Update on the speedpaint situation. Reprimed and tried again (this time without the enamel). Got far better results this time. More or less working as advertised with a few caviats.
The marine looked pretty good, on par, if not slightly better than a traditional acrylic + wash job.
The guard fared worse. The clothes were okay, but the lasgun was a complete mess. It really doesn't do flat panels well (which I expected). I'm not sure if I spend the money on real white spray to make it work.
One bit of advice I've not seen elsewhere, get a set of panels done at once (eg. A space marines leg from the knee down) as seams in the paint are obvious.
My opinion on speedpaints so far is meh. They aren't really the "one coat solution!" that people hype them up as. All it does is move the work to other parts of the process. Maybe I'd feel different with a proper zenathol or an airbrush, or if I was batch painting a large army. What I mean is. Instead of base, wash, highlight. It's wash, base, highlight.
At present, I'm leaning towards traditional paints + panel liner for marines. I don't mind the sharp, clean look. But again, this is all just more and more money. For guard, base colour spray + paint the key details + wash.
I'm tempted to do sisters of battle painted in armour colours from an old anime I like, but the kill team box is sold out and a tac squad costs about the same as a kill team. I'm also thinking of reviving my old Tau army and make the guard a tau auxiliary force instead. So many potential ideas.
No, 40k doesn't have anything to do with the divide of modern politics. Nor does it have anything to do with a "post 9/11 world". At the end of the day it's an IP and game where the factions need reasons to be constantly fighting eachother, including infighting within their own factions. That's it. The farsight enclaves breaking off from the rest of the Tau don't have anything to do with trump, 9/11, or anything the fuck else. Neither does Imotekh basically wanting a civil war with The Silent King. Or any reason space marines might have to get into a slap fight with the inquisition, or whatever.
It's almost as if early 40k was made by history nerds, and a lot of this shit has happened before.
Post 9/11 and post covid are so fucking gay and retarded it makes me want to chimp the fuck out. It's like white girl speak, over dramatizing how much it changed the world.
I assumed it was an American thing. The obsession with 911 in particular was grating. I still remember the London bombings, and Americans on the internet being mad that it was discussed with the same tone as 911. Even a decade after and 911 is still a verboten topic and the source of "edgy" jokes. Even World War 2 had jokes and parodies 20 years after the fact, and was used in popular media before that.