Jump to content

Why no librarian dread for the grey knights?


henrywalker

Recommended Posts

i know that the venerable dreads get a psychic power but why not go the whole hog and make it a librarian dreadnaught?

The blood angels get it because they are quite a psychically attuned chapter but come on every GK is a psyker.

 

 

I am tempted to go for the furioso kit anyway over the venerable but the issue is i like the fist on the venerable and i think the sarcophagus looks more grey knighty. I'm guessing i'll get that and stick in a head from the GK terminator sprue.

I Completly agree i would have loved to have a dred that could use quicksilver to strike at I10 and warp rift along with a multi melta to take out tanks.

They are all technically psykers as they have the fortitude power but it would have been nice to have access to the other lib powers.

'cus they're always armed with two weapons and can teleport eveywhere.

 

I do think they dropped the ball a little witht the dreads...

why no have normal dreads as level 1's and venerables as evel 2's? bump up the cost a little and voila

So the BAs get to use Stormravens and we get ... bupkus in return? :tu:

We get army-wide Force Weapons! :)

 

That said I also wished the GKs got the Librarian Dread; IMO more than any other chapter it would suit the fluff well, especially if they gave it like, an amped-up version of Holocaust. Dreads tossing psychic pie-plates is just pure win in my head.

 

I did feel personally that the Libbie dread was a little out of place in the BA codex though, to be honest.

I was extremely surprised that it wasn't something that was available to us, but yet available to the Blood Angels. I would have loved to try to model in the blade from the GK-DCCW available from Forge World on the end of the Librarian force weapon staff that comes in the BA dread sprue. Would have looked epic.

 

I am a sad, sad panda. ;)

I guess it should have been seen coming. You don't make a Librarian Dreadnought sprue with only BA iconography if you're then going to release one for Grey Knights down the line. It would have been more like the Storm Raven but that was a lot easier.

 

No reason why they wouldn't have them, just wasn't surprised to see it not in the book.

I think the reasoning behind it is that all GKs are inherantly psychic, but only to a small extent, hence why squads need to focus their psychic power through a justicar in order for it to be as effective as a normal librarian. GKs do have librarians, who have inherantly greater psychic potential, but other than that there are only a few (grand masters for example) who have honed their potential and increased their mastery. As for dreadnoughts, they represent fallen justicars and the like who are able to channel their (slightly greater) psychic mastery to activate force weapons/cast a single power, but there are no/few librarians interred as dreads.

 

Blood Angels on the other hand are not simply a collection of individuals who showed some level of psychic talent prior to becoming space marines, their gene seed contains psychic properties hence why the black rage is able to manifest itself anf hence why there is an abundance of higher level psykers in the chapter. Where the GKs may prefer to use their librarians principally for teaching recruits, the blood angels prefer to employ them more aggresively in battlefield roles and interr them into venerable furiosos wherever possible.

 

While I totally agree that the libby dread would have been perfect for the GK codex, this kind of explains why it may not have been appropriate as people would first think. Also, it may have been a balance factor, that in conjunction witht the GK powers and dreadknight you could make too strong a list with a librarian dread?

Have to agree with Jimbo here. A GK Justicar is basically a sum of his parts. Every GK adds to his mental capacity. A Space Marine Librarian, on the other hand, is inately Psychic on his own. His power is hiw own and not drawn from his Battle Brothers. So yes GK Dreads may have some psychic potential (which leads to some interesting modeling opportunities) But they still cant draw on the same power alone.

 

Even Grand Masters of the GK (I'll accept any hand slaps here as I dont know the GK lore by heart) are less attuned than a Librarian. I look at it, excuse the metaphor, like playing with fire. Librarians are a bonfire, large and running the risk of burning wildly (perils of the warp) and a GK Sqaud/GM/etc is a small controlled fire watched over by firemen. Yes something can go wrong but its unlikely.

...It is for this reason that the Grey Knights are screen to exclude all but the most potent psykers. The strongest and purest of these psykers are trained to even higher levels of mastery, where their skill in using these abilities can match those of the mightiest librarians of the Adeptus Astartes. Even amongst those who reach this level of mastery, there are those who distinguish themselves and they may be elevated through the ranks and take to the field in ancient and sacred suits of terminator armour...

Ugh, another case of when players follow rules = fluff. On the contrary to widespread belief, it is not that they're offensive psychic ability is less effective than Librarians from other chapters, more that Grey Knights have their abilities nerfed from fluff-to-game so they can more become viable on TT. Having a load of Librarians running around the table just wouldn't work - much to the same reason movie marine rules will never be brought into play. Feel free to believe they've left out librarian dreads due to balance or worse - forgetfulness/ineptitude. But this misconceived generalisation of the Grey Knights belongs to the forgotten wastelands of misinformation along with the other cussing, internet-bred claptrap such as 'Grey Knights only ever fight daemons and thus must be rubbish at fighting anything else,' etc...

 

In answer to the original poster, maybe the powerful combinations were seen as potentially abusive. But it wouldn't surprise me if the notion to include them never even crossed Matt Ward's mind either. Such a shame if so... :P

...It is for this reason that the Grey Knights are screen to exclude all but the most potent psykers. The strongest and purest of these psykers are trained to even higher levels of mastery, where their skill in using these abilities can match those of the mightiest librarians of the Adeptus Astartes. Even amongst those who reach this level of mastery, there are those who distinguish themselves and they may be elevated through the ranks and take to the field in ancient and sacred suits of terminator armour...

Ugh, another case of when players follow rules = fluff. On the contrary to widespread belief, it is not that they're offensive psychic ability is less effective than Librarians from other chapters, more that Grey Knights have their abilities nerfed from fluff-to-game so they can more become viable on TT. Having a load of Librarians running around the table just wouldn't work - much to the same reason movie marine rules will never be brought into play. Feel free to believe they've left out librarian dreads due to balance or worse - forgetfulness/ineptitude. But this misconceived generalisation of the Grey Knights belongs to the forgotten wastelands of misinformation along with the other cussing, internet-bred claptrap such as 'Grey Knights only ever fight daemons and thus must be rubbish at fighting anything else,' etc...

 

In answer to the original poster, maybe the powerful combinations were seen as potentially abusive. But it wouldn't surprise me if the notion to include them never even crossed Matt Ward's mind either. Such a shame if so... :)

 

Yes, the STRONGEST AND PUREST may climb the ranks to become as potent as Librarians of the adeptus astartes. As for those chaps being the only ones suitable to wear terminator armour, this has obviously been retconned to the whole chapter being able to field terminator armour more or less. Of course the Let's take other fluff sources as comparison though, the GK novels portray hardly any psychic potential from Justicar Alaric, who is ranked as justicar. In fact, I remember him revering Justicar Tancred who was potent enough to cast holocaust.

 

There will never be a game that fits the fluff perfectly, but to be fair just because the new codex doesn't contain a librarian dreadnought I'd hardly say it was veering away from representing GKs adequately. There appears to be an equal level of anti-daemon to the DH codex, and the fact that they now ALL wield actual force weapons (and a variety at that), can field librarians and something that can actually take down a greater daemon in 1 to 1 combat (dreadknight), is a step in the right direction. They ccan;t just include all the options from previous other codices including new GK stuff. Would it make sense to include a dreadknight, dread, vendread, ironclad and librarian? How many people would have complained if they could only take vendreads and librarian dreads? Who knows, but I think a vendread with WS/BS5, force weapon (NDF), reinforced aegis, fortitude and psyammo represents an interred librarian well enough for me.

Yes, the STRONGEST AND PUREST may climb the ranks to become as potent as Librarians of the adeptus astartes. As for those chaps being the only ones suitable to wear terminator armour, this has obviously been retconned to the whole chapter being able to field terminator armour more or less.

 

Way back in the day, weren't Grey Knights only ever encountered in Terminator Armour?

 

One could think of the new style as "going back to the roots" of it- with the difference being that they don't all deploy in Terminator Armour because sometimes its not tactically sound- rather than because only a few are trained in it.

 

Thus, the First Battle of Armageddon, where the Grey Knights deploy 100 terminators, makes more sense- it's not the vast majority of the suits of Terminator Armour, and Terminator-trained marines, but rather a smaller portion of them.

Also it has been stated that GK's prefer not be interred into a dreadnought. Only with their express wishes are they interred. As high ranking members of the chapter they've probably already been serving for centuries, so they probably elect not to.
Personally I am looking forward to All my vehicles, including dreads, psychic powering away shaken and stunned results, to better let them annihilate things in the shooting phase with their two twinlinked psibolt autocannons :) I'd rather have that then additional psychic powers on a dread that already has a force weapon by default along with a defensive psychic power...

Who says you've got to have one without the other. ;)

 

Yes, the STRONGEST AND PUREST may climb the ranks to become as potent as Librarians of the adeptus astartes. As for those chaps being the only ones suitable to wear terminator armour, this has obviously been retconned to the whole chapter being able to field terminator armour more or less. Of course the Let's take other fluff sources as comparison though, the GK novels portray hardly any psychic potential from Justicar Alaric, who is ranked as justicar. In fact, I remember him revering Justicar Tancred who was potent enough to cast holocaust...

Retconned? It still fits in well with this edition. A different interpretation is needed mayhap:

Has to be a potent psyker...
- just to gain initiation.

The strongest and purest...
- to go through training and come out as Grey Knight marines.

Those who distinguish themselves...
- in reference to the officer rankings (HQs) who will wear
TDA
as a default. This still happens in the latest edition.

True that there are other interpretations of how powerful Grey Knights are. Personally I prefer supporting the Chambers/Kelly/McNeil interpretation over Counter's 'Grey Marines'. It would be intriguing to meet a long-term GK fan who isn't... Still, the fact that each member of their hierarchy is a powerful psyker doesn't make it too much of a push to say that Grey Knights are capable of handling the requirements to warrant something similar to a furioso-level dreadnought. After-all while interment is rare, it does still happen - Brother-Captain Arturus from the Vraks Campaign is such an example of a high ranking Grey Knight who accepted this choice. So why isn't there a similar option that respects this?

 

We're agreeing that it's also likely a mechanical reason that Grey Knights don't have Librarian dreadnoughts too - Matt Ward couldn't or didn't need to do so. It probably involved too much of a shuffle around. Dreadnoughts with Hammerhand as a default power gain little unlike everyone else, etc. But it would have been more pleasing that along with the 'normal GK dread with minor powers' (as it is) to have a veteran dread with more wider range of powers that could also cast two per turn. Instead, we're stuck with a another version that while representative of higher-level Grey Knights as veterans warriors, doesn't do them justice with their various psyker mastery levels.

 

Really the only part of it all that narks me off is that by not having such aspects it seems to add to the foray of other players generally willing to make all kinds of excuses. To say that only the Blood Angels and their ilk produce the amounts/levels of of psykers worthy of taking on a librarian dreadnought comes across as another example of putting down Grey Knights in favour of the more popular chapters. To me at least Grey Knights got the psyker speciality first and still foremost. As such Blood Angels can yet again cuss off with stealing everyone else's specialities while trying to gradually go one-up on them.*

 

* see the Adeptus Sororitas and the flamer/melta preference for further details...

Here's a quick idea for a GK Libby Dread;

 

AV13 Front facing.

Psycher Mastery 2.

Comes with a Nemesis Greatsword and Assault Cannon.

Can swap the A Cannon for a Flamestorm, Hammer, or a Second Greatsword.

Hammerhand base Power, can purchase any of the other 'libby' powers.

Can Puchase Psycher Mastery 3

Can Purchase Truesilver Armour, Warp Stabilisation and Psybolt/Flame Ammo.

 

CC orientated Dred, to ride in our Storm Ravens.

 

Hopefully Forgeworld will make one. :cuss

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.