Will the heresy tarantula turrets work for Stormravens and razorbacks?

[Jamafore]

Good morning,

 

I like the look of the tarantula turrets, and with the Forge World turrets not being available anymore, I was thinking to use them for both Stormravens and Razorbacks.

 

But I am questioning if the will work out of the box or what modifications will be required for them. 

 

Has anyone tried this?

 

Thank you

 

 

[Griefbringer]

That is an interesting idea, though those HH tarantulas are not particularly cheap.

 

I had some spare Razorback turret pieces around, and checked the measurements for them. The turret ring on the hull top measures 26 mm in diameter. The turret base has a matching diameter ring on the underside, while the upper part is 30 mm in diameter - any wider and the detailing in the hull around the turret ring would get on the way (unless you mounted the hull part with turret ring hole the other way around in the Predator-style configuration, in which case this is not a problem).

 

Unfortunately I do not have the HH Tarantula, but I have the Legions Imperialis version, which should measure 1/4 of the bigger version. I also found this review of the HH version with some very useful pictures of the sprue and (partially) assembled models:

 

https://www.tabletopbattles.com/goonhammer-reviews-horus-heresy-tarantula-sentry-guns-and-tarantula-missile-battery/

 

Legions Imperialis Tarantula turret base top measures around 7 mm in diameter, which should equal around 28 mm (+/- something), which would be a good fit for Razorback, being slightly wider than the turret ring. However, my measurement is a bit rough, and the LI and HH kits are cut differently, so I think more precise measurements for the HH Tarantula turret base would be needed before purchase. I would consider the diameter of the top part crucial - if the ring underneath does not quite match with the hull, you could either cut if off and make a replacement (25 mm diameter round base would be pretty close), or widen it a bit by glueing a few small pieces of plastic sprue and then trimming there to fit.

 

(That said, now I am inspired to try spare LI Trarantula turrets on top of Rhino-style vehicles.)

[Jamafore]

Thank you. While they definitely are not cheap, looks like 2 turrets come in the kit, which helps the cost, and hopefully I can find the bits on sites like ebay for cheaper

[Griefbringer]

It would be even better if you could find somebody who has the actual kit and could measure the exact diameters for the turret bottom pieces, but this might require a bit of a hunt since the kit is relatively new (summer 2025). Furthermore, as a static sentry gun it is probably not a great seller - and it does not help that a month later GW released the HH 3.0 Saturnine starter box, which contained even bigger sentry gun (Arachnae), so the (few?) sentry gun enthusiasts out there could also get those quite easily on the second hand market.

 

Alternatively, some of pictures of sprues or individual parts on the Goonhammer website show also some kind of scale or grid, so with a bit of image analysis you could try to determine the diameters with some accuracy (measure the diameter in pixels and then measure a distance on grid in pixels, and apply tiny bit of math to calculate the ratio).

 

For an alternative kind of mounting, you could also try mounting the square bottom part of the platform straight to the Rhino top hatch (instead of the actual Rhino turret ring piece) if you have a spare Rhino, though making it fit nicely would probably require a while lot of work, filing and/filling to make things match.