Road to the Michigan GT: Mugginns’ Genestealer Cult for Warhammer 40k

The Great Lakes state’s own Michigan GT is coming up the first weekend of October and I’m once again playing in the Warhammer 40k Narrative Crusade. I am mostly a historicals and post-apocalypse gamer, but I’ve been playing Warhammer 40k casually for a long time – starting around the release of fourth edition in 2004, playing weekly for many years until I dropped off a bit when I got more into historical games.

This year I’m bringing my Genestealer Cult army, The Forlorn Collective. I’ve been playing GSC since they released and I’m especially in love with the bikes, trucks, and other vehicles. My army is themed around the Rusted Claw, the wasteland GSC who roam and collect scrap while they repair all of their old vehicles as best they can. This year I’ve added a few things to my army as points have changed and impacted my list.

If You Seek a Pleasant Peninsula Look About You

The Michigan GT takes place in Lansing, MI every year around the time pumpkin spice hits the streets. Lansing is the capital of Michigan, and being a typical midwest capital it’s not a huge metropolis. There is plenty of parking and walkable food in the area without being overly busy everywhere.

The GT itself takes place in the Lansing Convention Center, a massive facility that is older, but still well-kept and efficient. There is a parking deck beneath the facility and more parking around the area. There are plenty of hotels nearby as well as a skywalk thingy that connects the convention center to one of the hotels. Some great spots to eat are: The Nuthouse, a sports bar nearby with great food; Kewpee Sandwich Shop, an amazing old school hamburger place; and Thai Village for great Thai food.

Relationship Status: It’s Complicated

I’ve played GW games forever – I’ve seen almost everything except Rogue Trader and second edition. I started with Blood Angels, moved on to Tyranids, playing them for a long time, then sold all of that and collected a large army of Genestealer Cult minis. I was tired of carrying a ton of stuff for Tyranids. Around the time that GW made Warhammer 40k simpler with tenth edition I really bounced off of it – a lot of the flavor of the units that I loved just wasn’t there.

My buddy runs the Crusade event at the GT, and I want to support him and our club (Fresh Coast Gaming), so I signed up again. I’ve played a bunch of Crusade with our club and realized that’s really the only way I want to play: Crazy stuff happening, fun storylines, interesting missions, and my guys leveling up. The Codex crusade is a cool idea, but a little complicated. White Dwarf 507 actually came out with an addition or replacement (depending on how you want to do it) that adds a bunch to the Genestealer Cult crusade, including a new Crossfire mechanic that actually adds utility and interesting abilities.

GW also changed the way that GSC units come back to the field from death – representing more cultists rallying to the banners of the Four Armed Emperor. Quite a bit of the ennui I felt when the Codex first released was likely due to how badly the mechanic for Resurgence was designed; it was changed not long after, but was still not great and I believe relied on a die roll. The newest incarnation of Resurgence is just a lot more fun and makes more sense.

The fluff of my army is not that they only take the best troops so they can win, unfortunately. I really like the Atalan Jackal models and motorbikes in general so I use 20 of those total. The trucks are amazing models with a lot of 40k character to them; I love the idea of these dudes Mad Maxing their trucks out on the field at full gas and weirdoes piling out to shoot at enemies. The Benefictus mini is a more recent release and a gorgeous mini – it’s amazing to see this brain weirdo shooting mind lasers at people. I give my Benefictus the Cartographic Data-Leech, which is a parasitic implant thingy that taps into the survey augurs and helps the Benefictus guide the fire from their troops on the firing deck (+1 to hit).

All of the above is to say I kinda loathed 40k for a while – it was hyper-deadly and my expensive minis that I painted lovingly for hours just didn’t do much before I had to put them away. I enjoy the new Resurgence mechanic and am having a much better time with 40k now as a beer and pretzels game.

My Crusade List

My Crusade army is a mobile force of Genestealer Cultists who worship the Four Armed Emperor. They run the transport side of the mining work done on their planet. They drive trucks, huge Ridgehaulers, and even mag-trains to deliver mining goods around the colony (along with baby genestealers). The Forlorn Collective has even gathered a few transport voidships that deliver goods to local planets, further enhancing the reach of the Cult.

The leader of the Collective is a Primus named Pike. He leads the operations to take new equipment and load up cargo at the small settlement the Cult uses as it’s base. His second is Director Skyr, a Jackal Alphus, who leads the Transport Union and surveys the work being done from the back of her motorbike. Her subordinates of the cult are Dr. Matterzhek, a Biophagus who is responsible for any medical care the Collective needs. He has raised a group of hulking aberrants that help in the loading and unloading of mag-trains and trucks during the nighttime hours. Skyr’s subordinate is Secretary Marika, a Benefictus who has used her massive intellect to tweak and jury-rig every truck to maximize performance.

The Collective has been working in the wastes for years without much logistical support from the planetary governor. This means all the vehicles and equipment they use has to last as long as possible – so much of the equipment is rusted, battered, and patched up. The Collective members know that one day they will be delivered from this meager existence – they merely have to wait it out and keep working as hard as they can to further the needs of everyone in the Cult.

In regards to the actual list building, I am going for a very mobile force that can put a lot of hulls on the table that are ready to flood the board with objective control and lots of firepower. In particular I have a ton of mining lasers to take down vehicles and webbers to try to throw mortal wounds on whatever I can. I love webbers – the design and the actual idea of these dudes shooting huge chemical webs around enemies.

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I had taken out the Primus and replaced it with a Biophagus because of the recent change to the Primus ability – it went from re-roll hits to +1 to hit – but I purchased the Event Exclusive Primus at AdeptiCon so I need to use him. He’s still pretty good – many of my neophytes are going to be jumping out of trucks so they’ll need his +1 to hit on the heavy weapons that turn. Re-rolling hits was just super nice for the big guns…

The acolytes are there to hold objectives and hopefully generate some CP. I actually haven’t used the Reductus Saboteur much, but she is in a ton of lists online and I already throw a ton of IEDs with my list so more IED is good. In general, my strategy is to mark something with the Alphus, then hit a few key targets with Ridgerunners, then use the Trucks and Neophytes to try to take them down using +1AP. I am using the Crusade rules from White Dwarf, so a few units will also have the White Dwarf Crossfire rule – probably Trucks.

The Jackals will soften things up with tons of mortal wounds from their IEDs, race around the board and take objectives (that are sticky), and come back after death from Resurgence. Rockgrinders will hopefully soak some damage and then plow into tougher units to move them. I don’t have much close combat here at all, so they need to do a bit to take things down.

I had pretty much everything painted for a 2,000 point army, and then GW changed the points a bit and I had to re-jigger stuff. I added two more units of Neophytes and two Goliath Trucks to the list. I also had never really updated my Neophyte squads after GW did the whole ‘box-lock’ thing, so I had to paint a bunch of special and heavy weapons to make my entire list WYSIWYG. Painting these guys years after I painted the rest of the list was daunting but fun.

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The Forlorn Collective – Genestealer Cults – Outlander Claw

Army List - Click to Expand

Getting Back Into It

I’ve been in a real 40k mood lately due to working on the minis I needed to finish out my army for this event. I’ve been watching the cartoons on WH+, playing Crusade games (of course, to try to re-learn how to play), hitting Warpforge the mobile card game on my phone when I’m bored, and getting into the CRPG Rogue Trader on my PC. I can’t overstate how great Rogue Trader is – it’s chock full of amazing 40k flavor. My Rogue Trader is secretly a Genestealer Cultist – she even uses a webber and a heavy rocksaw.

I also decided to support the Cult by getting a 40k tattoo. I’ve had a bit of a mid-life crisis the last two years and have been getting tattoos of my favorite things. I have a historical tattoo of the Raven Banner bird, a Walking Dead tattoo, and now a Genestealer Cult tattoo.

I’ll be playing five games of Crusade 40k this weekend and hopefully it rejeuvenates my interest in 40k even further. We’re starting a club Crusade later in October at the local shop so it’ll be a perfect opportunity to continue my Cult’s story. If you’re near Michigan, please check out the GT – it’s a great time!

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