Tzeentch Renegades - Cultist squads painted

Hope you all had a great Labor Day weekend (for us Yanks, at least)! Over the past weekend Dark Vengeance was released and I managed to get a hold of a couple limited edition sets - Ostensibly for the mini rulebook, but lets be honest the models included look amazing as well, and are well worth the purchase.

I thought it was clever on the part of GW to include what appear to be a couple starter armies each capable of acting as an allied force for most of the various armies out there, so even if you don't happen to play Dark Angels or Chaos, there's a little something for everyone (except the bugs)! I will say I feel that the units provided don't lend themselves quite as well to buying multiple copies of the box set as the Assault on Black Reach set did - doubling up really adds far too many HQ and Elites choices in my opinion. Nevertheless, the models are staggeringly beautiful. I'm planning on painting up the Dark Angels to ally with the guard from time to time, but to be frank I was much more interested in the Chaos stuff, which has already got me thinking about starting a new Tzeentch Renegades force. That said, I knocked out the cultists over the long weekend:

First up is the hand-to-hand unit - let me start by saying that these are, hands down, the best cultists GW has made to date, and they were an absolute joy to build and paint. I especially like the fact that various models are obviously fallen members of the assorted strata of Imperial life - there are tech priests, and ministorum, adeptus terra and miners and what have you. Excellent stuff! As they are intended to be Tzeentchian cultists, I went with a semi-randomized pattern of blue, yellow and dirty white. If I paint up the second set I'm thinking I'll be using them for our 40k:RPG games and will paint them up more closely adhering to the colors of the adeptus to which they appear to belong, but for now I'm quite pleased with how these turned out!

The second squad of cultists are armed with ranged weapons such as autoguns and a heavy stubber and again there are some simply beautiful sculpts - I really enjoyed painting them! The leader of this unit is by far my favorite - the liberated Commissar's coat and the grotesque makes him just ooze with character!

Next up on the painting table is the first unit of Skitarii for my Ad Mech army, but the remaining Chaos units from the Dark Vengeance set aren't too far behind!