The Joy of Painting

Squad Kartoffelkopf  is complete.  If anything, I'm going even slower. Edge highlighting will be the death of me. I had to wear two pairs of reading glasses to get some of the detail on the Inceptors.  And there's a lot of detail on these new marines if you want to paint all the fiddly bits. In the words of Executive Officer Kane, "We've come this far. We must go on".

 As usual, I've signed up for a tournament (Call To Arms) and not left myself sufficient time to complete the army.  So its becoming a bit tedious now but I knew I'd never finish 1500 points without some sort of deadline.  I kept finding excuses to not be at my paint station.  It was only by listening to Bob Ross on repeat loop that I was able to get back into the zone and reach servitor levels of blank concentration.  At one point I came to my senses and realised that I was painting an eight pointed star on the desk with the model lying discarded next to my water pot.  I had no recollection of starting this doodle and quickly shut down YouTube.

In retrospect, I believe that Bob's hypnotic voice had gently lulled me into a partial state of heresy.  Wearing thin the tenebrous membrane between our own reality and the warp.  Or possibly I was just drunk.  I reckon ol' Bob was maybe only about a dozen paintings away from punching a hole into the realm of Chaos and unleashing a horde of rampant, unctuous daemons into our midst.  His legacy should be carefully scrutinised by the Holy Inquisition in my opinion and perhaps redacted.

I'm not really sure how to use these flying marines.  They've got a 'Hammer of Wrath' type rule which (rarely) lets them do mortal damage on the charge.  So I thought they would be great assault units but Ork boys just laugh uproariously and then dismantle them for spare parts.  They don't even have a specialist close combat weapon.  Their 'assault' bolter and high mobility is best used at range to harass the enemy I think.

However, they cost 75 points each and you can only take a unit of 3 with no weapon options.  This seems overcosted.  I can take a fully blinged out Predator Annihilator for less points than a squad of Inceptors. It hits harder, from longer range, is more durable and almost as mobile (moves further but can't fly).  So why people would ever take the squad in a competitive setting is a mystery.  I think they look pretty groovy and maybe the new codex will improve them but the SM Codex is not allowed in the up and coming tournament so I'm not even going to bother buying it yet.

I'd much rather buy a Redemptor Dreadnought if I had $100 spare.  That thing is awesome. The designers/sculptors must have been playing a lot of Titanfall when they came up with this concept.  The way the front panels open up is exactly like the way a robot chassis opens in the game.  Except that instead of a badass, ninja pilot inside, it disgorges a sarcophagus with dismembered corpse interred.  You've got to love 40k.  I kind of love Titanfall 2 as well though.  They actually put an excellent single player campaign into what is essentially a multiplayer game. Unheard of!

Anyway, I'm rambling. Time to finish the Lieutenant and Captain.  Every day's a good day when you paint.  There are no limits here.