Inceptor Inception

As I settle in to write yet another “Tom doesn’t like GW’s design so he fixes it” I feel I have to point out that I really do like most of the new Primaris range.  The core armour designs are excellent and the vehicles are (mostly) great.  They just occasionally have a tendency to stick something pretty derpy on top of that excellent core, and I feel the urge to replace it with something less dumb.

Image Credit: Games Workshop, used without permission for illustrative purposes only.

Inceptors were some of the very earliest of these derpy designs.  Modelling them in a more upright pose certainly helps with the “floating baby” look, but those stupidly large pistols…  I just can’t get past them.  They’re so massively front heavy, and why a pair of jumbo pistols instead of a sensible weapon?  So I just ignored them.

But they kept niggling at me, because they’re a very cool concept that is extremely on-brand for Raven Guard.  A highly mobile jump pack unit that can be dropped from orbit to ambush people.  Ka-kaw!

Add to that my recent completion of a Battle Company and upon reviewing it I found I had relatively little plasma.  5 Hellblasters and one Redemptor is just not that much plasma for an entire company.  Plus I have at least one of nearly every Primaris unit at this point so…  my eye was drawn inevitably back to Inceptors.  

I haven't posted them before, although I have mentioned them in comments on other articles, but a few years ago I converted some Flamestorm Aggressors.  It’s a pretty simple job, so it wasn't really worth an article.  They’re Heavy Intercessors with (old) terminator arms.  Same basic loadout but without the somewhat silly “I punch you with my gun fist!”.  

This was a similar kind of job, I just needed to swap out the weapons I didn’t like the look of for something that didn’t look derpy but looked like it could produce about the same kind of effect.  In this case plasma, but a bit more powerful than Hellblaster plasma incinerators.  As it happens I had four firstborn plasma cannons kicking around from a project I never got around to before I moved over to Primaris.  I also happen to have some spare Heavy Intercessor arms.  Couldn’t have gone better if I’d planned it.

Ingredients of victory

Nothing could be quite that simple however.  The body was easy, just build a normal Inceptor completely apart from the arms.  Then I proceeded to spend ages dry fitting different arms and trimming down the plasma cannon until I got a good fit.  The plasma cannon comes with the right arm and left hand attached, so I removed the right arm but left both hands in place.  If there is a size difference in the hands, it’s not noticeable.  

Trimmed plasma cannon vs original

A lot more dry fitting and careful trimming of the wrists on both the arms and the gun side, and eventually the cannons fitted nicely without even needing any green stuff filler.  Sadly, I couldn’t avoid all green stuff.  The plasma cannon is modelled with cables that absolutely would not fit onto Inceptors, but the main cable joins in a manner that would be a huge effort to remove neatly.  Far easier and more satisfying then to trim it back as far as I could and then replace the cable with my own.

I tested out guitar wire, my go-to cable option, but even the largest wire would have looked laughably skinny.  Instead I turned to a tool I’ve been eyeing up for a while.  Green stuff World produces a “roll maker” designed for creating textured tubes and hoses out of green stuff.  It was on offer and I figured it was worth trying out, so I dropped it in my shopping cart.  

Image Credit: Green Stuff World, used without permission for illustrative purposes only.

The tool itself is three pairs of textured plates, with a pair of guide rails you can attach them to so they slide together in line or at 45° or 90°. All the textures are the same parallel lines, but in different sizes.  The product itself feels pretty cheap, the plastic had horrible moulding artefacts I felt compelled to clean up, and it was hard to attach the rails fully, but it did function exactly as intended.  

With trial and error I found that to get the effect I wanted, it worked best by rolling out some fairly firm green stuff into the size and shape of sausage I needed on a flat surface first, then roll that a few times between one large textured plate and the flat rear of another.  I then poked each end into the holes I had already drilled in the model and carefully shaped it to hand nicely.  Ideally it would have been helpful to have a slightly longer cable, but I hit the upper limit of the tool.  In retrospect I should have got the XL version instead.  

I opted for the cool re-entry helmets, because I like the look of them, and generally tried to pose them fairly upright, however mr open helmet had to either be a bit more laid back or be staring at the ground, so I chose the former.  Letting the sergeant hold the gun one-handed reduced the effort quite a bit too, much easier than trying to line up both hands perfectly.  I painted them up in my usual technique and voila, one squad of fat floaty boys ready to orbitally insert some plasma right up some traitor marine arses.