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So, the rules say for every 10 Cultists, I get either a flamer or a heavy stubber. On top of that, my champion can get a shotgun...But every cultist Unit comes as nearly the exact same 5 models, aside from the Dark Vengence boxes. What would make a good substitute? I'm thinking about using Genestealers, but that may not be a good option.

Pester GW until they rerelease the ones from the 90's on Made to Order.

Imho GSCs are perfect for autogun-cultists and you get all options currently available to the chaos ones.

You can always use any of the hundreds of 3rd party alternate guard resin figures...but they're resin.

FW have some vraks renegades that would fit what you need, madrobot miniatures also have some great 3rd party chaos cultist like models.

Any imperial guard could work...

 jeff white wrote:
Any imperial guard could work...

I was just going to say the same thing here. Just cross out their Aquila. Or something.

Thanks for the GSC tip, those arw some amazing models I had skipped over.

If you have the money, FW renegades. I've managed to get some money together for Renegade Enforcers that I'm gonna use for Night Lord Cultists.

Before now, I mainly used some Guardsman that had slashed aquillers and a NL paint scheme.

there is also the upcoming necromunda release that might have some GREAT cultist variations

I plan to use, well, cultists..



They're less than £1 each, I've just got to locate some weapons that work for me that don't cost more than the model!

I've had a project on hold for about 8-10 years now. I ordered (old) Catachan heads and planned on putting them on Cadian bodies.

But now I think GSC bodies would work so much better. If I ever get to it....

I've also taken Ork boyz with shootaz and gave them Crypt Ghoul heads to make Mutants.

Azreal - Northstar actually makes a sci-fi weapon sprue for converting those guys.

Converted IG. You get flamers and can cut a lasgun into a more shotgun like appearance weapon. You might also turn to WW2 28mm models.

GW sells a box with all 20 of the Dark Vengeance cultists, plus a CSM champion for $48 US. This includes the flamer, heavy stubber, and shotgun.

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/CSM-Cultists-Assault


EDIT: As MechaEmperor notes, these are just the "5 in-a-box" cultists. No champs or special weapons. :-(

I use skaven for my cultist hordes. Clanrats are like, 50cents each on ebay. These ones have DE pistols, which can be a bit tricker to get a hold of.


Stormvermin are a very good human-sized kit too, and can hold rifle-arms pretty easily. These ones have kroot rifle's converted into flamers.


Ghouls are also a good kit that's easy to convert. Making them hold actual guns might be a bit tricky though.

 kungfujon wrote:
GW sells a box with all 20 of the Dark Vengeance cultists, plus a CSM champion for $48 US. This includes the flamer, heavy stubber, and shotgun.

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/CSM-Cultists-Assault

You might wanna check that again, it looks like it's just 4 boxes of the currently-available cultist packaged with an Aspiring Champ, which still has the same issue the OP has.

As for the OP, depends on whether you want CHEAP cultists or GOOD cultists, as well as if you wanna stay pure GW or not.

For pure GW, you can look to the Slaves to Darkness Marauders for a bunch of bodies, but these models are almost two decades old now and their goofy proportions and lesser detai stand out a lot more. There's also the Flagallants box. Slightly more expensive, but gives that "ragged crazy" look better. However for both you need to source some guns from somewhere, so unless you have a bunch of extras it will cost you more.

Someone mentioned GSC models. They are perfect for cultists (since they are cultists already, just a different flavour) but can be kinda expensive. You could always just take that kit and mix it with one of the above mentioned two to get more bodies (as the box should have a few extra guns).

Last GW choice would probably just repaint some IG infantry and call it a day. Probably the cheapest option outside of 3rd party, but also the most boring.

 MechaEmperor7000 wrote:
You might wanna check that again, it looks like it's just 4 boxes of the currently-available cultist packaged with an Aspiring Champ, which still has the same issue the OP has.

Wow, yeah. Good catch. That really sucks. Seems like a missed opportunity. Oh well.

GSC are great stand-ins for an 'subversive' Chaos cult PDFs or what have you, just some head swaps and some Choatic icons and you're good.

If you have spare guns lying around I'd agree Flagellants are a solid bet.

I saw some one use Catachans will little more than baldie headswaps for some, Khronate cultists painted up like the War Boys from Mad Max. Simple but effective.

The reason they didn't repackage the DV cultists for sale individually is because when they originally cut the sprues it contained pieces from the Dark Angels too. I have one of the Vedros sets (or the Build and Paint series. It's all the same to me) and to get the individual models off, they had to do some creative cutting on the existing sprues. Unless they re-release the DV stuff a la Spire Dawn, I doubt we'll ever see those cultists again.

I made a list of sources a few years ago:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/570156.page

Also, Heartbreaker Miniatures had a line of Sci-Fi miniatures for a while that make very interesting cultist models. I got a box of about 30 of them a few years ago but can't seem to find anything pointing back to the original line.

 Elbows wrote:
Azreal - Northstar actually makes a sci-fi weapon sprue for converting those guys.

I'm aware, trouble is they hugely increase the cost per mini, and the sprue doesn't match wysiwyg for 40K. Hasslefree do cheap metal Assault weapons of various sorts which look to be favorites so far.

They will be expensive, but will fit with my theme.

I plan on using Solar Auxilia rifle platoon from FW. Definitely pricey, but I think they'll look just right besides my non-chaos-y Iron Warriors. Problem is heavy weapons, like you're having.

I will probably forgo the use of heavy weapons until I find something suitable.

Another idea: Warpath stuff from Mantic.

http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/warpath/plague/product/3rd-gen-troopers.html

http://www.manticgames.com/mantic-shop/warpath/veer-myn/product/night-crawlers.html

I have an extensive bitz box, so I can't say that I only used parts from certain kits, but my Cultists that are not DV Cultists were mostly put together using bits from Cadian/Catachan spares (mostly for the laspistol/lasguns) and the Empire Flagellants kit - the bodies from the latter kit are really shabby and already look very cult-follower like, so painting a few Chaos tattoos onto them and gluing a few Chaos icons on really helps to dress them up. Even if you don't have access to las/autopistols from other kids, if they're armed with flails or hand weapons, I don't think many people will have an issue. At the end of the day, they're very obviously cultists, and you can rationalize that their small arms are hidden under their rags or even that they don't shoot "pistols" as such, instead they're throwing molotov cocktails (or the 40k equivalency) and rocks... It's not like cultist autopistol shooting ever really does much anyway...

I'm also a huge fan of building Catachan/Cadians straight from the kit and damaging or even painting red "X"s over the Imperial symbols. In the literature dealing with Chaos invasions, the lore suggests that Chaos gets into the mind of the loyalist guardsmen who then defect to the Chaos side. I have an idea for a Cultist unit that will be for all intents and purposes an Imperial Guard unit with red "X"s across all of the Imperial symbols, just like in the books I'm using for my army theme.

I usually convert/kitbash only when there is no official model (or I dislike it) for characters. I just don't like converting 20ish models.

For my cultists I just modified them a bit by cutting off limbs or weapons and replacing them (mostly magnetised). But I usually only make that effort for special weapons, for the rest I agree with my opponent that all others are the same.

You could use the Neophyte Hybrid Squad from the Genestealer Cult army. The Neophyte Hybrids would also work well, but require a bit more work to get the Tyranid symbols off them