40K: Designing Primaris Battle Tanks
We’ve heard rumors of the Primaris getting mainline tanks, but what should they look like? Let’s all give it a shot.
We’ve all heard the rumors of a new range of Primaris kits coming. In particular it seems obvious that they will need their own set of main battle tanks to allow Primaris only armies without older classic marine kits. But what exactly would they look like?
Meet the Repulsor
The Repulsor is clearly meant to be the new fancy Primaris Land Raider equivalent. It’s a (floating) breadbox, is bristling with guns and caries a full sized squad of the new W2 dudes into combat. Yup – that checks out with the Land Raider.
GW loves to take a kit and use it as the basis for new kits. There are 3 types of Land Raiders in the main Marine codex, not counting all the Index and Forgeworld variants. It doesn’t take a genius to see how GW plans on making as many variants as they can come up with using the main Repulsor’s hull and that big oversized turret ring up there. Here’s how the Repulsor clocks in right now:
You get all of that for 185pts, plus the weapons, leather seats and cupholders. That’s a 25pt reduction thanks to Chapter Approved. Looking at the main hull weapons gives us by default:
- Twin heavy bolter
- Storm bolters (x2)
- Icarus Ironhail Heavy stubber
Clocking in at 27 pts for a grant total of 213pts for the base hull.
The Usual Suspects
Now we have to ask – exactly what Space Marine vehicle should be replaced and with what. We all know what we should get rid of:
- Whirlwind
- Vindicator
The Hunter & Stalker are niche anti-air vehicles that I would think aren’t priorities for replacements. Let’s take these two classics in turn:
Whirlwind
The Imperium’s most underused indirect fire platform. These are outdated and cant kill enough to be viable. So we need to slap that missile platform up top the Repulsor and up it’s firepower a LOT. As Stableabe has suggested, roughly doubling the shots should do the trick, especially on top of the Repulsor’s base weapons. Something along the lines of this:
Cawl-pattern Castellan Launcher: R: 72″ Heavy 4d6 S6 AP0 D1 Indirect fire, May fire twice if the vehicle does not move.
Cawl-pattern Vengeance Launcher: R: 72″ Heavy 2d6 S7 AP-1 D2 Indirect fire, May fire twice if the vehicle does not move.
That would pretty much do it.
Vindicator
Everyone’s favorite siege tank. It’s not terrible, but she’s not getting any younger. If you put a faster firing Demolisher cannon up top with some special ammo improvements from Cawl – you may have the perfect close support platform for the Primaris to knock the stuffing out of foes holed up in fortified positions. Something like this:
Cawl-pattern Demolisher Cannon: R: 24″ Heavy 2d3 S10 AP-3 Dd6 Ignores the effects of cover, May fire twice if the vehicle does not move.
The Final Trick
The final question is would anyone take such expensive models just to hold them back? Probably not – and with the new aggressive Primaris theme I would suggest a marked improvement from the existing Whirlwind and Vindicator.
Threat them as the Land Raider variants and retain a smaller transport capacity, even with the new weapons. Effectively an upsized Razorback – give them 6 man transport capacity. Assuming the reduced transport capacity will compensate for the improved weapons (which are clearly WAY overpriced), I suggest pricing along these lines:
Repulsor-Whirlwind 260pts – a stubborn support platform that can fight its way out of trouble.
Repulsor-Vindicator 270pts – a point blank fire support platform that can deliver a squad ANYWHERE they need to go.
~Would you take em? How would you design Cawl’s Primaris main battle tanks?
