The last couple of days have seen some small progress - the cockpit detail is coming along for a start. I stole the seat backs from my Stormraven and Stormtalon gunships (I'll paint the canopies so you can't see inside anyway) and some detail from a drop pod interior:

I think I found the primary hull weapon as well - for this initial version anyway. Flamestorm Cannons! Twin-linked of course. Or more likely three actually, I have a second set somewhere...

And I finally (!) attached the first sponson to the tank wall. Still some detail to add to the lower mount plate, and probably some layering to the upper one for that matter. Also test fitting a different upper turret option.

Lastly, I added the 0.25mm detail layer to the chamfer along the upper hull edge (on one side anyway). This seems to work pretty well.

I think I've got a pretty good feel for the look of the thing when done now. Its a hedgehog of weapons, but so are most Astartes tanks.

Glued a few parts of the cockpit together tonight, but not much else got done. It takes a bit of time to test fit everything but I'll get there. Seems I only just get home and I'm eating tea and prepping for bed. I'm also trying to actually capture each step to show the process.

I am still hoping I'll be able to avoid armoured canopies - while more practical these would obscure so much detail (not added yet, sadly) - by using the old 'not open-topped because of the power armour' argument.

So, the cockpit bulkheads are in:

And I'm building the interior detail. No true marine is ever far from his bolter:

And I carved up the lower frame of the lascannon mount. The piping on the Centurion lascannons gets caught up on this otherwise.

Tomorrow I'll try tackling much more of the cockpit interior.

I've further trimmed down the sides of the cockpit well, and cut out the upper side panels.

I haven't had the chance to get much else down, but thought I'd share anyway. At the moment I think it looks a little front heavy, but it should have a turret mount behind the cockpit to offset that.

I certainly don't hate the look so I'll continue on with this. 

Yesterday I started on the cockpit area, as I always imagined it, on the basis that if it doesn't look good on this tank I can always recycle it for an Astartes gunship of some sort.

So first I built a basic shape. This looks unfortunately like the drivers's cab of a German Minenraumer :

Still it does put the quad lascannons in a nice position. The tank still has sufficient clearance for almost any obstacle, and room for the ramp to open, and the marines can disembark under the cover of a lot of firepower. So it seems to work as I hoped.

Also it leaves plenty of room for the prow guns (Whatever I decide goes there - Plasma, Melta, Flamers or some kind of twin Avenger bolt cannon).

So I will keep going with this. If it really doesn't work I can always replace it - its not glued the the main full sections yet. I removed the upper walls as they just look blocky - the sides will angle in instead.

A quick test fit confirms a marine fits between the cockpit walls with a couple of mils of clearance. The resin in back is just a counterweight.

So the cockpit detail - this doesn't need to be complex as the marine himself will mostly get in the way.

I went to the trouble of foot pedals only to realise you'll never see them under the consoles.

So below is a final test fit with consoles and such. The quad las has a spotlight above and a remote sight from the command tank sprue behind. This is the driver's primary forward sight as there are no vision slits up there to provide a weak spot in the prow amour.

I think I'll move both crew pits further back an inch or so. Leave some room for the avionics or whatever tanks have instead.

The driver sits forward with fighter style HOTAS. The gunner is behind with a PS4 Dual Shock.

A close up of one of the light arrays. Lights courtesy of Blood and Skulls Industries. These are actually the smaller light and are about the same size as a Land Raiders (perhaps a mil or so bigger).

I'm just using blutack to test fit the doors. I know I can make them open and shut, but I;m not sure yet if they'll stay shut on their own. Another case of building it first to see if it works...

I decided to change up the sponson design slightly, after the Repulsor came out. The Repulsor is a mixed bag in my opinion - decent hull but daft GI Joe turret (VERY low tech for a Astartes tank) - but the mini turret above the doors got my attention. I really don't know that the HBolters are the final choice for these slots.but they'll do for now.

And that's where we stand at present. I will probably get the sponsons completed and attached next, but I have ideas for the ramp too. 

The problem is the upper hull. I really want to try a helicopter gunship style arrangement for the offset crew area, with a pilot and gunner sitting fighter style in a raised fuselage, above a nose mounted sensor pod and a chin turret (with quad lascannons) directly above the ramp. I dare to hope it will look like a hunderhawk Gunship tried to merge with the tank.

Unfortunately I suspect it won't work. I mean, I know I can build it, complete with driver and gunner in semi open cockpits if I want, like Bigglesworth (or Snoopy) versus the Red Baron. The problem is I bet it looks awful when I'm done. I just can't shake the feeling.

However the alternative is a Land Raider clone upper hull, which will be step too far I think. This tank has very strong visual links to the LR, but I don't really want it to be identical, like I just scaled up a template (too much like that already). So I'm going to mock a few bits up and I'll let you know how it goes.

I set out to make the front half of the central hull interchangeable. I thought about magnets and sliding tabs, but it turns out the foamboard H section you see here actually holds itself in place perfectly! The foamboard has some give so the track sections have just moved a millimetre or so and are now holding the hull in place. Might stop working if I add too much weight later.

Also got started on the upper hull detail.

I promised myself I would NOT build an assault ramp because it would obviously weaken the prow armour of the tank (plus I'd have to detail an interior troop bay). Well.

I had some plans for the prow that didn't quite work (so far). The problem is that the lower prow armour is big (twice the height of a marine) and angled (at about the same angle as a Rhino rear hatch).  It is hard to imagine what else to put there.

So, a three part hatch with interlocking armour plates about 2 foot thick. This is just a test fit.

Some more work (on both sides although I seem to have only photographed the left) on the hull detail. The large square will obviously mount the sponson.

The chamfer on the upper hull edge will be detailed further with some 0.5mm or 0.25mm plasticard. This bit could be tricky, but thin plasticard is pretty easy to work with so I'm optimistic.

At about this point I thought I'd better tackle the weapon sponsons. These things are bigger in proportion to the Mycenaean than the regular land raider patterns, so they will absolutely dominate the finished model.

The base sponson brackets were initially easy enough, just a sandwich of plasticard. The mounts themselves were more fun though, modelled on the land Raider ones but scaled up to 200%. The drop pod missile launcher is something I'm currently rethinking, but the forward arm it is mounted on is there for a reason I'll get to eventually (parts just ordered in from UK).

A test fit to the tank 'wall' itself confirmed I had the size and layout about right.

Now, I hope to make several different weapon layouts once I've completed the 'base' configuration of this tank so I want to keep the weapons replaceable. But what would the base weapon array look like?

Well, I wanted official guns to help tie this tank into the GW range, so that limited my options. I went through the FW catalogue with great interest, but settled on...

Plasma. As much as would fit on the sponson. Which is quite a lot.

The parts are from the Dark Angels four engine landspeeder. They might be a fraction smaller than those on a Leman Russ Executioner, but there's not much in it. By my math each sponson now has almost as much firepower as two Astra Militarum battle tanks.

I had intended to magnetise the lower mounts so they can be swapped out and independently rotated, but they're not quite cooperating, so will likely just be superglued in place.

Progress

So believe it or not I haven't forgotten about this project. Progress has been very, veeery slow but semi-steady over the year. I've found a lot of time is spent just looking at the thing and trying to picture the next step or three in my head - sort of the old 'measure twice, cut once' approach.

(Unsurprisingly this only works up to a point. Eventually you just have to CUT and see what interesting shapes appear.)

Anyway, I thought I was further along than I was when I last posted, so here's what's happened.

I started work on the engine block/centre hull. Foamboard is pretty strong with a little bit of bracing. This is basically the rear of the hull, so the front section should be interchangeable if I want to try a few different setups.

Engine mountings are from Blood and Skull Industries. It turns out they are too small (perfect for a Baneblade or Fellblade but too short for the Mycenaean). Still I intend to use them.

I extended them Land Raider style with some 1mm plasticard frames and 0.25mm plasticard 'skin'.

And got to work making some engine louvres and two more exhaust stacks. Still haven't finished this bit actually...