The Neurode Crusade - Updates and Fixes to HQs and Elites

[BayOkuz]

Mate your skill is amazing. very Well done! I love the ideas on there, 

[Brother Carpenter]

Ha I remember the UM chapter in the WB. It was so insipring then.

 

Our lore is focueesd on massed bodies, either zerg rushing or shooting and massed armoured assaults, hence the construction of the LRC, based upon salvaged weapons from destroyed rhino's, to break through the heretic defences in the hives.

 

So I can see running more LR's in a BT force.

 

I always envisaged a mechanised BT force comprising of a core with LR and LRC's/redeemers with a screen of rhino esque tanks surrounding it as transports and mbt's (predators).

 

I wanted to buid a force like that, but got stranded. I did get me a LR hyperios and a LR prometheus as specialised tanks.

 

Keep up the Crusade!

(I just started on a firstborn devastator squad)

 

Rinke

Edited October 21, 2021 by Brother Carpenter

[Majkhel]

Not exactly Black Templar-y but more of a general thought:
1. Land Raiders are rare. Both in terms of existing units as well as forge worlds that have plans and resources required for their construction. It's not a default transport option for any chapter as that role is filled by Rhinos and Razorbacks. You can safely assume that they will be reserved for Veterans, especially those in Terminator armor. Personally I would count my needs based on that more than anything else and then possibly even reduce the number by some kind of the rarity factor if I wanted to be on the fluff side.

 

2. Repulsors are definitely more common as they are a new design and in possession of various parties around the galaxy. That techno-heretic Cawl is also giving away their schematics left and right and Guilliman has basically spread them everywhere along the way of his Indomitus Crusade.

 

Soooooo as with all things - it depends on your preference. From a fluff point of view you should keep the number of LRs relatively small due to their rarity, perhaps bigger because: Black Templars If you want to represent Repulsors with them, you can increase the number significantly as they are more common.

All this obviously completely doesn't factor in your potential gaming needs or the need to possess as many LRs as you like like

Edited October 21, 2021 by Majkhel

[Brother Christopher]

Well, that's not helpful but definitely insightful. The thing is that I probably should really focus first on finishing what I 'have' and think about adding more LR-sized vehicles later - that seems like a sound plan.

 

I suppose that I shouldn't worry too much about the number of LRs and the four will have to do for now. It seems justifiable from the general lore perspective (Land Raiders being relatively rare and/or relics) and from the perspective of my crusade's background; after all, they're supposed to be involved in a long and resource-draining conflict and cut off from supplies.

 

And from a pragmatic standpoint, for gaming purposes, I can't imagine a scenario in which I were to field more than one LR... Which is sad ;)

[Urkh]

You have as many land raiders as I have drop pods, haha.

[Brother Carpenter]

And from a pragmatic standpoint, for gaming purposes, I can't imagine a scenario in which I were to field more than one LR... Which is sad

 

I once participated in a Dutch GT (in 2005 or so) when I went up against someone with 2 Chaos LR's filled with zerkers.

By the then ruleset it was rather frightening to face off against. But 1/3 of his army points were in those 2 landraiders (excluding the bezerkers)

Talk about all your eggs in a basket situation..

Edited October 22, 2021 by Brother Carpenter

[SWORD BROTHER RYAN]

My thought, keep the number where it is. It's temping to get more, but as you said, running more than 1 in a game is not very feasible, especially given the trend these days for big scary vehicles to be shot off the board rather quickly (turns 1 or 2). To reiterate some other posts as well, lore does go into great detail about the rarity of these venerable machines, and a crusade with 4 of them could be considered a very well appointed force indeed. It sounds to me like you have plenty of other transport options that would cover you very well both in game and in lore. Just my 2 thrones.

[Brother Christopher]

You have as many land raiders as I have drop pods, haha.

 

Haha, well - I keep on repeating that I have (had) a problem ;)

 

 

And from a pragmatic standpoint, for gaming purposes, I can't imagine a scenario in which I were to field more than one LR... Which is sad

 

I once participated in a Dutch GT (in 2005 or so) when I went up against someone with 2 Chaos LR's filled with zerkers.

By the then ruleset it was rather frightening to face off against. But 1/3 of his army points were in those 2 landraiders (excluding the bezerkers)

Talk about all your eggs in a basket situation..

 

 

You're right, back in 2005, it might have been pretty scary; I remember that I used to run 1-2 LRC full of Crusaders and/or Hammerators to good effect. It was pretty fun to have a "fluffy" force with a LRC which wasn't an obvious handicap, at least in my gaming group.

 

My thought, keep the number where it is. It's temping to get more, but as you said, running more than 1 in a game is not very feasible, especially given the trend these days for big scary vehicles to be shot off the board rather quickly (turns 1 or 2). To reiterate some other posts as well, lore does go into great detail about the rarity of these venerable machines, and a crusade with 4 of them could be considered a very well appointed force indeed. It sounds to me like you have plenty of other transport options that would cover you very well both in game and in lore. Just my 2 thrones.

 

Oh, my! Thank you ;) This is what I wanted to hear. I mean, I've been trying to justify the number of models in my crusade's fluff along these lines, but it's way better to hear an impartial opinion confirming one's thoughts.

 

I must also admit that I feel amused by how much of my attention recently went to my plastic tanks. To combat me wasting the Emperor's currency on dwelling on things purely hypothetical, I started working on the turret for my Land Raider Repulsor. Currently, I only have the rough general shape of the thing. I downscaled the original Repulsor Executioner turret to 70% and I think it will work pretty well on a LR body; I found the Executioner turret to be too large, while the one on the stock Repulsor to be too small. I am also going to introduce more changes;

- I will be removing the rear-facing storm bolters and moving them... somewhere else; I don't know yet where exactly, but I'm considering making small SB-turrets and placing them on the top armour panels, right behind the lights (provided that the barrel of the main gun won't know on them when aiming at a downward angle);

- I will make a centre-mounted main gun with a co-axial heavy stubber; the onslaught cannon will probably be a separate, small turret on top of the main turret or a pintle-mounted.

 

These are the initial principles. I'm not sure where the creative process will take me, yet - which is kind of exciting!

[Brother Christopher]

Okay, so I got around to start my Land Raider Repulsor project. I feel I might have made a mistake, though. While from a technical point of view, most of my ideas are or will be successful, I'm not sure about the look of a turret on a Land Raider. I'm extremely happy that I downscaled the Repulsor Executioner turret; it's a bit on the large side as it is and a larger one would've been off.

 

Please note that what you see in the photos below is initial WIP stuff held together by gravity and blu tack. What I managed to do so far:

- split the top track armour from and build the 'sides' as separate pieces (not held together by the 'roof' as in the original);

- remove parts of the power-plant mount in the back to reduce the thickness of the thing;

- extend the power plant which will be placed somewhere on top of the vehicle, like the exhaust of the original Repulsor;

- build the base shape of the turret and add some detailing.

 

For posterity, an early photo showing the reinforced interior of the turret to make it super-sturdy:

 

Details on the front of the turret:

 

Alterations of the back of the LR:

 

Power plant installed on top of the tank:

 

Turret roughly placed on top of the tank; please not that the front will also be extensively nodified and ultimately the turret will be mounted on slightly elevated additional armour, like in the original Repulsor.

 

 

Any words of encouragement are most welcome! I mean, I'm having immense fun doing conversion work and scratch building and I'm sure that I will continue with this project, but I feel that there's something fundamentally wrong with this turret on top of a LR chassis. Regardless, in the worst-case scenario, I will use the modified model as a LR Achilles.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Interesting. Will the resulting vehicle have ramps on both ends, or will you seal up the frontal assault ramp so you may mount heavy weapons and/or use the vehicle as a battering ram?

[Marshal Reinhard]

So is the end goal to have a repulsor-esque, tracked land raider? Ie land raider with repulsor weapons and turret while grounded?

[Brother Christopher]

Interesting. Will the resulting vehicle have ramps on both ends, or will you seal up the frontal assault ramp so you may mount heavy weapons and/or use the vehicle as a battering ram?

 

I will seal up the front; I want to recreate the front armour of a LR Achilles - I've always liked the industrialish look of it.

 

So is the end goal to have a repulsor-esque, tracked land raider? Ie land raider with repulsor weapons and turret while grounded?

Yes, exactly that. I want to have a Repulsor proxy for my Firstborn army and have some fun converting the thing. I also intend to magnetise bits of my modified vehicle to use and/or display it as a LR Achilles/Redeemer (with the turret removed and added Flamestorm cannon sponsons).

[Majkhel]

...t I feel that there's something fundamentally wrong with this turret on top of a LR chassis...

Of course there is. LR is based on a general shape of first WWI tanks (only backwards) and those did not have turrets. If you place a turret on top, you will get an early WWII tank's shape.

Additionally Repulsor is really poor, over-cluttered design. Repulsor Executioner is only better because of it's noticeably bigger turret (although still over-cluttered ). There are quite fun and imo successful conversion of Repulsor into LRs on the net. They mostly remove the turret altogether

If I can throw-in something, I think for the turret to work it needs to be bigger still (wider, longer, not taller) or much, much smaller (a remote operated one, like the ones we have for Razorbacks)

 

 

Edited October 25, 2021 by Majkhel

[Brother Christopher]

Thaks for the feedback! I must say, I did my homework and seen these images that you've posted, among other things. For some reason, I really wanted to keep the turret - probably to make it apparent when using the vehicle in a game as a Repulsor proxy. I love the automated tarantula-like turrets and had a very advanced idea how to make one for a regular Repulsor loadeout, but I don't think it would work for the Executioner pattern.

 

I will be extending the length of the turret for sure. Regarding width, I might add more armour plating once I'll see how it looks when installed on its proper mount and in its proper/final position; I probably should move it further back on the hull, maybe to make its front armour slope match that of the hull. I think that I'll also get rid of some of the weapons for a cleaner look.

[tvih]

I sometimes feel I'm too old for this stuff. With today's experience, I wouldn't have gotten into 40K or at least not to the extent I did. However, despite my better judgement, I'm not a quitter and I badly want to have a painted army to showcase, one that I used to dream about and that I actually bought, but have greatly neglected. Thank the Emperor for Primaris releases that helped me put an end my purchases and actually start assembling and painting models.

I know the feeling... about getting into 40k that is, and in my case doing a far too deep a dive in terms of model purchases. Especially as such a big portion of my marines are now near-pointless post-Primaris. Of course there are still older models I love, and plenty of new ones such as the plastic Sisters... but can't but help feel that I'm spending too much by a huge factor for how much (little) I actually play - and how mediocre the game itself is - considering my multitude of armies. And I don't even like painting - I like getting models finished, but not what it takes to get there... and they say it's about the journey and not the destination, pfft!

 

But yeah, being so far down the rabbit hole it's kinda pointless to quit. Some might call it a sunk cost fallacy, but what I'd get out of selling things would be basically no recompense for the time and effort spent - or even the money, really. But with what I know now... even if I didn't stay out altogether, I'd pretty much skip the hobby 'til 2019 as far as models go, then start with Sisters first and maybe Primaris Templars after that. Probably just skip Guard, Orks, fledgling Necrons, CF etc altogether aside from maybe some showcase models or such. Not that I don't like them, but indeed the time and money, and the subpar game... sigh. Not that I wouldn't have spent it on something equally "frivolous" even if I never got into 40k, mind you.

 

So going forward I just try to be at least a little more sensible with the purchases for any given army, but even then there's still over 800€ in the acquisition queue despite the yuuuge backlog  Gotta try my best to delay the ones I can't work on yet. But on the upside I've painted almost all of my plastic Sisters now and thus can focus more on the new BT stuff, so at least that's something.

 

(P.S. sorry for going off the rails in your thread - damned plastic crack problems!)

Edited October 25, 2021 by tvih

[Brother Christopher]

No prob, tvih! I appreciate your feedback. It does seem that we are in the same boat, so to speak, and this has a very positive, therapeutic effect on me. I find it very helpful to know that there are other people with similar thoughts and outlooks on certain things. The major difference between us probably is that I've invested all the time, money and collecting efforts into one army while you - quite wisely - split them between forces. We also appear to share a certain dissatisfaction with the game, which further makes it difficult to justify having painted collections of models. But what can one do? This indeed is a case study of the sunk cost fallacy in a hobby!

 

I mean, now and again (like admittedly now) I feel tempted to just let it all go and either box the army up and place the models in stasis for an indefinite period (like they don't exist) or sell them altogether; however, I've come to realise that these ideas usually pop up when I'm not in a good mood / struggle mentally with real-life stuff so I'm conscious and cautious enough not to make any rash decisions under the circumstances.

 

Oh, and I childishly still hope that one day, at least the game will be more fun or at least less complex ;)

[tvih]

Yeah, being chronically depressed and so forth really doesn't help with being happy with one's decisions in life, hobby stuff included, that's for sure! It also makes the painting tasks seem so insurmountable. Especially when I'm slow on the best of days. I just wasted/spent 16+ hours painting a Hospitaller and Morvenn Vahl for my Sisters. Sigh. Didn't help that painting the former in subcomponents turned out to be a terrible idea, because gluing it after painting caused all sorts of problems and a lot more work. Kinda like with my Repentia. Also the white robe was a total pain in the ass as expected and after a couple of hours at least spent on that alone still doesn't look great, which makes the upcoming task of tackling white Templar tabards all the more unpleasant...

 

And indeed, a fool's hope it may be but a hope nonetheless. Like initially 9th seemed great on paper initially, but honestly so many things wrong with in practice. And ever more complex, and I just can't keep it all in my head. Soon you'll probably need a PhD in theoretical physics or something to even manage the basics, I reckon.

[9x19 Parabellum]

 Also the white robe was a total pain in the ass as expected and after a couple of hours at least spent on that alone still doesn't look great, which makes the upcoming task of tackling white Templar tabards all the more unpleasant...

 

Bro! Don't make it more difficult than it needs to be!  Ushabti bone layer, agrax wash (lightly...don't let is get all pooled up) and then Ushabti bone again! Done.  I know it sounds too good to be true but mine look great.

Edited October 26, 2021 by 9x19 Parabellum

[Brother Christopher]

Yeah, being chronically depressed and so forth really doesn't help with being happy with one's decisions in life, hobby stuff included, that's for sure! It also makes the painting tasks seem so insurmountable. Especially when I'm slow on the best of days. I just wasted/spent 16+ hours painting a Hospitaller and Morvenn Vahl for my Sisters. Sigh. Didn't help that painting the former in subcomponents turned out to be a terrible idea, because gluing it after painting caused all sorts of problems and a lot more work. Kinda like with my Repentia. Also the white robe was a total pain in the ass as expected and after a couple of hours at least spent on that alone still doesn't look great, which makes the upcoming task of tackling white Templar tabards all the more unpleasant...

 

And indeed, a fool's hope it may be but a hope nonetheless. Like initially 9th seemed great on paper initially, but honestly so many things wrong with in practice. And ever more complex, and I just can't keep it all in my head. Soon you'll probably need a PhD in theoretical physics or something to even manage the basics, I reckon.

I'm sorry to hear about your mental health! I do hope that you find enjoyment in the hobby - your models look great and you should take pride in them, even if they take a long time to finish. Sometimes it's all too easy to fall into the trap of considering hobby time as wasted time and the output as not adequate to the time investment, but who cares! The 16+ hours seems like a lot, though ;) I'll remember that and maybe stop worrying about my pace of painting that much ;)

 

Painting white tabards must be a pain in the neck. I'd highly recommend switching to beige tabards or using a very light grey highlighted with actual white for white-ish tabards.

 

I also share your view on rules. The beginnings of 8th and 9th editions were great, but everything starts to fall apart pretty quickly while GW starts to stack rules up and codex creep kicks in. I know that people take enjoyment in the gaming red tape - in finding the right configurations and exploits. I also sometimes find it satisfying, but I rarely find it worth my time. Especially since one can easily make a game-breaking mistake at the stage of building a list - an error that cannot be amended till another game - which can be quite disheartening, especially if you fail the dice roll-off to find out who goes first.

 

All of this aside - let's keep on Crusading and finding the good things in the situation we're in ;)

[tvih]

Bro! Don't make it more difficult than it needs to be!  Ushabti bone layer, agrax wash (lightly...don't let is get all pooled up) and then Ushabti bone again! Done.  I know it sounds too good to be true but mine look great.

It's not white though, and my obsessive nature kicks in Usually trying to do off-white I just manage to make it look dirty, especially with washes involved. Which works for parchments and purity seals, but not so much for my preference in cloth (at least when the rest of the model isn't weathered, which mine aren't because I've not managed to make it look good so far). It's actually rather ridiculous that as I mused in my own thread, my first tabards nine years ago were better than any of my newer attempts. Haha.

 

Especially since one can easily make a game-breaking mistake at the stage of building a list - an error that cannot be amended till another game - which can be quite disheartening, especially if you fail the dice roll-off to find out who goes first.

When building the list, picking secondaries, deployment, roll-off, CP management... so many potential points of failure even before the real battle begins. Too much destructive power makes the game far too unforgiving, even at the casual level. My last battle was with CF against Sisters, and as soon as I saw what he had I knew it was going to be a loss despite it not even being a tournament list. Spending 4 hours tossing dice just to confirm the foregone result isn't all that nice. (And no, I didn't give up and make it a self-fulfilling prophecy, hence the game dragged needlessly.)

[Urkh]

For tabards, I go talarn sand, ushabti bone (these two for depth), ulthuan grey ( main color), white scar (highlight). Makes a white tabard with depth and good highlights I feel. I just need to actually get better at edge highlighting them, haha.

[SWORD BROTHER RYAN]

Yeah, being chronically depressed and so forth really doesn't help with being happy with one's decisions in life, hobby stuff included, that's for sure! It also makes the painting tasks seem so insurmountable. Especially when I'm slow on the best of days. I just wasted/spent 16+ hours painting a Hospitaller and Morvenn Vahl for my Sisters. Sigh. Didn't help that painting the former in subcomponents turned out to be a terrible idea, because gluing it after painting caused all sorts of problems and a lot more work. Kinda like with my Repentia. Also the white robe was a total pain in the ass as expected and after a couple of hours at least spent on that alone still doesn't look great, which makes the upcoming task of tackling white Templar tabards all the more unpleasant...

 

And indeed, a fool's hope it may be but a hope nonetheless. Like initially 9th seemed great on paper initially, but honestly so many things wrong with in practice. And ever more complex, and I just can't keep it all in my head. Soon you'll probably need a PhD in theoretical physics or something to even manage the basics, I reckon.

 

I found a hack for white and off-white that really works well. Use a bit of 'Ard Coat or other similar gloss medium, mixed just slightly (like 1/3 gloss to paint). Play around with the mix, and it does make the white a bit more satin-like in finish, but it goes a on LOT smoother. Might make things go better, and I know it makes me feel great when I finish a model that looks good.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

I find Corax White is incredibly underrated. Its the best base white GW do. It covers well over dark colours, so you don't need as many layers (and less loss of detail).

Its not full on WHITE, so takes a highlight well.

Its well worth a try if you want white, as opposed to bone/tan.

[Urkh]

I actually recently picked up a coral white to try it out. I just haven't had a chance to use it yet!

[War of the Eagle]

Love to see where your Land-pulsor goes. Was thinking of making one for my BT force.

 

I made a land-pulsor already for my raptors army if youd like to see it.