Welcome

Miniature Apocalypse is all about helping modelers get their figures built with a modicum of quality, on budget and on the table. Remember the game store wants your hard earned money, but they should deserve it before you hand it to them.

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Tempestus Scion Taurox-halftrack - pimp my ride 40k

Today we will be Pimping The Tempestus Scion Taurox/Taurox Prime into a half-track version. As we all know GW makes some pure genius figures and models, but that said, they also make some plastic paperweights.
To most people, the Taurox is an ugly beast but being a student of war history, I see it's WWII origins...the quad gun tractor. I believe only the track setup really lets it down. my guess is the designer wanted to make a quad gun tractor but some exec said "spaceship that bitch up some". Or something like that. That said, I needed to fill my transport slots for my Long Range Desert Group Tempestus Scions.


Materials needed:
Taurox/ Taurox Prime kit
Two medic arms from the Tempestus Scions command sprue(or some plastic stock if you aren't cheap like me)
The usual model suspects... clippers, sanding papers, crazy glue, plastic glue and files and hobby knife.

OK, on to how this thing came to be...

(hey no peeking at the final suspension setup. Move along nothing to see here.)

First get your Taurox to this stage but don't attach the tracks yet. Or alternately just put together the lower suspension half, but this doesn't let you see the overall look and feel.

Go get some of these bad boys made by Hussar Productions. These are made for the long tom but you cant tell me how to live my life. Seriously tho, these are about 25$ Canadian...so almost free in every other currency(except Australia you dudes get really screwed, my wallet bleeds for you.) With the conversions I'm making, this one set will go 3 vehicles worth. 

First I sliced off the 'u' shaped inset pegs for the original tracks.

Then because this is how I work flow and try stuff out I blue tacked on some of the wheels to see positioning and look.

I liked this setup, it's closest to the WWII version. So I will be making two of these for my Tempestus Scions force as missle platforms.

The Hussar wheels are built to make dual wheel sets.

Cool, but ...

Just didn't speak to me.

Now this is more like it....having already found the two wheel setup I will use for the missile launcher Variants, I decide to make my command vehicle different,

I started by cutting off the center gribbles and making room for the original axle. make sure you get those little rivets too, I forgot and had to slice them off while they had glue on them. Sticky. Glue the tracks onto the axle at the uppermost limit of the top lip of the track.

Now blue tack is good but I knew I'd have to attach the front wheels in a more permanent way. Spacers were needed, but I'm cheap and plastic costs money so I used parts you guys should have lying around. Medic arms from the regular Tempestus Scion box  had the parts I needed.

cut off the arm and sanded off the medic logo.

Next glue the 'boxes' to the front axles half way exposed to account for the new vehicle height.

Take some spare sprue and cut into three pieces and glue them together like this(flipping the ends the opposite way to account for the triangular shape of the sprue). Make sure you let them dry well. Measure so they will fit into the front wheel or just wing it like I did.

crazy glue them into the hub well so they wont show from the front side.

Now all you have to do is glue on both front wheels with regular plastic glue(Tamiya thin is my weapon of choice for all GW plastics) and then carefully position them against something 'square'(i used the side of my table) to get them aligned front to back and the same height.

Wait for it to dry a few minutes....

...as you can see nice and recessed but still looks like it belongs on the Taurox.

I'm quite happy with the results and now have a nice Taurox variant I think will stand out on the table.

That's it for now, Hope this helps you guys. Until next time, have fun and see you in the 4x8 arena.

Rhasputine/Gord



5 comments:

  1. Lifting the suspension dose alot for the poor old taurox. Much more off road, and less giant metal slug.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I actually don't hate the original look but it didn't fit my desert rats motif.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nice modifications. Looks great and will stand out as a command tank!

    ReplyDelete