Paint job: 50 Genestealers

It must have been was way back in 1990 or 1991 and I had never heard of Warhammer or 40k before. See, I was a young lad back then, barely a teenager. I remember entering the school were the gaming convention was held, checking out the shops and all the games set up. If I’m not mistaken were we there for role playing but a big part of the experience was just wandering around checking out stuff.

In one of the classrooms on the upper floor a bunch guys had set up this massive game board of rooms and narrow corridors. It felt like stretched across half the room. Nervously I asked one of the older guys what game it was and he told me that the game was called Space Hulk and began to explain the setting and the game itself. After awhile he looked at the clock and said:

– We’re about to get a game going, why don’t you grab yourself a few Terminators and join us?

I did. I believe I had a regular one with Stormbolter and Power Fist and a dude with Lightning Claws. Of course my dudes died horribly because that’s what the Marines do I Space Hulk but I was hooked. For life it seems. I played a couple of games over the weekend and eventually picked up the game.

Space Hulk is probably the game I’ve played more than any other game. I picked up all the expansions and used to make my own maps on squared paper. And house rules for regular Power Armoured Space Marine (before Games Workshop released them) and Imperial Guard And we played and played and played. Nine times out of ten I played the Genestealers.

I have a life long relationship with the Vanguard of the Tyranid Hive Fleets. Heck, they weren’t even part of the Tyranids first. Anyway, the original box came with a lot of Genestealers. I painted less than a handful way back when but most have remained bare plastic blue all these year. Neglected minis. When I picked up the awesome 4th edition a few years ago I just added the Genestealers to the pile of older unpainted minis.

But all that have changed. I originally intended to call this post – I painted 50 Genestealers in two weeks and they look kinda crappy but here they are – but I actually don’t think they look that bad. I’ve organised the Genestealers into three squads. Two big blocks of twenty and a single unit of ten. I know I have more Genestealers kicking about in boxes and whatnot. Eventually I’ll have three units of twenty painted but for now, 50 will have to do. To separate the units from another I painted a coloured line on the base of each model – red, blue and yellow. It is both visible and discreet. As you’ll see there is a Genestealer with a blue tongue in each group of five. That’s an Acid Maw. I used blue to tie the Acid Maw to the blue of the Venomthropes.

What do you say, want to see some pictures?

The Red Brood

The Yellow Brood

The Blue Brood

I’m very pleased with the Genestealers (or Greenstealers as I’ve come to call them) and the rest of the army. I took my less than three week to paint a 1000 points which is something I never done before. Quite a feat for me. I’ll add these units to my Junit tally. I’m looking forward to the tag team tournament in July. They will all learn to fear the Assault of the Greenstealers.

As a treat, I’ll give you a snap of the entire army.

From the void, we devour!