40K: GW’s Tips For Dealing With Genestealer Cults
The Genestealer Cults are making waves and causing problems for people. Need help dealing with them? Games Workshop has some tips.
Normally when I’m having trouble dealing with an army I go and talk to some of my tournament ringer friends. Well it seems Game Workshop has beat them to the punch this time. GW has some pretty solid tips on how to deal with the insidious threat that the Genestealer Cults bring to the table.
They do a pretty fair job of listing the strengths of the army and then how to counter those with some good tactics and planning. Here are the 4 ideas they cover:
via Games Workshop (GW Webstore Team)
“Stick Together! – Isolated units are vulnerable, and even lone Imperial Knights are going to have a hard time against certain units that the Cult can field.”
“Where Did They Go? – The first principle is to always finish off your targets. The second part is that Return to the Shadows rule doesn’t work if your models are too close to the cultists, so get stuck in.”
“Who’s In Charge Around Here? – Genestealer Cult HQ choices are often the linchpins of the army. [The solution] …the leaders of the Cult are no more difficult to kill than a tough human, so just shoot them with enough guns, and they’ll go down. ”
“Flying High – [The Genestealer Cults] have virtually no ability at all to deal with Flying units, making them largely immune to the vast majority of evils a Genestealer Cult can inflict.”
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These are all very good tips for dealing with the Genestealer Cults. You want to learn more about fighting them you can read the full breakdown HERE. But I wanted to go back and touch on the reasons why these tips work.
Stick Together!
As the article says “Isolated units are vulnerable” and it’s never been more true that when you’re fighting against the Genestealer Cult. Their ability to pop-up close to where they are needed is both frustrating and deadly. Most of the units that want to get into assault with you are only going to want to get into a fight they can win and then slip away the following turn. If you can force them to stay dug-in that will prevent them from getting away to re-coup some losses. You can only get there in time if your units are nearby.
You can even use this to try and bait the Cults into committing to an unfavorable attack. Maybe the player might be too tempted to go after the easy kill exposing one or more of their units to return fire. If you want to beat the Cults you have to think like one!
Where Did They Go?
This one was a two part lesson. Always finish off your targets! Show a unit of Cultist no mercy because they are like roaches – if you don’t wipe them out entirely they will come back. Think about it – if you take a unit of cultists down to a single model, that one model can use their ability to leave the table and return with D6 buddies. That 1 last wound just became 7 wounds. Say you had another unit that was in range of the single model or another unit. Are you going to wipe out the single model or are you going to cause wounds to the other unit?
Let’s say you opted to fire at the other unit you do some damage to them but you don’t wipe out that second unit. What happens next round? Both units leave the table and eventually come back with friends. Congratulations, you’ve still got 2 units to deal with and all that hard work you did just got undone.
Who’s In Charge Around Here?
The Genestealer Cult HQ units are very important to the cult. They toss out lots of benefits and make even their basic units dangerous to deal with. There is only one option – Kill them! Most of the HQ units aren’t particularly tough – their armor isn’t particularly impressive and they typically don’t have that high of a toughness. Overwhelming fire is probably your best bet. Pouring shots into the HQs or units containing HQs is the way to go – and remember what we said above: Finish the unit!
The article does note one exception: The Patriarch. Look, the Patriarch is deadly – there are no two ways about it. With the right load-out he’s as deadly as he is resilient. He’s probably going to make it into combat and the results are going to be bad. I think GW has some bleak yet solid advice: “Be prepared to take casualties, then blast it to bits.”
Flying High
I think this is probably one of the biggest weakness of the Genestealer Cults, right up there with their paper-thin armor. They have very little Anti-Air capabilities. If you have a lone flyer it will be able to rain down death and destruction all over the place. If you have a flying transport, you’re in a good spot to be able to rapidly re-deploy your units to go Cult hunting. If you’re a Heldrake, well, you’re going to have a field day.
Oh and one last thing. Games Workshop also has some recommended Units and Weapons to deal with the Genestealer Cults. I must say, I don’t disagree:
Choice Units and Weapons:
Units: Hellhounds, Leman Russ Eradicators, Hive Crones, Soul Grinders, Grotesques, Imperial Assassins, Stormravens, Furioso Dreadnoughts Heldrakes and Wulfen.
Weapons: Flamers, Frag Cannons, Thunderfire Cannons, D-Scythes, Bolters.
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Well except for the Grotesques…Not that I think they can’t deal with the Genestealer Cult, I just think that the Dark Eldar have lots of better options to take.
What do you think about Games Workshop’s tips for dealing with the Genestealer Cults? Do you have any other tricks you’ve learned when fighting them?
