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.

15mm Sons of Horus colours

 SO, back on the old blog, one of the resurrected posts I did before moving over here was about choosing colour schemes for 15mm Horus Heresy Legions.

 At the time, I couldn't decide on a colour for the Sons of Horus, so ended up deciding to go with/settle for my second choice - The Death Guard.

 

However... my brain Decided to hyper-focus on the Sons of Horus. The joy of Adhd!

Yeah... It's kinda like this sometimes

I tried a different xpress/quick turquoise - In this case AK Quick Gen Turquoise Green.

A similar to-but-slightly-more-intense, and a little more grey (only it's... not) colour than Xpress Heretic Turquoise

(And... I've realised.... I am terrible at spelling turquoise! thanks gods for spell check)

Didn't quite work. but it did give me an idea for a different legion.

A bit more researched suggested I was going the wrong way - the Sons of Horus Green to my eyes, is more of a grey-green with a hint of turquoise.

"Sons Of Horus Green Colour Swatch"

 

Green.

Turquoise.

 

Well... I dunno about your eyes... but I'm seeing 3 different colours here.

So. in the end I went sod it. It's described as sons of Horus GREEN, described in the novels as pale GREEN, and the artwork is older then the mini and the paint colour any how (And yes.. I know the amount of retconning in the setting is a bit bonkers but still.....)

I'm going for a greenish, aiming to match the artwork.

Oddly, it only took an evening... and a fair few test models - I tend, at the moment to use some 15mm Vietnam-era marines from 3d breed: as paint test dummies as they have a lot of texture, and I'm replacing them with a stronger resin.

And a few mixes:

Paint!

Incidentally - the palette I use is actually a fidget toy... but being silicone the paint doesn't stick and peels off easily when you pop it out after it's dried.

Eventually, I settled on a mix that I liked. And yeah.. i know this aint the best photo... and a couple of the bits of sepia over the gold studs were still wet... but eh...

Tiny Test Heretic!

Its a little greener in the flesh (crap white balance on my phone) so to speak, but it's good compromise in any case.

I think the key thing was realising it's actually a grey-green, which is handy, as WW2 German uniforms were a greyish-green, which Vallejo do in xpress as Landser Grey. But.. that wasn't quite grey enough.

However, it's ALL XPress paints - which was one of the main aims of the exercise.
The recipe being:


    6:2:1:1 Space Grey : Landser Grey: Black Lotus : Heretic Turquoise


 

6 parts this

2 parts this

1 part this

1 part this

And bosh. you've got the colours for a very naughty legion indeed using just Vallejo Xpress that I'll be using for 15 & 6mm.

I mean.. this covers both Horus and Lorgar really....