Praetorian Project, mk. II

One of the things that draws me to the Guard can be summed up in one word: Tanks. Not only do the forces of the Imperial Guard get some of the biggest tanks on the 40k battlefield, but in the Epic scale games there are far more massive vehicles available, including one of my personal favorites, the Leviathan Command Carrier:

The incarnation of the guard army that preceded this most recent Mordian 7th redux was a very vehicle heavy force full of fun Forge World models and conversions. Right about the time that I was building the army, BoLS had come out with their Lords of Battle supplement, and I figured I'd try my hand at building a Leviathan in 40k scale, as I was always a fan of the model back when I played Adeptus Titanicus. Without further ado, I broke out the foamcore and cities of death bits and came up with a passable albeit scale-challenged model.



As I have alluded to in earlier posts, it is my intention to create a new leviathan, taking advantage of what I'd learned from making the previous one. I feel that while I got the general shape of the superstructure correct, it was just about 2/3's the size it should have been, and because of that the CoD bits looked awkwardly out of scale with the rest of the model. Since I'm hesitant to rely on foamcore for structure on a vehicle that's going to end up about 10"x9"x14", I've enlisted the help of a woodworker friend of mine to build the new superstructure. I drafted up some simple plans for the basic geometric shapes, and will subsequently detail out the resulting wood superstructure with thin plasticard and CoD bits. Replacing the Leman Russ turret with a Baneblade turret, and being able to space the side pylons further apart should help the overall aesthetic as well.

To that end, I started off with measuring the various detail bits that I intended to use (CoD panels, the various turret collars, etc), then assessed the overall scale and shape of the hull accordingly. Above is the quick sketch I made to help me figure out the scale - following that I drew out a set of full scale templates. When all is said and done,, it's going to be about 1/3 again as long and wide as a Baneblade, and stand about 10" to the top of the Baneblade turret. Other than needing to order up six of the Land Raider Terminus Ultra sprues, most of the decorative bits I'll be using exist in the closet of doom... Once I get the superstructure back, it should be a fairly simple task to decorate it appropriately!

I'm turning over the plans to my woodworking friend this weekend, though since he's only able to work on it in his spare time there is no real completion date for that stage of creation. Further updates on this monstrosity to follow!