Been chilling around lately, reading up on my Forge World stuffs to bring you guys some better reviews as some feedback I received about the Sicaran said I could of been a little more detailed. So here we go, The Land Raider Proteus, the eldest and oldest of all the Land Raiders, even before the Raider we all loath and hate that sits in our own codex, so on to the alternatives!
First off, before we get started with the Land Raider section of AI:13 please note:
No Land Raider Variant may become Dedicated Transports for any unit. This is the reply I received from Forgeworld along with a list of others. But yes, No Raider from this book can be taken outside the FOC, so all the Raiders take up them Precious Heavy slots.
Now, apart from being a nice bit of eye candy for all collectors, the Proteus is a confusing vehicle to me, especially the Chaos one. It comes in at 200 points for a Raider, which is considerably cheap, 30 points less than the standard and 40-65 points less then the Marine Dex variants, but why? Looking through it's Wargear and Special Rules, you see why.
First off it has no Heavy Bolter, which to be honest I do not mind as having 2 Twin-linked Lascannons you are not going to be shooting many things where the HB will do much against, not a bad loss. I would prefer it if all Raiders began without the bolters stock and you had to buy an upgrade for it, then it would lead to more interesting builds, and if more weapon options where there then it could fill more rolls. Wish and prayer, that is what I shall do!
It has lost assault vehicle, WHAT? Ok, this is big. The two main reason you get a raider is it's Survivability: Best armour, 4 HP's winning. Durability: The 24" threat range it possesses and the ability to drop all sorts of nasty things into your enemy late game that they have to deal with is a hammer in it's own right. Now taking off the Assault ramp you take away the 24" threat bubble and lose half of your effectiveness and your threat on the field and being big and tough is great and all, but then you are just a 2 Lascannon shooting box at 200 points? Whats going off here...
Well, the up sides. You still keep the transport capacity, so you can still hold 10 dudes in there to guarantee their safety, if you are planning on getting this 200 point bucket, then shove in some cultists as at 50 points they are leveling out the expenses, and 200 points holding objective unit with a 50 point ob sec unit inside wouldn't really sit too high on your opponents radar. It might remain unnoticed for a while guaranteeing you an objective. If you are going this way about it, you probably are going to be sitting back and shooting, I don't see this unit working in an army designed around pushing the board as 250 points is quiet a lot to sit at the back on an objective, the cultists could do that by themselves with an Agus and still achieve a similar standard.
So, there are many upgrades for this large Lascannon bucket and most of them are your usual stock, Havoc launcher, Possession ect, and as for all the stock upgrades I would say only the Havoc Launcher is the only useful one for this vehicle, perhaps the armoured Ceramite depending on the amount of Melta weapons in your Meta, or if you have trembling fear of Fire Warriors in Drop Pods. My reasons will be stated soon, but moving on.
The "Ark of Unnameable Horror" is the one and only unique upgrade this Vehicle has, all the others are available somewhere else on some other vehicle but I won't judge. Now, the effect of this upgrade is that any unit firing upon the Proteus must take a Pinning Check, with usual rules applied for who ignores the Pinning Checks. So it isn't too bad at the moment, it drops 2 off of your 10 man unit cap, so you can no longer fit them 10 Cultists in there, which I think is quiet annoying and a bit crippling in my opinion. This upgrade costs 50 points, which is a bomb shell amount for what you are getting. 50 points to pin things that try shooting you, now most units roll off of a LD8 or more check, so about 70% pass rate there, and then when you look at tanks and fearless units that ignore pinning, that is a lot of units that just push past the protection ability. So I highly disagree with taking this upgrade, it is not worth it at all. Keep it cheap, keep the cultists in there.
Next up are Pintle Mounted weapons. Now, the Proteus has access to the Combi stock upgrades and also the Heavy Flamer, Heavy Bolter and the Multi-Melta. Now I am not much of a celebrator but WOOOO! We get the Multi-Melta chaps! I'd say slap that upgrade on that bad boy cause we love the guns! Coming up finally we have the Hull mounted weapons, which include a Twin Linked Heavy flamer and Heavy Bolter back on for 20 points each. So we can get back to almost normal standard Land Raider, but we can't get them assault ramps back, so here is my final thoughts.
The Proteus is not an assault vehicle by far, not front line stuff. It can be, after many weapon additions and upgrades you can get yourself quiet a sufficient gun boat, add on the Havoc Launcher, Multi-Melta and the Twin Linked Heavy Bolter then you have an AV14 4HP's 5 weapon systems vehicle. 2 Lascannons, 1 Multi-Melta, 3 Heavy Bolter shots and 1 Havoc shot a turn isn't a bad thing to throw out. Anyone getting close will have to pay for walk over. Personally I would put cultists in here, to keep the costs down it might work, depending on what you shoot at. I'd look at switching between the Melta and the Bolter just in case you are not getting any coins for your points at the end of the day, but stock the melta is what I would go with.
Hope you have all enjoyed this review, thank you for staying till the end, next up Relic Achilles!
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