Now that I have a solid base of models assembled and painted, it’s time to enter the dojo!

I’ll be starting out at 1,000 pts, understanding that lower point levels do tend to warp the balance of the game. Not to mention I am fairly restricted by model collection, so no waves of 6 units of 20 Neophytes, sorry. Also, given the way that Cult Ambush works, I suspect that this ability could be abused to really warp balance in favor of GSC at lower points, as at 1000 pts most armies just have less answers and less board control; so I’m going to try to avoid leaning into that too hard. 

Going into the army with few ideas what I’m doing, I decided to try out an MSU style list build with a single large anchor unit. To that end I’m looking at a 20 man Neophyte unit, kitted out with Mining Lasers to hang out on my home objective, backed with a Primus and a Nexos. This blob will hopefully bring some solid anti-vehicle shooting with full rerolls, be fairly resilient to shooting thanks to the Nexos allowing a free use of One with the Darkness, and cover enough real estate to give my blips a safe haven.

From this point, I opted to split my army conceptually into two parts:

• Battleline without Character Support
• Elites with Character Support

This is probably the opposite of what is considered “meta” right now with the Primusii and Nexii and Demo Charge Acolytes running amok in the streets, but the logic is thus: Battleline are guaranteed to come back, and are on the cheaper side. The more “single use” characters you stick on them, the more diminishing returns you get. By keeping them light weight and cheap, you are able to have them front assaults, use your Elites as beta-strikes, and recycle your Battleline units. Less characters means more boots on the table! Additionally by list building slightly off-meta I'm hoping to dodge some of the expected nerfs due in the September balance update.

For my MSU I wanted to explore:

Battleline

• Acolytes with Demo Charges (yes, duh)
• Acolytes with Heavy Mining Tools (seriously think people are sleeping on these guys)

Elites

• Abberants with any Character
• Hybrid Metamorphs with Biophagus (also seriously think people are sleeping on these guys)

To this end, a couple of 1,000 pt lists to try:

List 1

Neophytes x20
-Mining Laser x4
-Grenade Launcher x4
Primus
-Prowling Agitant
Nexos

Acolytes
-Demo x2
-Flamers x3

Acolytes
-Mining Tools x2
-Flamers x3

Ridgerunner
-Mortar

Goliath Truck

Aberrants x5
-Abominant

Metamorphs
-Hand Flamers x5
-Biophagus

List 2

Neophytes x20
-Mining Laser x4
-Grenade Launcher x4
Primus
-Prowling Agitant
Nexos
-Inscrutable Cunning

Acolytes
-Demo x2
-Flamers x3

Acolytes
-Demo x2
-Flamers x3

Acolytes
-Mining Tools x4
-Flamers x6

Kellermorph

Ridgerunner
-Mortar

Aberrants x5
-Abominant

Next time, finally some games…!!!