Death Korps of Krieg Rapier Laser Destroyer

Santa you fat bastard, you really came through for me this year! That's right, a shiny new Rapier Laser Destroyer was under the tree for me on Xmas day, shooting up all the other presents!

As soon as i saw the minis on the Forgeworld website, i was hooked! A massive Rogue Trader throwback for sure (which i don't usually buy into) but for some reason it really called out to me. Once i read the rules for this baby, i was set on a 3 piece squadron of them for my Krieg, which really lack anti tank firepower at the moment. If your not familiar with the Laser Destroyers weapon profile.....

Range          Strength          AP          Type

  36"                   9                   1           Ordinance 1, Twin Linked

Its a Lascannon on steroids, but you compromise a bit on the range, which I'm happy to do for AP1 and Twin Linked! It also has an AV value of 11, 10, 10 - understandably flimsy, with 1 IG crewman (which changes to Kriegsman if used in a Krieg list) I can also take a squadron of these as an Elites choice for a Krieg Seige Regiment List, and at 40pts a piece, I'm all in!

Anyways, enough talk, here's the painted pictures of my first Rapier Laser.



The usual tank weathering effects were applied, with the exception of the mud on the tracks. I thought that  it would make it look a bit clumsy with all that extra bulk on it, so just went with the muddied brown tracks instead.

Here's the WIP shots. As you can see, a genuine Kriegsman was used as opposed to the Cadian crewman that comes with the set. This guy is the gunner of a Centaur Artillery Tractor! 3 sets of Centaur Crewmen were sent to me in error from an eBay seller Y-E-A-R-S ago, which i had no use for but dutifully held onto. I'm glad i did!

The spotters backpack came with the set (which is a nice touch), but the arms were a real problem though. The right arm controlling the joystick is a Krieg arm which would normally be holding onto the Heavy Stubber on the topside of a Centaur. The problem was, it was way to long. I had to shorten it dramatically to make it fit. The shoulder plating covers up most of my "trademark-sloppy" Green Stuff work fortunately!

The other arm was from the Cadian that came with the set. The second Krieg arm bent to much towards the middle of the Kriegsman (as if you were hugging a stomach wound) and to much work would be required to make it right. So i added a cuff to the arm and decided to just live with the Cadian shoulder pad. At least this way it wouldn't look shoddy from being butchered to death by my woefully inadequate Green Stuff skills! It doesn't look that bad once its painted up.

Finally here's a quick size up for you. Mrs GunGrave was appalled by how small it was! (turns out it wasn't Santa after all.....) I assured her that you couldn't put a price on the death of the Emperors enemies.....she wasn't convinced!

It felt really good to get back to the Imperial Guard after all the Xenos action that's been going on around here recently. Thought i might have to change the name of the blog! Suffice to say, I've got 2 more Rapiers on my desk waiting to be built, so expect more reinforcements for the Death Korps soon!

The GunGrave