Frosty makes a bad decision

[Frosty the Pirate]

I wanted to throw this out there because I'm toying with the idea of adding a 3rd army to my collection atm. With my Space Wolves recently revived and strengthened to 1000 points, I'm just waiting for some play time so I can figure out what to fill in the last few hundred points with (I've got some pretty solid ideas on getting to ~1600 ish), and I've got a pretty good idea where that army is going and it will get finished off soon.

Long story short, So I was browsing through the different armies on my short list, and I've always really really wanted to start Tyranids, and I've honestly been kind of missing my old Guard army while I've been assembling my infantry-heavy Space Wolves and want to get some Tanks on the table and this led me to a pretty obvious solution that wasn't on my list.

Start a Genestealer Cults army.

Now, I've heard some pretty horrible stories. In fact, from what I understand, owning a Genestealer Cults army is like getting kicked in the junk in an ice cold shower while you tear up one-hundred dollar bills.

My idea in my head would be more of a Brood Bothers army, leaning pretty heavily on an Astra Militarum detachment to provide guns and heavy firepower, while the GSC provide combat punch, coolness factor and modelling opportunities for me to kit bash Tyranids and Guard bits together.

By no means am I expecting this to be a "good" army. I did a bunch of backstory and fluff reading and the army has tempted me for now. I'm not planning to jump into this until the spring when the wolves are fully off the painting table.

So, now I'm turning to the community. Do I sound of sane and rational mind to attempt this? Are my expectations low enough? Is there a good source of information on playing GSC I should go through before get more serious than a couple days of browsing model ranges and picturing how cool the model would look in a certain colour scheme?

EDIT: Shame on the poll. No one will tell me NOT to do this! lol.... I'm totally going to do this....

[Jack Shrapnel]

Well I have a pretty extensive GSC army. Is it frustrating to play? yup. You pick up models by the handfuls... Kind of like playing ork infantry (T3 5+ armor save sucks). The brood brothers as part of the list do not get orders or tank commanders, so if you want the good part of guard (who are also struggling right now) you have to bring an allied detachment. The shooting is pretty garbage outside of ridgerunners with Alphus support. Genestealers are just absolutely terrible, even worse than in Tyranids and do not benefit from any of the cult traits so are not even worth putting on the table. Abberrants are priced as TERMINATORS however have no invul, a 5+ armor save and FNP and only two wounds. They even have less attacks with worse weapons. One of the most criminally overcosted units in the game right now. Their core decent unit is acolytes (which still die like flies) who are 5 models for $60. You need a lot of them. My GSC army cost me about a grand.

Okay so all that out of the way. The models are fantastic. Simply the coolest infantry models around. They are full of cool details and every model in the army is cool. Their (admittedly terrible) Goliaths have giant mining blades on the front of the bulldozer that plows into people. How cool is that?

You also get to play tricks that no one else does. Not even Harlequins are this tricksy. You get to pop up, redeploy, go back underground, move your deployment around, charge out of nowhere, bring back troops from the dead, etc. etc. etc. The psychic powers are all around mind tricks, buffs and messing up your opponent's units. You can play the secondary and primary game like no one else. Sure you cannot survive literally anything (primaris bolters will strike terror into you) but if you can master this army's playstyle (the learning curve is STEEP) you can play the mission like nothing else.

The changes to bring it down and abhor the witch are going to help this army a bit (ridgerunners are good but literally die to heavy bolters in seconds). However the biggest change has to be scoring secondaries at the end of turn 5 if you're going second. This army actually wants to go second, but the biggest punishment of that is turn five scoring is incredibly hard.

This is not an easy army to play. You have to plan turns ahead at all times. You have to be willing to literally lose everything. There will be games where you lose two units to kill one, other games where you can trade up, and others where you literally don't kill anything at all.

I own 20 abberrants. If you're starting GSC do not buy any until they're fixed. 10 point drop and an additional attack would be my suggestion to even have them worth putting on the table. That plus T5 would be actually a good unit. Right now Acolytes do more damage, are a fifth of the points and are more survivable due to greater numbers of wounds per point. Multiple detachments aren't a fantastic idea unless you're trying to stuff in some more characters (or a guard battalion) as this is one of the most CP hungry armies in the game. Do NOT put in any genestealers. You will regret it every time. Don't let the name of the army fool you. 

This is playing on hard mode. If you want a cool looking army that plays like nothing else, and you are okay with losing a lot, and you have a fairly decent disposable income, then go for it. Just know what you're going into from the start.

[Frosty the Pirate]

Honestly, having read that. I'm actually _more_ convinced the army will play the way I'm looking for.

I've kinda gotten tired of the Eldar way of "all our soldiers lives are precious and we must strive to have as few casualties as possible" over the years, and I really kinda want an army again (like I had with my Guard) where I can throw my troops into the grinder and 100% expect them to die for the cause/tactic/strategy. Tricksy play is something I'm no stranger to, years of playing Eldar have prepared me to join the cult it seems.

Abberants are something I was hoping to include a unit of, simply cus of the coolness factor of their looks, but yeah, hopefully they will become better. It seems they got a _slight_ points break in the update yesterday, through by what you're describing it's no where close to enough to make them good.

Here's kind of the idea in my head drawn out roughly: (I threw it in Battle scribe and this is around 1700 points)

GSC Detachment:

Some sort of big punch hero dude, probably an Abominant or Patriarch or maybe both
Assassin of some kind (thinking maybe Kelermorph with the Dagger of Swift Sacrifice)
Small unit of Abberants
A unit of Acolytes for follow up to perfect ambush
Some Brood Brothers Troops, maybe 2-3 units, with Cult Chimeras or Goliath Trucks
A Ridgerunner or two with HML

Brood Brothers Detachment:

Tank Commander with Punisher Gattling
Tank Commander with Demolisher
Large "meat shield" Conscripts (Cus things exist that are more of a meat shield than usual GSC units... ha!)
Hellhound (Mandatory. Freaking love the idea of an insane GSC cultist rolling up in this thing and exploding himself)
Earthshaker Gun Carriage or maybe a Wyvern instead

[raceygaming]

I know that due to some of the frustration of how they are playing right now I have seen a number of 2nd hand lots on facebook market place when looking for some ork buggies.

If you are serious about them, that might be a good place to grab a base army and then flush it out with nexus's help.

[Jack Shrapnel]

Best of the GSC

HQ: Patriarch, Magus, Alphus

Troops: Acolytes all day. They are the best unit in the entire codex. Rocksaws are the only choice for heavy weapons. Include hand flamers if you can. An icon on any unit above 5 models is a good investment for the rerolls.

Fast: ridgerunners (mining lasers only), jackals

Elite: Kelermorph, clamvus, sanctus is great against some armies (but useless against Tau/necrons/non-psykers)

Heavy: brood brothers mortar squads

literally everything else you take because you think it's cool, but you realize it won't do a lot.

For your guard part: Demonolishers got cheaper so that's a thing. Tank commanders are okay. Conscripts are garbage (your brood brothers can screen the tanks). Hellhounds are cool. Wyverns are excellent.

Remember, guard are not what they used to be. if you're doing the gsc / guard combo you need something to flip objectives. Acolytes can do this. Pretty much nothing else in your list of wants can do it. Gunlines don't really work in 9th (just ask a tau player!), you MUST flip primary objectives to succeed - especially with GSC.

Also the start collecting box for GSC is full of everything you need. Buy alot of these. Also if you can find the tooth and claw boxset somewhere (since you collect wolves anyway). 

I cannot stress enough though that Nexus does need our support right now. If we want to have a place to play this game when lockdown is over we do need to keep the doors open by buying from our FLGS!

[Frosty the Pirate]

I'll do a little reading and see if I can find a battle report of a GSC game in 9th to start me off on how to use Acolytes for objective flipping then.

I'll also make sure to order a start collecting box through nexus when I'm ready to get started before they disappear for combat patrol boxes

[Jack Shrapnel]

Tabletop Titans has some great GSC batreps in 9th and a good overview of the faction and how it plays in 9th from the summer (although the information is of course a bit dated). Their last report (vs. Guard no less) using GSC really, really highlights how poorly aberrants perform. Adrian of course did the "I'm bringing them because I have them and I like them" and realized he was essentially playing 300+ points down from his opponent lol

[Frosty the Pirate]

I had a view over the TTT review of GSC, and the 2nd style of list with GSC providing the punching and Brood Brothers providing the shooting is EXACTLY what I was envisioning. In fact their list template was basically exactly what I was looking for, with the only real difference being that I'm going to find a way to jam in a Hellhound instead of a 3rd tank Commander.

I'm getting a little too excited about this... I gotta stay negative.

[Jack Shrapnel]

lol... well I cannot recommend TTS enough for testing out lists BEFORE you actually buy them.

If you put together your ideal GSC list and want to test it out let me know, as I'm pretty familiar with the cult so can certainly help you get used to the army.

[Frosty the Pirate]

Jan 8, 2021 15:02:17 GMT -5 Jack Shrapnel said:

lol... well I cannot recommend TTS enough for testing out lists BEFORE you actually buy them.

If you put together your ideal GSC list and want to test it out let me know, as I'm pretty familiar with the cult so can certainly help you get used to the army.

If you are around this weekend and are able to use voice chat or similar I'd really appreciate advice or just chatting in general to get to better understand the codex.

I'd love to play a TTS game but I've never actually played on TTS yet, so I'd probably be really slow. But if you are willing to just mess around or maybe play a smaller point game just so I can try things out I'd 1000% be down.

[Jack Shrapnel]

TTS is fantastic... it's clunky at first when you get used to the controls but you're a computer guy, I can't see you having any difficulties with it.

I can walk you through a game so long as you have your army built on it! (you have to save your army first to load into games). Can do whatever point level you'd like.

I find with GSC it's almost better to walk through a game slowly using the models and discussing your options as you go, so you can see how it plays out rather than theory-hammer... which I'm of course game for as well lol, but you know, looking at what is most effective to learn.

Plus what I think is awesome you might be "meh" about and vice-versa... so at least there are a ton of options - it's certainly not a cookie-cutter list and the cult creeds change your army build a LOT.

[Frosty the Pirate]

Jan 8, 2021 16:06:30 GMT -5 Jack Shrapnel said:

TTS is fantastic... it's clunky at first when you get used to the controls but you're a computer guy, I can't see you having any difficulties with it.

I can walk you through a game so long as you have your army built on it! (you have to save your army first to load into games). Can do whatever point level you'd like.

I find with GSC it's almost better to walk through a game slowly using the models and discussing your options as you go, so you can see how it plays out rather than theory-hammer... which I'm of course game for as well lol, but you know, looking at what is most effective to learn.

Plus what I think is awesome you might be "meh" about and vice-versa... so at least there are a ton of options - it's certainly not a cookie-cutter list and the cult creeds change your army build a LOT.

I could do a game tomorrow, say 1000 points? I'll create the list on TTS and save the models/objects as a load file we can import.

I PM'ed you my STEAM information.

[voodoo]

I'm also considering a bad idea in the form of a Shadow Spectre/Harlie army. It's been knocking around in there for a LONG time, and clearly still is. I like the Shadow SPectre models, though I think they're kind of garbage on the field nowadays.

[Jack Shrapnel]

I will say (as a purveyor of MANY bad list ideas) there's something truly satisfying with painting an army and putting it together because you love the theme of it and you don't care one bit about competitiveness!

[question]

That pretty much explains my Harlies, GSC, and Imperial Knights.