G-dubs is back with another reveal of the next Psychic Awakening book, this time: Genestealer Cults!
There is a canker that grows across the Imperium, rarely noticed until it’s too late – the Genestealer Cults. Now, with the release of The Greater Good, these insidious cells will have a range of new tools with which to overthrow their oppressors.
Cult Creeds
Feeling downtrodden? Crushed by the relentless yoke of the Imperial machine? Ever thought that joining a Genestealer Cult would solve all your problems but you’ve never managed to find the right one? Well, now you can start your own! The Greater Good lets you create your own Cult Creed by selecting any two rules from a comprehensive list.
Do you like the speed and manoeuvrability of Atalan Jackals but wish that they, and the Jackal Alphus, could move and still shoot at full efficiency? Then choose the Agile Outriders rule, which was originally only available to cultists from The Rusted Claw.
But what if you wanted to combine it with a way to make psychic powers more reliable? Well, add Unnatural Symbiosis to your Cult Creed and your psykers will be dishing out powers left, right and centre. As an added bonus, re-rolling those 1s will mean you’re less likely to suffer Perils of the Warp too. Truly a blessing from the Star Children!
Speaking of psychic powers…
Cult Psychic Powers
For those players who prefer to use one of the six best-known Genestealer Cults, you now have access to a new psychic power, which can be taken instead of generating one from the Broodmind discipline. Fans of the gene-splicing Twisted Helix can give their warriors an unnatural blessing with Mutagenic Deviation. Use this alongside your Purestrain Genestealers to easily cut through enemy infantry.
Psychic powers aren’t enough for a successful revolution though, you’ll also need some new tactics.
Stratagems
Before the release of Codex: Genestealer Cults last year, the followers of the Star Children had to resort to taking the blue denim trousers of their enemies as a legitimate tactic.* The Greater Good adds an array of new Stratagems to those found in the codex. Combine Prepared Ambush with a unit of 20 Neophyte Hybrids to unleash a hail of autogun fire on your enemies.
This is just one from a collection of Stratagems that will allow you to easily show the truth to any who would deny the divine nature of the Star Children.
The Greater Good is available for pre-order on Saturday, alongside a new Start Collecting! Genestealer Cults box and the Kelermorph, who is available on his own for the first time. In the meantime, learn just how insidious Genestealer Cults can be by reading the Black Library book Cult of the Spiral Dawn.
* Oh no, wait, that was the jeans stealer cults!
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
So 1 CP for Tau nets you average 7-8 extra hits with those juicy damage 3 damage Y’vahra weapons and probably five-ish dead Intercessors/Infiltrators (or 150+ points of Aberrants gone up in smoke) etc..
1 GSC CP nets you about 10 extra Str. 3 hits from a max squad of Neophytes without any upgrade weapons for perhaps 1 extra wound on an Intercessors (or one dead Firewarrior) if you also deepstrike that turn and stay out of Rapid Fire / Stealthy range.
Seems legit.
A dedicated Psykers cult is also great for an army that’s capped at two one-power-a-turn Psykers per detachment, ?
You’re assuming a lot of stuff about the Y’varha considering they just announced that the Forge World books were about to be rewritten.
Also, the Y’varha costs maybe a tad more points than the Neophytes do.
>two one-power-a-turn Psykers per detachment
Man, only six psychic powers per turn? Why even have a psychic phase at all if you’re only going to cast every single power on your core discipline every turn?
Sure the Y’vahra costs more. Which is in itself a reason the Strat should cost more, because all strats should probably scale in CP cost if they are played on larger/more powerful/more expensive units that take better advantage of them.
And sure, 6 powers (maybe 7 or 8 occasionally if you upgrade your T3, 4 wound Magus models completely to Primaris Librarian point-costs with some familiars). Maybe I missed the coming new meta list of mono-GSC with all 3 detachments running the re-roll 1s psychic cult. Your gonna average 2-3 powers + maybe 2 smites on good turns. Gonna be vicious ?
If you’re only succeeding with 50% (or fewer) if your psychic powers, that means… you’re casting WC8 or WC9 spells? That’s really impressive, I didn’t realize that GSC had six of those on their table.
As for strats and point costs and all of that- you’re not wrong, but that’s not how the game is right now. If you get mad about that, then there’s a billion other nitpicks you should have about every other strat in the game as well (“rerolling the armor save of a Guardsman is worse than rerolling the armor save of a Terminator!”) first before picking on this one example of how GW is so obviously biased against GSC.
I am not getting mad.
I just observed that from the same book, 1 Tau CP converts to roughly 12-13 MEQ wounds and 1 GSC CP converts to roughly a single MEQ wound (over and above the damage these armies do normally) “as the game is played right now”.
You were the one arguing it’s not so imbalanced because some possible future FW book may or may not change that, so I also started talking hypothetical wish-scenarios where things would be better.
And 4-5 successful powers out of 6 or even 7 wasn’t 50% when I was taught math, but admittedly it’s been a while ?
You’re comparing apples and oranges. Of course the two strats aren’t equivalent- they weren’t intended to be, and not all strats should be. Even setting aside the cost of the units involved (which, as I already said, is its own can of worms) there’s issues like the expected CP from running detachments that the respective factions would have, whether their focus is on shooting or on melee, and many other factors.
Are the two of them going to be on parity? No, probably not. Tau are in a stronger starting place and I wouldn’t be surprised if they stay well above GSC, but that’s not the same issue as what you’re complaining about at all.
>You were the one arguing it’s not so imbalanced because some possible future FW book may or may not change that,
No, I was pointing out that you are hinging your analysis of a single strat _entirely_ on one Forge World unit, a unit you don’t even know if it will have the same rules in a month or so. It’s not that I’m posing hypotheticals, I’m saying that you’re working off of bad data.
>And 4-5 successful powers out of 6 or even 7 wasn’t 50% when I was taught math, but admittedly it’s been a while
You might wanna reread your own post there, chuckles. You said 2-3 out of six.
I said 2-3 of the normal powers plus 2 smites (which would be easier to cast).
Adds up to 4-5 in my old-school math.
Honestly, that psychic trait for GSC makes me feel like they’re fooling me. A couple months ago we had a horrible custom psychic trait for ‘nids, that could have been useful* for a GSC creed. Now, GSC get a horrible psychic trait for them, that could have been useful* in a psychic focused hive fleet.
*: Not great, not good, just useful.
It was really necessary?
Lets not forget it only effects 3 max psykers as Patriarch don’t have and won’t benefit from this
Maybe they’ll upgrade purestrains and patriarchs to finally get the keyword… I mean, doesn’t the “genetic enhancement” of the hybrids originally come from the patriarch, and aren’t purestrains birthed as the 4th or 5th generation?
(I know it won’t happen.)
I think this gsc stuff is by far the worst preview any army has had since PA started. It is safe to say all gsc players should be extremely worried at this point about the rest of the stuff. Thanks GW, chapter approved dropped our heath bar, PA will be our « Fatality » (for those old enough to have known Mortal Kombat video game# hah hah)
To be fair, I thought the same when the first pa previews for Tyranids were dropped, but in the end there was some useful stuff in bob.
There’s still a lot of stuff to see before rushing into conclussions. Most of it will probably be crappy, but I’m sure we will get a couple of new neat tricks.
Anyway, the Helix power is fairly good. That’s a start.
Twisted Helix psychic power is awesome. +1 to wound is one of the best buffs in the game. The fact that you can stack this with the Vigilus detachment +1 is crazy; turn those 5+ to wound into 3+ to wounds! Forget about taking Power Sledgehammers; just go Power Pick with no worry! That’s quite good.
But yeah, woof… that stratagem preview. Not going to lie, I think it’s the worst stratagem ever printed. To be worth it, you need to be in a situation where a unit showing up needs to be very spread out and NEEDS to be shooting more S3 shots with no AP value. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that situation come up. Need to be somewhere? Check. Need more S3 no AP shooting? Ummmm…. maybe once? Like on Turn 6? Needing these combo’d together? Nope. Not going to happen. Ever. I mean, you COULD use this, but I can’t imagine a situation where that’s actually going to be better than just, you know using your units better and using that CP for something worthwhile.
A stratagem preview should make you excited. This one makes me terrified that the book is going to be a really wet fart on the GSC army. Not saying it will; like I said, the Twisted Helix psychic power is good, but it really, really, really, really, really makes me worried. Who knows, maybe there’s be something else that makes Autoguns good… but I don’t think so.
The power looks ok, but it only works on enemy infantry, not vehicles, so most of the time you are going from a 3+ (thanks to Twisted Helix) to wound to a 2+. A nice bonus, but GSC really don’t have much trouble dealing with enemy infantry. If it worked on vehicles or monsters, I would be a bit more excited.