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Manufactorum Brood (5x5 model 'Stealer broods, infiltrate within 6'' if they are in ruins) all with Scything Talons and Adrenalin Glands.
Broodkin formation (Everyone has infiltrate, can assault first turn and Patriarch and 'Stealers can infiltrate within 1'')
Deathleapers Assassin Brood (Infiltrating Lictors + deathleaper, 12'' bubble of -1 Leadership).

1500pts.

I'm slowly but surely working my way towards this list and by god does it look fun to play and scary to play against. 60-ish wounds with strength 4/5/6 rending high ws high I models in your deployment zone turn 1, 1/3 of which can charge 1st turn, 2 units of which are assured first turn assaults (Patriarch and Princelings). I love the idea of turn 1 the enemy is surrounded and pressured on all sides by MSU units that each do enough damage not to be ignored. Turn 1, wave 1, Broodkin Cult can charge first turn and take all the attension. Turn 2, wave 2, Manufactorum 'Stealers and Lictors charge in. All Lictors and Stealers in the army have Hit'n;run so can hide in combat just dandy. Luckily my meta has forgotten about a little thing called Servo-skulls and I feel the list will be a nice change of tone from the usual gun-line shooty lists about. Would you be scared of all those beasties appearing in your deployment zone? More importantly do you think you'd have more fun against this kinda list then a pure shooty list?

Keep in mind all of your units are still very squishy.
I've tried similar but with a nid CAD instead of the stealers.

You have pretty much no ability to remove flyers what so ever.

The stealer broods are so small they generally get killed by basic shooting or over watch.

Taking down MC's is a huge issue as your units will be wittled down before getting there, and even rending won't do enough.
Let alone fighting a GC.



While the list is great fun to play and looks amazing, it does struggle a fair bit as its very reliant on cover, yet needs to be in combat.


The patriarch and princelings are solid though as a first turn assault to remove a threat.
Had then assault a unit of 3 missilesides to prevent huge losses.

Against swarm armies like green tide etc this would also be difficult as your out gunned and outnumbered by miles.

Also, it's important to remember that a lot of the army strikes at I1 if it assaults through cover. :(

Saythings wrote:
Also, it's important to remember that a lot of the army strikes at I1 if it assaults through cover. :(

Yea, it is generally the big problem of Genestealer. But Broodlords' "the horror" will solve that problem, and also solve the overwatch problem.

Generally speaking my TAC Marine or Necron list (i.e. not knowing my opponent's faction beforehand) may be scared to death when I saw this combo and the Nids player actually snatched the 1st turn, as I am technically can do nothing but watch that G-cult Patriarch assault and silence (at least tied up) my important shooting unit (especially those ones carrying ignore cover weaponry, like Necron Tomb blades), then the whole Genestealer tide could assault my line with much much less lost.
But if I know my opponent is going to use these formations, I could easily tailor against it, for example, bring my whole army in droppods and LS / LSS, Null deploy would left the genestealers no one to charge, while all those flamers, heavy flamers coming out of the pod or the DS land speeders would likely to destroy this army. That said, if you know this kind of army is coming, it is not hard to counter it, at least, much easier than countering Flying Circus armies or super mobile Eldar armies.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
(snip)
Deathleapers Assassin Brood (Infiltrating Lictors + deathleaper, 12'' bubble of -1 Leadership).

Does the -1 Leadership stack with the -D3 leadership from Deathleaper himself?

With that + the -2 as part of casting The Horror, there should be a really good chance of having it work. Same for Paroxysm.

Combined with the 1st turn assault Broodkin formation, and the Acolyte Hybrids that are kind of genestealer-ish but have assault grenades. Could lock down a lot of threats before there's a chance to react.

I'm so looking forward to running the 'stealer Cult formation. Even the unit of GEQ with half-range Lascannons and GLs has got me all excited. The Aberrants are definitely cool too, even if they don't do much in game. It'll be another 8 wound threat in the enemy DZ that they have to deal with or eat hammers and picks and rending claws.

Personally, I don't think I'm going to go all in on Stealers and Lictors. Sad to miss out on the Broodlord, guaranteed The Horror and his insane challenge rules, but I think it'll be better to bring a more balanced list.

I think I'm going to try to shoehorn in a Skyblight Swarm with the cult to provide much needed air support and ObSec recurring Gargs. Then maybe a CAD with Deathleaper HQ, min Mucolids troops and a Mawloc. A few points short of a 3 bug strong Hive Guard unit with Impalers though so I'll probably just drop in some Zoans to fill the last few points and supply more Warp Charges and maybe blast some marines or lance a tank if they get lucky.

jy2's "Maximum Threat Overload" stratagem/tactic is back and better than ever.

GMC aren't fun, but who does have fun against them now'a'days? And if the MC is a character like a Wraithknight, Greater Daemon or Dreadknight I could just stack the -D3 from Deathleaper with the -1 from the formation then Psy-shriek his ass.

Overwatch actually doesn't effect this list much, since I have so many small units and you can only overwatch once I should have a lot of options to feed a depleted unit to Overwatch. If not, Lictors also eat overwatch well due to having 3 wounds and can assault through terrain to claim a good cover save.

Biggest concern is the list can be coutnered by a 25pt inquisitor with servo-skulls, but hey, people don't usually tailor for pick up matches and they can't tailor for tournements. And strangely enough I'd imagine this list does very well against some classic meta lists like Gladius Razorback spam (can't hold objectives If your held up in your own deployment zone) and against Eldar in a similar way to Lictor shame.

Imagine what a battle between this army and a similar-size Harlequin list on a map with heavy cover would look like?

All that charging and hit&running and ghosting through cover. It would be epic.

In theory, but what in your list has the ability to psy shriek?

Patriarch has BS0 thus cannot hit, so can't make use of this.
Plus, if that was who you were relying on anyway, you won't be using him for a first turn charge.

Hinging a solid plan based on that model pulling it off won't do much as its a soft character and gets torn apart by shooting.

Even if you could psy shriek you would have to be out of combat and you would take return fire.



Don't get me wrong, the list is stupidly fun to use and against some armies they really don't stand a chance of doing anything.

However, certain unit types will give you a nightmare.



Also, you say you can feed a unit for overwatch, keep in mind you only have 5 units of 5 stealers.
So you can effectively do that twice.

Against tau however I doubt the stealers will even make combat. (That applies for alot of units however)

The army just lacks ability to deal with a fair few common things these days.
More so, flyers.

There is pretty much nothing you can do to hurt them at all.

So hopefully you play in a meta that's light on them.

For me I'd struggle as most marines run a fire raptor minimum for air support, which the list can do nothing to bring down.





All I hope is they throw out a mini dex and give options for the cult.
I'd love to see a way of covering a few more bases.

Its also fairly easy to defend against. Valuable units (i.e. wyverns, manticores, Thunderfires, etc.) to the center, expendable units to the perimeter to force your turn 1 assaulters far away from the valuable targets. You can even protect against the super infiltrators by wrapping the TFC with a tactical squad or a scout squad to prevent a gap to place models in/assault through. Heaven forbid you run into anyone with servo skulls.

I think it'd be fun to play with/against but walkers/flyers/flamers/tanks with rear armour above 10 will wreck your day

I would not be scared at all, I actually would try to not table you in 2-3 turns.

T3/T4 5+ armor with 1-2 turns of cover isnt very good. specially sense I play with 3 Skull Cannons (Large Blast S8 Ignore cover)

Psy-Shriek from Magnus, he wants to be around the 18'' range mark, so it's no great loss.

The idea of having units to throw at overwatch is that I have 5x5 stealers. the Princelings, 4 Lictors + Deathleaper, the Abhorents, the Hybrids and the Patriarch. That's quite a lot of units of varying survivability.

And why would the list care about fliers? 90% of my army is in the opponents deployment zone by turn 2, fliers have to move 18'' at least. They'll only get 2 turns of shooting at me really. I can't kill them, but they won't impact me much either.

If you bubble wrap that much, you'll be completely surrounded. I don't mind charging your bubble wrap, my units are safer in combat and 70% of them have hit'n'run. Just you know...screw Servo skulls and Djin Sight.

I think it'd be fun to play with/against but walkers/flyers/flamers/tanks with rear armour above 10 will wreck your day

I have a fair variety of strengths. Hybrids and Princelings have 4, Stealers and Patriarch have 5 (Furious charge) and Lictors have 6 all with rending, then we have the Abhorents At strengths 7 and 8 at AP 2. Tanks usually have a rear AV at most of 12, most of 11 or 10, so I can handle most tanks. Walkers are a little harder but I can't think of many walkers still reguarly taken.

So your relying on a model that dies from a stray missile as defence against gmc, MC etc?

2 turns of shooting from alot of flyers is enough to cause plenty of damage.
Fire raptors and the heavier gunships ore so.



Yes, that's a fair few units, but I don't think you can put survivability in the same sentence as most of those.
They are all very soft targets that are bait for any ranged weapon in 40k.
The princelings more so as there are only 2 of them in total.

Keep in mind that in a KP mission your throwing points at the enemy too.


Also keep in mind that there is becoming quite an abundance of ignores cover shooting too.
Which is pretty much your only defence in the list.



In another point, what's the plan again an IK army?
They are somewhat common place now so it's hardly a rarity to play with or against one.

My default BA army is full of heavy flamers, flamers and hand flamers in drop pods (The Codex Astartes names this maneuver "Fiery Rain") and I also take a Fire Raptor whenever possible, so no I wouldn't be scared at all.

It is a really neat list though.

Of course against some lists I would have to do what any list in a bad match up would do; play the mission. Which I am in a good position to do with so many small units to score Maelstrom points with the ability to be deployed practically anywhere. But this is the same any list does when it meets the rock to it's scissors. I feel I could probably handle a single Knight depending on how Agressive he is with it, if he is cautious I could probably control his movement with the High Strength Lictors and Abhorents but if he uses it as a Suicide missile that explodes with an apoc template...well that's a different story.

While I agree my survivability relies on cover, it's still there. First turn all Broodkin have Shrouded. All Manufactorum have Stealth (ruins) and Lictors have stealth base. I can be fairly confident of a 4+ cover save against the vast majority of shooting for the first 2 turns if I'm smart. During my practice games (I've played Against Skitarii, win, Tau, Draw, and Dark Eldar, win) I've found that I can obscure my Lictors with Genestealers, then charge the Lictor in for overwatch with a 4+ cover save and 2 wounds to spare. There is also something to be said about MSU forcing the opponent to either overkill or underkill units.

Of course, I'm not trying to suggest this is a top tier list. I just love the threat potential and psychological factor this kind of threat overload list would promote. And Hey, it's pretty good against Eldar who spam Bikers and Warp Spiders (first turn assault and high I all around). So that's something.

**EDIT** Also, does anyone have an opinion on Adrenalin Glands vs Toxin Sacs? Furious charge helps out vs vehicles with strength 5 on the charge and also helps vs T4 infantry while Toxin sacs allows me to re-roll to wound against T4, potentially leading to more rends.

Don't get me wrong, I love the list and play style, I just think there are quite a few hard counters as it stands.

If we could bump up the princelings to say 10 models, that alone would be a severe threat increase.
At the moment the cult gives us some great units and tricks, but not really enough of anything to be ground breaking.


I've tended to make magus my warlord and charge the patriarch and stealers first turn.
Recently paid off as I played a 30k list that ran a 10 man squad of devs with plasma cannons.
So they couldn't even over watch me.

However, that was situational luck as sometimes the assault will just be suicide.


I'm just hoping they give us more options soon.
Even unit sizes and a basic HQ would be nice as we could then run broodkin and a CAD along with it.



Personally I would take the re-rolls as rending plays a huge part of the trick.
The extra strength is nice, but I'd rather have a few more rending hits than +1S.

Helps a ton more against TEQ where the army may risk a few losses.

 ALEXisAWESOME wrote:
Of course against some lists I would have to do what any list in a bad match up would do; play the mission. Which I am in a good position to do with so many small units to score Maelstrom points with the ability to be deployed practically anywhere. But this is the same any list does when it meets the rock to it's scissors. I feel I could probably handle a single Knight depending on how Agressive he is with it, if he is cautious I could probably control his movement with the High Strength Lictors and Abhorents but if he uses it as a Suicide missile that explodes with an apoc template...well that's a different story.

While I agree my survivability relies on cover, it's still there. First turn all Broodkin have Shrouded. All Manufactorum have Stealth (ruins) and Lictors have stealth base. I can be fairly confident of a 4+ cover save against the vast majority of shooting for the first 2 turns if I'm smart. During my practice games (I've played Against Skitarii, win, Tau, Draw, and Dark Eldar, win) I've found that I can obscure my Lictors with Genestealers, then charge the Lictor in for overwatch with a 4+ cover save and 2 wounds to spare. There is also something to be said about MSU forcing the opponent to either overkill or underkill units.

Of course, I'm not trying to suggest this is a top tier list. I just love the threat potential and psychological factor this kind of threat overload list would promote. And Hey, it's pretty good against Eldar who spam Bikers and Warp Spiders (first turn assault and high I all around). So that's something.

**EDIT** Also, does anyone have an opinion on Adrenalin Glands vs Toxin Sacs? Furious charge helps out vs vehicles with strength 5 on the charge and also helps vs T4 infantry while Toxin sacs allows me to re-roll to wound against T4, potentially leading to more rends.

Its MSU, but its not really good MSU. It doesn't have mass OBSEC or mass shooting. Its not exceptionally mobile. The problem with this list is beyond rock-paper-scissors. The problem is that it doesn't have any exceptionally good match ups and has very many poor matchups. A traditional TAC list would pummel it in the hands of an equally skilled player. You're essentially using the manufactorum brood to double down on the same skill set brought by the genestealer cult. You have a massive disruption force with no main force of note that can survive past turn 4 and exploit the damage your disruption units have done.

If you want to build an ambushing list like this, pick either the manufactorum brood or the cult and then build a supporting Nid CAD around it that complements it.

Stealers are unfortunately just garbage :(

Really hope they get T5 and/or beasts in the next codex...

I would not be scared in the slightest, but it looks like a really fun list and I'd very much like a go against it.

Personally I'd swap out the Manufactorum Genestealers and go with a CAD using a couple of min units of Stealers and going for Mawlocs to provide a bit of heavy lifting. The Deathleaper Assassin brood goes someway to fixing the problem of scattering with Terror From the Deep as thats effectively 6 12" homing bubbles running around. The problem is the HQ, assuming you'd want to keep it somewhat fluffy a Flyrant may not be what you want but the Deathleaper is already taken so that effectively leaves you with the Tervigon, Old One Eye and Warrior Prime. Then again it might be a little difficult to run it effectivel at 1500pts anyway.

When I upgrade to 1850 I would really like to include Tyranids with Mawlocks, but there simply isn't a single cost effective tyranid HQ save for the Flyrant after Deathleaper has been used. I SOOOO wish they kept the Parasite of Mortex :( There is a formation which includes a Trygon Prime, a Ravener Brood and a Mawlock which all come in on 1 roll, don't scatter if within 12'' of the Prime and get shrouded however it's an apoc formation which is upsetting, because that would've brought me to exactly 1850.

Perhaps swap the Manufactorum Brood for a Broodlord hunting pack, which is 3 stealer broods but includes a Broodlord. Those stealers don't have hit'n'run and stealth though. This is what i'll have to do when I go to 1850 to make points for...what? Not a single Tyranid HQ fits with the theme of the army. Maybe I should pick up some Guard allies (Themed as infected PDF) to get some Vendetta's and long ranged firepower on the board.

As for 'Stealers being garbage, If we were just using the basic codex I would agree with you. But every stealer in my list can deploy at up to 6'' away from you, have Stealth or Stealth and Shrouded and has Hit'n'run. High Ws, good cover saves, high I and rending attacks with Hit'n'run. That's not garbage.

That formation is the Subterranean Swarm. I didn't know it was an Apoc formation as I've only seen it on Battlscribe, but it makes sense as it's big with a Trygon Prime, Trygon, Mawloc and 3 units of Raveners so I think it's 850pts minimum.

Old One Eye kind of fits in as his fluff has him seen running around with Genestealers, but he's 220pts and, well, he's Old One Eye.

I'm just going off of a comment on 1d4chan That says only Prime and Ravenors are necessary. Not sure where I'd find the rules for it though

Subterranean Swarm: A Trygon Prime joins a normal Trygon, a Mawloc, and three Ravener broods. The whole formation gets rolled as a group for reserves and once the Prime's location is found, everything can deep strike within 1" of the Prime. The Raveners can't move or assault, but they can still shoot and run. The main issue with this formation is the price, as this is a lot of dosh to spend on a deepstriking force. Main draw of this formation - I can't think of a single army that would be able to wipe out a Trygon Prime and (at least) 9 Raveners the turn after they arrive from reserves as well as focus on what may be charging across the board. Yes the price is high but even if it does not come in until turn 3 or 4 you can still do some serious late game damage.
The Apocalypse version makes only the Trygon Prime and Raveners mandatory, with the ability to add more Raveners, Mawlocs, and Trygons. They also make anyone who Deep Strikes within 12" of the Prime never scatter, grants Shrouded the turn they arrive, and forces anyone within 6" of them to test for pinning. Other than that, it still works the same way, but with a bit of extra insurance.

Anyhow, Adrenal Glands or Poison Sacs?

ALEXisAWESOME wrote:Perhaps swap the Manufactorum Brood for a Broodlord hunting pack, which is 3 stealer broods but includes a Broodlord. Those stealers don't have hit'n'run and stealth though.

The Manufactorum stealers don't get stealth unfortunately. With that formation you get 6" infiltration in a building or ruins, or with the hunting pack you can set up 6" from enemies in buildings or ruins BUT only if you come in from reserve (there's some weird wording though). So if you want them on the table from the get go (which with a maximum threat overload list you probably do), the manufactorum brood is definitely better.

Not a single Tyranid HQ fits with the theme of the army.

You could use a Broodlord model (especially one as big as the Spawn of Cryptus) as a proxied Nid prime. But they are vastly overcosted. Flyrants are probably a solid bet if you can fit them, as they address your issues with armour and will be less likely to be shot down when the foe has tons of genes in their face.

As for 'Stealers being garbage, If we were just using the basic codex I would agree with you. But every stealer in my list can deploy at up to 6'' away from you, have Stealth or Stealth and Shrouded and has Hit'n'run. High Ws, good cover saves, high I and rending attacks with Hit'n'run. That's not garbage.

This is part of the issue with genestealers - on paper they seem fantastic, but in practice, they need to get into combat at initiative to make use of their amazing stats. With infiltrate they have to weather possibly two turns of shooting (plus overwatch) before they get to charge, and 5 genes are not tough to take out. Nor actually are they that good in melee in practice - losing rerolls to wound with scything talons was really painful there.

Imateria wrote:That formation is the Subterranean Swarm. I didn't know it was an Apoc formation as I've only seen it on Battlscribe, but it makes sense as it's big with a Trygon Prime, Trygon, Mawloc and 3 units of Raveners so I think it's 850pts minimum.

There is a non-Apoc version which is in the third rising leviathan dataslate. It's as described and incredibly points intensive for the benefit of the raveners not scattering when they come in near the prime - the trygon and mawloc deepstrike as normal. You're better just taking Mawlocs in a CAD.

ALEXisAWESOME wrote:Anyhow, Adrenal Glands or Poison Sacs?

I think part of your rationale for toxin was flawed - you thought you'd get rerolls to wound vs T4 foes? Poison only now grants rerolls when your Str is higher than the opponent's T - so you'd only be rerolling against T3. That's a pretty major issue for it I think. Personally I don't think either are worth it - your genes are fragile enough that spending more on them just makes it more of a blow when they get flamered to death.