Do Grey Knights Deserve the Hate?

[DrBored]

A lot of Grey Knights players, at my FLGS and in other places, have been getting a lot of heat lately.

More heat than Space Wolves got when Razorspam hit the tables. Maybe a little more heat than when IG brought Leafblower.

In my opinion, yes, they do deserve the hate. When a GK player brings a competitive list (or really, any list in my opinion) it saps the fun out of the game. They have so many defenses against all types of firepower, and then have such a powerful fist behind that that it's very difficult to actually enjoy a game. It becomes frustrating just to focus fire on a single squad just to wipe it out, and forget about destroying a squad of Paladins completely.

But let's extend the discussion here. Why do you not like Grey Knights?

Why do you *like* Grey Knights, if you play them? What is the motivation for you? Is it just because they're an easy point-and-click army or do you like the idea of crushing the will of your opponent even in casual games, or do you just like to have an easy time painting models with a drybrush and chainmail? (Of course, I'm not saying all Grey Knight players are like this, but from polling my FLGS, these are the reasons I've gotten for liking Grey Knights).

I for one don't like them because of how not fun they are to play against. I even traded armies with a friend just to show him how not fun they are! His GK Paladins versus my then-Venom Spam DE. When the games were done, he promptly turned around and sold his GK army and started to invest in Necron (I'm not entirely sure if that was because they were the army of the month, or because he was actually a mature individual).

Let's see how much rage GK has actually generated over the past year.

[KrewL RaiN]

I put the hate to how the heck does GW playtest so bad. 40K slogan should be changed to "in the 41 millennium there is only Grey Knights" because all the power gamers have a massive boner for them, and its all your seeing at huge events.

I have a friend who got into GK because he likes the models and had no idea they would be the kings of cheese. He got them right at their 5thed release. He's been playing his vanilla marines again.

Then another friend has been playing them before their 5th ed codex. He still plays them but doesn't place well at events. He doesn't play the dumb spam lists you usually see and I give him awesome points for playing them how he wants to play them, even if its a bit odd.

And yet another totally dropped them because of what they became. He said they are not fun anymore.

For people who play GK because they like them for what they are fluff wise are probaly getting hosed with the same hate too, even if they aren't doing the dumb spam GK lists you see at big events.

I dislike playing against them for obvious reasons. You can guess what army I play *points to my avatar* I also play Daemons.

Been loosing faith in GW's ability to ballance their game... I am more into the hobby then anything, but I still get rather sour about the state of the game.

[Ghoulio]

Pretty much what KrewL RaiN said. I look through the GW book and I cant understand how that got through playtesting (I do the same for Nids for different reasons). For me and the armies I play (Nids and to a much lesser extent Dark Eldar) playing against Grey Knights, regardless of list, can be negative fun. Even friends "fun" lists that are the models he wants to play isn't really any fun to play against. My big hope is that 6th ed comes along with a real FAQ/Errata and does some tweaking to the current army books to balance things out. Not holding my breath.

[Chaoschrist]

The reason I have GK is because I got into the hobby after a 3+ year hiatus and starting GK was a good way to get a starting army done for cheap. So yes, that includes, that I run Draigo and paladins.

But, I should add, back when I played 40k years ago, I always wanted to do GK because I like the models. But the models were way more expensive and the codex was a bit meh I thought.

The fact that they represent a OP list (according to some people) isn't of that much concern to me because I don't game that much and the times I do, is, for now at least, just with a close friend of mine. And chances are, that if he was into the hobby as long as me, he'd get into GK as well instead of marines that came with the starterbox (since he just started 40k)

With the low model count I'd probably get a hard time with horde armies, so I feel that's the risk I take. Yes obviously 2 wounds and 2+ saves will help a lot but with only 23 models in a 2000 point list I'm easlily outnumbered by small arms fire and lots of it. Also, because I don't play that much, I'm probably not that skilled of a player to win straight forward with no effort.

Down the line I will add more/other models to my GK army to mix up lists. Adding models to your collection to mix it up motivates me more if I already have a list ready to go, instead of just adding random models/squads all the time, just to figure out "oh, I don't even have enough models to fill out an FOC".

On a small sidenote; my grey knights are actually grey, rather than the easy paintjob most people tend to get away with for GK armies. So no it's not for "the ease of painting".

When I decided to get back in the hobby I thought about a few other armies I liked for the sake of gaming as well (besides possible modelling options), but that would include running an Ork biker list... and nob bikers with their wound allocation aren't that different from paladins I guess. I've heard people whine about those as well...

Also; since I have my list done, I picked up painting pretty well again, and I started my 2nd army. Which will probably get somewhat of the same "hate" as the GK list I have around. Terminator only Deathwing... even if it's because of the mass of 2+ save models. So to be honest, I don't really worry too much about how my army is cheese if I play with friends, chances are that all armies I prefer are cheese in their eyes. Heck; I've heard people complain about IG because "it's so much infantry" or "it's too many tanks". People complain about marines because... hey 3+ save is silly. So the complaints go on with people in my area that even play the game.

[DarkLink]

Been loosing faith in GW's ability to ballance their game... I am more into the hobby then anything, but I still get rather sour about the state of the game.

Which is ironic because the game is currently more balanced than it's been in a very long time. Whine about Grey Knights all you want, they're not exactly sweeping the tournament scene's top tiers.

[Wildcard]

I play GK because:

- I had played IG for a long time and i had always fancied to try out marines.

-- BA and Chaos SM were taken, i have no interest in the dark angels, and Black Templars dont have full plastic kits. Also, i dont like the theme of vanilla marines(having multiple different forces (chapters) portrayed in one book with very little true diversity to my taste. (We try to keep one army per player since there are only a few of us in our friend circle who play)

- Wolves were not my cup of tea

- I had space marine model i had crafted unique color scheme to one model i owned that i wanted to create army for:

http://s719.photobucket.com/albums/ww196/Wildcard84/Grey%20Knights/?action=view&current=KnightoftheFlame.jpg

- I truly like the models


Now, to be 'fair and sporty' in our small community, here are few guidelines i am trying to follow

- No rad & psychostroke grenades
- No razorback spam
- No psycannon spam
- No henchman spam
- No psyfleman spam
- No wound allocation shi*

I will however:
- Toggle Force weapons (since i rarely have the opportunity to stack weaponry that would otherwise instagib multiwound enemies)
- Take psybolts for troops if i fear i need to have something to use to pop AV10

Aside from those points, i've tried draigo / paladin combo in only 2 games if i remember right.

Rough example of how my list could look like


HQ:
1-2x Captain to run with the terminators
or
1-2x Brother hood champion

Troops:
2x 5man terminator squads (in bigger games) or 2x 5+man GKSS

Elite
(as a hammer in my force) usually 1x 7-8man purifier unit (with a heavy support landraider, and sometimes with brotherhood champion for the re-roll buffs), knight of the flame with hammer, 1x incinerator, rest geared with halberds or falchions, depending on the expected enemy hammer .

occasional assassin (sniper or polymorphing guy)

Fast:
- 2x Stormraven with either typhoon missiles or multimelta at the front, and something i feel like trying on the turret

Heavy:
1x landraider (one for the purifiers)
2x Dreadknight with sword & teleporter & heavy incinerator or heavy psycannon

After each game i've asked from my oppoenents (Chaos SM, BA, necron, orks, eldar) If they feel that my lists were full of crap. Never have they frowned upon my builds (save for the 2 times against different players that i tried out psychostrokes)

I always try to come up with fluffy and or "believable" reason why such a force would be sent to the encounter. And so far, it hasn't been Greay Knights that have made the games unenjoyable.

[KrewL RaiN]

Which is ironic because the game is currently more balanced than it's been in a very long time. Whine about Grey Knights all you want, they're not exactly sweeping the tournament scene's top tiers.

I started playing when 5th ed hit the shelves. I have no exp with the older stuff. Sure they may be getting better, but when 4 or 5 codex's out of how many armies are the only things that can "compete at higher tiers aka tournaments" there is still a huge ballance issue with the game. The should be no such thing as the best codex or things with instant win buttons. Each army should be balanced to an extent were there is no best codex or min/max. People will always fish out stuff like this and it always shows bad ballance and play testing.

I am not a sore loser, I love a challange but not one were I am hitting my head against a brick wall because I can't do anything against something more optimized and better written (I HAVE beaten Gray Knights with my Tyranid's and I AM NOT the greatest general either, but if you take two generals who are evenly skilled, one with Tyranids and one with Gray Knights, the GK will most likely win, with list tailoring out the window here. If Tyranid's can tailor towards the GK fight, then fight might be more even..blarg actualy my head hurts when I think of both armies tailoring to each other haha). I have not codex hoped to a higher tier army (dark eldar has tempted me but then I would be falling for that bait of codex hopping which *sigh*... I dont want to bring up yet another issue that has be disused a lot). So I do take offense being called a whiner because I refuse to play the game at a retarded min/maxed level of parking lots and 3 up saves. As long as there's people who will do anything to win, they will find and exploit flaws in the rules to create those easy win buttons, and GW wont bother to patch their game if they are making money off it.

Then 6th comes and everyone all even again. then the whole codex creep thing will happen again and its all rinse and repeat, unless they will learn from their mistakes...

[DarkLink]

Really, only a few minor tweaks would fix just about everything in the GK codex. Remove psykotroke and rad grenades (they're the only things that're outright broken), appropriately price TL Autocannons and Psybolts on Dreadnughts, as well as Reinforced Aegis and Fortitude, completely rewrite psilencers to be at least mediocre instead of incredibly horrible and make psycannons more expensive than incinerators. Purifiers shouldn't get a discount on Halberds and Hammers, either.

Problem solved. Just tweaking a few upgrade prices and we're good.

[Dyrnwyn]

I hate how they exploded. I played Grey Knights under the Daemonhunters codex - had a pretty big army built up, all metal models, and I liked the fact that I had an elite army that was always outnumbered - they were all good, but not incredibly so. I had a lot of games that I had a ton of guys die, but I just barely won on objective. I had a trio of Dreads that were converted to be Riflemen - they were actually Autocannon/ML Dreads. I had lots of opponents that were surprised to see Grey Knights on the table, and it was neat fielding a niche army that not everyone knew how to deal with.

Then the new codex hit - all of a sudden, there was an explosion of Grey Knight players in my local store. We went from me, to 6+ players. A lot of new players turned up with Grey Knights. I don't like playing with the new codex - it feels like it lost a lot of the niche appeal of the old elite Daemonhunters, in favor of turning the army into overpowered badasses. All of a sudden my Riflemen dreads were really, really good, and also, really really popular. I don't like playing against the new codex - there's too much that borks my Orks, and mirror matches hold no interest for me.

The FLGS recently started a 40k campaign/league that's a territory grab. I was fairly excited as I like this sort of thing, and was considering coming out of my Warhammer hiatus for it. Then I read the starting rules. I chose not to participate, as I didn't have 1000 points of Orks in Troop slots, and I didn't want to play Grey Knights, as I already saw 4 Grey Knight players signed up.

[KrewL RaiN]

Really, only a few minor tweaks would fix just about everything in the GK codex. Remove psykotroke and rad grenades (they're the only things that're outright broken), appropriately price TL Autocannons and Psybolts on Dreadnughts, as well as Reinforced Aegis and Fortitude, completely rewrite psilencers to be at least mediocre instead of incredibly horrible and make psycannons more expensive than incinerators. Purifiers shouldn't get a discount on Halberds and Hammers, either.

Problem solved. Just tweaking a few upgrade prices and we're good.

Yeah your completely right there too, I call those "psycodouche" for a reason haha. 5th could just use some tweaking here and there and all can be good... (man even when I am tipsy I try to be completely neutral in ways xD, argh I should go poof before I get RAWR again xD)

[Shadoq]

I play pretty much pure Termie GKs. I have a Vindicare in the list too but that is about it.
I play them because I wanted a foot termie army that would be different than DA's TH/SS/Cyclone spam and I liked how they looked in grey, red, and gold.

[MrGiggles]

I can honestly say that I like most of the model range. Even the models I don't like per se, I can see good uses for the parts. I also like the amount of choice in the book. I'm a pretty strong proponent of multiple builds and multiple neat builds at that.

I think the main issue is with the sheer explosion of the army on the gaming scene. Some of the tourneys are seeing as much as 60% of their contestants using Grey Knights. I tend to interpret that as a negative simply because I like variety in terms of play style and army list. I'm not saying that every list is the same, but with that sort of volume in a tournament, you're going to see some repetition.

The main issue I have with the Codex personally is the Inquisition stuff in it. A good chunk of what I was planning to use for my Witch Hunters moved over to Grey Knights. I'm was initially fine with that since I had new rules for my Inquisition models, until I tried to build a 1500 point list without actual Grey Knights. I just couldn't seem to get up to the points level. I'm glad I can use the models I have, I just would have liked to be able to do a full Inquisition list with some inducted stuff.

[KrewL RaiN]

I think another reason of their massive explosions is that they are a very affordable army to set up, and the spammy lists even more so. Small number of models and the ability to dish out the pain too.

[Kawauso]

What Darklink said, really.

GK aren't broken as an army...but they do have a number of underpriced/broken things in the codex which can be very un-fun to play against. By far the worst offenders are the grenades and pricing on certain vehicle upgrades/rules (5pts for fortitude on a Rhino is ok; on a Dreadnought it's nuts).

They really aren't that bad though, particularly if you're playing fun lists. They'll still give certain armies trouble ('Nids, for example), but they're far from unbeatable...I used to beat my friend's GK with vanilla Marines regularly.
If you're playing more competitively, well...GK aren't taking the tournaments by storm from everything I've heard, so you probably just need to adapt.

[Mr.Pickelz]

I personally play GK's because of Codex Daemonhunters, and after reading stories like the First Battle of Armageddon, in which 101 terminators deepstrike into a horde of daemons and only 5 walk out alive, i just had my mind set on doing that army. With the new codex I can field that with "Draigowing" but i still got my old DH if anyone wants to throw-down against old school rules, "yes, Marneus Calgar dies to my force weapon..." And i loved playing C DH because at the time i was the only local player to have them, they were in a sense, My army. When they exploded here i now look at my grey knights and hang my head with a sigh. Overall i share Dyrnwyn's sentiments about C:GK over C DH.

Edit: had to delete the ":" in C DH for it not to switch to a smiley face.

[Paul]

I don't HATE Grey Knights, I just dislike them.

They aren't that much fun to play against, but if you're gracious and your opponent is gracious then they can still make for an enjoyable game.

I played once against a guy who was using some Strike Squads, Mordrak + Paladin buddies, and a couple of squads of purifiers with my armored company.

I killed four paladins and one squad of purifiers with the firepower of 10 LRBTs and accessories. I got tabled 100%. But the game was fun, because he named his heroes (Heroic Brother Gabriel, a paladin who's only upgrade is Master-Crafted weapon who ALWAYS bites the first ID-wound, for example) and in general it was just an entertaining game.

[Angelofblades]

Really, only a few minor tweaks would fix just about everything in the GK codex. Remove psykotroke and rad grenades (they're the only things that're outright broken), appropriately price TL Autocannons and Psybolts on Dreadnughts, as well as Reinforced Aegis and Fortitude, completely rewrite psilencers to be at least mediocre instead of incredibly horrible and make psycannons more expensive than incinerators. Purifiers shouldn't get a discount on Halberds and Hammers, either.

Problem solved. Just tweaking a few upgrade prices and we're good.


Actually there's more than just that.

Imho, no rank and file marine deserves I6, ever. Special character and HQ's sure, because there aren't that many of them. But elites and troops should never see I6. Halberds needs to be +1 I instead of +2. I6 is the realm of Eldar. and GK already trounce upon that with their plethora of psychic powers and psychic defenses.

2+ invul saves need to be changed too, staves should be downgraded to a 3+ instead of a 2+. Falchions should be changed to be +2A, so that the the termies are more inline with their generic counter parts for being armed with 2 ccw's.

Next, comes psycannons. One of the most powerful anti-everything weapons in the game. It can take out a guardsman just as easily as it can take out a titan. That's just wrong. Either make it S7 w/out rending or assault cannon equivalent. GK were supposed to be the one power armored army that the power armor didn't have access to melta guns, imho, that didn't mean give them a weapon that was waaay better than a melta gun.

Lastly de-stack hammerhand. Multi-stacking hammerhand is one of the broken things in the codex. When you combine dual stacked hammerhand with rad grenades and the GKGKM ability to re-roll all 1's to wound, at I6 no less, it becomes pretty dumb.

[Ghoulio]

Which is ironic because the game is currently more balanced than it's been in a very long time. Whine about Grey Knights all you want, they're not exactly sweeping the tournament scene's top tiers.

Then dont go look at the results for Adepticon :). First overall for day 1 was Grey Knights and of the 16 spots for day two there were EIGHT Grey Knight players (so 50%). Grey Knight players will argue till they are blue in the face that the book is fine balance wise, but that just simply isnt the case as anyone who DOESNT play Grey Knights will attest.

[eldargal]

I've only seen the Adepticon day one resuilts, but they were:
Necrons
Grey Knights
Space Wolves

So given that half the final 16 were GK and god knows what percentage of the total players they made up, they only came in second.

So while I think the GK has its problems and can be extremely un-fun to play against, I really wouldn't say it is broken. I actually find some Necron lists more annoying.

Having said that I think between them DarkLink and Angelofblades have solved most of the issues with the book.

Then dont go look at the results for Adepticon :). First overall for day 1 was Grey Knights and of the 16 spots for day two there were EIGHT Grey Knight players (so 50%). Grey Knight players will argue till they are blue in the face that the book is fine balance wise, but that just simply isnt the case as anyone who DOESNT play Grey Knights will attest.

[the jeske]

Really, only a few minor tweaks would fix just about everything in the GK codex. Remove psykotroke and rad grenades (they're the only things that're outright broken), appropriately price TL Autocannons and Psybolts on Dreadnughts, as well as Reinforced Aegis and Fortitude, completely rewrite psilencers to be at least mediocre instead of incredibly horrible and make psycannons more expensive than incinerators. Purifiers shouldn't get a discount on Halberds and Hammers, either.
you just listed half the stuff good in the GK dex.
psycannons. fort on razors . cheap rifleman with str8 . cheap weapons for puri spam so they dont need to buy counter units and just can concentrate on the shoty aspect. actualy only thing you didnt list was draigo wings in kill point games . So saying that the GK are balanced and easy to fix , is like saying they need a new dex.





So given that half the final 16 were GK and god knows what percentage of the total players they made up, they only came in second.
that is just because they had to play against each other . also lol 200+people . 0 nid players . more sob players then nids :D.

[Kawauso]

you just listed half the stuff good in the GK dex.
psycannons. fort on razors . cheap rifleman with str8 . cheap weapons for puri spam so they dont need to buy counter units and just can concentrate on the shoty aspect. actualy only thing you didnt list was draigo wings in kill point games . So saying that the GK are balanced and easy to fix , is like saying they need a new dex.


Psyflemen are far too cheap for what they do, though. Yes, they offer something important to the army, but they're so good there's pretty much no reason not to take them, ever.

Purifiers probably shouldn't be shootier than Purgators, also. Just sayin'.

And yeah, as was mentioned before by Angel, the combinations you can give some units (multiple Hammerhand, re-rolling 1s to wound, I6, all the grenades) makes their combat potential ludicrously one-sided. As a small elite army GK need to be able to hold their own against a wide variety of more numerous foes, but not to such an extent. I agree it probably would make more sense for halberds to grant +1I instead of 2, but once again the clearest culprit here are the ridiculous grenades (and the fact that one model can pitch, like, 4 of them in a single charge. And then pitch more while already locked in combat).

[inquisitorsog]

I started playing when 5th ed hit the shelves. I have no exp with the older stuff. Sure they may be getting better, but when 4 or 5 codex's out of how many armies are the only things that can "compete at higher tiers aka tournaments" there is still a huge ballance issue with the game.

If you've only been playing since 5th, you should check the dates of those codexes that you think don't compete. The dexes you're talking about are "5th edition" dexes whereas the dexes that "don't compete" tend to be basically out of date. That's a bit of a guess because I don't track the tourney scene that closely, but based on the rumblings out there, that's probably the case.


Which is ironic because the game is currently more balanced than it's been in a very long time. Whine about Grey Knights all you want, they're not exactly sweeping the tournament scene's top tiers.

The main argument against OP lists is not that they're winning tournies. It's that given an OP list, a meh player will beat a better than average player with any non-OP list.

[Lexington]

So given that half the final 16 were GK and god knows what percentage of the total players they made up, they only came in second.
Eh, I dunno. The larger sample of top-tier players in a game that's got such a heavy reliance on randomization by dice is probably the one I'd look to here. Really, when you've got a gathering of some of the game's best players that's so dominated by such a narrow selection of armies, that indicates a problem.

[DarkLink]

Imho, no rank and file marine deserves I6, ever.

It's not about what some random person arbitrarily decides an army "deserves", whatever that even means. It's about what's balanced.



2+ invul saves need to be changed too, staves should be downgraded to a 3+ instead of a 2+.

No need. Staves are already very expensive and very rare. Outside of CC and the HQ's, the best available save is a 5+. That balances it out just fine already.



Falchions should be changed to be +2A, so that the the termies are more inline with their generic counter parts for being armed with 2 ccw's.

Yes. Falchions are overpriced and underpowered compared to the other NFW options.



Next, comes psycannons. One of the most powerful anti-everything weapons in the game. It can take out a guardsman just as easily as it can take out a titan. That's just wrong. Either make it S7 w/out rending or assault cannon equivalent.

Lascannons are just as good (actually, probably better) at killing titans as killing guardsmen. Poor comparison. Without something like psycannons to allow them to open vehicles, GKs would be a pretty crappy army.



GK were supposed to be the one power armored army that the power armor didn't have access to melta guns, imho, that didn't mean give them a weapon that was waaay better than a melta gun.

Funny, that. You realize one of the GK's big weaknesses is dealing with AV14, which is exactly what meltaguns are for? They need to have at least a small chance against that sort of thing, since they don't have meltaguns.



Lastly de-stack hammerhand. Multi-stacking hammerhand is one of the broken things in the codex. When you combine dual stacked hammerhand with rad grenades and the GKGKM ability to re-roll all 1's to wound, at I6 no less, it becomes pretty dumb.

Until your opponent brings psychic defense, or you Perils, or you have to spread out to claim objectives and your opponent is smart enough to take advantage of the fact that you've got so many points buried into one single squad...



So saying that the GK are balanced and easy to fix , is like saying they need a new dex.

I'm saying like three or four things need to change points cost slightly. Not a whole lot, just slightly.15-20pts for psybolts on Dreadnoughts instead of 5. No rad/psykotroke grenades. One or two other minor tweaks. Done.

No need for the comma in the middle of the statement, by the way.


Then dont go look at the results for Adepticon

I actually did. Funny thing about Adepticon, is every single year the latest flavor of the month army makes up like half of the contestants. Necrons haven't caught on yet, so it's still GKs. Before that, it was Space Wolves, then Imperial Guard, and so on. So naturally there will be a lot of GK players, and thus there will be a deceptively large number of GKs placing fairly highly.

However, look at the top spots, at least as of sometime yesterday. You have Orks, Necrons, Imperial Guard, Space Wolves and Grey Knights. It isn't until the teens where GKs start to overwhelm, and all that means is that there are a lot of GK players rather than a lot of GK winners.

GKs are a top tier codex. There will be a couple in the top ten at most any tournament. But don't mistake popularity with being overpowered.


The main argument against OP lists is not that they're winning tournies. It's that given an OP list, a meh player will beat a better than average player with any non-OP list.

How is that any different from my point? If GKs were an auto-win button, then GKs would sweep all the top spots at all the tournaments because any average player could show up and beat the veterans of other armies easily. GKs have become popular, but they're not actually winning more tournaments than Space Wolves or other top codices.

[Paul]

Funny, that. You realize one of the GK's big weaknesses is dealing with AV14, which is exactly what meltaguns are for? They need to have at least a small chance against that sort of thing, since they don't have meltaguns.

Bull****. I've lost more Leman Russ tanks to a single GK player's psycannons than I have everyone else's meltaguns in my gaming group.

Want to know why? Because I actually get to shoot a meltagun before it can hurt me. 1/2 range compared to the psycannon, then 1/2 range again to really perturb armor 14.

Yeah, bull****.

[DarkLink]

You do understand what anecdotal evidence is, right?

[Rapture]

Imho, no rank and file marine deserves I6, ever.
This is the real reason. When people say GK are 'breaking the game' they do not mean that they are unbeatable, they mean that they are breaking precedents/norms that other books are forced to follow. Deviation is fine and fun if it is rare and focused in one direction. GK break all of the rules and suffer none of the consequences.

Think tau. They got their really cool s5 pulse rifles (a big deal at the time), but they die almost instantly in CC. GK are the best of everything (especially once the Inquisition choices are mixed in). It is annoying and frustrating.


You do understand what anecdotal evidence is, right?

You ignored the real argument. I would gladly trade access to melta-guns that have to be positioned under 6 inches to be effective (which tends to make the unit using it highly susceptible to charges after destroying AV 14 vehicles) for the heavy/assault rending psycannons.



No need for the comma in the middle of the statement, by the way.

No need for an insult in the middle of you argument, by the way.

[Dyrnwyn]

You do understand what anecdotal evidence is, right?

Anecdotal evidence aside, he does have a point. Meltaguns have an effective range of 6" for reliable AV14 busting and have only one shot, while the Psycannon have a 24" effective range and has enough shots to play the numbers game - it's not as prone to flubbing. The Psycannon suffers from the same problem the 4th ed assault cannon had, in that it was a weapon that was good at busting both AV and hordes. Under 4th ed, the assault cannon was statistically better at busting any non-Monolith AV than a Lascannon. The 5th ed Rending nerf helped fix that by reducing bonus Penetration, meaning against AV 14 the Assault Cannon has a 33% chance to bounce even after rending, but the Psycannon's higher base strength negates the fix - If it Rends, it is hurting something. It's only guaranteed a glance on AV14, but it is still hurting it. I haven't done the math on psycannon like I did for assault cannon, but I wouldn't be surprised to see them have similar curves.

Nobody has a problem with Grey Knights having a vehicle killing option. The problem occurs when it is too good a generalist weapon - it is better at killing infantry AND at killing vehicles.

[DarkLink]

You ignored the real argument. I would gladly trade access to melta-guns that have to be positioned under 6 inches to be effective (which tends to make the unit using it highly susceptible to charges after destroying AV 14 vehicles) for the heavy/assault rending psycannons.

His argument amounted to "psycannons blow up my stuff all the time". I find that, as a GK player, I have trouble dealing with av14 unless my dice are doing well. Other than the acolyte melta squad I like to take, that is. My experience contradicts his, and both are purely anecdotal. Run the math, however, and you'll find that psycannons are only slightly better than lascannons at killing AV14, and lascannons aren't exactly the ideal solution to heavy armor by any means.

His point about meltaguns doesn't change the fact that psycannons aren't that good against AV14. And since GKs don't get meltaguns, they need something that can blow up Land Raiders.



Not that psycannons aren't really good, but you have to keep in mind the difference between what's overpowered and what's good. If you take away everything that's good about a codex, then GKs would be horrible again.

Incidentally, you want to know what psycannons are really good against? Razorback spam. It's good but nothing special against most everything else. Psycannons don't have a high enough AP to really scare most MCs or Marines that much, you need to rely on weight of fire. You have a chance to kill heavy armor, but you tend to have to put your whole army into it until you get lucky and roll a couple 6's. And you can shoot up hordes fairly well, but you're not getting a huge number of shots out of it.

If people stopped taking light vehicle spam, psycannons wouldn't be auto-includes for GK players. Funny thought, that.

And of course psycannons should be more expensive than incinerators, and psilencers need to be completely rewritten, but I already mentioned that.



No need for an insult in the middle of you argument, by the way.

I'm not sure the word insult means what you think it does. I've noticed the jeske doesn't always have the best grammar and/or punctuation, and I like being snarky, so I gave him a helpful tip. If you took that as an insult... well, good for you I guess. I'm really not sure what to say to that.

[Rapture]

His argument amounted to "psycannons blow up my stuff all the time".

That is not at all true. He made a point about range and referenced a specific situation where that point is particularly relevant. It is easy to make an argument when one picks and chooses which counter-arguments to ignore and which to respond to, but it is adverse to the goals of an actual discussion and can be a serious indicator of bias.

By the way, a period should (almost) always go inside of a quotation mark. Consider it a helpful tip.

'Insult' means many things, but a reasonable example of such is when one goes out of their way to criticize another grammar in the middle of a friendly debate.

[Angelofblades]

It's not about what some random person arbitrarily decides an army "deserves", whatever that even means. It's about what's balanced.

So do explain what exactly is balanced about a Terminator with frag/krak grenades, access to stackable S modifier, with Free Initiative 6 and Nemesis Force weapons. All coming in at the exact same price cost as Thnuder hammer assault terminators. Heck regular shooting termies don't even come close to that destructive power



No need. Staves are already very expensive and very rare. Outside of CC and the HQ's, the best available save is a 5+. That balances it out just fine already.

Downgrade the invul save, downgrade the points cost. It goes hand in hand, but in terms of balancing, does a model with a 2+ Armor Save, really justify any need for a 2+ invul save? I highly doubt it




Lascannons are just as good (actually, probably better) at killing titans as killing guardsmen. Poor comparison. Without something like psycannons to allow them to open vehicles, GKs would be a pretty crappy army.

For as well versed as you are in the game Darklink, I'm pretty sure you are well aware of the case between Assault Cannon Vs Lascannon. IIRC (from memory) but I believe the Assault cannon beats the Lascannon every time in terms of killing armor. A psycannon only reinforces the math on this. Soo do psyflemen count for nothing in regards to allow them to open vehicles? Imho, psycannons should not be dishing the amount of disgusting damage they do against vehicles at range that they do now. Honestly, if someone gave me the choice between melta guns and psycannons, I would always choose psycannons, all the time. But the honest truth still is, Psycannons are OP. If GK want to pop armor, rely on a dread, combat or get some gaurdsmen to tote those melta guns. From the sounds of it, you obviously have not been on the receiving end of a psycannon spam while playing a non GK army.



Funny, that. You realize one of the GK's big weaknesses is dealing with AV14, which is exactly what meltaguns are for? They need to have at least a small chance against that sort of thing, since they don't have meltaguns.


But Psycannons don't give them a small chance, it gives them a HUGE chance to pop AV 14. Hence the reason why I suggested either downgrading the Psycannon to equal an assault cannon, ergo it can still touch AV 14, but not have the ease of poppping it.



Until your opponent brings psychic defense, or you Perils, or you have to spread out to claim objectives and your opponent is smart enough to take advantage of the fact that you've got so many points buried into one single squad...

Like 3 armies in the game have psychic defense man...Space Marines (and equivalents), Eldar, and Tyranids. Also, I can count the number of times I've perils w/ my armies that have psykers ( I play Eldar, BA and GK) on one hand. That still says nothing about de-stacking Hammerhand. You honestly only need S6 and rad grenades (oh look that's 1 IC attached to insert GK unit here) to start causing ID to base T4 models without having to activate FW. I said nothing about multi-casting it, if you were thinking that. Let GK multi-cast it, but prevent the stacking.

[bfmusashi]

So do explain what exactly is balanced about a Terminator with frag/krak grenades, access to stackable S modifier, with Free Initiative 6 and Nemesis Force weapons. All coming in at the exact same price cost as Thnuder hammer assault terminators. Heck regular shooting termies don't even come close to that destructive power

This sounds incredibly odd. If we're going on points shouldn't there be a comparison as to which units have which advantages? In this scenario the GK have storm bolters, I6, either +1S (S5) or Instant Death (at S4) on all close combat attacks, and a 5++. Assault terminators would have I1 attacks at S8 that stun and a 3++ save.
Hammerhand being stackable* does not matter in this instance.


*All time weirdest FAQ ruling. I don't remember anything in the codex even hinting at this.

[DarkLink]

Hammerhand is kind of ambiguous. It really just says you get +1 strength, which leaves open the possibility for stacking bonuses. So at least the ruling didn't actively contradict the codex.


So do explain what exactly is balanced about a Terminator with frag/krak grenades, access to stackable S modifier, with Free Initiative 6 and Nemesis Force weapons. All coming in at the exact same price cost as Thnuder hammer assault terminators. Heck regular shooting termies don't even come close to that destructive power

Well, for one thing THSS Terminators have a 3++, and are base strength 8. Lightning claw Terminators get reroll to wound. GK Terminators require attached HQs and psychic tests to be more than a basic power weapon, and can't get Storm Shields at all to improve their durability. A unit of GK Terminators brings upgrades that jack up the cost very quickly, and the supporting units are very, very different.

So if you remove rad/psykotroke grenades and appropriately price psyrifle Dreadnoughts, the unit instantly becomes much more reasonable.

To be honest, aside from THSS Terminators, Terminators in general are pretty mediocre. They're too expensive to actually be that good at anything, unless they have that 3++ and the hammers to smash most anything.



Downgrade the invul save, downgrade the points cost. It goes hand in hand, but in terms of balancing, does a model with a 2+ Armor Save, really justify any need for a 2+ invul save? I highly doubt it

Well, since any real assault unit ignores armor, the quality of a units armor save is secondary in assault to the quality of its invulnerable save. And since GKs lack good invulnerable saves elsewhere, I think my point stands.



For as well versed as you are in the game Darklink, I'm pretty sure you are well aware of the case between Assault Cannon Vs Lascannon. IIRC (from memory) but I believe the Assault cannon beats the Lascannon every time in terms of killing armor. A psycannon only reinforces the math on this. Soo do psyflemen count for nothing in regards to allow them to open vehicles? Imho, psycannons should not be dishing the amount of disgusting damage they do against vehicles at range that they do now. Honestly, if someone gave me the choice between melta guns and psycannons, I would always choose psycannons, all the time. But the honest truth still is, Psycannons are OP. If GK want to pop armor, rely on a dread, combat or get some gaurdsmen to tote those melta guns. From the sounds of it, you obviously have not been on the receiving end of a psycannon spam while playing a non GK army.

Psyrifle Dreads are really only good against light armor. And I did mention that psycannons were "slightly better than a lascannon" at killing AV14. They are.

Thing is, look at the old GK codex. Dreadnoughts, Land Raiders, CC and Stormtroopers were your only anti-tank. The old codex sucked. No codex can be competitive in 5th ed without the ability to open light vehicles easily. Plus, since everyone is obsessed with light vehicle spam, introducing a codex that specializes in opening light vehicles is good for the meta, assuming that people actually adjust instead of staying stuck in the old paradigm.

Anyways, we're not disagreeing as much as you think. I did mention that psycannons need to be more properly priced, to make Incinerators a more competitive option. And they need to make psilencers at least decent as well. But the basic idea of what psycannons currently do is appropriate.



But Psycannons don't give them a small chance, it gives them a HUGE chance to pop AV 14. Hence the reason why I suggested either downgrading the Psycannon to equal an assault cannon, ergo it can still touch AV 14, but not have the ease of poppping it.

Not that big of a chance. Something like 6% to a Lascannon's 4% to wreck a Land Raider assuming 4 shots and no cover, iirc. Something like that. I've done the math before. Slightly better than a lascannon, as I said earlier. Compared to a squad with a couple of meltaguns, it's kind of pathetic. The meltaguns have closer to a 40% chance of wrecking the Land Raider.



Like 3 armies in the game have psychic defense man...Space Marines (and equivalents), Eldar, and Tyranids. Also, I can count the number of times I've perils w/ my armies that have psykers ( I play Eldar, BA and GK) on one hand. That still says nothing about de-stacking Hammerhand. You honestly only need S6 and rad grenades (oh look that's 1 IC attached to insert GK unit here) to start causing ID to base T4 models without having to activate FW. I said nothing about multi-casting it, if you were thinking that. Let GK multi-cast it, but prevent the stacking.

Space Marines and variants make up the half the codices, and several other armies don't actually need it in this case. Tau or IG already die in droves if they get into assault with GKs, excluding blob squads. And since they're T3 anyways, a single Hammerhand makes you wound on a 2+ so stacking hammerhand doesn't matter very much.

And I did say rad grenades should be removed;).

[scadugenga]

Adepticon 40k champion played GK. There were a plethora of GK in the top 20. Reecius placed 7th with Eldar. Tony Kopach (sp?) last year's champ placed I think 20th with his puppies.

Goatboy was pretty up there (26th?) with his Daemons army.M or maybe that was Darkwynn with his Templars. It's been a long con...

I could care less about whether or not they are deserving the hate. That's subjective at best.

They are still a huge percentage of the armies being played, however, which says a lot about the staying power of the book.

Edit: Results were actually after day 1. My bad. (Told you it was a long con...)

Edit part the second: GK made up 8 of the top 16 armies in the Championships, and also won 1st. There were 2 Puppies armies, 1 Eldar (Reecius, go figure :) )1 Daemon (Bill Kim--fantastically nice guy, and awesome painter.) 1 Ork, 1 Necron, 1 IG and 1 Dark Angel list.

[DarkLink]

They have the final results, but they don't show placings on pure battle score so it's hard to tell anything from that.


That is not at all true. He made a point about range and referenced a specific situation where that point is particularly relevant.

And his argument still contains a non sequitur. The fact that psycannons have longer range than meltaguns does not imply that psycannons are particularly good at dealing with heavy armor. You can defend against meltaguns by shooting them before they get to you, and it's true that you can't do that as easily with psycannons. That doesn't change the fact that it takes a lot of psycannons to reliably kill heavy armor. The premise of his argument is flawed.

The rest of his argument, which is what I spoke to, amounted to him saying that in his experience psycannons blew up heavy armor all the time. That is, in fact, by definition anecdotal. That is to say, a claim based on casual observation. Thus I retorted, as my experience has been somewhat different. With the evidence confused, we fall back on statistics which are in my favor.

It is not impossible by any means for GKs to deal with heavy armor. They're just much, much better at killing light vehicles.



It is easy to make an argument when one picks and chooses which counter-arguments to ignore and which to respond to, but it is adverse to the goals of an actual discussion and can be a serious indicator of bias.

See above. I simply did not fully lay out my point. Because, as I mentioned, I like being snarky sometimes, and while being snarky one must recall that brevity is the soul of wit.



By the way, a period should (almost) always go inside of a quotation mark. Consider it a helpful tip.

Actually, in that case the use of quotation marks was altogether inappropriate. Technically you don't paraphrase quotes within quotation marks. My sentence really should have been: "His argument amounted to psycannons blow up my stuff all the time."

Your point, however, is actually (almost) incorrect. Since the quotation marks only applied to a sentence fragment, the aforementioned paraphrased quote, the period goes outside the quotation marks. Had I simply stated the quote on its own, the period would go inside. Inside or outside is situational. Which you (almost;)) mentioned, but I digress.



'Insult' means many things, but a reasonable example of such is when one goes out of their way to criticize another grammar in the middle of a friendly debate.

I still think you're a little unclear on this. Had I said "hah, what sort of idiot would put a comma there", that would be insulting. If I say what I said and you get your panties in a bunch, then whatever dude:rolleyes:. Most of us aren't here looking for a fight.

[Dyrnwyn]

Vs AV 14
Lascannon at BS4:
1 shot x .66 to hit x .33 to pen = 21% to damage
1 shot x .66 to hit x .16 to pen x .33 to damage = 3% to destroy in one shooting phase.

Meltagun at BS4
at 12"
1 shot x .66 to hit x .16 to pen = 42% to damage
1 shot x .66 to hit x .16 to pen x .16 to damage = 1% to destroy in one shooting phase
at 6"
1 shot x .66 to hit x .72 to pen = 47% to damage
1 shot x .66 to hit x .58 to pen x .5 to damage = 19% to destroy in one shooting phase

Psycannon at BS4:
Stationary or Relentless platform:
4 shots x .66 to hit x .16 to pen x 1.0 to rend = 42% to damage
4 shots x .66 to hit x .16 to pen x .66 to rend x .33 to damage = 9% to destroy in one shooting phase.
Moving Infantry:
2 shots x .66 to hit x .16 to pen x 1.0 to rend = 21% to damage
2 shots x .66 to hit x .16 to pen x .66 to rend x .33 to damage = 2% to destroy in one shooting phase


A Psycannon is three times more likely to destroy an AV 14 target than a Lascannon. It is also more effective against lighter vehicles than Lascannon. Literally the only point the Lascannon has in it's favor is the 24" of extra range. Meltaguns are only superior inside the 6" melta sweet spot - great if a raider just rushed 24" at you or you deep struck onto their position - the psycannon outperforms it if approaching or firing at an approaching vehicle over two-three turns.

[DrBored]

It's pretty clear to me that from a variety of perspectives, GK deserve the hate.

To some, it's the rules that are busted. I too agree that GK should not have gotten such high initiative, halberds or not, when Dark Eldar, an army that SURVIVES on high initiative, just came out. To be frank, it's not fair. All the other shenanigans aside, Dark Eldar and Eldar should always have a higher initiative in close combat (sans Wracks and Guardians, etc perhaps) regardless of whatever any Grey Knight is wielding. I don't care if he has a weapon that strikes into the future before you get there, DE and Eldar should strike first. It was the biggest insult that I got as a Dark Eldar player.

To others, it's the army as a whole. Even BigRed just posted his article about how he's worried he's worsened as a player because of his experiences with Grey Knights. One comment even had the gall to say 'So what if GK are easy to play for noobs and mediocre players? It takes a master to pick out the other options in the Codex and master them.' That's like saying 'it takes a master to win a fight with his hands tied behind his back'. You're right. But why would a master do that when he can win with the easy choices in the codex/his fists? I think we can all see that this is the case from the Adepticon results.

Yet others don't hate the game, but hate the system. I think it's fair to say that IG, Space Wolves, and now especially Grey Knights were all larger-than-normal jumps in Codex Creep, while Dark Eldar, Tyranids, and even Necron (and Blood Angels to a lesser extent) were... a ripple in an ocean (and in the case of Tyranids, some argue that they got even worse). It's almost painfully clear how biased GW is to their imperium, and how cautious they get with their xenos races. I worry for the upcoming Tau and Eldar, for their Codices to similarly flop while Dark Angels, Black Templar, and Chaos Marines surge forward at phenomenal rates. It's almost like the power armored armies are trying to one-up each other constantly! And it shows.

And finally, others simply hate the player. Darn you people for picking a stupid-easy army to play! Darn you for bringing the cheese to competitive games! Darn you for choosing the easy win over the challenge! My only wish for the future is that TO's pair up more GK players against each other rather than other armies so that they can whittle down the GK players that get to the end. Want to prove your mettle, prove that you deserve to get to the top tiers? Then beat the same spam net-list that you brought! Then we'll see who is the better general. I feel for the players that didn't bring GK and lost, not because their tactics were bad, but because the units in their Codices weren't as points-efficient or as broken as the GK easy-win. I also applaud the non-GK armies that made it to the top of Adepticon's list, especially Chaos Daemons. Nowadays it takes true skill and knowledge of the game, not only of the rules and your own Codex, but also of the opponents' in order to take a solid win. Unlike GK, Eldar, Chaos Daemons, Orks, and Tyranids require a little more in the general than from the Codex.

Bottom line, sorry GK players, but you deserve the hate. Pick a different army and we'll forgive you, even if it's within the same Codex. Use spammy, cheesy stuff for an easy-win army that plays itself, and you deserve the hate.

But don't worry. I'm sure that the next Space Marine Codex (be it Dark Angels, Black Templar, or Chaos Marines) will take the torch from you soon.

[mikethefish]

Then the new codex hit - all of a sudden, there was an explosion of Grey Knight players in my local store. We went from me, to 6+ players. A lot of new players turned up with Grey Knights. I don't like playing with the new codex - it feels like it lost a lot of the niche appeal of the old elite Daemonhunters, in favor of turning the army into overpowered badasses.

This is kind of the main disadvantage for me. I REALLY dislike how there are just a ton of GK armies being played around my local shops now. Grey Knights are supposed to be elite and rare, not the most common army played in gaming circles.

Now I totally get how the "rarity" of a certain army in the fluff shouldn't match the rarity of an army in the game club. If that WERE the case, then the vast majority of players would be playing Orks and IG. I totally get that... and yet the common sight of the Grey Knights just rubs me the wrong way somehow. Can't explain it.

I long for the day when GK armies are just a tad less common. Not rare necessarily, but not played more than anything else (or at least vanilla marines!)

[DarkLink]

I'd wait to know the percentage of players bring GKs to adepticon before declaring them op because of the results. Heck, I'd wait to actually see the top ten places from pure battlepoints. As far as I know, so far they've only released the best general and the overall placings.


Vs AV 14

Psycannon at BS4:
Stationary or Relentless platform:
4 shots x .66 to hit x .16 to pen x 1.0 to rend = 42% to damage
4 shots x .66 to hit x .16 to pen x .66 to rend x .33 to damage = 9% to destroy in one shooting phase.
Moving Infantry:
2 shots x .66 to hit x .16 to pen x 1.0 to rend = 21% to damage
2 shots x .66 to hit x .16 to pen x .66 to rend x .33 to damage = 2% to destroy in one shooting phase



I will point out that this isn't quite correct. Binomial probability actually gets really complex when you have multiple attempts in each trial. So your numbers will be a little off. The error shouldn't be very big, though.

More importantly, the result of .42 does not mean you have a 42% chance of doing damage. It means that, on average, you do .42 damage results. That is an important distinction. Expected outcome is very different from probability. In the case of single shot weapons like the lascannon the binomial formula just happens to simplify down, but with multiple shots there's a difference.

[Corvus-Master-of-The-4th]

As a Grey Knight player, I'd just be happy to not have Force Weapons (on all standard Infantry)... I mean, against Daemons, they make no real difference anyway. I'd also be happy to up the points of most men by 5 points as well as upgrading and downgrading some of the costs in the book.

But I must say, my Grey Knight army rarely ever wins, but that is because I often play against big hordes (of which 20 Terminators, a Grand Master and 3 non-Psyrifles isn't great against), or heavy plasma based lists... I also enjoy my games too, as they are often very close, with a lot of luck on the side of the dice. But I still agree that Grey Knights are over powered, it's just abit of a shame, especially with the horrible new fluff :(

[eldargal]

Not much sympathy for Guard players complaining that their cheap and abundant AV14 dies too easily to psycannons. None of my armies has anything above AV12.:rolleyes: Strangely enough the amry with which I have most success againt GK is mostly Av10, yay DE.

[Dyrnwyn]

I will point out that this isn't quite correct. Binomial probability actually gets really complex when you have multiple attempts in each trial. So your numbers will be a little off. The error shouldn't be very big, though.
I'm aware. It's simple mathhammer, not exact. I'm also not even rounding, just cutting off the digits at the hundreths so there's errors there.


More importantly, the result of .42 does not mean you have a 42% chance of doing damage. It means that, on average, you do .42 damage results. That is an important distinction. Expected outcome is very different from probability. In the case of single shot weapons like the lascannon the binomial formula just happens to simplify down, but with multiple shots there's a difference.
True enough - I'm out of practice on my mathhammer. As I haven't done any serious statistics figuring in a couple years. Still, the results are good enough to eyeball, and my pronouncement of the psycannon being thrice as good as the lascannon is still valid.

[isotope99]

I'm aware. It's simple mathhammer, not exact. I'm also not even rounding, just cutting off the digits at the hundreths so there's errors there.


True enough - I'm out of practice on my mathhammer. As I haven't done any serious statistics figuring in a couple years. Still, the results are good enough to eyeball, and my pronouncement of the psycannon being thrice as good as the lascannon is still valid.

To flesh this out, ignoring range, the psycannon (at 4 shots) has the following relative percentages of scoring a wrecked/exploded result aginst a non open-topped vehicle.

AV14: 3.7% vs 9.52% (X2.6)
AV13: 7.41% vs 14.01% (X1.9)
AV12: 11.11% vs 14.01% (X1.3)
AV11: 14.81% vs 26.5% (X1.8)
AV10: 18.52% vs 37.6% (X2.0)

The difference is least pronounced at AV12 because of the rending roll. The psycannon is better at all levels but range also needs to be factored in.

[the jeske]

I am not a math person but I know that a GK army runs a lot more psycannons then other armies can fit melta guns at same points . So if GK player can put more psycannons at same points then he is opening transports [what ever AV they maybe] better . the fact that a GK players razorspam list doesnt have to worry about the only thing that was suppose to balance razorbuilds [stunlocking] then a GK players abilty to pop Av14 our performs any other army aside maybe a anti razorspam foot IG build [but unlike the IG foot build GK dont have to worry about counters , hth , swarm etc].



Strangely enough the amry with which I have most success againt GK is mostly Av10, yay DE.
yes but not every army has flicker fields.



The fact that psycannons have longer range than meltaguns does not imply that psycannons are particularly good at dealing with heavy armor.
0_o what ? if he can put 2-3 turns of shoting in to a LR when a melta will get 1 then unless the melta has a 100% chance to blow up the transport and scout to do it turn 1 , the psycannon will always outperform it .
I mean even in mirror matchs against other razorspams.

[Renegade]

Not OP, just the normal ranting at a new codex. If playing an objective game, GK are actually quite crap as others can easily out number them. Necrons can get the better of GK, and Gauss is far more annoying that Psy ammo or cannons.

If I were to list what armies I least like playing against with either my IG or BT, GK would be lumped somewhere in the median, Necrons, Nids, D Eldar, Orks and Eldar being top of the list.

But then I play at 1500 points normally, where the game seems more balanced.

[Defenestratus]

I never seem to have a problem with GK's when I play my Eldar. Runes of Warding shut down pretty much everything that they want to do while my saturated high strength shooting whittles them down. Sometimes I kill them all before they get to my squishy bits. Sometimes I don't.

Now if GK players would actually use lists that they DIDN'T find posted on the internet I might have a problem.

The GK's deserve no less hate than the IG, SW and BA players that all use netdeck lists. The only reason why it seems worse with GK's is that the low model count of the draigo wing crap makes the entry price point much lower.

[Levitas]

There should be no hate over toy soldiers... But build it...and they will come. So you cant blame players for taking up GKs. Its just a skin on the top book which is breaking the already unbalanced game designed to sell plastic.

I don't like what GW has done to them, and the real GK fans who have followed them for a while. They used to be this mysterious chapter that was humanities finest and the last line of defense. Now they are just transport poppers who are everywhere, and have some discount on Dreadnought parts with the Mechanicum.

The problem is that Matt Ward isnt a good writer, and that GW doesn't seem to want to put him on a leash with a psy collar. Please stay away from Eldar Matt...

[Cuddy]

The problem no one has talked about yet is the whole henchmen unit group.

Grey Knights got psycannons to make up for not having melta...but they do have melta, and they can do melta for even cheaper then IG special weapons teams (42 points for three melta guys, or 54 for six guys with three meltas, vs six guys with three meltas coming in at 65 for IG) and IG is a strong codex. Not to mention that servitors offer a 10 point model with a multimelta. If you want you can bring three meltas and three multimeltas in a squad for72 points. So a good GK list is actually strong against AV14.

GK are often said to be weak in objective missions. But with henchmen a GK player can put out a scoring rhino for as little as 52 points. That's nothing, and a fairly resilient target; chimeras and razorbacks are an even better choice, as for a really low cost they can also bring tons of firepower. So numbers arn't the problem. Mobility isn't an issue either, as GK do mech better then most armies out there, with lots of options and Fortitude.

Range is usually given as an issue, with few GK weapons having ranges over 24". While a few armies can use this (IG) the fact that those few weapons that do have range get taken and placed on Relentless platforms in almost every army kind of makes it a moot point.

Sure, GK aren't unbeatable, but that doesn't mean they're not OP. A competent general and list maker with them can cover every weakness given for the army, which most lists can't do. At low skill levels it gets even worse, two relatively unskilled players will see GK dominate. Death Cult Assassins are better than banshees, and cheaper. For ten points a psyfleman brings a reinforced aegis, higher strength and Fortitude over a C SM one. If the players are both inexpierianced, that kind of thing is a big hill to climb over, without even looking at the strong GK infantry themselves.

[isotope99]

Simple 6ed fix I'd like to see:

Units with grenades may only use one type of grenade each turn and may not use defensive grenades if already locked in combat.

[Thiazi]

NO they don't.

The Grey Knight codex is very strong agaist the meta game it was released into. Players unwillingness to think outside the box and change their list from what they were running 2 years ago helps the GK codex stay on top.

[Kawauso]

Simple 6ed fix I'd like to see:

Units with grenades may only use one type of grenade each turn and may not use defensive grenades if already locked in combat.

Change 'defensive' to 'any', otherwise GK still toss out psychotroke grenades in locked combat...heh.

[Defenestratus]

and may not use defensive grenades if already locked in combat.

pg 36 BRB. If a unit is already locked in combat or gone to ground, then they cannot use defensive grenades.

[celestialatc]

pg 36 BRB. If a unit is already locked in combat or gone to ground, then they cannot use defensive grenades.

Since Rad and Psychotropic Grenades are not specifically defensive grenades I don't think the restrictions for defensive grenades applies.

[Defenestratus]

Since Rad and Psychotropic Grenades are not specifically defensive grenades I don't think the restrictions for defensive grenades applies.

I don't know about those, but he specifically stated 'defensive' grenades in his wish list :-)

[isotope99]

I don't know about those, but he specifically stated 'defensive' grenades in his wish list :-)

This is exactly the sort of thing I think needs tightening up in the 6ed definitions with more general coverage. For me, anything used in your opponents turn should be a defensive grenade, anything in your turn an offensive grenade (dual use grenades would be both).

This may even be the intention but with loosely worded rules, these kinds of issues always crop up. The intention of tjhe rule defenestratus quopted looks like it was intended to stop grenades activating when charging an already engaged unit but the situation isn't clear leading to disagreements or OP interpretations (which may well be correct on a strict reading).

[inquisitorsog]

How is that any different from my point? If GKs were an auto-win button, then GKs would sweep all the top spots at all the tournaments because any average player could show up and beat the veterans of other armies easily. GKs have become popular, but they're not actually winning more tournaments than Space Wolves or other top codices.

1) I didn't say "autowin". I said "over powered". There's a vast gulf of difference between the two. Over powered is using a 12 gauge shot gun to shoot tin cans 10' away. Autowin is dropping a nuke to do the same.
2) It is entirely possible that a list is capable of beating 90% of any other lists played by any other player, but still frequently lose to lists played by the top 10% of players. If it beats 90% of players 90% of the time , then it's probably over powered. That the players who live and breathe the game can successfully counter it doesn't change that. It just means it is not, as you say, autowin. You still need to play effectively and there may be some tactics out there to counter it that some folks aren't sharing because they want their own competitive advantage.

[MattHoell]

I'd wait to know the percentage of players bring GKs to adepticon before declaring them op because of the results. Heck, I'd wait to actually see the top ten places from pure battlepoints. As far as I know, so far they've only released the best general and the overall placings.

I guess you missed this

http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2012/04/40k-meta-what-weve-become.html

Out of the top 16 players half was Grey Knights, in the next round they were 4 out of the 8 and in the Semi's 2 out of the 4, with GKs going to win the whole thing.

Oh and GK also won the Team Tournament.

And the Necron codex has been out for 6 months (10/20) . I think they would be considered more than the new flavor over the GK which have been out for almost a year?

[MattHoell]

This is exactly the sort of thing I think needs tightening up in the 6ed definitions with more general coverage. For me, anything used in your opponents turn should be a defensive grenade, anything in your turn an offensive grenade (dual use grenades would be both).

This may even be the intention but with loosely worded rules, these kinds of issues always crop up. The intention of tjhe rule defenestratus quopted looks like it was intended to stop grenades activating when charging an already engaged unit but the situation isn't clear leading to disagreements or OP interpretations (which may well be correct on a strict reading).

My change to grenades would be as followed.

In any assault phase a model may use one type of grenade/bomb for free. If a model gives up all it's attacks it may use a second grenade/bomb. Any model wishing to use a grenade/bomb must be engaged in combat (ie IC must be in base to base).

Not only does this stop the GK nade belt, but makes things like giving sgt. with PF and melta bombs almost work while.

[DarkLink]

I guess you missed this

I posted before that was put up;).



Out of the top 16 players half was Grey Knights, in the next round they were 4 out of the 8 and in the Semi's 2 out of the 4, with GKs going to win the whole thing.

But was it like at the end of day 1, where 5 of those GK players were 11-16? Like I said, GKs are a top tier codex and a very popular army, as you just pointed out, and with such massive overrepresentation there will be a lot relatively high in the rankings. But when you get to the top ten, suddenly there are Necrons, IG, Space Wolves, Orks and I think Eldar all there. I don't know what the final standings are exactly, but I would still be very hesitant to make a claim that GKs are overpowered from such sparse and shaky evidence.

GKs are too popular for their own good, but they're not actually overpowered against most other competitive armies.




And the Necron codex has been out for 6 months (10/20) . I think they would be considered more than the new flavor over the GK which have been out for almost a year?


But people haven't adopted the Necron codex yet, for whatever reason. DE made a much bigger impact, and even DE aren't the most common army to this day.

[MattHoell]

I'm not sure what else you are looking for??

Here's something things to chew on.

In my area, before the 5th edition dex, there weren't nearly as many GK players. When the BA, IG and SW codexes came out most the players were existing players dusting off old armies. While these armies had some new players not nearly as high a percentage as GKs. An easy way to support this is look at the armies, many BA, IG and SW armies tend to have mostly previous addition models, with some of the newer stuff like Valks and Thunderwolves. How often do you see metal Gks on the table.

This explosion in players definitely has something to do with GK power level.

Next, (I know this is no a great argument), but look across the web to see how much time is devoted to this topic on other forums and blogs, no codex has ever received this much hate.

Finally as many people have stated, I just don't find them fun to play against. I have been playing 40k for over a decade and this is the first army I have felt that way. Part of playing the game is having fun, and part of that is winning and losing, but you have to have a shot at winning.

I consider myself a pretty good player, I have won many tournaments, but I don't feel I have a shot at winning a game vs GKs. I don't feel this way about IG, BA or SWs.

[GrogDaTyrant]

Finally as many people have stated, I just don't find them fun to play against.

I agree with this. Although other armies for 5th have proven just as much of a chore to play against (SW, and BA), Grey Knights take the cake for me in terms of "No-Fun-Zone" armies. Win or Lose, I am just unable to actually enjoy the game at all. Maybe it's because of the constant threat of avoiding combat, or the seemingly endless bag of "Gotcha!" tricks. Regardless, they just make for a terribly unenjoyable game.

[DarkLink]

In my area, before the 5th edition dex, there weren't nearly as many GK players. When the BA, IG and SW codexes came out most the players were existing players dusting off old armies. While these armies had some new players not nearly as high a percentage as GKs. An easy way to support this is look at the armies, many BA, IG and SW armies tend to have mostly previous addition models, with some of the newer stuff like Valks and Thunderwolves. How often do you see metal Gks on the table.


That's because all the normal Marine codices are cheap to build and have always had resonably competitive rules. Daemonhunters, on the other hand, had nothing but expensive metal models, and were horrible in general. Ergo, no one played them. Now that the new codex is, as Barney Stinson would put it, Awe-wait for it-Some, and very cheap to build, virtually everyone plays them.

And I have metal GKs:cool:.

[Dyrnwyn]

That's because all the normal Marine codices are cheap to build and have always had resonably competitive rules. Daemonhunters, on the other hand, had nothing but expensive metal models, and were horrible in general. Ergo, no one played them. Now that the new codex is, as Barney Stinson would put it, Awe-wait for it-Some, and very cheap to build, virtually everyone plays them.

And I have metal GKs:cool:.
Honestly, I have a TON of metal GK's. They weren't a bad army under the Daemonhunters codex - they were difficult to wrap your head around and there was a whole lot of 'trap' equipment that was useless if you weren't playing against a Chaos player, but they could do very well if you were careful about positioning and played to your opponent's weaknesses. They were fairly weak in objective missions, but had few liability units in a KP mission.

But I acquired the vast majority of them from people who tried building a GK force, found they didn't like it, and pawned them off. I liked Daemonhunters because they were such an old and rare dex that they were an out of context problem for most players. Every lost Marine hurt, but you got to do things like use your Force Weapons on Greater Daemons and other Eternal Warriors, or show up to an Apocalypse game with an Inquisitor and 12 Orbital Bombardments. And while they were tough and hit hard, nobody told me that the were broken in anything but jest.

[DarkLink]

The old codex was awesome, and it was more like the current codex than most people realize. It was just severely underpowered. All the troop options were overpriced, you had virtually no anti-tank, Land Raiders were your only transports for most of your stuff, and there were plenty of armies that were a hard counter to your list. The new codex just fixed the lack of anti-tank and the overpriced thing.

Roughly half my models are metal. Most of my Purifiers are metal, maybe 1/3-1/2 of my Terminators and other power armor GKs, and I have a couple metal HQ Terminators. I've still got some models to clean up and paint properly, though. I need to find a few storm bolter arms and get more greenstuff for Mordracks Ghost Knights, in case I ever actually use them. I've got the models lying around, so why not.

[eldargal]

I'm going to have to go with the 'absolutely no fun to play against crowd'.

I'm getting to the point new hwere despite winning 75% of my games against GK with DE and 50% with Eldar I'm sick of the sight of them. I had one game against a new player who had no idea what he was doing and I only scraped a win with my Dark Eldar simply because his army is so forgiving of mistakes. He was bored by the end of it, I was bored by the end of it. That is not good codex design.

I think I'm going to stop playing against GK altogether as a result, GK are almost like WFB 7th eds Dark Eldar/DoC, too cheap, too powerful, no fun. GK at least aren't really broken, I still stand by what I said earlier that they don't really deserve the hate they get. I just find them increasinbly stultifying.

[Bean]

I agree with this. Although other armies for 5th have proven just as much of a chore to play against (SW, and BA), Grey Knights take the cake for me in terms of "No-Fun-Zone" armies. Win or Lose, I am just unable to actually enjoy the game at all. Maybe it's because of the constant threat of avoiding combat, or the seemingly endless bag of "Gotcha!" tricks. Regardless, they just make for a terribly unenjoyable game.

This sounds like a "you" problem more than a "Grey Knights" problem.

Honestly, while I feel sorry for your predicament, you have to know that once you've gotten down to "i just don't have fun playing against them," you don't really have any legitimate argument to offer on the matter.

Certainly, your failure to have fun playing against them doesn't constitute a mark against them in any sort of broad sense.

[eldargal]

He isn't alone though, and even BigRed on the main page said how sick of playing GK he is for the same reasons, dull point and click playstyle. If it were just a few people certainlly you could jot it down to personal taste, but there are an awful lot of people coming out and saying they are fed up with GK lately, whether fighting them or playing them.

As I've said I don't think they are broken or even overpowered, I just think they are far, far too forgiving to make compelling gameplay one way or the other. Iwas going to start a small GK force led by Inquisitor Valeria but I now have absolutely no interest in doing so because I want an army that actually takes some skill to use effectively.

I have more difficulty beating Necrons, for example, but they are so much more fun to play against. If it weren't for the fact I don't like the models I would start a Necron army.

[Bean]

He isn't alone though, and even BigRed on the main page said how sick of playing GK he is for the same reasons, dull point and click playstyle. If it were just a few people certainlly you could jot it down to personal taste, but there are an awful lot of people coming out and saying they are fed up with GK lately, whether fighting them or playing them.

As I've said I don't think they are broken or even overpowered, I just think they are far, far too forgiving to make compelling gameplay one way or the other. Iwas going to start a small GK force led by Inquisitor Valeria but I now have absolutely no interest in doing so because I want an army that actually takes some skill to use effectively.

I have more difficulty beating Necrons, for example, but they are so much more fun to play against. If it weren't for the fact I don't like the models I would start a Necron army.

Some of that, though, isn't the fault of the codex--it's just that a lot of people are playing. Partly, this is because they're a cheap army to build. Partly, it's because they're awesome (not just in terms of rules).

I know I started a Grey Knight army because I knew it was only going to take about twenty models, and they're really cool models.

Unless you can come up with some more-or-less-objective metric, I still just don't think you can base a legitimate argument for the conclusion that there is something wrong with the codex around the observation that some people don't have fun playing against them.

[eldargal]

Their ubiquity is irrelevent, they aren't exceptionally common in my games club but the yare still boring to fight against.

This is true.

True, but we are never going to have any metric data, but the growing number of people coming out and saying they are sick of playing with or against GK does indicate there is something going on. There is nothing wrong with the book as such, it just isn't very interesting and has no real weaknesses as their lack of numbers are more than compensated with being incredibly durable.

[bfmusashi]

Daemonhunters weren't fun to play against before. We constantly interrupted the opponent's turn and had arcane rules that people misunderstood or ignored (storm bolters as CCW on the charge, moving an Inquisitor Lord around before the retinue died, etc.).

[eldargal]

That was just the joy of 3rd edition. SoB Acts of Faith, Invulnerable Eldar Falcon starcannon spam, rude little GKs interrupting everything, thin litlte codices that fell apart if you looked at them wrong etc.:rolleyes:

[bfmusashi]

The more I hear about third the more I'm glad I ducked out in second :)

[Corvus-Master-of-The-4th]

(storm bolters as CCW on the charge, moving an Inquisitor Lord around before the retinue died, etc.).

Wait... Storm bolters werent on the charge, it's what made it silly. it's only when they dont charge do they count, meaning they always have the same number of attacks :L

[bforber]

I guess I personally don't understand why people get bored playing -as- GKs when there's an innate amount of diversity within in the codex. The people who got bored of playing GKs got bored of running the same list all the time because that's what the interwebz says will win, (the internet told me strike squads suck afterall.)

I've played GKs since the DH codex. I do agree that there are a few ridiculous things in the codex, and quite honestly, I just ignore half of the dumb crap they confirmed in the FAQ, (stacking hammerhands, grenades working regardless of who charged, all dumb etc.) but people seem to forget that all of the other powerhouse codexes in 5e, (IG, SW, BA etc.) had people whine for a year until it suddenly clicked that adaptation is a necessary thing when new dynamics are introduced into an existing system.

I'm just waiting for 6e at this point. I'm sure a lot of stuff people complain about will change.

[DrLove42]

I guess I personally don't understand why people get bored playing -as- GKs when there's an innate amount of diversity within in the codex. The people who got bored of playing GKs got bored of running the same list all the time because that's what the interwebz says will win, (the internet told me strike squads suck afterall.)


I think they point they're making isn't "my build is boring". I think its "no matter what I take I could screw up completly and still win". You could a unit into the middle of no where, with no cover or strategy and not hurt that much. Its not punishing to mistakes, so theres no challenge, and therefore gets boring

They're very durable. They excel at shooting. They excel in combat.

Compared to armies out there that have weaknesses (DE Fragility, Necrons & Tau in CC etc) theres no challenge and therefore people get bored of just putting models down, rolling dice and winning.

[Urza8188]

I don't see why everyones complaining about the competition getting pigeonholed to 50% one codex. Build an aniti-GK list and autowin better than half your matches.

Perhaps this is too general...All i know is the few games ive played against GK with my Tau, they got lit up by railguns, and kited due to mediocre mobility. Perhaps this is a bad matchup for GK because they seem to be one of the few cases that quality shots are better than quantity, Or maybe the player Im facing just sucks rotten eggs and i don't know anything, but it makes me wonder why more people aren't playing tau lately? :)

Is it really that the codex is OP or is it that the competition has been flipped 180 and you didn't react properly? Maybe i'll go try and play some dedicated GK players and i'll learn what all the fuss is about.....shouldn't be hard to find.

[D_acolyt]

Why do you *like* Grey Knights, if you play them? What is the motivation for you? Is it just because they're an easy point-and-click army or do you like the idea of crushing the will of your opponent even in casual games, or do you just like to have an easy time painting models with a drybrush and chainmail? (Of course, I'm not saying all Grey Knight players are like this, but from polling my FLGS, these are the reasons I've gotten for liking Grey Knights).



I have played the Deamon Hunters/Grey Knights sense just before 5th edition. Back then I played a pure army, no inducted IG. As for why I like them, I have been a fan of inquisition like groups in many games I have played. I am also a fan of close combat, yes you may now laugh, and they were different then my 100 model Eldar army but played a little similarly, minus the anti tank and anti 3+ armor, with a lot less models.

P.S. I miss my inquisitorial storm troopers, they served a purpose.

As for the new codex that's GW powering up issue.

[bfmusashi]

Wait... Storm bolters werent on the charge, it's what made it silly. it's only when they dont charge do they count, meaning they always have the same number of attacks :L

Yes, and you couldn't detach the Inquisitor Lord from his mandatory retinue either. It was a common mistake with the old 'dex and one people didn't tend to catch.

[GrogDaTyrant]

I don't see why everyones complaining about the competition getting pigeonholed to 50% one codex. Build an aniti-GK list and autowin better than half your matches.


So... anti-MEQ then? Like everyone already does, especially in the tournament scene? And not every army has been graced with the capability of being built in such a way to be an 'anti-X' tailored list.


On the bit about 3rd, not all of it was bad. Yeah Gav's Eldar were obnoxious, and the fluff was kept in a vault and released in snippets. But the studio was more willing to listen to the player base (as rampant as they were), and Chapter Approved had some great moments! There was the v3.5 'trial' rules for assaults and vehicles, which did a lot to rebalance the game. Some of the best stuff GW has ever done for 40k was through Chapter Approved, things like giving Terminators an innate 5++ save, the Index Astartes articles, new IG regiments like Death Korp or Elysian, the Ork Clans, Kroot Mercenary, the 3e update to Dark Eldar (fixing them, and making them bringing them back up to playable standards).

[Renegade]

I am quite sure that there is a Space Wolf and an Imperial Guard topic, just like this one somewhere here.

[Wildcard]

has no real weaknesses as their lack of numbers are more than compensated with being incredibly durable.

I am not sure i understand where this is coming from. Do you mean infantry or vehicles?

Infantry in general:
- Power armored units: No inv save, no possibility for army wide FNP.
- Terminator armored units: 5++ save against las / melta / plasma etc, can have 4++ save in cc, no possibility for 3++ saves for against shooting / power weapons & fists in cc (save for draigo & some hqs that forego combat provess for safety in cc) Doesn't differ that much from the other (marine) armies HQs?

And, GK dont have access to ap2 (or 3) weaponry (save for the stupid henchmen - not using them since they dont come from the Titan). Other armies can take plasmas / meltas or other weaponry to counter GK forces, that makes terminators use their 5++ save instead of 2+, and negate power armor altogether. (cover is or should be equal to both players as are stealth etc USRs.. - so i wont go into that either)

Vehicles: Sure, GK vehicles have fortitude, but those only help like 1/3 of the cases (shaken + stunned), and landraider & stormraven can still move and let the unit inside assault anyway if the result is shaken. There are armies that let you ignore stunned and shaken, or squadrons that treat stun as shaken instead.

Then there are extra armors (and equivalents) and other upgrades that makes it safer for vehicles to be on the table. Cant remember them exactly, but 4+ cover saves and possibly 2d6 and lower result on the damage table.

So, its not like GK are the only army that can turn aside blows and withstand punishing.

About army wide NFWs:
Also note, that meltas / missiles / lascannon, generally str8+ weaponry is largerly available to many armies (that i know of) that can inflict instand death to multiple wound units. GK don't get these kinds of weapons (save for few transports), and squads can get none. So GK squads, both PA and Terminators have the possibility to cause ID only in cc, and more times than not they hit on a 4+ as opposed to the 3+ of many shooters that can carry str8+ weapons.

While shooting, you don't have to worry about taking casualties, while on the cc the issue is quite the contrary.

So, in my eyes, there are lots of trade offs, strenghts and counter available both on the GK side, but aswell against them.
---------------------

About building lists:
- I don't play for the need to utterly crush my enemy. Generally speaking i am not using those frowned upon grenades. I also don't stack psycannons like hell. Although i don't take psilencers either -ever.
- While i feel that my options are somewhat limited (special weapons being psycannon or incinerator), and not too many vehicles to choose from (rhino, razorback, landraider & stormraven) + dreadnought ofc (but i dislike the fact that i cannot make it wield 2x dccw, or some fancy GK-themed CCW) - so i hardly use these aswell.

I know that i am excluding a lot of the options that are generally frowned upon, but that is just for personal preferences..

Maybe the whole point of this post is to question the statements that no matter what - playing against gk are boring and stupid.

There are 4-5 plus me in our small gaming circle, and no-one has ever said its dull or stupid to play against GK (other than 2 times when they wanted to see the full power of grenade and cheese spam - one example was that 10man nob squad with claws, 5+ invusaves and fnp assaulted my 4man terminator + grandmaster squad, and died to the last man before ever even striking a blow at me) :P

[eldargal]

There is more to being durable than just saves and toughness. GK are extremely strong in close combat, they are extremely strong in shooting, they have high initiative and can get extremely high strength and have access to some extremely powerful wargear and characters that boost them further. They have few drawbacks, they aren't overpowered but they are ridiculously forgiving of mistakes.

[bfmusashi]

Not every army can counter the GK easily, and Eldargal is correct, they are forgiving. The IG can rock the power armored space gorillas and I do so with fair regularity.

[bforber]

Vehicles: Sure, GK vehicles have fortitude, but those only help like 1/3 of the cases (shaken + stunned), and landraider & stormraven can still move and let the unit inside assault anyway if the result is shaken. There are armies that let you ignore stunned and shaken, or squadrons that treat stun as shaken instead.

Okay GKs are my main army and I have to disagree with you. The armies that have vehicles that ignore shaken/stunned pay a premium for said ability (Daemonic possession,) or are units that are difficult to use (DC dreads,) I love fortitude, but it should've at least been 10-20 points. Do you realize how much that helps against stuff like ML long fangs glancing land raiders, Gauss weapons glancing vehicles, etc.? In the end you end up wasting shots on a unit because unlike other armies you can't just leave a dreadnought shaken/stunned and move on to surpress the next thing, which I will agree is a balance issue.


Then there are extra armors (and equivalents) and other upgrades that makes it safer for vehicles to be on the table. Cant remember them exactly, but 4+ cover saves and possibly 2d6 and lower result on the damage table.

And? An aircav GK list can lulz around the board with a libby, (because lets face it, Librarian's are the best HQ in the codex,) giving a 3+ cover save to a vehicle that's immune to melta that can flat out and fire a weapon. Answer: Hydras? Okay, good luck with 5's to glance and still having a 5+ cover from the shrouding.

With the exception of fortitude, GKs are equally durable to any other marine army. They die to the same ap3ap2 weapons, terminators still die relatively easy to mass fire, (at least mine do... so many 1s.) I feel like people have a hard time getting away from a castling strategy, which is really just the worst idea against GKs because its way too easy for them to corner you into a 24" corner.

[Wildcard]

but they are ridiculously forgiving of mistakes.

Out of genuine interest, what kind of mistakes are we talking about here? Can you give me some examples?

[Rapture]

Don't take this the wrong way, but did you think about any of this as you typed it? Either that, or this is a fairly serious case of pessimism.

I am not sure i understand where this is coming from. Do you mean infantry or vehicles?

Infantry in general:
- Power armored units: No inv save, no possibility for army wide FNP.
Not having an invulnerable save and army wide FNP is not a disadvantage, it is normal

- Terminator armored units: 5++ save against las / melta / plasma etc, can have 4++ save in cc, no possibility for 3++ saves for against shooting / power weapons & fists in cc (save for draigo & some hqs that forego combat prowess for safety in cc) Doesn't differ that much from the other (marine) armies HQs?
Did you forget that those terminators strike at I6 and with stacking hammerhands and silly grenade support? They don't need a high invulnerable save because generally there will not be enough left to fight back.

And, GK dont have access to ap2 (or 3) weaponry (save for the stupid henchmen - not using them since they dont come from the Titan). Other armies can take plasmas / meltas or other weaponry to counter GK forces, that makes terminators use their 5++ save instead of 2+, and negate power armor altogether. (cover is or should be equal to both players as are stealth etc USRs.. - so i wont go into that either)
Although there are exceptions, access to AP2 weapons is pretty limited in most cases.

Vehicles: Sure, GK vehicles have fortitude, but those only help like 1/3 of the cases (shaken + stunned), and landraider & stormraven can still move and let the unit inside assault anyway if the result is shaken. There are armies that let you ignore stunned and shaken, or squadrons that treat stun as shaken instead.
Did you just say that squadrons of vehicles are an advantage? What kind of advantage allows one unit to put multiple hits on separate tanks? Extra armor does not stop stun locking.

Then there are extra armors (and equivalents) and other upgrades that makes it safer for vehicles to be on the table. Cant remember them exactly, but 4+ cover saves and possibly 2d6 and lower result on the damage table.
The problem isn't that other armies don't have a trick or two (but more likely only one) of their own, but that the GK have more than most of the other combined.

So, its not like GK are the only army that can turn aside blows and withstand punishing.
But they are the undisputed best at it.

About army wide NFWs:
Also note, that meltas / missiles / lascannon, generally str8+ weaponry is largely available to many armies (that i know of) that can inflict instand death to multiple wound units. GK don't get these kinds of weapons (save for few transports), and squads can get none. So GK squads, both PA and Terminators have the possibility to cause ID only in cc, and more times than not they hit on a 4+ as opposed to the 3+ of many shooters that can carry str8+ weapons.
Largely available to who? IG maybe. DE? A little. Other than that it is generally either one (maybe two) per squad or heavy weapons that hold back the entire unit. Can only inflict ID in CC? Every single one of them can inflict ID in CC. Even a SM command squad with four melta guns can inflict, at most, 4 ID wounds. How many cover ignoring, I6, S6 ID wounds squad of grey knights inflict?

While shooting, you don't have to worry about taking casualties, while on the cc the issue is quite the contrary.

So, in my eyes, there are lots of trade offs, strengths and counter available both on the GK side, but aswell against them.
I don't understand what you think the trade off is. Not having invulnerable save on your power armor troops? Having to take yucky inquisition units to spam the sh*t out of special weapons? The ability to fire 4 TL S8 BS4 shots from a dreadnought? S7 rending heavy/assault weapons? GK have broken free or the disadvantages while piling on the advantages. The codex deserves criticism to, hopefully, prevent things like the Tau coming out with railguns that cost 5 points more for the upgrade from one shot to three.

[eldargal]

Edit: Nevermind, Rapture said it better.

[bfmusashi]

You don't need to pay nearly the attention to placement with GK. You get two shots from a storm bolter at 24", you can still charge if you notice they're within range (and you can tell if they're in charge range), and you don't need to worry about something else charging into you with nearly the anxiety of other armies as you will be answering back with (at the minimum) S5 or instant death attacks at initiative. Each unit is a toolbox capable of dealing with multi-wound models, elites, and with some experience, can whittle down a horde to something manageable. It doesn't make them overpowered but they are seriously robust.

[the jeske]

I think people forget that with mecha or even normal movment GK range is never 24" . if it was then deploying further would work against them . when a Psy C has a range of 24+6 or worse 24+2disembark+12 moven hiding isnt much of an option . and before you say "but it halfs their shoting, if they arent termks" then yes you are rigth , but a GK army can fit what in to a normal army 14 psycannons + rifleman ? thats 28 rending str 7 shots and anything the R man can dish out.

[Renegade]

Well if people find GK that hard, take Nuns with Guns of Black Templars with Abhor the Witch. Laugh as NFW are only power weapons on a roll of the dice, and lots of other little surprises for the newb.

[DarkLink]

That's why I've found psyrifle dreads to be a bit overrated. You need a couple to reach out and touch your opponent's backfield units, but other than that psycannons do the job while also bringing scoring, storm bolters, assault and extra bodies. Psyrifle Dreads are good at one thing and one thing only, killing light vehicles at range. If 6th ed tones down the importance of transports, then psyrifle dreads will become less common very quickly.


Not having an invulnerable save and army wide FNP is not a disadvantage, it is normal

It's normal, until you realize that most other armie's troops are significantly cheaper for the same, or better, durability. Both Purifiers and Tactical Marines have T4 and a 3+ save, but one is 50% more expensive than the other. Vanilla Terminators have widespread access to 3++, while GKs are stuck with at most a 4++ and one 2++ a squad, in assault only, where as you mentioned they already tend to kill stuff dead as it is, and even the 4++ trades off a lot of their offensive power in CC.


Did you forget that those terminators strike at I6 and with stacking hammerhands and silly grenade support? They don't need a high invulnerable save because generally there will not be enough left to fight back.

Shooting goes before I6.


But they are the undisputed best at it.

Necrons are better at it, actually. You can't stop their ability with psychic defense.


I don't understand what you think the trade off is. Not having invulnerable save on your power armor troops?

Not having directly increased durability for much more expensive troops, necessitating increased offensive power to make up for that relative fragility and the difficulty of projecting force with a limited number of units.



Having to take yucky inquisition units to spam the sh*t out of special weapons?

Inqisitorial units, in general, suck or are overrated. Regular IG is much, much better at spamming special weapons. Death Cult Assassins are kinda scary, until you feed them a sacrificial unit and/or destroy their transport then just shoot them to death.12pt scoring upgrade to Razorbacks is bad codex design, though.



The ability to fire 4 TL S8 BS4 shots from a dreadnought?

Psyrifle dreads are slightly overrated, but yes, they're underpriced.

To expand, aside from the underpriced Fortitude and Reinforced Aegis, Psybolts should be more expensive. I'd say an extra 20-30pts overall would be appropriately priced.



S7 rending heavy/assault weapons?

Since they lack all the normal heavy/assault weapons, they need something other than Storm Bolters.



GK have broken free or the disadvantages while piling on the advantages.

This is a complex point. You have to realize that upgrades tend to give diminishing returns when you start stacking them on, so you often end up with a unit that looks overpriced on paper but is actually more balanced than you might think.



The codex deserves criticism to, hopefully, prevent things like the Tau coming out with railguns that cost 5 points more for the upgrade from one shot to three.

Frankly, every codex deserves criticism. A lot of it. I think GW should take their current codex writing procedures and, instead of going straight to printing, release the rules in WD and have 3-6 months of player feedback. Then print. Of course, WD seems to have a curse on it, so maybe that's not the best idea.


You don't need to pay nearly the attention to placement with GK.

Unless you're playing a competent opponent. The movement phase is where you beat Grey Knights. I started a thread on that not too long ago.

As I mentioned, when you start paying a lot of points for a lot of upgrades you start getting diminishing returns. Each individual unit has to be very robust, as you put it, otherwise the overall army will be very underpowered. GW didn't to too bad of a job getting the balance right, though I'm not going to say they couldn't have done better.

[DrLove42]

It's normal, until you realize that most other armie's troops are significantly cheaper for the same, or better, durability. Both Purifiers and Tactical Marines have T4 and a 3+ save, but one is 50% more expensive than the other. Vanilla Terminators have widespread access to 3++, while GKs are stuck with at most a 4++ and one 2++ a squad, in assault only, where as you mentioned they already tend to kill stuff dead as it is, and even the 4++ trades off a lot of their offensive power in CC.



Comparing Purifiers and Power Tactical Marines points costs is like comparing a Kabalite Trueborn to a Guardian. Same durability, but wildly different abilities. Purifiers wound everyone on a 4+ in combat before hand, and all have power weapons. Thats pretty good for a few extra points. They might be as durable, but they're far more offensive

Compare normal power armoured marine and power armoured GK for a fairer comparison. I don't know the points for either, but I bet their closer

Also purifiers arent troops are they? They can become troops, but theyre an elites option arent they

As for 3++ on Terminators...yeah normal marines can take a stormshield. But it limits the unit purely to CC. How do GK get their 4+? (Genuine question....I don't know). Can they still shoot when they have that save?

[Rapture]

You know what sucks? Getting sweaty, wasting a half hour, having to constantly worry about whether another person is having fun, messing up the sheets, and potentially having a baby. See? Even sex sounds bad if you only list the negatives (although the last one is actually kind of annoying).

That's why I've found psyrifle dreads to be a bit overrated. You need a couple to reach out and touch your opponent's backfield units, but other than that psycannons do the job while also bringing scoring, storm bolters, assault and extra bodies. Psyrifle Dreads are good at one thing and one thing only, killing light vehicles at range. If 6th ed tones down the importance of transports, then psyrifle dreads will become less common very quickly.
If.

It's normal, until you realize that most other armie's troops are significantly cheaper for the same, or better, durability. Both Purifiers and Tactical Marines have T4 and a 3+ save, but one is 50% more expensive than the other. Vanilla Terminators have widespread access to 3++, while GKs are stuck with at most a 4++ and one 2++ a squad, in assault only, where as you mentioned they already tend to kill stuff dead as it is, and even the 4++ trades off a lot of their offensive power in CC.
I forgot that Tac Marine could explode a horde by simply touching it. I would gladly pay 50% more for that. Those terminators with the piddly 5++ have access to a fast skimmer transport with assault ramp. Once they are in assault, they strike before most opponents with ID power weapons. Who needs an invulnerable save when there is nothing left to fight back? Besides, the warding stave will gladly soak up that random power fist attack.

Shooting goes before I6.
GK shoot and assault better than most other troops and they always get to assault when they finish.

Necrons are better at it, actually. You can't stop their ability with psychic defense.
What psychic defense? That is not a universal ability.

Not having directly increased durability for much more expensive troops, necessitating increased offensive power to make up for that relative fragility and the difficulty of projecting force with a limited number of units.
The best defense is a good offense, especially when reinforcements are not part of the game. Alpha strikes can dominate and, having high S and I with ID capabilities piled on top of consistent shooting (strong against both infantry and transports), GK get to repeat them (to a lesser extent) every turn.

I appreciate that you are looking at some of the rules objectively, but I am not seeing much space for argument that the book is OP and deserving of a significant amount of the hate that it draws.

[Big Jim]

If you are going to compare any unit to the SM Tac marine it would be the GK strike squad and that is a heck of a comparison.

Tac Marine comes with PA, Bolter, Bolt pistol, Frag and Krak nades. For spec rules ATSKNF, Combat squads and tactics. All for a base cost of 16pts.

GK Strike marine comes with PA, Stormbolter, Nemesis force weapon (striking as a power weapon at the worst), Psyk-out, frag and crack nades. Spec Rules ATSKNF, Combat squads, Bro of psykers, Aegis, Deepstrike, PE Daemons and two psychic powers; Hammer hand and Warp Quake. for a whopping 20pts.

Four points difference seriously WTH? Am I the only person that sees the ridiculousness of that?

The points system is a steaming pile of unbalancing poo in this codex.

[Wildcard]

Not having an invulnerable save and army wide FNP is not a disadvantage, it is normal

BA can make a pretty effective army wide FNP bubble. Also, i don't know of any other army that can get army wide 5+ inv save but orks (with a certain HQ unit). The original point to my answer was to question the stateent that the GK are highly durable: Later i was said that offensive power also counts into the durability. I see the connection, but cannot fathom how it is straight incorporated with the 'durability'..

Point with the lack of inv save was that there are weapons that can chew them, just as their power / force weapons chew others.. and there are armies that can get dodge inv saves, fnp, gear inv saves, or just smash through with huge humbers..


Did you forget that those terminators strike at I6 and with stacking hammerhands and silly grenade support? They don't need a high invulnerable save because generally there will not be enough left to fight back.

a) Hammerhand is not 100% sure (even without hoods / runes of 3d6 for psychic test) (i've gotten almost 50 / 50 the times i've rolled perils - unhindered.. And for multiple hammerhands / grenades you will gonna need a HQ unit (or techmarine), and those slots are really in high demand.. Also if we talk about terminators + HQ, thats top 6 models in a stormraven and a 6-8 models in a generally less usefull landraider variants (in the GK point of view)

b) With I6, they lose 1A, 4++ -> 5++ save, str8 / str10 hammers (not much to do with instant death, but nice against walkers / tanks)

c) Even one nob with 3 str 8 power weapon attacks either at ws4 or 5 can hurt. Ofc if there is one Guardsmen sergeant with laspistol and chainsword i wouln't be that worried..


Although there are exceptions, access to AP2 weapons is pretty limited in most cases.
I don't pretend that i know all the codexes from front to back cover..

- Imperial Guard:
AP1 & AP2
Plasma guns / cannons, possibility for huge amounts
Meltaguns / multimelta, again possible to gear up to match a supernova
Lascannons, 21x in one troop slot + vehicles (vendettas and russes). Although with company having 21 lascannons i dont know how much more points you will got left..
AP3
Krak missiles, Battlecannons, banewolf, and various artillery pieces.

- BA
AP1 & AP2
Melta pistols and melta guns and multimeltas
Plasma pistols ,plasma guns, plasma cannons
Lascannons to devs / preds / landraiders / stormraven
AP3
Krak Missiles atleast

Dont know about DA, BT, SW
Possibly atleast some variants of before mentioned..

Vanilla SM
Same song, las, plasma, melta. At reduced rate tho atleast to my understanding since if tacts need to be 10strong to get 1xspecial and 1xheavy.
AP3
KrakMissiles
Sternguard special ammo (str4 ap3), applies to all chapters?


Eldar
AP1 & AP2
Starcannons str6 ap2 ?
Fusion guns (those firedragon meltaguns)? ap1
fireprism guns ap2 / ap1?
D-cannons ap2?
missile ap3

Orks
Even though these guys seriously go to quantity over quality
Custom mega blasta str8 ap2?
missile str8 ap3
battlecannons str8 ap3
Then there are all those zzzap guns and shock attack guns and those str6 assault 2 ap d6 guns (probably with upgrades, the name of the squad just escapes my thought)

Chaos SM
again, possibilities for different plasma and melta weaponry, practically to every viable unit. Lascannons also to havocs? and preds / landraiders. (and oblits & defiler)

And so on..


Did you just say that squadrons of vehicles are an advantage? What kind of advantage allows one unit to put multiple hits on separate tanks? Extra armor does not stop stun locking.

Extra armor: Treat stunned result as shaken instead
Squadron: Treat stunned result as shaken instead, but immobilised result is instead wrecked

Stunlock to my understanding: Forcing the vehicle to remain stationary and give up shooting for one turn.
Now, depending on the enemy ofc, but even tho tank cannot fire, to be able to move (be that cover, tank shock, or just move so that enemy cant get auto hits if they assault) can mean alot against some forces, especially cc oriented.



The problem isn't that other armies don't have a trick or two (but more likely only one) of their own, but that the GK have more than most of the other combined.
My stormraven doesn't have vectored thrust engines, starengines, holotrololo-fields etc etc.. although i know those are expensive, yet everything in the eldar dex are (or so i've heard).. Its not GK dexes fault..

- BT can put machine spirit in practically any vehicle, making it nearly impossible to shut them down if not wrecked.
- Eldar tanks got alot of ways to stay save, not to forget fortune that makes them re-roll failed saves (any saves) and 2d6 and lower result in damage table or something like that
- IG got camo-nets, extra armor, smoke launchers - and quantity
- Chaos SM have extra armor,smoke launchers and demonic possession
- Orks got custom force field, that with a skill (and 2 HQ units, agreed) can create a huge 4+ cover save bubble for vehicles and 5+ cover for infantry. They got grot riggers (4+ repair of immobilised result), extra armor -equivalent. Can make some vehicles from open topped to -non open topped (notice the important impact of losing assault vehicle rule tho)
- Tau got some sort of 4+ save to everything if more than 12" away i think.

All of these are abilities that help to mitigate incoming / taken damage (and thats like half of the forces there are)

-GK: Smoke launchers, machine spirit in LR / SR, Fortitude, and that librarian stealth USR psy skill.

Then there are rules like melta wont get extra d6 for stormraven
(eldar shield: any weapon max str8, always only 1d6 armor pen)


But they are the undisputed best at it.
Well, this involves equations i cannot even begin to understand.. points vs point, who gets the charge, are we shooting first, what is happening around the calculated conflict..

Or do we just take a general look and take it for granted that GK will wipe anything any other force can deploy? If this topic is to be taken any further, it sincerely requires its own topic..


Largely available to who? IG maybe. DE? A little. Other than that it is generally either one (maybe two) per squad or heavy weapons that hold back the entire unit. Can only inflict ID in CC? Every single one of them can inflict ID in CC. Even a SM command squad with four melta guns can inflict, at most, 4 ID wounds. How many cover ignoring, I6, S6 ID wounds squad of grey knights inflict?

This i partly responded already, but some points remain.

GK with their ID forceweapons need to close the gap first. Best case scenario (against GK) is footslogger termies on an open terrain, that your lascannons could fire 4 turns in a row, if the termies kept running and rollin 6'es while going for the lascannon teams..
I dont know how much 5man devastator squad is point wise, but with 4 lascannons (one fired with signum) is 12 lascannon shots at BS4 and 4 shots with bs5 to take down 5man terminator squad requiring 3/2 to hit, 2 to wound and negating the best protection terminators got - the 2+ save. And you dont even have to finish of that squad with the lascannons. You should have plasma / melta around to do that aswell..

Again with the shooting vs cc aspect.
a) most of the time you hit better while shooting than on the cc
b) you can get more shots than just 1 round of shooting thus multiplying the amount of possible wounds inflicted (unless you are getting hot with plasma like me.. then the enemy wont even have to worry about killing those men, ill do it myself for them -_-)
c) When you shoot someone you don't (generally) have to be afraid of getting hurt yourself. When you decide its time to go to melee, unless you actually do wipe the enemy out, there is a risk of losing your own troops aswell.

GK dont have the luxury of sitting back and shooting the multiwound monsters dead.. 10man nob squad with painboy giving them 6+save, 5++ save, fnp with 2wounds each and t4 is a lot to stop with stormbolters alone. psycannons do help, but unless the shot is rending nobs still get 5++save and fnp for it (and it doesn't do ID on them, like a melta or missile would. Even plasma would deny the fnp)

Basic GKSS has 1A. 5man squad gets max 6A if charged (most likely 2 of them will be hammers). that leaves 4 attacks that hit on a 4+, wound on a 4+ (if Nemesis circuitry is activated). Thats one ID wound from the basic dudes per round (+ hammers, but still it is lileky to make 1 unsaved wound aswell)


I don't understand what you think the trade off is. Not having invulnerable save on your power armor troops? Having to take yucky inquisition units to spam the sh*t out of special weapons? The ability to fire 4 TL S8 BS4 shots from a dreadnought? S7 rending heavy/assault weapons? GK have broken free or the disadvantages while piling on the advantages. The codex deserves criticism to, hopefully, prevent things like the Tau coming out with railguns that cost 5 points more for the upgrade from one shot to three.

At first i said a post or two back: I don't count the henchmen since they dont come from titan.

Tradeoffs:
GK Interceptors: Other assault marines got 1A + 1A from 2x CCW plus 3rd from the charge. Tradeoff here is not being able to dish out that much damage in melee, yet the role is to jump around and spray with stormbolters. (I've managed to lose a whole squad to a unit of ork lootaz, and i even got the charge..)

Psyfleman: GK dont have access to devastators with STR8+ weaponry. That devastator squad got probably few extra wounds before you start losing missiles to fire. You can hide them better and get a cover save when shot with ap3 or stronger. If not pinned, even one casualty wont matter, since 3 more missiles will be fired.

Psycannon: I never said it wasn't probably a good weapon, but i never said you had to gear up all your forces with it..


The codex deserves criticism to, hopefully, prevent things like the Tau coming out with railguns that cost 5 points more for the upgrade from one shot to three.

I did quote this twice on purpose. You are absolutely correct on this matter. Yet, it must be said that it is never the game alone that is lame even if 'broken'. The players that solely try and use those things that are broken to their advantage is what makes the game unfun.

Razorback spam = truly frowned, 5-9 cheap tanks dishing out death is not cool,yet one or two razorbacks are fine?
Psycannon spam = truly frowned, 10-20 guns able to shoot 4 str7 ap4 rending shots at 24", aye, thats bad. But if one only takes one two or three?
Henchmen = 100points for HQ and then 6x 62pts for scoring psybolt razorbacks (kinda like razorback spam above, but with a twist of strawberry.. Not nice.. Yet, to take one inquisitor as a HQ, and take a squad of henchmen to go with it.. is it that bad?

Point here, generally spamming strong / op stuff is not nice. But to take only a few to support otherwise a list that is built with a great theme, or something.. It is actually fun to get those "OOO SHIIIII*" -moments while running for cover and trying to figure how to hell are you gonna deal with that..

But is it lame to take 9 Leman Russes as a IG? ( I have honestly no idea)..

[Kawauso]

If you are going to compare any unit to the SM Tac marine it would be the GK strike squad and that is a heck of a comparison.

Tac Marine comes with PA, Bolter, Bolt pistol, Frag and Krak nades. For spec rules ATSKNF, Combat squads and tactics. All for a base cost of 16pts.

GK Strike marine comes with PA, Stormbolter, Nemesis force weapon (striking as a power weapon at the worst), Psyk-out, frag and crack nades. Spec Rules ATSKNF, Combat squads, Bro of psykers, Aegis, Deepstrike, PE Daemons and two psychic powers; Hammer hand and Warp Quake. for a whopping 20pts.

Four points difference seriously WTH? Am I the only person that sees the ridiculousness of that?

The points system is a steaming pile of unbalancing poo in this codex.

See here's the thing with regard to that comparison, though...

Strike Squads are really easy to kill. Like, seriously easy. They're no more durable than Tacticals, and those extra 4 points per model really do add up. 2 barebone troop choices from either army come in at 340 pts for vanilla Marines and 400 for GK. The regular Marines can add 2 Rhinos and that makes them just a tiny bit more expensive than the GK. And the Tac squad has special weapon options at 10-man size that are free.

Strike Squads are easy to kill with shooting. If you can kill regular marines with it, you can kill PA GK with it. And the GK will have a -lot- less bodies in a full army list.

Yeah they all have power weapons, but they're actually not good in assault due to having only 1 attack. If you get the charge on them, you still have a chance of doing pretty well even with Tactical Marines (which is something I've done before, multiple times). The unit's strength is in shooting (since it can cause more wounds that way, at a constant 24" if need be). But if you can get up close and double-tap them, maybe get in their with a few special weapons, or charge the unit and tie them up in combat for a while, you can whittle them down pretty easily.

I don't think Strike Squads are poorly costed at all. There certainly are things in the GK book that are too cheap, but their bog-standard troops are not one of those things.

[graybrother]

Grey Knights won both the team tournament and the 40k Championships this weekend at Adepticon. I played against them in the last round of the Team Tournament. That list was incredibly abusive and no fun to play against, but I can't complain. All of my team are pretty competative players.

[graybrother]

Which is ironic because the game is currently more balanced than it's been in a very long time. Whine about Grey Knights all you want, they're not exactly sweeping the tournament scene's top tiers.

They won both the team tourney and championships at Adepticon this past weekend. I played GK 4 games out of 8.

[Cuddy]

a) Hammerhand is not 100% sure (even without hoods / runes of 3d6 for psychic test) (i've gotten almost 50 / 50 the times i've rolled perils - unhindered..

Without runes or a hood the chance of succes is around 90%. As far as warhammer goes, where a guardsmen has a 50% of hitting a baneblade he's an inch away from, that's pretty reliable. The chance of a perils is 1/18, not that bad at all.



b) With I6, they lose 1A, 4++ -> 5++ save, str8 / str10 hammers (not much to do with instant death, but nice against walkers / tanks)

c) Even one nob with 3 str 8 power weapon attacks either at ws4 or 5 can hurt. Ofc if there is one Guardsmen sergeant with laspistol and chainsword i wouln't be that worried..

It's a good thing you can mix the wargear they carry in that case. With I6 instant death, there arn't many elite units that can have models around afterwards. A squad of enough Nobz with PKs that you can depend on having some left after Grey Knights strike is going to run you several hundred points. Anything smaller will be destroyed, since it relies on multiwounds to survive, and maybe FNP if you sink more points in to it. That's more expensive then most GK squads, and doesn't have the same shooting ability.




My stormraven doesn't have vectored thrust engines, starengines, holotrololo-fields etc etc..

- Eldar tanks got alot of ways to stay save, not to forget fortune that makes them re-roll failed saves (any saves) and 2d6 and lower result in damage table or something like that

Then there are rules like melta wont get extra d6 for stormraven
(eldar shield: any weapon max str8, always only 1d6 armor pen)

Yeah, but upgrading one vehicle with holofields costs as much as you get a razorback for. And that's for a vehicle that can't have units assault directly out of it, doesn't have POTMS, has lower BS, rear armor and capacity. So it's not really a good comparison. Bringing Fortune into it is hundreds of more points, and not supporting the rest of your army. And eldar are pretty good with vehicle survivability compared to a lot of armies. Its the fact you can get that staying power on 40 point vehicles too.



- Orks got custom force field, that with a skill (and 2 HQ units, agreed) can create a huge 4+ cover save bubble for vehicles and 5+ cover for infantry. They got grot riggers (4+ repair of immobilised result), extra armor -equivalent. Can make some vehicles from open topped to -non open topped (notice the important impact of losing assault vehicle rule tho)

So they can make their vehicles survivable...using HQ choices, a slew of upgrades and by removing the entire reason they would take vehicles (to shoot out of/get into assault before the die). Huge = 5+ 6" from Mek.

Basically, other armies can do some of what GK do with thier transports. But they can't do it army wide, and definitely not for the same cost.




GK with their ID forceweapons need to close the gap first. Best case scenario (against GK) is footslogger termies on an open terrain, that your lascannons could fire 4 turns in a row, if the termies kept running and rollin 6'es while going for the lascannon teams..
I dont know how much 5man devastator squad is point wise, but with 4 lascannons (one fired with signum) is 12 lascannon shots at BS4 and 4 shots with bs5 to take down 5man terminator squad requiring 3/2 to hit, 2 to wound and negating the best protection terminators got - the 2+ save. And you dont even have to finish of that squad with the lascannons. You should have plasma / melta around to do that aswell..

Yeah, if my opponent places all his terminators on the ground first turn, and walks across a board with no terrain to my gun line, I'll do pretty well. Thanks for the advice.



GK dont have the luxury of sitting back and shooting the multiwound monsters dead.. 10man nob squad with painboy giving them 6+save, 5++ save, fnp with 2wounds each and t4 is a lot to stop with stormbolters alone. psycannons do help, but unless the shot is rending nobs still get 5++save and fnp for it (and it doesn't do ID on them, like a melta or missile would. Even plasma would deny the fnp)

I don't know why people keep advocating Nobz against GK. Nob with PK (if he doesn't have a PK, fighting GK will just be sad) and FNP is 50 points, plus the cost of the Painboy. The Nob has essentially no shooting ability, and they don't have a 5++ save (unless they have the Meq with them too, in which case the unit is approaching or over 500 points alone). So they have to get in CC. Where GK will strike first, deny them armor and FNP, and instant death them. That Nob unit will get devastated in that first round. You could beat a strike squad with it still, probably, but then your Nob squad got next to destroyed by a unit a third of it's cost. And that;s the best case scenario. If the GK player is experienced, he can make the situation much more favorable then that.



BAt first i said a post or two back: I don't count the henchmen since they dont come from titan.

You may not, but they're in the codex, and people use them. The fact that you don't doesn't change that.



I did quote this twice on purpose. You are absolutely correct on this matter. Yet, it must be said that it is never the game alone that is lame even if 'broken'. The players that solely try and use those things that are broken to their advantage is what makes the game unfun.

Razorback spam = truly frowned, 5-9 cheap tanks dishing out death is not cool,yet one or two razorbacks are fine?
Psycannon spam = truly frowned, 10-20 guns able to shoot 4 str7 ap4 rending shots at 24", aye, thats bad. But if one only takes one two or three?
Henchmen = 100points for HQ and then 6x 62pts for scoring psybolt razorbacks (kinda like razorback spam above, but with a twist of strawberry.. Not nice.. Yet, to take one inquisitor as a HQ, and take a squad of henchmen to go with it.. is it that bad?

Point here, generally spamming strong / op stuff is not nice. But to take only a few to support otherwise a list that is built with a great theme, or something.. It is actually fun to get those "OOO SHIIIII*" -moments while running for cover and trying to figure how to hell are you gonna deal with that..

This conversation is happening because people do take that. A lot.

[Rapture]

See above
You are just listing things. I will say it again, every army has something - GK have everything.

Not literally everything of course, just enough to give them an obvious and frustrating advantage. What do you do against Tau? Assault them. What do you do against IG? Kill the tanks, then the leaders, then mop up the troops. What do you do against Eldar? Hit the specialists with the opposite of what they specialize in. Against Space Marines? They are all-arounders, grab little advantages as they arrise. Against Space Wolves? They are better all-arounders, same plan. Against GK? They have no true weakness. Everything that shoots assaults surprising well and vice versa. So.... play Grey Knights?

[Cuddy]

See here's the thing with regard to that comparison, though...

Strike Squads are really easy to kill. Like, seriously easy. They're no more durable than Tacticals, and those extra 4 points per model really do add up.

For 4 points you get:

-Upgrade to storm bolter
-Force weapons
-Psykout grenades
-Aegis
-Reroll misses against Daemons
-Psyker powers
-Free deepstriking (Not that great, but still)

And also cheaper/better upgrades, like paying 15 points less for a Power Fist/DH, being able to take as many as you want etc.

It may not make them unkillable, but that's a hell of an upgrade for 4 points.

They outperform tacticals in cc too, even if tacs get the charge. 11 attacks*0.5 hit*0.5 wound*0.33 to pass armor)=0.75 dead vs 6 attacks*0.5 to hit*0.5 to wound=1.5 dead. If the Grey Knights get the charge, or cast hammerhand it just gets worse.

[Big Jim]

See here's the thing with regard to that comparison, though...

Strike Squads are really easy to kill. Like, seriously easy. They're no more durable than Tacticals, and those extra 4 points per model really do add up. 2 barebone troop choices from either army come in at 340 pts for vanilla Marines and 400 for GK. The regular Marines can add 2 Rhinos and that makes them just a tiny bit more expensive than the GK. And the Tac squad has special weapon options at 10-man size that are free.

Strike Squads are easy to kill with shooting. If you can kill regular marines with it, you can kill PA GK with it. And the GK will have a -lot- less bodies in a full army list.
It does not matter how easy he is to kill, he is still a fraking Space Marine with more wargear and special rules. He also puts out more fire at range and trash the Tac Marines in assault due to the power weapons. Do you understand nothing about basic game balancing? That is what a points system is for.



Yeah they all have power weapons, but they're actually not good in assault due to having only 1 attack. If you get the charge on them, you still have a chance of doing pretty well even with Tactical Marines (which is something I've done before, multiple times). The unit's strength is in shooting (since it can cause more wounds that way, at a constant 24" if need be). But if you can get up close and double-tap them, maybe get in their with a few special weapons, or charge the unit and tie them up in combat for a while, you can whittle them down pretty easily.
Sure lets get into assault range with Tac Marines, yeah that is a great idea. You are really undervaluing their NFW and psychic powers. If the GK get the charge and hammer hand off, most of the time the Tac squad dies.


I don't think Strike Squads are poorly costed at all.
And you are wrong from a fundamental game design view point unless you like to play nothing but unbalanced games.


There certainly are things in the GK book that are too cheap, but their bog-standard troops are not one of those things.

There are plenty of messed up things in this codex and the bog standard troops are part of the problem.

[Kawauso]

You are just listing things. I will say it again, every army has something - GK have everything.

Not literally everything of course, just enough to give them an obvious and frustrating advantage. What do you do against Tau? Assault them. What do you do against IG? Kill the tanks, then the leaders, then mop up the troops. What do you do against Eldar? Hit the specialists with the opposite of what they specialize in. Against Space Marines? They are all-arounders, grab little advantages as they arrise. Against Space Wolves? They are better all-arounders, same plan. Against GK? They have no true weakness. Everything that shoots assaults surprising well and vice versa. So.... play Grey Knights?

You make a number of good points, but I would not say GK have no true weaknesses.

They do have one and that's model count. They are (almost) always outnumbered. I say almost because I play an all-jumper/flyer list with my BA, and that typically winds up being smaller/more elite than a GK list...which is admittedly frustrating. I've come up with a list I'd have liked to try against my friend's GK (since I could never pull off a win), but I've since moved, so no idea if it would work...

Anyway. Numbers. GK will pretty much always have fewer models than any other kind of army they face, and as a result each casualty hurts them more. They can't take a lot of sustained fire on individual units, and in this regard they are somewhat like Necrons, requiring a lot of shots (or possible attacks) to be pumped into individual squads to take them down. It's a pretty grueling war of attrition and it requires some smart play, but it works.
I've had a lot of success in the past, for example, finding some way to split a GK force so that I can focus 15-20 vanilla Marines on putting shots into a Strike Squad to whittle them down. Also, charging to ensure that unit doesn't get an assault bonus (and once they are assuredly outnumbered). It's pretty effective.

On the other hand, however, I have gone up against GK a lot with 2 armies that find it an incredibly uphill struggle - namely my pure CC Tyranids and all-jumper/skimmer BA army. Nids have the obvious problems, here - loads of S8 firepower and army-wide NFW makes multi-wound bugs cry, as do things like I6 halberds and Cleansing Flame. My BA, on the other hand, often found themselves outnumbered by the GK and, while possessing superior mobility, lacking the same close combat oomph and having no anti-infantry firepower to speak of. I never did find a satisfactory solution to either of these, but it's been a while since I've been able to play 40k at all, so I'm not sure what I might be able to try now.

All of this to say that there are some obvious problems with the GK book, which have been expounded upon, but I don't think they are as bad as some people are saying. In some cases however, there are things in that book which are pretty bad.

[Rapture]

All of this to say that there are some obvious problems with the GK book, which have been expounded upon, but I don't think they are as bad as some people are saying. In some cases however, there are things in that book which are pretty bad.
I agree to a certain point. The problem is that even a few egregiously unbalanced options ruin the entire codex when spammed. Although I am happy to point out the serious issues in this codex, I don't think that it alone will ruin 40k - just make it less enjoyable against certain opponents.

[Kawauso]

It does not matter how easy he is to kill, he is still a fraking Space Marine with more wargear and special rules. He also puts out more fire at range and trash the Tac Marines in assault due to the power weapons. Do you understand nothing about basic game balancing? That is what a points system is for.


There are plenty of messed up things in this codex and the bog standard troops are part of the problem.
Yes, he is, and yes, he does - he's also more expensive. I do understand a thing or two about game balancing, thank you.
And for the record, in pretty much every game I've played against GK, I've never found Strike Squads to be problematic. Anecdotal, sure, but the basic troops in a GK army have never given me grief in any way that makes me feel they are overpowered. It's always been other aspects of the army that have made me question the balance of the codex.

Psyk-out grenades have almost never come up in games I've played, mind you, and I think they're probably a needlessly tacked-on upgrade across all GK units that confer an extra advantage they don't likely need against applicable units.


Sure lets get into assault range with Tac Marines, yeah that is a great idea. You are really undervaluing their NFW and psychic powers. If the GK get the charge and hammer hand off, most of the time the Tac squad dies.
Yes, that is a great idea. That's where the Tac squad is actually useful - within rapid fire range. Don't send them in alone unless the GK unit they're after is smaller; the Tacs will require support from another unit. Also, you obviously don't want the GK to get the charge (unless they are a really tiny squad, and you can take a hit or two). If you assault them, though? 1 PW attack per model (2 from the Justicar) isn't scary. They miss with half of their swings against vanilla Marines. Your guys miss with half of theirs, too, but getting in the charge nets you twice as many attacks for that first turn, which can make all the difference.



And you are wrong from a fundamental game design view point unless you like to play nothing but unbalanced games.
Out of curiosity, do you have any game design experience to back up this statement?
I ask because I have a diploma in game design, and a number of years' experience working in game development.
40k is not a perfectly balanced game - I'll be one of the first people to say that. 5th edition is pretty internally well-balanced, though, compared to GW's past efforts. They've been getting notably quite better at it, in my opinion.
I understand perfectly well what a well-balanced game looks like. If I want to point to a very good example of something like that, I'll direct you towards something like Magic: The Gathering.

[Bean]

It does not matter how easy he is to kill, he is still a fraking Space Marine with more wargear and special rules. He also puts out more fire at range and trash the Tac Marines in assault due to the power weapons. Do you understand nothing about basic game balancing? That is what a points system is for.


There is a points difference--each Strike Squad member is 25% more expensive than a tactical marine.

You can't simply note that the Strike Squad is better (obviously, it is) and then state that its point cost isn't enough to make up for the difference. What's your system for determining how much things should cost? How much do you think the Strike Squad should cost, per guy, in order to be balanced against a Tactical squad?

Even this fairly-straight-forward comparison isn't half as clear-cut as you make it out to be. Four points, frankly, seems pretty close to the difference I feel is appropriate. I could see five or maybe six, but without some improved durability, I don't think I'd go much beyond that.

As is, this argument is not sufficient. You need to tell us what you think an appropriate price would be and why if you want to act as though their imbalance, price taken into account, is so obvious.



Kawauso:

"I understand perfectly well what a well-balanced game looks like. If I want to point to a very good example of something like that, I'll direct you towards something like Magic: The Gathering."


Not sure I can agree with you, there. Magic not only has poor internal balance, it has poor internal balance intentionally. Some cards are just better than the others, and they're designed that way. Some are strictly better than others (lightning bolt and shock, for instance). For any given instance of the standard format, you'll find a small handful of decks that dominate.

What magic does is force people to transition between decks routinely--it has a semblance of "good balance" only because everyone has the option of building the same set of decks. There are no "factions," as it were, that wax and wane in relative power. On the other hand, to a player who insisted, for whatever reason, on playing mono-blue, all the time, the game would seem extremely unbalanced. Sometimes mono-blue is good. Sometimes it's terrible.

Magic is not an exemplar of game balance. It is merely a game in which competitive players don't stick with a single "faction" through format changes, and by switching routinely to keep up with the new power curve, they offer an illusion of balance.

Don't get me wrong: Magic is a very well made game. Its mechanics are solid, and it's fun to play. It is not, however, well balanced in any sense of the phrase.

[Kawauso]

I agree to a certain point. The problem is that even a few egregiously unbalanced option ruin the entire codex when spammed. Although I am happy to point out the serious issues in this codex, I don't think that it alone will ruin 40k - just make it less enjoyable against certain opponents.

Oh, and it certainly can.

I've had teeth-grindingly frustrating games against GK with 'Nids and BA. Psyfleman Dreads and the grenades have usually been a large part of the issue, there.

Outside of those issues with the book, however, and the spamming of certain units in a competitive sense, I think the GK codex has done something pretty remarkable in making a very low model-count elite army viable. Additionally being as well-rounded and forgiving as it is, and requiring less models to play, it makes it pretty suitable for beginners. For that reason alone I started my brother on a GK army as a Christmas present. His first 1000 points consist of:
Grand Master w/ Incinerator, NFS, some grenades (which, in this army list, help make up for the very low model count)
Terminator Squad with 5x models, hammer on justicar, 1x psycannon
2x Strike Squads with 5x models; hammer on justicar, 1x psycannon, Razorback w/ psybolt ammo
Ven. Dread with assault cannon, heavy flamer, psybolt ammo

He's planning to expand it to 1500 eventually with a Dreadknight and Land Raider. Point being that he's just focused on adding fun, cool-looking models to the army, keeping its cost and model count low, and so far managing to build a pretty decent army without any inherent power level issues. And this is something about the GK codex that makes me pretty happy - something I think the army needs to hang on to if ever it gets an update that tones down some of the goofier stuff in it.

[Kawauso]

Not sure I can agree with you, there. Magic not only has poor internal balance, it has poor internal balance intentionally. Some cards are just better than the others, and they're designed that way. Some are strictly better than others (lightning bolt and shock, for instance). For any given instance of the standard format, you'll find a small handful of decks that dominate.

What magic does is force people to transition between decks routinely--it has a semblance of "good balance" only because everyone has the option of building the same set of decks. There are no "factions," as it were, that wax and wane in relative power. On the other hand, to a player who insisted, for whatever reason, on playing mono-blue, all the time, the game would seem extremely unbalanced. Sometimes mono-blue is good. Sometimes it's terrible.

Magic is not an exemplar of game balance. It is merely a game in which competitive players don't stick with a single "faction" through format changes, and by switching routinely to keep up with the new power curve, they offer an illusion of balance.

Don't get me wrong: Magic is a very well made game. Its mechanics are solid, and it's fun to play. It is not, however, well balanced in any sense of the phrase.

Perhaps I should have been specific with regards to format - specifically I was talking with Type2 or Standard or whatever it's called in mind. There's no way they can keep the game internally balanced across all sets ever printed.

It's very rare that they are required to ban cards (though they do when they feel it is necessary, and I would not fault them for that - they cannot possibly see the outcome of every card they add to the game at all times), and there is often a wide variety of decks that are viable competitively and in friendly environments at pretty much all times, which I find quite a remarkable feat.

[DarkLink]

Comparing Purifiers and Power Tactical Marines points costs is like comparing a Kabalite Trueborn to a Guardian. Same durability, but wildly different abilities. Purifiers wound everyone on a 4+ in combat before hand, and all have power weapons. Thats pretty good for a few extra points. They might be as durable, but they're far more offensive

Tactical Marines also kinda suck. They're overpriced at least as much as Purifiers are underpriced. Grey Hunters are probably a better comparison, in which case Purifiers are 60% more expensive.



Compare normal power armoured marine and power armoured GK for a fairer comparison. I don't know the
points for either, but I bet their closer



Also purifiers arent troops are they? They can become troops, but theyre an elites option arent they

Yes, they're elite so no scoring, which is actually a pretty big deal. Crowe makes them troops, and a Grand Master can use the Grand Strategy, but Crowe is so horrible that you're basically completely wasting maybe 100pts and the Grand Strategy has a big opportunity cost associated with using it to make stuff score. Purifiers are really good, but they're a bit overrated.



As for 3++ on Terminators...yeah normal marines can take a stormshield. But it limits the unit purely to CC. How do GK get their 4+? (Genuine question....I don't know). Can they still shoot when they have that save?

Nemesis Force Swords grant a +1 to an existing invulnerable save, in CC only. That means not taking Halberds, so no I6, and it doesn't help against shooting. On my Terminator/Paladin squads, I take a Stave (2++ in CC, max of one per squad) and one Sword, to eat power fist attacks, a pair of Hammers, and stick to Halberds on everything else.


You know what sucks? Getting sweaty, wasting a half hour, having to constantly worry about whether another person is having fun, messing up the sheets, and potentially having a baby. See? Even sex sounds bad if you only list the negatives (although the last one is actually kind of annoying).

Conversely, if you only list the positives anything can sound good. That argument swings both ways (hah, double entendre;)).



If.

Hopefully.



I forgot that Tac Marine could explode a horde by simply touching it. I would gladly pay 50% more for that.

Cleansing Flame is pretty good, but it's not worth 8pts per model. It's really only great against orks, nidz and IG blob squads, otherwise it's a very reasonable power. And thanks to Shadow in the Warp, nidz have a pretty good defense against it. Poor orks, though.

I once played a game (last Bay Area Open) where my squad of 8 Purifiers, plus an Inquisitor with grenades and Coteaz, assaulted a unit of 30 boyz. Cleansing Flame killed like 14, I rolled a '6' on the psykotroke grenades so they attacked themselves, and my hammers didn't have to do a thing. Everyone was dead at I2. I don't think I lost a single model.

Of course, I got steamrollerd (well, deff rolla'd) later by battlewagon orks. They're pretty good against GKs that don't have a large Terminator/Paladin squad that can soak up their charge.




Those terminators with the piddly 5++ have access to a fast skimmer transport with assault ramp. Once they are in assault, they strike before most opponents with ID power weapons. Who needs an invulnerable save when there is nothing left to fight back? Besides, the warding stave will gladly soak up that random power fist attack.

I dunno, I've never been overly impressed with the Storm Raven. Their most successful lists involve Death Cult Assassins, who, while kinda silly, aren't actually too hard to deal with if you know what you're doing. I rarely see people taking Terminators or Paladins in Storm Ravens, and frankly a competitive list should have decent odds of downing a Storm Raven in one turn, even with a 3+ cover save. And since the Raven severely limits the size of the squad, the GK unit becomes a lot less scary. It's tough to deal with 10 Terminator/Paladins with an HQ, but only 5 isn't unreasonable for most competitive lists. You either have your own solid assault unit that can counter assault and kill them, or enough shooting to take them out after they slaughter the suicide unit you fed them.



Shooting goes before I6.
GK shoot and assault better than most other troops and they always get to assault when they finish.

Individually they're shootier. The trick is outmaneuvering the GK player and focusing fire enough to take units out while minimizing return fire. At higher levels of play, the movement phase becomes exponentially more important. The GKs big weaknesses are that tend to have trouble spreading out and have to stack multipliers to attain overwhelming force. If you can find a way to negate that, you win.



Necrons are better at it, actually. You can't stop their ability with psychic defense.
What psychic defense? That is not a universal ability.

Not universal, but pretty common.



The best defense is a good offense, especially when reinforcements are not part of the game. Alpha strikes can dominate and, having high S and I with ID capabilities piled on top of consistent shooting (strong against both infantry and transports), GK get to repeat them (to a lesser extent) every turn.

Right, that's how GKs get away with their relative fragility compared to other Marines. So in order to beat GKs, you need to try and steal that alpha strike and get the upper hand.



I appreciate that you are looking at some of the rules objectively, but I am not seeing much space for argument that the book is OP and deserving of a significant amount of the hate that it draws.

I think it's better to say that I'm trying to avoid promoting a defeatist attitude. There are absolutely some problems with the GK codex, and if you're not a big competitive player you might have trouble figuring out how to beat GKs, but it can be done and I want to try and highlight weaknesses, small as they may be.


If you are going to compare any unit to the SM Tac marine it would be the GK strike squad and that is a heck of a comparison.

The points system is a steaming pile of unbalancing poo in this codex.

Funnily enough, GKSS are probably the most balanced unit in the GK codex. They're solid, flexible, but far from overpowered. They have a low number of attacks in assault and are limited to two heavy weapons so they don't have overwhelming firepower in either case, and can be whittled down, making up for their advantages.

Remember, Tactical Marines are overpriced. Look at Grey Hunters, they're commonly accepted as the best troop choice in the game. GKSS lose an attack, counter assault, and have no access to melta, but for 5pts they get force weapons, hammerhand, aegis and storm bolters. Warp Quake and PE daemons are too situation to be a huge deal, and brotherhood of psykers is just the rule that explains how the squad psychic powers work so it's not really some special advantage.

Your comparison kind of falls flat on its face here. GKSS (and Interceptors as well) are probably the one thing that I would leave untouched if I had the opportunity to rewrite the codex. Almost everything else would have minor nerfs or buffs to bring them in line and balanced the codex out.



They won both the team tourney and championships at Adepticon this past weekend. I played GK 4 games out of 8.

That was mentioned a few pages back. What you didn't mention, though, is what the top ten places went to. That's far more important than just who won. I'm not saying GKs aren't popular (they are, taking up 22% of the entrants), I'm saying you shouldn't confuse popularity with power. GKs are a top tier codex, and very popular, but just because a lot of people play them and you can win a tournament with them doesn't in and of itself make them overpowered. And while Adepticon is the premier competitive tournament in America, there are plenty of other major events that have been won by everything from Eldar to 'nidz. Based purely on tournament wins, in fact, I think Space Wolves are still the kings of 40k, though I'm not 100% on that.



Yeah, but upgrading one vehicle with holofields costs as much as you get a razorback for. And that's for a vehicle that can't have units assault directly out of it, doesn't have POTMS, has lower BS, rear armor and capacity. So it's not really a good comparison. Bringing Fortune into it is hundreds of more points, and not supporting the rest of your army. And eldar are pretty good with vehicle survivability compared to a lot of armies. Its the fact you can get that staying power on 40 point vehicles too.

For one, eldar vehicles are overpriced. Don't confuse that with GK vehicles being underpriced. Secondly, holofields are overpriced, so don't confuse that with razorbacks being underpriced. Fortune comes as a package deal with one of the best support HQs in the game, so that's a poor comparison there, and I might add that a GK Librarian is just as expensive to get things like the Shrouding. And while Fortitude is very good, it can be stopped by psychic defense and doesn't prevent the vehicle from being destroyed. Most people overstate the underpriciness of Fortitude.

So, yeah, eldar vehicles are a poor comparison.


I don't know why people keep advocating Nobz against GK.

Because it frikin' works. I mean, don't assault a unit of 10 Paladins with Nobz, but Purifiers and Strike Squads don't have enough offensive firepower to kill all the Nobz. ID power weapons only take you so far when you have a limited number of attacks at only Str 4 and WS 4.

And here's a little trick smart players do. Take a cheaper unit, like Boyz, and tie up the bulk of the GK squad with them. Then pile the Nobz in around a single GK in the unit off to the side. The GK player will have to put most of his attacks into the Boyz, leaving you with a metric ton of power klaw attacks as he won't be able to kill very many Nobz. Now that lack of quality invulnerable saves doesn't seem like such a minor thing. Add Ghaz to the mix, with the potential ~22" charge range and 2++ on his Waaagh turn, and things aren't looking so great even for Paladins. And if the GK player isn't playing Driagowing, you can wipe units off the board one at a time. Just avoid psykotroke grenades.

Think outside the box and you can find solutions to just about any problem.



You may not, but they're in the codex, and people use them. The fact that you don't doesn't change that.

This conversation is happening because people do take that. A lot.

Do you really think that silly 6x 3 Acolytes in Razorbacks is actually all the great? I mean, it's a silly unit, but it's not like it's unbelievably powerful. You have a bunch of very fragile units to hand your opponent killpoints, and it's fairly easy to kill your opponent's scoring units in objective games. You can make good lists with it, but it's not overpowered or anything.

[Cuddy]

There is a points difference--each Strike Squad member is 25% more expensive than a tactical marine.

You can't simply note that the Strike Squad is better (obviously, it is) and then state that its point cost isn't enough to make up for the difference. What's your system for determining how much things should cost? How much do you think the Strike Squad should cost, per guy, in order to be balanced against a Tactical squad?

Even this fairly-straight-forward comparison isn't half as clear-cut as you make it out to be. Four points, frankly, seems pretty close to the difference I feel is appropriate. I could see five or maybe six, but without some improved durability, I don't think I'd go much beyond that.

As is, this argument is not sufficient. You need to tell us what you think an appropriate price would be and why if you want to act as though their imbalance, price taken into account, is so obvious..

Alright, let's look at it like this: Start with a tactical marine at 16 points.

Upgrade to a power weapon is +15 points in the Space Marine Codex. Obviously, when its extended to a whole squad in should be cheaper, but how much? I know of no codex where that's a 4 point upgrade. Against MEQs, it upgrades your combat ability to three times what it was. What do you think that's worth?

It also causes instant death. this allows your base squad to reliably down a carnifex in CC before it can touch you. That's huge. Not to mention killing everything from Nobz to characters. Like I said, Nobz arn't a good counter for GK, since you are using a 45 point model that relies on FNP and multiwounds to survive, which GK laugh at. So how much would be fair for units to get that for?

Hammerhand is great, and makes your squad even better in CC. What's the value of +1 S 90% of the time?

Storm Bolter over normal boltgun. Doubles your shooting between twelve and twenty-four inches, and allows you to move. Drastically increases your threat range. Adds two S4 shots on the charge as well, making Strike Squads even better compared to tacticals on the charge. This means, on the charge, Strike squads get twice as many attacks as tacticals, with half of those ignoring armor and causing instant death. That's a big improvement.

What is the value of the Aegis? Maybe not too much, but at least a point or two a guy. Let's include that and the daemon rules together, since they're situational, but not useless. Psykout grenades are situational, but strong. It places you attacking before tons of characters, from Librarians to entire Eldar councils. Combined with force weapons, your base squad can threaten characters worth more then they are. While all three of these won't come into every game you play, playing against Space Marines of any kind, Eldar, Daemons etc they are pretty big.

Power weapon upgrades alone tend to be more then 4 points a model. Think about all these upgrades, what are they worth? Even discounted together, no one gets this kind of buff for 4 points.

[Bean]

Perhaps I should have been specific with regards to format - specifically I was talking with Type2 or Standard or whatever it's called in mind. There's no way they can keep the game internally balanced across all sets ever printed.

It's very rare that they are required to ban cards (though they do when they feel it is necessary, and I would not fault them for that - they cannot possibly see the outcome of every card they add to the game at all times), and there is often a wide variety of decks that are viable competitively and in friendly environments at pretty much all times, which I find quite a remarkable feat.

I haven't played seriously in a while, but I remember some standard environments where the pool of competitive decks was pretty small.

That said, I generally agree with this. The game works very well, on the whole. Its "balance" works in a peculiar way, though, and not one that really translates well to 40k. In 40k, people want *their* armies to remain competitive, and they get upset when a new codex overshadows theirs.

This happens all the time in Magic--new decks overshadow older ones--but, to Magic players that's just business as usual. There's no real attachment to the deck, no expectation that your deck will remain competitive in the face of new releases, and there's a general willingness to move on and build new decks because that's just the way the game works.

If 40k worked the same way and 40k players had the same type of expectations, we wouldn't see this type of thread very often at all. At the same time, though, it doesn't mean that Magic is balanced in the way that we generally want 40k to be balanced--it just means that Magic operates on a paradigm where that type of balance isn't important.

[Kawauso]

I haven't played seriously in a while, but I remember some standard environments where the pool of competitive decks was pretty small.

That said, I generally agree with this. The game works very well, on the whole. Its "balance" works in a peculiar way, though, and not one that really translates well to 40k. In 40k, people want *their* armies to remain competitive, and they get upset when a new codex overshadows theirs.

This happens all the time in Magic--new decks overshadow older ones--but, to Magic players that's just business as usual. There's no real attachment to the deck, no expectation that your deck will remain competitive in the face of new releases, and there's a general willingness to move on and build new decks because that's just the way the game works.

If 40k worked the same way and 40k players had the same type of expectations, we wouldn't see this type of thread very often at all. At the same time, though, it doesn't mean that Magic is balanced in the way that we generally want 40k to be balanced--it just means that Magic operates on a paradigm where that type of balance isn't important.

Touche. I suppose it's not really comparable, and that owes largely to the fact that 40k has the whole modeling and painting hobby aspect to it. This requires more player investment and makes any changes to the game that make even an individual model in an army obsolete (understandably) very undesirable.

Barring extremely expensive mythic/rare cards, in 40k each game 'piece' individually costs much more, and requires player investments of time and energy that simply are not present in a card game.

[Big Jim]

Out of curiosity, do you have any game design experience to back up this statement?
I ask because I have a diploma in game design, and a number of years' experience working in game development.
40k is not a perfectly balanced game - I'll be one of the first people to say that. 5th edition is pretty internally well-balanced, though, compared to GW's past efforts. They've been getting notably quite better at it, in my opinion.
I understand perfectly well what a well-balanced game looks like. If I want to point to a very good example of something like that, I'll direct you towards something like Magic: The Gathering.
I don't have a fancy degree but I do have 35 years of practical wargaming experience. I have been playing GW games since WFB 1st edition.

I actually do have some practical design experience, most recently I helped with Battle Standard Ancients (still in production) a few years back and am in the credits of the rulebook. I also created the points system for a now defunct Vietnam rule (left nameless to avoid drama) set, that went away due to mismanagement blamed on everyone but the actual owner.

I also worked on many game systems in the 80's and 90's, such as 15mm Ancients, Lightning Bolts and Lasers (part of Starguard the oldest sci-fi wargame around) I also used to playtest for Target games back when Warzone was still alive and kicking.

So yes I have practical knowledge of what it takes to design a wargame.

[Bean]

Alright, let's look at it like this: Start with a tactical marine at 16 points.

Upgrade to a power weapon is +15 points in the Space Marine Codex. Obviously, when its extended to a whole squad in should be cheaper, but how much? I know of no codex where that's a 4 point upgrade. Against MEQs, it upgrades your combat ability to three times what it was. What do you think that's worth?

It also causes instant death. this allows your base squad to reliably down a carnifex in CC before it can touch you. That's huge. Not to mention killing everything from Nobz to characters. Like I said, Nobz arn't a good counter for GK, since you are using a 45 point model that relies on FNP and multiwounds to survive, which GK laugh at. So how much would be fair for units to get that for?

Hammerhand is great, and makes your squad even better in CC. What's the value of +1 S 90% of the time?

Storm Bolter over normal boltgun. Doubles your shooting between twelve and twenty-four inches, and allows you to move. Drastically increases your threat range. Adds two S4 shots on the charge as well, making Strike Squads even better compared to tacticals on the charge. This means, on the charge, Strike squads get twice as many attacks as tacticals, with half of those ignoring armor and causing instant death. That's a big improvement.

What is the value of the Aegis? Maybe not too much, but at least a point or two a guy. Let's include that and the daemon rules together, since they're situational, but not useless. Psykout grenades are situational, but strong. It places you attacking before tons of characters, from Librarians to entire Eldar councils. Combined with force weapons, your base squad can threaten characters worth more then they are. While all three of these won't come into every game you play, playing against Space Marines of any kind, Eldar, Daemons etc they are pretty big.

Power weapon upgrades alone tend to be more then 4 points a model. Think about all these upgrades, what are they worth? Even discounted together, no one gets this kind of buff for 4 points.

Fair, let's look at the list, then:

Aegis and Daemon rules: I wouldn't pay a point a guy for these in a tactical squad if it were an option.

Psyckout grenades: again, not a point.

Storm Bolter over Bolt Gun: I'd pay a point for this per guy in a tactical squad. I wouldn't pay two.

Hammerhand: I'd pay a point per guy for this. I probably wouldn't pay two.

Warp Quake: I'd pay a point for per guy for this. I might pay two.

Force Weapons: I'd pay two or three points for this. I might pay four. I probably wouldn't pay five. (and here, of course, we're talking about a bolt-pistol for force-weapon trade, not just the addition of a force weapon).

So, maybe eight or nine points worth of upgrades, there, if they were priced separately. Since it's all or nothing, there should be a discount, though half seems like maybe a lot. I could see six points for the lot at the top end, perhaps. Four is maybe at the low end of where it should be, but not way out of line.

It's also worth noting that the Tactical Marine squad is not a very good troop choice. It's not the worst, but it's a far cry from being one of the best. So, here we're talking about determining a "fair" upgrade for a poor troop choice. Even if 4 points is on the low side of what it should be, that really just leaves the Strike Squad as a good troop choice instead of a kinda bad one like the tac squad--it would take more than that, I think, to push them into the realm of completely unfair.


If there's one thing I don't like about the Strike Squad pricing scheme, it is that Psycannons are only 10 points each. They should be more like 20 or 25 to be inline with similar options in other codices (or even comparable options in the GK codex). At 20, they'd still clearly be worth it. They'd probably have to be 30-35 before you'd seriously consider playing Strike Squads without two of them (and even there, you'd probably still suck it up and buy them.)

[Cuddy]

I once played a game (last Bay Area Open) where my squad of 8 Purifiers, plus an Inquisitor with grenades and Coteaz, assaulted a unit of 30 boyz. Cleansing Flame killed like 14, I rolled a '6' on the psykotroke grenades so they attacked themselves, and my hammers didn't have to do a thing. Everyone was dead at I2. I don't think I lost a single model.





And here's a little trick smart players do. Take a cheaper unit, like Boyz, and tie up the bulk of the GK squad with them. Then pile the Nobz in around a single GK in the unit off to the side. The GK player will have to put most of his attacks into the Boyz, leaving you with a metric ton of power klaw attacks as he won't be able to kill very many Nobz. Now that lack of quality invulnerable saves doesn't seem like such a minor thing. Add Ghaz to the mix, with the potential ~22" charge range and 2++ on his Waaagh turn, and things aren't looking so great even for Paladins.

Boys won't tie up GK, they'll die horribly from purifying flame and disintegrate when they lose combat due to fearless. Its not that Ghaz with nobz wouldn't kill any GK, but Ghaz+8 Nobz w/PK (and like I said before, there's not a point to bringing many without them against GK) is around 600 points. Even assaulting a Strike Squad, a unit that isn't optimized for CC, the strike squad will bring down approximately its own points before it dies. Low initiative +relying on multiple wounds and FNP is a bad combination against Grey Knights. At this point you are bludgening cheaper squads then yours, and still can get killed by tons of things. They are going to get killed by psycannons and the like coming in too.

Burnas are a better option. They have the same WS and will be S4 on the charge and will strike at the same time as GK. They arn't Strength 8, but they do have power weapons, and they're a third of the price. That way, your strategy and army don't disappear in one turn of shooting. Remember, Nobz are the same cost as a Paladin with a paper thin armor save. Two wounds is good but not anything crazy.



Do you really think that silly 6x 3 Acolytes in Razorbacks is actually all the great? I mean, it's a silly unit, but it's not like it's unbelievably powerful. You have a bunch of very fragile units to hand your opponent killpoints, and it's fairly easy to kill your opponent's scoring units in objective games. You can make good lists with it, but it's not overpowered or anything.

Its not just them in themselves, though they make strong units. Its that a canny list maker can use them to cover basically all of the army's shortcomings. You can have cheap melta, lots of good units/high model count, cheap durable CC units, etc, and even better then other armies can do with their specialists. Death Cult Assassins are better then banshees and cheaper. Melta squads are cheaper then their IG heavy weapon team counterparts (and that is a strong codex). Servitors are ridiculous, a ten point model with a multimelta is insane. They wouldn't be too bad if Coteaz wasn't such a cheap unlock, allowing you to field whatever you need, and keep the broken GK items on top.

[bfmusashi]

You are just listing things. I will say it again, every army has something - GK have everything.

Not literally everything of course, just enough to give them an obvious and frustrating advantage. What do you do against Tau? Assault them. What do you do against IG? Kill the tanks, then the leaders, then mop up the troops. What do you do against Eldar? Hit the specialists with the opposite of what they specialize in. Against Space Marines? They are all-arounders, grab little advantages as they arrise. Against Space Wolves? They are better all-arounders, same plan. Against GK? They have no true weakness. Everything that shoots assaults surprising well and vice versa. So.... play Grey Knights?

Really? GK have no weaknesses? I thought Darklink did a fine job listing them in a thread dedicated to the subject. While I'm certain this comment was consciously hyperbolic it's unnecessarily dismissive of other armies.

[Bean]

Against Space Marines? They are all-arounders, grab little advantages as they arrise. Against Space Wolves? They are better all-arounders, same plan.

Grey Knights basically work the same way. They're just better all-rounders. They're numbers-limited, so those little advantages do arise--especially in terms of positioning options. You just have to take advantage of them.

[DrBored]

I haven't played seriously in a while, but I remember some standard environments where the pool of competitive decks was pretty small.

That said, I generally agree with this. The game works very well, on the whole. Its "balance" works in a peculiar way, though, and not one that really translates well to 40k. In 40k, people want *their* armies to remain competitive, and they get upset when a new codex overshadows theirs.

This happens all the time in Magic--new decks overshadow older ones--but, to Magic players that's just business as usual. There's no real attachment to the deck, no expectation that your deck will remain competitive in the face of new releases, and there's a general willingness to move on and build new decks because that's just the way the game works.

If 40k worked the same way and 40k players had the same type of expectations, we wouldn't see this type of thread very often at all. At the same time, though, it doesn't mean that Magic is balanced in the way that we generally want 40k to be balanced--it just means that Magic operates on a paradigm where that type of balance isn't important.

There are key differences.

Every 3-6 months or so, a new 'Codex' of magic cards are introduced. When this happens, the oldest group that's still legal goes out the window. That means that currently only Necron, Grey Knights, and Dark Eldar would be playable right now, and the rest of the armies would just have to drop 500+ dollars on the newest army in order to play competitively because GW would no longer support anything older than that.

Every pack of magic cards contains a chance to get your money back via selling rare cards to other players. I've had friends that will take a pack of cards and sell most of the useful cards and buy 5 packs of cards. Only if you paint like a Golden Daemon winner can you do this with anything from 40k, and even then you're spending resources (including paint, time, and usage of tools) into doing just that.

Competitive Magic pays for itself. You win a tournament in order to win a box of the next set of cards, and build your next competitive deck from that, selling and trading as you go. Sadly, this cannot be done with 40k. Seldom are there prizes that equate to a full 1850+ point army, and even then those are yearly events. With Magic, these types of events happen monthly.

It's a little peeve of mine when people compare MtG to 40k. One is a card game, the other is played with miniatures. You cannot so readily compare the two without coming into problems like those above, and then some.

And to another point, a lot of people put a lot more time and effort into their 40k armies, building, painting, and practicing with them, than MtG players do. As soon as a new set hits, competitive Magic players already know what the best cards are going to be and how to make the most broken combos. That sort of thing takes the 40k community months to figure out! When you spend so much time, you become emotionally invested. Of course MtG players get over an update.. they're used to spending a lot of money on new packs every couple of months. For Warhammer players, it's a lot more than that. Sure there are 'army of the month' players, but for most of us we develop a backstory for our army, characters, we even come to find affection in individual models or vehicles because the dice gods seem to favor them over the course of gaming. We spend hours and hours building them, removing flash (or not) basing them and then priming and painting them, or at the very least we pay someone a decent buck to paint the models for us so we can be proud of what we bring to the table.

It's ridiculous to expect a warhammer player *not* to get irritated when the next 'army of the month' becomes the most popular, the most busted, while their army that they've poured their soul into fades farther back into obscurity and they have to struggle and fight to win each game against the new 'cheese'.

So of course, when Grey Knights players have such underpriced models that survive far too much fire and then return to punch the crap out of us, we get irritated.

Ideally, GW would release new Codices with more interest in adding new options/models while remaining relatively balanced. I'm ok with a little codex creep, but IG, SW, and GK took major leaps up in codex creep. That's the problem right there.

[DrLove42]

For one, eldar vehicles are overpriced. Don't confuse that with GK vehicles being underpriced. Secondly, holofields are overpriced, so don't confuse that with razorbacks being underpriced. Fortune comes as a package deal with one of the best support HQs in the game, so that's a poor comparison there, and I might add that a GK Librarian is just as expensive to get things like the Shrouding. And while Fortitude is very good, it can be stopped by psychic defense and doesn't prevent the vehicle from being destroyed. Most people overstate the underpriciness of Fortitude.

So, yeah, eldar vehicles are a poor comparison.



As a side note on this point. This is just so true. And eldar 1500 point army its not uncommon to see 10-15% of the points spent on holofields alone. They're 35 points, on a tank that only costs close to 100 to begin with

Yes it makes the tank less likely to die, but you're still guarenteed a roll on the table, which means at best you can't do anything really next turn.

And the number of times I've seen a double six rolled on my tanks beggers belief

Also I don't think fortitude is underpriced on transports. 5pts seems fair on a transport. Where its underpriced is on tanks and dreadnaughts. 5 points to almost guarentee i can still shoot next turn? 5 points to virtually make me immune to glancing hits? (1-4 it ignores, 5 ok half weapons and 6 can't move but can still shoot everything?)

See also at this point - Necron Living Metal. Thats free on all vehicles and just as dirty.

[Rapture]

Really? GK have no weaknesses? I thought Darklink did a fine job listing them in a thread dedicated to the subject. While I'm certain this comment was consciously hyperbolic it's unnecessarily dismissive of other armies.
Although there can be claims of some weaknesses on the individual unit basis, the codex as a whole make overcoming these weaknesses rather simple. See Cuddy's post above or the various other explorations in the various unit choices in the codex.


Grey Knights basically work the same way. They're just better all-rounders. They're numbers-limited, so those little advantages do arise--especially in terms of positioning options. You just have to take advantage of them.
Although it seems like extending the logic train will work, it does not. As even the advocates of the GK codex have been saying in this thread, the GK codex is incredibly forgiving. The advantages are few and far between and very, very short lived. Movement is not necessarily an advantage as every unit in 40k is subject to the same set of movement rules. Although GK do not have access to beasts, cavalry, or jet packs, neither do many other armies. The point is that, all things being equal regarding the players, the GK codex is simply better.

People are very fond of pointing out the relatively low model count. Not only can that be countered by the inclusion of cheap Inquisition units, but also, the damage output of those fewer models has no problem making up for their lesser numbers. It meets the level of return fire and does so before the opponent has the chance to strike. I agree that, with their lower model count, GK would be in a rough spot if they were subject to continuous 24" s5 assault 2 fire and s5 (90% of the time) I6 force weapons - but they are not. They just have to fight off Tactical Squads and Guardsmen who have trouble even touching the GK troops.

[bfmusashi]

So, the problem is units can compensate for each others' weaknesses to the point of negation?

[DrLove42]

So, the problem is units can compensate for each others' weaknesses to the point of negation?

This is a good way of looking at it. It also doesn't help that the GK weaknesses aren't as pronounced as they are in other races.

For the ultimate in required synergy you look at Eldar

Scorpions? Excel at Hordes in melee. Banshees? Excel at armoured combat. Reapers? Exceed at Ap3 firepower. Dragons? Excel at killing armour

But you match up badly...shoot at a Banshee or assault a Reaper and everything goes to hell.

A GK unit doesn't have as strong a weakness. They don't die to shooting easily and can shoot back better than most. They don't die to assault as much, and can dish it out incredibly hard.

[GrogDaTyrant]

Burnas are a better option. They have the same WS and will be S4 on the charge and will strike at the same time as GK. They arn't Strength 8, but they do have power weapons, and they're a third of the price.

This is terrible advice. Burnas swing at Initiative 3 when charging. The only units you should be charging at all with them, are units that cannot feasibly hope to do more than a wound or two in a turn, or swing after Orks (as rare as that is now). If you take a unit of Burnas and charge something like purifiers or paladins, you're going to end up with upwards of 225 pts in your casualty pile and little to show for it.

A much bette plan of attack would be to take those burnas, give them a transport Battlewagon out of your Heavy Support (because some idiot gave them no transport options...), drive up beside an offending unit (i.e. Thunderhammer/Stormshield terminators, Purifiers, anything with T 4 and without FnP), and unload 10 to 15 burna templates into them. If you manage to catch 4 in the template(s), you'll end up with anywhere between 40 to 60 hits, which should average out to 20 to 30 wounds. And god help them if you can land 6 under the template...

[Kawauso]

See also at this point - Necron Living Metal. Thats free on all vehicles and just as dirty.

Except Necron vehicles are all pretty pricey outside of the Annihilation Barges, and Living Metal is 3x more likely to fail preventing Stunned results. Also, it's rolled for after each result is applied, so you know whether or not you have to keep shooting a vehicle or can move on to another target. With GK you don't know whether or not Fortitude is going to do anything until the GK player turn, and when it works it wipes any number of Shaken/Stunned results clean.

They're similar, but Fortitude is better despite being a psychic power, and if I had to hazard a guess I'd say Living Metal costs more than 5 points on most Necron vehicles (we have no point of comparison to be sure, though).

[Kawauso]

I don't have a fancy degree but I do have 35 years of practical wargaming experience. I have been playing GW games since WFB 1st edition.

So yes I have practical knowledge of what it takes to design a wargame.

All I was asking. :P
I don't have a 'fancy degree' either, if you'll go back over my first post.

The reason I asked is because a lot of people tend to think they'd make a good game designer with no idea as to how tricky design actually is. And your comment about how horribly unbalanced 5th edition 40k surprised me a little because, like I said, I've found 5th overall to be pretty good considering where the game was at the start of the edition.

[Big Jim]

All I was asking. :P
I don't have a 'fancy degree' either, if you'll go back over my first post.

The reason I asked is because a lot of people tend to think they'd make a good game designer with no idea as to how tricky design actually is. And your comment about how horribly unbalanced 5th edition 40k surprised me a little because, like I said, I've found 5th overall to be pretty good considering where the game was at the start of the edition.

Sorry I was being snarky I get asked that quite often lately, I really do apologize for the tone.

It's not so much that I think 5th as a whole is unbalanced, but we keep getting these OTT units or entire books that throw that balance into question.

In my opinion one of the most failing thing in 40k is the points system, because it is arbitrary and based on "that feels right" principle, in stead of a standardized points matrix. It really gets crazy some times, a drop here or rise in points there for no ascertainable reason is frustrating at times. Unfortunately this codex has been extremely frustrating.

It's not that GK's are unbeatable, they are beatable, but it requires more effort than I want to put into a game outside of a tournament setting.

[Rapture]

I would like to take back everything that I said. I just read an eye-opening BoLS article on the front page. Who knew that flooding the table with biblical proportions of plasma and lascannon fire was all it took to beat the GKs?

[Cuddy]

This is terrible advice. Burnas swing at Initiative 3 when charging. The only units you should be charging at all with them, are units that cannot feasibly hope to do more than a wound or two in a turn, or swing after Orks (as rare as that is now). If you take a unit of Burnas and charge something like purifiers or paladins, you're going to end up with upwards of 225 pts in your casualty pile and little to show for it.

A much bette plan of attack would be to take those burnas, give them a transport Battlewagon out of your Heavy Support (because some idiot gave them no transport options...), drive up beside an offending unit (i.e. Thunderhammer/Stormshield terminators, Purifiers, anything with T 4 and without FnP), and unload 10 to 15 burna templates into them. If you manage to catch 4 in the template(s), you'll end up with anywhere between 40 to 60 hits, which should average out to 20 to 30 wounds. And god help them if you can land 6 under the template...

I didnt go into tactics, because this thread isnt really about orks, but I assumed anyone here who played orks would know to use battlewagons, shoot with some of the burnas/allocate the first wounds in combat to the ones that shot etc. They give you a lot more tactical flexibility then a nob deathstar has. You cannot really afford more then one nob unit, and the GK player is not going to have an issue shooting it to death on the way in. It will be THE target in your army, and its not that tough. Both the burnas and Nobz will get massacred before they attack back, the burnas arn't quite a s killy, but you can have three of them, with more models and more tactical options (template spam, battlewagon drivebys) then the nobz. Orks arn't good against GK, I don't nkow what you want.

And arguing that they will end up slaughtered before they can do much just underlines my point about nobz. To a Grey Knight, a Nob is just as survivable as a Burna. They have same WS and T, and the armor, multiwounds, FNP they get is ignored. The Burnas have a better chance of striking back, since they have more models in the unit, on average and maxed out.

Ghaz/Nobz cannot depend on getting the charge. As I said, their transport will be a huge 600 point "SHOOT ME FIRST" sign, it won't survive coming into range. After that (and before) Ghaz is in Mega Armor, this makes the unit slow. Since the GK units are faster (and probably meched, another weak point for orks) there is no reason they should get charged.

Could the ork player outplay an incompetent GK player, tie him up and multicharge? Yes, but now we are assuming that the Ork player is much better then the GK player, so its not exactly reliable.

EDIT: Just ran the numbers quick. This is very conservative, with no upgrades to the squad, not getting hammerhand off, etc.

On the charge:
1 Dead Nob/Burna per Paladin
0.75 Dead Nobz/Burnas per Termie
1.67 Dead Termies per Nob (before invuln)
0.75 Dead Termies per Burna (before invuln)

Getting Charged:
2/3 dead Nob/Burna per Paladin
0.5 Dead Nob/Burna per Termie
1.25 Dead Termies per Nob (before invuln)
0.33 per Burna (before invuln)

This is the best case scenario for an ork deathstar. Like I said, its unrealistic, as the unit would be shot, have mobility issues etc, and this is their ideal matchup, vs a squad that they are specialized against and have no upgrades/powers. With around 330 points of each (6 GK, 7 Nobz), when the nobz charge, the result is 4 dead nobz, 2.5 dead Paladins . Next turn is another dead nob or two, and the paladins are finished. Not a terrible trade off, but not great. Considering this is the very best outcome (no upgrades/powers/characters/shooting) and that those paladins have more abilities on the battlefield then just smashing face, and you basically break even, its not ideal.

Same points values of Burnas would be 15 burnas for 4 paladins. Assuming a worse scenario (you don't flame the paladins with some guys before charging, then allocate wounds to them to avoid losing PW attacks) we get 2.67 dead Burnas, and 9 wounds on the Paladins. With the same number of paladins above (a units 50% more points then the burnas) it comes to 4 dead burnas, 8.25 wounds on the Paladins. Thats the unit wiped for 60 points of dead orks. Plus the burnas can do a lot more on the battlefield. This is why I'm advocating them. Plus, you can have three units of them for the cost of your deathstar, which helps with not having one priority target for your enemies awesome shooting.

[Levitas]

It's not that GK's are unbeatable, they are beatable, but it requires more effort than I want to put into a game outside of a tournament setting.

This. So very much this.

[GrogDaTyrant]

Cuddy, what the hell are you going on about? I'm not trying to claim a nob deathstar is better than burnas against GK. My point is Burnas are not worth their points in close combat, and suffer far too many casualties to be effective against anything with 2 or more base attacks. Leave Burnas in their transport, and only charge basic 1-attack infantry.


To a Grey Knight, a Nob is just as survivable as a Burna. They have same WS and T, and the armor, multiwounds, FNP they get is ignored.
WS 5 on the Nobs, with a Waaagh Banner. And they will have a 5++, because you should be taking Cybork bodies if you're getting a Painboy. But that's not the point, because a unit of WS 5 Nobs with 5++ Cybork are still going to get schooled by anything in the GK codex, and I'm not arguing against that fact.


The Burnas have a better chance of striking back, since they have more models in the unit, on average and maxed out.
Burnas may have a better chance at striking back (compared to Nobs) against 1-attack basic GKs or GK Terminators, but you're still going to lose against anything else and you're still throwing points into your casualty pile. You're better off spending that elite slot on something more useful (and not as gimmicky), like Snikrot Kommandos, or Lootas. You also don't see GK armies without (plenty) of Purifiers if the person has any clue they'll be facing off against Orks. And there's literally nothing you can do against those in combat, short of throwing some walkers at them and hoping the Psyrifle Dreads bounce off your KFF.

Ultimately the most best thing for an Ork army to do against Grey Knights, is to simply not play against them at all. I'm not saying GK are unbeatable (far from it). But I am saying I found it to be a frustrating and thoroughly unenjoyable waste of time, win or lose.

[jmach]

As a GK player myself I have to say I really miss my old daemonhunters dex. It made it really seem like the numbers were against me when I played them, though they seemed to have a problem keeping up due to wargear.

Here are my personal thoughs of what they could do and not hurt them too bad but bring them back in line...

Nades
I wouldn't mind if they got rid of psychotroke nades completely, rad nades aren't as bad in my opinion since the old Grey Knights had str 6 weapons, those combined with hammerhand brings that back to what it was only with guys that have weapon skill 4 instead of 5 so it's a little less of an affect. On the flip side they're all force weapons.

Nemesis Force Weapons
To address that I would be fine to have the strike squad guys have regular weapons and have the justicars have power weapons like before.

Halberds could in my opinion be dropped down to only adding +1 initiative instead for the +2 and keep the same cost.

Units
Let all terminators be the weapon skill 5 and keep force weapons just increase cost by 5 points each. Since they're supposed to be the best that GK have to offer. Since they don't have storm shields as an option I don't think that's unreasonable, going along with the idea that halberds only give

Move purifiers cost up to 35 points each if and increase their weapons skill to 5. Also keep it to 1 special weapon per 5 guys, they're not a heavy weapons team.

Increase cost of psybolt ammo for Dreadnaughts to 20 points.

[DarkLink]

35pts per purifiers is horribly overpriced. 24pts per model for an elite choice with their abilities is actually pretty fair, it's mostly their upgrades that are underpriced. Psycannons are cheap, Halberds and Hammers are cheap, but not the base model themselves. Just bumping up all the psycannons to 15-20pts each codex wide and keeping Purifier Halberds at 4-5pts and Hammers at 10 would be more than appropriate.


Boys won't tie up GK, they'll die horribly from purifying flame and disintegrate when they lose combat due to fearless.

I missed this, but this made me facepalm. You really missed the whole point of what I said here. And by the way, Purifiers are the only things with Cleansing Flame, so obviously this doesn't apply to them. Believe it or not, there are other units in the GK codex.

Now, I'm not talking about multiple rounds of combat. I'm talking first round of combat. The Boyz get into base contact with 9/10 Paladins. The Nobz and Ghaz then get into base contact with the 10th Paladin. Done properly, only one or two Paladins will be able to direct attacks at the Nobz. We don't care what happens to the Boyz.

Paladins strike, and kill maybe two Nobz because they can allocate so few attacks to them. The Nobz are then free to do as they please. Ghaz hits with his 7 klaw attacks, any klaws in the Nob squad hits, and the Boyz Nob hits with his claw if he's still alive.

You don't need to have that many Klaws in the Nob squad to do a lot of damage. Even Paladins will feel the hurt from Ghaz and a Nob squad with just a couple of Klaws. Not enough to finish off Driago and friends on their own, but you still have the rest of your army as well.

But against most GK units, this here will do a lot of damage. And against any GK unit that doesn't have attached HQs, Nobz are very good. They have to save their psychic power for their force weapons, so they're hitting on 4's and wounding on 4's, and GKs don't actually have that many attacks. The Nobz will take a couple of casualties, then the leftover Klaws will kill the 8-9 GKs. Nobz don't care much about Cleansing Flame, either.



This is not theory. This is my practical experience. I've seen it happen, and I've had it done to me by ork players who knew what they were doing.

[jmach]

I was talking of 35 points for them with halberds and granting them weaponskill 5, I miss having WS 5 grey knights. But after thinking more I would say 30 points for those things would be more appropriate.

[Uncle Nutsy]

lemme tell you a little story of when Duke Sliscus took after a GK IC.

Duke went in on full charge towards the one lone character, and got greeted with grenades. Sure he got reduced down to one attack but you know what? that didn't matter. because that one attack, while missing the intended target, BLOCKED the incoming blow. Duke and that IC had blades locked together, staring at each other with the hate that could boil a mans' blood. All guns fell silent and everyone in the battle stopped and stared at what was going on just to see who would win.

Next round they pulled back their weapons, swung and in the end.. The Duke dove, caught that IC right in the chestplate and looked right at him, searching for that subtle and satisfying facial expression. That poor IC realizing what just happened, looked back at Duke. With a sickeningly sadistic grin, Duke twisted his blade in the cavity and slowly withdrew his blade, letting that IC listen to each clink the serrations made on the armour and letting the poisons do their work. After he fell dead, the duke said only one word. "weak."


so if done right, GK's fall, like any other marine.

[juliannehough]

http://www.webcam-steamate.com/cookies/43/b/happy.gif


Ill answer to my play style and list (full terminator and psyflemen dreads)

1. Not too easily, I find in most of my games, I win on KPs at the end of turn 6 or 7, mainly due to the ammount of vehichles / transports I can pop

2. I would think swarm armys like nids would be tough to defeat (although ive not yet played against them) due to my low model count on the board. The focus would be on surviving

3. If I had to guess why people hate on GKs so much is that they are a very difficult army to play against, as close combat is almost out of the question due to halberds jumping iniative, and everyone having a power weapon. I think the hate doubles when its an all terminator list they are going against.

4. I think GKs are very fun to play, especially with all terminators. Its a very intimidating sight to see 4 groups of terminators deepstrike into play on a 3+ on turn 2 (taking a grand master for psychic communion) when they plant themselves within 24" of their intended target. Psycannons = win.

As far as taking other units such as purgiton squads, strike squads, assasins and the such I cant really speak to - but im sure more answers will be coming in soon

[Rapture]

so if done right, GK's fall, like any other marine.

Valuable input. Maybe you should read the thread?

[bfmusashi]

Aw, someone's got their cranky panties on.

[Bean]

Valuable input. Maybe you should read the thread?

Given that he's essentially right, I'm not sure what you mean. =P

[Uncle Nutsy]

Valuable input. Maybe you should read the thread?

reading the thread versus.. actually playing against them.

yeah i'd rather take practical experience any day. LOL.

oh and just to humour you, I did read the thread. specifically your posts, which really were a lot of 'waaah'.

[DarkLink]

Valuable input. Maybe you should read the thread?

Valuable input. Maybe you should quit being a dick and return to the topic instead of harping on other posters;).

[Rapture]

reading the thread versus.. actually playing against them.

yeah i'd rather take practical experience any day. LOL.

oh and just to humour you, I did read the thread. specifically your posts, which really were a lot of 'waaah'.
Cute.


Valuable input. Maybe you should quit being a dick and return to the topic instead of harping on other posters;).
Pot,

Maybe you should calm down. It is only the internet after all. (gay winking face)

If you want to encourage comments so devoid of thought that they could be a guest article on the BoLS front page, then feel free. A reasonable discussion was taking place and at least minimal standards exist regarding it.

[DarkLink]

And you're doing it again. Well, that's what the Ignore list is for.

Ignoring the troll, I'll pose a question. What could be done to bring certain aspects of the GK codex in line? What's broken that needs a nerf, what's too weak and needs a buff, and how do you do it without nerfing the codex into irrelevance.

[Rapture]

And you're doing it again. Well, that's what the Ignore list is for.

Ignoring the troll, I'll pose a question. What could be done to bring certain aspects of the GK codex in line? What's broken that needs a nerf, what's too weak and needs a buff, and how do you do it without nerfing the codex into irrelevance.

Pot,

This thread has a specific topic and that is not it, but still very White Knight of you.

-Kettle

[bfmusashi]

What we have here is a classic East Coast/West Coast showdown. Gentlemen, your mics are at the ready.

[bforber]

Should probably lock this thread at this rate due to internet arguing that's so cool.


Anyway, on topic. I think the only thing that really needs to be adjusted is the price of certain things, (psybolts on vehicles, cost of transport due to fortitude, possibly the prices of special weapons on purifiers in particular)

Oh wait, just thought of something else. Stupid 95 point henchmen choices with razorbacks w/ psybolts, (I play pure GKs, so I can hate because it's dumb.)

[MaxKool]

Just thought I'd chime in seeing as I also hate the gk.
Basicly having to play against this army so many times in the last year I have stopped playing 40k all together untill a new edition.
This is not cause I'm a bad sport and don't know how to play. I'll explain.

I have 4 40 armies, necrons(since day 1) black Templars since before the codes, crimson fists and a Huge dark eldar army.
I have never lost a single game with my de to gk, more often than not I table them. It's just not that hard wih de. That being said its still probably the least amount of fun I have EVER had playing 40k in all these years. The sheer amount of broken and underpriced crap u have to fight around is crazy. I've been playin my de for 9 years... The gk for 7 months....
If I didn't know my de inside and out I wouldn't be winning as much. No army hat I've ever read is so forgiving to noobs. U can basically screw up half your game and still win just based on the codex and list.

The crimson fists? Don't even get on the table vs gk. it's just not fun removing models for 2hours while u waste yor time "playing"

Necrons... Hit and miss. I've won 50% but Again not much fun to win...

Templars? The only time I beat a gk was when I spammed vindis with potms, cyclone termie and cheep missle speeders... Not realy fun just taking things that are slightly broken and spammming them just To have a hope...



All In all this stupid codex forces u to almost build specifically to combat it with alot of the armies... Wich is pretty stupid and not at all balanced well.

Halbards should have been +1 Ini and +1 str. There is no reason whatsoever in he fluff or rules for gk to be as fast as dark eldar/eldar. Ini6 is one of the things that defined the eldar races... Faster than everyone else......

I will say tho the gk guys hate when a cheepo squad of wyches can tie up anything gk. 4++ on them is golden.

[Bean]

Max:

I can't tell if you're being sincere or offering a convincing parody of a laughable extremist--so, if it's the latter, good job! =)

[Lucian Kain]

Who's got a rough tounge,I may have an itchy ***,a few stray peanuts?Wait for the New RB doodleburgers.If you think an army that presents you with a challenge makes for a ****ty game then why do you even play.

Shoot those GK with all your guns,always kill the weakest unit first and avoid the strongest.If you loose the initiative outside of close combat you are dead.Same as GK..they don't like gun lines in cover.
If your an aggressive player then you probably got smoked by the GK by default.

An army of hero librarians should be stronger!:p No dought, there's some stupid rules/points costs and I think purifiers shouldn't exist.I think the psycannon is fine its purifiers and psycotrope grenades/ rules around grenades that gay up the dex it just wasn't quite exicuted.

They are the apex of humanity in the fluff though,the old fluff served them well.I do mourn it.The Emperor left them with the keys to the Imperium and Mr Ward left them que gay musicI got the power

[the jeske]

Shoot those GK with all your guns,always kill the weakest unit first and avoid the strongest
that is impossible to do because either
A the GK spams units and when he has 6+ identical ones with psycannons in identical transports with identical rifle man supporting them there is no weaker units.
B he plays draigo wing and well shoting the damn with everything we got is already being done. Doesnt work so well . +unless we wipe them out KP games are always lost draigo builds[unless it is a mirror match].
C there is no such thing as a "weak" GK unit because even GK gunline builds have build in counter in every unit [specialy if they are horde].

[DarkLink]

that is impossible to do because either

Ah, so it's impossible to beat GKs. So all those times I've heard or seen someone beating GKs, or got beat myself, are obviously illusions.



A the GK spams units and when he has 6+ identical ones with psycannons in identical transports with identical rifle man supporting them there is no weaker units.

You don't have to target their weakest unit, you have have to hit one of their units with more firepower than they can deal with, one at a time. Isolate one of their units, weaker or not, and kill it dead. Then move on to the next. Avoid the rest of their army, and you'll take them apart piecemeal. Not exactly rocket surgery.



B he plays draigo wing and well shoting the damn with everything we got is already being done. Doesnt work so well . +unless we wipe them out KP games are always lost draigo builds[unless it is a mirror match].

There's a whole series of articles on non-linear play on the main page not too long ago. Read them.



C there is no such thing as a "weak" GK unit because even GK gunline builds have build in counter in every unit [specialy if they are horde].

Purifiers aren't the only unit in the codex, and the idea that literally any GK unit can kill anything else in the game is so nonsensical I can't even laugh at it.

[Bean]

To be fair, Darklink, Draigo-wing in a kill points game is extremely difficult for most opponents. It really is almost impossible to win without wiping them off the table, and (since there are no objectives other than stay alive) there really is no "lateral play" that gives you an advantage in that situation.

I generally agree with you when it comes to the state of the GK codex and the appropriate way to tackle them, but I do generally draw a line at the Draigo-wing / kill points scenario. It's not impossible to beat, but it is a tough, tough game for virtually any army, and there aren't really any clever movement shenanigans that mitigate it.

[Chris Copeland]

I win some games and lose some games. I am more of a casual player than a tournament player. I play every single week at my LGS with a great bunch of guys. I feel that Grey Knights is a horribly unbalanced codex that is not much fun to play against. It seems to be easier for Draigowing players to win than for anyone else. I've had some victories against GKs with my Genestealer army but only by the skin of my teeth and only by scenario-win. I am at the point where I'll probably turn down GK pick up games because they're just not fun to play against. I am a veteran player and have always been a fan of pick-up games (it's a great way to meet new people) but who wants to spend two hours being destroyed in detail? So, yes, GKs deserve the hate (in my humble opinion). It is what it is... Copeland