Razorback

Well its Christmas eve, Everyone is busy with parties and dinner with their friend, colleague and family. Not for me.. I shall be spending it writing 40K!!! I can see Wong has been entertaining you guys with Dreadies and Devastators.

So Since my recent post talks about Space Marine units that need improvement. For once i shall talk about something that the Space Marine have that great.

The Space Marine Razorback, It is a Space Marine vehicle that is a between of a Rhino and a Predator Tank. It can carry up to 6 model and by default carries a single twinlinked Heavy Bolter. It is used in Space Marine codex and all its counterpart.

This tank is ideal as it has mobility, transport, firepower and degree of protection. You can load a 5 men squad with any ICs. After droping them off unlike a rhino its job is over.. The Razorback has firepower that can continue to support the rest of the army after doing its job as a transport.

A good senario is you load troops into a razorback to secure an objective. You can use your Heavy Bolter to take out target while holding an objective like a sort of a mobile pillbox. Even immobilize the Razorback can still provide fire support at far distant.

You can upgrade your twinlinked Heavy Bolter into a variety of weaponry which all are fairly impresive.

However you can only upgrade it with a Twin Linked Lascannon with the Razorback kit as the rest require some degree of modification.

-Twin-linked Heavy Flamer

Although i rarely use it but i see some degree of effectiveness from other people. It is good to take out pesky outflanking/infiltrating/deep striking and so on infantry that come to contest your objective. You can simply just point the flamer to their direction and watch the template do the rest.

-Twin-Linked Assault Cannon

You can actually just grab the Land Raider redeemer assault cannon turret and it will fit. It is twinlinked rending goodness ideal for taking mid range objective. It can be some sort of all round weapon given your rolls are good.Nonetheless it ideal when you are storming into a enemy position.

-Twinlinked Lascannon

This by far is the only variant you can upgrade with the Razorback kit. This is good for eitier Devastator or Troops staying behind objective. As you can park at the objective securing it while having a 48inch lascannon to shoot down any enemy transport trying to contest your objective.

-Lascannon and Twinlinked Plasmagun

This variant give up one lascannon for twinlinked plasmagun. Making this an Anti Elite variant. Its only official model is out OOP(out of production) models of the Razorback, You will need to make your modification if you want it on the new Razorback models. Me and Wong usually dub this as the Stronos Pattern due to the codex mention the Razorback with this variant is name Stronos. This is technically the only Razorback that carries 2 weapon.. yeah you heard me its 2 weapon in 1 turret.. Check Space Marine Faq if you dont believe me. So if you move you can only fire eitier of one weapon. Unless you are Blood Angel where their Razorback are "fast" so you can move 6" and still fire all weapons. You can still mantain the lascannon support like mention above but lesser chance of hitting due to no more twinlinked. When the enemy is within 24" you can add plasmagun into the fire.

However the downside of the Razorback is the lack of firing port so your passenger are truly passengers as they cant do anything unless they disembark. Another problem is cost.. other than the heavy bolter razorback the rest is pretty costly as you are equipping heavy weaponry on a fragile AV11 tank. So getting to many of this can be not a cost effective thing.

Overall this Tank is a useful transport vehicle and with Heavy Bolter alone is consider good already. You can buy it for your Tactical Squad. That way you can just combat squad leaving the Heavy weapon and his 4 lackeys behind to take one objective as the Sarge and special weapon move to the secure another.

Another way is you can just buy it if you are getting Devastator squad as the Razorback can sit back with the Devas provide extra fire support . Even incase of a dawn of war deployment you can drive your the Devas squad to the their location than they have to waste 1-2 turns walking to it.

The Razorback flexibility is up to whatever tactics you have for your army. Speaking of flexibility.. You dont have to buy Rhino kits even if you need Rhino. Both the Rhino and Razorback kits cost the same and Razorback already have the parts to make a rhino.. So why settle for a Rhino while getting a Razorback get you the same thing but with an extra turret including weapons