We're back after a week off post The Gladiator Games Team Event and damn was it a good weekend. A massive shout out to Joshua McGowan for putting on a great event and leaving us all keen for more!
But lets get into talking all things GSC! There's still plenty more testing to do before I'm totally sold on this archetype but so far so good, with the games I played over the weekend I couldn't fault it if I'm honest, not only was it a real bully for pairings but it also just really wasn't scared of much, for everyone that knows how well GSC can score I could confidently throw myself into any lists from the other teams and know I was going to be able to hold my own without being too concerned with what they were packing.
In my mind this archetype functions far better into the current meta over the Jakals and there's a few reasons for this. With lists starting to include more and more volume in their melee units (world eaters, orks, daemons) and in their shooting (guard, tau, votann, admech) the Jakals need more and more protection and force you to play far more conservatively then you would really like to. Something a lot of people can't quite wrap their head around with the GSC to really unlock its potential is the units that are on the table NEED to force an over commitment from your opponent to drag them out from playing super cagey and screening or defending themselves from the neophyte drop and with the bikes being so fragile into a number of those lists they are no longer achieving what they were once there to do. When I busted out the Jakal list for WTC the meta was very different, for one thing it was Nephlim but also your "big dog" lists were leviathan nids, sisters, tau using hammer heads and crisis suits that has all for the most part changed dramatically, those lists really struggled in being able to handle the bikes while they threatened a primary lead and held onto a very commanding board state. Now those units are much easier for the current lists to deal with thanks to the added injection of volume and re rolls that all those factions have this forces players to be far more passive with their bikes because you don't want them to be picked up too cheaply but while doing that you're really hindering the overarching idea of the list in being so good at forcing your opponent to leave their solid defensive set up behind walls to enable the neophytes to actually do their damage.
In addition to all that there is a number of lists that do not excel at killing the vehicles from range and this allows you to play very fluently with your vehicle placement and launching obsec accolytes out of trucks to hold objectives out of sight and really threaten a strong primary lead against your opponent and this starts to create a really frustrating on flowing effect for your opponent, they are forced to engage in an exchange war with you which is perfect, utilising agile guerrillas with all the seismics and demo charges on the vehicles makes it really easy to bring the guns to bare and start pulling teeth out of the opponent's lists very quickly, this forces a stronger commitment from them which is now exposing them to more damage from the neophytes and this is where you break their back everyone does seem to forget that the list is all about the neophytes, not the jakals and not the vehicles everything in the list outside of the neos is all about supporting and creating the best possible scenario for the neophytes to come in and do their job, majority of the thought process and planning MUST go into getting maximum value from the neos or you simply aren't going to make enough of an impact on turns 2/3 and you'll find yourself running out of steam very quickly.
In my games over this event and every other event I've taken the GSC to I spend an extra bit of time on turns 1 and 2 ensuring I can set up a position that is really going to land my opponent in an awful spot and a lot of this comes down to experience with the faction and really understanding the limitations of your list and that will help you determine what sort of position you can put yourself in without giving them too much or you under committing because you are being more cautious than you should be.
During the event I had the pleasure of playing 5 great opponents and I was lucky enough to play against a healthy mix of factions ( Drukhari, Tau, World Eaters, Chaos Marines, Drukhari)
you can see for this event I was strongly hunting melee lists for 4/5 rounds and round 2 against the tau I was looking to catch a list no one in my team wanted to play against, a lot of people think this sort of thing only works in teams where you can avoid bad match ups but it's often looked over how much the GSC is used to bully other defending lists into a match up we want because they are not confident enough to take on the GSC, this happened a number of times with Daemons and Guard.
Overall the list was very successful and really shined in the team environment, the only things I would really look to consider adding into the list is making room for icons on the neophytes for singles, for teams I don't think its needed as much, I would also look to maybe a bit more melee threat in units like metamorphs just for some extra teeth in digging certain units out from behind walls.
I hope you enjoyed the read! If you'd like to see more or have a chat directly to me like and follow the facebook page The Alien Majesty ( https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100090609639176 ) and if you enjoy the adventure I'm on with this feel free to show some love and support over on the Patreon ( patreon.com/TheAlienMajesty )
