The Marienburg Land Ship is the largest land vehicle in the Warhammer Old World, a rolling fortress bristling with guns and powered by an unstable steam engine. Games Workshop's specialist subsidiary Forge World released a (massive) model for it in 2011, but it's long out of production, and buying a landship from the second hand market today will set you back serious money. No surprise then that some fans take matters into their own hands and create their own scratch built replicas - and Alastair Bowers, from the South of the UK, has made a real beauty.
Bowers has been into Warhammer since his "dad came home from a swap meet in 1990 with a tin of pre-slotta lead miniatures and a double-digit issue copy of White Dwarf". He's been making custom models for almost as long. "My first army was a second edition 40k Ork army", Bowers says, "I remember making the card Gobsmasha tank based on the instructions found in White Dwarf". "It opened my eyes to the possibilities and spirit of making your own models from scratch", he adds.
Newer Warhammer: The Old World fans may only be familiar with the Landship from its appearance in the Thrones of Decay Total War: Warhammer III DLC. But Bowers says he "Always wanted one of the gorgeous land ship models", but the prices for them on eBay "Broke me into cold sweats". What's a fan to do? Make his own, of course.
He calls the model the "Perfect blend of low-fantasy setting and laughably ambitious engineering", where "The sheer scale and grandeur of the model quickly quash those niggling silly details like 'would it work?'" And "It has such a great silhouette - the original ForgeWorld design is absolutely perfect". No argument from us.
Bowers model is made using specific "Materials that mimic their real life counterparts - so plasticard representing metal, balsa for all the wood, and resin print for any bronze or decorative pieces". "I think that helps sell the illusion and scale", Bowers explains. "One tip to maintain consistency is to ensure that the plasticard doesn't have any sharp edges compared to the balsa", he adds, "I sanded down the plasticard to give a softer edge wherever I could".
The massive miniature is almost entirely stuck together using superglue. Bowers says "As long as your measurements are roughly right, a decent blob of glue and a generous prime with spray paint will cover any minor gaps or imperfections 90% of the time". The biggest technical challenge of the build was the wheels: "I know balsa isn't a friend to being cut against the grain and tends to fray a bit, so I knew having a wheel out of balsa would be a challenge", Bowers explains. To avoid this, he "Bought some very basic 2D MDF wheels off eBay or something similar to provide a starting point", and "Layered up details from there".
The build process took Bowers "A year or two", though he estimates that if he were to sit down "With a clear diary I could probably remake it in a few days' work - balsa and plasticard is so easy to work with and there is no drying time to contend with". Maintaining motivation was the biggest challenge. As a parent with two young boys, "Hobby time is precious and always comes with opportunity cost", and sometimes "The prospect of gluing hundreds of tiny rivets onto a model" was singularly unappealing.
His process "Would usually consist of me having the model in various states of completeness sitting on my desk whilst I work, and letting my subconscious tackle some of the modelling conundrums that occasionally presented themselves" until, "Eventually, either through frustration or sheer determination I would pick the piece back up and start working into it a bit more!"
There were some scrapes along the way. "I ended up punching a hole in the hull at one point through gripping it too tightly whilst doing something", Bowers recalls, "I panicked because the hull is kind of the centerpiece". He "Styled it out and literally patched it with a sheet of plasticard to mimic some rudimentary battlefield repairs and was quite happy at the additional detailing it resulted in".
Then there's the figurehead on the prow. "I trawled the internet and STL sites for a mermaid model that I was happy with for months and never quite found anything I liked", Bowers says, so he "Plumped for a trident which I 'kitbashed' in a 3d modelling program to attach to the prow". "I'm really pleased with how that turned out and I wouldn't change it", he adds.
You can find more pictures of the landship in the r/WarhammerFantasy subreddit where Bowers originally shared it. But now that it's done, he isn't sitting on his laurels.
"From a scratch building perspective I'm thinking of building a 'herd stone' for my mate's Beastman army", he says, "There is lots of inspiration for this online and it should be a fun and easy project that I can get done quickly and actually get to play with on the table!" An even bigger project lurks on the horizon: "I also have an Empire trade ship that I started about 10 years ago that I'd love to finish at some point", Bowers says, "I want to maybe include it as part of 'armies on parade' board, so watch this space!"
Have you or a friend made a careful scratch built recreation of another hard to find kit kit? Are you lucky enough to own an actual Empire Landship, or an equivalent out of production model for a different Warhammer: The Old World faction - a Chaos War Mammoth, perhaps? We'd love to see your pictures in the Wargamer Discord community!