BB: Scratch building a Truescale Rhino; into the deep end!

[Blissful Brushes]

No out and out modelling just yet in this page; there will be, it's just very early days at the moment.

 

For now I could just do with a little bit of advice as I draw up the plans for this monstrosity.

 

To start then, what we know about the Rhino, versus what the model actually offers:

- The Rhino is meant to have the transport capacity for 10 marines, a driver and ideally a small ammo/weapon cache for rapidly advancing formations. It has two side exits, the top access and a rear ramp. Weapon-wise, it has a remote-operated weapon, usually a bolter of some description on the top, and the option for a pintle mounted weapon at one of the access hatches.

 

+ Onto the model itself then, the model is still far too short: a standard marine is virtually the same height as the rhino, and that's in the customary squatting position. The floor of the model is too low as well, tracked vehicles tend to have fairly good clearance because of the terrain that they are designed to be able to operate through, wrecking the underside of the chassis is not ideal.

 

+ Length-wise, again the model is a bit short. Shoulder to shoulder, you can fit three marines before the door to the driver's compartment, allowing for a total of six marines to be transported, and that's without leaving the side exits clear.

 

 

The crux of my problem, however, is more than just a simple stretching of the rhino, because my marines are truescaled. So I drew up a rough plan of the required proportions for the storage of the marines, and excluding a gap for the sides (I've just made it a larger cradle to allow the marine to turn around and open the door), I've come up with some rough proportions and it's huge. It's going to be bigger than a Land Raider, so it should be a nice project to break me into scratch building!

 

The next few updates are going to be focussed around the design of the model and mocking up templates for me to to use. I'm hoping to keep some of the more recognisable features in place, but give it my own twist and make it reflect a bit better what I think an APC for a Legion army should look like.

 

In purely gaming terms, I don't think there're any advantages in having it that big - a bit more cover, but then it's a target like no other...so it swings in roundabouts I suppose.

 

Hopefully this evening I should have some basic concepts drawn up!

 

Any suggestions about materials, design etc. are more than welcome; I am well aware that I am diving head first into the deep end with no arm bands!

[Grimm.]

You sir, are nuts but I commend your bravery. Very interested to see the results of your work.

 

I've had the conversation of what size the vehicles should be with a GW blueshirt... we agreed to disagree.

Based on leaving marines as stock then realistically the rhino should be as big as a land raider and a land raider should be as big as a baneblade and so on. ..

 

So good luck.

[Astartes-ULTRA]

I'd be very interested to see what you come up with, being a fellow true-scaler and all.

 

I like Space Marines, always have and never really bothered with anything else. It's just a crying shame that GW didnt size them right in the beginning but hey that will mean that if you do your troops/tanks will always look unique amongst other SM armies.

 

If I can help I will, good luck brother.

[Grotsmasha]

Best of luck

I went the LR route a few years back,

and Machinator also did some as well based on the actual kits HERE.

Cheers,

Jono

[Yodhrin]

Ahoy BB, an ambitious project, one I've spent a great deal of time thinking about myself. I've been using a baseline measurement of 32mm as the total height of a "normal" human male standing upright(it seemed to be the best compromise to allow the use of the most models with the least conversion work, given GW's "heroic 28mm" models tend to end up around 29-32mm tall and a few "32mm" ranges[measured to the eyes rather than top of head] can be shortened easily without completely ruining the proportions), which I defined as 6 feet tall purely because the average is already trending towards that, and a round number is easier to work with when doing conversions from imperial to metric and back. And yes, I know, before fans of "tallscale" jump all over me again, I know those two numbers are totally arbitrary; to my mind they're logical, and BB can take or leave them as he sees fit.

 

I see Marines as being approx 7.5' tall in full armour(and before anyone jumps on me for that one - it's a nice compromise between the IMO outdated "They're 7 feet and not a nanometer taller, because the Holy Prophet J says so!" view, and the fact that the modern artwork and fiction obviously depict them as taller than 7', plus it's an almost perfect height once converted into scale for truescale Marines based on plastic Terminator legs).

 

However, determining the actual size to make the model is troubling. If we use the numbers from the "technical readouts" in IA2 and plug in the above numbers we get;

 

Length: 6.6m - 116mm long

Height: 3.6m - 63mm tall

Width: 4.5m - 79mm wide

 

((If 32mm is equivalent to 6' in-scale, and 6' is equivalent to 1.83m in-RL:

 

6.6/1.83 = 3.61, x32 = 115.5

3.6/1.83 = 1.97, x32 = 63

4.5/1.83 = 2.46, x32 = 78.7))

 

That seems pretty close to the actual kit, from memory at least. To know whether it's actually feasible to fit them inside the chassis while still accounting for the interior layout, we'd need exact measurements of the model interior so we can determine the volume.

[Blackadder]

Of course now you come up with this project now that my T'hawk is built to accommodate a standard GW Rhino. So you figure a Landraider size will be the correct proportion?

I'll be watching this with interest...........