Super Heavy Land Raider Exterminus Project, Because regular Land Raiders just don't cut it...... Options

[DogmaRaider]

Long time lurker, first time poster so brace for impact .....

Believe it or not, this project started out as a Christmas present to two of my friends but then grew on me. Unfortunately besides growing on me..... the project also grew. I started it back in very late November but since it was a Christmas present I didn't want to reveal it on forums where my friends read... that would ruin the surprise. Please bear with me while I catch up to where I am now with pictures and details. BTW I posted this project on a few different forums so you may see it elsewhere.

From Apocalypse we've seen a lot of super heavy vehicles for many different factions; some redone and some new ones. While I'm an Imperial Guard player with an a surplus of super heavy vehicles (among others...), I look over at the Space Marines and Chaos Space Marines and I don't really see any. I mean yes they can take the Baneblade and dress it up to look like a SM or CSM vehicle but IMHO it just really doesn't "fit" in the army alongside a Land Raider. Now I'll admit to you from the beginning that I know squat (no pun intended) about the SM or CSM regarding vehicles but I wanted to give them something special that they could use in a super heavy vehicle capacity on the battlefield.

Taking this concept, I looked at what they had already; the Land Raider. The Land Raider is an awesome vehicle and combines awesome firepower with trooper protection and delivery in the same vehicle. So why not take that concept but a bit further. First, let's start with two Land Raiders. Now let's chop off the front of one Land Raider and the back end of another and marry the two sections. Now we have a double length Land Raider which sort of looks a little weird so let's go ahead and fix that.

Next let's make our elongated Land Raider wider so it doesn't look like a driving coffin. Ok so now we have a wider longer Land Raider but it's really doesn't look quite right yet. The tracks really don't look right. Now doubling the width of the tracks doesn't them really doesn't look right either (at least in my mind); it looks like a brick driving around. Ah but what if take a regular unstretched Land Raider side and put it centered and in tandem with the already extended tracks..... something like this.

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I think we're on the right track here (pun intended)...time to get some parts. Conveniently the Land Raider Spearhead deal works perfect for two Land Raider Exterminus's (name for now anyway, suggestions are welcome!). The first Land Raider Exterminus will be bumped up to a Land Raider Exterminus Crusader taking advantage of all the extra parts and bits. My other friend is a huge Thousand Sons fan so his Land Raider Exterminus will be of the Chaos variety. In fact I'm going to call his project Ahriman's Chariot.

In addition to the kits, I also purchased some additional bits from Forgeworld to put some nice detail on it as well:

Land Raider Reinforced Armor
Land Raider Prometheus Command Tank Conversion Kit
Imperial Eagle Land Raider Doors
Terminator Land Raider Doors
Thousand Sons Land Raider Doors (x2)

As a substitute for the Helios Land Raider Kit, I choose to buy the Space Marine Whirlwind Sprue instead because the missile launchers on that kit look much more impressive.

Ok so the table is set and the pieces are in play. Look for an update in the next couple of days! The bad news is that because of my schedule, I'll only be able to work on this on Saturdays (we have Gatekeepers to build the other days....) As always, comments and suggestions are always welcome!

This post has been edited by DogmaRaider: Dec 26 2007, 02:44 AM

[Zeller]

What about height?

[Eberious]

I wish you the best of luck with that one. What weapons are you planning on having(apart fron the missle launcher). But you will probably have to add some higeht in the middle, maybe mount a cannon on it.

[manwithmachete]

I really hope GW is reading this... SM's need a superheavy tank! Sure, it may not completely "fit" with the fluff, but IG can't have all the fun! And no, Thunderhawks don't count. ;-) Good luck with this! I can't wait to see pics!

[DogmaRaider]

@Eberious: For the LRCE, I made my friend a set of Las Cannons, a set of Twin-Linked Twin-Linked Heavy Bolters and a set of the Hurricane Bolters from the kits.

For Ahriman's Chariot, I have the standard Las Cannons but then had to come up with some new weapons as the CSM LR doesn't really have any options at all in the codex. I decided to use the Havoc Launcher rules and put them on sponsons paired with custom flamers using the IG Hellhound rules. I'll write them up in the next day or two and then post them for review. I don't think these will be the final weapon options for the Ahriman's Chariot as they don't really fit the psyker theme of Ahriman. I'm going to do some more thinking on it and browse through the CSM bits to see what I can come up with.

Also I definitely want to add items to the top deck, most notable the missile launcher attachment from the Whirlwind. The tank will also be highly configurable so look for magnets for the sponsons and doors.

@manwithmachete: Personally I think it does fit in the fluff. It's a larger,. more heavily armored troop transport. What would be more desirable to a Space Marine command then to have 2 squads of Terminators charge out of the front ramp of a vehicle?! Pictures will start to appear on Saturday night or early Sunday morning.

[Eberious]

Cool, be looking for them, funny we start a very similar project at the same time.

[demenhoth]

Wow whats the total of this project in US dollars?

[DogmaRaider]

Good question.... I'm trying not to think about it right now as the end product will, at least I believe, totally awesome! Not to worry thought, I'll keep track and at the end of the project write a nice summary including instructions on everything including the costs.

[DogmaRaider]

Ok time for an update. Below you'll see the current set of items that we'll be working with. I have pictures of the FW kits but we'll worry about them later when we actually need them.

Working Inventory

Let's start by creating the interior panels of the Exterminus. Now the inside of a normal Land Raider has two access points through which troops or an internal panel can be displayed. To easily make the Exterminus larger, we're going to cut and combine the interior panels of the Land Raider such that we will have four panels on side instead of just two.

One thing to keep in mind is that we want to ensure that the spacing between the all of the access points is the same. As will be shown later, we want the two inner access points to line up just as if it were the original internal internal panel. This way, we can combine the elongated track structure and an external standard Land Raider panel. I know it's confusing now but believe me it's really hard to explain. Just bear with me while I create the basic structure.

For easier identification, let's designate the two left panels of the Land Raider kits the left front panel and the left rear panel. Below the cut details for the left rear Exterminus interior panel. You can see that it's made just aft of the divider on the front ramp. The cut is made all the way through and is the easier of the internal panel cuts. Save any left over internal panel material. We'll be using it later elsewhere on the model.

Left Rear Panel Interior Cut Location
Left Rear Panel Interior End Result

Be sure to save the front ramp structure that we cut from this panel. We'll need it later...

Left Rear Panel Interior Left Over Bit

Now that we have the back panel cut, let's go ahead and cut the left front interior panel. This cut is more complicated as it goes through one of the posts that previously connected the internal and external Land Raider panels. We don't want to cut through the post all the way; let's save the post for a later point that we can use to connect panels to together.

Left Front Panel Cut Location

Below you see the depth to which we want to make our cut. It's just past the rail structure used to hold the sliding Land Raider doors. At this point you want to stop cutting.

Left Front Panel Vertical Cut Depth

Now you want to cut horizontally into the cut that you previously made. Again you just want to cut through the post to the point where your previous cut finished.

Left Front Panel Horizontal Cut Depth

All the cuts for the left panel are now complete. The effect is we've cut out a rectangular chunk separating the back portion where the engine would have attached from the remainder of the interior panel.

Left Front Panel End Result

You want to perform the same process on both sets of interior panels for the right side as well. When you have everything cut, you can assemble the two pieces into one interior panel shown below. These two panels will form the basis of the chassis that we're building.

Interior Panels
Interior Panel Detail

Here you can see the one the Exterminus interior panel's that we created alongside a regular Land Raider and Leman Russ track structure.

Panel Size Comparison

Remember back when we were cutting the panels and how we wanted to make sure that all the access points lined up correctly? We'll because of the locations of the cuts, everything is lined up perfectly. This will allow us to connect the external and internal access points together.

Access Point Alignment

We'll this wraps up this update. We've made some real good progress for this week. Next week we'll look into cutting the external panels. At that point the whole Land Raider Exterminus structure should be much more recognizable and defined. As always questions and comments are welcome!

[Eberious]

Looking good so far.

[Pulse]

Interesting, looking foward to seeing more.

[Shinohai]

i look forward to the finished product. as an inspiration theres a site i'd like to share with everyone. this guy makes the biggest badass converted vehicles that i have ever seen
baddest conversions ever

[White Crusader]

i look forward to the finished product. as an inspiration theres a site i'd like to share with everyone. this guy makes the biggest badass converted vehicles that i have ever seen
baddest conversions ever

That, my good sir, is absolutely uber shooty.

[DogmaRaider]

@All: Thanks for the support!

@Shinohai: Thanks for the link! There are some really awesome dreads in that site. I love the twin-linked Las Cannon one!

This post has been edited by DogmaRaider: Dec 31 2007, 08:53 PM

[Shinohai]

your welcome, his stuff is to cool not to share. i hope it inspires you with your project

[CaptainShrike]

you are going to go insane painting all those dudes. Even after all the conversions, which will probably take a long time, painting so many cadians cannot be done without help, or a couple years. Also, that's gonna cost a ton of money to do, just be happy the Baneblades are plastic now.

This post has been edited by CaptainShrike: Jan 2 2008, 01:23 AM

[DogmaRaider]

you are going to go insane painting all those dudes. Even after all the conversions, which will probably take a long time, painting so many cadians cannot be done without help, or a couple years. Also, that's gonna cost a ton of money to do, just be happy the Baneblades are plastic now.

The Cadian 1st Gatekeepers project is definitely a long term multi-year project compared to the Land Raider Exterminus one. I've never going to get bored of the Cadian 1st; it's my life's work. I did find my true calling there. As for the the plastic Baneblades, personally I only bought one of them and it was for bits. I'm a true fan of the Forgeworld one as IMHO it looks 100 times better than the new one. Believe me that the new one is not without merits but I'll never put it in any IG army I have.

Just in case anyone is wondering, CaptainShrike is commenting on my Cadian 1st Gatekeeper thread which is on Warseer. Look for another post regarding the Land Raider Exterminus on Sunday morning.

[DogmaRaider]

Alirghty time for an update. My apologies for the lateness of the post, I was distracted by a movie. Just to review, this is what we have so far. For today, we're going to be working on the outside of the Land Raider to match the interior panel. So we'll start off with two standard Land Raider exterior panels. First let's cut the left exterior panel

Left Exterior Cut
Left Exterior Cut Result
Left Exterior Piece Detail

And we want to do the same for the right exterior panel.

Right Exterior Cut
Right Exterior Cut Result
Right Exterior Piece Detail

You'll notice that regardless of the side, cut line is actually just in front of the Crux Terminatus symbol on the side of the LR (the really small one) straight down. It's ok if the cuts are not exact. Where you're cutting will eventually be hidden inside the elongated inner track anyway so not to worry.

Our next step is for the left and right exterior pieces that we just cut, we have to cover the access points. They're not necessary and we'll also need them filled in to serve as glue points for the exterior Land Raider track we'll be putting on the outside. To do that will require two steps. First we'll worry about the large area of the access points. To fill that we'll need to cut some rectangle plasticard 2mm thick which best fits the thickness of the access point area.

Plasticard Rectangles for Access Points

The first time I tried this, the angle corners of the access points made it extremely difficult to match with the plasticard. To eliminate this problem, I used a chisel Xacto blade to square the corners. This made it much easier and faster to fit the pieces properly.

Access Point Square Corner Cuts
Access Points with Rectangular Plasticard

Now that we have the majority of the access point filled. we need to go ahead and fill the latch and hinge slots. To do that we employ the same technique with small strips of 2 mm plasticard. Instead of trying to cut each tiny cube and it in the slot, I glue the strip into the slot and then use the same Xacto chisel blade

Latch and Hinge Slots Filled

Now that we have all the plasticard we need cut to fill the access points go ahead and glue all the plasticard pieces in place. Do not glue the interior and exterior pieces together yet. We'll keep those separate for now. Below you can see the result of our work for today. The inner track is coming into better focus now and you can see better how we're going to proceed.

Exterior Inner Cut And Access Point End Result 1
Exterior Inner Cut And Access Point End Result 2

This coming week we'll start to work on the external track units and start to do some thinking on how to connect everything. As always, questions and comments are always welcome!

[DogmaRaider]

Ok my apologies for the delay. I actually had to do a bit a design work before I could post anything.

Our next step will involve the use of those small bits of internal panel that we cut off to make the larger internal panels.

Internal Side - Initial

The plan moving forward for these bits is to eventually glue them to the external panel we have on the larger track piece. To do that, we frist have to remove all of the internal detail so the pieces lay flat. I used a simple razor saw to cut raised portions flush with the rest of the panel

Internal Side - Detail Cutting Off - In Process
Internal Side - Final - Both Sides
Internal Side - Final - Front
Internal Side - Final - Rear

Now that we have the internal sides cut flat, we can begin to see our internal and external tracks taking shape.

Internal and External Tracks

The next set of pictures actually gives you a very good general idea of the actual shape of the Land Raider Exterminus. You can see the larger inner tank tread with the accompanying outer tank tread.

Track Side Mock Up 1 - Combined Outside View
Track Side Mock Up 1 - Front View
Track Side Mock Up 1 - Combined Left Front Elevated View

It looks pretty good so far. Unfortunately the celebration is short lived. Our next task is much more labor intensive but can be optional. To make the model much more interesting and more configurable for my friends uses, we going to connect the external and internal hatches with a connecting tunnel. In the normal Land Raider model, this is already done for you. However because we've moved the internal and external edges apart we have to do this ourselves. Now again, this an optional step. You could just simply glue the doors and weapons straight on and it would work just fine.

I'll try and post again on Saturday morning. I've already figured all the measurements for you guys and even starting gluing bits together but it's getting kind of late here on the east coast so I'll post again on Saturday morning. See you then! As always comments are always welcome.

[The Emperor'...]

You could even have the top halves of two Rhinos merged back to back on top; sort of like a bunker/thing.

Like so:

EDIT: Went back and reread; saw that you were adding WW Launchers. So instead of one massive top hatch (which could be awesome) you could use the same baseplate that the WW Launchers normally mount on.
EDIT 2: Looking at my Predator it seems like there would ALMOST be enough room to mount the Predator sponsons on the doors up there...but that'd take some finagling.

This post has been edited by The Emperor's Champion: Jan 25 2008, 07:23 AM

[The Emperor'...]

More accurately:
Front:

This post has been edited by The Emperor's Champion: Jan 25 2008, 08:12 AM

[Technoscream]

More accurately: (image)

....OH MY GOD. Wow, that looks awesome!

[The Emperor'...]

Thanks! I thought so.

[The_Chaplain]

Words cannot describe how awe inspiring that frankensteinian LR is going to look if that last mock up is the basis. What are you going to do for ornamentation on this behemoth??

[lhg033]

like it - something similar you might want to take a look at


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