If you have read any of my previous articles you know I have mainly been playing Necrons at tournaments this ITC season.
They were getting a little stale for me, but thankfully GW put out their balancing patch which gave a ton of Necrons the Core keyword allowing for combos/buffs that were impossible to pull off with the Necrons in the past. You would think this got me excited to play the army I have been scrambling for ITC points all season with, but with the announcement of the new Genestealer Cults Codex (even with its delay into early 2022) I really wanted to get back to my favorite army in 40k.
GSC has always been my favorite army, but I just did not think they were competitively viable. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a top table player by any means with my Necrons, but at least playing Necrons doesn’t feel like you have the defensive capabilities of little porcelain dolls that made their way onto the tabletop. However, with the announcement of the new GSC Codex I started to look into what people were currently taking who were crazy enough to play GSC competitively. This led me to building the list I would take to the December RTT at Tables and Towers in Westminster, MD. A Pauper Princes Battalion along with a Patrol of the GSC custom traits that gives ignoring the penalty to moving and firing mining weapons as well as a full re-roll to hit with those weapons. A bunch of Acolytes with Rock Cutters and all these Mining Lasers (6d3 from Ridgerunners and 8 from the Neophytes on foot!) can’t be terrible….can it?
Game 1 Against Death Guard:
My first opponent was playing Death Guard with a bunch of Poxwalkers, 15(ish) Blightlord Terminators, 2 Vulkite Contemptors, some characters and a Plague Burst Crawler. The mission was Retrieval, so I felt good about sitting on my side of the board shooting my opponent’s army with Ridgerunners and Goliath Trucks until his slower army could get to me. For Secondaries I took ROD, Engage and To The Last (Patriarch and both Ridgerunner Squads) while he took Stranglehold, Grind Down and Spread the Sickness.
The first 3 turns went exactly to plan. I fed my opponent 10 man units of Acolytes as road bumps for his slow army while denying him Stranglehold all but 2 turns of the game. His Contemptors did get to shot my Riderunners once, knocking one unit down to a single vehicle, but with their superior speed they were able to avoid any other serious hurt for most of the game.
Unfortunately for my GSC the Death Guard managed to make it over to the opposite side of the table around Turn 4. I was losing units quickly (as a GSC army does), but I was not too worried until a couple of things took place. First, a unit of Acolytes I brought in from Ambush failed a charge (thanks to a very smart Stratagem play by my opponent to make their charge longer after the Acolytes moved closer) that would have tied up his PBC for the rest of the game. This ended up being huge in taking away 10 of my To the Last Points as the PBC would kill the Patriarch and the last Ridgerunner of a squad on Turn 5! Second, my opponent started to ignore one side of the table to sweep me completely off one of my Objectives. This would turn out to be huge for Spread the Sickness and the Primary score with him going second.
This game ended in an 85-77 loss for the GSC with my opponent noting, “the games where you are ahead the whole time and then lose are tough”. Facts. Even with a loss I still had a great game, with a really great opponent, and feel like if I could have just tied up that PBC (or, ok, protected my Patriarch like a smart 40k player instead of going on a rampage with him) the game could have swung my way.
Game 2 Against Dark Angels:
For the second round I was paired into a Dark Angels list that was mainly Ravenwing bikes, Deathwing Terminators and some Talonmasters. This army did not have a lot of Objective Secured (my opponent mentioned before we started it was just the bikes), so I felt pretty good going into the game I could win on scoring Objectives as long as my opponent didn’t table me too quickly. My opponent rolled to take the first turn in this game and……
He moved his Talonmasters and some other things directly into the center of the table onto the Objectives (this round was Surround and Destroy). While I could not shoot the Talonmasters, since they were being bodyguarded by some elite Terminators, I had plenty of movement to charge them with Acolytes who could advance and charge out of Goliath Trucks. With the Stratagems to manipulate blips I even could move blips into the perfect position to make those charges easier.
Unfortunately for my opponent I do not think he respected the melee punch of the GSC enough during the Turn 1 movement. During my turn I managed to remove a good portion of my opponents firepower through Ridgerunner shooting, and my Acolytes charged onto the middle objectives. I killed a unit or two in melee, but I actually didn’t kill a Talonmaster. With some terrible rolling I managed to knock him down to a single wound.
My opponent was reeling after my Turn 1 melee punch, but his Turn 2 was very effective. Bolters are pretty good at killing T3 5+ save Acolytes it turns out, and he had a bunch of bolters. “Oh you hit really hard, but your dudes die really fast”. Yup.
My Turn 2 in this game was my favorite moment of the tournament. My opponent had taken Stubborn Defiance on one of his back Objectives. He had done a good job screening it out so I could not use Lying in Wait to simply place ObSec models on the Objective, but he only had 5 bikes sitting on the Objective at the start of the turn. They were well hidden in a ruin, but if everything went right I could take his Stubborn Defiance Objective away early….
The Ridgerunners used their 14 inch move to get around the side of the ruin the bikes were hiding in while a unit of hand flamers used Lying in Wait to deploy 3in away from the 5 bikes (not on the Objective but behind the ruin). All of this shooting took the bikes down to 2 models. A charge from an Acolyte squad, that wiped out a unit of Attack Bikes, allowed me to Consolidate more ObSec models onto my opponents objective taking away any more Stubborn Defiance points for the game.
This one ended up in a 91-68 victory for the GSC in a game that probably doesn’t play out the same if we play it twice.
Game 3 Against White Scars:
White Scars are generally not a great matchup for GSC (ok, nothing is, but White Scars are faster and stuff). The mission was Overrun, a hold 2 mission, so I knew denying my opponent Primary points with Lying in Wait was going to be a big deal in this game. He was running attack bikes, 2 Vulkite Contemptors, and some Vanguard Veterans as the main part of his army.
This game turned out to be a much more cagey game then my previous two. My opponent understood the damage I could do in close combat and we traded shooting for the first couple turns. I was totally ok with this slower paced game as my opponent had taken Bring It Down and No Prisoners, so the longer I could keep things inside of trucks and hidden the better.
I had the first turn, and I was happy to see both Vulkite Dreadnoughts were visible to my Ridgerunners (well, they would be after their 14 inch move). Spending 4 CP to buff their Mining Lasers, Heavy Stubbers, and to re-roll a damage dice managed to do A SINGLE WOUND to one of the Contemptors. My opponent would heal that wound with his Techmarine during his turn…..
While the game was close fought throughout with my denying primary points using Lying in Wait, it came down to a couple key mistakes made by me to cost me this game. I took Psychic Interrogation as my third Secondary to which my opponent (smartly) said, “I’m going to hide these Characters back here all game”. This required me to use CP to get my Magus into position to cast Psychic Interrogation twice (once using a CP re-roll also). Spending those 3 CP meant I did not have enough to put a unit of Neophytes back into Reserves later in the game to get my 4th ROD.
The game ended with a 74-71 loss for the GSC. I played an extremely cagey game keeping my army alive, denying points when I could, but frivolously spending CP (along with being too aggressive with my Patriarch) cost me this game.
There are going to be games like this during every tournament where you wish you could have one of decisions back and make a different move, but these are the games you can learn the most from.
Overall:
I finished 18th out of 32 players which I felt was pretty good considering I was playing the worst army in the game. If I had more practice with the GSC I feel like I could have pulled out another win, but I’ll be honest and say I avoided the tough matchups for my army. The reality is as soon as GSC see Admech, or another army who can shoot better while still trading on objectives, they are in huge trouble.
I will say the army is still a blast to play, and my opponents all thought it was awesome to play against a non-standard meta army. Here’s hoping the Codex comes quickly so I can get back out there with my followers of the Four Armed Emperor.
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