Genestealer Cults: Xenocult Masses plus Xenocreed Congregation (2,000 Points)

Most good pairings in this programme cover each other's weaknesses. This one does something rarer: both detachments buff the same models, and they buff completely different things about them.

The shared subject is the Cult's hybrid infantry. Xenocult Masses names NEOPHYTE HYBRIDS. Xenocreed Congregation names ACOLYTE HYBRIDS, HYBRID METAMORPHS and NEOPHYTE HYBRIDS. Neophytes sit in both.

Xenocult Masses keeps them alive and hidden. Hordes of the Faithful heals 3 wounds on any Neophyte unit within a terrain area in your Command phase, which on one-wound models returns models. Slunk from the Underbelly gives -1 Armour Penetration to ranged attacks against a squad wholly inside terrain. Devious Disguises gives a squad -3 inch detection range for 15 points.

Xenocreed Congregation makes them act. Unquestioning Fanaticism re-rolls Advance and Charge rolls for any hybrid squad a character is leading, and gives that character Feel No Pain 3+ if it is a Magus, Primus or Acolyte Iconward. Transcendent Celerity gives [ASSAULT] so a squad can advance onto an objective and still shoot. Frenzied Devotion adds an Attack and a point of Weapon Skill in melee.

Not one of those rules duplicates another. The first detachment pays you for standing still and the second pays you for moving, which sounds contradictory until you notice they apply to different squads in the same list on different turns: the Neophyte block sitting in the ruin holding your home objective is being healed, and the character-led Acolyte squad running at the middle is re-rolling its charge.

And the enhancements do not compete either. Xenocult Masses sells you two 15 point options for a Neophyte unit and a Magus or Primus. Xenocreed Congregation sells you four options for a Magus, Primus or Acolyte Iconward, including the best 5 points in the faction.

Two of the six enhancements available across this pairing are worth naming specifically, because they solve the two problems that actually lose Genestealer Cults games.

Gene-sire's Reliquant (5 pts), from Xenocreed Congregation, lets you re-roll Battle-shock tests for the bearer's unit. It is the cheapest enhancement in the faction and it addresses the thing that quietly costs this army the most: a battle-shocked unit has Objective Control 0. A twenty-model Neophyte block standing on an objective while battle-shocked is holding nothing at all, and every point of the horde's board presence evaporates at once. Five points to re-roll that test is the best value on either detachment card.

Deeds that Speak to the Masses (25 pts), also from Xenocreed Congregation and rewritten in Faction Pack v1.1, gives you 2 additional Resurgence points. Read that against the army rule: at Strike Force you start with 10 for the whole game, so this is a 20 per cent increase in how many destroyed units you get back, and 2 points is most of another ten-model Neophyte block, which costs 3.

It is the only enhancement in any Genestealer Cults detachment that touches the army rule at all. Everything else in the faction improves a unit, a weapon or a save. In a list built on cheap infantry you expect to lose, this one improves the engine.

Together they cost 30 points and they make the horde both harder to shake and cheaper to replace, which is precisely what this pairing wants.

Take large Neophyte Hybrids blocks, because they are the only unit both detachments name, and because they are the cheapest thing in the faction to bring back: 3 Resurgence points for ten models, 6 for twenty.

Lead them with a Magus, Primus or Acolyte Iconward. Those three are the only models that unlock Xenocreed Congregation's Feel No Pain clause and the only legal carriers of all four of its enhancements. The Primus is worth a second look: its Cult Demagogue ability was rewritten in this pack to add 1 to the Hit roll for every model in the unit it leads, which stacks directly with Xenocult Masses' Fanatical Hail re-rolls.

Stand in terrain deliberately, and stand in it completely. Two of Xenocult Masses' three stratagems have terrain conditions, and Slunk from the Underbelly requires every model in the unit to be inside the terrain area. One model hanging out turns it off.

Keep The Downtrodden Rise in reserve. It costs 2 CP and it is Xenocreed Congregation's escape hatch from the whole marker economy: a hybrid unit in Cult Ambush can be set up without a marker, more than 6 inches from all enemy units. Against an opponent who has spent the game walking cheap units at your markers to delete them, that stratagem is the answer, and neither of these two detachments has a marker-saving tool otherwise.

What this army cannot do. It has no answer to armour. Nothing in either detachment improves anti-tank output, and hybrid infantry with autoguns will not remove a heavy vehicle no matter how many re-rolls you stack. If your local meta is full of tanks, Brood Brothers Auxilia or Biosanctic Broodsurge, whose Gene-twisted Muscle adds 1 to Wound rolls against Monsters and Vehicles, are the better second detachment.

Buying it. Combat Patrol: Genestealer Cults is the entry purchase and Battleforce: Genestealer Cults the larger bundle; check the box pages for current contents and price. Our catalog holds no Genestealer Cults single-unit box, so we link none for the individual models above.