Genestealer Cultists

So, let’s try to get this year off to a better start...  Not paperhammer, but here’s a money-saving tip—one we’ve probably all tried at one point or another.

One of the wonderful-yet-frustrating things about GW sets these days is options.  So many of these kits are just packed with options.  Phenomenal-looking options (even if some of them are a bit silly).  And we end up with lots of leftovers.

I had some extra neophyte weapons for my genestealer cult, and I wanted to use them all up. My lovely lady had gotten me the Armored Claw for Christmas, so I figured I could put them on the Cadian bodies.  Extra weapons, plus the change of arms and shoulders helps to move them a bit further away from Guardsmen and closer to mine-workers, visually.

However... the Cadian torsos have really narrow shoulders. I tried a few different ways of putting the weapon-arms on them, but no matter how I angled it I ended up with a sizeable gap.  Then I tried a couple of spare Catachan torsos I had—not much better.  They were wider, but that gap was still pretty big.

You can spot potential genestealer cultists by shoulder width. It’s a fact. Who know?

I played with a few different ideas of bulking out shoulders with plasticard and putty, but then I had a thought that tied back to one of my (very few) posts from last year. Maybe I had some older figures I could repurpose with a bit of cutting and scraping...

Meet some of my old, scratchbuilt genestealer cultists.  They’re built from the original plastic guardsmen, circa 1994 (I think).  I found a couple of them floating in the bitz bin way back when and used them to bulk out my (at the time) all-metal Genestealer Cult army.  Which, believe it or not, also came from the bitz bins...

A few quick slices and those old cultists had all new arms on them. Heads were a bit trickier—I needed to make some neck sockets. I used the thinnest drill bit I had for my pin vise, found the center, and gave myself a pilot hole (maybe just 1/8” deep) on each model.  Then I swapped out bits to my largest, which gave me a nice, centered socket.

Helpful Hint—when you need to center something like this, take your time.  Check and double-check.  Heads are always going to be a focus point for a model.  We all know how bodies go together, so even on this scale we’ll pick up on things that don’t line up.

After that, it was just gluing heads on and... done.  Some heavy weapons guys who will blend in nicely with the rest of the cult.  And all it cost me was some older models I wasn’t going to use anymore.

You may notice (like I mentioned above) that the new limbs are slightly out of proportion on the older body.  The arms, notably, are a bit long.  There’s a few ways to adjust for this, but I’m not going to worry about it much in this particular case.  Genestealer cultists have a lot of distorted body parts, so these won’t stand out much.

Next time—swear to Tzeentch—I’m going to finish up that Destroyer.