40K Genestealer Cult - Brood Brothers!

One of the standard troops options for the Genestealer cult is a unit called "Brood Brothers." These are standard Astra Militarum infantry that have been infiltrated by the Cult and defect once the grand uprising begins. You can also take certain standard Astra Militarum units as a separate detachment for your Battle Forged force, but I'll detail some of those options in a later blog entry.

The basic kit is based off of the venerable Cadian plastic set, and GW has painted up their infantry in that scheme. I, as per normal, had my own ideas about how to actually do them. As I'm running with a "Soviet" inspired color scheme, my infantry are painted in Vallejo Russian Uniform (70924) and Refractive Green (70890). These colors roughly match World War 2 soviet uniform and helmet colors, at least according to the old Flames of War color guides.

To distinguish Cult infantry from normal Imperial Guard Forces, there is an upgrade sprue included in the kit (shown above) which is also available separately. These include heads to swap out for the normal Cadian heads as well as combat gear. I've bought, well, a lot of these as I had several squads of old Cadians lying about which I've been converting. The heads are pretty nice and paint up well, and you get a lot of cult insignia to boot.

Again, I'm using the various upgraded bases in rust colors to represent the fact that these guys are coming out of the proverbial woodwork, or underhive if you will. The colors are honestly not incredibly different from the basic Cadians, but do have a bit darker feel to them. Again I'm using the Ammo of Mig flesh-tone set to good effect. I've also brought over a lot of the chipping and weathering effects I'm using on the vehicles to the autocannon and vox caster as well.

The one problem I've always had with some of the heavy weapon teams is that the base is so darned BIG. That means you have to do a fair amount of basing to get them to look right on the table. You'd think that would get better using prepared bases, but the empty space just seemed to be magnified in this case. So I went ahead and added the sandbags from the kit, a spare drum, some spent casings (I'll have to get a detail shot), a spare track link, and some barbed wire. It gives the base a suitably busy appearance.

This particular unit will run around in the Chimera from my previous post. I have another squad of these ready to paint, but they're behind a few other new units I want to get done first. Eventually I'll likely have a small Astra Militarum force that's entirely made up of Brood Brothers I could field on its own... which could be entertaining!