Imperial Fists – Land Raider Proteus

There is this lovely project of Imperial Fists of the 2nd edition, and I was looking for something heavy to bring along. And back in the day, there was this heavy chunk of plastic, the original Land Raider battle tank. While originally released as a pack of two for Rogue Trader, this tank was repacked as a single kit for the 2nd edition and received a nice vehicle data card, released in the Dark Millenium supplement to the starter kit.

But I am honest. The design of this kit didn't age well, compared to the Rhino for example and the updates to the tanks based upon the Rhino chassis made them last quite long. A bit different to the Land Raider who got a replacement with the 3rd edition and a new plastic kit. The new Mk III / Phobos Pattern Land Raider was too distinguished from the 90s design, so this would be out of the question. While I struggled to become acquainted with the old design, a second problem - the price of the OOP kit took that decision from my hand. You can barely pick up one for less than 50 EUR, more likely 70 EUR and above and there's usually something missing. And replacing those parts is rather tricky.

For that reason, I decided to give  the 30k model of the Land Raider Proteus a try. Unfortunately I sold my copy back in 2012 at Bitbox, but was able to get my hands on another one - unfortunately "just" the armoured one, last year. And I thought, with the armoured variant being a proper fit for the siege-focused Imperial Fists. Yet, the "well-known" Forge World fit of the kit, made me question my decision (which was actually the major reason why I sold the other one back in the day), but I decided that I could fix that, with some mutations and chaos insignia - if I move that vehicle towards my Black Legion and make it Abaddon's personal ride.

I haven't found that much information on Black Legion Land Raiders, and pretty much none on a tank belonging to Abaddon (there's only much bigger "vehicles" like the Vengeful Spirit or the Planet Killer), but came across this impressive artwork by HammertheTank. But that is an article of it's own, as beside making it chaos, I want to keep it in line with the aesthetics of the 90s.

That left me again without a tank for my Imperial Fists and still the challenge of finding something fitting. With the plastic kit of the Land Raider Proteus, I had another go at it, as it is reasonably easy to source, moderately priced and after my very, very pleasing experience with the Land Raider Spartan Assault Tank (you can read the review here) I was more than  eager to get my hands on the plastic kit. So I did!

The kit shares four sprues with the Land Raider Spartan (the tracks, the ends of the sides, the weaponry and the accessories), but replaces two sprues with the mid section of the chassis and the entire hull with a morer compact sprue for the Land Raider Proteus (third row).

The design is quite cleverly ymade, as you can see, the Land Raider Segments (shown in the first picture) are replaced in the Spartan Tank with prolonged middle pieces, as well as an insert for the inner section (middle picture), which you simply don't use in the regular Land Raider (third picture).

The difference looks subtile at first, if you look at them seperately (first picture Land Raider, second one Land Raider Spartan), but in a direct comparison you see it more clearly.

The Proteus kit can be build in three different ways, either as a Land Raider Proteus Carrier or an Explorator (with or without hull mounted weaponry). But to keep it as close as possible to the old model, I went with the Explorator variant and added a pintle mounted heavy bolter on it (even as the data card states it is a synchronised one, but the model it self only had a single heavy bolter to it). And I have to say, it came pretty close and I am very happy with the result.

I will have to clean up the model, as some of the parts have gaps between them. So this will require some filler prior to priming. And thanks to my rattle can of Imperial Yellow Matt Primer by Mig Jimenez, a first coat of paint shouldn't take too long.