Games Workshop - Warhammer 40,000 - Genestealer Cults Jackal Alphus

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Wings here. I have been asked to take the wheel and come up with a starter list recommendation that tries as hard as possible not to be completely unreasonable to buy into – we can understand that the advice of buy six start collecting boxes might sound a little extreme. In addition, Genestealer Cults currently lean very hard into 8th’s version of army construction for successful lists, and it’s likely 9th is going to change them a lot, so going all-in on what’s currently good might not work out. I’m happy that what I’ve put together below should remain a decent foundation going forward – all the stuff you end up with is good. I’m afraid I am still going to ask you to buy three start collectings, but Kevin assures me that three is a smaller number than six, and in this case that’s better. Hyper-Metabolism – 1CP: Use at the start of your movement phase to heal a character for D3. Your characters are fragile enough that they’re usually in a binary state of “alive” or “extremely dead”. Occasionally fringe relevant if you’ve taken a perils on a Magus, or a Patriarch has clung to live, but not usually worth it. This used to be slightly weaker than the Broodsurge, but still seen in a lot of lists. With the Aberrant nerf, this has basically vanished. If you’re still using them then by all means take it, but for most people this is on the bench until they get a buff. Psychic Powers

Focus of Adoration: Infantry or Biker units within 6″ can heroic. Potentially a very nasty surprise, and can give a lot of mobility to move your units around at a surprising time. Doesn’t see a tonne of use though. C+ Cult Creed – Cyborgised Hybrids: Models with this creed have a 6+ invulnerable save, or improve an existing invulnerable save by one. INFANTRY also ignore the move/shoot penalty for heavy weapons. The list uses a large number of hand flamer acolytes with a Patriarch in a Broodsurge, with the combo as follows The units able to exploit this rule best are BATTLELINE, but all the infantry and biker units in here are able to regenerate in this fashion on a 4+. Your vehicles and characters may fall permanently, but an endless swarm of minions is now at your disposal. Units also don’t leave ambush just because your opponent manages to tidy up all your markers on a given turn, so if you lose a high-value unit early and manages to get rid of the marker that was placed the first time, you can spring it on them later on during a turn where enough markers get placed that they can’t clear them all. Stoic and inhumanly patient, the Locus can go from sombre stillness to a blur of motion in an eye-blink. This sudden eruption of violence is as startling as it is deadly. Like a Lictor jumping from the shadows, the Locus makes a lightning-fast decapitating strike, their twin sabres flashing through the fog of battle to take the head of their foe.The only massive outlier is the Primus – unfortunately the fact that his equipment previously cost 3 ends up disastrous for him, because his base cost is increased to 80 and then 2pts added to the sword as well, for a total increase of 10pts on a unit that could comfortably have only gotten 5. He retains a powerful aura effect, but might see a slight drop in utilisation because of it.

GSC have an incredibly deep generic stratagem sheet, and the headache-inducing number of different ways this allows them to mess with their opponents has always been a big part of their strength, especially as two or three battalion lists are the norm, so they have plenty of points to spend. A few additional relevant options have turned up in TGG, but the main list is still definitely the focus, especially the various ways to manipulate cult ambush. Codex However, it’s the addition of various additional effects and stratagems that make this even more potent. The most important of these is They Came From Below. For one CP, just before you reveal an ambush marker, you can remove three markers from the board, and move three of your units underground, to deep strike on turns 2 or 3 as normal. This is great, because:Endless Hordes –GSC already played a grindy, horde based game in 9th, but the regeneration of units takes this up to 11. Outlasting your opponent via attrition and catching them out late game via careful deployment of ambush tokens will be huge this edition. To manifest the psychic power, you must first pass a Psychic test. The opposing player can then select one of their PSYKER units that is within 24" of the PSYKER unit attempting to manifest the power and attempt to deny that power before its effects are resolved by passing a Deny the Witch test. The Pauper Princes are probably the weakest cult, now that Hivecult is on the up, but when compiling the original version of this I found a list that used them on 40kstats, so in they went. Something that I can move onto mid-board objectives turn 1 going first that’s non-trivial to remove.

Unnatural Symbiosis: If a CULT psyker within 6″ of another CULT unit takes a psychic test you can re-roll 1s. Remembering that Gene-Sect is a rule and that Patriarchs don’t get Creeds, you can have at most one model per detachment of this you take who gets any benefit at all, and it’s an incredibly mild boost. F More or less, what I expected though. Seems like our codex has been streamlined significantly, but still have access to some jank. All units have the BROOD BROTHERS tag instead of a regiment keyword (or MILITARUM TEMPESTUS). This gives them +1Ld and the Unquestioning Loyalty ability as their regimental trait.

Atalan Jackals – The Eyes of the Cult

Hybrid Metamorphs fight on death on a 3+, and their mutations have gone to strength 5 ap 1 damage 2. They also gain a scout move. Flexible and well suited to causing headaches for the opponent as they scrap for objectives. They too can load up on hand flamers for free. Any unit can choose to deploy in Ambush. Rather than deploying a unit on the board, you instead place an ambush marker down in your deployment zone. This doesn’t count as deploying in tactical reserves, so any number of your units can do so (and generally, all of them should). Finally, Neophytes. One extra point a model here is good too, though there are some side-grades in their equipment. All the special weapons, along with heavy stubbers get rounded up to 5pts, which is bad and probably means most of them aren’t worth it. However, the mining laser and seismic cannon both go down two points to 10, which is good. Realistically, the mining laser is still king here – take it and enjoy it. While you do thus end up with a slight downgrade in the output of the squads without the nearly-free webbers on top, that means 10-model units of these with lasers only climbs up to 80pts instead of 74pts, which is extremely below rate and means there probably is still an angle on Bladed Cog lists flooding parts of the board with them. Elites