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Hi all, before COVID 19 stormed the world and brought chaos everywhere I planned to take up the gaming side of the hobby after many years of painting. Sadly I haven’t been able to do so but I’m still determined to learn ready for battles as soon as we can.

I have started a GSC army but I’d like to know the best tactics for them as 9th changed the game quite drastically with objectives.

So can you guys give me your thoughts on the best strategies please

Thanks

GSC are in a bit of a tough spot now Meta-wise. They are one of my favourite armies, but I am a Narrtive/ Crusade player who likes to grow my armies organically- Impanting human opponents in battle, who become Brood Brother, who then breed Acolytes, who then breed Neophytes, etc.

As such, I don't do tactics the way most people do, because I don't pick units based on their performance in game- I take them when the story makes them available.

Having said that, GSC deployment shenanigans can be fun- with care in unit selection, you can deploy your army as counters, which allows you to decide which units to put where after getting more battlefield intelligence than you would normally have.

Purestrains are FAST; they can charge after advancing, and they hit pretty hard- I love taking as many purestrains as I can.

Aberrants are crazy buffable, but expensive- so if you fork out the points, make sure you're prepared to invest in buffs.

Oh boy. GSC are very unique. But the knops and dials have made them. One of the worst in the game currently.

What is good:

Shotgun squad with lying in wait, 20 of them. Good at winning an objective.

One group of acolyte hybrids to charge from reserves with a perfect ambush. 15 bodies, very strong.

Kellermorph is gass. Have hike with shotgun squads.

Alpha Jackal BS boost is great.

Ridge runners with lasers are good. I recommend 6 of them in two units.

The psykick powers are good.

After that it gets dicy. When a codex is weak you need to play a competetive list to have a better chance to winn.

PenitentJake wrote:
GSC are in a bit of a tough spot now Meta-wise. They are one of my favourite armies, but I am a Narrtive/ Crusade player who likes to grow my armies organically- Impanting human opponents in battle, who become Brood Brother, who then breed Acolytes, who then breed Neophytes, etc.

As such, I don't do tactics the way most people do, because I don't pick units based on their performance in game- I take them when the story makes them available.

Having said that, GSC deployment shenanigans can be fun- with care in unit selection, you can deploy your army as counters, which allows you to decide which units to put where after getting more battlefield intelligence than you would normally have.

Purestrains are FAST; they can charge after advancing, and they hit pretty hard- I love taking as many purestrains as I can.

Aberrants are crazy buffable, but expensive- so if you fork out the points, make sure you're prepared to invest in buffs.

I wish I hadn't read the part about Purestrains and Aberrants, something not even my worst enemies would even consider suggesting


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Niiai wrote:
Oh boy. GSC are very unique. But the knops and dials have made them. One of the worst in the game currently.

What is good:

Shotgun squad with lying in wait, 20 of them. Good at winning an objective.

One group of acolyte hybrids to charge from reserves with a perfect ambush. 15 bodies, very strong.

Kellermorph is gass. Have hike with shotgun squads.

Alpha Jackal BS boost is great.

Ridge runners with lasers are good. I recommend 6 of them in two units.

The psykick powers are good.

After that it gets dicy. When a codex is weak you need to play a competetive list to have a better chance to winn.

Half the tips here should never never be followed though:

- Shotgun Neophytes are very bad for their points when you have both HF Acolytes for 11 pts that do better damage in shooting and infinitely more damage in melee.
- Kelermorph is bad: he doesn't really kill anything worth and his Captain aura only lasts for his current Shooting phase and only on INFANTRY (no Bikes or Vehicles) models, so unless you run literal HORDES of Neophytes with special and heavy weapons (100+) with Iconwards as well to provide the reroll Morale + FNP he's useless in all current (if any) competitive iterations of GSC
- Never play 15 sized units of Acolytes, go with 5 for Deploy Scramblers + 2CP Objective stealing in the same turn or 10 with Multiple Cutters (SAWs got kicked in the ass by several -1D, FNPs and Transhuman like abilities).
- Jackal Alphus is the best HQ in the codex, no questions here
- Ridgerunners are the best sources of mobility and lascannons in the codex bar Neophytes with Mining Lasers: never play GSC with fewer than 6 (2x3 or even 3x3 units)
- Psychic Powers are definitely nice to have but aside from few Cult specific ones and Mass Hypnosis/Might from Beyond they're trash

As you can see from the previous responses, there's not a whole lot of consensus on how to play GSC and do it well with the current ruleset. They are a weak army in a bad place for the moment, and we don't know when we're due for a new codex, so I'd caution against jumping into them as a faction and expecting to get results. Your cultists will die and die and die again, and you will bang your head against a wall as your master plan (which you spent 4CP or more on) goes up in smoke because your opponent has a better and simpler army which doesn't rely on so many tricks to perform.

Doom and gloom aside, as a hobby project they have an excellent model range, they just have a slightly steeper learning curve than some other armies. A lot of the deployment shenanigans don't amount to much because of the smaller board size. Even with the larger table size, I often found that these shenanigans just wasted time, but they do give you some room to counter-deploy against your opponent, and it prevents them from doing the same to you.

List-wise, I tend to run a battalion of Bladed Cog (neophytes with mining lasers, a supporting jackal alphus and patriarch, and ridge runners), and then a patrol of Four Armed Emperor - stack up on acolytes and take a clamavus for deep-striking, with a Magus and primus in the 4AE patrol.

Broodcoven is almost always worth it for a CP to give your Magus and primus warlord traits. Alien Majesty is great on the primus to boost his aura range, so he buffs units even when he fails charges. For the Magus, if he's 4AE then Inscrutable Cunning is ok for some extra CP, but you probably want to give him the Crouchling and/or use Cult's Psyche to buff him so he can cast more powers with modifiers.

I can't talk much about the missions for 9th ed because I've only played one or two, and my player group decided it's not for us. But the above is a good skeleton for list building.

I still like the saws. And 15 is a good number to have something that can delete a whole range of enemies. 10 can fall a bit short, especially if you loose a lot of them to overwatch. (T3 is paper thin.) If we had more deep striker CP, or if you have 10 in a transort in adition a 10 split might be OK, but I find it small.

The 20 shotgun neophytes pop up and deny objective. Flamers might be cheaper on CP, I have not run the math on them. I like the shotguns though.

However as Drakeslayer points out the consesus is not yet met. But I am sure you can have funn playing them. I do.

Lastly: GSC are very bad at holding objective. Most of our stuff just crumbels when looked bad at. How-ever, they do excell at denying the opponent their objectives. So it turns into a 'ugly' fight where both excell at denying the other points. Also, most tyranid players plan on using deployscrablers, engage on all fronts, or behind enemy lines. They pick 2 ripper swarms and 2 lictors to ensure they score these secondaries. 5 man units of acolytes for 40 points can do the same jobb. 4 units of nakes acolytes are 160 points to secure a lot of secondaries. And cna be backed into your list.

To add to this, acolytes are always a good idea, whatever mission style you regularly play. And I agree, in my experience 10 man squads tend to bounce and not delete their target. Plus, a 15 man squad is a better target for Undying Vigour if you're playing Bladed Cog, so with a 6++ invuln and a 5+++ FNP you might have some left alive after a turn of combat. Then you could use the cult reinforcements strat to bring back D6 acolytes.

It's not strong, but it can catch an opponent off-guard. Playing GSC is a bit like running a haunted house. You'll seldom catch your opponent with the same scare twice.

 Niiai wrote:
I still like the saws. And 15 is a good number to have something that can delete a whole range of enemies. 10 can fall a bit short, especially if you loose a lot of them to overwatch. (T3 is paper thin.) If we had more deep striker CP, or if you have 10 in a transort in adition a 10 split might be OK, but I find it small.

The 20 shotgun neophytes pop up and deny objective. Flamers might be cheaper on CP, I have not run the math on them. I like the shotguns though.

However as Drakeslayer points out the consesus is not yet met. But I am sure you can have funn playing them. I do.

Lastly: GSC are very bad at holding objective. Most of our stuff just crumbels when looked bad at. How-ever, they do excell at denying the opponent their objectives. So it turns into a 'ugly' fight where both excell at denying the other points. Also, most tyranid players plan on using deployscrablers, engage on all fronts, or behind enemy lines. They pick 2 ripper swarms and 2 lictors to ensure they score these secondaries. 5 man units of acolytes for 40 points can do the same jobb. 4 units of nakes acolytes are 160 points to secure a lot of secondaries. And cna be backed into your list.

- Saws are not good anymore since Marines moved over the new Gravis Profile and things got -1Damage and FNPs everywhere: cutters at least completely counter all of these issues with their D3 damage and a roll to outright kill wounded models.
- Shotgun Neophytes damage output is rather bad and I'd rather spend 2 CPs to deny Objectives with a unit (5 men acolyte squads) that is also doing Scramblers to maximize unit usage
- This is something I actually agree: GSC does not hold objectives since we've also lost playability for the most robust unit we had in that case (looking at you, Aberrants), therefore allying Tyr for FW goodness is always a great idea and makes GSC perform much better as a part of a Hive Mind list (which doesn't use Lictors or Ripper Swarms but plain Acolytes which are 100% better)

Also something to consider is that Undying Vigor on Acolytes is actually a trap: unless shot by single damage weapons (and even in that case you're not increasing their durability by insane levels anyway) you're NEVER making use of since you're 1W T3 target that would need to make 5s+++ for every single istance of multidamage, effectively negating the psychic power itself.

OK, people generally are talking a lot about specifics here, so let's dial it back a bit.

Genestealer cults are an army that are very very fragile, short ranged, and compared to other armies have very bad aura abilities/buffs for the points that they cost. The upside to them is that they have the level of mobility in all their units where they basically never have to ask how they'll get a unit where it needs to go - you can always either deep strike it, load it into a fast transport that it can shoot out of, or it's just ridiculously fast on its own.

The problems GSC are having right now is that they were very strong when they could build up an army with 20+ command points, because they can use Stratagem abilities to make their glass cannon units hit crazy hard. Now, limited to starting with only 12, the fact that their units on their own just do not hold up to the competition causes a significant problem.

So let's talk about what they are good at for a bit then in 9th:

1) Objectives that involve things your infantry units have to do, or objectives that require a unit to be somewhere on the board

GSC have very very very cheap, mobile, and small INFANTRY and BIKER keyword units that come with inbuilt deep strike. so when you look at objectives, consider things like Engage on All Fronts, Deploy Scramblers and Raise the Banners, and try to avoid objectives that require you to stay alive or destroy a large fraction of the opposing army.

2) Buffing up a single unit highly reliably to make exactly one very powerful melee swing.

The one exception to the 'gsc are not great at buffing' is the fact that they're fairly good at buffing one single unit up to murder a target one time. That unit is basically on a suicide mission, but if it gets in and does its thing it can take enough teeth out of your opponent's list to prevent them from tabling you - a nice goal to shoot for as a GSC army!

3) Anti-vehicle firepower distributed such that it's obnoxious to actually kill it.

GSC can scatter Mining Lasers on various different platforms - neophyte squads in Goliaths, ridgerunners, Rockgrinders (less efficient but cool), and Jackal Quads (again less efficient but you'll have them just lying around)

This can allow them generally to remove one heavy target in the first turn, and even after you've delivered your One Big Punch you can keep fighting and clear out medium vehicles and monsters to make you more obnoxious to table.

When I construct a gsc list, typically I'll decide what I want to be my 'big punch' unit, how many points I want to devote to distributed laser-power, and then how many of my units I want to be dedicated scorers.

Big Punch Units (in order of most to least viable)

-20x acolytes with max numbers of saws and drills
-10x Aberrants with mostly Picks, maybe a few hammers, at least Hammer on the squad leader
-20x Genestealers (Allied in from Codex Tyranids with a Broodlord HQ because GSC 'stealers are terrible, give them Catalyst and the 1CP upgrade to ignore AP-1 and AP-2 and they can be irritating to destroy)
-A unit of bikers with the maximum number of demolition charges, using the Rusted Claw stratagem, the Throw All The Grenades stratagem, and the Lying in Wait stratagem. Very expensive, but they cannot fail a charge roll!
-Meta...morphs? Maybe? God these guys are god-awful. I suppose conceivably you could use them with whips and use the strat that allows them to make an extra attack, and they'd be fairly good at carving into infantry.

Big Punch Unit Buffers

-Magus with the Crouchling - I like him in Bladed Cog because he can give a unit of 20 acolytes an offense buff and a durability buff.
-Primus - gives +1 to hit, and reroll 1 to wound against one target. 2 buffs in one for your big punch unit
-Abominant - Only works if the big punch unit is Aberrants, but is fun in Bladed Cog with the unique relic that grants him a 3+ invulnerable save. Many an opponent has underestimated the firepower needed to kill 10 aberrants and this dude, and when his turn ends has had to deal with The Angry Hammer Man.

Best Scoring Units

-5-man acolyte squad. Generally I think its worth going from 40pts to 50pts to get them 5 hand flamers, or if you're playing the Cult of the Four-Armed they're likely enough to get into combat unsupported that a saw or two may be worthwhile. I usually go flamers because I play Bladed Cog, IMO the best cult right now, and it allows them to do some damage but definitely not die the turn they deep strike in.

-Locus - 45pts, and he's just one little dude, so you can deep strike him way in the back of the board behind something, ideally then starting an Action or scoring Linebreaker/Engage. He puts out juuuust enough melee attacks with AP-3 and Damage 2 to probably kill a 5-man marine squad if your opponent ignores him.

-Sanctus with Knife - basically see Locus above, slightly less efficient

KurtAngle2 wrote:


I wish I hadn't read the part about Purestrains and Aberrants, something not even my worst enemies would even consider suggesting.

This is very fair criticism- I don't have a lot of game experience with my Cult yet. I probably shouldn't be giving anyone tactical advice. Also, as I noted in my OP:

PenitentJake wrote:

As such, I don't do tactics the way most people do, because I don't pick units based on their performance in game- I take them when the story makes them available.

What is keeping GSC from wins?

You would think jumping on any objective, getting actions off, and strength in numbers would at least put them in the middle. Can they not remove units in the way? Or can they remove them and die to a stiff breeze without follow up? I've been very curious as we have no regular GSC people around here.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Spoiler:

the_scotsman wrote:
OK, people generally are talking a lot about specifics here, so let's dial it back a bit.

Genestealer cults are an army that are very very fragile, short ranged, and compared to other armies have very bad aura abilities/buffs for the points that they cost. The upside to them is that they have the level of mobility in all their units where they basically never have to ask how they'll get a unit where it needs to go - you can always either deep strike it, load it into a fast transport that it can shoot out of, or it's just ridiculously fast on its own.

The problems GSC are having right now is that they were very strong when they could build up an army with 20+ command points, because they can use Stratagem abilities to make their glass cannon units hit crazy hard. Now, limited to starting with only 12, the fact that their units on their own just do not hold up to the competition causes a significant problem.

So let's talk about what they are good at for a bit then in 9th:

1) Objectives that involve things your infantry units have to do, or objectives that require a unit to be somewhere on the board

GSC have very very very cheap, mobile, and small INFANTRY and BIKER keyword units that come with inbuilt deep strike. so when you look at objectives, consider things like Engage on All Fronts, Deploy Scramblers and Raise the Banners, and try to avoid objectives that require you to stay alive or destroy a large fraction of the opposing army.

2) Buffing up a single unit highly reliably to make exactly one very powerful melee swing.

The one exception to the 'gsc are not great at buffing' is the fact that they're fairly good at buffing one single unit up to murder a target one time. That unit is basically on a suicide mission, but if it gets in and does its thing it can take enough teeth out of your opponent's list to prevent them from tabling you - a nice goal to shoot for as a GSC army!

3) Anti-vehicle firepower distributed such that it's obnoxious to actually kill it.

GSC can scatter Mining Lasers on various different platforms - neophyte squads in Goliaths, ridgerunners, Rockgrinders (less efficient but cool), and Jackal Quads (again less efficient but you'll have them just lying around)

This can allow them generally to remove one heavy target in the first turn, and even after you've delivered your One Big Punch you can keep fighting and clear out medium vehicles and monsters to make you more obnoxious to table.

When I construct a gsc list, typically I'll decide what I want to be my 'big punch' unit, how many points I want to devote to distributed laser-power, and then how many of my units I want to be dedicated scorers.

Big Punch Units (in order of most to least viable)

-20x acolytes with max numbers of saws and drills
-10x Aberrants with mostly Picks, maybe a few hammers, at least Hammer on the squad leader
-20x Genestealers (Allied in from Codex Tyranids with a Broodlord HQ because GSC 'stealers are terrible, give them Catalyst and the 1CP upgrade to ignore AP-1 and AP-2 and they can be irritating to destroy)
-A unit of bikers with the maximum number of demolition charges, using the Rusted Claw stratagem, the Throw All The Grenades stratagem, and the Lying in Wait stratagem. Very expensive, but they cannot fail a charge roll!
-Meta...morphs? Maybe? God these guys are god-awful. I suppose conceivably you could use them with whips and use the strat that allows them to make an extra attack, and they'd be fairly good at carving into infantry.

Big Punch Unit Buffers

-Magus with the Crouchling - I like him in Bladed Cog because he can give a unit of 20 acolytes an offense buff and a durability buff.
-Primus - gives +1 to hit, and reroll 1 to wound against one target. 2 buffs in one for your big punch unit
-Abominant - Only works if the big punch unit is Aberrants, but is fun in Bladed Cog with the unique relic that grants him a 3+ invulnerable save. Many an opponent has underestimated the firepower needed to kill 10 aberrants and this dude, and when his turn ends has had to deal with The Angry Hammer Man.

Best Scoring Units

-5-man acolyte squad. Generally I think its worth going from 40pts to 50pts to get them 5 hand flamers, or if you're playing the Cult of the Four-Armed they're likely enough to get into combat unsupported that a saw or two may be worthwhile. I usually go flamers because I play Bladed Cog, IMO the best cult right now, and it allows them to do some damage but definitely not die the turn they deep strike in.

-Locus - 45pts, and he's just one little dude, so you can deep strike him way in the back of the board behind something, ideally then starting an Action or scoring Linebreaker/Engage. He puts out juuuust enough melee attacks with AP-3 and Damage 2 to probably kill a 5-man marine squad if your opponent ignores him.

-Sanctus with Knife - basically see Locus above, slightly less efficient

What is keeping GSC from wins?

You would think jumping on any objective, getting actions off, and strength in numbers would at least put them in the middle. Can they not remove units in the way? Or can they remove them and die to a stiff breeze without follow up? I've been very curious as we have no regular GSC people around here.

I think the best way I can explain it is that anything that can hit can't take a hit and anything that can take a hit can not hit back.

It is very easy for an opponent to kill Purestrains, but Purestrains are going to eat anything they touch. Jackals are deceptively hardy but outside of demo charges which are one use only they aren't exactly killing much.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
What is keeping GSC from wins?

You would think jumping on any objective, getting actions off, and strength in numbers would at least put them in the middle. Can they not remove units in the way? Or can they remove them and die to a stiff breeze without follow up? I've been very curious as we have no regular GSC people around here.

My guess is that their infiltrate is still costed very highly even though it's no longer unique. This means that they're not faster than the fastest armies, don't hit harder than other glass cannon lists, and don't have the tricks to match other armies occupying their niche. Compare GSC to DE and you'll see how much better another terrible codex is compared to them.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Spoiler:

the_scotsman wrote:
OK, people generally are talking a lot about specifics here, so let's dial it back a bit.

Genestealer cults are an army that are very very fragile, short ranged, and compared to other armies have very bad aura abilities/buffs for the points that they cost. The upside to them is that they have the level of mobility in all their units where they basically never have to ask how they'll get a unit where it needs to go - you can always either deep strike it, load it into a fast transport that it can shoot out of, or it's just ridiculously fast on its own.

The problems GSC are having right now is that they were very strong when they could build up an army with 20+ command points, because they can use Stratagem abilities to make their glass cannon units hit crazy hard. Now, limited to starting with only 12, the fact that their units on their own just do not hold up to the competition causes a significant problem.

So let's talk about what they are good at for a bit then in 9th:

1) Objectives that involve things your infantry units have to do, or objectives that require a unit to be somewhere on the board

GSC have very very very cheap, mobile, and small INFANTRY and BIKER keyword units that come with inbuilt deep strike. so when you look at objectives, consider things like Engage on All Fronts, Deploy Scramblers and Raise the Banners, and try to avoid objectives that require you to stay alive or destroy a large fraction of the opposing army.

2) Buffing up a single unit highly reliably to make exactly one very powerful melee swing.

The one exception to the 'gsc are not great at buffing' is the fact that they're fairly good at buffing one single unit up to murder a target one time. That unit is basically on a suicide mission, but if it gets in and does its thing it can take enough teeth out of your opponent's list to prevent them from tabling you - a nice goal to shoot for as a GSC army!

3) Anti-vehicle firepower distributed such that it's obnoxious to actually kill it.

GSC can scatter Mining Lasers on various different platforms - neophyte squads in Goliaths, ridgerunners, Rockgrinders (less efficient but cool), and Jackal Quads (again less efficient but you'll have them just lying around)

This can allow them generally to remove one heavy target in the first turn, and even after you've delivered your One Big Punch you can keep fighting and clear out medium vehicles and monsters to make you more obnoxious to table.

When I construct a gsc list, typically I'll decide what I want to be my 'big punch' unit, how many points I want to devote to distributed laser-power, and then how many of my units I want to be dedicated scorers.

Big Punch Units (in order of most to least viable)

-20x acolytes with max numbers of saws and drills
-10x Aberrants with mostly Picks, maybe a few hammers, at least Hammer on the squad leader
-20x Genestealers (Allied in from Codex Tyranids with a Broodlord HQ because GSC 'stealers are terrible, give them Catalyst and the 1CP upgrade to ignore AP-1 and AP-2 and they can be irritating to destroy)
-A unit of bikers with the maximum number of demolition charges, using the Rusted Claw stratagem, the Throw All The Grenades stratagem, and the Lying in Wait stratagem. Very expensive, but they cannot fail a charge roll!
-Meta...morphs? Maybe? God these guys are god-awful. I suppose conceivably you could use them with whips and use the strat that allows them to make an extra attack, and they'd be fairly good at carving into infantry.

Big Punch Unit Buffers

-Magus with the Crouchling - I like him in Bladed Cog because he can give a unit of 20 acolytes an offense buff and a durability buff.
-Primus - gives +1 to hit, and reroll 1 to wound against one target. 2 buffs in one for your big punch unit
-Abominant - Only works if the big punch unit is Aberrants, but is fun in Bladed Cog with the unique relic that grants him a 3+ invulnerable save. Many an opponent has underestimated the firepower needed to kill 10 aberrants and this dude, and when his turn ends has had to deal with The Angry Hammer Man.

Best Scoring Units

-5-man acolyte squad. Generally I think its worth going from 40pts to 50pts to get them 5 hand flamers, or if you're playing the Cult of the Four-Armed they're likely enough to get into combat unsupported that a saw or two may be worthwhile. I usually go flamers because I play Bladed Cog, IMO the best cult right now, and it allows them to do some damage but definitely not die the turn they deep strike in.

-Locus - 45pts, and he's just one little dude, so you can deep strike him way in the back of the board behind something, ideally then starting an Action or scoring Linebreaker/Engage. He puts out juuuust enough melee attacks with AP-3 and Damage 2 to probably kill a 5-man marine squad if your opponent ignores him.

-Sanctus with Knife - basically see Locus above, slightly less efficient

What is keeping GSC from wins?

You would think jumping on any objective, getting actions off, and strength in numbers would at least put them in the middle. Can they not remove units in the way? Or can they remove them and die to a stiff breeze without follow up? I've been very curious as we have no regular GSC people around here.

Simple pts economics in correlation with some rather overpriced cost for some abilities... well and then there are stuff like metamorphs (i do think there's an argument for dual claw metamorphs if hordes become more prevalent but alas)...

Mind i haven't played yet but from my understanding it has to do with pts / durability and mobility. (same problem as R&H had except they were just overpriced) Instead of a lack of mobility you have overmobility and pay for it. hence the lackluster durability of GSC lists in regards to infantry.

The whole list (infantry, bikers , etc,) pays for cultambush, an ability that did drop down in value with smaller boards, and you only can take advantage so much off it.( not to mention counterplay against deepstrike exists for all factions, locking down an aura ability otoh which boosts shooting of units f.e. is far more difficult to influence.) It's also an issue in regards that you constantly are forced to invest in it for every unit you buy, even though you may not get more value out of it, basically you lose out on return for investments you need to make.

Further as a mind experiment to highlight this, a squad of lasgun toters costs 55 pts, assume then that the 10 man guard squad is correctly priced. The equivalent brood brothers or Neophytes (both are roughly equivalents), gain only cult ambush and the loyality rule but cost at the very least 5pps more. Synergy, whilest it exists, is often either against specific targets, or for a turn, etc. so in some cases severly limited.Tie in especially for Brood brothers is also abismally bad, considering they don't get a regimental doctrine or cult creed access, meanwhile the cheaper regular guard squad happily get's both.

There's also 4 other issues in regards to Synergy making it's use quite a bit more difficult then the point and click leutnant, chaos lords, etc out there.:
A) specific target (Jackal boost f.e. Primus aswell) Which then makes overkill an issue potentially.
B) Attributed to a specific slot (which you may need to skip due to overfilling concerns: HQ)
C) Often not in nature of directly increasing damage output (Magus aura ability is a deny for squads, which can be great but also be missing the mark, depending upon opponent, and you pay hefty for it in that case.)
D) overpriced charachters (compare a chaos sorcerer in the base csm dex with a magus. He cast's double time, he has a better psy table, he has a better profile. he costs 5 pts more. Now normally i find such direct comparisons iffy but the sorcerer is by far not the only really messed up exemple to a counterpart within the GSC list. NVM that the GSC list often has a second fail chance due to morale roll offs beeing tied to a lot of psy.)
E) invul save? what is that? There's 3 charachters with invuls, patriarch, keller and locus. 5++, the rest need to rely upon the loyality rule which is 50/50 or 0 at all because removing T3 bodies before you dakka down the leader is a trivial matter, (unless th GSC player wen't nuts and played a bladed cog infantry spam list, which all have a 6++, which is still fragile and tied to the overinvestment for something you'd not even use on all these units. sooo.)

Summa sumarum, you are forced in the whole list to invest in moblity, even though you have diminishing returns on it. You are also not capable of T1 deepstrike unlike a certain fan favourite faction despite beeing the ambush faction but minor gripe is minor, you have no option to opt out of the diminishing return investments of said mobility. And you have therefore really fragile bodies that might get to a point really well and kill some single targets really good, but the inevitable counterfussilade of lasguns / boltguns/ (primaris boltguns even more because ap-2 and SV 5+ go well together) will severly cripple your infantry centric core anyways.

Which leads to vehicles. Which are really good in the case of ridgerunners for what you pay, but are also rather fragile, and often don't profit from cult creeds. AM units beyond being worse equivalents then in the AM dex, suffer the same syndrome as R&H did: No trait-itis and limited options, and the same as AM do (case in point leman russ and Sentinels being not good enough in their parent list, and you got no tank commander entry to remediy the BS) and the low T value makes stuff like heavy bolters and autocannons a nightmare on non AM vehicles in the dex, and both are weapons that see and saw quite a bit of play because the meta is casually dominated by marines and all marines now have 2 W and incidentally all these weapons are good against marines and return well against stuff like your vehicles.

Then there's arbitrary limits on choices for matched play, like gene sect, and it starts to get uncomfortable. Not R&H level 8th edition uncomfortable which evolved into the red army of i have more bodies then you have dakka type of way but rather uncomfortable off , i technically have the units to really be a glass cannon, except , only against singular targets, if a list spams more of their mean things, welp, better hope you skewed your list in the other direction of his mean things.

Another practical point is collecting cult. You want a lot of acolytes. So many. And they are not cheap! Look for posabilaties to do alternative models.

I really love the cult models. But when I build my hybrids in 8th edition I took the spare arms I had from my acolytes and glued them on the trench coat necromunda models. Worked like a charm. So I saved some money. In 8th they where interesting for the scythe tallon (?) was free, meaning I had 50 attacks that re-rolled 1's and hit on 2s. It was good. But with the price increase ment on the base model and the weapons it has doubled in price and is no longer viable. Also, with the changes to CP it means I have a problem delivering them.

I have 40 models with shotguns, but as somebody pointed out now hand flamer has taken their place. So what do you do?

Cult has many models that do almost the same thing. And slight rule changes or point adjustments makes it very swingy what models retain their power on topp of beeing expensive to begin with.

Purestrain genstealers are good VS infantry. But so are hybrids as well. As well as acolytes. But acolytes come with heavy weapons, making them better VS T7 and T8. Abberants are strong VS elite units or T7 or T8. But their are priced out of this world compared to acolytes.

Become friends with the 'start collecting' box. You will be buying it a lott. And also look for alternative models if possible.

For me, even Tau are more "9th edition" than gen cult.

If you want to win at 40k (most people do, incl me) just leave them at home for now, wait for a new codex.
If you have opponents who don't compete much and play for fun then perhaps you can try bladed cog neophyte + mining laser spam with 2 patriarchs (they hit relatively hard and a don't die easy when they can use nearby neos as bodyguards) and a two jackal alphus, with ridgerunners in the backfield (and one of the jackal alphus with them).

Relying on DS in 9th doesn't work much, boards are too small now, unless we're talking objective grabbing with cheap units (5 bare bones acolytes are fine for this).

In addition to all that above:

Omniscramblers.

The most popular faction in the game has a 12" no deep strike no fun allowed Obsec troops that also happen to be a popular choice.

And the unit was revealed weeks after the GSC codex wave was over.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
What is keeping GSC from wins?

You would think jumping on any objective, getting actions off, and strength in numbers would at least put them in the middle. Can they not remove units in the way? Or can they remove them and die to a stiff breeze without follow up? I've been very curious as we have no regular GSC people around here.

I'd need some stats to back this up - but is it because their objective game isn't all that reliable?

I mean look at most of the good factions. They usually contain some fast units that can get onto mid board objectives turn 1. Either to say (if going first) "I'm claiming 15 Primary points, stop me or probably lose" - or, if going second, being able to respond to the fact their opponent has done precisely that. They probably want to go grab 3 points for Engage too.

By contrast deepstriking units can't appear until turn 2 - so if you are going second, you can't effect your opponent scoring at the start of their second turn. Worse still, as your opponent has 2 movement phases to position, you may well find yourself too screened out for having significant impact on the objectives in turn 2 (and/or the dice just don't cooperate on those charges, even with 4 armed emperor and rerolls). At which point your opponent may have a huge lead and the game is almost certainly over barring a major twist in the dice.

GSC can sort of do this with Ridgerunners and I guess Scout Sentinels. But they are quite fragile and can't really punch anything. Throwing Ridgerunners away feels bad even if you have alternate sources of mining laser shots. With the advance and charge stratagem one unit of acolytes can have a reasonably reliable going second turn 1 charge to the objectives - but without fly etc, its extremely obvious and the unit will likely just be shot up.

Basically I think GSC are probably the worst faction in the game if you go second. If you go first I think they are better than say Tau - but hardly good for more of the reasons people have outlined.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Spoiler:

the_scotsman wrote:
OK, people generally are talking a lot about specifics here, so let's dial it back a bit.

Genestealer cults are an army that are very very fragile, short ranged, and compared to other armies have very bad aura abilities/buffs for the points that they cost. The upside to them is that they have the level of mobility in all their units where they basically never have to ask how they'll get a unit where it needs to go - you can always either deep strike it, load it into a fast transport that it can shoot out of, or it's just ridiculously fast on its own.

The problems GSC are having right now is that they were very strong when they could build up an army with 20+ command points, because they can use Stratagem abilities to make their glass cannon units hit crazy hard. Now, limited to starting with only 12, the fact that their units on their own just do not hold up to the competition causes a significant problem.

So let's talk about what they are good at for a bit then in 9th:

1) Objectives that involve things your infantry units have to do, or objectives that require a unit to be somewhere on the board

GSC have very very very cheap, mobile, and small INFANTRY and BIKER keyword units that come with inbuilt deep strike. so when you look at objectives, consider things like Engage on All Fronts, Deploy Scramblers and Raise the Banners, and try to avoid objectives that require you to stay alive or destroy a large fraction of the opposing army.

2) Buffing up a single unit highly reliably to make exactly one very powerful melee swing.

The one exception to the 'gsc are not great at buffing' is the fact that they're fairly good at buffing one single unit up to murder a target one time. That unit is basically on a suicide mission, but if it gets in and does its thing it can take enough teeth out of your opponent's list to prevent them from tabling you - a nice goal to shoot for as a GSC army!

3) Anti-vehicle firepower distributed such that it's obnoxious to actually kill it.

GSC can scatter Mining Lasers on various different platforms - neophyte squads in Goliaths, ridgerunners, Rockgrinders (less efficient but cool), and Jackal Quads (again less efficient but you'll have them just lying around)

This can allow them generally to remove one heavy target in the first turn, and even after you've delivered your One Big Punch you can keep fighting and clear out medium vehicles and monsters to make you more obnoxious to table.

When I construct a gsc list, typically I'll decide what I want to be my 'big punch' unit, how many points I want to devote to distributed laser-power, and then how many of my units I want to be dedicated scorers.

Big Punch Units (in order of most to least viable)

-20x acolytes with max numbers of saws and drills
-10x Aberrants with mostly Picks, maybe a few hammers, at least Hammer on the squad leader
-20x Genestealers (Allied in from Codex Tyranids with a Broodlord HQ because GSC 'stealers are terrible, give them Catalyst and the 1CP upgrade to ignore AP-1 and AP-2 and they can be irritating to destroy)
-A unit of bikers with the maximum number of demolition charges, using the Rusted Claw stratagem, the Throw All The Grenades stratagem, and the Lying in Wait stratagem. Very expensive, but they cannot fail a charge roll!
-Meta...morphs? Maybe? God these guys are god-awful. I suppose conceivably you could use them with whips and use the strat that allows them to make an extra attack, and they'd be fairly good at carving into infantry.

Big Punch Unit Buffers

-Magus with the Crouchling - I like him in Bladed Cog because he can give a unit of 20 acolytes an offense buff and a durability buff.
-Primus - gives +1 to hit, and reroll 1 to wound against one target. 2 buffs in one for your big punch unit
-Abominant - Only works if the big punch unit is Aberrants, but is fun in Bladed Cog with the unique relic that grants him a 3+ invulnerable save. Many an opponent has underestimated the firepower needed to kill 10 aberrants and this dude, and when his turn ends has had to deal with The Angry Hammer Man.

Best Scoring Units

-5-man acolyte squad. Generally I think its worth going from 40pts to 50pts to get them 5 hand flamers, or if you're playing the Cult of the Four-Armed they're likely enough to get into combat unsupported that a saw or two may be worthwhile. I usually go flamers because I play Bladed Cog, IMO the best cult right now, and it allows them to do some damage but definitely not die the turn they deep strike in.

-Locus - 45pts, and he's just one little dude, so you can deep strike him way in the back of the board behind something, ideally then starting an Action or scoring Linebreaker/Engage. He puts out juuuust enough melee attacks with AP-3 and Damage 2 to probably kill a 5-man marine squad if your opponent ignores him.

-Sanctus with Knife - basically see Locus above, slightly less efficient

What is keeping GSC from wins?

You would think jumping on any objective, getting actions off, and strength in numbers would at least put them in the middle. Can they not remove units in the way? Or can they remove them and die to a stiff breeze without follow up? I've been very curious as we have no regular GSC people around here.

Because they actually do not deal very much damage at all for the points that they cost, and they die ridiculously heckin fast. "play to score' is basically the only style available to them, as they have an almost cartoonishly ineffective and overpriced weapon list and the most redundant unit roster I've ever seen out of any faction in 40k.

In a world where space marines have seven layer burritos of overlapping army-wide special rules, it's pretty tough to make the argument that the Index-ass D3 Shot D6 Damage Lascannons on platforms that benefit from no universal special rules period can compete in a meaningful way.

On top of that most of their unit roster just does the exact same stuff in the exact same way creating a situation where there's always been a "best GSC infantry unit" and the rest are perpetually pointless in comparison.

Currently, Acolytes are best (and at peak performance are ~10ppm GEQ bodies that can suicide for a roughly 70% points investment return against MEQ in melee or can shoot slightly less effectively than ordered guardsmen) and that makes Aberrants, Metamorphs, Purestrains, Patriarchs, Abominants, Locuses, and Sanctuses pointless to consider.

and on the flipside all their heavy units also try to all do the same thing. The most optimized builds for Rockgrinders, Ridgerunners, Neophytes in Goliaths, and Jackals with Quads are all Mining Laser platforms, with no real alternatives because the stuff you can swap the mining laser out for is things like "One Single Heavy Stubber" or "A 12" range heavy bolter" or "A S5 Guard Mortar"

I'd say in my own experience they're less frustrating to play as than Eldar or Tau, but evidently some competitive players of those factions are figuring out some kind of secret sauce that lets them outperform the geneboys.

That's something that always confused me, the mortar that is?
Why is it not a heavy mortar? Aka S6.

Not Online!!! wrote:
That's something that always confused me, the mortar that is?
Why is it not a heavy mortar? Aka S6.

Many GSC weapons just have the absolute rock-bottom negative nine jillion IQ levels of creativity and effort on the part of the designers.

Metamorphs: 4 different choices for reducing your model's effectiveness in combat per point
Ridgerunner: You can exchange your D3 shot lascannon for a 1 shot missile launcher. Any takers?
Aberrants: A literal stopsign costs 35 points per model
Webber: What if a flamer did 1/2 the shots but you could choose to wound vs either strength or toughness? Eh? Eh? What do you mean, 95% of models have the same strength and toughness? What do you mean even if that gives you +1 to wound its still worse than a flamer?
Bonesword: What if we designed a weapon option that reduced the damage output of any model that chooses to take it against everything and make it cost points
Improvised Weapon: What if we gave a whole bunch of cool bits to the Atalan Jackal kit and make it so the only thing they did WYSIWYG-wise is make it so you halve the number of attacks your model gets...for zero benefit of any kind. Literally has no stats. Just "You can choose to model your jackal with a cult knife, which is free and gives +1A, or a crowbar/chain/pipe which is also free and...doesn't."

Yeah. GSC is sort of the story of failures.

GSC comes out. And the because Nids tournament lists do 0 deployments, 8th edition get a lot of restrictions on deep strike and deployment that lasts all the way into 9th edition. (And very well. It is a better game because of it.)

The webber used to be 1 point. Then it increased to 5 points. And then the flamer increased to 12" in range. So you have a D3 shots range 14 vs D6 shots range 12.

Vigulus book is not allowed, but abberants seems to stil be priced as though them where. (Abberants used to have +3 to charge if you stacked bufs right.) And the acolytes also benefitted from vigulus, re-rolling the charge. The loss og vigulus hurt us a lot.

Losing Vigilus is a kick in the teeth to GSC for competitive play. If you're not playing matched play, or you have opponent's agreement, then it gives a much-needed shot in the arm to Aberrants (possibly even at their current points), and more delivery mechanisms for both Acolytes and Aberrants.

Personally, I still miss the First Curse formation from 7th. That was positively scary, and I think the last time our purestrains were any good.

the_scotsman wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
That's something that always confused me, the mortar that is?
Why is it not a heavy mortar? Aka S6.

Many GSC weapons just have the absolute rock-bottom negative nine jillion IQ levels of creativity and effort on the part of the designers.

But, they wouldn't have needed creativity if they'd used a weapon that worked? And , you know, existed and was common within the imperium?

Metamorphs: 4 different choices for reducing your model's effectiveness in combat per point
Ridgerunner: You can exchange your D3 shot lascannon for a 1 shot missile launcher. Any takers?

the funny thing is, you pay for a Missile launcher , you don't for either of the other, superior weapons....

Aberrants: A literal stopsign costs 35 points per model
Webber: What if a flamer did 1/2 the shots but you could choose to wound vs either strength or toughness? Eh? Eh? What do you mean, 95% of models have the same strength and toughness? What do you mean even if that gives you +1 to wound its still worse than a flamer?
Bonesword: What if we designed a weapon option that reduced the damage output of any model that chooses to take it against everything and make it cost points
Improvised Weapon: What if we gave a whole bunch of cool bits to the Atalan Jackal kit and make it so the only thing they did WYSIWYG-wise is make it so you halve the number of attacks your model gets...for zero benefit of any kind. Literally has no stats. Just "You can choose to model your jackal with a cult knife, which is free and gives +1A, or a crowbar/chain/pipe which is also free and...doesn't."

Thanks guys this was helpful.

This point stuck out in particular.

Tyel wrote:

By contrast deepstriking units can't appear until turn 2 - so if you are going second, you can't effect your opponent scoring at the start of their second turn. Worse still, as your opponent has 2 movement phases to position, you may well find yourself too screened out for having significant impact on the objectives in turn 2 (and/or the dice just don't cooperate on those charges, even with 4 armed emperor and rerolls). At which point your opponent may have a huge lead and the game is almost certainly over barring a major twist in the dice.

So even if you can DS w/i 3" you can't start affecting scores with it early enough. This is made worse when going second as your opponent scores turn 2 so you can't even affect them until turn 3.

Couple this with soft units and low killing power.

Would GSC getting DS turn 1 help much?

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Thanks guys this was helpful.

This point stuck out in particular.

Tyel wrote:

By contrast deepstriking units can't appear until turn 2 - so if you are going second, you can't effect your opponent scoring at the start of their second turn. Worse still, as your opponent has 2 movement phases to position, you may well find yourself too screened out for having significant impact on the objectives in turn 2 (and/or the dice just don't cooperate on those charges, even with 4 armed emperor and rerolls). At which point your opponent may have a huge lead and the game is almost certainly over barring a major twist in the dice.

So even if you can DS w/i 3" you can't start affecting scores with it early enough. This is made worse when going second as your opponent scores turn 2 so you can't even affect them until turn 3.

Couple this with soft units and low killing power.


Would GSC getting DS turn 1 help much?

I think indeed pure gen cult (IMO you should lose this if you ally in nids) should be able to DS turn 1 at this point.
the problem is it would probably not be much fun for the opponent, but it could worth a try in a fun test game. It is a good idea you have come up with I think, but theoryhammer won’t cut it. It needs to be tested, but I think it could work
I still wouldn’t want to get them out of their boxes though, the rules are just too bad, as many here have detailed very accurately

The problem is that T1 deep-strike was part of what made GSC so obnoxious in 7th. Do you guys think it would be as bad if implemented for 9th?

 Drakeslayer wrote:
The problem is that T1 deep-strike was part of what made GSC so obnoxious in 7th. Do you guys think it would be as bad if implemented for 9th?

Well, if GSC goes first - it is potentially strong. If they go second then it isn't as bad. So perhaps no DS turn 1 if you go first? I doubt GW would go down that path though.

This is wishfull tinking. It does not help our beginning GSC.

Story guy piping up about story stuff again... Sorry to interrupt tactical/ how to win conversations.

Regarding webbers: sure they suck at killing. But the deal is that only purestrains can bestow the curse; hybrids can't.

So the reason you hit your enemy with a webber is to catch the enemy so you can bring them home and convert them to a brood brother.

This is particularly important for a cult that began with a single brood of purestrains rather than a vanguard, because it takes five generations of breeding to spawn more purestrains.

You can bet that my first brood cycle will be maxing out webbers; I only have 4 purestrains to seed my cult. The first round of Kill Team fights is expected to net me a minimum of one Brood Brother per Stealer and a max of four. So after 4 KT games (super small custom scenarios- 1 stealer vs 4 GEQ gangers), I should net 4- 16 BB.

Then they skip 2 campaign rounds- one to breed Acolytes and one to raise and train them.

The GSC are going for captures in every battle, and I'm looking at a minimum of 10 campaign rounds before we're ready to breed more purestrains. Webbers will help us increase the size of the first brood cycle, which means more purestrains in the second.

Sometimes fluffiness is counterproductive to killiness. OP is probably more interested in tactics, so sorry to go sideways on you. Just wanted to give an example of how something in a dex might not make sense from a tactics perspective, but still needs to be available for people who are playing 40k in a different way.