Purestrain Pleasures!

Well after adding a few more finishing touches to last week's hybrids/magus I thought it was time to introduce these new beauties to the rest of their cult.

As it stands this xenos cult consists of the following:

First up we have the brood's Big Daddy...The Patriarch:

This gnarled and weathered old genestealer is the primogenitor of this cult and as such he is decades, if not hundreds of years old, and in light of this I have tried to give him an appropriate paint job that demonstrates his venerable status. 

The model itself is the original 'Running Patriarch' from 1989 and I just love the character this sculpt oozes.  So much cooler than the Broodlord of modern canon; I particularly like his swanky giant medallion; perhaps this cult has infiltrated a world where 1970's disco is still cool and John Travolta will be the first of his brood brothers!

Unfortunately when he arrived via a Space Hulk (aka EBay) to my home world (aka Doorstep); one of his legs had snapped off completely.  This is one of the dramas with old lead, it's such a soft metal that weak areas such as joints and spindly limbs are prone to snapping/breaking.  So after I dried my tears I broke out the sculpting tool and green stuff for an afternoon of intense battlefield first aid; I'm not a great sculptor, but I am competent and I am pleased to say that you can no longer see the injuries this chap had previously sustained.

Moving on...

Well a patriarch is nothing without a brood to command and so here is his horde of vicious purestrain offspring (21 of the murderous little blighters in total). There are a variety of figures here including the early lead sculpts and the more common plastics from Space Hulk/Space Crusade.  As an interesting aside I discovered that the models from these two games are not quite identical; whilst the core body/torso is the same sculpt it is the arms that are slightly different as the Space Crusade ones are a little more basic and lack the fleshy nodule of muscle in the centre of the claws...look closely at these pics and see if you can spot what I mean.  I didn't really notice this until I started painting these guys in bulk!

To add some variation to the brood I tend to differ the tone of purple/mauve I use on the genestealers heads/flesh so as to break things up a bit. Overall I am happy with the look of these guys, and they frequently stalk the cardboard corridors of my first edition of Space Hulk.

Finally here is the whole family including the new hybrids from last week...lovely.

I will definitely start cracking on with some more hybrids (the crappy plastic ones from the GENESTEALER expansion are looking like they need some love; and I want to see if I can make a sculpt I don't really like look good) and those brood brothers I sprayed up probably need some attention too!!

I'll let you know how I get on!!

Legio