Tips for vehicles

[Shard0808]

So having seen the quite fantastic 54mm scale vehicles in use at conclave events (Marco's rhino if particular note) I have decided to try my hand at creating a transport vehicle for Inquisitor Shal'tan's war party sometime in the near future. Naturally an armoured APC would be a discerning Inquisitor's first choice, but as it's already been done I was thinking of going for something similar to the Elysian Tauros Venator:

As this would be my first crack at a vehicle i was hoping for suggestions from the more experienced forum members on where to start I plan on it being quite a lengthy project, though I will of course keep the forum updated as I go.

Thoughts?

[MarcoSkoll]

Well, firstly, check out Kaled's "Reach for the Sky" article on Dark Magenta - this details some of his construction of the Valkyrie and Arvus.

I'd suggest that it's a very good idea to start with a good set of blueprints (the papercraft Yahoo group can be useful, although I personally mostly just measured from a spare 28mm Rhino), and a working knowledge of geometric calculation - making parts right the first time will save on a lot of effort filling large gaps.
(I did still end up having to fill a couple of rather large gaps on the Rhino though, because I'd cut the armour for the top of the tracks narrower than the tracks and didn't realise it at the time).

As far as a choice of building materials, you'll want mostly 1mm plasticard, with 2mm for some larger and more structural bits (example: the base plate and two bottom front plates on the Rhino are 2mm, to give the central body strength without having to fill up the cargo area with bracing), and 0.5mm for surface detailing. Lots of rod for cutting into rivets is good too, and tubing doesn't go amiss either.
Sometimes balsa is useful, although the surface texture shows up after painting and means it's more of a "structural piece" (or for finishing mostly hidden areas to "mallet quality"*)

*Mallet quality (Mah-let kwal-e-tea) - noun - A quality level that will pass cursory inspection. If anyone bends down to take a closer look, you clobber them over the head with a mallet.

As far as tyres, definitely take a trip to your local toy store and take a look at what they've got there. Making those by hand would be daft.

~~~~~

As far as the Venator specifically though... I do see a few problems.

The curved roll-cage (and other such stuff) will be a little interesting to achieve - while I have a temperature controlled hot air station that could facilitate bending polystyrene tubing or a mini-blowtorch that could help with brass tube, I'm not seeing a hugely easy way to approach that without those. You might have to cut it squarer, something like the US Army DPV (formerly FAV) - which might be a good source of inspiration.

Still, either way, a open driver's compartment is problematic, as models won't be able to fit in there properly if driving - this limitation is part of why I just decided to use the Rhino's driver compartment for batteries, and the Sentinel (whenever I finish it) will have a fully enclosed armoured compartment; a character can placed to one side of the table and can be "in" the driver's seat without standing awkwardly in it.
A simple fix** here (which would also help with the roll-cage difficulties), would be to replace the driver's compartment with something like on the Land Speeder Tempest.

**Another, but harder, possibility I've considered is hard wired servitor crew, although that's only suitable for certain vehicles.
The Warhound of course side-steps the problem, as PCs can't drive it themselves - only the Princeps can do that (although she and her Moderatii will be removable and have separate "on-foot" models, and the Tech-Priest can just be normally based anyway).

[Radu Lykan]

an option that might work is magnetising the torsos of your retinue, add in some generic sitting legs and it could work. a lot of effort but seeing all your guys riding shotgun would be worth it?