[DeusMortemEst]

Hey there, guys. A few days ago, I had the idea of making gun turrets using some plastic cups I got from an ice cream shop, and when I had the chance to raid my mate's bitz box last night, I found the weapons nesescarry to make one. I thought that I might as well show you how to make them yourselves, as you might have interest in fielding them for own use.

This kind of turrets could be asigned to any of the Imperial forces, Chaos or Orks. If you were to make Tau, Eldar or Necron turrets, you would probably need something quite different looking as a basis in order to give make them appear authentic.

Anyways, here's what you need to make it the way I did:

- A cup with about the same shape and size as the cup I used (about 4 cm tall with a 6 cm diameter), or you can use a biger cup and make it a multi-weapon turret. The cup could be cardboard as well as plastic. (see the first image)

- A piece of cardboard in matching chape and size (second image)

- Weapons, and something to mount them on. (third) You could use about any type of heavy weapon, as long as they seem likely to be mounted on a gun turret. I used a multiple missile launcher and factory fittings (they are of unknown origin, but never mind), but as I said, anything that you have left from a tank or heavy weapons formation can be used. Raid your scrap box!

- Bitz. Again, a good portion of imagination and a wealthy scrap box, as well as some generous friends should do it. Use them to enrich the base, or to add new features to the turret. Smoke launcers, a searchlight and a form of communication transmitter should be as good as compulsory.

Putting it together:

From this stage on, the rest seems pretty obvious. Glue the cup to the cardboard, and glue the weapons to that. If the edges on the cup are as high as on the one I used, it would be a good idea to glue the weapon mount onto a 4mm slotbase first. If it's hard to glue the bits directly onto the cup, use a cardbard sheet in between them.

For the communicator-thingy on the platform, I simply cut and Imperial Guard vox caster in two and glued each of the sides into the back half of and old space Marine terminator torso.

Also, you should feel free to decorate the turret to your liking. I added a piece of cloth on the side of the turret, but you might as well also add banners, chapter icons, sandbags and weaponry.

On the forth image, you can see what the turret looked like when I was finished with the asembly and basing.

*If you see this before part two is posted, don't reply yet. It will be there in a moment*

 

[DeusMortemEst]

Then, I went on to painting it. The whole thing was sprayed chaos black, and the sand was drybrushed with scorched brown.

The rusty barrel and metal sheet had a basecoat of scorched brown applied to them, before being drybrushed with boltgun metal and given a heavy wash of chestnut ink.

The turret itself had its paint applied in quite unusual manner. First, I painted a thick layer of boltgun metal onto it, and smudged it out with my finger. By doing this, I made it appear like the armour had been scratched, damaged and burned at the random patches where the paint were scarce. Then, I gave it some liberal splashes of black and chestnut ink (primarily around the scratches/dins and down by the ground, respectively.

The gun itself should be painted in the colour of the army it belongs to. The main colour of my army is black, and I hence drybrushed codex grey over the undercoat, and washed it with black ink. The ends of the missile launcher were drybrushed boltgun metal and washed chestnut, to give them a sooty and burned appearance.

As I paint all the cloth in my army dark green, I did the same to the cloth on the side - a basecoat of dark angels green drybrushed with a mix of dark angels green and bleached bone.

Lastly, I added some transfers to the turret walls. They originated from the Imperial Guard veichle transfer sheet, and gave a nice finish to it all.

On the images bellow, you can see the finished turret, along with one of my veteran marines for size comparision.

Oh, and also, since I'd love to use these in a game: are there any existing rules for such turrets? If not, could anyone help me inventing some?

- All response is dearly apreciated. :victory:

 

[Red Orc]

I really like it - nice job!

As for rules, depends what you want to do. It could be a kill-team objective (Ork kommandos have to plant charges without da oomies seeing them for instance), or it could the object of a ... wotsitsname mission where you have to hold the centreground (is it 'take and hold'? I forget), so you could just treat it essentially as a terrain peice; or if you want to fire it, why not start with the rules for a whirlwind, and take it from there? That seems like the closest match in terms of SM armoury.

 

[DeusMortemEst]

I really like it - nice job!

As for rules, depends what you want to do. It could be a kill-team objective (Ork kommandos have to plant charges without da oomies seeing them for instance), or it could the object of a ... wotsitsname mission where you have to hold the centreground (is it 'take and hold'? I forget), so you could just treat it essentially as a terrain peice; or if you want to fire it, why not start with the rules for a whirlwind, and take it from there? That seems like the closest match in terms of SM armoury.

Thanks! ^^

Well, maybe it could be treated as the whirlwind, but without the ability to move anywhere. But also, the regular armour can't count, as it is circular. What about instead treating it as non-veichle, with a bs 4, two wounds, a 3+ armour save and a 4+ cover save?

And also, I thought about making the missile launchers count as 6 separate or 3 twin-linked hunter-killer misiles, but with the ability go use frag as well as krak, and a modification that alows you to fire all missiles at once. Or is that too good?

Any idea of how I could figure out the point cost?

 

[Red Orc]

TBH, mate, it may be circular, but you could still call one quarter 'front', the two adjacent quarters 'side' and the last 'rear', and base the rules on a whirlwind. You could paint an "x" on the internal floor pointing to the 'corners', you could bulk up the 'front' armour, you could have strategically-placed markings or bits of gubbins that delineated the quarters ('right hand of cloth to right eagle wing-tip - front; right wing-tip to barrel - side; barrel to communications array - back; communications array to right edge of cloth - side'). There's lots of things you could do.

I'm only keeping on at this because I think it's the easiest way to start working out rules. Work from the known to the unknown, I reckon. I would say, for ease, that for the purposes of providing cover etc, it should count as a wrecked vehicle, but for offensive purposes, it should count as a whirlwind (but immobile, but not then granting a VP bonus to the opposition), and cost 2/3 points of a whirlwind.

Other ways of calculating points are more complicated and produce really wild figures. Please see below...

6 independent missiles is way too good in my opinion. To get that ability in troops would cost a minimum of 500pts if my calculations are correct, as well as using 6 troop choices. It's a 'simple' missile defence platform - all those missiles should be firing at the same target, unless you mean, each barrel is single shot and therefore you can have 3 twin-linked or 6 independent shots in the whole game. That's only the same as a 5 man tac squad with ML, about 90pts and one troop slot.

You can't get 6 ML in a dev squad, but if you took 2x5-man, 3ML dev squads, that would set you back around 270pts - and 2 HS slots.

Of course, if you're treating them as hunter-killers, that bumps the cost up; each hunter-killer costs a minimum of 55pts IIRC (15pts per missile + 40pts for the transport to put it on) so x that by the number of turns it can be used. If it's 6 hunter-killers, that's 330pts. If it's 36 hunter-killers (ie 6 per turn), that's 1,980pts. Even if you discard the 'transport' part of the equation (cheating, like being able to take wargear without buying term honours first) that's still 90pts for 6 or 540pts for 36.

There's also no way you could get 36 hunter-killers in a normal game, it would take 36 FOC slots, so that's right out.

In the end though it comes down to what you and your opponent agree. If s/he's happy for you to field 36 hunter-killers for 100pts and one HS slot, fine. If not, it's about bargaining. But I really do think the simplest way to start is to treat it as a static whirlwind.

Let us know how you get on! I think it's a cool bit of modelling and would be interested to see how it works in games.

 

[Jacobite]

Very nice stuff mate - looks very effective. For rules you could take a look at the Tarantulas in Imperial Armour to get some idea of the points cost.

 

[DeusMortemEst]

TBH, mate, it may be circular, but you could still call one quarter 'front', the two adjacent quarters 'side' and the last 'rear', and base the rules on a whirlwind. You could paint an "x" on the internal floor pointing to the 'corners', you could bulk up the 'front' armour, you could have strategically-placed markings or bits of gubbins that delineated the quarters ('right hand of cloth to right eagle wing-tip - front; right wing-tip to barrel - side; barrel to communications array - back; communications array to right edge of cloth - side'). There's lots of things you could do.

Yeah, I see. I'll do that.

6 independent missiles is way too good in my opinion. To get that ability in troops would cost a minimum of 500pts if my calculations are correct, as well as using 6 troop choices. It's a 'simple' missile defence platform - all those missiles should be firing at the same target, unless you mean, each barrel is single shot and therefore you can have 3 twin-linked or 6 independent shots in the whole game. That's only the same as a 5 man tac squad with ML, about 90pts and one troop slot.

You can't get 6 ML in a dev squad, but if you took 2x5-man, 3ML dev squads, that would set you back around 270pts - and 2 HS slots.

Of course, if you're treating them as hunter-killers, that bumps the cost up; each hunter-killer costs a minimum of 55pts IIRC (15pts per missile + 40pts for the transport to put it on) so x that by the number of turns it can be used. If it's 6 hunter-killers, that's 330pts. If it's 36 hunter-killers (ie 6 per turn), that's 1,980pts. Even if you discard the 'transport' part of the equation (cheating, like being able to take wargear without buying term honours first) that's still 90pts for 6 or 540pts for 36.

There's also no way you could get 36 hunter-killers in a normal game, it would take 36 FOC slots, so that's right out.

No, I think you got me wrong. I meant that there would be 6 missiles that could would work like hunter-killer missiles, and they could all be fired ONCE per game. This seems logicals, as the turret eighter is remote controlled or guided from a crew on the inside that would not be capable of reloading the missiles.

A hunter-killer missle costs 15 pts, 6 x 15 = 90 pts. And, since the missiles themselves would be what would be needed to destroy (not the turret), it could be count as having 2 wounds and a 3+ armour save, as well as a cover save for being where it is. Or?

Let's say that the whole thing costs 120 pts? Or should it be more?

 

[Jacobite]

I think about 100 points is fair if they are one shot only, give it a 4+ save and a 2 wounds and I don't think many people will be complaining too much. What would the BS skill be 3 or 4?

 

[Engelus]

even more simple
Treat it as a deathwind droppod with deathwind missle launcher

 

[DeusMortemEst]

I think about 100 points is fair if they are one shot only, give it a 4+ save and a 2 wounds and I don't think many people will be complaining too much. What would the BS skill be 3 or 4?

Kk, sounds nice.

Oh, and it would have a BS of 4, as all other space marine thingies.

 

[Ezekial Lightning]

I like it. Especially painted. Maybe if you had the right parts you could use it as one of thos SM tarantula guns. see forge world imperial armour books.

 

[DeusMortemEst]

I like it. Especially painted. Maybe if you had the right parts you could use it as one of thos SM tarantula guns. see forge world imperial armour books.

Thanks, I might check that out.

Oh, and BTW, I'm currently working on a simiar heavy bolter turret. It will be even more awesome! :biggrin:

 

[makdonald]

i really like it but since i'm an ork player what type of guns would i use for the turret

 

[Jacobite]

Big shootas or roket launchers would work well. Especially with some Gretchin somewhere nearby.

 

[DeusMortemEst]

i really like it but since i'm an ork player what type of guns would i use for the turret

First of all, thanks.

Second: make big shootas, eigther by raiding your bitz box and use some looted imperial weaponry, or by taking lots of shootas and glueing them together into fours with the two tops of one being the bottom of another. That should work nicely.

 

[August Fidelius]

Very cool gunturrets, I like projects which use cheap materials

 

[Commissar_riptor]

Simple yet amazing looking, keep up the great work!

 

[Imperial Dragon]

seems more orky for me then anything maybe if the paint job was more like a SM chapter or even a CSM army it would work then, maybe use it as a havoc laucnher from the CSM codex, and give it an armour rating of 10 all round. for like 25 - 30 points or something like that and need to be brought in groups of day 5 and need to be within 10 inchs of each other? i like it though, might make things like that myself. nice job.

 

[chromedog]

I like it. Especially painted. Maybe if you had the right parts you could use it as one of thos SM tarantula guns. see forge world imperial armour books.

FW have just released an update for IA vol2 (SM and other loyal glory hogs of the Imperium) - available from their website. Quite a few things got cheaper. Sentry guns are now BS4 (for marines). The machine spirits got smart. Next thing you know, they'll take over, and there'll be legions of metallic skeletons walking all over their skulls.

 

[Blue Liger]

Yes the best rules would be an all round armour of the same, especially if the gun moves 360 degrees as some gun implacements are fixed arc of fire meaning they have stronger front armour, the second would be to give it 2 structure points to toughen it up and make the point cost to reflect the two structure points, other than that nice job + rep...