Goliath Truck

A Goliath Truck serves as a powerful armoured personnel carrier to bring the hybrid warriors of the Genestealer Cults to war.

A Goliath Truck is an extremely durable but common Imperial transport vehicle that is often used for mining and construction activities. They were originally built from an STC design to provide heavy-duty protection for Imperial officials and corporate bureaucrats moving through subterranean complexes and mining tunnels.

As such, they can be customised by the Genestealer Cults to serve as extremely potent but equally unexpected armoured personnel carriers, a use for which they are highly-sought after by the cults.

Role

Goliath Trucks are rugged transports originally designed to bear Imperial officials and corporate factotums through crypt complexes and mining tunnels. The vehicle's dense and robust construction makes it proof against the most hostile of underground environments, and its folded layers of chemically-treated permasteel give it a measure of protection against every industrial hazard the Imperium has yet encountered. Each Goliath Truck can carry up to ten cult infantrymen.

A Goliath Truck like this makes a formidable armoured transport for the Genestealer Cults.

Even an unmodified Goliath Truck can survive acid storms, hurricanes of forge-sparks, malfunctioning rad-chambers, and volatile toxin eruptions. Whatever damage they bear on the exterior, they keep those in their metal guts as safe as if they were locked in a command bunker. Whilst the cult lies quiescent, its Goliaths are used in everything from subterranean transit to stockpiling munitions.

The duraglass screens inside each vision slit can be raised to make the vehicles airtight -- as useful for surviving the choking confines of a hazardous mine as the poisonous atmosphere of battle. Their reputation is long-held; even the Astra Militarum has respect for the mighty Goliath.

Though an ascendant cult will make use of any type of vehicle, from lunar quads to civilian stretch-cars to mobile industrial macro-rigs, the Goliath Truck is always the most sought-after. These vehicles are customised with all manner of stowage, extra armour plating and sprayed-on cult symbols. They are acquired by means fair and foul by every cult that can find them, for they strike the perfect balance between unobtrusive civilian vehicle and pugnacious war machine.

A Goliath Rockgrinder is used by the Genestealer Cults as a mobile battering ram for shock assaults.

No one gives a second glance to a column of Goliath Trucks bearing rag-draped miners through the streets, and workplace graffiti and personalisation is far from unusual in the lower classes of the Imperium, so even the cult symbols stencilled upon the vehicles' sides often go unchallenged.

Then, when the mind-stimulus of the Magus or Genestealer Patriarch signals through the Broodmind that the time is right, the broods within these vehicles throw open their hatches and burst out -- some still mistaken for fully human even in their warpaint and others so alien that even to witness them is to feel the cold claw of defeat clutching at the heart.

Built to the blueprint of a ubiquitous Standard Template Construct design, the Goliath Truck has been modified and adapted countless times across the industrial worlds of the Imperium, and their are many variants in use for different functions. Among these is the Goliath Rockgrinder.

Goliath Rockgrinder

A Goliath Rockgrinder serves essentially as a mobile battering ram for the Genestealer Cults.

The Goliath Rockgrinder is the most common variant of the Goliath Truck across the Imperium. Though compact, the Goliath Rockgrinder is a mining vehicle built to withstand rockfalls, dam bursts and the fiery backwash of its Clearance Incinerator. Those huddled within have a great deal of protection from all but the highest-calibre weapons. The Goliath Rockgrinder can carry up to six cult warriors.

The massive Drilldozer Blade at the Rockgrinder's front boasts grinder arrays that can crack mineral seams and bore tunnels through bedrock. These are put to a far more sinister use in times of war. When the order is given to throw caution away in favour of outright attack, the Rockgrinder's hybrid driver will bully his vehicle towards the front line, his gunner laying down a swathe of burning promethium to keep the enemy's heads down as he accelerates for the killing impact.

In the driver's haste to close with the unbelievers, he will smash through barricades, redoubt walls, and even Aegis Defence Lines. The Rockgrinder's serried saws and grinders whine and scream as they slice, gouge and crack. In an explosion of sparks and flinders, the vehicle bursts through, ploughing its drilldozer into the cowering enemy beyond and sending welters of gore spraying in all directions.

The Drilldozer Blades attached to the front of a Genestealer Cult Goliath Rockgrinder can transform an entire infantry squad into a meaty paste.

Those riding this metallic battering ram to war will spill out to capitalise on the havoc of its impact, cutting down swathes of the enemy with automatic weapon fire. Ultimately, these cultists are not trained soldiers, and despite their bravery and boldness, it is likely their headlong assault will leave them unsupported.

Against a disciplined enemy, the instigators of the attack might soon find themselves surrounded and put down, and though the Rockgrinder has a thick hull, it cannot withstand concentrated heavy weapons fire for long.

Still, these vehicles are well suited to shock-assault tactics that are extremely effective at punching through defensive lines. Every Rockgrinder rampage leaves a gory path of scattered limbs, armour and splintered bone over which the main body of cultists can pour.

Unit Composition

• 1 Goliath Truck
• 1 Goliath Rockgrinder

Wargear

Goliath Truck

• Heavy Stubber
• Twin-linked Autocannons
• Cache of Demolition Charges

Goliath Rockgrinder

• Heavy Stubber
• Heavy Mining Laser
• Drilldozer Blade
• Cache of Demolition Charges
• Clearance Incinerator (As replacement for Heavy Mining Laser)
• Heavy Seismic Cannon (As replacement for Heavy Mining Laser)

Sources

• Codex: Genestealer Cults (8th Edition), pp. 61, 99-100
• Codex: Genestealer Cults (7th Edition), pp. 34-35