Two things stood out as I got close to the finish line on this army – one, I didn’t have nearly enough actual bodies on the field for 1,000 pt. games, especially with half of those bodies being precision instruments like Howling Banshees. Two, some of my HQ choices were less than ideal for the direction of this edition. Tailtineth and Keltharal won’t be going anywhere, but I’ve gone back and repainted one of my Eldrad Ulthran miniatures to represent an old favorite character who’s also been dragged (as if he wasn’t already) into collaboration with the Star Children: Farseer Ry’hil.

Ry’hil is a mainstay named HQ character of mine and has been since before I started this blog, and it felt nice to be able to bring him back to join the party. I gave him a neat little skull with psychically glowing eyes to hold to help demarcate him as part of this Genestealer Cult – Aeldari force, mostly because things are tight and I didn’t want to shell out for any more Genestealer Cult bits right now when I could make do with a little less. The same design philosophy went into the kitbashing on the Guardians – a lot of the heads, details, and even the sprues for the Guardians themselves were largely bits, bobs, odds and ends that I had lying around that I repurposed.

I painted Ry’hil up largely the same as the earlier psykers, but tried to imitate a sort of Khaine-esque molten quality on the staff that he was holding. I also found earlier that some of the purples that I used for Genestealer skin tones came off a little dark, especially on camera, so this time when painting Guardians I made sure to use lighter tones for those instead. The neon tufts continue to put in work for contrast, and I’m thanking my past self and lucky stars that I held onto all of the old Tyranid bits that I wasn’t going to be using for actual Tyranids.

Having a couple of Guardian squads means that I will be able to pair Tailtineth with one, Ry’hil (Eldrad) with the other on the tabletop, and have Keltharal attached to a squad of Howling Banshees for Deep Strike, keeping my HQ lineup a little more effective. Being able to avail of both Guide and Doom I think will come in handy. Beyond gameplay, I also like that I was able to build one squad of new Guardians and one squad of old ones, and follow the same kind of direction for the Howling Banshees and psykers as well; it feels like the kind of asymmetrical approach that a Genestealer Cult full of Aeldari would actually take.