Pooling Your Knowledge Part 8

[Gibious]

Almost every DaemonHunter army will contain a squad of these. Sure they are expencive and forcing you to drop half a ton of points in a Justicar is mean. Most of their anti-Daemon abilities are now out of date and no longer work. And they lack so much when compared to the newer Arbites, (Grenades come to mind).

 

And lets not forget shrouding... oh your within 24"? ok lets forget it then.

 

But wow their NFW look amazing! Troops with str6 and Storm bolters and Power Armour is nothing to cough at either.

 

So how do you field yours, and how have they worked?

 

-Gib-

[f.desrochers]

The only squad I use is 8-men strong, an incinerator, the Justicar with frag grenades and teleport homer for my GKT for up to 1750 points, typically adding another incinerator in bigger games. They deploy inside my GKLR (not LRC), which means they typically don't advance more than 12 inches in two turns, which allows the enmy to either A. Over-commit himself for my counter-moves and charges or B. Give me enough information to discern his plan and deploy accordingly.

 

They are murder on the charge, my most recent tourney handing a 5-strong unit of fiends the ticket to the dead-pile while working their way up to claim the opponent's home objective (mine succured by IL and IST squads).

 

That same tournament they charged a unit of Wolf-riders, which didn't turn out so well. That's what you get for not reading their entry before charging and dealing with wound-allocation shenanigans. His Chapter Master Velveeta on wolf mount crunched 'em in two rounds. Not pretty, but held them out of the game for effectively two turns and were the only unit to kill any the whole tournament.

 

I use them primarily as a mobile Scoring Unit and counter-moves.

 

;francois

[Leardinal]

I tried playing DH for a while, but the old rules and the new, shiny BA codex finally pulled me away, but I did not forget the Grey Knights, as reflected by my DIY's paint scheme. As I am thinking about getting back into DH again, I thought I would add my 2 cents. I tried running a pure GK force in a 1000pt turny, and got my rear end handed to me by 2 Space Wolves and Daemons, (this one still bugs me,) I ran 3, 5 man PAGK squads with either 1 or 2 psycannons each, which ended up being my down fall as I couldn't put enough attacks in cc or enough bodies to survive being shot.

 

So, what is their optimal squad size? I have seen lots of people saying not to give them special weapons, as it takes away the NFW, but then many more people saying that they do give them weapons, so to take 1 or even 2 special weapons, or actually take purg squads and let them have all the guns?

[Gentlemanloser]

There are really only three options when using PAGK.

 

1: Don't buy them any upgrades! You pay points to lose your S6 NFW and True Grit. Never a Good Trade off.

 

2: The 'mini-purgation' Squad, as the Full Heavy Slot Purgators are rubbish. This is the bare bones 5 man PAGK squad, with 2 Psycannons. Yes, it goes agains #1 above, but you plan for this squad to sit at 36" Range (preferably on a home Objective), and not get into CC.

 

3: 8-10 PAGK with 2 Incinerators. Load these into a Land Raider (Crusader), and roll it up to stuff to hit them with two Incinerator Templates. Then chrage what ever's left (if you think you can take them in CC).

 

It should be noted that the outrageously expensive Justicar can't purchase Weapons from the Armory. There is a potential work around to this by buyinh him Artificer/Crapace armour, but you should check this with your opponent.

 

Don't touch the Fast Attack PAGK, nor the Heavy Slot Purgators.

 

Fast: You trade 'Scoring' for the worst Deep Striking ability in the game. Trading your ability to 'win' for leavng your guys in reserve (with no boosts to reserve rolls) for a smidge of deployment flexibilty is bad. It's always a bad option.

 

Heavy: Becuase for some reason, the change to trade your S6 NFW and True Grit on an extra 2 marines makes them all cost more... Plus you lose Scoring. If you want Long Range 'Heavy' fire Support, use a TLLC/ML or PC Dread.

[Gibious]

Yes, unless you are running a mini purgation psycannon squad. 5 Men is shockingly small, the sitting at 36" range makes up for the small numbers, but one good hit from anything and they are gone.

 

I personaly use 2 squads of 6 as my goto 2xtroops.

 

Adding in a single incinerator each gives them a cheapish 185pts cost. They provide decent fire support and can be rather effective counter charges if anyone attempts to wade into the Guard gunline. The flame template for 10 points realy does make up the loss of the NFW, when your opponent is looking at other things.

 

In larger armies whenI am fielding my LRC I push both incinerators onto the squad that rides the transport. This will roar across the battle and hit almost suicididly into what ever I target, troops in cover eat flame templates, ordanance tanks eat str 6 to the rear. When going into assault the squad is purposefully equiped low on NFW. With that loadout and dropping the incinerators for the first 2 deaths, the damage wont hurt my opponent enough during the charge. But on the second round my attacks have hardly weakened, finishing off to then be free in my turn.

 

 

The standard 6 man squad is normaly all I field turn one then, it will focus on darting out of LOS and peppering 14x StormBolter shots into anything near by. They tend to draw the attention of something or another and that causes my opponent to split, helping the rest of my army focus on their job. What ever was sent to kill these 6 men also normaly get hit by my LRC Drive by. When they finaly meet their target the assault phase is fairly even matched in my NFW favour.

 

 

Additional note my walking Knights have also spent battles in reserve, turn up late and claim my home objective. Which was origionaly ignored by me during the battle.

 

-Gib-

[Validar]

alright, in my (not very large) experience with the PAGK I have experienced two MAJOR weaknesses, which is why they generally can't live up to their cost.

 

First of all: The lack of transport.

We live in the age of transports. When you have to walk the table you'll be fragile and you'll by slow - and even worse, all the firepower usually used to pop transports will take out 25 points of grey knights instead (which is almost as much as an SM rhino). When they reach the other end of the table they'll be devastated and worth nothing. Let us not even begin to talk about your enemy's option to decide what exactly they'll come up against, because his transports simply move at twice the speed.

 

Second of all: The weak save

Even if the Knights are much more expensive than other space marines, they have exactly the same survivability. And let us not talk about shrouding here, because, as the OP stated: If they're within range to hurt even the slightliest (the 24" range of their stormbolters) then you might aswell just forget it. From there the casualties will be the same amount of marines on each side - except the Knights are much fewer and much more expensive.

If they get into melee they can take out basic squads and such for sure, but against anything specialized, they'll get eaten (remember that anything that'd slaughter a normal marine would likewise beat the knight in spite of his cost) - the only hope is to destroy the enemy before destruction.

[Leardinal]

Ok, since Validar makes the point that they can't buy transports, what if you inducted guard and gave them Chimeras from other guard units? I know the chimrea the type of tank you want to use as a bunker rather then an assualt carrier, but still, moving 6" and firing a multi laser/ Heavy bolter combined with PAGK Storm Bolter fire/ incinerators/psycannons seems like quite a bit of damage. Or you could just run it up 12" to get you there faster.

[Validar]

First of all you'd have to figure out what you're going to do with the guards with no transport. Even if they're much cheaper than the Knights, they're even more helpless without it (unless heavy weapon teams can buy transports?)

 

Then you have to remember that you'll have much fewer transports than your average player (high cost per mini + have to buy a guard squad for each transport), so the anti armor people bring against other armies should still be enough to wreck you open (thus you need to be smart with your car, always have cover, allow it to soak up more damage than other transports).

I don't think you'd want to drive 12" all that much, since it has 5 fire points! Imagen just a flat squad of GK with 2x psycannon - they can fire EVERYTHING even after moving (albeit within 18" for the cannons) - but still considerable firepower vs infantry.

Just for a flat unupgraded squad, 5 stormbolters is still not to be messed with vs infantry.

 

And this is all while bringing your precious s6 weapons where they need to be. Sounds wonderful, and it is, just until the transport pops, which may happen sooner than later, refering to the first part...

[Leardinal]

Well the plan I was working on meant that since if you where going to induct guard you have to take the mandatory platoon command squad + 2 infantry squads, I would combine the infantry squads into a 20 man bog squad with a commissar and power weapons on him and the sergeants, (this has worked on me several times until I started fielding bikes,) and sit back with this minuscule gun line supported by heavy weapons teams, so the chimeras wouldn't really be need for squads. I have also been kicking around the idea of giving the command squad a chimera to give to termies, but that is for a different topic.

 

Yeah, you are going to have less transports, but you can be smart with them as you said, using cover to protect it, but as you also pointed out it could still be popped by the gratuitous amount of anti armor. So if you charge it up 12", assuming it was as far as it could be deployed, you are half way across the board. If you hide it in cover, and it survives till the next turn, you can move it up 6" and blast away from the fire points and built in weapons, and then next turn drop the marines out and have them bring all other strengths to bear (i.e., all storm bolters, incinerators, psycannona, and assaults if you are close enough). Or can't you upgrade IG vehicles to have smoke launchers? Just a thought.

 

I usually use a 10' and a 1/2" stick to keep vehicles out of my lists, (so many painful memories...), but the chimera is a pretty durable little tank for 55pts, and it would be fun to watch marines pile out of an IG tank. :lol:

 

Edit: Grammar, not my best ally

[Validar]

just remember the smoke launchers - you don't have to cover-hide atleast once, you just have to get yourself out of LoS from as much AA that you can and then smoke (and pray whatever is left won't finnish you)

 

A good thumb rule that I'd like to add is: Use the terrain. Make it block, make it hide. Use it.

[ntgcleaner]

2 squads of 8 in LR's... lascannons blazing into the face of an opponent. push them into a clump with the LR and step outside with two incinerators, roast whatever is clumped together and finish them with assault all in one turn.

 

That's amazing.