So let's jump in and start looking at some pros and cons to putting a Thunder Chieftain in with some Raptor ladies and why you might want to at least give yourself the option to do so. The biggest benefits of putting a Thunder Chieftain in with Raptors are that you can get a warlord chieftain on to the table very early to start being able to benefit from Shock basically from the start of the game and to create a light regiment capable of scoring.
Light regiments do not normally count toward seizing objectives, however, Character stands still count as their own type. So a 3 stand unit of Raptors with a Thunder Chieftain is 3 light stands and 1 heavy stand so that 1 heavy stand WILL contribute toward seizing an objective. This is similar to using a Matriarch Queen with the Brood of Omgorah artifact to shift her to cav. The Raptor block with Queen has been a reasonably common choice through out V2 and is quite good. The Chieftain can do similar but adds the possibility of destroying objective markers in a single round which the Queen can't do. Let's take a closer look at how that works.
"Objective Markers cannot suffer more than 1 wound per Charge/Clash actions from Light and Medium Regiments"
The above is relevant because the character does not change the type of the regiment. So even though both a Thunder Chieftain and a Matriarch Queen are heavies the regiment itself is still a Light Regiment so can not cause more than 1 wound per action to the Objective Marker. The Thunder Chieftain has the advantage here as its Trample special rule DOES* work on objectives. This results in an additional 2 hits that have the opportunity to do the third and final wound to an objective marker in a single turn.
You wont always want to attempt this but against an opponent that isn't prepared to punish you for extending to attack an objective on turn 2 you can get a pretty solid amount of scoring in very early. Raptor riders can quite reasonably reach an objective on the midline of the table by turn 2 and you have roughly a 75% chance of destroying one with a charge/clash action and the aforementioned tramples.
Now that we've looked at why we might want to do this lets look at some considerations that maybe make this less than stellar. First the Thunder Chieftain does slow down the raptors. The Chieftain is only March 6 and you are limited to the lowest march in a regiment. You could, at the time of this writing, take the Brood of Omgorah on the Thunder Chieftain (yes I know that sounds silly) to make up the difference but that is quite expensive as the impact bonus doesn't stack with the base impacts of the Chieftain.
The Thunder Chieftain's way of war doesn't combo overly well with the Raptors. Raptors already have flurry so while the Chieftain would still get it and Rapid Displacement is far from bad its a little bit not great. I'd probably still take Violence of Action mostly on the intention of eventually dropping the Thunder Chieftain back into a unit of Thunder Riders. Seek New Escort is a whole different rules deep dive to get into with the way it messes with formations but at least with Thunder Riders Impacts and Tramples don't care that you'll likely be forced to be more compact after you move.
Lastly Raptor riders are a little bit fragile and the regiment gets quite expensive when you add a Thunder Chieftain. If you opt to go this route you will need to be careful to avoid getting what is likely to be close to 400 pts taken off the table early. You'll only have 5 wounds per stand at resolve 4, defense/evasion 2 to work with and losing the Chieftain, especially if it is your warlord, early is going to make the rest of your game quite difficult.
One of the options you do have to try to keep your Chieftain a little bit safer is just how the rules work in general as far as when you attach a character to a regiment before the game. This isn't done until just before the first reinforcement phase so you will get a chance to see what you are up against before you decide to put your Chieftain in the squishier Raptors as opposed to a regiment of Thunder Riders.
I promised a list that is probably terrible but probably quite fun so here it is. It takes the idea of early scoring to the logically extreme so try to build early advantage.
=== The Last Argument of Kings ===
All the Cav? [1980/2000]
The W'adrhŭn
== (Warlord) Thunder Chieftain [190]: War, Mantle of the Devoted, Violence of Action
* Thunder Riders (3) [250]:
* Raptor Riders (3) [210]: Huntress
* Veterans (3) [180]:
* Tontorr (1) [310]:
== Thunder Chieftain [200]: War, Elder Brontoskalps, Violence of Action, Wasteland Adder
* Thunder Riders (3) [250]:
* Raptor Riders (3) [210]: Huntress
* Veterans (3) [180]:
There is 20 pts left in this list you could probably drop Wasteland Adder to add more but Adder ensures we get BOTH of our THUNDER RAPTORS on the table turn 1. The best option is probably just to toss a standard or champion on one of the Vets but you could get cheeky and add Marksmanship to the Warlord Chieftain. It is only volley 1 but it would also be pretty funny and this deep in the jank tank I'm not sure how much we care about efficiency. You could also drop the Tontorr to take a 4 pack of Thunder Riders in that warband if you wanted to avoid the big dino and take more hats.
As Always Thanks for reading and if anyone opts to try that list I hope they have fun,
-K
*There is clarification that tramples do work on objectives despite saying enemy regiment. The Clarification statement was that Objectives need to be targeted the same was as enemy regiments so while the objectives can't count as enemy regiments for mechanical reasons they are essentially subjected to attacks the same way.
