Kill Team: Genestealer Cults

The Cult that Mostly Comes Out at Night.... Mostly

I've always liked the Genestealer Cults, to me they've always seemed like a cross between Aliens and Mad Max. The Kill Team boxed set gave me the excuse to finally try my hand at painting them.  I chose to go with an industrial mining color scheme, accented with Xenos influenced purple and eerie neon green light sources. The skin color is an unhealthy pinkish hue. While I was never a fan of the bright blue & pink classic Genestealers, I ended up using that same scheme - just muted a bit for darkness. After all, this is a cult that mostly comes out at night..... mewstlay.

Almost all of these models are done with inks and shades - only the metallics and the top highlights were done with pure paint. The final product worked so well (this is probably my favorite paint job to date) that I plan to do this on most future projects.

I started by airbrushing everything in a monochrome highlight of progressive greys and whites over black, to give the initial lighting effect. With a 0 brush, applied vallejo metal steel to the metal bits , and highlighted most everything else using my favorite all-purpose highlight color, vallejo Ivory. Then came the inks: brown and sepia ink on the clothing, then alternating layers of thin red, purple, and sepia inks on the skin. This gives kind of a nice living-but-unhealthy hue to the flesh. A blue ink on the hybrid limbs, and several violet and red washes to get the right shade of purple on the torn cloaks.

After this came the shades (GW Shade colors are basically a wash in Lahmian medium, not water) : black shade on the armor and brown & black mixed shade for the clothing. The flesh was not shaded - the inks were sufficient to provide the shadows, and I did not want a Shade to darken the overall skin tone which I was already happy with. GW shades are great but they do take some practice - you need to know beforehand that the entire surface will turn out darker when it dries - even if it doesn't appear so while it's wet. Plan ahead, and start with a brighter base if that isn't desired.  

Lastly, I chose a different method of basing for these guys; using slate basing material for the rocks and a yellowed grass. It works well to give the look of an unforgiving mining planet surface (and unintentionally matched well the Alien Ruins FLG mat they are pictured with!).


The Aberrant models are some of my favorites in the bunch, mutated twisted hulks. I added a few blue 'veins' streaking up through the hybridization limbs.

The Hybrids below. You know Cthulhu had to come join the party.

 

I'm not going to lie - The Heavy rock drillers and rock saws are probably what made me want to paint this Kill Team the most. Absurd but awesome!

The Neophytes

Insert your favorite Aliens quote here:

Now that this Kill Team is done and was so much fun to paint, will this lead me to more Genestealer Cult purchases towards a full 40k army? Damn you Games Workshop marketing geniuses! Kill Team a.k.a. GW's gateway drug....