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I would love to play the Raptor Talon formation, but have yet to decide which Legion to take for them.
I am looking at the Emperor's Childeren at the moment as a good option, since the Blissgiver relic stacks nicely with the formations LD debuff.
Also I am just looking at the formations as a single option, not including the special detachment format.
So which Legion would then be the best option, based on their Legion special rules, warlord traits and relics, to use the Raptor Talon formation with?

The only one that really doesn't do anything for you is Alpha Legion. What're you looking for specifically?

Night Lords seem tailor made for the formation. the Chaos Lord takes the duel claws of doom and deep strikes with a unit of them, charging right away and ripping something apart.

Any legion can take them. Night lords have Raptor talon as a core formation. So, by adding just one Spawn you can get free votlw and either a free boon per turn or guaranteed nightfight if you need one.

Though, the formation is still sub-par cause of how underwhelming raptors are and how unreliable deepstrike is. I'd say that it works 1/3 of the time.

I am kinda looking at the Raptor Talon for stuff to use as reaction unit in turn 2.
I mostly face space marine armies with each a different playstyle. Some go White Scars, some Ultra, some Iron Hands, etc, etc and while I win most battles against them. I still lose once in a while because an enemy unit was able to defeat my flank or because an opponent was able to keep an objective to himself in his/her backline.
The Raptor Talon can fill this roll pretty neatly by counter charging enemy units on my flanks or deepstriking into my opponents backline.

Two options I can think of. 1 would be thousand suns, solely for their relec. I forgot the name but its a weapon that uses your leadership (10) as strength and their leadership (#-5 from the formation right?) As toughness. That being said, it might be better to ally a TS sourcerer and have in charge in with the raptors after. Idk how effective it would be but it could be pretty cool.

Another option is DG. Give all squads double plasma. Rapid fire out of deepstrike and charge. T5 and FNP should keep them alive against most things not built for CC, and the double plasma should soften CC units up

SirSweetroll wrote:
Two options I can think of. 1 would be thousand suns, solely for their relec. I forgot the name but its a weapon that uses your leadership (10) as strength and their leadership (#-5 from the formation right?) As toughness. That being said, it might be better to ally a TS sourcerer and have in charge in with the raptors after. Idk how effective it would be but it could be pretty cool.

Another option is DG. Give all squads double plasma. Rapid fire out of deepstrike and charge. T5 and FNP should keep them alive against most things not built for CC, and the double plasma should soften CC units up

I agree with this and have had a great deal of success running the same unit with DG rules. Also, grab a Powerfist for the Aspiring Champ if you have the points; with FnP, T5 and maybe a reroll of 1's from the Vectorium, it's actually quite likely that he'll get to wreck stuff with it.

If you're focusing on your whole army popping in from reserves, Black Legion gives you the most bang for your buck. Turn 1 deep striking is huge along with army wide hatred, and a small troop tax. Take the hound formation and you only have a unit of Berzerkers and regular marines, everything else is raptors. Slap combi-melta and double melta on every single thing that can take it, throw an aegis with the comm relay in there, and always go second. Then literally rain melta from the sky and tear the heart out of the enemy army.

 Badablack wrote:
If you're focusing on your whole army popping in from reserves, Black Legion gives you the most bang for your buck. Turn 1 deep striking is huge along with army wide hatred, and a small troop tax. Take the hound formation and you only have a unit of Berzerkers and regular marines, everything else is raptors. Slap combi-melta and double melta on every single thing that can take it, throw an aegis with the comm relay in there, and always go second. Then literally rain melta from the sky and tear the heart out of the enemy army.

They get Endless Hatred, which gives you an extra attack each round. They also get Crusader due to VOtLW.

Black Legion Raptor Talons are crazy good but suffer from deep strike mishaps. Playing them in an army right now and having some success. They pair nicely with a Cyclopes Cabal, which can use Shroud of Deceit to soften up a target before the charge.

The one drawback is points. Hard to get the points to all add up with a Black Legion Warband.

You can read about my list here:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/720871.page

 techsoldaten wrote:
They get Endless Hatred, which gives you an extra attack each round. They also get Crusader due to VOtLW.

Endless Hatred gives them regular Hatred (rerolls to hit in the first round of combat against everyone) and rerolls to hit for -every- round against Forces of the Imperium. It's actually very good, as stated, and works well with the Raptors. Crusader is also good if you can get a couple Raptor units on the same target for the Leadership debuff and better chance of a Sweeping Advance!

Black Legion seems very good but requires me to take the special detachment format, not just the formation. Deathguard T5 with double plasma also seems like a kickass option. Personally I though the Emperor's children to be a good option because initiative 5 Warp Talons and Raptors can hit like a truck in the SM heavy meta I am in, before said SM have a chance to hit me back.
So now I am kinda wondering between hitting first, hitting last while rocking T5 and FNP or rerolling to hit.

Another nice thing about black legion Raptors is army wide crusader. When (not if) your guys scatter horribly off course you get a better run chance back into position or into cover.

As far as detachments, black legion actually have the cheapest requirements other than Night Lords who just get straight Raptors.. The Hounds of Abaddon formation just requires berserkers, a regular chaos squad, a lord and some more raptors. Everyone else has to take the chaos warband, which has much higher troop requirements before you get your raptors and you don't get free khorne marks.

Also you get to take your choice of marks on all your raptors with BL instead of being locked out or forced into one like the other legions. Honestly the only real con of Black Legion is their boring color scheme.

OP specifically said no decurion though. Black Legion might have possibly the best raptor talon in their decurion, but outside of that their raptor talon very quickly loses interest.
All they get is hatred and the BL relics aren't all that special for a T2 deepstrike assault.
There is some merit for a turn 1 hand of darkness, since that can take out most flying MCs in one shot before they take off, but even generally speaking, it's nice to hit before your opponent can activate any defenses like invisibility or what have you.
You can forget all of that when you don't take a decurion though. Hatred is nice and all and even endless hatred would seem to apply here, but other legions offer more. Especially in a marine heavy environment when everybody has VotLW.
Fearless, assault with plasma guns or simply more interesting relics.

Alpha legion get the mind veil, so the unit with the lord can't get stuck and can keep assaulting.
IW get the cranium which is nice bit of aoe to have when in your opponents back field and you have fnp. Or a juicy 2+ save with IWND.
Night lords get more leadership debuffs if you do want to build on that and you can mess with you opponents reserves. The potential for pay off is higher with this than with endless hatred alone, but I guess their about equally good overall. Stealth isn't likely to do much here.
Word bearers kinda suck for this. So do TSons, although two of their WL traits are pretty good for this if you're willing to take that risk. And maybe Warp talons are worth considering if you play in a marine heavy environment, what with their 3++ and VotLW+shred.
The remaining cult legions are good simply for making all the raptors fearless. BL can do the same if you add icons, but then you'd need at least 10 raptors per unit, which interferes with deepstriking.

Things to consider:

1) Raptors are easily killed and relatively high cost. This means that the Emperor's Children buff can be really attractive as a choice - Potentially a 4+ feel no pain and a single attribute bonus..

2) Black Legion lets you deep strike first turn and charge. Couple of meltaguns and meltabombs and all is good to go. This can help lower casualties from actually moving.

3) If you're willing to buy a single Spawn, Night Lords are very good as a choice. Being able to choose constant night fighting, giving your whole detachment a 5+ cover save in the open and a 2+ cover save in actual cover can be very attractive.

 Roknar wrote:
OP specifically said no decurion though. Black Legion might have possibly the best raptor talon in their decurion, but outside of that their raptor talon very quickly loses interest.
All they get is hatred and the BL relics aren't all that special for a T2 deepstrike assault.
There is some merit for a turn 1 hand of darkness, since that can take out most flying MCs in one shot before they take off, but even generally speaking, it's nice to hit before your opponent can activate any defenses like invisibility or what have you.
You can forget all of that when you don't take a decurion though. Hatred is nice and all and even endless hatred would seem to apply here, but other legions offer more. Especially in a marine heavy environment when everybody has VotLW.
Fearless, assault with plasma guns or simply more interesting relics.

Just to be clear, Black Legion gets Endless Hatred for any unit with VotLW, and Fear and Crusader within a Speartip detachment. You don't have to take the Speartip formation, Endless Hatred would apply within a CAD.

I think the artefact you are referring to is the Eye of Night. It's a nice way to kill vehicles on the first turn. The Hand of Darkness is a powerfist that strikes at initiative.

The best artefact for a Black Legion Raptor Talon, in my mind, is the Last Memory of the Yuranthos. It lets you fire off an 18 inch sunburst, which (obviously) covers a wide area.

 techsoldaten wrote:

 Roknar wrote:
OP specifically said no decurion though. Black Legion might have possibly the best raptor talon in their decurion, but outside of that their raptor talon very quickly loses interest.
All they get is hatred and the BL relics aren't all that special for a T2 deepstrike assault.
There is some merit for a turn 1 hand of darkness, since that can take out most flying MCs in one shot before they take off, but even generally speaking, it's nice to hit before your opponent can activate any defenses like invisibility or what have you.
You can forget all of that when you don't take a decurion though. Hatred is nice and all and even endless hatred would seem to apply here, but other legions offer more. Especially in a marine heavy environment when everybody has VotLW.
Fearless, assault with plasma guns or simply more interesting relics.

Just to be clear, Black Legion gets Endless Hatred for any unit with VotLW, and Fear and Crusader within a Speartip detachment. You don't have to take the Speartip formation, Endless Hatred would apply within a CAD.

I think the artefact you are referring to is the Eye of Night. It's a nice way to kill vehicles on the first turn. The Hand of Darkness is a powerfist that strikes at initiative.

The best artefact for a Black Legion Raptor Talon, in my mind, is the Last Memory of the Yuranthos. It lets you fire off an 18 inch sunburst, which (obviously) covers a wide area.

Having endless hatred doesn't do anything. It only works on armies of the imperium and even then only after the first round of combat. Granted, that's going to be pretty often but the other legions offer things that always work, bar night lords. It's not exactly a major point in favour of a BL talon.

I was referring to the hand of darkness. The eye of night is completely useless on a talon lord, given how it is heavy and infinite range and yuranthos can't even be taken on a lord as it is psykers only. the talon doesn't allow for a sorcerer.
The hand is more than just a powerfist, it has instant death and fleshbane. You only have one chance, but between hatred, fleshbane, AP2 and ignoring fnp, it's a decent chance at getting that wound to stick. Combined with the Decurion, that allows you to come in T1 and take out the biggest baddest guy (without eternal warrior) before they get a chance to do anything.
It's hardly a competitive relic, but when it works, it instantly more than makes its points back and flying circus type lists are somewhat popular at least. But outside of a decurion? You get to re-roll to hit once, maybe twice with a BL Talon. On turn two like everybody else too, with the same basic relics.
I'm not saying it's bad, but I would consider other legions first, cult legions in particular. Fearless is a good thing to have with small units and the fearless icon isn't cheap.

Quite some handy advice here.
I will most likely try out the Death Guard first as T5 and FNP allows the unit to be a bit more survivable after the initial charge + combat.

I would consider giving them some plasma guns in that case. Thanks to relentless you can pump out 4 S7 Ap2 shots before combat, suddenly initiative 1 doesn't seem so bad anymore lol.

If going DG it may be worth taking one of the units as Warp Talons. Warp Talons with T5 3+/5++/5+++ and charge off deepstrike suddenly become pretty durable for their points and being able to decide where and who you are engaging makes those lightening claws way more effective (albeit at I3).
When Sanguinary Guard got the option of charge off deepstrike it made them far more effective and they are around the same cost, have no invuln or fnp, are T4 and only get to reroll 1 attack compared to all rerolls to wound (same amount of attacks due to the +1A for 2 LCs). The only advantage SG have over Warp Talons is the ability to take ap2, I4 (and more accurate DA if Dante is taken). But the lack of ap2 is no biggie if you are picking your charges due to the formation.

DG for relentless and extra tougness and FNP, or EC for extra initiative and FNP. Swinging first and FNP will help you murder in CC. The Night Lords aren't bad, either, though their improved Fear doesn't do a whole lot unless you're murdering chaff units.

Also for funzies sake, try taking 10 man raptor squads. (Proxy if you don't have the models). It's really fun. I just did it yesterday.

Munga wrote:
DG for relentless and extra tougness and FNP, or EC for extra initiative and FNP. Swinging first and FNP will help you murder in CC. The Night Lords aren't bad, either, though their improved Fear doesn't do a whole lot unless you're murdering chaff units.

Ironically, night lords don't really add that much to the raptor talon. Their night fight bonuses are 1-st turn only and both raptors and warp talons allready have fear which you will probably use to any result ~1% of the time when fighting orks and other night lords. What you do get is stealth which is pretty minor for such a formation as you will likely ds in the open trying to avoid extra dt tests and mishaps as cover is usually occupied allready. On the other hand you could probably use it to kill a chaff unit and consolidate inside cover. Though, don't expect to kill all that much. 5 raptors will kill around 1 meq and 3 geq in mellee. They're really there for shooting and finishing off vehicles, tying up heavy weapon teams and eating overwatch. So, probably durability and shootiness is the main focus here. Don't forget about relics. I really like this d6 s8 ap2 assault one-use emp children thingy. And deathguard have a large blast poisoned grenade and a flamer stuff. Though, a flamer weapon is not that great to use on a deepstriking unit without any ds mitigation.

But take my word with a grain of salt - i'm usually trying to build lists that are more reliable, so i avoid non-scatterless deepstriking as much as possible.

The huge advantage the NL Raptor Talon does have is that it unlocks a decurion (and all the auxiliary, the Nightfighting and other bonuses and up to 4 Command choices) for far, far less points than a warband... plus all the units are effective for very little upgrade cost - unlike the units in a warband. No other Legion can unlock their Decurion for anything remotely near the points that a NL talon allows.

DG talons have worked very well for me the extra toughness and FNP makes them very hard to kill in the first strike that you give to your opponents so charging into cover is less of a punishment for them than other talons.

Poly Ranger wrote:
The huge advantage the NL Raptor Talon does have is that it unlocks a decurion (and all the auxiliary, the Nightfighting and other bonuses and up to 4 Command choices) for far, far less points than a warband... plus all the units are effective for very little upgrade cost - unlike the units in a warband. No other Legion can unlock their Decurion for anything remotely near the points that a NL talon allows.

Word Bearers can take the Lost and the Damned as a core choice. That's 310 points for the minimum with no upgrades (4 units of Cultists and a Dark Apostle). Raptor Talon with no upgrades is around 400 (maybe a little less, but no one in their right mind runs the Chaos Lord naked...). Of course, Raptors > Cultists, so there is that.

I'd not say that 3 raptor squads are better than 4 respawning cultist squads.

Black Legion does the Raptor Talon the best. So weird.

If I had to make a suggestion I would say Crimsion Slaughter. Take the MoT and add a Sorcerer with Balestar of Mannon. Its a gamble but you can have a unit that has a 3++ that rerolls to hit and has a 12" move.

Another one I would say is 1k sons and going biomancy heavy it will give you strong melee units with lots of invul saves.

Anything that allows the MoK.

World Eaters.



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I would say the best thing to do would be combine


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Oh and the last thing. Is TS if you take Exalted Sorcerer and roll on Tele and go for Telekinetic Dome 12" 3++ bubble