Patriarch [8 PL, 165pts]: Familiar [10pts], Meditations in Shadow [1 PL, 15pts], Patriarch’s Claws, Power: Mass Hypnosis, Power: Might From Beyond, Power: Mutagenic Deviation You can set up this unit anywhere on the battlefield that is more than 6" away from any enemy models, but that unit is not eligible to declare a charge this turn. 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. That setup puts down lascannon shots and heavy stubber shots at a very competitive price with a lot of different options to buff them up. The key ones are: The Crouchling: A relic familiar for a Patriarch or Magus (side note – is this the only relic that can actually be killed?). Acts as a normal familiar, and lets the owner know an additional power and adds +1 to all their casts. This is really good – I, an Eldar player, would commit a not inconsiderable number of crimes to be allowed to give my Farseer one of these. Generally taken on a Patriarch to help with landing key psychic powers on an alpha turn, and very good there. A

EDIT: Noted Scotsman Innes Wilson has informed me that you “should all be rooting for Jaffre or Gaylard to win, you cowards” as it would “be hilarious if a non-American player won the ITC this year.” The RTT 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. Set up one model from that unit within 1" of the centre of that ambush marker, wholly within your deployment zone and more than 9" away from any enemy models. Then remove that ambush marker. The Genestealer Cults Codex felt like a blip on the radar when it came out. It had some interesting rules that were hurt by the sheer amount of bullet hell we see in the current 40k Meta. Still, the army in the right hands can be a rough monster to face.Hunters Instincts: During the first battle round, add 1 to your advance and charge rolls. Only being able to use this on turn one, when you can’t deep strike, makes it pretty terrible – the upshot is your opponent has to deploy an extra 2″ away on a turn where you don’t have much of your army on the board anyway. D+ The Cult’s Psyche – 1CP: Once per game pre-game, upgrade a Magus. They get +1 power use per turn, and +1 to their casts for each friendly psyker within 3″. You’re mostly looking at the first part here, and that is basically good – Magi are unusual in being one-cast psykers that know two powers, so they get a benefit from this straight away, avoiding the need to buy a familiar and being more consistent throughout the game. The boost to casts almost never comes up – most lists are on one or zero magi, Patriarchs are generally elsewhere on the board, and they often aren’t the same . Still worth using pretty much every game if you’ve brought a Magus though, and makes them a more attractive choice. B+ Cult live and die on their charges landing on crucial turns, so the +1 bonus to that coming out of deep strike is a much bigger deal than it might first appear. Any unit can set up underground, going into standard “Deep Strike”. This is capped by the Tactical Reserves rule as normal, so no more than half your units or points value can use it, though as we’ll see there’s a way around that. This kit is supplied in 89 plastic components and contains 4x 60mm oval bases and 1x 60mm round base.

For the first time since codex release in February last year we have changes for Genestealer Cults that weren’t just secondary related, and we even saw some changes there.

Jackal Alphus – Leader of the Pack

Cult Ambush’s ability to be reactive in deployment is exceptionally good in the missions, allowing GSC to adapt to going first or second on the fly. Use Scanner Decoys a lot. As a final thing to look at then, are any of the core secondaries ones that GSC are especially good at? I think three stand out (happily from three different categories) that they’re above average at achieving, and they’re definitely also an army that should look at mission secondaries. One thing to always look for on a table after the objectives are placed is whether any of them are within 3″ of a terrain feature – when that’s true, you can often use the Lurk in the Shadows stratagem to keep a unit safe while performing an Action.

If you do not have the first turn, you must reveal all of your ambush markers at the end of your opponents Movement phase. Units set up in ambush are considered to be set up on the battlefield (unless they are embarked within a TRANSPORT model that is set up in ambush), even though their models are not actually on the battlefield. Enemy models cannot be set up or moved within 9" of the centre of any of your ambush markers. Finally, he ignores cover – a nice to have against things like Librarians which might otherwise shrug off his shots once concealed. The psychic power is a powerful ability but it has a high WC and a hefty target restriction. It’s a good enough effect that you can’t write it off entirely, especially as you can get cast bonuses on a Patriarch, and against armies running INFANTRY hordes, or something like White Scars who depend on Advance manipulation to get their Centurions around, it could be worth a look. It could easily have been WC7 though, 8 was a bit mean.A 4AE detachment with Acolytes, giving me a deep strike threat and once per game A Plan Generations in the Making. Strategem 2 – Fight for the Anointed One! – 1CP: An Abominant can grant re-roll 1s to wound to an Aberrant unit. As previous, this is a good ability but won’t really see competitive play any more. C Prepared Ambush– 1CP: A unit of Neophyte Hybrids that set up on the battlefield this battle round makes their autoguns assault 2 instead of rapid fire 1. The ceiling here is wildly low, and even in perfect circumstances with a 20 model full squad (which you don’t take) this is adding 16 BS4+ autogun shots. This needed to give rapid fire 2 instead. C There are six of these and, terrifyingly, they all have plausible competitive applications. Part of the reason they’re good is that they tend to have one niche that they strongly reward, and for that reason (along with the general low price on models and ability to fill out detachments with Brood Brothers) it’s extremely common to the point of being near universal for tournament-level GSC armies to contain detachments from multiple cults. Even beyond that, it’s quite common for them to include at least one mixed detachment where a hodgepodge of characters is tagged appropriately to gain access to powerful relics or stratagems. Probably the most common configuration overall is for an army to contain two pure detachments and one mixed grab bag.