Astartes II trailer (2026)

[Evil Eye]

The Stormraven (and all those late-5E to 6E era new Space Marine things with the possible exception of the Stalker/Hunter, which barely counts as it's a 28mm version of an old Epic model rather than a totally new concept like Centurions or the Stormtalon) is not great, it has to be said. The Stormraven would be on shaky ground anyway due to aircraft just straight up not working very well in sub-Apocalypse games, though being a VTOL gunship it's at least less ridiculous as a gaming piece than the ironically much nicer looking Ork or Eldar flyers, but the fact it looks like one of the sillier mid-90s G.I. Joe vehicles firmly cements it as a mistake (in my mind, at least). I think the concept of a smallish VTOL aircraft that can either be a gunship OR a dropship is a good one, like an Astartes Valkyrie, but for it to work it'd need significant redesigning and splitting into a transport and a gunship variant. Honestly that'd be the one case I'd like to see a Primaris replacement for a Firstborn model.

[Magos Takatus]

25 minutes ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Ias for armament, lots of aircraft these days are more heavily armed than tanks.

AC130s are way more heavily armed than any modern tank, and most tanks of the past.

A10 warthog, more heavily armed than tanks, heavily armored, and small engines.

 

as for engine size, they have lift thrusters as well as the engines for horizontal flight, but engine size doesn’t mean much, what matters is how the engines work. A modern V6 engine is likely more powerful than the steam engines on the USS monitor despite being much smaller.

True, but my point is that aircraft tend to be considerably larger than ground vehicles in order to carry an equivalent armament up into the air, and they have a lot less armour as a result.

 

The Abrams tank is approx 32 feet long, the AC-130 is 97 feet long. We are comparing a Land Raider to a Stormbird here.

The A-10 is 53 ft long and a 57ft wingspan to hang munitions from in addition to it's main gun. It also weighs approx 47,000lbs on a close air support mission, which is about 24 US tons. The lightest version of the Abrams was 60 tons. People say the A-10 is extremely well armoured for an aircraft, yes, but it's not a flying tank. Not even close.

 

Let's have a look at how much bigger a Stormraven is compared to a Land Raider, shall we?

 

So, it loses two wounds, a couple of toughness brackets, but it gains an extra front weapon hardpoint, under-wing missile hardpoints and it can carry a Dreadnought on a tow-hook... and now it can fly?

 

As for the comparison between a Steam engine to a car engine, that is fine, but neither the Land Raider or the StormRaven need a bulky boiler to make their power plants work. Granted, the turbines on the Stormraven are larger than the external reactor on the Land Raider, but it doesn't have to lift a Land Raider back into orbit. I can swallow the suspension of disbelief that those engines might be able to propel it into a straight line, but to hover on those little hair dryers? Maybe the thrust is vectored directly from the main engines but's it's still holding up the armour of a medium tank, more guns than a Land Raider, a squad of power armoured soldiers, another vehicle and whatever fuel, ammunition and their weight of the airframe itself. I'm sure you can handwave it away with anti-grav or suspensors or something, but just looking at the model to me expecting that thing to stay in the air is asking a bit much from a purely aesthetic point of view, since comparing the power output of fictional aircraft engines is a bit beyond me.

 

Of course I am not trying to convince you not to like the Stormraven, that would be pointless, I am just saying that compared to the other aircraft in 40k to me the Stormraven and Stormtalon are far too small for what they bring to the table. It makes them look so toy-like to me compared to other dropships like the Vampire, the Orca and so on. Mainstream 40k aircraft are generally a bit tiny for what they are expected to do but the space marine fliers are the most egregious of the bunch.

 

[Evil Eye]

That picture reminded me how patently silly the armament layout is for the Stormraven. I think the most egregious element is the turret, placed on the top of the vehicle where it's going to be pretty worthless; it's unable to point backwards, rendering it useless as a defensive weapon against other aircraft, and being on the top means it has very limited applications against ground targets. Ironically, the Stormtalon's armament layout is far better...but on such a tiny fuselage it looks just as (if not EVEN MORE) stupid.

 

Maybe it's my fetish for interwar armour (and 2-year stint as a volunteer at Tangmere Aviation Museum) but I find a lot of classic "GWisms" with vehicle design far more annoying on aircraft than tanks. Maybe it's because aircraft are a lot harder to design and make functional than an armoured land vehicle, but I can tolerate utterly impractical 40K tanks far more than I can tolerate utterly impractical 40K planes. Case in point, the Malcador's limited-traverse battle cannon mount is completely absurd from a practicality point of view, even compared to the rest of the design being antiquated by the standards of 1930, let alone the 41st millennium. but I absolutely love it as a design; it looks like a vehicle that you could feasibly build a working replica of, and for the setting it fits perfectly. A lot of 40K planes, including the Stormraven, don't even look like they could move, let alone perform well as aerial combat machines. And it's not like GW have never made good looking aircraft for the Imperium either. FW's offerings, despite still obviously being sci-fi vehicles designed for rule of cool rather than serious aerodynamic plausibility, look great for the most part and manage to fit the 40K aesthetic whilst still looking somewhat fliable, at least by sci-fi standards. The Marauder is one of my personal favourites, looking almost exactly like the marriage of modern jet technology with 1940s design standards. The Lightning (especially the old one that made its way into Dawn of War Soulstorm) is another really good one. And hell, the Space Marines have gotten good designs from Forge World and GW proper; the Xiphon is a very nice little sci-fi fighter, and the Corvus Blackstar is genuinely a fantastic design.

 

...All that to say, I really don't like the Stormraven. Doesn't help I associate it with the 5th edition Blood Angels book and the torrent of cheese the spewed forth from it. There were good things to come from that book (the Death Company kit, and in concept the Furioso Librarian even if I never liked the actual sculpt much) but the Stormraven was not one of them.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

2 hours ago, Magos Takatus said:

True, but my point is that aircraft tend to be considerably larger than ground vehicles in order to carry an equivalent armament up into the air, and they have a lot less armour as a result.

 

The Abrams tank is approx 32 feet long, the AC-130 is 97 feet long. We are comparing a Land Raider to a Stormbird here.

The A-10 is 53 ft long and a 57ft wingspan to hang munitions from in addition to it's main gun. It also weighs approx 47,000lbs on a close air support mission, which is about 24 US tons. The lightest version of the Abrams was 60 tons. People say the A-10 is extremely well armoured for an aircraft, yes, but it's not a flying tank. Not even close.

 

Let's have a look at how much bigger a Stormraven is compared to a Land Raider, shall we?

 

So, it loses two wounds, a couple of toughness brackets, but it gains an extra front weapon hardpoint, under-wing missile hardpoints and it can carry a Dreadnought on a tow-hook... and now it can fly?

 

As for the comparison between a Steam engine to a car engine, that is fine, but neither the Land Raider or the StormRaven need a bulky boiler to make their power plants work. Granted, the turbines on the Stormraven are larger than the external reactor on the Land Raider, but it doesn't have to lift a Land Raider back into orbit. I can swallow the suspension of disbelief that those engines might be able to propel it into a straight line, but to hover on those little hair dryers? Maybe the thrust is vectored directly from the main engines but's it's still holding up the armour of a medium tank, more guns than a Land Raider, a squad of power armoured soldiers, another vehicle and whatever fuel, ammunition and their weight of the airframe itself. I'm sure you can handwave it away with anti-grav or suspensors or something, but just looking at the model to me expecting that thing to stay in the air is asking a bit much from a purely aesthetic point of view, since comparing the power output of fictional aircraft engines is a bit beyond me.

 

Of course I am not trying to convince you not to like the Stormraven, that would be pointless, I am just saying that compared to the other aircraft in 40k to me the Stormraven and Stormtalon are far too small for what they bring to the table. It makes them look so toy-like to me compared to other dropships like the Vampire, the Orca and so on. Mainstream 40k aircraft are generally a bit tiny for what they are expected to do but the space marine fliers are the most egregious of the bunch.

 

My point about engines is technology makes a big difference in power. That being said the engines on an SR are not small by any means. Relative to fuselage size I’d say it appears to have larger engines than an A10

 

the next part of your complaint seems to largely be that vehicles in 40K aren’t properly to scale…like not even remotely.

 

google’s AI summary puts LRs at 10.3 meters long and 6.1 meters wide.

SR is listed as 30 meters long and has a wingspan of 20meters.

 

so yes a stormraven is significantly larger than a landraider.

Edited yesterday at 05:26 PM by Inquisitor_Lensoven

[Ayatollah_of_Rock_n_Rolla]

50 minutes ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

My point about engines is technology makes a big difference in power. That being said the engines on an SR are not small by any means. Relative to fuselage size I’d say it appears to have larger engines than an A10

 

the next part of your complaint seems to largely be that vehicles in 40K aren’t properly to scale…like not even remotely.

 

google’s AI summary puts LRs at 10.3 meters long and 6.1 meters wide.

SR is listed as 30 meters long and has a wingspan of 20meters.

 

so yes a stormraven is significantly larger than a landraider.

 

Come on man. Even Thunderhawk is not 30m long, while Storm Eagle (i.e. longer and way better looking Storm Raven) is 18m long with 11m wingspan. Vehicles are in scale to each other within a model line and SR is simply an absolute potato.

[Magos Takatus]

5 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

My point about engines is technology makes a big difference in power. That being said the engines on an SR are not small by any means. Relative to fuselage size I’d say it appears to have larger engines than an A10

 

the next part of your complaint seems to largely be that vehicles in 40K aren’t properly to scale…like not even remotely.

 

google’s AI summary puts LRs at 10.3 meters long and 6.1 meters wide.

SR is listed as 30 meters long and has a wingspan of 20meters.

 

so yes a stormraven is significantly larger than a landraider.

If this was the case, then those pilots would be abnormally large when the model was scaled up. Like, they would make Primaris marines look tiny. Ogryn sized probably. Google's AI summary is unreliable unfortunately. I found that out today. When I was looking up the sizes of the C-130 transport (the same airframe as the AC-130 gunship as you know), and the Abrams tank, the AI summary claimed that the C-130 could comfortably carry an Abrams tank in it's cargo hold. Further research told me that this simply was not the case. As a piece of friendly advice I'd suggest giving the AI summary function a wide berth until it's capable of fact-checking itself. 

[Evil Eye]

Yeah, Google's AI is...notoriously bad. AI chatbots can be useful for helping with these sorts of things but Google managed to code an Abominable Intelligence so mind-numbingly crap it suggested using glue to keep pizza toppings from falling off.

 

The long and short of it with 40K vehicles is that the scale is completely screwed even by the standards of 40K, try not to think about it too hard.

[Nephaston]

34 minutes ago, Magos Takatus said:

If this was the case, then those pilots would be abnormally large when the model was scaled up.

Thing is, they kept any crew at infantry scale despite being to large for the respective vehicle, just look at all the too small hatches on rhinos that couldn't let any marine actually pass through them.

And they can't increase the size of any of them without making them unplayable.

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

5 hours ago, Magos Takatus said:

If this was the case, then those pilots would be abnormally large when the model was scaled up. Like, they would make Primaris marines look tiny. Ogryn sized probably. Google's AI summary is unreliable unfortunately. I found that out today. When I was looking up the sizes of the C-130 transport (the same airframe as the AC-130 gunship as you know), and the Abrams tank, the AI summary claimed that the C-130 could comfortably carry an Abrams tank in it's cargo hold. Further research told me that this simply was not the case. As a piece of friendly advice I'd suggest giving the AI summary function a wide berth until it's capable of fact-checking itself. 

Again, you’re crying over scale…which is fkt in 40K 

4 hours ago, Nephaston said:

Thing is, they kept any crew at infantry scale despite being to large for the respective vehicle, just look at all the too small hatches on rhinos that couldn't let any marine actually pass through them.

And they can't increase the size of any of them without making them unplayable.

Right? Is anyone really going to argue they could actually fit more than 3 or for intercessors in the back of an impulsor without bases?

[Gorgoff]

The Scythes looks so great in this video. 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

And just touching on the SR size if it’s not 30m long, and it is much shorter GW screwed up.

 

an MI-8 helicopter is 83’ (25.3m)

sea stallion is 88’ (26.8m)

 

 

[Magos Takatus]

11 hours ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Again, you’re crying over scale…which is fkt in 40K 

Right? Is anyone really going to argue they could actually fit more than 3 or for intercessors in the back of an impulsor without bases?

You say "again, I'm crying over scale" as if it was continual. What I was telling you was that while I was fact-checking the scales of the vehicles you mentioned I discovered how poor the Google AI is. I'm not entirely sure what the hostility is for, I'm not "crying" about anything, I was just talking about a very silly model. I'm not going to lose sleep over it. 

[Gorgoff]

What that scale discussion has to do with the upcoming probably mind blowing awesome Astartes series I want to know. 

[Nephaston]

36 minutes ago, Gorgoff said:

What that scale discussion has to do with the upcoming probably mind blowing awesome Astartes series I want to know. 

Just one of the dozens of side discussions that LSM-centric discussion can spawn. Probably enough to sort via d20 now that I think about it.