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Hi, just wondering. Are there any good GSC articles out there after 9th edition came with point increases? Most I find is outdated in some form or other. I wanne learn.

Hi Niiai,

I've found a couple of half-decent articles on GSC going into 9th edition:

https://www.theartofwar40k.com/home/adapting-to-9th-edition-genestealer-cult

https://www.goonhammer.com/9th-edition-faction-focus-genestealer-cults/

I think the goonhammer article has access to 9th points. We're not in a particularly great place, all things considered, but I'm very happy to theorycraft and see if we can hammer out something workable.

The initial hurdles to GSC in 9th as I see them are as follows:

1. Mission scoring - primary objectives being scored in your command phase mean you need to have captured & held it throughout your previous turn. Most GSC units don't have the durability to do this (though Lurk in the Shadows can be a saving grace)

2. Detachments & CP reworks. Now we're incentivised to run a single detachment, so it's harder to fit in all the cult creeds and characters you want to buff your army.

3. Changes to multi-charging, coherency, and the Desperate Break Out stratagem take out a lot of the crutches that GSC relied on in 8th.

- Now if you declare a multi-charge you have to reach everything with your charge roll.

- Units of more than 5 models must remain in coherency with at least 2 other models in the unit - in effect meaning combat is reduced to fighting in two ranks. This and the changes to blast
weapons push us towards smaller units of acolytes.

- Finally, there's the Desperate Break Out Stratagem which prevents us from wrapping and trapping - so that's no longer a viable tactic to keep close combat units alive.

4. And then there's the points increases... Aberrants have been priced into irrelevance, and purestrains and metamorphs are still pretty suboptimal. Handflamers have gone up, so the old acolyte handflamer bomb is probably too expensive for what it does now.

Onto the "good" news then, most online lists seem to be incorporating a large number of ridgerunners with a supporting alphus as a first turn presence and to provide firepower. Goliath trucks are seeing a bit of use to ferry units onto objectives to take and hold and score primaries. The trucks are practically guaranteed to die, but they may just soak up enough fire to keep your neophytes alive to hold the objective.

Acolytes and neophytes both received modest points increases, but are still going to be staples of your army. Mining lasers being 10 points is really good, and so Bladed Cog Neophyte spam is still very much on the menu! I've also found that tyranid support is still viable - you'll probably want an extra patrol to support a GSC battalion so you're not losing too many CP.

Have you had any games in 9th with GSC? How have you found them?

Well thank you for very turuow response. I did not expect it to be honest. And thank you for the articles.

First my first hand experience. I have only had two games of 9th edition so far. I got into GSC by way of tyranids. Both games are vs my buddy who play orks. Orks are very dificult for nids, as they seem to fight better in melle then nids. Further they (or my buddy) has a lot of T8 that nids have a hard time dealing with. We can not kill T8 in melee, and he tend to shoot away all my ranged awsers. GSC suports me there with ridge runners and acolytes with saws. Almost all the good units in nids need some CP gimmic to maken them good. (Two adaptions, shoot x2, slimer maggots.)This leaves very little CP for a perfekt ambush, or a plan generations in the making. You want dirt cheap stratagems!

I am transitioning into a pure GSC because I want to. I found a podcast by this player Alex who spams infantery to sit on objectives + 6 ridgerunners and characters. I will try it out.

Regarding theorising GSC. Acolyte squads are very exspensive for what they do. If they kill their targets they are usualy in the open and gets killed. Going full 15 models is risky. APA is exspensive. But using a truck + the Genetic Lineage can give a very big threath range.

Both versions of mining lasers are stil very good. Ridgerunners are very good.

Speaking of, we have a very shacky when it comes to building a list.

HQ: Biker lady is very good! Patriarch, Magus (with stratagem), Banner guy and primus as OK. Big hammet guy is exspensive and bad. Works best as a counter charge unit.
Troops: Neophites are great in bladed cog, acolytes are good. Brood brothers are good because they are cheap. Perhaps good for home objective.
Elites: It is a mess. Sanctus is exspensive but good. Kellemorph is really good. Aberants and metamorphs are way over prices. Purestrain GS are not good, or rather overshadowed by acolytes.
Fast attack: Sentinels are bad, but cheap and can scout move for objectives. Ridgerunners with lasers is really good. Both stratagems are good on them. The bikes are good at grabbing objectives and the one use bomb delivery out of reserves.
Heavy suport: Weapon teams are cheap but unreliable. Leman russ i exspensive but unreliable. (3 heavy flamers is neat though.) Rockgrinder could have potensial in melee, and is probably in OK part.

Transports: Flaming chimera seems OK. To bad brood brothers unit is not very good.
Truck: Seems bad but potensialy very nesasery to make it easier to be on objectives.

No matter how you split it you are looking at goof fast attack with troop spam. Question is do you take transport, or do you take more then 6 troops? Transports will eat up a lot of points.

If yes on the later do you take two detachments or a brigade? A brigade means only 1 of the same character. You get:
Fast attack, cheap sentinels or the fast attak unit or your choise.
Elite: Kellermorph, Sactus(?) and your choise of one more character.
Heavy Suport: Three heavy teams with either mortar for objective controll, autocannons with few good targets or the exapensive options lascannons for that to hit gamble.

Just my thoughts on this.

It's interesting you're moving from Tyranids to GSC, as I started GSC but am moving more towards Tyranids to support!

I pretty much had my army finished by the end of 7th - so it's a lot of infantry, acolytes, supporting characters and lots of aberrants! I am in a terrible place for this edition as I have no bikers, no trucks and no ridgerunners - but as this is like my 4th army I don't want to splash out much more money to meta-chase with it...

I feel like nids and GSC can support each other very well - in your case the mining lasers and rocksaw acolytes really can deal with that T8 armour. I've taken to running a large warrior brood with deathspitters and venom cannons and a durability adaption - they tend to advance up the middle or on one of the flanks to hold objectives - but they also distract my opponent from shooting the mining laser neophytes.

I also think you're right about acolytes being expensive for what they do - most of the time they're a suicide unit to take out one key threat. I'm thinking they still fulfil that role in units of 10, and maybe small 5 man units may be handy to hide out of LOS and perform actions? Haven't tried it yet, but I think they'd be far too vulnerable to being wiped out by indirect fire like mortars.

In terms of list building, I tend to go for a Bladed Cog battalion (mostly mining laser neophytes with an alphus and then a deep-strike threat like acolytes with CP for APA) and a Tyranids patrol (warriors and prime), or I will drop the nids and go for a 4AE patrol of deep-striking acolytes backed up with a clamavus, Magus (broodcoven to get Inscrutable Cunning) and maybe a Patriarch.

So far I've completely avoided fast attack and heavy support - like I say it's my 4th army and I don't really want to shell out much more money on meta-chasing.

 Drakeslayer wrote:
It's interesting you're moving from Tyranids to GSC, as I started GSC but am moving more towards Tyranids to support!

I pretty much had my army finished by the end of 7th - so it's a lot of infantry, acolytes, supporting characters and lots of aberrants! I am in a terrible place for this edition as I have no bikers, no trucks and no ridgerunners - but as this is like my 4th army I don't want to splash out much more money to meta-chase with it...

I feel like nids and GSC can support each other very well - in your case the mining lasers and rocksaw acolytes really can deal with that T8 armour. I've taken to running a large warrior brood with deathspitters and venom cannons and a durability adaption - they tend to advance up the middle or on one of the flanks to hold objectives - but they also distract my opponent from shooting the mining laser neophytes.

I also think you're right about acolytes being expensive for what they do - most of the time they're a suicide unit to take out one key threat. I'm thinking they still fulfil that role in units of 10, and maybe small 5 man units may be handy to hide out of LOS and perform actions? Haven't tried it yet, but I think they'd be far too vulnerable to being wiped out by indirect fire like mortars.

In terms of list building, I tend to go for a Bladed Cog battalion (mostly mining laser neophytes with an alphus and then a deep-strike threat like acolytes with CP for APA) and a Tyranids patrol (warriors and prime), or I will drop the nids and go for a 4AE patrol of deep-striking acolytes backed up with a clamavus, Magus (broodcoven to get Inscrutable Cunning) and maybe a Patriarch.

So far I've completely avoided fast attack and heavy support - like I say it's my 4th army and I don't really want to shell out much more money on meta-chasing.

The only viable infantry GSC is an army comprised of Neophytes with Characters support (and the only deep strike threats are effectively there just to do secondaries): the moment you decide to take Acolytes you're at mercy of both spending additional points for a Clavamus, Primus and in a F4AE Detachment just for a 7" charge that isn't rerollable anymore and hoping to make a charge at the first things you see since you can't multicharge the old way.

If you really want to win go mechanized with Trucks, Ridgerunners, Alphuses and Neophytes and don't look back

KurtAngle2 wrote:

 Drakeslayer wrote:
It's interesting you're moving from Tyranids to GSC, as I started GSC but am moving more towards Tyranids to support!

I pretty much had my army finished by the end of 7th - so it's a lot of infantry, acolytes, supporting characters and lots of aberrants! I am in a terrible place for this edition as I have no bikers, no trucks and no ridgerunners - but as this is like my 4th army I don't want to splash out much more money to meta-chase with it...

I feel like nids and GSC can support each other very well - in your case the mining lasers and rocksaw acolytes really can deal with that T8 armour. I've taken to running a large warrior brood with deathspitters and venom cannons and a durability adaption - they tend to advance up the middle or on one of the flanks to hold objectives - but they also distract my opponent from shooting the mining laser neophytes.

I also think you're right about acolytes being expensive for what they do - most of the time they're a suicide unit to take out one key threat. I'm thinking they still fulfil that role in units of 10, and maybe small 5 man units may be handy to hide out of LOS and perform actions? Haven't tried it yet, but I think they'd be far too vulnerable to being wiped out by indirect fire like mortars.

In terms of list building, I tend to go for a Bladed Cog battalion (mostly mining laser neophytes with an alphus and then a deep-strike threat like acolytes with CP for APA) and a Tyranids patrol (warriors and prime), or I will drop the nids and go for a 4AE patrol of deep-striking acolytes backed up with a clamavus, Magus (broodcoven to get Inscrutable Cunning) and maybe a Patriarch.

So far I've completely avoided fast attack and heavy support - like I say it's my 4th army and I don't really want to shell out much more money on meta-chasing.

The only viable infantry GSC is an army comprised of Neophytes with Characters support (and the only deep strike threats are effectively there just to do secondaries): the moment you decide to take Acolytes you're at mercy of both spending additional points for a Clavamus, Primus and in a F4AE Detachment just for a 7" charge that isn't rerollable anymore and hoping to make a charge at the first things you see since you can't multicharge the old way.

If you really want to win go mechanized with Trucks, Ridgerunners, Alphuses and Neophytes and don't look back

I disagree with this pretty wholeheartedly, I think if you're playing GSC you should be bringing at least one melee bomb unit. Right now, that's maxed acolytes with max saws. With a more sensible points update that could viably be Aberrants as well, there's nothing wrong with them CONCEPTUALLY they're just wickedly overcosted.

8ppm is not wildly overcosted for acolytes. In fact, I think min squads purely for the purpose of scoring would be viable if we didn't have the knife sanctus, the nexos and the locus doing that job just straight better.

The reason it's better than just running pure neos in trucks is because neos in trucks can't spend any CP at all while in the truck, and while out of the truck spend CP very inefficiently. There's no reason not to bring a good solid punch of acolytes, you've got nothing else to spend all your CP on otherwise.

Conveniently if you're using the best all-round cult right now, which is Cog, you mght as well be bringing one big melee unit, because you've got Overthrow and you've got the Cog psychic power which is basically Catalyst.

You don't need to bring hardly anything to buff them, and tbh I think bringing the Clamavus for just one squad is a huge waste. A Perfect Ambush still gets you in EXTREMELY repeatably.

A list with the general structure of:

Battalion
Always Jackal Alphus
2nd HQ (I usually go Magus)
3-4 Squads of Mining Laser or Seismic Truck Neos
1 squad of maxed Acos with max saws+Banner
Always Kelermorph
2-3 dedicated scoring characters (Nexos/Locus/Sanctus)
From there, flexible stuff depending on your meta. I've played successfully with adding brood bros, adding Rockgrinders with min aco squads for melee counterpunch, with adding Ridgerunners for more antitank.

If you don't have the melee punch, beefy armies that like melee will charge into your truckline and deny you scoring. Custodes/Primaris SM/Death Guard will roll right over you.

EVEN if you roll a 1 on APA you have good odds to get in with a CP reroll, over 60%.