I've been keeping an eye out on ebay for an old Rogue Trader era Land Raider that wasn't ridiculously expensive, and was finally able to score one for a rather reasonable price. On the downside it definitely needed a little TLC before it would be usable for my Thousand Sons. Once it arrived it was obvious that it needed a thorough soak in Simple Green to remove the rather thickly-applied paint - after three days of alternating between soaking and scrubbing it came to light that the tank had been painted and repainted no less than three times!
No matter how long you soak and scrub however, there's always a wee bit of paint that stubbornly refuses to come off. Nevertheless, this is much, much cleaner than I was expecting. The Lascannons and Heavy Bolters that came with the original kit were a bit too bent and/or broken, so I took a queue from Ron's Deathwing Land Raider and re-purposed some current-era bits to re-arm the tank appropriately.
The side sponsons are a combination of Predator and Land Raider bits, while the Heavy Bolters are leftovers from the countless Chimeras I've built over the years. With the addition of some brass rod to act as a banner pole, it's more or less ready for primer!
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Nice find and good job getting him in order. Looks like a perfectly serviceable machine now.
ReplyDeleteRon, From the Warp
Thanks Ron! The rebuild is totally inspired by your work - the Chimera Heavy Bolters were an inspired addition, I knew as soon as I saw yours back in the day that I'd definitely do something similar!
ReplyDeleteTakes me back, I bought one of those when they were originally released...shame I cut it up (no idea why now).
ReplyDeleteI like it overall, especially the sponsons. Personaly i'm not so keen on the heavy bolters. The position just looked a bit off to me, if you had the bits I think building a new pintle weapon would of looked better, but that is just my personal taste I think.
very nice, I have been hoarding some for my next pre heresy project.
ReplyDeleteI am looking for an empty box for one though......
John
Thanks folks!
ReplyDelete@Rictus - Indeed, I remember being able to buy two to a box for less than $30. Man how I wish I'd hung on to 'em! I tried a couple pintle mounted heavy bolter options (the ones from the Fortress of Redemption, and some from the IG heavy weapon sprues) but the new chunkier weapons just looked out of proportion on this somewhat smaller model.
@SC John - Sounds cool, I look forward to seeing what you come up with!
I really dig the additions to it! The placement of the bolters looks great to me'
ReplyDeleteThanks for the shoutout! The banner looks great on the blog :)
I always had a fondness for this origional LR! That's quite an inspiring conversion, and I think i want to eventually try something like that when I get around to doing my chaos army- thanks for the idea!
ReplyDeleteIs the plastic actually that creamy colour?
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff, it looks like the scale wouldn't actually be so bad! Shorter from the looks of things and a bit taller maybe but it would do fine in a game.
Your conversion bits look great. I think the Chimera heavy bolters are a good choice and you can make an evolutionary line from what you have made here, to the Forge World MkII, to the current edition.
Keen as mustard to see some paint on it!
Looking good! This thing will fit nicely with your Thousand Sons!
ReplyDeleteAlso, like the new banner!
I also love the shiny new banner. Hats off to the designer!
ReplyDeleteThat's a fantastic model, too. I've always wanted one of those old mk. 1 kits.
Thanks very much everyone!
ReplyDelete@LuckyNo.5 - Thanks again for the new banner, I love it!
@Neverness - I always liked the Mk.1 with the wrap-around tracks, and I'm pretty happy with how the newer weapons worked out. It was a pretty simple conversion, though I did need to build up the attachment point on the predator sponson a bit with some sprue and plasticard to give it a solid place to glue.
@Redscorps a.k.a Red - Indeed, the old GW plastic was that sort of cream/eggshell color. The tank is quite a bit shorter length-wise than the current-day Land Raider, though it is a bit taller. I'll try to get a side-by-side comparison once I get some paint on it!
@Oink - Indeed, I was thinking about building another FW heresy-era version, but man that kit is just poorly designed. I ended up getting this Mk.1 for a song, and couldn't pass it up!
@#2501 - Thanks, the new banner really classes up the joint! I trawled eBay for six months looking for a decent Mk.1, but any that looked half decent went for absurd amounts of money. Finally I took a chance on one that looked a bit banged up and was pleased at how well it recovered!