Deathwatch Task Force Artemis

Firstly, the Pathfinder is on sale. I'd have hung onto it. but I'm out of work right now and need the money more than the model. 

Minus their Dreadnought comrade (who was converted for a Dreadtober event in 2016) here are the two Kill Teams that comprise Artemis' anti-Eldar beatdown brigade. I made the mistake of trying out Armory's black primer with these, and boy is it a chalky can of shit. Never again, Armory. Never again. 

The Artemis model, while having an excellent pose (by the one sculptor at GW who understands such, suffers from design flaws that seems to be creeping into more and more GW models these days. Separate-elbow syndrome is no laughing matter, and requires drilling and pinning to be viable. I wish they would master the art of making tabs and deep sockets, or just plain sculpt the arm as a complete piece. His right also has feeder cables for his combi-flamer that, being plastic, are pretty much guaranteed to snap at some point in their lifetime. If you're going to have cables all over the place, just make a metal model, for pete's sake. I know it's no guarantee even then, but jeez. 

The Vanguard Vets have a curious mix of slow-hitting super-heavy hammers and the troopers with storm shields to take the incoming hits for them, which would be an okay combination if the squads weren't limited to five men. The eldar as present in the box are all close-combat monsters, and will positively ruin them in a fight if the marines don't get in a bunch of killing blows. These guys would be great against slow Xenos, but there really aren't any. Necron foot soldiers, maybe? 

The Sternguard are a bit better poised (I guess?) to gun down the flip-dancing space fairies, although it would've been better to have the shot cannon (and a full squad of 10) for gunning down those eldar skimmers. Ah well, at least the heavy bolterflamer's more than capable of removing the woussy elves from the field, albeit at close range where if it doesn't, the Astartes are going to get their asses carved into so much transhuman lunchmeat. I know, I know, I'm giving the eldar too much credit, but they're not going to face a whole lot of incoming fire from this bunch, which is essentially a half-squad's worth of guns. Why are the Space Marines always, always outnumbered? It's not like they're THAT good on the tabletop.