Gentlemen....Behold!!!

[Grenadier]

I present to you the Minotaur Mk 1 assault tank. Or, as I came to call it "Frankentank." That's because it is made up of parts from heavy weapons teams, Chimeras, a Landraider, and Leman Russ. With a few odds and ends here and there.

Frankentank was a project of mine in the works for nigh upon 3 years. It began with just a simple desire to build a WW1 style tank using the Vehicle Design Rules (perhaps my favorite thing about the game!) But then when I added my beloved Ogryns to my army the project evolved into something else. Some fluff in their entry inspired me to go in a new direction. It seems despite being big bad gnarly tough guys the adorable Ogryns are afraid of the dark and tight spaces. And that it takes some convincing to get them to embark inside a Chimera. Often requiring some unfortunate Guardsmen to coax them in with a barrel of rations.

Well, this just won't do! My thoughts turned to making it easier to transport Ogryns. And come up with a sweet new tank in the process. One of my biggest complaints about GW models is the models aren't in scale with the troops. 12 Guardsmen don't look as if they can fit in a Chimera as it is. Let alone 5 Ogryns! Looks like if one crawled in on his belly he could fit in. Well, Frankentank actually looks like it could comfortably hold 5 of those brutes. Plus the unlucky Guardsmen assigned to Ogryn herding duties. Without a doubt the Ogryns are my favorite unit in the game.

And so after many long nights of crafting this tank, lots of measuring, cutting, getting it wrong, getting it right, and a lot of problem solving "Frankentank" was born. And how fitting! It's big! It's ugly! It's so...so..."Ogryny!" I wanted it to have a somewhat rough appearance to match the Ogryns. Note how the Ogryn's wear armor bits which look like they're made from scrap from the battlefield. Each of them have that painted in various colors to represent collecting them from destroyed vehicles. This theme will transfer to Frankentank for when I paint it.

As for its rules, I believe in the VDR. And I don't like to create entirely new vehicles. It's better to just modify existing vehicles in some way. You never want to overpower anything. But in this instance it required creating an all new vehicle. And with this in mind I chose weapons and rules for it in keeping with its intended purpose: safely moving Ogryn's across the battlefield so they can assault the enemy:

Hulll mounted multi melta. This gives it some anti-armor and bunker busting capability.
Two sponson mounted twin linked autocannons. To whittle down heavy troops. (Originally was going to go with heavy stubbers but they just looked too tiny.)
Turret mounted Nova cannon. Not very high strength but good at hurting troops in cover.

Special rules:

Lumbering Behemoth (just like the Leman Russ.) I feel this is a smart choice as the tank is so huge in size and due to its intended role. It's not going to be the fastest transport like a Chimera. But it gives it the right "flavor" all things considered.

Assault Ramp: just like Landraiders. Troops can always assault from it.

It also gets smoke launchers and extra armor.

Ideally, my tank will plow its way inexorably across the battlefield. Not much of a threat to armor but certainly enough to make infantry wet themselves. Especially after the ramp lowers and gang of Ogryns bursts forth to stomp 'em good.

[Grenadier]

Here is another tank I built. You can see a nearly finished painted version of it in the pic with the Ogryns. This is simply a Destroyer. Made on a Chimera body and using an Earthshaker cannon. This was my first major build. The armored structure enclosing it is made of the cover from one of my old sketch books. It was made of really thick plastic. And getting all the angles right was a big pain considering I'm not good at geometry. Overall it came out alright I think.

[Lord Inquisitor]

http://i1.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/006/501/dr%20wierd.jpg

[Grenadier]

Hah! I love that guy! I so wanna make a model of him!

Any suggestions on my tank? My assault ramp won't stay closed. And I don't want to glue it shut. It needs to stay closed when I need it to be. My only thought is that maybe after painting the model it'll provide just enough added thickness to keep it in place.

[Brakkart]

Use mini magnets, they'll hold it shut when you want it shut and that way it can be opened and closed as you want.

[SotonShades]

Only problem I have with it is the name... The Minotaur is all ready a superheavy artillery tank. essentially 2 Bassilisks in 1. Other than that I love the concept and execution. As Brakkart pointed out, magnets are your best friend for keeping doors closed. Relying on paint only works until the paint wears away, which it eventually will, but neodynium magnets are forever (or at least a few hundred years!)

I can deffinitely understand stubbers looking too small; even those autocannons look a little on the weedy side :P Could i suggest cutting the upper ones off and gluing them slightly closer together to give an impression of greater bulk? Well, I can suggested it as I just have, but... well you know what I mean.

I'm afraid I'm not quite so keen on your Destoyer. Don't get me wrong, it looks really well made, but to me it looks more like FWs enclosed Basillisk. The gun is a little too high and the hull just feels like the wrong shape. This is more a personnal thing (too long playing with Destroyers built around Leman Russ chassis like the FW one), and as I said it is really well made. I wouldn't have a problem playing against it at all, but just seems a bit off.

Great work overall though, can't wait to see them painted up, especially the assault vehicle! How many points does that beast come in at, anyway?

[Nosmo75]

Only problem I have with it is the name... The Minotaur is all ready a superheavy artillery tank. essentially 2 Bassilisks in 1. Other than that I love the concept and execution. As Brakkart pointed out, magnets are your best friend for keeping doors closed. Relying on paint only works until the paint wears away, which it eventually will, but neodynium magnets are forever (or at least a few hundred years!)

I can deffinitely understand stubbers looking too small; even those autocannons look a little on the weedy side :P Could i suggest cutting the upper ones off and gluing them slightly closer together to give an impression of greater bulk? Well, I can suggested it as I just have, but... well you know what I mean.

I'm afraid I'm not quite so keen on your Destoyer. Don't get me wrong, it looks really well made, but to me it looks more like FWs enclosed Basillisk. The gun is a little too high and the hull just feels like the wrong shape. This is more a personnal thing (too long playing with Destroyers built around Leman Russ chassis like the FW one), and as I said it is really well made. I wouldn't have a problem playing against it at all, but just seems a bit off.

Great work overall though, can't wait to see them painted up, especially the assault vehicle! How many points does that beast come in at, anyway?

I'm completely with SotonShades here, the Minotaur name is already taken, magnets are your friend, paint wears away, the autocannons will look better if repositioned closer together and your Destroyer does look more like Forge World's Armageddon pattern Basilisk than a Destroyer Tank Hunter. =)

How about naming your assault tank pattern 'Mammoth', or 'Mastodon'? Both names convey power and brute force, plus the Ogres in Fantasy use elephantine creatures, so it fits in with that, or if you just wanted your Ogryns to have come from an icy deathworld or something. Also, war elephants have been used in human history in what I guess would be a similar manner to your assault vehicle: a huge transport that remains terrifyingly dangerous after it has unloaded its passengers. =D

[Cpt Codpiece]

http://i1.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/006/501/dr%20wierd.jpg

hehe cool pic of Fulgrim :D

keep up the builing man, im in the process of doing pre heresy rhinos from modern rhinos and trying to make a mk1 land raider from foam core and plasticard.

[Grenadier]

I'll definitely change the name then. Wasn't aware Minotaur was already taken. I wracked my brain for some Greek name since the Guard loves that so much and that was only thing I came up with that I thought wasn't taken! "Mastodon" sounds perfect I think. It has to be something big and ugly in keeping with the Ogryn transport theme.

To be honest I feared giving it the current weapons might be too much. My natural inclination was to give it a hull lascannon. But that wouldn't seem right for a tank meant to transport assault troops and soften up infantry. So the melta just seemed the perfect choice. This way it could break open bunkers and have a reasonable chance to kill a tank. The short range of the melta I felt was a fair negative to take. This is my first use of a Nova Cannon though. I'll look into repositioning the autocannons. That bit gave me great difficulty. I basically just cut the round drum part off some spare heavy bolter sponsons and glued them together. Then whittled down some spare autocannons from the heavy weapons teams. The trouble was I needed to make the whole housing for them on my own using sheet styrene. And to make them actually swivel was not that hard. I do wish I had a better way to cap the point where they swivel. All I had on me that seemed to work were those little round hubcap thingies you get with Space Marine bikes. I did have the targeters from the Landraider's sponsons but those would just kill the look.

Ah, the Destroyer. It looks that way for a reason. I fell in love with the Death Korps models. And originally I wanted to make my whole Guard army using them. Saved up some money and order some Kriegsmen. And then based on how expensive it'd be to make the army I want I abandoned that idea and settled for cheaper Cadians. Originally the army was going to have a German look. So the Destroyer was built to resemble their Elefant tank destroyer.

But so right you are. When I finally built it I too noticed its resemblance to the enclosed Basilisk. And was quite crestfallen by that. It wasn't an intentional thing!

[Emerald Rose Widow]

I love the tank, its really cool, but hey don't forget about us ladies who peruse the warhammer world, we exist too hehe

[Grenadier]

I know you do. Alas I've never met one. As it is I am the only person in my county, and perhaps a 300 mile radius who plays. And alas again, I lament the lack of females in the Imperial Guard range. To my knowledge there are only three female models. To that end I went outside the GW range and selected female models from Reaper. I then did some basic conversion to them to create an all female squad of Imperial Guard veterans.

Also, I know of at least one 40k player from Canada who is a transsexual.

[Emerald Rose Widow]

I know you do. Alas I've never met one. As it is I am the only person in my county, and perhaps a 300 mile radius who plays. And alas again, I lament the lack of females in the Imperial Guard range. To my knowledge there are only three female models. To that end I went outside the GW range and selected female models from Reaper. I then did some basic conversion to them to create an all female squad of Imperial Guard veterans.

Also, I know of at least one 40k player from Canada who is a transsexual.

Yeah, I love it when people do cool conversions with models to put females in their army, got any pictures of it I would love to see them.

There are only a handful in my area, myself and maybe two more who play actively enough to know they exist.

I am trans as well, so now you know one in washington -giggles-

[Grenadier]

Alas, no pictures. I'm quite proud of them though. They're as sexy as they are well equipped for combat. And I'm banking on their allure to serve as distraction for the guy I sometimes get to combat. This fellow is a true "coozehound" and he has that creepy stare when attractive women pass by. I'm thinking 10 cute female models on the battlefield will unsettle his plan. So now I know two trans players. After reading this very offensive article a woman wrote about 40k players, casting them as uneducated, unthinking, right wing extremists and or ****s I'd love to see how she can explain this.

[Emerald Rose Widow]

Alas, no pictures. I'm quite proud of them though. They're as sexy as they are well equipped for combat. And I'm banking on their allure to serve as distraction for the guy I sometimes get to combat. This fellow is a true "coozehound" and he has that creepy stare when attractive women pass by. I'm thinking 10 cute female models on the battlefield will unsettle his plan. So now I know two trans players. After reading this very offensive article a woman wrote about 40k players, casting them as uneducated, unthinking, right wing extremists and or ****s I'd love to see how she can explain this.

Yeah, bullcrap, I have noticed in my travels that while gamer guys in shops often get the pronouns wrong they are fully kind and accepting to me. Hell I am convinced they only use the wrong pronouns because they arent used to girls being in their shop, so yeah, hehe.

[Grenadier]

I've not been fortunate enough to be around many other games. Just a handful over the years. And then there is this forum. And I've noticed most gamers are pretty intelligent people. Quite a few are very knowledgeable about a wide range of topics ranging from politics, news, and history. And most make great conversationalists. In my short time here in the topics I've become active in the conversations and debates have been great.

Nonetheless that article angered me. I suppose mostly because of the stereotypes for us gamers. She described many of us as lonely introverts rarely going outside. Conjuring images of geeks hunkered over a table painting models. Well, I am a bit of a lonely introvert who doesn't go out much. But that's primarily because I don't fit in where I live at and I've always been a loner by nature anyway.

Her article reminded me when I was a kid and Dungeons and Dragons was under fire. As a kid I had tons of D&D material but nobody to play with. Because the game had been so heavily demonized. Growing up in such a religious area most viewed it as "devil worship." So in some ways this article treated Warhammer 40,000 in the same way. Just some idiot who didn't know what they're talking about casting a huge blanket judgment on a thing.

In the end I'd much rather hang out with folks like you and "geek it up" than anyone else.

[Nosmo75]

I'll definitely change the name then. Wasn't aware Minotaur was already taken. I wracked my brain for some Greek name since the Guard loves that so much and that was only thing I came up with that I thought wasn't taken! "Mastodon" sounds perfect I think. It has to be something big and ugly in keeping with the Ogryn transport theme.

Awesome! Glad I could help with the naming of this frankly incredible-looking tank. ^-^

[Nosmo75]

Yeah, bullcrap, I have noticed in my travels that while gamer guys in shops often get the pronouns wrong they are fully kind and accepting to me. Hell I am convinced they only use the wrong pronouns because they arent used to girls being in their shop, so yeah, hehe.

How do they use the wrong pronouns? Do they refer to your dudewomens as dudemens? =S

[Grenadier]

With any luck I'll be having a battle next weekend. The first in over a year. So I had best paint the Mastodon up!

[Meigeall]

+1 for the ATHF.

[Grenadier]

Aqua Teen Hunger Force?