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I've been trying to think of ways to make the terribad new GSC workable, and I'm looking at tyranid allies. I've been wondering if anyone has any first hand experiencing running nids with their GSC in 8th, and what you used?
My reason for looking to nids is because our army is a paper thin close combat army, which worked when they could pop in and out of reserves to minimize exposure, but now that ambush is meh, and return to shadows gone, plus needing to start half the army on the board, we need staying power. So nidzilla stuff?

Even though both armies share the keyword tyranid, you can't use cult ambush at all if there are nids in the detachment, so they'd have to be a separate detachment.
Here's what I was thinking.

Old One Eye HQ
2 Carnifex
1 Tyrogen

No synapse, but the new instinctive behavior isn't really bad. You still control movement and just want to run up the field being a big distraction and charging whatever.

No direct experiance, but I suggest looking at Lictors. I also think a few Biovores could be helpful to our GSC Brothers. The least fuffy would be Hormagaunts to work as bullet catchers while your GSC do their thing. Good luck!

GSC really, really took a beating switching to 8th.. each unit that can CA got hit with a "CA Tax" even if half of a GSC army can't use it. Stock Acolytes (who went from 8 PPM to 11 PPM) are only 1 point less than Hive Fleet Stealers. The special weapons (except Demo Charges) are priced really weird. That hurts and a bad CA roll (even with a CP reroll or Primus) will kick you square in the nads as there's no way to hide behind LoS then RttS as in 7th.

I'm leaning right now towards a Nid Battallion with 2x Broodlord 3x 20 genestealers and 2x Trygon Primes with Adrenals then a Patrol (or whatever the detatchment with 1 HQ/3 troops is) w/ 2x20 neophytes with max mining lasers/flamers with patriarch back up. He won't synergize with the Hive Fleet 'stealers but he'll keep the Neophytes fearless if nearby and can CA on his own if you want to hold him until Turn 3. He's primarily there for Mass Hypnosis to disable overwatch on a dangerous unit for the Nids.

The Neophytes can CA onto an objective on Turn 3 or possibly threaten vehicles with their mining lasers.

Come in right at 1916 pts.. so there's room to sneak in some more Hormagaunts, rippers, etc.

Main thing I'm looking at with list building is having Nids as primary so all of the GSC units can at least CA (must be in a seperate detatchment.)

Yeah, you probably need to rely on allies to make the best use out of GSC, considering their point costs. Only half of you army can actually benefit from CA, so it makes sense for only half your army to actually be GSC. On the other hand you have a lot of flexibility. The recommended max number of detachments for a 2k point game is 3, so you could have a GSC detachment doing the CA, an Astra Militarum detachment doing some heavy artillery support and a Tyranid detachment bubblewrapping that Astra Militarum with some nice melee while also providing an advancing melee line. There aren't even any restrictions to your Astra Militarum detachment so you could put characters like Creed, Pask or Yarrick in your list.

Creed supporting some of those cheap mortar HWS could do very well. A spearhead detachment of creed surrounded by 6 HWS with mortars is only 242 points. I dunno if you'd want to make Creed your warlord for that 2 extra CP, I guess that depends on your enemy and the strength of your bubble wrap which could be anything like gaunts, rippers, regular genestealers, sky-slasher swarms, you get the idea. You can get some flexibility with this formation by replacing heavy weapons. Replacing 3 of the HWS mortars with lascannons, for example, would raise its cost to 377 but you'd gain a lot of vehicle removal capability though you'd have to put yourself into the line of sight of your enemy to make use of it. Maybe mortars is the way to go.

There are many other units that might be beneficial, too. Like Ratlings, Tempestors, a Primaris Psyker or a Ministorum Priest. It'll be interesting so see what people come up with.

If the sole objective is to make a base of units to start on the table while all the GSC melee units ambush, I'd probably look towards a couple Tervigons with big Termagant blobs and interspaced Venomthropes. Sporocysts also might not be a terrible idea, as they can drop in within 9'' as well and have a fair amount of firepower for their points and generate free Spore Mines/Mucolids to draw fire (nice big blocks line of sight piece too).

CWDub wrote:
The special weapons (except Demo Charges) are priced really weird.

The Rock Saw seems to be copying the price of the Imperial Chain Fist (identical stats) with a 2-point premium for not having the -1 to hit penalty. Agreed with the other two though, not sure why the Clippers are cheaper.

I like the idea of the Tervigons.
The goal is to have something on the board so some of my cult can still attempt the horribly low chance ambush (yes I'm salty about how bad ambush is now.) But I'm also thinking in terms of distractions, big scary things that say "hey look over here, shoot me instead of those paper thin GSC." which is why i think maybe a bunch of distractionfexes.


The GSC portion of my army is broadly speaking:
3 squads of neophytes in trucks
3 acolyte squads
1 purestrain stealer squad
1 unit of aberrants

I feel like what i need is something else charging across the board at the enemy to concern them. Acolytes will general ambush in, fail the 25% they have of assaulting from ambush, then have a turn sitting there hoping not to get shot. I'm wondering if target saturation with scary melee things would help some of them survive to assault the following turn.

Well you could build Old One Eye, and a band of merry Carnifexen. Not Too pricey, then use a Tervigon, with one or two Broods od Termagants...then try to Ambush Behind units to sandwich them in. Several Broods of Rippers could be very nice as well, helping to "sandwich" (preventing fallbacks) or snatching VPs while the battle roils.

I think that Tervigon Psychers can add a Lot of durability to 'Gant Broods by buffs, and by replacing fallen 'Gants.

Well to me GSC are nota s bad as people are making out..

But 8th GSC are a different build to 7th GSC

pinecone77 wrote:
Well you could build Old One Eye, and a band of merry Carnifexen. Not Too pricey, then use a Tervigon, with one or two Broods od Termagants...then try to Ambush Behind units to sandwich them in. Several Broods of Rippers could be very nice as well, helping to "sandwich" (preventing fallbacks) or snatching VPs while the battle roils.

I think that Tervigon Psychers can add a Lot of durability to 'Gant Broods by buffs, and by replacing fallen 'Gants.

Old one eye with 2 screamer-killer carnifexes do look pretty amazing. And boy are they cheap now. Old one eye is the 2nd cheapest HQ and the carnifexs cost less each than my acolyte squads.
Though back of napkin math I only have about 120pts left after OoE and 2 fexes. So maybe a mawlock to have 3 heavies for a vanguard detachment. Not sure how good they are though. Or I could drop the aberrant story get the tervigon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

GodDamUser wrote:
Well to me GSC are nota s bad as people are making out..

But 8th GSC are a different build to 7th GSC

Sorry mate, they're the squishiest army, who lost the mechanic that balanced how squishy they are, and got a big points hike to boot. The entire thing that made them viable was removed, they bad.

Danny slag wrote:

pinecone77 wrote:
Well you could build Old One Eye, and a band of merry Carnifexen. Not Too pricey, then use a Tervigon, with one or two Broods od Termagants...then try to Ambush Behind units to sandwich them in. Several Broods of Rippers could be very nice as well, helping to "sandwich" (preventing fallbacks) or snatching VPs while the battle roils.

I think that Tervigon Psychers can add a Lot of durability to 'Gant Broods by buffs, and by replacing fallen 'Gants.

Old one eye with 2 screamer-killer carnifexes do look pretty amazing. And boy are they cheap now. Old one eye is the 2nd cheapest HQ and the carnifexs cost less each than my acolyte squads.
Though back of napkin math I only have about 120pts left after OoE and 2 fexes. So maybe a mawlock to have 3 heavies for a vanguard detachment. Not sure how good they are though. Or I could drop the aberrant story get the tervigon.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

GodDamUser wrote:
Well to me GSC are nota s bad as people are making out..

But 8th GSC are a different build to 7th GSC

Sorry mate, they're the squishiest army, who lost the mechanic that balanced how squishy they are, and got a big points hike to boot. The entire thing that made them viable was removed, they bad.

I would bring AM tanks before Tyranid Monstrous creatures. I think the fact that they can now take a bunch of Basilisks & Manticores (first turn alpha with no line of sight) with a tank commander HQ in a Spearhead Detachment means you don't need to rely on your Infantry to do the heavy lifting. Save your points on the GSC special weapons and spam more bodies. They then can simply use Cult Ambush to get on to objectives as quickly as possible, bubble wrap your tanks etc. etc. And you can still send your Patriarch and purestrain genestealers to go hunting or bog things down in CC.