Thursday 21 August 2014

Genestealer Cult Pt. 1

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Been quite busy lately and haven't had the opportunity to post, but hopefully I will have a bit more time from now. So for this post I thought I'd show off some of my Genestealer Cult.

Most of the models for my cult were painted quite a while ago, but I haven't painted up all the units I have collected. I've been enthusiastically working on this recently, I'll post more as I progress.

The Genestealer Cult is one of the most interesting armies for 40k, it's so gonzo and bizarre it is hard not find it compelling. I love Space Hulk, it is a masterpiece of game design, and the introduction of the cult rules for Rogue Trader in White Dwarf allowed a better look into the background of the Genestealers, hybrids, and the mutants, brood brothers, and assorted freak show who love them.

There were essentially three army lists, each with a slightly different character- the Invasion Force, the Cult, and the Tyranid Army (while technically not a Genestealer Cult, it was similar and had access to Chaos Marine Mind Slaves, Zoats, Squigs, as well as Tyranids, Termagants, and Carnifex). The way I envision my cult is as an amalgam of all three lists.

Alot of the appeal of the Cult to me is the variety of different models you can field, along with the Magus, Hybrids, Patriarch (preferably daemon possessed!), and Genestealers, you can press into service all manner of mutated freaks, sci-fi humans as Brood Brothers, Beastmen, aliens, summoned demons, Mutant Bombs, Chaos Spawn etc, lots of fun.

Magus, Hybrids, and Limo

















The concept of the Genestealer biology, life cycle, and the over all appearance of the hybrids really reminds me of the kind of villains you would see in Dr. Who. I can really picture Tom Baker encountering them. Cheesy and comical, while at the same time creepy enough to make your skin crawl. I have a few more not pictured here to paint up, and I think I might convert one of these into an Icon Bearer.

Limo

The limo is such an iconic GC item, mine was converted from a Minairons Hispano Suiza MC-36. The art deco styling, ribbed, hunched appearance, and origin as a vehicle used in the Spanish Revolution seemed like an appropriate limo base. I still need to make a couple more, I have my eyes constantly peeled for good cars to start from, they are harder to find than you'd think. If any one has some Marx Cars of the Future they'd be willing to part with, please get in touch!


Magus




















Genestealers


I have a lot of these from Space Hulk, this is just a handful.


Brood Brothers


An assortment of brood brothers that I've put together so far. This lot are mostly made up of Imperial Guard deserters and dissidents who make easy targets for the Cult to influence.


Rogue Psyker




















A Rogue Psyker, no doubt fallen in with the cult trying to flee from being round up and sacrificed to the Emperor, who can blame him?








































This is one of my favourite Imperial Army models, his non regulation hair cut and graffiti on his flak armour mark him out as a radical.




















A devoted mother of a four-armed abomination. The idea of the adoring parents lovingly caring for their alien spawn is delightfully creepy.




















Liberated Tanks



I'll leave it at that for now, but there's a lot more on my workbench to come!

13 comments:

  1. Absolutely stunning work, the Brood Brother mob and Limo are spot on...the old Imperial Guard are so cool.

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  2. Cool cult! And especially the limo is great :)

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  3. Splendid from start to finish ! you manage to get both the vibe from the old GC from and give it your own twist with your superb painting.

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  4. Highlights for me are the blood running from the mercs eyes, the banner, limo & the detailed insignia/helmet work on the guardsmen.

    That's some top shelf work there, well done!

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    1. Cheers, I'm glad you like the pictures. I painted that figure when the film Event Horizon came out, I remember being quite taken by the video of the ship's crew and their hellish orgy- pulling out your eyes and sewing up the lids seemed like a suitably chaos cultist thing to do so I tried to depict that on the model.

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  5. When you talk about the cult army list I get the impression your working from the 2nd Genestealer cult army list. I recall there were 2 lists with the first one giving your cult the option to go over to chaos worship. The second list had the mind slaves, zoats and squig herds in it. It didn't make a whole lot of sense.

    Anyway great painting. My favourites are the single part hybrids. Those plastic army models were a terrible idea.

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    1. Yeah, I believe the first one was the Invasion Force which was a mature clan with lots of Purestrain Genestealers that was powerful enough to attempt to seize control of a world.

      The Genestealer Cult list represented a clan which was still clandestine, biding it's time, waiting for the right moment to arise. At this stage an impatient or ambitious Patriarch might turn to chaos worship.

      The third list, the Tyranid Army list was pretty weird but I kind of like it for it's wackiness!

      I entirely agree with you, despite having a lot of them, I really think the dudes with separate plastic arms are pretty terrible. I'm not interested in posing and gluing together fiddly models, but I can see how they could really shine if a talented modeller were to put the effort in.

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  6. Fantastic work, that limo is absolutely perfect. Great painting on the troops too, lovely.

    I can spare a couple of Marx Cars if you are after them. Im based in Ireland. Drop me a line if you would like to work out a trade :)

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    1. Hell yeah, I will send you an email. Thanks for the comments, it's very encouraging.

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  7. Great work! I looked at the same armoured car for my own cult, and now I see it converted I'm convinced.

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    1. Thanks! Good luck with your cult, I'm looking forward to seeing more, looking very cool so far!

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  8. Greta looking limo. Thanks for the heads up about the Miniairon Hispano Suzia for limos. Have two limos and one is based on a snap tite fantasy car and the other is an old 49 Ford panel-truck.

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    1. Cheers, I saw some pics of your cult on your blog a while back, it's great to see other peoples interpretations as there is not much reference material. The MC-36 kit from Minairons is a really nice kit and I highly recommend it, and it is quirky enough to just stick a few bits on and come across as a retro-futuristic vehicle.

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