Rogue Trader Land Raider Prototype

So you know how Rogue Trader is an incredible gold mine full of weird nuggets to dig up right ? It's facsinating to see all the seeds of modern 40k in tis venerable tome. Now there's a model that's reached an iconic status and it's the Land Raider. Unfortunately it's not an easy one to get your hands on unless you're willing to spend a fortune.

Now the magic of life is having talented friends, I happen to have plenty of those and amongst them is Curis from Ninjabread, who sculpted the most excellent Röknauts and who decided he needed to give life to one very specific Land Raider pattern.

When Rogue Trader was released, the Land Raider kit hadn't been released yet. That wasn't a problem though, in a world of converted Zoids, upgraded deodorant sticks and Dalek pants, a prototype was modelled and painted for the rulebook. It's a fun design of course with its 2 graviton guns and barely space for the pilot, let alone 10 marines.

Curis reinterpreted the Green prints and the prototype to offer his version that screams Rogue Trader from every corner, I like that there's space to let a marine rider in the open hatch (I stole the idea from him tbh).

Painting wise, I was really tempted to convert this vehicle for my chaos traitor marines but It made more sense and would require far less work to give it to my Scythes of the Emperor. Painting was easy since I have the scheme locked in. It was also the occasion to use the dirty down rust pot here and there to see how it behaves.

There aren't many places to add decals or markings so most of them were added on the front with some checkers on the graviton guns to lonk them with my marines' weapons.

I have to say I hadn't planned on adding a vehicle to what is mostly a Space Hulk/Space Crusade force but I can't resist having a bit of everything in any given force fo mine.
I hope this is not my final model of the year but if it is, I reckon it's a worthy one so many thanks Curis !