Redesigning the Chubby armoured unicorn Pt2

 In the last post, I waxed lyrical on redesigning the 'Humble' Rhino APC.

While I have been tinkering with it 

If a rhino had a baby with an M113.....

I've also been looking at alternates.

One of the ones I've been enamoured with was this:

Battletechnology Goblin APC

It's a vehicle designed for use in Battletech, and given that in our world (name to be confirmed eventually :D) the none imperial city-states will need slightly different vehicles. (They have at least one Standard template construct machine to give the basic designs) I see no reason not to use whatever vehicles that we like.

I have done some tinkering with the original model, partly to re-arm it with a Heavy bolter, rather than the generic heavy machine gun and simplify parts of the mesh to make it easier to manually take a chunk out of the underside, to reduce the amount of resin used, and negate the need to hollow the model in the slicer (That comes with it's own potential issues)


Give us this:

Affectionately referred to as the Rhinogob

Still, the Rhino itself, along with the Predator and Land raiders are classic designs from Rogue trader, and I've had a soft spot for them for years, despite the varying impracticalities of the designs - they are distinctive after all.

Plus they would be a really handy addition for the 15mm & 6mm Horus Heresy Projects :)

So, overall my overactive, short circuiting, meth addicted Squirrel of a brain has gone through a few iterations of ideas and kind of settled on the current ideas:

Rhino:
1) Change the transport capability to 5 Marines
(which in our rules could be done by keeping it at 10 and amending the transport requirements for Heavy Infantry to 2 each, so 5 Marines/Heavy Infantry, or 10 Infantry/None Power armoured troops)
2) Amend the Armament to a Single Heavy Bolter
3) Model up variations - Mortar carrier, Command Variant etc (Using things like the M113 and FV432 variations as inspiration)

Well... that escalated quickly to:

Predator:
This isn't a main battle tank. (And I'm not a fan of the Sicarian design...)
Based on the similar hull the the Rhino, It'd be more suited as a light tank, or up armoured a little to a Medium tank, and  the clasic Autocannon/pair of Sponson Las cannon armament does suggest to me more of an anti-light-mendium vehicle target - but the problem there is the removal of a blast effect from the autocannon that it used to have in Rogue trader, which makes it terrible against infantry. 

]so I'm considering the alternate armament version of the Twin LAscannon in the turret and heavy bolters in the sponsons - a better mix for most targets.

Land Raider
As much of a soft spot I've got for these things, they have always given me a connundrum - Are they a tank, or a transport. And to me, they are a jack of all trade. Over-expensive to use as a transport, and over-expensive to use purely as a battle tank.
Solution to that is again straight forward:
1) Remove the transport capacity and it becomes a reasonable Heavy Tank.

With Original for reference

The above (to my eyes) also work better with the size/scale of the vehicle models themselves for both 15mm and 6mm

So, we have 3 classes:
Troop Transport/Misc: Rhino APC - 2 Crew: Driver, Commander/Gunner

Light-Medium Tank: Predator: 5 Crew: Driver, Commander 3 Gunners
Heavy Tank: Land Raider. 5 Crew: Driver ,Commander, 3 Gunners

So. Overall - The original models I can't remember, or find on my Hard drive where they came from... I've had a search for them and they appear to have fallen off the 'net for now.
But, I think it's a good example of playing the game how you want to.