Traitor Ratlings

[chainsaw]

I'm building up a Renegade Militia / Traitor Guard army with allied Daemons and think a small unit of Ratlings to man a Quad-gun could be quite fun.

I haven't seen the Ratling models in quite a while, but have heard that they can hide behind the Aegis without being seen. This does mean that they will only be able to shoot the quad-gun, but also that they can't be targeted by the enemy. Once the quad-gun has gone, they'll redeploy and start sniping stuff. Mostly it will just be a minimum three-midget unit, so as not to waste points on rifles that won't be used until later on in the game. At least that's the theory. Of course they will still be vulnerable to barrage weapons and flyers that can see over the Aegis, but it stops my CCS that would otherwise man the quad-gun from being an even bigger target.

Not having Ratling models to hand, can someone confirm that they really can hide behind an Aegis please?

Now what to use. Obviously there are no chaos themed midgets with sniper-guns in the GW or FW line-up. One idea is to get some cheap Goblins from the new Hobbit box set off eBay. I'll give them some converted Cadian lasguns (remove the aquilla & add some sort of telescopic sight, but probably don't want to lengthen the barrel because otherwise the model will be over-balanced and fall over).

Of course I could just use real Ratlings, but they're metal and not easy to convert (other than filing off the eagle from their belts). They also don't fit the theme of my army very well.

Any thoughts? Anyone out there actually have Rattling and the new Goblin models to do a size comparison? I really don't want to be accused of cheating by making my conversions too small.

Any other suggestions? Needs to be based on GW parts so I can play in their shops, otherwise I'm open to ideas.

Thanks.

[The Hawk!]

Hmmmm... An interesting idea....

I have 5 of the older Ratlings lying around somewere, if I recall correctly, they're about 2/3 of the size of a guardsman. But I don't have any idea about the new Gobbo's unfortunatley :/ As for scopes, try using a bitz seller on Ebay or something to get Space Marine scopes... They should be easy enough to get a hold of

Hope this helped mate
Dave

[Adkenpachi]

Ignore the paint

[christopher300]

if size is issue you could just pack the feet up a little so they end up as tall as?

[Sgt. Rock]

It would take some fiddly work to put the lasgun on, but the new night goblin models are stellar, and the tattered robes and pointy hoods would be *awesome* for chaos cultists of some sort. The arms are a bit screwy, though, as they don't have anything on the sprue that could be easily converted to fit the lasgun; you'd have to do some surgery to make it work. But the models are about the same size as a ratling, maybe a touch shorter and slighter of build, but not by enough that I think any reasonable player will cry foul.