Playtesting New Grey Knights

[Aidoneus]

This thread is going to be reserved for discussion of battles you play with the new rules we've developed in my Fixing Daemonhunters thread. The purpose here is to discuss how the new rules worked in action, bring up concerns with changes or suggestions for new changes, and convey opponents' reactions. If you want to post a full battle report as a separate thread, feel free to do so, but please post a link here so we can go see how you did.

 

Contents:

1) 1500 Shrouding Abuse vs. Space Marines post #2

2) 2000 Deep Strike Abuse vs. Space Marines post #3

[Aidoneus]

I'll start, I suppose. I played two games today, against my friend Agrab and his Space Marines.

 

First game was 1500pts. I decided to use my Shrouding Abuse list. Agrab's list was something like the following:

 

Captain: Bike, Power Fist

Master of the Forge: Bike, Full Servo-Harness

3 Land Speeders (separate): Heavy Bolter, Assault Cannon

2 Bike squads: Sgt with Fist, 1 Plasma gun, 1 HB attack bike, 3 regular bikers

2 Tac Squads: Sgt with Fist, 1 Flamer, MM in one squad, HB in other, both in Drop Pods with Deathwinds

 

Terrain

Game was Pitched Battle Annihilation. I went first, and deployed my two psycannon squads in opposite corners with the Vindicare by one and the three Dreadnoughts spread out along the back edge. GKTs were set to come on first turn, with 8-man PAGKs later. He deployed all his bikers and HQ and Speeders facing the flank with my vindicare (my left). Drop pods in reserves, obviously. He tried to steal the initiative, but failed.

 

Not gonna give you the whole play-by-play, but here's a quick summary. I spend the entire game shooting my Dreadnoughts, and half the time my GKTs too, at his three land speeders. Should have been three fairly easy points, but either he made cover saves or (much more often) I simply couldn't roll well enough on the damage chart. The only one I killed was by simply stripping it all the way down with psycannons. Meanwhile, the Vindicare did absolutely nothing (turbo-pen failed to pen a speeder, tech marine made 2 cover saves, then he died). The GKTs killed one unit of his marines in assault, and then killed off what was left of his bikers after I took one turn to shoot them with 2 dreads, but alas his bikers and Captain killed off the last of the GKTs in that same combat. All three of my dreadnoughts fell in close combat, with him never failing to kill one on the charge. I got his second Pod unit down to 1 model, but then he ran around behind his pod and hid. By the end, he had won handily.

 

Part of the loss was terrible rolls. I failed a little over half my armour saves, spent all game failing to destroy his land speeders... near the end (bottom of the fifth, out of 6 turns) I forced 4 saves on his lone marine and 2 insta-kill invuln saves on his captain, all of which he made! It was really bad.

 

The other problem was that the list was, as advertised, designed to abuse Shrouding, but of course his list was all Drop Pods and Bikers, so he just got in too close for Shrouding to do anything at all. I'd like to try this army against a more static list, like TJ's IG. However, since most armies now are at least partly mobile, due to objectives in 5th ed, I think it's safe to say Shrouding isn't overly-powerful. I want to do more testing on Dreadnought Shrouding, as Agrab had no long-range anti-tank.

 

I also retain my deep-seated loathing for the Vindicare. Of course, given that, I'm hardly the best judge for his new rules. I will say that BS7 saved him from missing one shot. Of course, he then rolled a whopping 5 to-pen with a turbo-pen round, but that's another story entirely. Bottom line, I think I will still keep not taking him, but that doesn't necessarily mean he isn't worth taking for other people. I'd be interested to see if anyone can make him work now.

[Aidoneus]

Second game today was 2000pts Spearhead Annihilation, on the same board. My list was my Deep Strike Abuse list. Agrab fielded the same units he had before, plus a 5-man Tac Squad with power fist in Drop Pod, and two Dreadnoughts in Drop Pods, one with MM/HF, the other with dual HFs (which I didn't even realize could be done). All Pods had Deathwinds.

 

Warning: we only have 2 drop pods between us, so any Rhinos or Chimerae you see are, in fact, Drop Pods.

 

This time he went first, and I was happy to let him. He massed all his bikers and the 3 Tac Squads with Pods in the middle of the board, presumably to keep them together so I couldn't divide-and-conquer. He later told me he considered putting everything in a corner, which would have been a better move.

End His First

 

First turn, I brought on my 2 psycannon units and the GKT on the flank by his bikers. I shot down about half of the bikers in the techmarine unit, which then failed a Ld test and fell back.

End My First

 

His next turn it was still within 6" of my squads, so it fell back again, just far enough to not fall off the board, but to get outside of 6" from me and regroup. Neither of his Dreadnoughts came down. The Captain and bikers moved to assault one PAGK squad, while the techmarine and bikers shot 3 PAGKs from the other squad. At the end of combat, I had 2 PAGK left (justicar+1 regular), and he had lost maybe 1 or 2 bikers.

End His Second

 

My second turn both Incinerator squads and 2 Dreadnoughts came down, leaving the purgators and one dreadnought in reserve still. Incinerators both came down aiming at the last few bikers from the techmarine squad, and the dreadnoughts both came down to shoot land speeders (which were in a squadron this game). The two incinerator squads finished off the bikers, but left the techmarine with both his wounds. I shot drop pod storm bolters at him, just on principle, but low-and-behold I caused 3 wounds, of which he failed two! Score! Perhaps my luck has turned this game. The Dreadnoughts killed 2 speeder and shook both the others. GKTs I think helped them do it. The five men from the damaged Psycannon squad rushed into combat with the captain's bikers, in hopes of keeping them locked in combat during their own turn. He finished off the two PAGKs from the first squad, and I think I killed a biker.

End My Second

 

Now both his dreadnoughts came down. The dual flamer one staring down my massed PAGKs, and the MM one right behind one of my dreadnoughts. His tac squads also began advancing on my dreadnoughts and drop pods, while the speeders ran away. He killed a decent number of PAGKs with the one dreadnought, and took off my dread's MM with his. He then assaulted the damaged dreadnought with a tac squad. I killed one marine and suffered no damage in return. The bikers killed a couple more PAGKs, and suffered no, or perhaps one, casualty in return.

End His Third

 

This turn my Purgators came on, and everything started to fall into place. My GKTs shot the back of his MM dreadnought, and even though it was obscured they managed to kill it. His bikers got charged not just by the Purgators, but by another PAGK squad as well, while the last PAGK squad went to help out my dread in close combat. The bikers and captain all fell before they could attack back. The dread and PAGKs killed 2 or 3 marines, and suffered 1 wound and a stunned result in return.

End My third

 

The rest of the game went pretty smoothly from there. His other marine squad charged my other dreadnought, and took out its DCCW early on, but never killed it. My PAGKs and Purgators first helped kill the marines attacking the other dread (without the MM), and then went on to help that dread without the DCCW, although 1 marine was left alive there when the game ended. Before all that though, those PAGKs killed a Drop Pod with massed S6 attacks in CC. The third dread showed up eventually, and in three turns it killed one Drop Pod, and was well on its way to killing a second. One more speeder fell to the GKTs, but the last managed to survive. His dual-flamer dread survived too, and killed one PAGK squad, but by the time it was done everything else had moved far enough away to ignore it.

 

 

Overall, I liked this list much better than the other. While the first list was based on a gimmick, and consequently got stomped by an opponent who could get around it, this list felt well-rounded and flexible. My biggest concern was lack of anti-tank power. Against a plethora of AV12, my hordes of S6 weren't bad (took down a drop pod and a couple speeders), but they weren't good enough. The multi-meltas rarely hit (partially bad luck), and then got tied up in combat and were unable to shoot again. I'll need to learn how to make better use of those in the future, to preserve my anti-tank firepower.

 

The purgators were very nice. I wish they had come in a turn earlier, because I think I could have finished the bikers then instead of stalling them for a turn and losing the remains of a PAGK squad. Still, when they did come in their Heroic Intervention was a godsend, and easily worth the 15pts. Of course, part of that was that they didn't scatter thanks to my teleport homers, so more playtesting is in order to see if that ability is perhaps too cheap.

 

 

In response mainly to the second game, Agrab told me he thinks the universal teleporting, and Teleport Assault, are too good. It was really the only change he complained about. Most of his complain was levied against Teleport Assault specifically, saying it's too powerful to have half the army automatically come down first turn.

 

I'll grant that it has vastly improved the tactical capabilities of the army, but it takes a savy and sometimes lucky player to make good use of it. Importantly though, this is exactly the same as Drop Pod Assault, Deathwing Assault, and whatever the rule is called in Codex: Chaos Daemons. In fact, all it really does is start things going 1 turn earlier than normal deep-striking; it doesn't actually bring more units on than (on average) would come in together on turn 2 normally. Also, although Agrab didn't agree, I actually feel somewhat constrained by it sometimes, especially when I want to hold 1-2 units in normal reserves, and don't want to have any come down 1st turn. Half the time I have to get around this by deep-striking a GKT unit down first turn, when I normally would have just deployed them. Lastly, keep in mind that this was my "Deep Strike Abuse" list, designed solely to make the absolute utmost use of our new Deep Striking abilities. I doubt most lists will be so abusive.

 

So there's that. I felt I should bring it up at least, and keep it in people's minds as they do their own playtesting. At the moment I'm not convinced it's a problem, but it might end up being one in the future. We could always compensate by making Deep-strike an optional upgrade for maybe a few points per squad. I don't necessarily want to deal with ideas for that yet though; not until more testing is done and we determine whether it's actually even a problem at all.