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Greetings, fellow Sons of Titan! Every week I share another battle report with you all, so I figured I'd just make an ur-thread rather than posting a new topic every week. My name is Icosiel and I make videos about Grey Knights! I focus on battle reports, but I also do some list pondering and hobby stuff on occasion. Here's a link to my channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCud2nvtJBLCnYxLSpV-pjPA I'm fighting against Imperial Knights this weekend, so I made a video about my thoughts on exactly how I am going to beat them. I don't have a lot of anti-tank! Any input would be appreciated!

Heya folks! So I'll preface this by saying that I'm a very new collector to 40k and don't have many models at all. No vehicles, no dreadknights, no transports, nuffin. So it was pure infantry by necessity and not choice, that being said here we go! Playing with 100 PL My Knights; Brotherhood Champion Castellan Crowe Voldus 2 5 man Paladin squads with 1 hammer, no special guns 2 5 man Interceptor squads with 1 hammer, no special guns 1 Purgator squad with 4 Psilencers Allies; 1 Custodian Guard Squad, 2 with Guardian Spears, 3 with Storm Shields DELETED 5 Eversor Assassins cause I needed to fill 20 PL at the end and didn't have enough models I'm realizing that this probably isn't thoroughly battleforged. Unless maybe I took a TON of allied detachments? Maybe? Idk the rules for how you would take assassins in an allied detachment. But if you're still interested read on! Blood Angels; 3 Drop pods (the pattern that transports dreads) 2 Dreadnought Librarians with force spears 2 Dreads with 4 autocannons A DELETED bunch of other dreadnoughts with combinations of twin lascannons & Dread CCW with Heavy Flamers. I can't remember how many but it was the standard loadout. Mission: Deadlocked Deployment Style: Corners So we've got a very cluttered board, half forest terrain and half city. Blood Angels get to choose the map and deployment type. We start deploying and I've got the 5 Eversores to put into 'Deep Strike' so he ends up getting first turn. On the board are my Interceptors (with GoI), Purgators (far away in cover), my Custodes, 1 Assassin, Brother Champ, and Crowe. Everyone is hiding. All other units in Deep Strike Turn 1 BA: 8 autocannons fire on my Interceptor squad and reduce them to 2. Autocannons. Another 2 autocannons fire on my other interceptor squad removing 2. Autocannons. Rest of his turn is moving to grab the objectives he generated. GK: Move to secure objectives. Brotherchamp moves alone up toward a dread&pod holding nearby objective. I hope his hammer hand will give him the edge against the Dread. Discussion ensues as to whether or not the pod blocks line of sight. Discussion ensues as to whether the pod block charging. Drop pods are still dumb...DEEPSTRIKE EVERYONE!!! Assassins all over the board, Paladins popping up near objectives, Voldus appears on highground near the middle of the map. Psychic Phase: Voldus with his Leadership 10 (+1 warlord trait) casts Purge Soul on the dreadnought threatening the Brother Champ. POP! Well not total pop, mostly popped. Smites from Voldus and Brotherchamp finish it off. Purgators GoI onto the highground with Voldus. I am intrigued by how the Psilencers will do. Interceptor squad with only 1 casualty shunts near an objective and dreadnought, other Interceptor squad with 2 remaining hide in back lines holding objective. Shooting Phase: Ok here's the fun bit. Most of the shooting does little pecks or dings here and there, remember I've only got storm bolters besides the Purgators. BUT...the Purgators open up on his HQ Dreadnought Librarian! Voldus gives them reroll 1's. 24 shots rerolling 1s is no laughing matter. Wounding on 5's, HQ has 3+. HQ gets :cussing PLASTERED! Did a few wounds, but the d3 roll of damage cranks it up to a total death. Psilencer Purgators...interesting. Charging: only the 4 man interceptor squad makes it into combat. Do a couple wounds then get wrecked down to 2 with D CCW. ... ....... Ok this is gonna take too long and be too wordy. So suffice to say Paladins prove to be excellent objective holders, especially when the Objective is in cover! Purgators GoI to a better spot and Voldus follows them on the next turn. GoI avoids the Heavy Weapon limitation so they can shoot without penalty, and they wreck FACE. Not sure how it'd do against something with more than 8 wounds...but they did a good job. Custodes, Voldus, Brotherchamp, and Crowe never see combat. Purgators make a 24inch ':cuss YOU' bubble that the dreads wont enter, giving me center control hard. Assassins do some OK damage, but surprisingly aren't that damaging to dreads, their 3d6 charge helps make some big moves and tie up shooty units though. Game was called 11 to 7 for the Grey Knights, with only 1 dread left on the table. Casualties for the Grey Knights were 7 Interceptors, 3 Paladins, and 3 Assassins Take Aways Psilencers may be worth taking in big groups. I don't think 1 psilencer is gonna do the trick, but reroll buffed they hurt. Just a couple of d3s on a multiwound high toughness model is enough to wreck its day Force Swords are great. You're wounding on 5's usually, but the -3 AP and d3 wounds per hit can make a difference. Every one of those has the AP and damage of a powerfist. Hammers are great for the guaranteed 3 damage, but 2 sword wounds can easily result in 3 each and avoid the -1 to hit Paladins in cover are a bitch to get rid of Purge Soul with buffed Voldus isn't a half bad idea assuming you have a valid target. There's a lot of IFs before it pays off, but it can pay off really hard. Eversor's probably shine better against hoards, but weren't awful. Is there a way to take multiple assassins now? Or are you obligated to take only 1 due to allies? I guess I could have had SEVERAL allied detachments and just lose all my command points? I only used 1 all game anyways Lemme know if you have any questions! Didn't realize there was a cuss filter, my bad

So I haven't had a chance to play against a pure Custodes army... in truth I only see one local player trying them that way, and the rest seem to be content making them allies with other armies. That's no surprise, but it's worth mentioning that it appears out of the gate Custodes are probably not seeing single faction competitive/semi-competitive play. I started thinking about making GK lists that would tackle Custodes best. For the sake of argument let's say we are talking mono-Gk vs. mono-Custodes. On the surface GK provide the 'magic bullet' against the mono-Custodes army... that being mortal wounds, and psychic powers. But I think it goes beyond that: - So we have psychic might. Unless the Custodes are exceptionally lucky using the odd trick in the codex, pretty much anything is going through. This helps with mobility against an army that has very little board coverage so something like Gate becomes more valuable here. - Mobility. GK have a lot of inherent deep strike. Usually we're struggling to keep something on the ground to make lists legit. On the ground we have a few choices with inherent speed where the Custodes seem to be heavily relying on bikes. Their bikes are amazing, and super cost effective, but that's the core of mobility plus their own flavour of termies. - Durability. I think to be fair the Custodes have it here... hands down. The numbers aren't going to be numerous for either force, and less so for the Custodes but at T5, plus the legion trait of basically a 4++ is nice. However in a lot of cases I will argue it can be negated, or not a factor. But it definitely helps, and I'd have to say there's probably not a lot of debate on this point. - Shooting. I think overall, and looking at unit options, the GK actually have more flexibility here. I think the stock shooting on the Strike is adequate, and you have some flexibility in the dreads, and definitely the Flyers. (I think a lot of GK players get a little caught up in elite units and Stormtalons / Stormravens are still decent choices). This essentially means GK -should- have the advantage in 'softening' up the opponent from range. Especially combined with deep strike positioning. So that leaves the Custodes specialization: - Close Combat. 8th is really weird for CC in my opinion. The more I engage in it, the more finicky it becomes... characters can be left in the cold, and interrupting can make a multi combat absolute hell for the player initiating it. With point 1 we could argue Thousand Sons could really excel there as well, but there is the problem of Close combat. I would suggest that GK force weapons are murderous on multi-wound, specialized units. I find the force weapons really come into their own here, whereas facing cultists, orks, etc, then they can feel frustrating. Of course Custodes hit like a gold brick, but in 8th it's really about the charge and I'd argue a lot of GK units can and do severely threaten the livelihood of any Custodes that get charged. Character wise Gk are no slouch here either. I mean I personally love Voldus for fluff reasons as well as game play, but Draigo is a beast, and we know how strong the Brother-Captain Dreadnights are. Let's be fair, almost 100% of soup lists that cherry pick GK take THIS unit. Do you think that wold change with Custodes? Perhaps a character on a bike, surrounded with Custodes bikes (detachment) will be the norm but for the sake of this argument, I don't know enough about all the choices Custodes have, but I still think GK have some of the most fierce, infantry based, characters in the game. I started to realize out of all the armies I play perhaps GK would present the biggest threat to Custodes.... What do you guys think?