively something dragon related is definitely a winner too as culturally they are significant to the world.

Oh and I totally forgot to post this. Finished with Butch the FW nightmare, half converted Macharius!
Now Macharius Vanquisher/Vulcan with optional baneblade turret and so many weapons options! Apologies if the photos are a bit gloomy. The only real things I have changed on both tanks from the vanilla kit, is that I added a loader's hatch to the thank, and I chopped the vision ports off the front upper hull. I figure that this is a battle tank, not a cottage in the contryside, no-one in the middle of the tank(the loader/loaders) has any reason to want to see out of it. I swapped the punisher cannons on the tank for victoria miniatures vanquisher cannons. Because macharius vanquishers are probably my favorite 40k tank.

So before shots

Okay, so the malcs and drac arrived, still waiting on a boat load of 3d parts(although they are being printed in queensland so a whole trainload?) as I do not have a printer. Anyways, some mock up picks. Bear in mind the side of the hull is like a centimetre from the centre of the hull as they were never meant to fit together and a large resin block would need to be removed(but it won't be becasue my defenders are getting 3d printed track sides)



As I suspected the solar auxilia life support system is not really compatible with the defender, but that's not an issue. I just won't give the Dracosan the filter either.

My Enemy Spotted Studio Kamaz MRAP painted up. Very cool little vehicle.







Not the best painting I've done, but happy with the dust in the tire treads.


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And a few years old, but this is a (I think Solido) Diecast VAB converted and then painted as a SWAT armored car.