Last weekend my local store, Tables and Towers in Westminster, MD, hosted a 98 person charity event to raise money for Alzheimer’s research. The event was a massive success thanks to the organizer and TO JC, and thanks to Tables and Towers for being an amazing host. They even let people throw pies at other people in the store all in the name of charity! While the inaugural Battle to End Alzheimer’s was an amazing success as an event it was more of a mixed result for the success of my Genestealer Cults on the table. In last week’s article I explained the army I would be taking and my general plan for my games, but now that the even is over I have a complete run down of all five games I played with my GSC over the weekend.
Round 1: Death and Zeal
I was pumped when I paired into Black Templars Round 1. Not only was my opponent’s army beautiful on the table, but I knew we would have an awesome melee fight over the middle during this mission. Generally, I don’t like going first since jumping onto Objectives at the end of the game is a good way to score 12 on Primaries for Turn 5, but for this game I wasn’t too mad about getting the first turn. I made the most out of it by moving my 10 Genestealers with They Came From Below directly into a unit of 10 Templars. Thanks to their 5+ Invulnerable Save vow the 50 attacks from the Genestealers didn’t wipe the 10 Space Marines, but the Turn 1 charge really put my opponent on the back foot.
My opponent’s second turn saw his biggest melee punch hit me back, and he was able to knock me off all but one Objective. Unfortunately, Space Marines really don’t have the models to be able to throw most of their army into a Turn 2 assault while still keeping enough threats held back as a second wave. During Turn 2 my Abberants charged into the mid-board where they would live for the rest of the game. Hilariously, all of their attacks bounced off Helbrect for two straight turns, but my 20 Purestrains charging around them to take care of any supporting units Helbrect brought with him meant it was only a matter of time before the Chapter Master was hammered to death by my monstrous bio-horrors.
My opponent took Stranglehold which he only scored during his one turn of pushing onto the middle Objective and Oaths of Moment scored him the full 15 (such a good Secondary). The third Secondary for my opponent was Raise Banners, and, through Cult trickery, I was able to pull down Banners throughout the game to hold him to a 7 for this Secondary.
Since the fight in the middle was won by the GSC after Turn 2 I was able to max my Primary score. I also took Stranglehold, and was able to score 15 by holding the middle Objective the entire game.
This game felt extremely fun since it boiled down to a haymaker knockout melee scrum in the middle of the table. 30 Genestealers and 10 Abberants is a tough opponent for a game like this where the Black Templar’s only option is to charge right back at the best melee the Cult has to offer.
Score 90-69
Round 2: Data Scry-Salvage
My reward for scoring 90 points in Round 1 was to match into Custodes Round 2. My opponent’s army was a solid Shadowkeepers list with 3×3 Custodian Guard, 3×3 Bikes, Trajann and some Dreadnoughts. My opponent let me know before the game he had never played against GSC before, and I think I really played this to my advantage during the game. When he looked at my list he saw 30 Genestealers who he assumed would come rushing into his lines. Most games he would be correct, but I have seen how little Purestrains do charging into Custodes. I knew that if I tried to play the game of melee trading I would not be coming out of this game with a win.
I was extremely lucky for this particular mission there was no real need to interact with my opponent to win this game. I choose Secondaries like Pierce The Veil, Broodswarm and Deploy Teleport Homers so none of my Secondary points involved dealing with my opponent’s army. My opponent deployed the majority of his army along the back board edge since he assumed I would be running directly at him.
After I spend my third turn just dropping the rest of my reserves to score Broodswarm and Teleport Homers my opponent asked me if I would be moving any of my Genestealers in his general direction during the game. I informed him that my Genestealers were perfectly happy scoring points on my side of the table.
To my opponent’s credit once he realized my plan to score points by not interacting with his army he did an excellent job at recovering. He took To The Last, Raise Banners and Assassination. When my plan was made clear, I explained he would be getting 15s on To The Last and Banners, but he would be scoring a zero on Assassination while we scored the same on the Primary. From Turn 3 on my opponent screened his entire deployment zone, while pressuring my Objective closest to his army, so I only scored 8 on Teleport Homers. During Turn 5 he managed to completely knock me off the Objective I had been holding the entire game with my Genestealers.
This game ended in an 82-82 tie. If my opponent did anything else other than screen his backfield, cover Objectives so I could not drop a unit onto them to steal it and force me off one Objective by Turn 5 he looses this game. Sometimes the obvious answer of charging the Genestealers into your opponent’s army is not the right call. This lesson will be immediately forgotten by Round 4.
Round 3: Abandoned Sanctuaries
For my Round 3 match up I played into a Howling Griffons player (look at those paint jobs!) I had played a couple times during tournaments in the past. While my last Round game was where I came up with the best plan to win a tough match up, this game was my favorite of the tournament. My opponent selected Oaths of Moment, RND and Warp Ritual as his Secondaries. I will admit I looked at Warp Ritual as a huge mistake in this game since the Marine list was rocking a single Psyker! After revealing my Secondaries were RND, Stranglehold and Psychic Interrogation I felt pretty confident as I took the first turn in this game.
The game that followed was an absolute slug fest of 40k with my Genestealers throwing themselves into my opponent’s three Redemptors while my Abberants cleaned up Vanguard Vets and other units trying to come hold the center. My biggest mistake in this game came in Round 3 when my opponent was pushing the center Objective leaving one mid-table Objective completely unclaimed. I foolishly thought I could park 10 Acolytes on the Objective and sneak into 12 Primary points during my next Command Phase. At this point of the game the middle Objective was hotly contested, so I had hoped the 10 Acolytes would survive any extra Bolter fire my opponent could spare. I forgot one key flaw in this plan though….I play GSC, and Bolters are real good at killing Acolytes.
Even after my sloppy attempt to swing the Primary score in my favor during my last turn I managed to score a few more points by getting my last 4 RND points and claiming 8 Primary points. I did some quick math and let my opponent know he would either win by 3 or lose by 1. The game depended on his single Psyker, who he had been extremely conservative with during the game, casting Warp Ritual for the second time that game. Through some timely Xenoprophet wound passing off, my Patriarch was still alive to attempt a deny, so I felt pretty good about my chances. My opponent rolled a 6 to cast Warp Ritual but burned his last CP to re-roll into an 8. My Patriarch tried to deny, but also rolled an 8. In what was the single most tense roll of the tournament I lost an extremely close game that I had an absolute blast playing.
Score: 85-82
Round 4: Recover The Relics
After my Round 4 game I felt just about as dumb as I have ever felt during a 40k tournament. My opponent was playing a mixed Nurgle Daemons/Death Guard list which was centered around a Great Unclean One, some Possessed and a unit of 3 Blighthaulers. One single strategy mistake really lost this game for me, but I also made a couple other minor mistakes along the way.
First, 30 Genestealers were going to do roughly nothing offensively in this game. Wounding most enemy units on 5’s that have a 5+ Invulnerable Save is not the path to success for Genestealers. Why in the world I charged all of them into my opponent’s line after he moved forward on his Turn 1 is beyond me. They did basically nothing, and a whole lot of Genestealers died due to my hubris. Those Genestealers were always going to die in this game, but it would have served me much better to have them die during my opponent’s turn, while they move blocked his entire army from Objectives for a Turn or two, instead of getting slaughtered during my own Turn.
My second big mistake in this game came in the form of target priority. On my opponent’s backfield Objectives were just 10 Poxwalkers with a Character and some Nurglings. The correct choice would have been to use my Hand Flamer Acolytes to remove the Poxwalkers from the table while my Metamorphs used their 3d6 pick the highest charge to get their massed amount of close combat attacks to take care of the Nurglings. Doing the complete opposite opened up the option for my opponent to interrupt combat with his Poxwalkers and use their exploding Mortal Wound Stratagem on the Metamorphs. That Metamorph charge did was blunted completely, and my Hand Flamer killed all but one base of Nurglings.
Sometimes I play smart, but this was not one of those games. My opponent did exactly what he needed to do to capitalize on my mistakes as well. Throwing his Daemon Prince that ignored up to AP2 into my Abberants ensured they were stuck in a 3 turn slap fight, and his Bloat Drones became like seeker missiles killing my Characters later in the game.
Score: 79-65
Round 5: The Scouring
Round 5 I paired into an Astra Militarum player who I had actually played during the last round of the February RTT at Tables and Towers. That last game was extremely close with me winning by a small margin due to having bottom of turn and hoping on more Objectives at the very end of the game. Unfortunately for my opponent this event was using player placed terrain which allowed me to have one completely line of sight blocking ruin overlapping the Objective in the center of the table. This ruin would be my armies staging ground for a five turn hide and seek game the Astra Militarum never wanted to play.
Every turn my opponent would throw Guardsmen onto the middle Objective to score Stranglehold while I charged in a unit of Genestealers to wipe the Objective clear. After killing the Guard units in the middle of the table my Genestealers were able to go back into Reserves using the Return To The Shadows Stratagem. This effectively turned the battle into a game of wack-a-mole my opponent could not win. While his Leman Russ Tank Commanders, Manticores and Wyvern had plenty of targets they could just not handle the number of units that popped up around the board. The units that did get through the gunline stole Primary Objectives, blocked my opponent’s RND scoring and took out all of his Objective Secured units who could score points.
This game ended with me dropping just the 3 points from scoring 12 on RND while my opponent racked up 72 points by scoring 15 No Prisoner points and a respectable 34 Primary points.
2 wins, a tie and 2 losses fell just short of my 3-2 goal, but all of my games were very close. I scored a ton of battle points during the event racking up a score of 416! While it is obvious that I dodged some very tough match ups in Harlequins and Tau I learned a ton about playing GSC over the weekend. Most importantly, this was an excellently run event that I had a blast attending, and the event managed to raise just under 15,000 dollars for Alzheimer’s research! My friend JC did an amazing job putting this event together, and Tables and Towers was an awesome host for the 98 person event. I can’t wait to see how this event grows in the future, and I am sure I’ll be there with my GSC.
