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My dad is the one who got me into 40k, and he's liked the hobby since the rogue trader days and as such, I know a lot of the old fluff, so here's my question,
Are genestealer cults still official canon in 40k? (IE, do they still exist, like in the title)
I remember that it was revealed that genestealers were the scout forces or the vanguards of the tyranid fleets, which is why genestealers came out in the fluff first, THEN tyranids, but are genestealer cults still around or are they considered null due to the vast tyranid forces?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
oh damn, I put this in the wrong forum
can I move it by any chance?

As far as I know, yes. I can see no reason otherwise. It would be a great strategy (from a nid point of view), and I think still applies in Necromunda and Inquisitor (I know they may not be official cannon, but they came out of GW, so I'm counting them).

As far as I know, yes. I think Stealer Cults are mentioned in the Genestealer page in the Tyranid Codex.

Indeed, they are still explicitely mentioned in the current Codex. If you search, you might find the google group that made a 5th edition fan-made Codex on these.

Genestealer cults totally exist. They are still the scouts for the Tyranids. They have an instinctive biological drive to sow anarchy and bring down the infrastructure of a planet (thus making it harder for the population to resist the Tyranid invasion). Often times, they don't even know they are Tyranids, instead thinking they are some kind of revolutionary movement. Some of them even think they are legitimate Chaos cults. They generate a low level psychic beacon, which attracts Hive Fleets. The more Genestealers there are, the more powerful the beacon is. As an incidental side note, the reason Tyranids arrived in this galaxy in the first place, as I understand it, is that they got fooled by the Astronomican, which they thought was the biggest honkin' 'stealer beacon ever.

Would you like to know more?

They're the badguys in a lot of Black Library novels, and mentioned occasionally in codices. They definitely exist, and I really hope they get some sort of official rules again.