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I am coming back to the game after a long, long hiatus, so some of the things I am seeing are new to me, and I am sorry if I am rehashing old topics or questions.

However, can anyone explain to me why Genestealer Cult Genstealers are just flat-out better than the Tyranids Genestealers? Not only is the stat line better, invul save is better, and their special abilities rule (the advance+charge), they're two points cheaper as well.

If I could still take GC as an ally of Tyranids, I'd be taking these for the second detachment every time.

HF_Scorpion wrote:
I am coming back to the game after a long, long hiatus, so some of the things I am seeing are new to me, and I am sorry if I am rehashing old topics or questions.

However, can anyone explain to me why Genestealer Cult Genstealers are just flat-out better than the Tyranids Genestealers? Not only is the stat line better, invul save is better, and their special abilities rule (the advance+charge), they're two points cheaper as well.

If I could still take GC as an ally of Tyranids, I'd be taking these for the second detachment every time.

Nid Genestealers do have forward deployment, which is pretty valuable.

But overall, agreed.

GSC stealers are free-range organic, all natural. The ones in the tyranid book are factory raised in confined, inhumane situations. Clearly one of these produces better results.*

Jokes aside, while the same basic unit, they work differently within their respective codexes. Throughout the history of 40k we sometimes see this, with the same unit with different rules in different places. Artifact of the codex system.


* almost said non-GMO, but we are talking about ‘nids…

While that maybe seems odd I am very glad that they are different units.

Purestrain Genestealers are very unique in the GSC book. They over a lot of diversety in a codex where acolytes, abberants, PSG and hybrids could all feel very similar like in the old codex. From a mechanical standpoint they lack core.

The genestealers in tyranids perform a infiltration function similar to what GSC in general do. The Tyranid codex in theory at least has the abilaty to pour on a lot of buffs on core units.

In the Tyranid codex they play as scout units. (People include them more for utilaty then for kill.power.) In GSC they play the role as elite killers.

I like this distinction.

Caveat: I've been playing GSC's since 2nd ed. There have been slight modifications to the lore over time, so some of the information that follows can be traced to older editions, some of it is current, and some of it is probably head-cannon.

GSC's are disconnected from the larger hive mind. They have no link back to the Norn Queens and higher-order psychic powers which create the shadow in the warp. Instead, they have a patriarch to source their own hive mind equivalent, and a magus to amplify and shape it. This Cultmind manifests most strongly in purestrains, because they form the crucial first generation in each brood cycle.

If a single purestrain makes into melee with a squad of guardsmen, it has a fair chance of implanting the entire squad with the genetic material that interferes with their breeding process so that they beget Acolyte hybrids. If purestrains were weaker, the likelihood of the cult growing beyond that first brood is severely hampered.

A purestrain under the dominance of the hivemind on the other hand, has no need to beget progeny, and it is actually beneficial for the hivemind to override and dull down its natural instincts in order to better force it to operate as a part of a larger, multi-organism strategy.

Playing a GSC in an escalation campaign and growing it to full army from a single brood of purestrains is an interesting experiment, and it demonstrates the challenges that a fledgling cult faces. Not being able to field hybrids until you breed them is brutal.

All GSC organism mature to fighting capacity quickly. In much the same way animal species mature faster than humans, an acolyte can kill an unarmed human at a young age, and breed to create neophytes at a young age. Brood brothers are created in a mature state- it does a purestrain little good to infect a human child, because while the child's mind and breeding capacity are altered, it still grows and matures as a typical human would.

But still, the first brood has to create 10 brood brothers before it can field a second unit. The strongest purestrain in the brood will begin to evolve into a patriarch, but that evolution is rarely complete before the first brood brother unit is ready to deploy. The brood brothers have to breed and nurture 5 acolytes before they can be fielded... though purestrains can continue to create more units of brood brothers while they wait for the acolytes to be ready for deployment... Which in turn increases the potential for breeding additional acolytes.

Acolytes need to breed and raise 10 neophytes before they're ready to field- but while the cult is waiting, purestrains continue to beget new units of brood brothers, who continue to breed more acolytes.

When neophytes breed, they create the near-human hybrids; this is the generation that produces the magus, and the patriarch will have completed its evolution by the time this happens- often it will be completed by the time the first neophytes are ready for battle.

When this generation breeds, it produces a new wave of purestains- the first generation of the second brood cycle. Aberrants and characters other than the patriarch almost never appear in the first brood cycle- the likelihood of them appearing increases with each brood cycle. Metamorphs only appear once the cult is big enough to be psychically detected by the hivemind- somewhere around the 4rth or 5th brood cycle.

So if you assume it takes 3 years for each begotten generation to be ready for battle (as opposed to Brood Brothers, which are created at maturity over a span of days), your first brood of purestrains has to survive 12 years before additional purestrains arrive- the fist six of those years without the support of a fully mature patriarch. And they can't just hide during this time either- in order to create enough 2nd gen neophytes to beget multiple broods of purestrains, each member of the first brood has to create multiple units of brood brothers.

If you try this in game, you will understand why GSC purestrains need to be as tough as they are. Most people don't play this way for obvious reasons- if I told you that you could only use a single brood of stealers until you get ten kills, and that when a stealer dies, it's gone forever... or that you could only play with stealers and brood brothers for the first six games after achieving those 10 kills...

Most people wouldn't want to do it. Most people want a competitive 2k build for game one.

But playing a cult campaign according to the GSC lifecycle is a fascinating narrative experiment, and it absolutely does illustrate the critical need for purestrains that are tough as nails.

PenitentJake wrote:
But still, the first brood has to create 10 brood brothers before it can field a second unit.

Are you talking about lore or your own game mechanics? You seemed to be talking about lore at the start of all this but here you're quoting an arbitrary game mechanic involving squad sizes that has nothing to do with lore.

The vast majority of brood brothers aren't created through combat, but through stealth and ambush infection of civilians. Those brood brothers might be involved in kidnapping others and bringing them to be infected by purestrains, until it becomes strong enough through generations to be actively recruiting through faux religion, but any cult will avoid outright warfare as long as possible to grow its strength in secret. Discovery is likely death to a cult until they are finally ready to rise.

That said, any purestrain in a cult will most likely be one with decades of experience of living in secret and moving by stealth, having its survival depend on being able to live in extremely harsh conditions (i.e. hide in places nobody would look), its mental strength, and skills as an ambush predator. Let alone the original purestrains that may have had to survive a very long time on a space hulk or co-opted cargo hauler first.

Tyranid 'stealers are popped out of a spawning chamber, sent to attack a world, controlled utterly by the hive mind, and then die in battle or voluntarily get dissolved down to goo when they win. They're babies compared to the grizzled independant veterans from a cult.