40K Deep Thought: It’s Time to Hand Over the Rhino to Chaos
The Loyalist Astartes have an all-new high-tech aesthetic – and the Rhino is looking like it’s part of the past.
Ahh, the old classic Rhino. Tracked lunchbox of the Grimdark that has been hauling around mankind for well over 10,000 years. Actually, even longer… When they first arrived in the game during Rogue Trader in the 1980s, they came three to a box!
We saw GW crank out 40K Rhinos…
teensy EPIC Rhinos…
A decade later an all-new “modern” Rhino, the IIc:
Then the old Rhino became “retro”, and Forge World brought out the Deimos kit for 30K:
Heck, GW loves Rhinos so much they made a full sized one and ran over an innocent (maybe heretic) car with it…
Which brings us to today…
The Rhino is Old-Fashioned
The Rhino is literally the oldest plastic vehicle in the game. It was the first! And over 30 years later it is still with us. Of course, the Grimdark is full of ancient pieces of kit that various armies still haul out to blow each other away (I’m looking at you Malcador), but the Rhino has a more significant problem…
The Marines are moving into the future, and the Rhino is part of the past. The Marines are all about big fancy Primaris these days, and GW just keeps cranking out new fancy looking kits. These new fangled marines even have their own hover transport, and it looks like everything they use hovers:
…and the superheavy, and the other one with the big gun out the front…
Worst of all, you know the Rhino’s days are numbered because Primaris Marines can’t even ride around inside it. It’s time for a change.
One Man’s Garbage Is Another Man’s…
Now, of course, I’m not saying that we should throw the Rhino out of the game – that’s ridiculous. Untold thousands are already out there, and 40K players are keen hobby scavengers. While it looks like the venerable Rhino’s best days are behind it for the Imperium, they would be welcomed with open arms by the Chaos Marines.
Just as we see the older marks of armor and “old fashioned” weapons like the Reaper Autocannon used by CSMs, I can see a day several codexes from now, where the Rhino and all of its variants have moved over to the CSM side of things. You know that anything that the Imperium doesn’t nail down will “magically” find its way into the hands of Renegades and the Traitor Legions. It would be very cool to see GW take some of the more recent Rhino variants and make them available to Chaos Renegades only, to give them a slightly more modern vibe than the Traitor Legions.
It would give GW a way to recycle old kits, and give the various armies more visual and battlefield definition. The Loyalists get more and more “high tech” toys, and the CSMs get all of the Imperium’s trustworthy old kit. From a hobbyist point of view – it’s always a fun challenge to do those looted or hastily painted over battlefield schemes where vehicles have been captured and pressed into combat without a full 100% new paint job.
Like this, but Grimdark.
~ The Rhino is here to stay, but what do you think about giving it some new owners.
