Genestealer Cults in Necromunda

[infornography]

So my wife and I started getting interested in Necromunda, interestingly, you can use Genestealer cults in that game too and I happen to have a good bit of those (go-fig).
We got the Book of Ruin which has their rules and man it looks like Acolytes got the short end of the stick, what is up with their statline?

Long story short, I was wondering if any of you guys had gotten into this and if so, what your opinions are on the options available and what your starting gangs look like for campaigns. I'm currently leaning toward a bunch of neophytes and aberrants and maybe a psychic leader. Just wondering what everyone else's experience has been so far if any of you guys have tried it out.

[killercroc]

So I've played Necromunda with Genecult and they do have some positives and negatives, but overall were fun to convert and play.

What I noticed most off, is running melee is difficult unless you can get that one ability where you don't get pinned from incoming fire. If a model gets pinned it cannot charge during its turn cause it cannot ready and make a charge move (unless they changed the rules) so when I played my Aberrant did a fat load of nothing every game cause he kept getting pinned down. The issue with Acolytes is they don't get the 2 wounds that every other factions "elite" choice gets meaning he goes down easy but costs just as much, I want to believe it's a typo cause it's weird every other factions version of the Acolyte slot gets 2 wounds. Other big issue is it's difficult getting some special gear from the market with the cult.

So one positive they have is whenever you'd get a Juvie you get a Neophyte instead, so you get lots of new members that have better stats than what other factions new recruits are. When I played I got so many Neophytes whenever one got damaged I wouldn't try to heal him at the Doc, I'd just replace him with another fresh cultist. Cheap special weapons too, you're limited in how many you can take but Grenade launchers with smoke rounds make a huge difference in games. Big upside to the cult, cult is fun to run and you can do even more kitbashing and converting so your force looks extra spiffy. I can still pick out all my Necromunda models I ran even with them mixed across my GSC army.

My list, if I remember, was a leader with two machine pistols and a sword, and Aberrant (Slow Alec was his name, getting pinned and doing nothing every turn was his game) the rest was Neophytes with Autoguns, two grenade launchers... at one point I had one with a mining laser, the heavy weapon can come in handy for some missions. I added some Acolytes later in the campaign just for flame pistols & bombs, but I cannot remember if they even did anything during any of my games...

As long as you don't play against Van Saar I think you should have fun with it, Van Saar shooting and special weapons just made playing against them unfun every time.

[Kyokii]

Necromunda is a lot of fun, I've been playing gsc and helot cults the most this past year.

One important note is the champion types for genestealers have only one wound instead of two like the other gangs, so they are more fragile.
Third as rmnis a great upgrade, but pricey so you usually only want a couple.
Overall they're a more shooty gang. Melee is always going to be troublesome without nerves of steel but you have low cool so your gangers don't often break when the guy next to them gets yeeted into a pit.
They don't have as big numbers as helot cults but they're close and often you can overwhelm with numbers.