Progress on the Genestealer cults

With the end of the Shadow war campaign at GW, I made it a point to try and put together what I had left of my cultists. I can say that in only the span of a few days, I had gotten a lot done. I built two sentinels, 40 more cultists, 8 more genestealers, and a magus that I had converted along with some more stealers that are in the works. All in all I'd say that I did a pretty good job.

Most of the cultists were done up using parts from the chaos cultists and genestealer cultists. I used spare parts that I had been given and from what I had from the acolyte cultists from the genestealer cults. I had cut off parts that were unnecessary like most heads, and some tubing bits and for the shotgunners, clearly the autoguns had to go.

I have a chimera to transport a unit of ten cultists around to capture objectives when they need to and to get around to advantageous positions when they don't need to be capturing objectives. I'm going to be adding a nice large dozer blade to the front, made out of plasticard. I'm just not sure what I want it to look like yet, I currently have a vague idea on what I want it to look like, so I might just start sculpting it and see where it takes me.

The magus was built using the bottom half of a dark elf black guard and the torso and head of a neophyte cultist, with the arms from a chaos cultist from the dark vengeance boxed set.

My sentinels are currently plain jane sentinels, but I want to do something special with them to make them that much more unique, and more of a centrepiece unit for my cultists. I have thought of adding three arms to the sentinels, where two arms will be holding a gun (lascannon, plasma cannon or a missile launcher) that would be converted well enough to be held, and a sword in the other arm, because why not? These arms would also make for a nice test bed for what I have planned for a game I'm coming up with so really it feels like a win-win.

I also have four abberrants in the works. Now I realize they still need a lot of work, and the claws were more of an experimental thing to see how they would look. I don't particularly like them so what I might do is just sculpt some hands and power picks myself and see how those look when compared to the claws.

These are the stealers I plan on using for both my genestealer cultists and for my Tyranids where I hear that for 8th edition, genestealers are going to get that much better and will once again be a top notch assault force.

I certainly hope that the rumours are true for my genestealers but I'll have to wait and see how good assault will be in 8th, and hope that its better than it has been in the past few editions.

Well that's my post for this week, let me know what you think in the comments below and remember to have fun out there.

Battle report 5 Tau V. GS cults

And here we are again, another battle report, this time with a fellow named Alex. We both had lots of fun and I’m sure we’ll have another game sometime in the near future, so you might be hearing more about Alex in the future.

Setup:

Deployment:

The deployment is thusly; The mission was Ambush, and it is my first time playing this mission. Alex had to deploy first, wherein he placed his first 4 troops up on top of the gantry-way close to the centre of the board. two troopers and two drones.

 He then had to deploy his remaining troops 4 inches from each other. He then placed 1 rail riflemen and a trooper behind the 2 troopers and 2 drones on the building behind him, 

two rail riflemen on the ground near the other two, and then beside that in the next building over he placed his stealth suit and recon drone.

I had placed my two heavy stubbers on the building on the closest edge, and then placed the rest of my troopers behind the same building I had placed my stubbers on. Everything started in hiding.

Turn 1:

I had moved my troopers forwards, out from behind the building and behind the ruins of the other buildings.

Alex ran his troopers as far away from my heavy stubbers as he could and placed his rail riflemen into hiding, and his stealth suit into overwatch.

Turn 2:

 I kept moving my troopers through the ruins, in hiding, trying to gain a better vantage point from which to strike.

Alex kept running his troopers in the opposite direction, out of sight of my heavy stubbers

Turn 3:

I kept moving my men stealthily through the ruins, still trying to gain a vantage point, and still thinking I could stay hidden. I moved my grenade launcher to the base of the gantry way.

Alex had moved his men to a vantage point behind a number of buildings, creating a choke point from which he could prevent my troopers from charging head on.

Turn 4:

 I continued to move my troopers through the ruins, I shot with my grenade launcher, blowing the head off of one of his troopers

Alex moved a few of his troopers into better positions, and opened fire with the rest of those that hadn’t moved. He had downed my trooper with blasting charges.

Turn 5:

I had moved my shotgunners and my leader up to try and get to better vantage points with which to charge them from. I had also moved my troopers up in an attempt to keep the opposing forces occupied on them rather than my shotgunners and my leader. My grenade launcher opened up and blew the head off of another one of his troopers, causing his drones to panic, but not the troopers beside him as I had been hoping for.

Alex had moved his stealth suit up, and had opened fire with everything that he could and put his rail riflemen into overwatch. The troopers had moved around the corner to open fire on my leader, downing him. The recon drone moved from around the corner from where my stubbers could not see him and opened up on them and downing one. Alex had ran his rail riflemen up the nearest building to get a better vantage point for them also. The stealth suit had downed the trooper in front.

Turn 6:

I didn’t have much left to shoot with, so I had moved my shotgunners to the cover of the side of the building, although they did not have much to shoot at. They stayed there while my grenade launcher popped off another shot, but missed wildly.

Alex moved his remaining troopers that were around the corner through the door of the building my shotgunners were behind and opened up fire on them, wounding one, and downing the other, the stealth suit had opened up on the other stubber, and downed him also. The rail riflemen in the building had shot at my trooper behind the first one and had downed him also.

I then bottled out.

So what did I learn? I learned that if I can take the shot, I should, all the time, because if I don’t it’ll come back to bite me. I also learned that hiding in this game isn’t that great and is super situational and that for this scenario, bunching up isn’t that great of a tactic. I needed to spread out more and cover more areas to fire from, and keep his men more separated. All in all we had a fun time and I’m sure we’ll have another game soon and don't forget to let me know what you think in the comments below.