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Stealthy Killers In the previous articles in this series, I talked about going against conventional wisdom and why the struggle can be worth it. If your opponent doesn't know what to expect, they cannot prepare for the battle. If they don't understand the army, they will waste valuable time trying to figure out how to best handle your army, giving you more time to take care of their army. In addition, when they don't understand the army, they don't know what parts are vulnerable and what parts to watch out for.
I also discussed how to buck conventional wisdom in your list. Unusual units leave the opponent scrambling to remember what they are and what they are capable of. Combinations of wargear or special rules that are out of the ordinary make it much harder for the opponent to foresee the possibilities until he is reeling from the result. Sometimes even using standard units in uncommon ways can throw the opponent off guard. If they expect your Space Marines to stand and shoot, but they charge into close combat, it will change their battle plan. Trying to change battle plans mid-battle is very difficult and will cost your opponent valuable turns. Similarly, be aware of the expectations that your opponent has for your army. Using their expectations against them is very important to the concept of unconventional warfare. Most people facing Tyranids expect waves of cheap gaunts leaping forward to engulf them, and know to be wary of the other Tyranids, for their true close combat nastiness. When I first ran my Genestealer army, I did it intentionally trying to buck conventional wisdom. More specifically, I did it because the conventional wisdom at the time was that Genestealers were a waste of points and Lictors were simply giving the enemy 80 points each. This was so pervasive that I eventually decided to try to make an army based around Genestealers and Lictors. While it would have been fairly easy to simply include a large number of Hormagaunts as the opening wave while the Genestealers moved up behind them. This was a no-go for a couple of reasons. First, large numbers of Hormagaunts take away from the numbers of Genestealers I could use. In addition, having large numbers of Hormagaunts would play exactly the same way as a traditional Tyranid list, with little surprise for opponents. Secondly, at the time Genestealers could infiltrate, but could not fleet. If I were to Infiltrate them forward, that would put them ahead of any Hormagaunts, eliminating the screening potential. If I didn't infiltrate them forward, they would take too long to reach the enemy lines. A slow Tyranid is typically a hungry Tyranid.
The lack of Hormagaunts was not the only surprise the Genestealer army offered opponents. As I mentioned in the discussion of my Godzilla army, using solid numbers of Genestealers meant that I had apex assault. Basically, once I hit close combat, nothing could stem the tide or turn off the meatgrinder. I remember one time when my Genestealer list went against a Khornate Chaos army in a jungle battle. There was no shooting to speak of, just chainaxes and Daemons (even a Bloodthirster) against Rending Claws and Chitin. I remember hitting the Chosen squad, which was full of completely super-powered close combat nasties. I also remember them almost vaporizing in a single turn. It turned out the Bloodthirster had been bound in one of the members of that squad, so it appeared as the Daemonhost died. It never even got to strike before disappearing under a barrage of Rending Claws. 36 Rending Attacks on Initiative 6 on the charge means never having to say you are sorry, or even worry about what you are attacking! I still had more surprises up my chitinous sleeves, however. I knew that I wanted to include Lictors, as they were even more maligned than the poor Genestealers. Unfortunately the reason they were so maligned is that they weren't really that good in close combat. They were very sneaky, however. Their rules allowed them to appear at a time of my choosing right outside the enemy deployment zone. The combination of their surprise appearance and their high-Initiative Rending Claws did give them a _reputation_ (not that they always lived up to it) for being able to quickly assassinate characters or take on vehicles. Their combination of unusual rules and dangerous reputation did make them good for me, but not quite in the way that most people thought. They could appear in the first turn or two right outside the enemy deployment zone. They also got a bonus to their cover saves that made them extremely durable. It occurred to me that I could get better screening for my Genestealers by spending 240 points on three Lictors (which I'd already planned on using) than I could get by buying 24 Hormagaunts. When the Lictors show up right outside enemy lines, it's a surprise and between that and their reputation for mayhem, opponents would generally shoot everything possible at them to take them down. With good cover, they could generally absorb the firepower of the entire army for a turn. Against a canny opponent that chose not to fire at the Lictors, three of them together could actually do a pretty good amount of damage.
The final surprise was the Flying Hive Tyrant. Winged Hive Tyrants have a well-deserved reputation for carnage. They can do tremendous amounts of damage to pretty much any target and can absorb a tremendous amount of damage as well. The surprise here is that the Hive Tyrant was actually my second wave for this army. While the Lictors appear on turn 1 and absorb enemy firepower, the Hive Tyrant starts flying forward as well. If the Lictors did their job, it would slam into enemy lines, not merely blocking up shooing lines and keeping that unit from shooting, but other units would be desperately trying to move away or maneuver to get a shot at the Tyrant. All the while, the Genestealers continued moving forward. Even if the opponent knew that Genestealers were dangerous, it was hard not to react to the Tyrant hitting the lines. Now, there have been a few changes for this army since the latest codex. The most important one is that Lictors can no longer appear on the first turn and are left to the mercies of the reserve roll. This makes it much harder to protect the Genestealers, but there are some other changes that keep the army viable. Those changes are to the Genestealers themselves. First off, Genestealers can no longer Infiltrate, but they can Fleet. That makes them a little bit faster right off the bat. In addition, they have two other options that are vital to the army. The first is the option of Extended Carapace. Getting an armor save against Bolters is really useful for Genestealers. The second is the option of Scuttlers. The option of getting a 6-inch free move at the beginning of the game gives roughly a turn of extra speed, making them effectively as fast as Hormagaunts. It also can give a little bit of surprise as to what direction the Genestealers will be going or suddenly darting them behind cover and ruining the opponent's first turn shooting plans. The problem is that choosing both Scuttling and Carapace for every Genestealer makes them very expensive, which means there aren't very many of them. The way I chose to handle this was to have more than one kind of Genestealer. I put a group of Genestealers with Scuttling and Extended Carapace up front, with cheap Genestealers with nothing behind them. The front group, with it's speed and armor, would absorb a lot of firepower, letting the rear group get in with numbers. And for those few opponents that tried to shoot the rear Genestealers? Well, they'd get hit by a much smaller number of Genestealers, but they'd be hit on turn 2. Ouch. Although the changes in the codex did make Genestealers more effective and thus more often used, there is still the surprise of how powerful Genestealer assault is. There have even been a number of Genestealer armies that people have used, so potential opponents may have even seen one before. This list still offers a few surprises. One of them is the mixed armor and mixed speeds of the Genestealers. Many Genestealer armies focus on either all Extended Carapace or all Scuttlers. Another was the use of the Winged Tyrant in much the same way as before.
My Genestealer list wasn't as directly surprising as my Godzilla army, but it's primary surprise was typically hidden until late in the game. The shock of the Genestealer assault was difficult to recover from, especially since it happened in the middle to late part of the game, leaving less time for the opponent to recover. That many Genestealers made for a tough army anyway (you should have seen the looks on various of my opponent's faces when I told them how many Genestealers I was bringing) but it was made even nastier by the use of various tricks to distract the opponent from the Genestealers. Sort of a shell game or sleight of claw. If you enjoyed this, email me and let me know |
