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For those of you too young to remember the wild heady days and battles of the Great Crusade and subsequent Heresy in Epic (read 1st edition AT and SM) there were a plethora of rhino variants out there. A few were refactored into core units you are familiar with such as the old Rhino Bison getting cooked into the Razorback we all know and love (IIRC).

Recently I came into possession of a huge lot of 2E plastic Land Raiders and Mk1 Rhinos. For shits and giggles decided to bake a few into the LR spartan variant just to have a little old skool flavor in my BA (some of which actually goes back to items I painted in the 90's). Looking around for inspiration I stumbled across this thread (viewtopic.php?p=322950#p322950) and note Legion 4's typically bad ass conversions (cheers, mate!). Now spartans I can see being used without stat changes - they're just great relics and in the EA world would be smoothed out to equivalence with the existing stats for LRs.

However right along side this post was his Rhino Sabre conversions. In all frankness, I had completely forgotten about them until now (I still have fond memories of WD 120). Stats were published for using them in Epic scale and life was grand. However no models were ever produced for them and over the decades (man I'm old ) they've fallen to the way side. All this being said, it would be great for non-tourny games to dust off a few of these old school relics and update the stats for them to EA. note: personally I'd see them working best in scenarios but I digress...

My take on a Sabre was that as a dedicated tank hunter it's not dissimilar to the role the Leman Russ Vanquisher plays for IG. In addition the way the Rhino chassis would take to handling it would probably be something along the lines of the Vindicator. Putting them together I could see some stats along the lines of:

Rhino Sabre
Armoured Vehicle; Save 4+; Speed 25cm; CC6+; FF5+
Vanquisher 75cm AP4+/AT2+
Bolters (15cm) small arms
Sabres are an incredibly rare site on the battlefield harkening back to the days of the Great Crusade. No more than a single upgrade may be taken ONCE in an army (0-3 Sabre Tank Hunters).

Now I am fine if we want to rename the weapon itself to "blah blah blah tank hunter cannon yada yada yada". In the original stats it was an autocannon which many people would immediately turn to look at the pred destructor. However I will point out that way back when the abilities of autocannons were very anti armour capable (remember this is long before the whole Pred Anihilator / Destructor split). The fluff states this was a dedicated and very capable tank hunter so I think this stands to be a reasonable stats.

The real question would be given the above what would a good cost recommendation be? My initial thoughts would be around a vindicator cost considering the balance with the notes limiting # units. I may be smoking crack here and of course there's always the need for play testing but we've got to start somewhere...

let the rules lawyering commence!

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A vindy with a vanquisher instead of a demolisher sounds about right given the descriptions for it. The only thing I'd consider would be giving it Scout.

As to cost, for a formation of four I'd start at 300. Upgrades, 75 per.

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I put them in the Heresy list as that without the bolters. I went with 40 points each (since they're limited in availability and because they were part of the Vindicator upgrade). No ATSKNF, though (Defenders of Humanity instead). Probably a bit too cheap, really.

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FYI This thread also has some Sabres pictured viewtopic.php?f=13&t=21721

Those stats look pretty good Lyle, as do your's jimmy ... The old fluff, as Lyle posted, and you noted jimmy, had the main gun as an auto-cannon ... But jimmy your stats can be a Sabre Mk.IIJ ... And thanks for the compliment !

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Wow someone read my mind i was about to ask about this!!!!

How did you make your spartans L4?

One suggestion for Tourney Games: you could count them as Predator Annhiliators if they're meant to be Tank Hunters...

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Well as I told jimmy, I used the old plastic Mk.1 Land Raiders, as you can see from the pics. And I used the old Metal Mk.1 Rhino chassis cut to fit. And added a few bitz from here and there. Back then I didn't have the E40K Hatches and Heavy Bolter. But I would use those if I made some today.

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As an aside, the Sabre is given a passing mention in the latest Horus Heresy novel from Black Library Know No Fear

The rules you've given them look solid. From a background perspective, I'd suggest a Laser Destroyer armament, like the Leman Russ Destroyer Tank Hunter, rather than the Vanquisher cannon.

This is because:
1) The relative scarcity of the weapon is explained in background terms for both Guard and Astartes.
2) It's a dedicated anti-tank weapon, rather than the more generalist Vanquisher cannon.

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Why does it have to be so powerful? In NetEPIC the Sabres were a nice cheap lightly armoured vehicle you could bulk out your marines armoured forces with.

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Fair enough.
What did you base that on?

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Way before my time - It was 14 years ago chum.

It will have been based on AT and SM1.

It's just how I've gotten used to playing with them .

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Ah, okay. The earliest references I can find to them (WD120) is that they were initially jury-rigged Rhinos – and thus I'd taken them to be relatively more scarce than dedicated designs like Predators etc.

Of course, there's a lot of open-endedness to that interpretation, particularly in how the older background now meshes with the newer. However they're implemented, they seem a nice concept.

I already use conversions based on the AT Vindicators with the Predator Annihilator rules (as Man of Kent also suggested earlier in this thread), which is probably the simplest approach and requires no rules changes.

The Predator Annihilator is the modern equivalent of a tank hunter in the Astartes forces, so it's a natural fit. However, if you did want to include them, suggesting it for the Horus Heresy army list would be a good place, since the Predator Annihilator doesn't exist there.

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It's in the Horus Heresy army list, dammit.

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The Horus Heresy 0.5
Night Lords 0.1
My Trade Thread