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I am putting together my list for this Friday night's fun at the FLGS, and am trying to figure out what a good load out of stealers would be.

The rest of the list consists of:

2 squads of 12 Devilgaunts each
3x3 Hive Guard
2 Primes with Rending Claws - one towards the front with the gaunts, one in back to ride herd on the Zoats (er, Hive Guard).

This puts me at 880 points. I do not have a particular points target in mind, merely optimizing the force and then seeing where that falls in terms of points.

My basic strategy is center board control with an excellent shooting base against both infantry and light armor, with the stealers as my primary counter strike or outflank force. I can afford to ignore the occasional land raider or Monolith and play the scenario around something I can't kill.

I the past I used either 16 or 20 stealers, in one or two squads - but I am somewhat concerned by the inability to charge coming onto the board while outflanking, which was of course my preferred tactic.

What are your thoughts? One squad? Two? 10 of them? 20? Should I go all Ymargly on 'em? Enquiring minds want to know!

Cheers,

V

I've played a few games with Nids now and am finding that genestealers are becoming more situational depending on your opponents army they are fielding. I used 20 in my last game against necrons and they got shot to pieces before i could get into close combat. Actually i did get into a position to try and charge 6 inches, lost the closest 2 stealers to overwatch, and then failed to roll high enough to make it into charging distance. The randon charge lengths can be brutal to Nids even with a reroll as you get shot with overwatch even if you fail to reach them which makes it very risky to charge a longer distance.

i do have a game coming up against blood angels soon against someone who loves assault marines, i plan to bring all 40 of my genestealers

I think your list would work better with a tervigon whihc can look after those termagants. Maybe 1 unit of stealers as a counter assualt unit sitting behind the tervigon as you advance.

I was running 30-40 stealers regularly under 5th and was even looking to increase this and go for nearer 50 in a swarmlord list. Not sure I'm ever going to run that many stealers again, but wil try to run a few apcks now and again to see how to make them work. They can still work I'm sure, they just require a little more finesse than before.

Indeed, both a tervigon and a hive tyrant with old adversary are high on my list of next additions. I have a feeling that adding just one would be a fire magnet for the things my opponents normally bring as antitank, and might have a very short life expectancy as a single MC, but the only way to find out is to try!

Agreed that overwatch will be painful for stealers - I dread flamers like never before.

Cheers,

V

Overwatch really isn't that bad...
Its going to kill some stealers when you have squads larger than 10 firing multiple shots (even a 10 man tac squad only gets 3 hits from the 8 bolt guns rapid firing). Also charging shouldn't be too bad, not quite as reliable as fleet and charge, but still I personally wouldn't worry about including stealers.

Infiltrating with a Tervigon granting FNP is still going to be a pretty tough combo. Don't outflank them, to be honest in 5th ed it wasn't the best tactic, unless you had a Swarmlord (and perhaps also a Hive Tyrant with Hive Commander?), even then you didn't know what turn, what side or if there would be anything close enough to charge. It wasn't a silly idea, I just think infiltrating was and is a better idea.

Also, don't know what points you want this list to be, but unless its 1750+ 9 Hive Guard seems a little overkill.
Definitely a Tervigon or two next, if you want a excellent shooting base, maybe consider Warriors, Carnifexes and TFexes. Gargoyle screens are also great in my opinion.

It is a barge load of HG. If I go with the full complement of twenty toxin sac stealers, that puts me at 1220 points- I can probably afford to drop 3 or 4 HG and keep things in balance.

Cheers,

V