Reviewing the Raptors

GWpertinent is having a Crusade week and on Thursday it was raptor legion so I decided to make a small review of my raptor force.

So here it goes:

Reason for picking raptors
When I was running the badab war campaign people would ask me "what chapter should i pick? I want something easy." I would reply with "raptors", monocromatic armor and dirty look is realy easy. No matter how many people i sujested it to no one actually took the challange. So I wanted to show people that my money was were my mouth was. (is that the right expretion?)
Playing the scenario massacre at bellaphones fall (which I found the hardest mission for the defending player,you need in the mission to keep your 3 hq's alive/buildings are dangerous terrain), I lost alot of games.
I could have come up with really unfluffy ideas like:
1)Take Tygerious and deep strike your characters and reroll when the succefully enter to keep them in orbit longer.
2)Play 30 terminators with storm shield.
3)Take the the minotaur, salamander and ultramarine special characters with eternal warrior.

Instead I had a look at the special characters, Elam courbay of the Fire hawks would do me no good making assault marines into scoring units. Then I read Lias Issodon of the raptors 140 points I think for a Chapter master that changes combat tactics to stealth. His pros was the universal stealth, his power sword, 3 wounds,cheap cost and special ammunition in a big sniper riffle (I love snippers, in CS I would always try to snipe). His cons where no orbital bombartment and no iron halo.
He also gets to sabbotage a unit at the begginig of the game glanse roll on a vehicle or d6 ap- wounds on a unit. Usally it would go against a ball or land raider.

ALso raptors are the exact opposite of the Fire Hawks, where Fire Hawks apear in their red orrange yellow armor with guns blazzing, Raptors choose to use camo to their advantage and try to remain unseen. What better way to distract the enemy than a loud red orange yellow distraction in the front to their ranks while you sneak up from the back?

I imagined in the senario the small force of raptors pass through the enemy lines to warn the Fire hawks of their inpending doom surrounding them in a death trap.

I also added a master of the forge that fortified my central ruin givving my hq and 2 devastator units a +2 cover save. While I used 3 tactial units, their rhinos, and 10 terminators as a perimeter.

So the bottom line is I added raptors to my army cause i wanted to prove a point, they were useful and were a pleasend break from orange yellow armor.

Selection of units for my force
I made my raptors by looking at what my list needed, a tactical with rhino, devastators and Lias issodon him self.

Creating the force
In the badab war book they had a very basic armor, no fancy artwork or etchings upon their armor. No chapter marks or ranks, I know from real military in time of war you remove isignia and marks so you dont make your self a target, makes it harder for the enemy to count you and track you and harder for them to know who died from where. No marks no purity seals, (except those already on the armor , some where trimmed of). I used were I could the studded shoulder pads to avoid having a gap on the one shoulder pad, on the other a black sumbol to the chapter was attached.



Lias was heavily converted, giving him a big ass gun.







Painting the raptors

Property of Games workshop.

Property of Games workshop

Painting the raptors was dead easy as I had  advised others, I painted 15 marines in 1 day to the standar you will see in the final pictures.

First I undercoaded them black.
Then I airbrushed them with Tamiya dark green.
Then  I airbrushed them with Tamiya flat green getting only the higher areas and mainly above the torso.
Then I darkened the feet with dark green and black.
At this point they looked like this.




After this stage green thraka was washed all over the models without leaving pools of wash.
When dry I did the details, like eyes guns and the shoulder pad edges and eagles with codex gray.
then washed mettalic and grey parts with badab black wash (badab war chapter getting washed with badab black, get the joke? oh never mind)

After that was dry I applied the pigments from the mix section randomly and what ever felt right , i used black some tones of grey and white. White especialy went heavy into the raptors, I  imagine that while shooting in some building a roof or wall colapses or gets blown next to them.




Same prosedure whent into the rhino with some fast higlighting.
The end result...











just for the record Lias and my plan worked in the badab war campaign my opponent was impressed with my +2 cover save against his plasma cannons and vindicator.
Thanks for reading.

Can I also add that if anyone want to commision me for a raptor force looking like mine I would be willing and in a small period of time too.