Unleash the Gland-Hounds!

 Cultist spam incoming!

Time for some mere mortals to fill out the ranks of the Creations of Bile - and not just because I'm hungry for Command Points to gobble up all the lovely stratagems.

In the narrative, Bile makes use of his 'Gland-Hounds' as enhanced human warriors. It's a shame that Cultists are the only ones not to benefit from the legion trait, because faster, stronger Cultists would have been perfect Gland Hounds (and hardly broken the meta).

To fill the ranks, I pulled out my box of Blackstone Fortress Cultists of the Abyss - and wow, these are some lovely models. I actually spent more time painting them (rather than the usual Agrax bath that my Cultists come to expect) because I wanted to do them justice.

I also liked the unique pose of the Cultists, so in a rarity for this army, these guys were left untouched by the conversion clippers.

And useless they may be, I do like a heavy stubber in a Cultist mob (and they have another one carrying the ammo - nice touch), so I may have to find the points to include that.

This being Chaos, everything had to be different (although vaguely themed), so as well as giving everyone different skin tones, I was frequently switching between blues, greens, browns and greys for their cloth.

This poor grenade launcher chap may find himself picked last for sports, unless the new codex relaxes the special weapons options, or I just decide he's carrying an autogun with a really big barrel.

The pad out the Cultist numbers, I went back to the original guys from 7th Edition. I think they hold up well - a big stockier than the new models, but no worse for that.

I've had these models before, and heavily converted them. But it appears they're no longer on sale, so when I found I had a box of five untouched, I thought I should paint them untouched as a last huzzah.

It's a good thing I was committed, because these Cultists are just festooned with details! For some of the cheapest and expendable units in the game, you can't just 'assembly-line' paint them like Termagaunts or Guardsmen.

Although I did appreciate the abundance of gas masks - not only did it make them look more 'Creations of Bile', but I didn't have to paint eyes!

And once those five were done, I found I had a few spares knocking around for conversions too. The first one got a flamer (nicked - both in reality and in the narrative) from a Cadian squad. I can't imagine ever using it, but you never know.

And speaking of Cadian loot, this guy already had a semi-military tunic on, so I gave him a Guard helmet and laspistol to look like a proper traitor. And then a Corpse-Grider axe, which I'm sure is not standard issue.

So that's the Cultists done - if I can leave them hanging around the back, it just gives me more astartes to charge forward!