I have at long last started finishing complete groups of unit types for my Genestealer Cult. So, I wanted to post them here. The cult started out from the Kill Team starter Neophytes. I didn't really have any kind of plan as Kill Team didn't have subfaction rules, and I didn't particularly like or dislike playing
GSC. I kinda painted them like they were in the starter changing out the clothing khaki gray. I went with a grayish skin tone to match my Space Hulk Genestealers. Although, it is lighter on the cultist as I went with a fair flesh color mixed with a bit of the same gray I use for the Genestealers.
Since the color scheme was based on Rusted Claw I usually play them as such even if while I like the Jackals, they probably aren't my favorite models of the faction nor really rules that necessarily like. The
AP reduction hasn't been particularly useful for me as my meta has a surprising large amount of
AP -2. If I get a chance to play this army before a new codex arrive, I may switch over to something like Bladed Cog to help me learn the faction in a more general sense before I go back to Rusted Claw or decide on a Creed that better suits what I like about the faction.
The lore outline of my cult is that on basically country bumpkins living out in the radioactive wastes of their hive world. Chances are the planetary governor know they're mutants as they can survive in the irradiated hellscape, but has no idea to the actual threat the cult poses to all human life on the planet. The governor instead looks the other way as the cult (tentatively named the Clan Clawdunk as I can't think of a rustic-ish, possibly with hints of Tyranid yet ominous name that isn't too charged). The cult is equal parts tight-knit rural community that is very devout to the 4-arm Emperor while being very much frontiers folk. They have a great disdain for hive folk believing them too soft for to survive the life they live in addition to being outside Papa Patriarch's influence.
Outsiders that are decided to be far too weak and likely won't be missed in the hive city are cannibalized or fed to the pure strains. Those that the elders (read: character models) believe might survive are put through grueling survival tests in the wastes before being mentally and spiritually indoctrinated. Only after passes those trials which are nearly as difficult and dangerous as any space marine initiation, the survivor is given the genestealer kiss and welcomed into the clan. This is done as the cult is still in the early stages with a little more than a century of existence and hasn't the resources to spare on the weak.
The cult operates both in the open and hidden in the wastes. The cult founded an entire town, Emperor's Persistence, which provides the cult with goods and services that frontier farmers, ranchers, miners and other workers could require. The cult also has a mining town that operates in somewhat in the open, though; it does make use of some of the more obvious alien hybrids and mutants as a workforce. No one seems to mind as the mines provide rich bounties for the planetary tithes.
The cult has operates a neutral trading outpost, Promethium Haven, and inn that serves merchants, raiders, arbities and anyone else not looking to start trouble within the walls of the compound. Planetary law enforcement don't like this, but also don't want to spare the manpower to construct, station and defend their own outposts, so they allow the way station to exist as it generally provides an oasis of security to the otherwise lawless wastes.
The last arm of the cult is a road gang that hire themselves out to protect convoys nearly as much as they raid them or other road games in the wastes. The gang call themselves Vulturewing and mostly consist of Jackal bikers though the gang also makes use of custom ridgeruners for heavy weapon support and trucks for scavenging the large spoils of a raid. The road gang largely competes with other road gangs, arbities on high-speed vehicles and even a few Ork speed freaks in anarchy of the open wastes. The gang itself accurately believed to be cannibals that will eat the freshly dead or dying as they loot their corpses.
