Uprising!

As we near the halfway mark for 2011, you'll have gauged from the lack of activity on the blog that it's so far been a hard year for Hive Fleet Askepios. 2010 had been a promising year for the Tyranids, but as the mechanised might of 5th edition grinds its gears against the bugs, victories have become few and far between! With the initial assault thwarted, the Hive Mind has taken a step back to consolidate its position, put out feelers, seek fresh feeding grounds. It's time to go back to basics. For Tyranids, that means finding new worlds to conquer, infecting the indiginous population with alien spores that, over generations, manifest themselves as hybrid creatures with an innate desire to overthrow the existing authorities, so that the planet is rife with internal strife by the time the Hive Fleets arive, making them easy prey for the Tyranid invaders!

So without further ado, I introduce the first initiates to my burgeoning Genestealer Cult: The cult of Askepios!

A small sample there of the disturbed creations I'm churning out just now. I've always wanted to do an army like this, obscure and heavily converted, there's an appealing sense of insanity about even taking such a project on! But, like my Brood Brothers, I'm devoted to the cause, and hope to keep the blog updated as to the progress of the rebellion. I've got plans for all the old favourites (from the 2nd edition codex) so you can look forward to seeing a purestrain Genestealer Patriarch, the psychic Magus, and the fanatical Cult Icon Bearer.

So how the Hell do I plan to field such an army, when there aren't any rules for them at present? Well it'll be 'counts as', counting as Imperial Guard. The cult, as I'll be fielding them, will already have had a fair amount of success in overturning the planetary authorities. They've captured munitions factories and 'liberated' transport vehicles, aircraft, and defence batteries from the Planetary Defence Force, and they're ready to use them! So it will be a heavily mechanised army. One of the 1750 point lists I'm looking at has 17 AV12 tanks in it. Yup. Pure cheese. I like to think of it this way - the Tyranids I'm playing are seeking to defeat their enemies by infiltration and disruption, so that's exactly what I'm doing with the Imperial Guard Codex! We'll see how it goes. In the meantime I'll be cutting, hacking, sawing, and getting out some 'Rage Against the Machine' CD's to get me in the mood for a revolution!!