JStove is back with another Necromunda breakdown. This time he’s going over the pros and cons of the recently revealed Genestealer Cults to see if they are worth it.
JStove here, and today I’m continuing my series of articles about the gangs of Necromunda, and whether or not a single box of miniatures has enough value to equip a proper campaign-ready gang for Necromunda.
So far, we’ve covered Goliath, Escher, and Orlock. You can click back through the archive to find these articles, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll post the spoilers right here.
Goliath– Thumbs Down. Not enough cheap and simple weapons on sprue to equip the whole gang effectively.
Escher– Thumbs Up. Effective weapon options, plenty of pistols and discount lasguns.
Orlock– Two Thumbs Up. The best box on the market, piles of autoguns, combat shotguns, heavy weapons, more pistols than you’ll ever need.
Once again, our goal here is to determine if we can craft a good gang out of one box of models. Since the Genestealer Cult has the Hybrid Neophyte box from 40k, we’ll be using that as a base.
Necromunda GSC First Impressions
There’s a lot to take in, so far, this is the most divergent gang from the houses on paper. However, like a lot of the goofy Goliath and Escher weapons that are either massively expensive, questionably useful, or both, the Cult looks like it has a lot of options that are either too much money or just don’t get the job done.
-GSC is theoretically the cheapest gang in the game. Since you only need a copy of White Dwarf to get your roster list instead of a Gang War, GSC is currently the cheapest gang in the game, assuming you opt to go in and out with one box of models.
-GSC has access to Aberrants, the first of the ‘big dumb brute’ models added to Necromunda. Unfortunately, Aberrants are only available in the Deathwatch boxed game, which means that you either need to pay too much money just to get them, or you have to snipe auctions on Ebay.
-GSC is currently the gang most capable of going melee-centric, if you equip them for it.
The Unique perks that are good
The first special trick that’s good available to the GSC is the Adept’s special ability. Instead of picking a normal skill, he MUST pick one off of the Adept ability list. The Familiars and the Hypnosis are questionably useful. Familiars give you more bodies to run interference for the Adept that activate for free on his activation. This can be clutch, but ultimately, other abilities are better.
Hypnosis is the one that looks powerful, but I think is a secret stinker. It allows the adept to force a willpower check on enemy models that are 9” away from him to force them to stop them from shooting or charging him. The problem with this ability is that it is very situational, and moreover, I’m not concerned by being shot by gangers or Juves with pistols or autoguns from 9” away, since they’ll probably be hitting on a 4+ under the BEST circumstances. The real problem is that any model that I really don’t want to get shot by at 9” range is probably a champion or leader with a big gun and a good willpower score that is likely to pass the test and blow my face off.
The real sauce of the Adept abilities are ZEALOT and UNBREAKABLE WILL. Zealot allows every friendly model in 9” to reroll 1’s in close combat, making it the natural choice for a combat focused GSC. Unbreakable Will allows cultists within 9” to use the adept’s Willpower and Cool for their checks. Unfortunately, Unbreakable Will looks like the best skill until you read the stat line of the gang and see that the cult are the coolest mofos on the block. They really don’t care if they get shot up, even the neophytes are Cool 5! You’re pretty much taking Zealot all day, even if you don’t want to be a combat gang.
The second special perk package of the GSC that rock are a handful of gear options unique to the GSC.
Seismic cannon– A bigger, meaner, more awesome heavy stubber that always pins, even if your target has a skill that normally lets them escape pinning, and no armor saves allowed on a 6 to wound.
The Cult Icon– grants a Neophyte the group activation perk like a champion. Very good, but expensive.
Webber– A S5 flamer that automatically injuries it’s target if it wounds. Just walk up and coup de grace them!
Chainsword– The first gang with on-roster access to this weapon at the start of the campaign. It parries, it has a hit bonus, it does extra damage on a wound roll of a 6, it’s 25 credits. The chainsword is great.
The Cult out of the Box
First things first, I have to talk about Aberrants. I don’t think they’re worth it. They’re expensive, you have to snipe them off ebay, and their weapons are expensive too, making them more expensive. They start out at 90 credits, and the cheapest weapon they can buy is 40 credits. If they don’t buy that weapon, they’re using unarmed attacks. Abbies are also only movement 4, and cannot gain more skills. They have no armor and no weapon options aside from the ones that make them even more expensive. So they hit like a freight train, but they’re fat, slow, and can’t learn new tricks.
They also only have 2 attacks, which doesn’t really cut it on a model that’s supposed to just kill anything it can actually catch. If we were in Mordheim, I might have given the Abby a chance, but the problem this guy has is that any enemy model with a bolter or a plasma weapon that can spot this guy and pass a target priority test to put a shot on him is going to melt him. He’s too expensive and it’s too much work to get him safely into a fight where he -might- crush heads, unless you brick your hit rolls. Another mega huge problem is that there are weapons that ignore your wounds and armor (that he doesn’t have anyway) that can instantly put a model down, and this is especially devastating on a 130 credit model like Abby. Toss a choke gas grenade at his feet, or spray a nightshade chemthrower in his face, and it’s sweet dreams to your bank account.
The seismic cannon costs about as much money as you didn’t spend on an Aberrant, and it’s very good. Just as importantly, it’s also on the sprue in the box. The GSC can only ever have 1 heavy weapon, and only a Neophyte can carry it. The Cult can’t just stock up on big guns the way champs and leaders can in house gangs. So, for your one trip to the gun store, you’re going to want the seismic cannon because it’s just a more fun heavy stubber. You also have your choice of the mining laser and the heavy stubber, but the mining laser isn’t a machine gun and the heavy stubber is just an inferior seismic cannon. That was an easy choice.
The leader and the Acolytes are the real heart of the gang, more so than in a normal house gang, because you’ve got three models and they have to carry all the weight of the cult, but without being able to buy anything they want like in a house gang. They can’t even have basic guns! The leader and Acolytes do have access to Acolyte and Adept weapons though… But that’s trash. The Acolyte weapons, which are cool, are too expensive to ever buy even if you wanted to run a combat-focused gang, and the Adept weapons are pretty much all hot garbage, none of them are as economical and effective as a simple chainsword or power maul. Personally, my ideal loadout for Acolytes and the Adept would be for them to just go cowboys from hell with 2 autopistols, and just go for broke on the dakka. It would be like how I like to equip Juves, except they can actually shoot straight. What’s the verdict here? Well, you’re kind of screwed. There’s not enough pistols in the box to make 3 cowboys, and there’s no mining equipment in the box, but you don’t need it anyway because it’s too damn expensive.
The Neophytes are the guys that really shine. This is the only model in this whole cursed gang that does exactly what he’s supposed to do. At 45 credits a model, he’s currently the cheapest ganger in the game. An Acolyte with an autogun costs as much as a Goliath ganger before the Goliath even buys a stub gun. This is the part of the list where we really gain ground, because our legions of foot soldier mooks with autoguns and shotguns are dirt cheap, are ready to catch bullets, and will always pass cool checks when they get shot. The best thing that a GSC has going for them is that while they aren’t the fanciest shooting gang in the game, they are the best at attrition- They won’t run when their buddies get shot and they have piles of cheap rapid fire dice.
This is the way to go if you’re building an out-of-the-box gang. You could try to arm them with pistols and melee weapons and have them run into fights to use your Zealot skill, but this is impossible because you don’t have any pistols in your cultist box (or knives for that matter) and a melee cultist is more expensive than an autogun Cultist. If you want to get up close and personal, your best bet is still just swamping them with autoguns, or if you’re feeling saucy, some shotguns.
Bringing it all together
GSC is by far the most complicated gang in the game. I would call them the Anti-Orlock. They’re the anti-Orlock because the Orlock gang does literally everything you want and you don’t have to change it, you just dump the box out on the table and play the game. The GSC has the opposite problem- You have a very narrow build option if you’re just going to play out of the box. You’re gonna take the leader and 2 Acolytes, 7 Neophytes. One of them is gonna grab a seismic cannon, one might grab a cult banner, and the rest are all autoguns, or maybe a couple shotguns if you can afford it and you like the shotgun. Granted, I DO think that the all autogun Cult can do some serious work, since the boys are cheap as hell and Cool as hell.
The other thing to remember is that GSC has access to simple and effective special weapons. Grenade launchers are cheap and the webber is very, very good, but you can’t have any of those in your starting gang because only 1 Neophyte can be a gunner and he needs to take your seismic cannon. The GSC takes more forward planning for the future than other gangs because you cannot buy your firepower off the start of the roster. Because of this, I would not recommend this gang to starting players. The best starting gang is Orlock, because of reasons I mentioned earlier.
The biggest problem that the Cult has, however, is that it offers almost nothing to the Tyranid/GSC 40k players who happily already have all the models. The Aberrants are bad, the mining equipment melee weapons are too expensive to use, you can have all the toys you want, but all your toys are dumb. The best thing that a 40k player has going for him is that he already has piles of webbers and grenade launchers sitting in his bits box for when his gang grows up.
The Final Verdict
This box is wonky. It has almost every problem every other gang has, but at the same time, is effective inside of a narrow framework.
If you just want to play a GSC because you like the spooky bald guys in ALIEN space suits, or if you don’t want to commit to spending a lot of money on the hurricane of extra supplements that Necromunda has gotten/will receive, then running the Cult of the Autogun is a thumbs up for you. Yes, the box is effective inside these narrow parameters.
If you’re already a GSC player with models to burn, and you can do anything you want with the gang, then good news… You’re already set, and you don’t even actually want to do half the stuff you can do because it’s either mediocre or too expensive to work! I think the funniest thing about the GSC is that all the tools that are the best options in 40k are lousy in Necromunda, and all the tools that are the best option in Necromunda are lousy in 40k. Time to dig all those grenade launchers out of the bits box, boys.
If you think you’re smarter than me, and you might be, and you’ve got the sauciest, most hardcore GSC list that I didn’t even mention or think of, then you’ve got the biggest problem of all. In order to make GSC really do whatever you want it to do, you have to go scalping for bits. Either to buy Aberrants or mining saws or whatever wacky trick you’ve figured out. At that point, you’ve flipped the cheapest gang in the game to the most expensive.
