Genestealer Cult Ratling Brood Brother

With the world sort of going crazy all around us, I've managed to take the enforced "home time" to start making forward progress on my various Genestealer Cult activities. I haven't been idle over the past month and a half, just some of the projects have been taking a bit longer than I'd hoped they would to get finished. However, that being said, over this past weekend I finally managed to make real forward progress on several projects. I expect until the current quarantines ease, posts to the blog will be a bit more regular - at least that's the goal!

As part of my Brood Brothers Guard force, I wanted to start including something beyond simple infantry squads (be they command, line infantry, special weapon, or heavy weapon squads) and tanks. I started looking at the possibility of converting some of the abhuman forces like Ratlings and Ogryns. The Sanctus I converted from a Blackstone Fortress Kroot last year got me thinking that there may be other good miniatures out there that I could use as the basis for some conversion, and as BSF had two ratlings, I decided to take the plunge!

I started with the BSF Rein miniature. I also have a Raus figure, but that one will be a bit harder to convert into a sniper - not impossible, but harder. One key feature of most GSC figures is an apparent complete lack of body hair, which means the beards and fuzzy hobbit feet had to go. Fortunately the miniature comes in several parts which made removing the head easier than on something like the current or vintage metal ratlings.

The miniature itself comes in four parts - three of which are shown above. There's the sniper rifle itself, a front body/torso which has the head attached to it (along with the left hand), a back body/torso, and a part for some additional stowage including a bipod for his sniper rifle. I removed the head, and then removed the hand from the head so I could attach it directly to the figure. I found a head I like from the GSC accessory sprue which I attached after I carved a channel for it in the front torso.

Once that was done, I snagged a pouch, grenade, and cult symbol to add more stowage to his belt (these are ratlings, they pretty much carry as much as they can with them!). The feet were replaced with boots taken from some old Catachan figures I had lying about (which I'd also tried to do some GSC conversions to, but unsuccessfully).

As this was an all-plastic miniature, attaching the plastic donor bits to the existing miniature went very smoothly and didn't require any pinning. Once the miniature was together, I painted it in sub assemblies (shown above).

As this miniature will be the first of what I hope will eventually be a unit of ten, it is painted in my standard Brood Brother colors - i.e. World War II winter Soviet uniforms. I decided to weather the metal crate on his back - I'm unsure if that is an ammunition locker or a beer fridge - the romantic in me hopes it's a beer fridge.

Overall I'm really pleased with the final result on this one. He's fairly tiny (watch this spot for a comparison with other miniatures in the collection). Now I just have to convert more - which means I'm likely going to have to tackle converting pewter figures, which is always a pain. Eventually I'll have a full unit of 10 of these little monsters - so enemy characters beware!