Warhammer 40,000 - Cultist Warband
Having had previous success in Nurglefying the dead, it was time to press-gang the living into the loving arms of the Grandfather. Naturally, I needed some test subjects and the Cultist Warband were the perfect subjects. For a start, I already have these models in the form of the Servants of the Abyss for the Blackstone Fortress board game, so I was keen to change them up and avoid duplicates in my collection.
The easiest thing to do, is to cut extraneous bits off and change the silhouette of the model. Two of the miniatures have topknots so it was simple enough to remove those. I also removed the flames jetting forth from the guy with a flamethrower, perhaps instead he has some sort of chemical thrower. I additionally removed the tusks and jaw from the armour he wears. These look very Chaos but it makes the head that much harder to paint, plus as I said it’s an easy way to change the silhouette.
A couple of the models I felt would be suitable for a simple weapon swap. I had ordered some Renegade and Wasteland bits from Anvil Industries, so it was a simple case of clipping off a hand at the wrist and replacing it with an alternative. For the Cultist throwing a grenade, I replaced her grenade hand with a pistol. And for the Cultist with the chainsword I replaced it with something a little more toned down.
With the basic conversions done to differentiate them from my existing Servants of the Abyss models that I have, it was time to make some more drastic changes and bestow the Grandfather’s gifts. So with that in mind I mixed up a bit of greenstuff and grabbed my pin-vice drill. Before I started drilling holes for boils I had a look to see who were the best candidates for some arm replacement. I found four, the first three being fools that had the audacity to be holding their weapons one-handed and the one with the Heavy Stubber. For all of them, it was simply a case of leaving the arm off and mushing in a replacement thin sausage of greenstuff. Admittedly, it may have blended with the model better by attaching the arm and clipping it off below the shoulder, but that’s why we do these experiments. I also didn’t smooth down the tentacles as I quite like the texture that my fingers leave when moulding the putty.
Once the greenstuff had cured, I set about adding boils to the models in the same way that I did for the Deadwalkers. I started by drilling a recess in the skin and dabbing in a bit of AK Interactive Acrylic Arming Putty. I then carefully put a 1mm steel ball bearing into the recess and added more arming putty on top to seal it down.
Last but not least, as these are technically test models I wanted to play around with some textures on their armour plates. As they are plague cultists it makes sense that their armour would be showing signs of corrosion and decay. So I added some Typhus Corrosion in a few select places and then, as Typhus Corrosion doesn’t have a huge amount of grit in it, I also added some Vallejo Red Oxide Texture Paste in some areas as well. Finally, I used an old brush to dab on some AK Interactive Acrylic Arming Putty, I had seen a couple Youtubers do something similar to add a realistic steel texture to scale model tanks.
The conversion work was done, I could move onto the painting and I primed the models with Colour Forge Standard Grey. As with the Deadwalkers and the Valkyries I wanted to continue to develop my own speed painting methods. Base coating the skin before giving the models a zenithal highlight with white had worked nicely for the Valkyries, but I wondered if I could make the process easier still by using an airbrush to block in the skin. I reasoned that it would be quicker to tidy up with Two Thin Coats Dungeon Stone than it would to carefully paint in a few coats of Cadian Fleshtone. So I loaded up some Army Painter Air Nomad Flesh and set to base coating the skin areas on all but two of the models. For the remaining two, I instead painted their skin with Vallejo Dark Fleshtone as I wanted to see how my process handles darker skin tones.
Whilst I was tidying up any overspill with the aforementioned Dungeon Stone I realised that I didn’t need to tidy everything. The masks and armour would be getting base coated with opaque paints later so it was only the cloth and leather details that needed to be brought back to that dull grey. Once I tidied up everything that I needed to, I then gave each of the models a zenithal highlight with Liquitex Titanium White acrylic ink through my airbrush.
You can see on the tentacle where the zenithal ink has been rubbed off
With the pre shading done I could move onto the actual painting of the model. To make the boils stand out a little more, I added a small ring of Guilliman Flesh contrast paint around each of them, I also added some Guilliman Flesh around any plugs in the skin. I had picked up one of Games Workshop’s new washes, Kroak Green, which proved perfect for adding a sickly tone to the skin without darkening it down too much like Athonian Camoshade would. The only issue I had was that on the two models I had basecoated their skin with Dark Fleshtone, when I applied the wash it rubbed off some of the white ink. I probably hadn’t left the ink layer long enough to properly cure to be honest, but also keep in mind these artist inks aren’t designed for model painting so they probably don’t have much, if any, binder in them. Moving forward I might add a touch of Matt Medium to the ink so help it stick a little better. In any case, I couldn’t really think of a way to fix the areas that had been rubbed off so I just moved on. I finished off the skin by painting the tentacles with Army Painter Speedpaint Familiar Pink, which as it’s a transparent paint it was easy to blend it into the rest of the skin tones.
The next step was to move onto the transparent paints that will take advantage of that zenithal highlight. I started by painting their trousers with Army Painter Speedpaint Desolate Brown, it’s more of a dirty green and it's quickly becoming one of my favourite paints to use. The boots I picked out with Black Templar contrast paint. The leather straps and pouches I painted with Gore-Grunta Fur contrast paint, while the cloth wraps on the wrists and ankles I painted with Snakebite Leather contrast paint. For the couple of models wearing tank tops I painted them with watered down Cygor Brown. I watered it down because when neat, Cygor Brown is very strong and will overwhelm the zenithal that I did earlier. The skirts I painted with Garaghak’s Sewer, the rich and dirty brown complimenting the greens and browns of the scheme. Lastly, I painted the weapons with Army Painter Speedpaint Broadsword Silver. Not quite as transparent as the other paints but it did enable me to do a metallic and Nuln Oil wash in a single coat.
The white ink really washed out the vibrancy of the Dark Fleshtone
As these are plague cultists it seemed only right that I paint the armour plates with Death Guard Green and the trim with Balthasar Gold. One of the cultists has some horns on her helmet, which I painted with Army Painter Skeleton Bone. These areas I then washed with Army Painter Strong Tone.
Moving onto the final details I picked out the boils with Vallejo Heavy Goldbrown, any plugs and staples in the skin with Scale75 Thrash Metal and any scars with Kislev Flesh. I used Skrag Brown to paint the thin leather straps attached to the cult icons as I felt they were a bit too thin for Gore-Grunta Fur to work effectively on. Whilst I had the Skrag Brown out, I heavily watered it down and used it to add some rust effects to the weapons and armour. Likewise I used Nihilakh Oxide to add some verdigris to the bronze areas.
The models done I moved onto the bases, which I did the same way as I have for my other Nurgle models. I started by piling on some Vallejo Thick Brown Mud and once that was dry I washed it with Athonian Camoshade. To bring out the texture I then drybrushed the bases with Tyrant Skull. In some of the recesses on the baes I painted in some thinned Caliban Green, then dabbed on some Nurgle’s Rot to make some toxic pools of goo. Once that had fully dried I dolloped on some PVA glue and sprinkled on some Geek Gaming Scenics Base Ready Forest Floor. I then followed that up with some more PVA glue and static grass. Finally, I painted the rims of the base with Warboss Green.
I’m really happy how these turned out, aside from the issue with white ink rubbing off of course. But these are technically test models and I’m looking forward to applying this scheme to the rest of the cultist range that Games Workshop produces. As they all share the same aesthetic I will need to come up with a name for this group of disgusting lot. As a lot of them wear masks perhaps something like the Masque of Creeping Horror? Let me know in the comments if you have any suggestions.