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Hi guys

I am having my first battle against the GC next Friday, and I'm a little worried that he is going to steamroller my forces with that horrible Cult Ambush rule.

I am pretty sure my opponent is going to use the Cult Insurrection formation that gives all GC units Infiltrate.
He is probably going to be very light on vehicles and very heavy on footsloggers.

I play a Skitarii force with 2 Dominus Maniples, a Skitarii Maniple and an Offocio Assassinorum oprerative ( haven't decided on which one yet).

Any advice on how to deal with the Cult will be greatly appreciated, especially in regards to my deployment because doing deployment wrong will cost me half the battle with this guy.

Thanks in advance.

What mission you are playing? Eternal War or Maelstrom? Anyway, the Genestealer Cult is a army that is very hard to deal with. Especially for the Skitarii because you lack mobility, and no transport for your guys and your guns are not long range. It will be a paradox that if you bubble warp in a corner, those abominations may just sit at objectives waiting for you, if you spread out to go for objectives, your guys will be eatened piece meal very quick. It may just be a steep uphill fight for you.

Anyway, try to Bubble warp your army is still the best chance for you, when your guys are all been eaten, you have no body to grab objective anyway. Take as many template weapons as you can, Fish for the Warlord Trait that grants you full BS overwatch (iirc, there is one exist for Skitarii), take omnispex as well as any equipment that reduce your enemies cover saves, and try stay in cover to force your enemy loss their advantage of high inititive when charging you. Also, when bubble warp, put objectives as close to each other as possible, as well as near the area you chose to bunker up. Remember that Genestealer Cult is actually a highly mobile army, which just require mastery in risk management and pre-planning. And putting objective close together would be one of the methods for low-mobility army to fight a highly mobile opponent.

For your Assassinorum opreratives, I would think the Vindicare the worst one to deal with G-cult. The best one might be Eversor Assassin, or the Culexus. The former is good for tons after tons of fleshbane attacks and the full BS overwatch, he WILL eventually goes down under the tons after tons of attacks from opponent, but before that he might brings down half a dozen guys with him. The later would give hell to the Magus and Patriarch when try to cast those annoying psychic powers, such as generating new units, or shoot you with your own guys, also, he is harder to hit due to force WS1. Whoever you take, DO remember that G-Cult detachment auto pass LoS which cancels your "No escape", so your precision shot / attacks should always target those special weapons guys, take out that rock-saw and mining laser guys .

Thanks for the speedy reply.

We usually play Maelstrom missions, so that is probably what we'll do Friday as well.

You're absolutely right about this being an uphill battle, especially since this guy is my local nemesis, who regularly beats me up with his Dark Angels.

As for template and blast weapons, all I've got is 3 dunecrawlers with Neutron Lasers or Eradication beamers, and the Eradication Rays on the Tech Priests.
Not a whole lot I'm afraid.

My only fastmoving units are 5 Infiltrators and a couple of Dragoons, the latter ones should be able to put a lot of pressure on him, while the former are better kept in the back as a counterassault unit.

As for the Assassin, I think you're right about going for the Eversor or Culexus. The Vindicare is not going to last long unless he gets a unit to babysit him.

Definitely bubble wrap! But bubble wrap loosely to make the most of your guys. You just have to make sure that there are no spaces where he can get 3" away for when he rolls a 6 on cult ambush.

As a GSC player, high volume of str4 shooting does the most damage, flamers are terrifying.

Don't go nuts on vehicles, rending makes short work out of most AV values. I took out a knight with a 55pt unit of claw-morphs...

The subterranean uprising formation is almost auto include and gives shrouded turn 1...so watch out for that...

And always kill entire units so that they can't reinforce. Nothing gives me greater joy that's returning to shadows with 1 guy, rolling a 6 for reinforcements and coming back with a vengeance!

Ignores cover and flamers. Go first so that you get an extra turn of shooting.

Summoned Daemonettes do some damage. speaking as a Word Bearers player, if I go first vs GSC, Daemonettes are my first summon so I can run them as a screening force. Between Fleet and their run bonus and superior WS and Initiative, they're one of the few things rank-and-file Acolytes have to worry about.

Another thing that helps? Novas.

@ AwesomeSauceGaming: Thanks for the pointers.

@ luke1705: I'll see what I can do to get first turn.

@ MagicJuggler: Not crazy helpful there, as Skitarii doesn't have much fun in their psychic phase, and allying with chaos scum is going to be over my dead bionics.

Your best solution for GSC is allying with the Cult Mechanicus.
Kastelan Robots are great versus horde armies with their torrent flamer and also quite good in CC.
Destroyers with cognis flamers scare off pretty much any GSC charge. Guaranteed flamer hits on overwatch are terrifying for the cult.
With the skitarii I might also advice using infiltrators, lowering their I might mean you get to strike first and their burst pistols wound most of the cult on fives, which is quite good because of the shred and each burst pistol firing five shots.
Vanguard are quite decent versus the cult, three shots per vanguard is quite a lot of fire power.

I too would like some pointers on dealing with GSC. Played this week against them. I run WS gladius and found that bolters to very well against them. I generally would focus on a single unit or two and put all my shots into them till they were wiped out. I used my re-roll tactics as soon as possible on tacticals and then Devistators to get as many bolter rounds into the enemy.
I split up my army into 2 main forces tto mitigate multi charges but also kept them close enough to support.
We played ITC missions and I basically conceded trying to get any objectives or goals that required me to go to his table edge. Relic was the main mission and I was able to grab it with my bike command squad. tied on maelstrom mission and won primary and tertiary. Wasn't an easy fight.
I found not being overly aggressive was key. basically stayed mid table and moved around enough to not get bottle necked in.
I never won a combat.. lost 50% of my rhinos/RBs

Next week I play a small RTT and I know 2 guys that are running GSC. they both won top 3 spots in last 2 tournaments in area.
This will be my first RTT against them. I know both go heavy MSU hoard and 1 guy runs 3 Max Genestealers with fearless. He won last tourney and came in second prior.

Im interested in any more info on how to play them.

Blakman wrote:
Hi guys

I am having my first battle against the GC next Friday, and I'm a little worried that he is going to steamroller my forces with that horrible Cult Ambush rule.

I am pretty sure my opponent is going to use the Cult Insurrection formation that gives all GC units Infiltrate.
He is probably going to be very light on vehicles and very heavy on footsloggers.

I play a Skitarii force with 2 Dominus Maniples, a Skitarii Maniple and an Offocio Assassinorum oprerative ( haven't decided on which one yet).

Any advice on how to deal with the Cult will be greatly appreciated, especially in regards to my deployment because doing deployment wrong will cost me half the battle with this guy.

Thanks in advance.

Deployment wise, this might seem counter to what seems right...but try to bunch up a bit.

Why? Remember that your Onagers can get Mindscanner Probes, which have a 6" range, and make it so that charging models do not gain bonus attacks from charging.

This is important as Skitarii are going to generally be outnumbered by GSC's assault troops.
Your Onagers also come standard with a Broad Spectrum Data-Tether, boosting your LD by 1 while your units are affected by Doctrina Imperatives.

A good trick I've used is having Vanguard out in front, soaking up the charge, while having overlapping Onagers with Mindscanner Probes, and the Vanguard holding charging units in place for a counter-assault from Sicarians.

Assassin-wise, why not take an Eversor? He Overwatches at his BS, and whatever he doesn't knock out in Overwatch...he can rip to shreds in CC.

Thanks for all the help fellas, I had a great game even though I lost 14-11, so it wasn't a total wash.
We played the Maelstrom mission Deadlock.

His army consisted of infantry only. He had the big bad Patriarch with the 20 purestrains, and a merrily mixed bunch of Acolytes, Neophytes, Aberrants and Metamorphs plus a magus.

Naturally he managed to get the dreaded 6 on his warlord trait, and the magus got the summoning power.

I had 2 Dominus Maniples from the Start Collecting box, whereof one of the priests was my Warlord with the Eternal warrior trait and the Raiment of the Tecnomartyr. In both formations the 10 man Vanguard had been equipped with 3 plasma calivers each, the dunecrawlers had Eradication beams and stubbers.
I also had a Skitarii Maniple consisting of 2x10 Vanguard with a couple of Arc Rifles since I didn't know if he would bring any vehicles.
Also in the Maniple was 5 barebones Rangers, a Dunecrawler with Neutron Laser, 2 Dragoons and 5 Infiltrators with the zealot mask.
Lastly I had the Eversor assassin and Inquisitor Coteaz.

Coteaz really did a number on my opponent because even though he never got to use his "I've been expecting you" rule, the effect it had on the redeployment of the units using Cult Ambush was wonderful. I'll definitely take him again in future games, 100 points well spend.
I had chosen.Pyromancy for Coteaz, I know it's subpar compared to Divination or Telepathy, but I knew that if I could just get the Primaris plus maybe Inferno or Sunburst, I could put some hurt on him with all that cover ignoring goodness.
I got Inferno, but unfortunately the warp didn't seem to favour the Emperors secret police, because in 4 psychic phases I managed to roll 1 to generate warp charges.

Anyway, I had a very good first turn, managed to get a couple of his units destroyed, but when he started making his Ambush rolls at the start of his turn 2, he managed to roll 3 sixes, plus the automatic one from his warlord trait.

At the start of his turn 4 we were tied with 11 points each, but unfortunately he managed to get 2 easily achieved tactical objectives, and Slay my Warlord, leaving me with Coteaz, 2 vanguard and 4 Sicarians.

He still had 4-5 units on the table plus one who'd returned to the shadow, so I conceded the game at that point.