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Bikes look superior to Sentinels if you want a Brigade, which you will if you’re running the drill and have to burn a detachment for fortifications. Speaking of which, I feel like if you’re already using the fortification slot you might as well put another building in it. Stick a heavy weapons team in a Bastion or Plasma Obliterator.

Heavy Weapon Teams don’t get Cult ambush afaik, which is why mortars are so good for them. They hide out of los, keep deepstrikers out of your backfield, and provide some nice firepower to clear chaff for your melee units. Being cheap heavy slots is still their main purpose though.

I think my list will have 2 mortar teams and a Rockgrinder though. 3 teams seems a little more difficult to hide.

One thing I like with the new chapter approved missions is that if you’re in a very close game with only a single unit left on the board that has to grab an objective on your next turn, you can Return to the Shadows without the game automatically ending as usual with no units left on the board.

Anointed Throng Abominants in a 4-armed Emperor detachment with a Clamavus can get your Aberrants in on a 6” charge.

I think for best results I’d Perfect Ambush a Primus in with them for the reroll 1’s to wound and +1 hit, and for complete overkill drop a Biophagus and Magus in to buff them as well.

That’s one nice thing about your options here, you can pump a unit up to extreme levels of damage if you’re willing to put the effort into it.

I’m not even gonna bother theorycrafting the best way to kill stuff with mental onslaught. That thing is getting errata’d for sure, and I’d gain no satisfaction from erasing things with it in the meantime.

On the matter of some actual shenanigans, the drill gantry is an excellent way to put a couple units out of melee range. You could fill each floor with a heavy weapons team and nothing could touch them.

I brought The Drill to a game last night and lemme tell you, that thing is nasty against...other genestealer cult armies. Hitting multiple grouped up characters and units on a 4+ can do some work. Won’t kill anything on its own but will weaken things considerably, especially lots of MSU.

The Drill also lets you put another unit in reserve if you’re going all in on deepstriking. That plus the other 3 from the ambush token stratagem can put just about your whole army in reserve.

As far as making a fast horde army that starts on the board, Twisted Helix with Deliverance Broodsurge, an Iconward with the Broodsurge warlord trait and a Clamavus means a bunch of acolytes going 6 + rerollable D6 + 3 which is faster and cheaper than genestealers. Every character you throw in just increases their power exponentially.

I wouldn’t even bother with anything other than maybe hand flamers on them. Mass strength 5 rending claws will absolutely shred anything and everything. For fast attack and heavy choices keep it to bikes and heavy weapon teams so there’s nothing to shoot any big guns at.

A 20-man blob of shotgun neophytes makes a great tarpit and source of protection and Unquestioning Loyalty saves for nearby characters.

Speaking of perfect ambush, for a shooty list it seems like the perfect thing to use on a kelermorph. Drop him in with Perfect ambush, use Lying in Wait on a demolition acolyte squad, then shred something with a double shooting kelermorph and give a million rerollable grenades to the acolytes.

Patriarchs aren’t in the cult, they ARE the cult. It would be like Jesus wearing a little gold cross and offering thanks to himself before meals.

All special detachments let you spend a cp to give a non warlord character their special warlord trait.

The difference is that you can buff GSC genestealers to pretty obscene levels while Tyranid genestealers are mostly on their own. You can’t compare them in a vacuum when the GSC version has The First Curse with its assorted buffs plus all the character/warlord/psychic buffs.

There was a big ITC tournament recently so I’ve had nothing to practice my GSC with but people tweaking their tourney lists. Played against ork loota bombs, Ynnari spam, a couple copy/paste knight lists, and some other assorted hardcore nonsense. Among my assorted musings:

We need a LOT of chaff clearing for a reserve heavy list to work. The bubble wrap is insane in ITC when you don’t have to really care about objectives and can play a parking lot. Reaching IG artillery and Ork loota blobs means wading through a lot of stuff. I’d replace every pistol on acolytes with flamers and run 3 mortar squads as a baseline army composition.

GSC vehicles are going to die turn 1. The sentinels might survive to turn 2, but Goliaths, Rockgrinders, and Ridgerunners are getting iced. Your only hope is squeezing them behind LOS terrain, but they’re not doing much good there. Taking vehicles means running a Mad Max horde or hoping for turn 1.

Running a boots on the ground horde can work if you’re fast enough. Broodsurge Twisted Helix acolytes can cover a lot of ground and get reliable turn 2 charges off with the right support. But you still have to go overboard on the chaff clearers and not get all your assaulters tangled up in pointless battles with scouts.

I’ll be glad to practice lists on something that isn’t another awful ITC army now, but it was definitely good experience.

Hypermorphs would score 4 hits on 6’s next to Abominants, right?

Wait...so if they set up 9” from your board edge and there’s ambush tokens in range does that mean the ambushing unit just can’t come on the board?

If I was running a horde list I’d probably take Twisted Helix instead. With a Clamavus and Broodsurge detachment warlord your neophytes and acolytes are trucking along at rerollable +3 advances. That’s comparable to Kraken Genestealers, but stronger and cheaper with shooting added.

The ridgerunner seems designed to snipe out vehicles hiding behind cover. It benefits from all your +hit buffs and stratagems, so with the scout move you can zoom it into position where it can pop nearly anything with that heavy mining laser. Of course the moment anyone looks at it hard it will die, but that’s the genestealer cult life.

I’ve been running the Abominant with the relic that gives +hit and mortal wounds to enemies that miss him, and that does some serious work if you can get him into melee fast. It’s better than his sledgehammer relic for sure.

Sanctus getting out of a transport; Perfect Ambushable, yeah?

I’ve tried out shooty lists with Hivecult and a bunch of neophytes with mining lasers and it’s...okay. 24” on all your guns means you’re constantly moving, so even with the +1 from a Jackal Alpha it’s not a great chance. You get a ton of str 3 shooting, but you can do that just as easily with brood brothers. Ridgerunners and Rockgrinders are more useful in that sort of list as they benefit from the buffs but have longer range on their lasers.

Yeah rusted claw gives probably the strongest trait, even without including any bike units to benefit from its stratagem. With them, well, they get some excellent offensive punch.

Sure, but overall every type of GSC army, ranged or melee or otherwise, is going to want a better armor save. The charge bonus is nice, but you really have to combine it with a Clamavus and Broodsurge detachment to have any real reliability.

I like the inclusion of metamorphs in that list and I’m glad he was able to make them work. They put out a stupid number of 2+ attacks without the need for stratagems or characters to buff them.

As far as shooty lists, despite Hivecult seemingly best suited for it I’d have to say their benefits are kind of outweighed by what you get from Rusted Claw or Bladed Cog. Maybe a detachment of Hivecult sitting in the back buffing a bunch of Laser Ridgerunners, but the bulk should be something else for survivability.

You can turn 1 a kelermorph with telepathic summons, they’ll clear screens with the best of them.

Yep. Can’t put out 77 shots with your brood brothers blob anymore.

In any other army I’d say that would be worth the increase in his killing power, especially since he’s pretty survivable with cult loyalty, but GSC have so many good relics that given the choice I’d rather run something else.

I’ve run IG/Nid/GSC in the past with a Kronos and Cot4AE detachment along with arty guard and it’s pretty obnoxious. A heavy detachment of Biovores and hive guard, which can drop down spore mines in range to use the Kronos stratagem to stop any important spells being cast. A detachment of 4-Armed acolytes for the deepstriking punch, and the deny stratagem. And finally a detachment of guard for basilisks and some cheap filler.

Nearly all your damaging units are long ranged that stay out of LOS, and you can stop any important spells or stratagems from going off.

I originally made that mistake thinking it was like knives/chainswords but nope it’s 1 per every pick attack. Which gets nasty with Might from Beyond and the Biophagus giving them extra attacks.

Drills and rock cutters might as well be extra saws, and if it’s that huge an issue a Goliath kit comes with a ton of them on its Rockgrinder sprue you can use.