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I have kitbashed together almost eighty cultists. I tried them in a game the other day, but they were all killed in two turns with almost no advantage to me at all. How do I make cheap wounds work?

The obvious answer is of course to stick to cover.

Stealth and shrouded help if you can find a way to get them. Invisibility is obviously good...but you'll want to put it on a squad or vehicle more valuable than cultists.

Cultists do have 2 things going for them. An army with typhus and zombies are pretty resilient for their points. Also there are some helbute formations that utilize cultists.

Probably best used with the Helcult to grant fearless... give one squad all autoguns and the other autopistols.

Use IA13 to make a Renegade list

I'm thinking of using them to lock things like Dreadknights or Riptides in close combat for a couple of turns.

 calamarialldayerrday wrote:
I'm thinking of using them to lock things like Dreadknights or Riptides in close combat for a couple of turns.

Plague zombies and the helcult will be fine for tying up melee orientated MCs like the dread and wraithknight. It won't help vs riptides are they are just too slow to catch one, and the riptide is designed to put damage out at range.

So, IA13 has a Master of the Horde thing that allows respawning units I think, and makes them into Infantry Platoons. Add in some Enforcers and some of the other toys and you can get yourself a nice supplemental army. You can also make them Plague Zombies somehow through IA13 but I forget the restrictions.

Bubble wrap things like Obliterators and other important units as an anti-assault shield and 5+ Cover.

Helcult or add in a cheap Lord for a Fearless blob to tarpit a big enemy.

Cultists shine when:

Attached to Dark Apostles
OR
Turned into plague Zombies by Typhus
OR
Used in the Lost and the Damned Apocalypse formation.


Helcult etc. I can't comment on as I've not used that

Losing 80 cultists in a couple turns is rare. I assume they were templated out of existence.

A player at my FLGS has an army with 120 plague zombies. At least a couple squads generally last the entire game.

He makes excellent use of squads of zombies to give other squads cover. 20 man cultist units can usually span the width of a board, literally making them meat shields. Think about the way you place them and try to make sure opponents only have one squad to shoot at each round.

Another tactic to consider is taking Huron or Ahriman to infiltrate large blobs of them. That way, the rest of your army definitely has a way to move up the board while they assault big threats.

I am not too up on psychic powers this edition, but I did see a came where someone put something on MoK cultists that allowed them to move like beasts. More of a question - but anyone know what that could be?

 Wulfmar wrote:
Cultists shine when:

Attached to Dark Apostles
OR
Turned into plague Zombies by Typhus
OR
Used in the Lost and the Damned Apocalypse formation.


Helcult etc. I can't comment on as I've not used that

The helcult is fantastic. When you max out unit coherency, you can use them to cover almost a square foot of the board in large games. In smaller games, helbrutes that survive past turn two are worth their weight in gold.

Giving cultists fearless is mandatory if you want them in big blobs. Space them out and keep to ruins if you have small squads for objective holding. If you want them as a big push unit then have a good fighty character with them or have a good counter charge unit nearby to help them with particularly tough stuff (enemies with buckets of attacks).


Helcult is in helbrute dataslate and gives the cultists (2 units) fearless and the helbrute 3+ cover (for the cultists). The helbrute kills his own mates on 1s to hit in melee.

Helcult is probably the cheapest way to give fearless and you also get hatred if the hrlbrute dies.

I don't play Chaos, but...I think you want to make them Fearless, if you can. The two simplest "boosts" are a Dark Apostle, or a Helcult. Zombies work very well too. (we need a Zombie Ork emotie...)

If I were building a Chaos force, I would start with two sqds of Marines, and two sqds of cultists, and go from there.

I only play Khorne, so zombies are out of the question. Unfortunately I had to keep them very tightly packed as terrain was very dense and I didn't have any spare room inside my deployment zone. He only got to fire two template weapons, which did kill a few, but not all.

Khorne cultists are inherently fragile at T3. As was said above, use a Dark Apostle to give them Zealot (so they don't flee) and hug cover until you can bring their weight to bear in CC.

I really want to see Khorne cultists make a charge. The ones I used last week were focuse fired for an easy first blood.

lustigjh wrote:

I really want to see Khorne cultists make a charge. The ones I used last week were focuse fired for an easy first blood.

There is no focus fire in 7th edition.