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Marine Autocannons and other Heresy weapons


Ufthak

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Hi all.

 

I heard that the Space Marines during the Horus Heresy used Autocannons, and I'd love to give my IFs a couple. But the Imperial Guard Autocannon is quite a huge thing and looks slightly ridiculous, even with a shortened barrel as shown in the tutorial on BoLS.

The Chaos terminators carry the Reaper Autocannon, which is a lot smaller than the IG one. Now, I was thinking that the standard Marine Autocannon would have looked quite similar to the Reaper, only with a single barrel.

Does anyone have an idea whether there are models which resemble this around? Or how I could make one? Help would be much appreciated...

 

Another question:

During the heresy the SM supposedly used many different strange weapons which can be no longer found in 40K (In the Collected visions I found a picture of Space Wolf scouts in Power Armour and carrying what looked like Autoguns or Lasguns). Has anyone any idea what sort of strange weapons were used and how I could represent them on the models?

As far as the autocannon is concerned, the only versions I have seen are the modified IG version with shortened barrel (as you have mentioned), or the reaper-autocannon. The weapon is meant to be bloody big, so thats probably the main problem!

 

As far as the pictures in Collected Visions go, these are representative of scout or recon units. There are different ways of modelling these, and I have heard of them being used in games in different ways. Looking at these drawings, it would seem that some of these marines did indeed use las-type weapons. While this seems ridiculous to us from a 40k perspective, remember that the legions during the crusade were much more like armies in their own right, and therefore had to have the capacity to act beyond the 'shock troops' of the 40k chapters. Some of these things involved garrison and also recon duties for example - if you want a unit to do the latter, then there is perhaps no weapon less suited to this than the boltgun, which is a weapon designed to obliterate its target and frighten the survivors as much as possible - hardly the weapon most suitable for staying hidden, in which case a las-type weapon would be far more useful.

 

There is also some argument that these pictures are simply a nostalgic reference to some of the RT-era marines who often had lasguns/autoguns amongst other weapons, but I still think that there is a logical argument for them being more than an artists embellishment.

 

Using these practically on the tabletop, you have several options. One would be to have them simply as 'counts as' boltguns. I'm currently constructing a combat squad of recon marines ('counts as' tactical squad) who are camouflaged and using las weapons, and are transported by an arvus-lighter proxy for example. Another way would be to model them as 'long-las' type weapons, and use the rules for scouts to represent them. I'm sure you can think of other examples which might be appropriate, but as one of the things that seperates pre-heresy armies from their 40k equivalents, i think its definately worthwhile to make the effort with it! ^_^

Well you could convert them. I've seen some nice las to auto conversions. Never done one myself mind you. You can just swap the laspack with a boltgun mag, shave off the end of the lasgun and scratch a shell dispeser (or whatever they are called) on the side. I can't for the life of me remember what the holes in the sides of guns, for getting rid of shells, are.

 

Anyway, Autocannons. Best bet if you ask me is the sentinel autocannon. It is much smaller. A lttiel conversion should see it marine like. You could also convert heavy bolter or even missile launchers to have the autocannon ammo and barrel. Just thoughts.

 

Show us a pic when you're done!

@Ufthak - If you really want some Pre-Heresy style autocannons, use the Guard autocannons and convert them to be shoulder mounted, making a slight nod to the 2nd edition Heavy Weapon Marines (Pretty much like the Havoc's Lascannon). The conversion itself should be fairly easy, if the barrel looks out of place, cut out the main part of the barrel (from behind the muzzle of the cannon to just before the brace of the autocannon, making it look more "Marine-portable"). Don't worry about an ammo feed, just keep the drum feed you find in the guard kit.

 

@Wolf Lord Mjolnir - Thats just showing off ;) :devil: (I'm kidding, great conversion).

Beautiful terminator Mjolnir - and I guess you've used the new Steam Knight helmets, haven't you? ;) Autocannon looks good too!

 

Thanks to everyone else for their advice. I guess I'll go for the sentinel autocannon, shorten it and shoulder-mount it, that should work out ;) Thanks everyone!

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