Land Raider: Guided Tour

Welcome, citizens. My name is Janos Jakoneliö and I am a HyperAdept with the Purple Hearts Marines. Together with my assistant, Laszlo Loiva, we shall introduce you to the various wonders here in the Purple Hearts Armorium.

Part of the decals are actual GW stuff, others come from a variety of kits. The first exhibit, right here in the main lobby, is a genuine Land Raider Mark I Ausf K for KumQuat (unsanctioned modifications) tank. As you have been briefed in the general chapter history, the Purple Hearts lost most of their vehicle resources in the expedition with Rogue Trader Igor Bogg in search of the lost temple of...

...Lemminkäinen...

Thank you, Laszlo. As I was saying, most of the vehicles were lost and far behind enemy lines, chapter TechMarines were forced to resort to extreme cannibalizing to keep the few remaining ones operational. As all good citizens, you must already be intimately aware of the operational specifications of a standard model Land Raider...

...and if you are not, we are more than happy arrange closer familiarization such as in the Massacre on Dulmoth IV...

...but this is the older Mark I model, rarely seen on battlefields or even riot suppression duty these days. Functionally it is almost identical to the new model, but far cheaper to manufacture. In fact, in the good old days, you could get five of these for the price of one MkII. I'm always delighted to present this particular to such an expert audience as you, because I can concentrate on the deviations from the standard model...

...sir, I would avoid using the word "deviate" to describe chapter activities...

...ah, yes, differences... errr, changes, yes, changes to the standard model. This particular tank, number 4 from the first company, is actually the only Land Raider to make it through the Bogg tour relatively intact...

...as in not reduced to sub-atomic particles...

Note the trademark silvered bolts again. ...It was most recently commanded by J.Hoag who was chosen for this unpleasent profession when the previous commander was vaporised by a near miss somewhere in uncharted space. As you can see, the most obvious change with the tank is the weaponry. The standard model lascannons were badly burned out from overuse. Luckily we were able to liberate these two fine specimens from a culture of deviant humans who had forged some sort of an alliance with a subspecies of the Necrons. They are a bit bigger than the standard model, but meet Adeptus Mechanicus specs easily.

Actually they exceed Mars specs by quite a bit. The only problem is that they just wouldn't make the official FREEM! sound no matter how hard we tried. On firing they make this weird sound that is perhaps best verbalized as Digitize!. We had to halve the power output so this wouldn't be so noticeable. We also had to tweak the aiming software so the guns would dip down when the side door locks were operated, otherwise the hatch wouldn't open.

The only problem remaining was the gun mounting, which had been blown clean off the tank. This dilemma was solved when yours truly was shifting through a pile of Tau debris after a battle with those imperialist aliens. Using various leftovers, we were able to mount the new guns on the tank.

Later in the campaign, the front armor plate suffered a catastrophic plasma hit. Evidence of this hit is still visible on the front power distribution unit - a small splash of plasma landed there while most of the burst hit the front plate squarely. In addition to being penetrated in three places, the structural integrity of the plate was seriously compromised and the plate had to be replaced.

The reinforcing spars are not quite centered... Unfortunately we were quite out of spare parts and the Land Raider was out of action until we stumbled upon a planet of very strange creatures. It turned out that their roads were made from excellent armor-grade plasteel. We soon finished trade negotiations and replenished our armor plate store with road sections.

Very strange fellows. If we shot them with bolters, their heads and limbs would pop off only to reattach a moment later. We had to hit them with flamers and meltaguns to stop them.

We bolted the front plate in place and added a couple of reinforcing spars made from sanctioned equipment racks...

...since we didn't have much equipment to rack on them anyway.

One of the exhaust pipes was missing, so I made a new one from a bit of sprue and some washers. Probably should have replaced the other too. Battle damage also included one of the exhaust pipes. This was lost with half the undercarriage power lines when Commander Hoag inadvertly ran over a batch of spore mines on Ragesh III. We salvaged some piping from a nearby dungeon and fixed the lines and the exhaust. It has 12% better flow than the original, I might add. Should have replaced the other exhaust while I was at it.

The final improvement is the dozer blade. Dozer blades are by nature somewhat expendable equipment, the original had been lost long ago and we had managed with a blade lifted from a chaos tank until it literally fell apart. As we met with the supply ship Altmark, we hoped this could be fixed. However, due to...

...the Emperor's great wisdom...

Closeup on the salvaged dozer blade. Note the plasma gun hit on the power distribution unit. ...we received Leman Russ parts instead Land Raider parts. Not to be stymied by this, we fitted a Russ dozer blade on the tank. Even though the mounting is much inferior to a proper Raider blade mounting, it has endured remarkably well.

Upon returning from the Bogg tour, this tank served in the Birmingham Incident, Liberation of Synn's World and Jaynestown Skirmish before being relegated to reserve status after the Alderaan IV Debacle.

Thank you for your attention. This concludes our tour.


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