October 27, 1864
Virginia Countryside

Caitlin Smith hopped down from the seat of her wagon, spinning as she did to land with a cat-like grace on the soft dirt of the trail. The wind had picked up, and clouds had rolled in during the few hours she'd traveled out from Williamsburg. The smell of rain had mixed with the earth smell of the countryside, the dry winds that rustled through the leaves grew damp and brought with it a veil of mist that even now sought to obscure everything from view. Caitlin settled a hand on the damp cloth she'd wrapped around the wagon's wheels in the hopes of a stealthy approach and tugged at a stubborn drawer that finally opened with a rasping protest. The horse pulling her wagon brayed quietly.

"Don't worry Bitty." Caitlin whispered, her voice barely louder than the whispering wind. Still there. Caitlin thumbed through the crumpled collection of papers, five tattered sheets with the faces of five individuals scribbled in a black ink, nearly indiscernible in the low light. The word WANTED was clear in bold letters along the top of the first sheet, a ratty old woman's face made creepier by the light stared up at Caitlin, one eye noticeably wider than the other. Should be a satisfying payout if I can bag all five here... Three witches, two skin walkers. Easy.

Caitlin gave a satisfied tilt of her head and glanced down at the small leather satchel that hung at her side a few inches below one of her two Colt 1851 Navy revolvers, the place where she stored all of her cattlemantic brews. She slipped the top flap open and ran her fingers across four tiny glass vials. One... two... three... she stopped on the third one, tapping a finger on the rough cork which sealed it. That's the one ... Caitlin withdrew the vial and held it up to her eyes. A lilac liquid within glowed with a faint luminescence too weak to illuminate anything more than an inch away. Caitlin thumbed the cork free, it disappeared into the undergrowth beside the trail. The scent of precipitation was joined immediately by a flowery aroma and something sweet like a basket of peaces. Maybe this one wouldn't taste as bad as the others she'd tried. "Cheers Bit."

Caitlin knocked her head back as she gulped down the brew, a milky substance that was as sweet as it smelled. No foul aftertaste ... Caitlin smirked, then grimaced. Never mind. A warmth burned within her chest, her cheeks and eyes began to tingle a couple of seconds later. She blinked a few times as the darkness seemed to lift from around her, the shadows receding until they were no longer a bother to her vision. Everything around her was still largely absent of color, still evidently darkened ... she could just see better.

Caitlin slid the drawer shut and scanned her surroundings. A gust of wind caused the boughs of large oak trees that lined the right side of the trail to sway overhead elicited creaks and moans sounding like disembodied souls calling out from the darkened woods beyond. Caitlin's wagon groaned in reply as the wind buffeted its side. She bound her hair in a ponytail she'd tied hundreds of times before and studied her reflection in the round window set into the wagon's side, a red curtain drawn across it's surface within.

Caitlin met her own gaze, her two eyes--the right a light lapis blue, the left a golden amber--stared back. Her lips were drawn in a tight resolute line and a look of determination she wished she could feel. Thinking back to her wanted posters, she recalled three of her targets were wanted for witchcraft. Witchcraft ... what protections do I have? Caitlin thought for a moment before pulling open a locked external drawer below the wagon window, Caitlin withdrew a hagstone necklace and an amulet with gemstones that some man in a nearby town promised her was blessed. He looked legitimate enough ... Caitlin frowned. She slipped the necklace and amulet on around her neck.

"You've got this Cait'." The words brought her some comfort as they repeated over and over within her mind, in the warm and soft reassuring voice of her father. They repeated the same way they always had in the twenty-four years Caitlin could remember, and they reassured her--as they always had. "You've got this ... Cait'." Bit huffed, looking back at her from ahead, his head bobbed in what Caitlin hoped was a horse's form of agreement. She jumped at the sudden slap of Bit's tail against his rear. Calm down Cait'. You've got this.

She turned and made her way down the trail. Twigs snapped below Caitlin's boots as she tugged the brim of her hat down, snugging it on her head, and walked past Bit running a hand over his brown coat. The wet muzzle of her horse nudged against her skin, right where her vest ended at her shoulder.

Caitlin focused for a moment on the manor house that loomed, silhouetted against the bleak skies beyond, and then to the trail that ended a few dozen yards ahead. A twisted rot iron gate slightly ajar still clung to one bracket of a wall's stone pillar. The forest seemed keen on claiming the gate as it's own, evident by the creeping ivy that crawled out along the forest floor and had already completely covered the entire wall to the entryway's right in a leafy coat the rippled as if it were alive.

Clouds broke momentarily, revealing a bright moon that bathed the compound in silvery shards of light, exposing the tattered shingles that hung from the eaves of a gabled roof riddled with holes that dropped into unseen darkness below. Four grand Greek pillars stood like sentinels before the rest of the house, obscuring rows of boarded windows beyond. Caitlin dropped to a low crouch as she neared the gate, gingerly stepping over a log and avoiding another twig. A faint patter of rain began, joining with the hollow winds in a way that set Caitlin's skin crawling as icy droplets splashed against her.

The feeling that she wasn't alone tugged at gut.

Her breaths were now coming out in short bursts of fog that was instantly carried away.

One window, seconds ago covered completely by a column, radiated with a faint yellow light that slipped between the planks of wood that someone long ago had nailed across it's surface. It was then Caitlin knew ...

This is the place.

"Victory ... or death." Caitlin muttered cross-drawing her pair of Colts, rivulets of water falling from the brim of her hat. She slid between the two halves of the gate and towards her quarries.

Behind her the wagon groaned.

Alright, so aside from writing I've been hobbying pretty steadily. I have my urban/insurgent Astra Militarum force ... but when Genestealer Cults (hereafter refered to as GSC) were announced I knew I had to steer my Astra Militarum in a more "Tyranidy" direction!

OK so according to 1d4chan (a fantastic source for 40k tactica ... and one of my go-to resources for when I'm trying to figure out an army build...) here is a little bit about the GSC. Courtesy 1d4Chan...

​Genestealer Cults are an army for when you want to play a "horde" of lots of cheap disposable infantry, yet still have a realistic chance of winning games. Genestealer Cultists have a very small selection of units, but there is relatively little overlap in unit roles. Their rank-and-file melee is capable of shredding many units to pieces and won't instantly die the moment they end up in combat with a lightly armored Walker, and they can strategically redeploy their infantry units over the scope of two turns, giving them defense against having individual units "stranded" and not contributing to the fight. Add in a fairly solid Psychic Discipline with a mix of utility and a nasty debuff Primaris, and two assassination-denial rules, and you have a functionally complete army with the means to cover most of your bases. Being Allies of Convenience with Tyranids and Imperial Guard rounds out your selection of tools.
While most builds will gravitate towards "horde"/ambush playstyles, the Cultists can also do a passable "armored company" of Neophytes with looted Guard tanks, while their Goliath mining vehicles and melee troops allow you to alternately run a "Witness Me" War Boy army. The relative simplicity of the codex belies an unusual depth of builds available to the aspiring Cult leader.
In short, the army is flexible and fairly forgiving of mistakes, giving you the option to spam summon in units that may have been wiped off the table, and with arguably the most mobility out of any army out there, being near or on the level of jetbike spam or Dark Eldar, you're going to be getting your guys where they need to be. Over the course of two turns, you can redeploy to within 9 inches of anywhere on the table on average with NO scatter, and sometimes as close as 3 inches away. Sure a bad roll on the ambush chart can ruin your day, but that's why you've got lots of units. You aren't playing Grey Knights, when you've got a fifteen infantry units on the board, and you're summoning in more every turn, there's no way they are all going to roll a 1 or 2 on the chart. Don't expect a 6 on the chart, but definitely be comfortable building a strategy around at least a decent number (66% on Average) of your units rolling a 3 or higher on the chart.

Pros

• You loved Fury Road and want an army of War Boys.
• You like Genestealers.
• You like Tanks.
• You like Genestealers in Tanks.
• You've got the models from the late '80s and have long been itching to use them again!
• You want to play whack-a-mole as the moles. And the moles are armed with machine guns.
• You like the idea of playing a mobile horde army that can deploy and redeploy whenever and wherever they want.
• You think that deployment zones are stupid, and like being able to pop up wherever you want. Go ahead, put all the objectives on one half of the board if you can, if you get to pick sides you're sitting on a bunch of objectives and your opponent is sitting high and dry. If you don't, slap on your trollface and just deploy over there anyway. (Do be careful though because if you take the Cult Insurrection detachment you aren't going to be objective secured and if you don't most units won't be able to deploy through Cult Ambush, although with the proliferation of formations in game-play today there's a good chance your opponent won't be objective secured anyway).
• Your basic troops are rarely useless. Neophytes might struggle to damage some targets, but they're cheap as chips and their special and heavy weapons can pack a whallop. Acolytes, on the other hand, combine a high volume of attacks plus rending. This means that they're a danger to everything from Terminators to Wraithknights. The only thing they struggle with is Land Raiders and the like, as they aren't strong enough on their own to punch through. That is somewhat alleviated by their effective but costly mining equipment.
• You're a Tyranid player who has been waiting for a workable allied force for decades. The Cults bring a lot to the table for a 'Nid army.
• You've always wanted to field a Catachan or Ork Kommando army that played like they're described in the fluff. The conversion and modeling opportunities for this army are fantastic!

Cons

• You have a lot of money to spare - it costs £25/$40/€33 for an unupgraded 50 point troops unit. Remember, you only have two kidneys.
  • This is somewhat alleviated by the fact that you can fairly reliably get 16 Neophytes, 12 Acolytes, and the Characters for (usually) about half the cost of the Deathwatch: Overkill box. That said, the expensive single kits are the only place to get the other upgrades, so you're gonna have to buy at least a couple.
• Your dudes have no durability to speak of. The whole army is T3 with 5+ armor, for the most part. Flamethrowers and basic infantry weapons wreck your shit.
• You're gonna have a bad time in kill point games. If your enemy is allowed to castle up, you have very few tools for actually threatening them. You also have a hell of a time dealing with Deathstars. The army is designed to pick apart an enemy army piece by piece, but if your enemy is one solid block of dudes you're going to have a hard time carving them up.
• Fliers are going to give you fits. Your ranged anti-armor is already kind of lacking, and very few fliers are going to politely land next to your dudes so you can cut the pilot out of the cockpit with a cement saw.
• Your shooting is decent, but most of your ability to tackle tough targets comes from melee. That said, the satisfaction of watching an Imperial Knight go down to a bunch of miners armed with power tools is second to none. Just be prepared for massive casualties.
• Allying with 'Nids or Imperial Guard fucks with your Cult Ambush abilities, as they technically count as "enemy models" for the purposes of ambushing or returning to the shadows.

Just to preface this ... the GSC lore in the codex is pretty neato.

My Cult--as you can probably guess from the section header--is a Nurgle themed cult.

Now, you may be like most of the other people I have told about my next modelling venture and say "Matt, you can't have a nurgle GSC... that doesn't make sense."

Enter stage right: Cult Tenebrous (which can be found in the GSC codex ... and in a lore excerpt online)​

"The Cult Tenebrous is a Genestealer Cult now devoted to Nurgle.
At some point the Cult found itself becoming the infested, rather than the infesters, when their bulk lander was swallowed by a Warp storm that strands them on the outskirts of Nurgle’s Garden. The cult discovers the true meaning of parasitism and horror. Eventually, the Grandfather of Plagues allows them to emerge into realspace once more, horrifically changed and ready to serve their new master’s sickly agendas.[1]"

Courtesy: Lexicanum

So ... there you have it folks. A nurgle-themed GSC is totally fluff!

OK so I first had to figure out a paintscheme for my cult. Since I wanted them to mesh with my Astra Militarum force I figured it made the most sense to use them to base the colorscheme off of! For the GSC vehicles I picked matching colors to my guard army. For the cultists themselves I am basing them off my Scions which is a semi-inverted colorscheme from my normal guardsmen. Check it out below.

So that sort of gives you an idea of the color palette--for infantry. For the vehicles I'm basing it off Straken Green again ... using The Heedless (the centerpiece for my Renia Liberation Front army) as the influence.

So I have constructed my Cult. I can post the list on another posting. But I'm sure you're curious as to how the first Cultist truck turned out! What does a nurgle-themed GSC truck look like?

​This:

So there is a little teaser of how my cult will shape up. Would any of you be interested in seeing progress pictures of the Nurglification process? I'd be happy to show the stages this above vehicle went through.

Have you played--or fought--GSC yet? If so, what do you think? So far my cult is 3 for 3. Won twice against Space Wolves and once against Legion of the Damned/Space Marines at 1,850 points.

I've really enjoyed them so far from both a modeling and gameplay standpoint! Super fluffy and very fun to play. They don't crumple up to fire as much as I expected--but I've been lucky with rolls I guess... I'll also post my army list if anyone is curious!

Connect with me on Twitter, or if you like SciFi (odds are if you're reading this you do...) check out my short stories I have up on Kindle! The Jax Jensen Trilogy. Some of my earlier stuff, but only a couple bucks (free with Kindle Unlimited!). I have some new stuff in the works and I assure you my writing has improved!

Links below to get in contact with me ... but be sure to leave any comments or questions you have and I'll get back to you!

Twitter: @MattTaylor1776
Facebook Page: Here
Amazon Author Page: Here
Jax Jensen Trilogy: Here

Thanks for taking the time to check this all out! I look forward to sharing more of my hobbying with you!

​-Matt