I thought I'd preempt the inevitable Tanksgiving posts that will flood the blogosphere next week with two recently painted 'tanks' of my own.
First of all, more over Steiner and your puny Atlas based scout lances, the Şoarece proves that no one can waste resources like the Free Worlds League can!
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| Note the Şoarece's dirty appearance from a recent river crossing. Due to it's weight, few if any bridges can support it. Luckily though it has a limited amphibious capability. |
A rolling 175 tons of Seriously, what the fuck were they thinking?, the Şoarece is a nigh impregnable mobile fortress, slathered in 40.5 tons of armor, and moving at a whopping 18.5mph (on solid ground, going down hill and with a good tailwind). It has mixed autocannon armament that's...theoretically good at all ranges, and in practicality kinda worthless, backed up by a lone nose mounted machine gun.
Fewer than 100 of these monstrosities tanks were built before production ceased, thus the roman numeral XIII on the front hull is actually the production number rather than any sort of regimental or unit marking. Also, due to their enormous size, at the time of manufacture Şoareces were christened with a name, much like naval vessels.
This particular one was Christened the Warhound, and has a canine rampant decoration on both the port and starboard sides. However crews and regimental commanders alike quickly dubbed it The Dog due to its sluggish mobility and both anemic and mismatched weaponry. Most of it's career was spent in static defense and on parade duty.
In 2913, The Warhound went in for an overhaul and rearmament to (hopefully) silence the incessant complaints of the armored brigade commanders who despised the machine. The AC-2 and AC-20 were removed and replaced with a pair of AC-10s, giving the tank a triple mount of identical guns.
Whilst a bit more useful, The Warhound was now essentially a slower, overweight, Star League era Alacorn. Commanders, resigned to the fact that there was no fixing the tank, continued to use it as little as was possible, until the tank was mothballed a mere two years later. The Warhound was reactivated a few times however, to serve as a stand in for a hostile, grounded dropships without actually risking damage to an actual dropship in large scale live-fire field exercises.
*****
And then there's the other tank. Its a 'not a fuel tank Screech!' that I recently purchased a pair of from Hardware Studios. Its all drybrushing and I cranked it out in about 15-20 minutes. I'm quite happy with it and despite being intended for Battletech, is large enough to be useful as a LoS blocker in 40k/KT as well.
I think I'd rather play under the assumption that was a grain silo or something rather than a fuel tank. A fuel tank that size ain't gonna be blocking LoS for long with BattleTech level weapons being fired around it XD
ReplyDeleteI actually kind of like how the rules for heavier stuff show that there's a reason 100 tons is the standard limit, and stuff heavier than that ends up generally being a boondoggle. The cube-square law matters!
Grain silo? Yes, because never explode...lol.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, the Soarece is fun purely because its so bad. I have no idea on how the 150 ton 3-legged monstrosities are supposed to work, and i honestly don't want to.
Well, my understanding is that grain silos, while not immune to explosion, are significantly less prone to it than fuel dumps ;)
ReplyDeleteThe 150 tonners probably don't require much more violation of the laws of physics than any of the others!
Indeed you are correct, but I couldn't resist!
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