Shadow Serpents and Battle Masters Skimmers

Deodorant tanks are back, baby!

The club will be swinging back to the Xiandao Campaign tomorrow, so I wanted to show you some of the skimmers I recently finished for my Battle Masters and Shadow Serpents Void Knight (Space Marine) legions.

First up, a Mk III ‘Wasp’ hovertank (aka Deodorant tank). This is a 3D print of the original GW deodorant tank kitbash from 1987 which you can pick up here.

The Mk 3 Wasp is of a type of lightly armored and fully-sealed combat vehicle, known by various different names including gun raft, gun nef, and blastboat, are usually deployed directly into the atmosphere by a dropship, utilizing their cavorite-based contragravity devices to descend safely, supplementing airborne or drop pod deployed forces with immediate firepower. They are highly mobile and capable of making pop-up attacks, like VTOL aircraft, although their cavorite suspensors have some drawbacks. The amount of cavorite (an expensive material) required is proportional to the mass of the vehicle, usually limiting their size and armor. In addition, the contragravity effects interfere with sensors and communications. You can see the special considerations taken for this here, with the prominent height and exposure of the radar dish and the side-mounted scanner/ECM pods.

The vehicle has a crew of only two: a driver, who also controls the forward-facing missile pod, and a commander/gunner who operates the remote turret. The pilot and commander sit side by side in the front of the vehicle; the rear section is entirely made up of the powerplant, lift, and populsion systems.

A more common sort of contragravity skimmer is this landspeeder. Although theoretically capable of rising to orbit if the crew are sufficiently protected, these are intended for atmospheric use. Skimmers such as this one are frequently used by Shadow Serpent tridents for rapid vertical assault.

Of course, this is just an older Landspeeder Storm model, with several of the crew given alternate heads from the Wargames Atlantic Ooh Rah set.