The Beard Bunker

It had to happen. We all knew it was coming. I had just two models* in the entire Genestealer Cult range I did not have painted. It was kinda inevitable that my completionist urge would combine with the final release of the Kellermorph and complete the army once and for all**.

One of things I love about playing as a Genestealer Cult is the insurgent feel. You aren't using too many military things, you're bodging together weapons and turning tools into instruments of destruction. Well, there isn't any bodged together instrument of destruction more destructive than this bad boy. Behold the Rockgrinder and despair!

It has been noted that I have something of a completionist impulse... the fact that I nearly own all of the available figures for the Genestealer Cult range maaaay have led to buying some more (and will almost certainly lead to me getting a Locus and a Kelermorph at some point) and among them was the technically unnecessary but oh-so-pretty new Magos:

While the human-ish faces of the Cult are the Primus, the Magos and the other specialists, there is only one spider at the heart of this web. The originator of the horrifying infection that sparked the growth of the Cult. The Patriarch. Yes, I know there are two of them, patience, I'll get to that...

We have seen many aspects of the Genestealer Cult. The willing acolytes, the hideous xenomorphs, the cunning leaders. But one aspect has been left a little isolated 'till now, the Atalan Jackals were kinda on their own. Mercifully, no longer:

There is a lot that has to happen to push a cult into a revolution. You need weapons, training, leadership, and perhaps most critically, you need intelligence. No, not smarts although that helps, I'm talking the espionage type of Intelligence.

I've waxed rhapsodic about the Genestealer Cults range a lot in my posts on the subject. I think they're wonderful. But they were just going to be NPC antagonists for roleplay scenarios until the latest models were released, and a massive determiner in pushing me to having a whole army was these guys: The Atalan Jackels grabbed me by the throat. Realistic bikes, lovely weight distribution, fantastic quads, narrative driving stowage. They're wonderful. Oh, and I could immediately see their fighting style as it was featured in one of my favourite films of recent years: Mad Max: Fury Road (link 15+ and is the biker attack). Deciding that I wanted more than a token unit of them I grabbed two box sets and set to making as varied a squad as possible. They're a nasty unit, especially with the stratagem that allows them to roar up their 14" move, yeet a trio of demolition charges at something and then blast the smoking remains with the pair of mining l...

For the most part, the Genestealer Cult is existentially horrifying. The loss of identity, the glad subordination of free will. But lurking at its heart is something much, much more straightforwardly horrific. Entities that are utterly, inimically alien, yet nonetheless born to human mothers. Yes folks, we've proceeded through the generations and have finally emerged, hissing and coiled, at the Purestrain Genestealers. I really wanted my Purestrains to have a good sense of motion and energy. The kit on it's own in quantity can be a little bit samey. Thankfully there exist some other sculpts of Genestealers out there, the Space Hulk set. Even more thankfully Maisey was looking to divest himself of his copy so I didn't have make the agonising choice of modelling my own Space Hulk set for the battlefield. Thanks Maisey! Mixing in the Space Hulk set and the slightly different two from the Deathwatch Overkill box gave me both 30 Purestrains (second half coming soon) but m...

With the core of the cult now laid down we can start to work on the weirder elements of the cult. There's purestrains on my workbench at the moment but first we have what happens when that pure strain goes very right and very wrong... Here we're starting to see where the colour scheme starts to fragment. The abominations are clearly of the Ortag facility, as is the Primus although he has some flourishes that mark him out. But it is the Magus that deviates the most so we'll start with him. This is the first of a pair of Magi? Maguses? Maguseees? Meh, this is the first of two that I'm going to have in the army. His sister will be along shortly. I wanted the nice purple robes, first for tradition's sake, and second for emulating the skin tone of the Broodlord. It is his ritual connection to the father of the cult. In order to tie him to the rest of the Starborn Souls, I used the same neutral grey for the adapted pressure suit and there's a little orange pee...

I talked in the first episode of this series about the existential horror of the Genestealer Cult. The loss of free will and the corruption of the love for one's children. Well, I think there should be another layer of horror added in. The fact that humans make stupid, stupid choices and there will always be some who will willingly drink the Kool-Aid so to speak. When I was first thinking about GSC models, it was mostly for roleplay purposes. So I'd decided to have some brood brother type human allies along for the ride so as to increase the amount of genestealer in the cult gradually. The more I thought about it though, the stronger the desire to have some actual willing humans among the cult. They might be there because they are anti-imperial and the stealer cult gives them the best chance of sticking it to the man; or because they have convinced themselves that the stealers are some next step in mankind's evolution; or just because they're suicidal and want to g...

Last time we prowled around the surface levels of the House Ortag Refinery and Mineral Exploitation Plant. There we met some people with funny looking heads but nothing too weird... but now we're in the sub levels and things are getting... claw-ey... Yup, they're back and this time they brought grandpa... the Acolytes are the earlier generations of the cult, still more genestealer than person and more bestial in mind. They thus favour the close up rough and tumble over more considered shooting. Like all the rest of the Star-born Souls (hey, check it out! I named them!) these acolytes are dressed in the jury-rigged remains of the pressure suits and coveralls that the neophytes wear. So other than the skin colour, all other painting details remain the same... in which case, let's talk skin! This is another step down on the purple train towards genestealer. They start from pure genestealer purple and are highlighted up with Cadian Fleshtone. All the chitinous bits ar...

I'm not sure there's any more horrifying concept in the 40k universe than the Genestealer cult. Think about it, demons need a weakness in you to get in, to manipulate you. Mutation through chaos influence tends to be a reward or punishment for actually worshipping them. Capture and torture in the depths of Commorragh is at least against your will. No, the Genestealer cares nothing for that. A dark alleyway or the corridors of a ship, a noise from behind, glittering eyes... now you are the proud parent of a monster. A monster that you love, that your brain makes beautiful. Who you'd die to protect. Gods I love Genestealer Cults... So it might be a bit of a surprise it's taken this long to make one... Well, not really, see here's how it went: The new neophytes and acolytes turn up in Deathwatch Overkill. I'm immediately in love. The boxes come out and they're just as good. But the army's a smidge thin, I'm not sure I want to be collecting guardsme...

Charlie: This is the final post about the Deathwatch scenario I GMd recently. This time I’m going over the scenario concept itself, accompanied with in-fiction snippets and photos from the day. The concept is simple enough that you could probably adapt it for a themed 40k skirmish; we were playing it as an RPG using our in-house ruleset. The first thing the players got was the briefing. This came weeks before the mission itself, so they had time to choose their marine’s gear (and make a model if necessary; Andy rather wisely magnetised his marine’s arms so that he could swap out the weapons in future scenarios). This is going to be a hefty post with a fair few photos and fat chunks of screed, so if you're down for that, hit the jump.

Stealers up inside yerrrr, findin an entrance where they can . Charlie:  Now that the dust from Saturday's game has settled, I can reveal whether or not I did indeed succeed at batch painting a genestealer cult in three weeks, particularly since the models are no longer swathed in a blanket of secrecy. The answer...? Hell yeah. Now I should couch this triumphal tone in reminding y'all that I had help. Andy joined me for a ten-hour painting binge in the run-up to Saturday's game, and on the Friday night Jeff spent a few quality hours on the magus so that I could scamper upstairs and spew out stat lines (we're using the RPG engine we developed, which of course means rules for 40k characters only exist if we write them!). After all these posts, I'd be remiss if I didn't provide a photo of everything that got painted over the last three weeks, so here it is: Much as I can't claim any of these are masterpieces, I am satisfied that they ...