Cultists. The great unwashed masses of thralls in servitude to the Silent Host, children of lost Prospero who fight and die in the name of a planet they never knew. Their duty is death, their strength is numbers. Bolstered equally by belief in a shining afterlife and fear of their masters, the Saqqrati are the last link to humanity the Silent Host possess. This fact does not spare the Saqqrati from being fed to the meat grinder of war.
I had a very specific vision when I started working on my cultist units. The Thousand Sons still utilize remnants of their human auxiliaries, known as the Spireguard. While there's no official art of the Spireguard, most depictions converge on something like this fellow to the left. So my goal was to find models that resembled that image.
This was...not easy. Theoretically, I could have used Tempestus Scions from Games Workshop, but a squad of five is $35. I have forty cultists. You can do the math. Where I ended up was
Anvil Industries. With a bit of chopping, I ended up with a model that is an...evolution of a Spireguard. Which was my goal.
Then the standard painting philosophy. You know the drill. Dark blues, greys, a bit of copper on the officers. Nothing too fancy. Now, because these are cultists, and because I had to paint 40 of these, I went light on the technique. Basecolor, wash, tidy up. No edge highlights, nothing fancy. In time I might go back and add edge highlighting to the greatcoats, but they look fine on the tabletop as-is.
PAINTS USED
Dark Blue (Cloth)
Kantor Blue
Nuln Oil
Steel
Leadbelcher
Nuln Oil
Copper
Balthasar Gold
Agrax Earthshade
Dark Grey
Mechanicus Standard Grey
Nuln Oil
Black
Abaddon Black
