This week I finished a few tanks I’ve had taking up an unnecessarily large amount of space on my fold up hobby desk.
The first two were a Turan 2 and Csaba (technically not a tank) from Mad Bob Miniatures for my burgeoning Hungarian Army for Bolt Action. The kits were extremely easy to build and I really can’t recommend Mad Bob Miniatures enough. These are 3D printed models and they have a few layer lines, but they are barely noticeable, and considering they come in at £10 less than Warlord Games’ models, they’re an absolute steal.
My third tank was that Wolverine I complained about the instructions for a while back. Finally proxying in as the Hammer tank for my Nexus Rebellion army in my Havok project. The model was a joy to paint, with a good amount of chunky details but not so many you get bogged down (my standard complaint when it comes to GW kits).
After painting this lot and taking pictures for this post, I had an odd thought…
I’m no tank expert, so could someone who is a tank expert explain to me why our sci-fi tanks are so huge? I understand that it may be a silly question. I believe Games Workshop (I’m refusing to call them Warhammer), make their vehicles in a slightly smaller scale than they would be in real life when compared to their figures. If you take the Rhino as a standard example, there’s no way you could fit 10 tactical marines in the back of one.
If I took the seats out however, I could fit the Turan in the back of the Wolverine.
The Wolverine is basically double the Turan in all dimensions, which makes it roughly 11x5x5m, even bigger than the Panzer 8 and it dwarfs the M1 Abrams. This makes the Wolverine unnecessarily huge, especially considering it’s aimed at being a Leman Russ or Chimera proxy, and as a tank in its own right in Mantic’s Warpath Universe. So the Wolverine isn’t supposed to be an example of a big tank, but your rank and file, sci-fi equivalent of a Sherman or T-34.
So should these vehicles be smaller? Is this the difference between heroic 32mm and standard 28? Should our sci-fi vehicles be far nearer in size to our Bolt Action ones? If you’re a tank buff, let me know, I’m genuinely curious.
Deathzap 
Nice tanks
My first Warhammer ork armies had tanks/battlewagons that were even bigger as they were made from various toy WW2 tanks that were about 1/32
Nice work! It’s probably more like a Merkava with its large rear entry doors for rapid reloads of ammo pallets and casualty evacuation. I’ve always looked at WH40K as being 54mm chibi’d down to 28mm heroic. Also the Hungarian stuff is quite small relative to other tanks IRL. 😎
Regards, Chris
I think the size/scale is the least of the difficulties with WH40k style tanks, nothing about them works.
For the size of that gun, how big would a round of ammunition be? How big would the gun breech be, would it even fit in the turret? Would it be able to recoil in the space? Is there enough room to load that massive round of ammunition in that tiny turret? Who fires the gun? The commander or gunner or loader? Is there space for three men in the turret? Where is the ammunition even stored? And how thick is the armour and how much of the volume does that reduce the size of that little turret by?
Where is the engine, can’t be at the back if the troops come out of a big door there! And the gearbox and all the other mechanical gubbins, where is that?
Compare your blue tank to the IS-2, the size of the gun to the turret, the size of the engine bay at the back. And the size of a man to the tank.
It’s the same with BattleMechs (those giant war robots) they look great, but they don’t work. Again, where is all the ammunition for their giant guns, how does it get loaded. I could go on.
It’s all fun, but none of it really works.
Love it! I’m wondering now what a realistically redesigned sci-fi tank or mech would look like. Unless you just argue sci-fi weapons and sci-fi engines no longer play by our rules, but where’d be the fun in that? I’ve often argued with myself if tanks will have a place on the battlefield in the future at all, or will they become a romanticised era?
That first question is the interesting one! It’s all about the target. Once you know what you want to destroy you can work out how and design the ammunition and gun, then build the vehicle around that. Unless of course you’re using some sort of energy weapon in which case it comes down to power and cooling.
I guess most high fantasy type Sci-fi engines and weapons don’t play by our rules. Which is what makes them fun.
At the end of WWI that is what British commanders were asking. Many of them wanted to get back to “proper soldiering”, on horseback, none of this mechanised malarkey. Tanks must fill a need as we still have them. Not in the form they had in WWI, but they are still here.
Who knows what the future will bring?!
Probably something very fast and light that launches drones and guided missiles, so probably not recognisably a tank… I think…
That seems to be what a lot of folks have in mind these days.
The new German Panther KF-51 has a drone launcher. Also has a big gun too!
Don’t think it’s very light or that fast though
Certainly looks cool though!
It does indeed!