Lord of the Raptors

In the previous version of the chaos space marine codex, raptors were defined as having daemonic flight and daemonic visage. This got me thinking about a couple of conversion ideas to use in place of (under the counts as rule) regular raptors.

Aims & Model.
Basically, I wanted to build a unit of raptors that weren't the same as the metal models. I wanted them to have wings. I wanted them to have leering daemonic faces. I wanted to to look suitably chaotic and mutated. Before this model, I did create another one as an HQ experiment, but it doesn't look as good as this model.

This model consists of a number of parts sourced from several sprues. The base is a regular plastic base with a rhino door stuck in to some green stuff. The legs are a from a standard space marine. The right arm is a chaos space marine bolt pistol, but the shoulder pad is a veteran space marines studded variety. For the left arm, I used a chaos terminator power fist and a loyalist (blank) shoulder pad. The wings are metal and from a warhammer fantasy harpy. The accessories (krak & frag grenades) are from loyalist marines. The head is taken from the plastic chaos mutations sprue and suitably filed down and angled to fit in to the head groove. The model uses no back piece -- the wings are directly stuck in to the rear of the front chaos space marine chest plate with green stuff. Although fiddly in parts, the assembly was straight forward and done from the base up in order to make sure that the miniature balanced evenly without falling over.

Painting.
When creating a new unit that doesn't have a pre-defined colour scheme, I'm always torn between several different concepts that I think might work well. For this one, I went with a purple scheme.

The first bits to be painted on top of the black undercoat were the recessed metallic areas (arm joints and the like) which received a silver drybrushing. The purple power armour was the next phase. Carefully, the purple was applied such that it didn't cover the entirety of every surface: if you look closely, you'll see that I've left some of the black undercoat showing through (e.g. on the power fist there is a black edging or buffer around the purple before it hits the bleached bone). The purple was inked and then highlighted appropriately.

For the wings and head, a goblin green basecoat was applied, inked in dark green and highlighted. The next phase was with the bleached bone detailing around the edges of the power fist and bolt pistol arm (etc.). In some areas, this takes a steady hand as the raised portions can tend to get very thin. The bolt pistol and the head were finished off next using reds and whites.

In the final touches, the grenades were painted almost entirely silver and a decal featuring a single skull was applied to the terminator shoulder pad. To make it look more like an ex-loyalist marine, four arrows were painted around the skull to imitate an assault squad symbol.

Evaluation.
Positives: Effectively being created out of bits and spare parts, this model cost much less than the metal variety of raptor, and (I think) it looks better. I note in passing that this figure could also be used as an HQ choice. But as can be seen below from the teaser, I've started on the rest of the squad of raptors to which this figure will be an aspiring champion...
Negatives: The use of the terminator power fist makes the model look like his arms are ill proportioned with one another; then again this is a chaos model, so I'm not bothered. I now just need to come up with a name for this fellow and his squad.