Imperial Tank Destroyers and SPGs

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**Arcsquad12**

I know that the Guard have access to the Laser Destroyer, but this vehicle is a very rare design due to the difficulties in manufacturing the main gun. With that in mind, what sort of vehicles could potentially fill the role of Tank Destroyer or Self Propelled Gun? Perhaps taking a Chimera chassis and building a Vanquisher into the heavy bolter section?

**Furyou Miko**

Uhm, the Guard book is full of tank destroyers and self-propelled guns.

The Vanquisher is a tank destroyer. If you want something squatter, you've got the Thunderer (Tank Destroyer converted with a Demolisher Cannon). The Basilisk and its squadronable friends are all self-propelled guns.

**Flinty**

Arcsquad - You're assuming that a tank destroyer can't have a turret mounted weapon. Both the Vanquisher and Annihilator class of Russ have turret mounted AT weapons, and all russes can have hull mounted lascannon, effectively making them all tank destroyers.

If you want to do your own version of a turretless tank destroyer for modelling fun, then I agree that a Chimera hull with a Vanquisher cannon would probably look really neat

**Vaktathi**

Arcsquad12 wrote:
I know that the Guard have access to the Laser Destroyer, but this vehicle is a very rare design due to the difficulties in manufacturing the main gun. With that in mind, what sort of vehicles could potentially fill the role of Tank Destroyer or Self Propelled Gun? Perhaps taking a Chimera chassis and building a Vanquisher into the heavy bolter section?

Medusa with enclosed crew compartment and bastion-breacher shells.

**ace101**

Valdor could be one, Omega Machiarus is an open topped tank destroyer (the whole top of the tank is a massive gun)

**Harriticus**

**Engine of War**

the massive Shadowsword and Stormblade (the plasma blaster one, i get the names confused all the time) are essentially gigantic Tank destroyers scaled up to kill Titans.

And the one with the Quake cannon could be a self propelled gun even with its super heavy armor.

**Captain Roderick**

Vaktathi wrote:
Medusa with enclosed crew compartment and bastion-breacher shells.

This. Closest you'll find in the IG Codex to an http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_gun

**Ross74H**

There is also the Destroyer Tank Hunter.

And a breif mention in some of the Imperial Armour and older fluff for the Chimera of the APDS-6a Defender built during the 2nd Armageddon War - basically a great big lasr cannon mounted into a Chimera chassis.

**Ilove40k**

Ross74H wrote:
There is also the Destroyer Tank Hunter.

And a breif mention in some of the Imperial Armour and older fluff for the Chimera of the APDS-6a Defender built during the 2nd Armageddon War - basically a great big lasr cannon mounted into a Chimera chassis.

You are a die hard fan of the chimera are'nt you ?

**Flinty**

You get a much nicer tank out of the Chimera chassis

**Ross74H**

Ilove40k wrote:
Ross74H wrote:
There is also the Destroyer Tank Hunter.

And a breif mention in some of the Imperial Armour and older fluff for the Chimera of the APDS-6a Defender built during the 2nd Armageddon War - basically a great big lasr cannon mounted into a Chimera chassis.

You are a die hard fan of the chimera are'nt you ?

Me? what made you think that?

Not like i have about twelve different variants of them or anything. Besides, they look more "right" to my eyes than the Russ. Especailly when converted to a MBT or with the lasguns removed from the back.

**Furyou Miko**

Chimeras are just plain more awesome than Leman Russes. *shrug*

**Anfauglir**

Flinty wrote:
You get a much nicer tank out of the Chimera chassis

Ross74H wrote:
Me? what made you think that?
Not like i have about twelve different variants of them or anything. Besides, they look more "right" to my eyes than the Russ. Especailly when converted to a MBT or with the lasguns removed from the back.

Furyou Miko wrote:
Chimeras are just plain more awesome than Leman Russes. *shrug*

Ah, it's not just me that prefers this to a Russ as the look of a MBT, then?

**Arcsquad12**

Strap a vanquisher on that thing and we'll be talking.

**Anfauglir**

Arcsquad12 wrote:
Strap a vanquisher on that thing and we'll be talking.

Trouble with doing that is, it reintroduces the heroic scaling that all of GW minis suffer from... the point of the autocannon on the Chimera chassis is that it actually starts to look like a correctly proportioned tank.

**Flinty**

@anfauglir - that thing needs a bigger turret and a bigger gun

**Furyou Miko**

If I had a ground-pounder Guard army, they would all be mounted in autocannon chimeras and backed up by Hellhounds and Tauros/Venators..

**Arcsquad12**

Anfauglir wrote:
Arcsquad12 wrote:
Strap a vanquisher on that thing and we'll be talking.

Trouble with doing that is, it reintroduces the heroic scaling that all of GW minis suffer from... the point of the autocannon on the Chimera chassis is that it actually starts to look like a correctly proportioned tank.

Okay, what if we took one of the upscaled Autocannons from a Hydra Flak tank instead?

**Anfauglir**

Flinty wrote:
@anfauglir - that thing needs a bigger turret and a bigger gun

Hmm, I prefer my tanks to look like they won't take themselves apart by trying to fire the main gun.

Each to their own, I suppose. Some like the overblown heroic scale.

Arcsquad12 wrote:
Okay, what if we took one of the upscaled Autocannons from a Hydra Flak tank instead?

Still a little on the large side for me. No, the normal one looks great, imo. But see above: each to their own. The beauty of modelling is that you can mod it to look any way you want, with any weapon type/size you want.

**Blackcrusader**

Alot of IG weapons are supposedly rare.

**Ross74H**

Just because I like any excuse...

Destroyer

Niad (it's meant to look like a baby Macharius)

I quite like how the stock GW autocannons scale up as battle cannons. And if you use the FW turret their version of the autocannon is a LOT thinner.

**Anfauglir**

Ross74H wrote:
I quite like how the stock GW autocannons scale up as battle cannons. And if you use the FW turret their version of the autocannon is a LOT thinner.

Yup.

Also, according to RT (via lexi, that is), the IG autocannon is an M2 tank weapon... just a full-auto version. Boom-boom!

**Captain Roderick**

The calibre of GW weapons is always a little perplexing. I was standing next to a T-34/85 yesterday, and I'll be damned if its cannon wasn't about the same diameter as a standard GW Autocannon.

So the ground-pounding IG use 85mm autocannons. Meaning a Battlecannon must be in the 150-200mm calibre range, but most fluff/text lists it as 105mm or 120mm from my recollection.

It's mad to think of autocannons as 'dual purpose' firing AP rounds. Why not have an HE shell? something like S4 ap- small blast would scale quite nicely against GL's and ML's.

/random wittering

**Anfauglir**

Captain Roderick wrote:
So the ground-pounding IG use 85mm autocannons. Meaning a Battlecannon must be in the 150-200mm calibre range, but most fluff/text lists it as 105mm or 120mm from my recollection.

Yet another example of heroic scale on the models versus "real" scale in the fluff, maybe?

**Harriticus**

Captain Roderick wrote:
The calibre of GW weapons is always a little perplexing. I was standing next to a T-34/85 yesterday, and I'll be damned if its cannon wasn't about the same diameter as a standard GW Autocannon.

So the ground-pounding IG use 85mm autocannons. Meaning a Battlecannon must be in the 150-200mm calibre range, but most fluff/text lists it as 105mm or 120mm from my recollection.

It's mad to think of autocannons as 'dual purpose' firing AP rounds. Why not have an HE shell? something like S4 ap- small blast would scale quite nicely against GL's and ML's.

/random wittering

The hilarious part is they list the Earthshaker Cannon as 132mm. The massive gun easily looks 210-240mm in real life, but in GW's world it's substantially smaller then standard US Army artillery today.

**Ross74H**

According to the books (from memory);

Heavy stubber is 50cal (12.7mm)
Autocannon is 40mm
Battle cannon is meant to be about 120mm as per most current main battle tanks

Oddly the FW turret with the autocannons actually gives them barrels that are the same size as the plastic Stubbers.

There aren't really many SPG and TD options really in the guard unless you go FW. Guard codex doesn't even have a tank hunter in it really apart from the Vanqisher.

**Melissia**

Ross74H wrote:
Autocannon is 40mm
Battle cannon is meant to be about 120mm as per most current main battle tanks

From what books are you getting this from?

**Flinty**

Ross74H wrote:
According to the books (from memory);

Heavy stubber is 50cal (12.7mm)
Autocannon is 40mm
Battle cannon is meant to be about 120mm as per most current main battle tanks

Oddly the FW turret with the autocannons actually gives them barrels that are the same size as the plastic Stubbers.

There aren't really many SPG and TD options really in the guard unless you go FW. Guard codex doesn't even have a tank hunter in it really apart from the Vanqisher.

Except for anything with lascannon and/or multimeltas

**Ross74H**

I'm pretty sure I was in the IA series - will have to check when I am on my computer.

I said Tank Hunter and I meant TD - d'oh. Was looking at the SU-100 and ISU-152 at Duxford over the weekend. Nasty looking things with whacking great guns sticking out the front of them. Both seemed very IG to me!!