The Cult Brings in the Artillery - First Heavy Mortar Done!

Among the many heavy support options currently available to Astra Militarum players is the Imperial Heavy Mortar from Forgeworld. These can be a fairly spendy option if you're going with a Death Korps of Krieg force and have to buy the resin crew, but as I wanted a battery of three of these for my Genestealer Cult, I was able to save a few buck and buy the mortars bare without crew. As I've been building a lot of Cult Brood Brothers lately, I have a lot of spare bits lying about. It also isn't too hard to find Astra Militarum bits online for reasonable prices, so assembling unique crews for the mortars shouldn't be too difficult.

As with most resin kits, the mortars themselves aren't without issues. One had a pretty bad seam down the bottom which honestly I decided not to try and fix. I just have that one aimed at a lower trajectory so the mold slip is not immediately apparent, and I'm planning on adding some details on the base of that one to further camouflage (get it!) the issue. However, I do love the big clunky look of these mortars. Initially I was going to not have them based, but as I had some of the Sector Imperialis Oval Bases, I thought they'd look a bit more uniform with the rest of the force on a base.

I'm using the black and white technique again on the mortars themselves - they have a top coat of the 4BO Green. The ammunition bins are also done with a black and white highlight, but they're in Protective Green. The handwheel is Alclad Brass and the gold details are Alclad Pale Gold. If you look carefully, that is indeed a Genestealer Cult Icon attached to the breach of the mortar. I noticed a little touch up that was needed after taking the photos, so I've completed that and will take new pictures when I can photograph the whole battery in action.

The crew are put together from various bits I had lying about and some I've been picking up purposely to create crew for this set of mortars. This will be the most senior of the three crews, so they borrow heavily from the Cadian Command Squad set. I'm still amazed how different these guys look with just the head swaps from the Genestealer Cult Upgrade Frame. At this point I've pretty much standardized my recipes for my Brood Brothers. Rather than trying to type it up every time, I've created a chart (below) that I'll include in future blog entries. You'll have to click on the image as It won't be intelligible from the preview.

I have the base coats on the other two mortars, and I also have their bases painted. I need to finish up their crew and get them painted before I can get the whole battery of three out on the table. I've recently been very focused on the Brood Brothers side of my army as I want to be able to field a credible Astra Militarum force in its own right. However, I have been working on some of the purely cult items in the background. They're still a few weeks out, but with Armies on Parade coming (hopefully!) in October, I have miles to go before I'm done!