Thursday, February 14, 2019

The Cult Rises: Update 4: A Sire for Them all

Greetings Reader,

After a week off for some work travel and also getting the chance to check out the LVO for a couple days, I'm back for another update on the Cult of the Four Armed Emperor. This journey has been amazing so far, a heartfelt thank you to everyone who has clicked in and checked this out, posted comments on Fecebook, Reddit, or this blog.



Before we get started, I want to share something with you all. When I started this yearlong journey, I didn't know if people would be interested in following along, much less participate as well. On Reddit, Canis Nebula posted that he was inspired by my cult journey to start his own. If you are enjoying #thecultrises, please check out his blog Cult of the Star Mother. He has some great conversions to kick off his journey!

So last time I told you that I fell a bit short on my goal to paint 10 models in a week so I was dialing back the goal in order to succeed and still make progress. I chose the Grandsire himself, the Patriarch as the focal model of the week.


It's easy to get inspired by the patriarch model. When he was first released with the Overkill boxed set, the 'Eavy Metal team did an amazing job with him firing some mind bullets with how they did the psychic effect. I also am using the Cult of the Four Armed Emperor color scheme for my GSC .

Nothing like a little bit of hotel room painting in Las Vegas!

I am also a Blood Angels collector so I wanted to create the tie in to my other armies so I made the space marine head the patriarch is clutching a poor Blood Angel tactical marine.


So let's take a moment and talk about the Patriarch, the sire of your cult. Firstly, in matched play he must be your warlord but he has some pretty impressive tricks up his sleeve. I'll walk through two of them today.

The Soul Crusher, Destroyer of Minds Patriarch is basically designed to take advantage of leadership buffing elements in order to use Mental Onslaught to utterly destroy single models.


The Patriarch has a base leadership of 10 and he can be easily buffed to 13 with three easy components:
  • Inspiring Leader warlord trait from the basic rulebook
  • A nearby Clamavus gives all nearby units +1 to leadership
  • The relic Grandsire's Blood from the Broodsurge Detachment in Vigilus Defiant   
You can of course look at other leadership debuffing elements to further press this advantage but I found it really easy to have the above elements in ANY GSC list.
The second major Patriarch build I am fond of is what I am calling the Bane Venom Patriarch. The Bane Patriarch focuses on maximizing the close combat potential of the Patriarch to create a true monster able to murder even some of the most toughest units in the game.


The patriarch already has some impressive close combat stats, he hits on 2+ at Strength 6 and 6 attacks. Then, we can further augment him with the Biomorph Adaptation warlord trait. Secondly, remember that Grandsire's Blood relic I was talking about earlier? We can use it to increase the strength and attacks of a single GSC infantry model by two for one turn. We are already at a str 9 patriarch with 9 attacks. Keep up the fun with little dose of Might from Beyond and you are up to Str 10 and 10 attacks. If you are going Twisted Helix, complete the look by giving him the relic that increases his attack by one more. This will give you a Str 10 Patriarch with 11 attacks hitting on 2+ (with a +1 to hit if needed), who rerolls to wound thanks to his monstrous rending claws. That definitely doesn't suck!


So let's talk about painting plans for this army. I am tentatively planning to attend the Spring CONflagaration in Minnesota this May as the first GT experience with this GSC army. The problem is, the GT is about 3.5 months away. This is a huge problem at my current painting pace. With all the GSC leaks and preview videos, I am tracking my lists clocking in right at about 160 models and that is without any playtesting on some units that I see are under performers (Atalan Jackals, I'm looking at you). I may borrow painted models from friends in order to play in this GT and keep my relatively stress free, enjoyable painting schedule going for #thecultrises.


Next week, the Gunslinger walks among us!

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