If a unit set up underground has any abilities that are used in your Command phase (e.g. Meticulous Planner), then the first time that unit is set up on the battlefield, it can use any or all of those abilities as if it were your Command phase. Like a lot of factions GSC gained the option of taking custom creeds in their PA book. You might think this could potentially be interesting, given that lists already tend to be mixed cult. Hunters Instincts: During the first battle round, add 1 to your advance and charge rolls. Only being able to use this on turn one, when you can’t deep strike, makes it pretty terrible – the upshot is your opponent has to deploy an extra 2″ away on a turn where you don’t have much of your army on the board anyway. D+ Neophytes return as the rank and file go to of the army. They can put out a lot of shots with a standardised ‘hybrid firearm’ profile, Seismic Cannons take a mild nerf to D3 damage but remain very versatile, and Mining Lasers hit the anti-tank strength 12 break point. CP regen for holding objectives and very generous regeneration via an icon keeps Neophytes relevant as ever (this procs in the Reinforcements step, but doesn’t have a fixed timing, so as it stands I think a Neo squad can come in, take an overwatch hit, and then regenerate casualties… neat). Genestealer Cults spent a good portion of 2019 as arguably the best army in the game, putting up top finishes everywhere and being the boogeyman used to scare new tournament players to sleep.

The Cult Russ, sadly, gets the same price rise as its vastly superior Guard cousins, and is not really worth a slot. Dedicated Transport Cult of the Four-Armed Emperor (or 4AE as it’s often abbreviated on army lists) could theoretically be argued to be the “best” cult in the sense that the vast majority of army lists include at least some units tagged with it, although as ever with GSC things aren’t quite what they seem.The TGG power is also the best of the bunch, and combos extremely well with bike spam, helping them blow tougher targets to bits with their shotguns. It’s also great in soup builds, being a big help to Hive Guard when comboed with Tyranids. Hybrid Metamorphs fight on death on a 3+, and their mutations have gone to strength 5 ap 1 damage 2. They also gain a scout move. Flexible and well suited to causing headaches for the opponent as they scrap for objectives. They too can load up on hand flamers for free. If you set up this unit in ambush, place an ambush marker anywhere on the battlefield that is wholly within your deployment zone.

The only massive outlier is the Primus – unfortunately the fact that his equipment previously cost 3 ends up disastrous for him, because his base cost is increased to 80 and then 2pts added to the sword as well, for a total increase of 10pts on a unit that could comfortably have only gotten 5. He retains a powerful aura effect, but might see a slight drop in utilisation because of it. When you select a PSYKER unit to manifest psychic powers, you select one psychic power that unit knows and attempt to manifest it. With the exception of Smite, you cannot attempt to manifest the same psychic power more than once in the same battle round, even with different PSYKER units. The same PSYKER unit cannot attempt to manifest Smite more than once during the same battle round. Any unit can set up underground, going into standard “Deep Strike”. This is capped by the Tactical Reserves rule as normal, so no more than half your units or points value can use it, though as we’ll see there’s a way around that.Mass Hypnosis – WC7: Make an enemy unit suffer a -1 penalty to hit, not be able to fire overwatch and fight last until your next psychic phase. All nice debuffs, and great for softening up a target like a Knight before your Patriarch goes in. Often somewhat overshadowed by the Amulet of the Voidwyrm relic, but still a great choice. B+ That strat is used by almost every GSC army in the majority of their games, but there are some ways to mess with this.