Taurox

Taurox refers to Taurox The Brass Bull from Warhammer Fantasy and a vehicle in Warhammer 40000.

Warhammer Fantasy

Taurox the Brass Bull is a psychopathic Doombull blessed by Khorne for his prodigious talents at killing, having made it a habit of killing and eating anyone and anything that looked him in the eye.

Eventually, Khorne took notice and sent one of his Heralds to offer a boon to him - remember, in this edition, beastmen are basically the Chaos Gods' unwanted bastard children and pretty much never get anything nice, in contrast to humans, so that shows how good Taurox was at getting shit done.

Of course, remember what we said about that little habit of his? Yeah; when the daemon addressed him, the dumb brute bit its head off! He was then promptly driven insane by visions of apocalypse, went into a berserk frenzy, slaughtered his entire tribe, then rampaged across the Empire for a year and a day without rest, killing everything he encountered. When the frenzy was finally ended (which more or less involved nearly dying from exhaustion lying in a river of blood of his own making), he collapsed. At that point the Chaos Gods - probably mostly Khorne - turned Taurox's whole body into living brass, gave him limitless stamina and two axes that burned with hellfire. Taurox surged to his feet, drank from the river of blood for nourishment, and has been waging a non-stop war for the Chaos Gods ever since, accompanied only by the most vicious killers who don't make the mistake of looking him in the eye.

There was one caveat though; much of his throat was still living flesh, because you do not bite off a daemon's head and get away with it!

On the tabletop, this manifested as him having a 1+ armour save and 5 wounds, but if you roll 6s for your To Hit and To Wound rolls, then you automatically killed him dead IF he failed that 1+ armour save of his, no matter how many wounds he had left (and unless he's fighting a special character this would nearly never happen).

Taurox was killed during The End Times, when Huntsmarshal Markus Wulfhart put an arrow in his throat from a couple of hundred meters away, like the archer who killed Achilles except Markus was a badass, during the battle for Altdorf.

Warhammer 40k

A Taurox Prime. High enough that Dreadknights can use it as cover. Also, note Captain Price in the hatch.

The Taurox is a vehicle used by the Imperial Guard serving as a low cost APC. By comparison to the other Dedicated Transport available to the Imperial Guard - the Chimera - the Taurox is not quite as durable (T6 vs the Chimera's T7), and it doesn't carry quite as many passengers. However, it has several advantages of its own: the Taurox is faster and also shootier (arguably).

However, it also looks retarded, a bit like Orks looted an IG vehicle and the Guard looted it right back. This model is one of the ugliest things that Games Workshop has released since the Dreadknight or the Centurions. Consider taking a jeep or a Hanomag, and ripping the wheels out to replace them with mini treads which appear to have been based on the Tucker Sno-Cat, except with stupidity in place of awesome all-terrain capability. And then make the thing as tall as a fucking tank, thanks to those same treads being ridiculously tall. The Taurox takes the METAL BAWKSES to their retarded extreme. It also has exhaust pipes going straight into the crew compartment, so your soldiers can sniff some petrol fumes before doing battle (Scions, fortunately, equip themselves with a "respmask array", so they may have designed the Taurox with the Tempestus crew in mind), and then get killed as they disembark by the side-mounted guns which shoot past the doors (Well, there's always the rear hatch, and - if the Imperium's tech-priests had any sense - safeties may have been installed to prevent the side mounted weapons from firing at any time the side doors open). Sensible people modify the kit to stick the autocannons/hot-shot volley guns to the side of the turret. The exhaust pipes exit the cab just above them.

The Taurox takes its design cues from real life MRAP (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicles. These APCs are built to withstand IEDs and landmines, and to protect passengers from injury during rollovers, which are more common due to the design- idiotically tall. Think a heavily armored Humvee upgrade that can withstand rocket strikes. The Taurox, on the other hand, seems built to kill its passengers. The aforementioned treads are horribly vulnerable to mines, and its relatively low armor rating means that heavier guns (and probably the mines that an MRAP would stop) will pop the Taurox like a balloon.

Oh and if you think it would look better with wheels, it does. Oh so much. A good conversion kit can be bought here[1] or here[2]

Both variants should have side armour 11 to help differentiate them more from the Chimera, and would thus give them a better drive by role.

Patterns

There are two variants of the Taurox. The Taurox and the Stormtrooper exclusive Taurox Prime.

Taurox

Oh Shit! We accidentally shot Dave when he was trying to get out of the side door!

The vanilla Taurox is available as a dedicated transport for regular Imperial Guard units. This vehicle looks a lot like an Ork Trukk and is basically a big Metal Box on top of four smaller Metal Boxes. The Taurox has somewhat more firepower and range with its twin-linked Autocannon, while the Chimera is an Amphibious vehicle (not that that really makes much difference in 8th), is slightly tougher, and can take upgrades from the Vehicle Equipment List. This means that the Chimera is slightly better for short ranged Guard since it's less likely to get destroyed as it rushes towards the enemy, while the Taurox is slightly better for supporting a shooty Guard army since a twin-linked Autocannon will probably deal more damage than a Multilaser/Heavy Bolter combo, especially at ranges over 36".

Alternative take: These are excellent little vehicles for melta-vets to spring out of. The vehicle's 14" move lets them get just that little bit closer than they might otherwise have been able to, which hopefully leaves them in a better position to get within prime melta range (assuming the vehicle isn't shot out from under them before they can deploy).

In terms of the model kit itself, there are two ways to mount the autocannons of a Taurox: either on the sides, or on a turret. However, any git with a lick of common sense will have them in the turret. Not just because the concept of shooting past the passenger doors is stupid (though it is), but because the idea of having fixed weapon mounts on a vehicle is fucking retarded. Who in their right mind would choose having fixed guns that can neither elevate nor depress, nor traverse left or right, when you could have a full 360 degree arc of fire? Spoiler: Literally no one.

Like most Imperial Guard vehicles the Taurox and its sister variant, the Taurox Prime, can be equipped with either a pintle-mounted Storm Bolter or a Heavy Stubber. At only 2 points for either option, there's really no reason not to take one.

Taurox Prime

This is only available to the Stormtroopers. It's basically a version of the Taurox with a Hot-shot volley gun in place of the Autocannons (you can swap back to the Autocannon for some points, of course) and a Taurox Battle Cannon. The Battle Cannon on the Taurox is a mini version of the Battle Cannon on the Leman Russ; being 48" S7 AP-1 Heavy D6. It can be further swapped for a Taurox Gatling Cannon (having 20 shots at Strength 4) or a Taurox Missile Launcher which is basically the Typhoon Missile Launcher that Land Speeders get. In addition, it's manned by Stormtroopers instead of the regular Guard so it has BS 4 instead of 3.

The best gun loadout is probably the hot-shot volley gun and the Gatling Cannon; you get 28 S4 BS4 shots at 24", which the vehicle can close to with ease; this is excellent for anti-infantry duty. The autocannons and Battle cannon are better against light vehicles, but the Taurox Prime doesn't quite have the toughness to trade shots with enemy armor; it's better suited to lightning-fast strikes against infantry and other soft targets. The Taurox Missile Launcher is very impressive, and can fire either 2 Krak missiles or 2 Frag Missiles doing the damage that you'd expect; this gives the Taurox Prime the ability to punch above its weight class, but it's 20 points.

You might think this is overpriced, and it is. A Taurox Prime with a Missile Launcher, twin Autocannons, and a Heavy Stubber comes in at 134 points, which is only 3 points less than a plain-Jane Leman Russ Battle Tank, at a fraction of the survivability despite having arguably comparable firepower. But the truth is that in order to get the most out of a Taurox Prime, or any Taurox for that matter, a wise player must use the vehicle's high speed to quickly deploy it and its squad to where they are most needed, and to where all that weaponry can make a difference. The ugly track pods will make new players mistake the Taurox for a tank, and it isn't; like the Chimera, it's an AFV, and one that's sacrificed armor for speed and firepower.

Alternative Modeling Options

A Taurox conversion by a certain Bas Dan of Spikey Bits glory.

Much like every other retarded new model, GW has a habit of coming up with rules that makes you feel like you pretty much have to buy the damn things no matter how shit the models are. Well there is another way - We all want twin linked auto cannons so just convert them on to your chimera. Same for the prime, just find appropriate guns for the turret and that'll do it. No retarded box on boxes, just sweet looking chimeras with some heavy firepower.

Alternatively, just find a 1/35 Tamiya halftrack (M3 or Hanomag, depending on your preference) and stick the twin-lined autocannons on it. That way it differentiates itself from the actual Chimeras in your army, and is relatively low-profile in comparison to the actual Taurox itself.

A third option, and the one you'll probably end up going for if you play at GW stores that frown upon 3rd-party models and kitbashes that are significantly departed from the shape of the original model (important for TLOS; the Chimera is lower, longer, and wider than the Taurox), is to simply not use those idiotic track pods and put some big ol' wheels on it. Several kits exist to convert the Taurox to something more visually palatable (see above); vendors of which include Victoria Miniatures, Zinge Industries, and Blood and Skulls Industry over on Ebay, the latter of which also makes kits for half-track, 8x8, and 6x6 configurations. Hell, if you happen to like the armored suspension that the vehicle came with (it does kinda appeal in its own way, doesn't it?), it can be fitted to just about any 27mm wheels you can get a hold of without much pain.

A fourth option is to use a Genestealer Cults Goliath Truck, which has the benefit of identical stats, wargear, and transport capacity for a perfect WYSIWYG count as match.