Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So, at the release of the new GSC codex I was expecting to see them everywhere at my LGS, and yes, even though some people started a new GSC army I've yet to see them on the table, and so I have no clear idea of their capabilities. I recall they were top 3/top 5 in a big tournament not long ago but haven't seen any news yet.

How are they doing in your local metas ? In tournaments ? Do you love the codex, as a GSC player ?

I actually haven't played it yet but I love the Codex.

I love it for its flavour stuff. I love the idea of a detachment of Jackals and Ridge Runners, all themed up as a group that frequently operates independently.

Another semi autonomous detachment of rock grinders and neophyte with mining gear.

My favourite? The abberrant / abominant / biophagus combo of doom.

GSC was my first love; I had played a couple games of 40k, here and there, but it was spacehulk- the first edition- that really made me fall in love with this game. My buddy had an amazing 3d board, and we played pretty fast and loose on rules; I think we ended up house ruling almost every model in the range at the time to allow them into spacehulk.

This army, like any good rebellion or uprising, is easy to build as a collection of cells, with the Magus, Primarch and Patriarch moving to various cells as needed to achieve the objectives at hand.

GSC is really powerful army, but has very skill ceiling. If you don't know what you are doing or inexperienced you will get your ass handed to you. The codex has a lot of powerful combos, but it is very fragile.

It's extremely powerful. Best overall melee ability of any faction.

worth noting is that it loses very little when not played in a tournament setting. A normal GSC list list is going to be more powerful then a normal marine list for example. ton of annoying units that a tournament player will just have to deal with, but a not so good player will find super OP. Souping up some kraken genestealers to buff the melee force of abberants is deadly to a lot of non fly armies.

Good high tier army with very defined strengths and weaknesses. Nice allied options and I think at least one of their allies is the best way to run them.



Kelermorph didn't end up dominating the meta either, which was a twist I'm sure blew out some Dakkanaut's minds.

The Best General podcast is using GSC in his quest to win a major GT currently. He's using 3 Vultures as Brood Brothers, to help shore up the ranged weakness of the army.

Overall seems very strong, but he's struggling against Tau.

 SHUPPET wrote:
Good high tier army with very defined strengths and weaknesses. Nice allied options and I think at least one of their allies is the best way to run them.



Kelermorph didn't end up dominating the meta either, which was a twist I'm sure blew out some Dakkanaut's minds.

I actually find the Keller somewhat underwhelming. He can do solid work, but he rarely feels like he makes a significant impact. The Sanctus on the other hand, can annihilate entire clusters given the right targets and a bit of luck. If given a choice between him and a Sanctus, Sanctus wins every time IMO

 Aaranis wrote:
So, at the release of the new GSC codex I was expecting to see them everywhere at my LGS, and yes, even though some people started a new GSC army I've yet to see them on the table, and so I have no clear idea of their capabilities. I recall they were top 3/top 5 in a big tournament not long ago but haven't seen any news yet.

How are they doing in your local metas ? In tournaments ? Do you love the codex, as a GSC player ?

I am very unsure about the armys celing, but I suspect it is high in the right hand. The floor is very very very low if you do not know what you are doing.

^Yeah we have a local guy with an absolutely beautiful GSC army but I don't think he's yet won a game. I think they're really unforgiving.

C4790M wrote:

 SHUPPET wrote:
Good high tier army with very defined strengths and weaknesses. Nice allied options and I think at least one of their allies is the best way to run them.



Kelermorph didn't end up dominating the meta either, which was a twist I'm sure blew out some Dakkanaut's minds.

I actually find the Keller somewhat underwhelming. He can do solid work, but he rarely feels like he makes a significant impact. The Sanctus on the other hand, can annihilate entire clusters given the right targets and a bit of luck. If given a choice between him and a Sanctus, Sanctus wins every time IMO

It's hilarious to me how certain Dakka was that the Kelermorph was power creep and going to ruin the meta, and anyone who said "maybe just wait till we can at least play the dex" was downplaying and bias.

I fully agree on the point of Sanctus btw. Kelermorph sometimes is lame, other times decent. Decent model. Sanctus is sometimes lame - and sometimes gives you a piece that shreds through your opponents characters and puts the board on lockdown and can't be dealt with easily, for just 60 points. I much prefer the Sanctus as well.

I actually have never seen GSC run without a swarmlord and 2 units of Kraken genestealers so I wonder if that is skewing my perception a bit. Aberrants and acolytes seem to synergize so well with the Kraken detachment that I've yet to see a stronger way to run them.

For those of you who have watched GSC lose a lot of games, is it often pure GSC? Or pure GSC + brood brothers?

 slave.entity wrote:
I actually have never seen GSC run without a swarmlord and 2 units of Kraken genestealers so I wonder if that is skewing my perception a bit. Aberrants and acolytes seem to synergize so well with the Kraken detachment that I've yet to see a stronger way to run them.

I thought that Tyrannid stratagems and so on specifically did not affect GSC?

Alcibiades wrote:

 slave.entity wrote:
I actually have never seen GSC run without a swarmlord and 2 units of Kraken genestealers so I wonder if that is skewing my perception a bit. Aberrants and acolytes seem to synergize so well with the Kraken detachment that I've yet to see a stronger way to run them.

I thought that Tyrannid stratagems and so on specifically did not affect GSC?

They don't. One squad of stealers gets the double run kraken strat while the other gets a double move from the Swarmlord so that both just fly across the board. You combo that speed with the deepstrike assault shenanigans of the GSC to hit the opponent on turn one.

As for the broader picture, they seem good, but have issues that can be exploited. They need a way to clear chaff before they can drop in their melee hitters and they need a way to deal with flyers, but they're a very lethal glass cannon outside of that.

 SHUPPET wrote:

It's hilarious to me how certain Dakka was that the Kelermorph was power creep and going to ruin the meta, and anyone who said "maybe just wait till we can at least play the dex" was downplaying and bias.

This is just so true. The amount of moaning was incredible even for dakka.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 slave.entity wrote:
I actually have never seen GSC run without a swarmlord and 2 units of Kraken genestealers so I wonder if that is skewing my perception a bit. Aberrants and acolytes seem to synergize so well with the Kraken detachment that I've yet to see a stronger way to run them.

For those of you who have watched GSC lose a lot of games, is it often pure GSC? Or pure GSC + brood brothers?

I think with Brood Brothers, as I often see some tanks along for the fight.

 Trimarius wrote:

Alcibiades wrote:

 slave.entity wrote:
I actually have never seen GSC run without a swarmlord and 2 units of Kraken genestealers so I wonder if that is skewing my perception a bit. Aberrants and acolytes seem to synergize so well with the Kraken detachment that I've yet to see a stronger way to run them.

I thought that Tyrannid stratagems and so on specifically did not affect GSC?

They don't. One squad of stealers gets the double run kraken strat while the other gets a double move from the Swarmlord so that both just fly across the board. You combo that speed with the deepstrike assault shenanigans of the GSC to hit the opponent on turn one.

As for the broader picture, they seem good, but have issues that can be exploited. They need a way to clear chaff before they can drop in their melee hitters and they need a way to deal with flyers, but they're a very lethal glass cannon outside of that.

Yeah. GSC's strength seems be overwhelming the opponent with strong close combat units as early as possible and prolonging that close combat aggression until their opponent is dead. Swarmlords and Kraken genestealers make up the initial strike.

The first blob of Kraken genestealers makes it in turn 1, punches a hole in the screen, and tries to take a hostage if possible. The 2nd blob + the entire GSC part of the army come down T2 and wipe everything important off the board.

Nids was always a solid melee rush army that was able to get in fast and hit hard, but they often didn't have the durability or array of tools required to survive if their initial alpha strike failed to cripple their opponent. GSC solves that by giving them much needed character assassination ability, cheap/fast/durable screening/board control units (bikes), and anti-knight weapons on extremely durable bodies (aberrants).

GSC's weakness is similar to the weakness that nids used to have which is they can be screened out. Units like nurglings that still have a T1 infiltrate are really good at this. If you survive past T2 and still have strong answers for clearing horde, you'll have a good chance of winning. But with soup filling all the gaps in the army's melee toolkit, properly screening against a fast, aggro GSC/Nid list with tons of bodies can be very difficult for many factions. Armies that don't bring enough bodies are likely to get stuck in close combat fighting endless, cheap, deadly bugs forever.

If there's one thing GSC can't really touch it's flyers. If gunship spam was meta it would potentially destroy them. But a true GSC/Nid aggro horde list would be fairly resistant to eldar flyer spam due to weight of numbers.

I've only played them once and so much of their stuff is easy to delete in shooting. There are some nasty tricks they can pull off (a full unit of flamers appearing less than 9" away anyone?) but are otherwise the definition of a glass cannon.

One thing to bear in mind with the skill required to play them well is that it can also take a skilled player to read what a GSC player is going to do and take preventative steps

 SHUPPET wrote:

I fully agree on the point of Sanctus btw. Kelermorph sometimes is lame, other times decent. Decent model.

I like the Kelermorph's rules but I hate both the fluff and the model.

After having been on the receiving end of a few different GSC players, I think its a very odd army, that while it wont be winning events regularly, will be very frustrating to play against for huge swathes of the general gamer population.

The shear scope of their rules, and their tools to deal with threats is incredible, and my wins have only come from baiting my opponent into making some mistakes. My losses made me feel like I was a non player character, just watching my forces be dissected.

In summary I don't think they are a very healthy army for the fun of the game, because if your opponent plays well, it often feels like you might as well not be playing. and their match-ups are so extreme, that either their win or loss is regularly locked in. But they aren't an army that will dominate the event scene, so probably wont see many changes.

GSC is all about Front loaded tricks that have to snowball for them to have a chance.

Squad that pops up and tosses 5+ demo charges on your doing 15 Str 8 hits, a squad that pops up and hits you for 20 times with Hand Flamers, and a couple of Psychic gotchas, A Kellermorph that shoots a character or so down, and a Sniper that is annoying.

After that they become crummy guard, with some psychic backup.

I am playing GSC a lot these days. I either mix it up with Monsters and men Nidzilla and GSC heroes, or Snipers and Stealers where I use the waves of kraken troops to look like the real threat and punch a hole with an exocrine, then fill that hole with GSC heroes.

I also really really like the bikers. They are the strangest unit with t4 and 5 up saves but the -1 to hit them really keeps them around especially when paired with an iconoward. I run Bladed Cog for the 3++ abdomniant and 4++ kellermorphs and locuses.

The trick is to pull of feints and go for the haymaker.

Glass cannon doesnt begin to describe it well. At least with the mark of the clawed omnisiah you can have a Mack truck of the abdominant slugging it out for a few turns.

If you layer the characters well you can score critical hit after critical hit to the board state while still keeping the brains of the army together for tougher pushes.

Rock-grinders are possibly the best use of 100 points in the game.

2 Command points lets to kill the guards heavy weapons teams on turn 2 because thats what kellermorphs do!

If you want to screw over GSC find a way to being a 5 man squad of infiltrators. These can be used in 2 ways.

1 basic way, make a box that GSC can’t reinforce into. This neutralizes Kellermorphs, Hand flammers, Demo charges, some of the bikes options. With Careful deployment, you can cover a very sizable portion of the table, and keep your best targets safe from GSC shenanigans.
2 the hard way. Deploy 9 inches from their front line that is hopefully a boat load of blips. Go further, advance and run to have as many of your guys within a 9 or 10” of as many blips as possible. Go first. As your GCS opponent flips blips, if all of the blips is within 11” of the Infiltrator is it killed, and the unit attached is destroyed for victory purposes. Be aware your opponent is going to use Fake blips and other blip shenanigans, but if you cover 7 or 8 blips and kill 4 or 5 units… still worth it.

I'm just super thankful there are no GS Babeblades rolling up and melting face....

dreadlybrew wrote:
Rock-grinders are possibly the best use of 100 points in the game.

Having had abysmal luck with the things, how have you managed to use them well? I've had one major success in nearly kneecapping a knight with one loaded with abberants, but they had picks not hammers.... so the success was a bit less than hoped.

According to Reddit they were one of the top 4 factions of BAO with a 64% win rate, so I'd say pretty good!

Audustum wrote:
According to Reddit they were one of the top 4 factions of BAO with a 64% win rate, so I'd say pretty good!

I'd love to see the different lists they took, but by BCP sub is off. Clearly a couple GSC struggled a bit more than the others.

WLWWWW
WWWLWW

LWWWWL
LWWWLW

WWLLLW -- early success, but crashed at higher tables
LLLWWL -- really low tables

Think it has gone underground.

The_Real_Chris wrote:
Think it has gone underground.

Nice!

Personally I've had some success against Orks and some close calls against Tau. I'm liking the codex, though I wished there was more of an incentive to actually include GSC Genestealers in my army list...

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Audustum wrote:
According to Reddit they were one of the top 4 factions of BAO with a 64% win rate, so I'd say pretty good!

I'd love to see the different lists they took, but by BCP sub is off. Clearly a couple GSC struggled a bit more than the others.

WLWWWW
WWWLWW

LWWWWL
LWWWLW

WWLLLW -- early success, but crashed at higher tables
LLLWWL -- really low tables

Top list was double broodlord, termagants. some brood brothers, 1 Abberant squad, 1 flamer acolytes and 1 saw unit I think?
He lost in top 8 against the Chaos list that ended in the finals, couldnt get through the plague bearer screen.

The 2 lists below that were some variant with Vultures I think.

 FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I'm just super thankful there are no GS Babeblades rolling up and melting face....

You mean "Bane"blades..... though "Babe"blades might be interesting as well (I'm thing a Jabba slave barge with slave Leia theme might work)

They exist but we have much more viable units to use instead.

I Have one and would use it in a fun game but definitely not competitive.