Continuing a stream we’ve seen in the latter half of this year, we’ve once again got new Crusade rules in White Dwarf, this time for Genestealer Cults. White Dwarf #507 introduces Shrewd Strategies, a new set of add-on rules for the faction which layer on top of their planetary conquest mechanics. You may recall from our previous review of the Codex Crusade rules, we weren’t huge fans. Does this bring the faction up to snuff? Read on to find out (Spoiler Alert: These rules are great).

Shrewd Strategies

Shrewd Strategies are a new way for GSC armies to interact with the crusade blessings table. During the “Select Crusade Blessings” step, you can choose to use this mechanic. If you do, your Crusade Points value goes up by two and you get six Planning Points to buy special abilities for the battle. Note these go away even if you don’t use them so make sure you do.

Deadly Crossfire

Many of your Shrewd Strategies mention giving a unit the Crossfire keyword. What this does is whenever a Crossfire unit shoots you can select up to two more Crossfire units to perform a Deadly Crossfire on a unit they could all shoot. If you do those units get +1 to hit and if you select three total units you also get +1 to wound.

Shrewd Strategy Abilities

There are six Shrewd Strategy abilities, each costing between one and three planning points.

• Eyes of the Cult (1 Planning Point): simply gives a unit the Crossfire keyword. To be honest, a Host of Ascension army with six units of neophytes with the Crossfire ability seems terrifying so this is a great ability on its own. 
• Oppress the Oppressors (2 Planning Points): This unit gets the Crossfire keyword and if they perform a Deadly Crossfire on a unit, that unit is -1 to hit until your next turn. This is nice, but I do wonder how often Crossfires will simply kill the target unit, but this is great into your opponent’s alpha threats.
• Lurk in the Shadows (2 Planning Points): Gives an Infantry or Mounted unit Stealth. Simple but this is great to buff up something you think is gonna get shot.
• Booby Traps (2 Planning Points): This one lets you booby trap an objective marker once per battle in the command phase. If a unit moves onto a booby trapped objective marker they take d3 mortals on a 2+ but if they control it at the end of any phase, the objective is no longer booby trapped. This one feels like its missing a sticky objective rider to me and d3 mortals once a game (or multiple times if you can maintain control somehow I guess), does not feel worth giving 2 units Crossfire or a unit stealth.
• Coordinated Assault (3 Planning Points): This is a strong one, but it better be since this is half your points. It gives the unit the Crossfire keyword and the unit rerolls charges and hits against Crossfire targets. This can be incredibly strong in the right circumstances, but most things that will benefit from the keyword probably don’t want to be charging. Still rerolling hits is always good.
• Squirming Advance (3 Planning Points): This is another banger. It gives a unit the crossfire keyword and at the end of your opponent’s turn if the unit isn’t in combat you can remove it from the battlefield and put it in reserves. I’ll be honest this might be too strong with Host of Ascension being right there and this requiring no work to just slam on the table game one. I would probably be windmill slamming this and three other crossfire units, or two with one having the ability to suppress, every game.

TheChirurgeon: These remind me of the old Cityfight Stratagems from the Cityfight campaign supplement. They’re a really great mechanical and fluff fit for the Genestealer Cults and I like that these let you adapt to the opponent and situation. Also it’s cool to see the crossfire mechanic make a comeback.

Agendas

On top of the already excellent five Agendas available to your motley collection of angry space mining cultists, White Dwarf has seen fit to offer you two more. Best of all, neither require too much trickery to pull off beyond having some survivors kicking around.

Broodswarm requires you to have three Genestealer Cults units still alive and kicking on the battlefield at the end of the battle. Then with the power of imagination, draw straight lines from each unit to form the most powerful of all shapes… the triangle. Beanith: I may or may not be replaying bridge builder again. If one or more enemy units are caught fully within this deadly trilateral border of doom then absolutely nothing happens to them at all. Instead the three Genestealer Cults units will gain 2XP and your Strategist model gains 1XP. There is a bonus 1RP on offer if you have managed to squeeze two or more enemy units into the treacherous ternary structure.

Spring the Ambush is a tasty bonus 1XP on top of the usual 1XP awarded to your units via Dealers of Death for destroying enemy units. Even better, if any of your units were involved during a Deadly Crossfire when the enemy unit was killed, each unit will gain the 1XP even if they never managed to get a round off. Extra extra bonus for the Strategist, if three or more Crossfire units gain 2XP from this Agenda, then they also gain 2XP. Thankfully this Agenda has been capped at 2XP max per unit to stop too much shenanigans. 

Requisitions

The Four-Armed Emperor and his beloved Star Children have been especially generous this Sanguinius in regards to giving you an additional two powerful Requisitions to use alongside the six from Codex Genestealer Cults.

Turns out having the A Perfect Plan just requires you having a Strategist floating around when you’re at the Select Crusade Blessings step before a game. Spending the 1RP means you will gain an additional D3 Planning Points (or the full 3 if you’re the Underdog) to spend on the Shrewd Strategy abilities in order to at least give more of your units the Crossfire keyword or to spend a little more for the more powerful abilities.

Do you have a Heroic ranked character helping lead your Cult? Then congratulations on getting access to what has to be the greatest ‘almost compulsory’ RP sink on offer to any Genestealer Cult force, Clandestine Goals. This incredibly undercosted bad boy grants you an additional Genestealer Cults Agenda for that tasty XP or to assist in sand bagging ruins to Prepare for the Ordeal. To sweeten the pot, all of your Agenda are secret and do not have to be revealed to your opponent at the start of the game. Instead they are revealed whenever you first gain XP from that Agenda. A nice touch to add a taste of the traditional sneakiness to your Cult.

Battle Traits

The Genestealer Cult Battle Traits in the codex were done in such a way that most units could pick from different tables to roll on for upgrades. 

Beanith: The Patriarch being the luckiest of the bunch, able to roll on three of the four tables just missing out on the Vehicles table just because they’re not comfortable riding pillion on a dirt bike.

This trend has continued with this new fifth table just straight up available to any Genestealer Cult unit you have. Plus if you bother to read the boring little blurb which accompanies the table, you will see that when you do the right thing that all good boys/girls/bugs should do, which is to roll to randomly determine which Battle Trait that unit will gain, if the unit has no ranged weapons equipped, you may instead roll a D3 instead of a D6 for a better chance at the more friendly melee based Battle Traits.

• From Every Angle gives the unit a 0CP Rapid Ingress because you love surprising your opponent with units suddenly popping out of bushes to cause them problems.
• Clandestine Operatives is the perfect way to make your unit of Genestealers immune to Overwatch. Begone foul Infernus Squad for I have the power of an asbestos suit on my side.
• Ambush Veterans get a discount on Shrewd Strategies to a minimum of one. And because White Dwarf felt you needed more XP, you also gain one additional XP from Dealers of Death.

Moving into the higher end of the table are all the fun traits for anyone not hellbent on stabbing a mofo (ranged).

• Massed Firearms lets the unit reroll 1s to hit on ranged attacks.Plus if they’re also plugging away at a Crossfire target, the attack gains [Sustained Hits 1]
• Agile Guerillas give the unit’s ranged weapons the [Assault] keyword.
• Deadly Feint lets you fall back and still shoot. Plus if you also shoot at a Crossfire target after falling back, those attacks gain [Lethal Hits]

Crusade Relics

You also get access to an entire suite of Crusade Relics. Following the usual pattern of Antiquity, Artificer and Legendary relics.

You get one Artificer relic, the Sacred Cult Banner which gives an Acolyte Iconward an extra two OC and increases the range on their Summon the Cult ability by 6”. This is fine and very skippable considering you have access to the book relics as well.

On the Antiquity side things start to heat up. The The Eye of Malice goes on a Reductus Saboteur and lets you put the Booby Traps Shrewd Strategy on it for free. In addition the explosion does D3+3 mortals instead of D3. This is extra funny considering the Reductus Saboteur has their own ability to do D3+3 mortals when something gets close, which can set up some devastating traps.

Next up is the Gift From Beyond, a nod to the relic of the same name in 9th ed. This gives  a Jackal Alphus’ or Sanctus’ sniper rifle Devastating Wounds and Anti-Character 4+. This is really solid and I look forward to seeing big knights taking 4+ dev wounds from a sniper rifle.

Last up for your Antiquity Relics is The Voice of the Liberator which upgrades a Clamavus’ Voice of New Truths ability to impose -1 to the battleshock test and causes three mortal wounds if they fail it. While I like trying to give the Clamavus a reason not just to sit at home and screen deep strikes, there are still better characters to be throwing on squads and I don’t think this is enough to get them in the conversation.

For your only Legendary relic you get the Cogniscator of Ascension. This one goes on a Primus and gives you an extra three Planning Points. In addition, unspent points don’t go away, instead you can spend them on units that come back using the Cult Ambush rule mid game. This is a really cool twist on the mechanic while also being really strong. I’d be gunning for this right away.

Final Thoughts

Beanith: This is an excellent departure from the Codex Genestealer Cults where you’re focused on overthrowing the planet and are more focused on the battles and skirmishes themselves. Having just the one Battle Traits table for the entire army is interesting and the way they went about making sure the melee units don’t end up with completely useless upgradesThis is a fantastic addition to the Codex and certainly something I want to see more of in future White Dwarfs, or better yet, on Warhammer Community. 

Norman: These rules kick ass. If I have any complaint its that I wish this was fleshed out to be the main mechanic and not the planetary control one which I wasn’t super hot on. Shrewd Planning lets you play with a part of the Crusade game process other factions can’t really do and the flexibility that’s available is really fun. I hope we see more rules like this in the future.

TheChirurgeon: If nothing else, this would have given us a set of Crusade rules for GSC that didn’t involve planetary takeover and that would have been fine but it’s great that these are great on top of that. The big issue I have with planetary control mechanics is they just don’t work with any narrative you’d want to tell in a campaign with multiple players – they’re purely single-player nonsense. If we’re running a campaign to take over a city or planet, then your mechanic of “well I took over the whole thing and had my big ascension day and no one noticed” either has to be the main plot or it just makes no sense, and that’s before you factor in that the Tyranids player is also devouring a planet and the T’au player is negotiating their compliance.

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