No Dedicated Transport Land Raiders?

[Irbis]

Hmm. Perhaps my desire for storm shields is skewed by the fact that my most common opponent is Tau. You don't 'kite' a bunch of AP1 and 2 weapons in an army that can turn off your cover save. That doesn't work very well. When faced with overwhelming ranged firepower, you have to close with the enemy and cut them up in assault. Grey Knights TDA units seem to have been deliberately gimped in their ability to do so. I'm fine with the design decision that we don't want 30 2+/++ bodies marching across the field in a line abreast killing everything they touch. That's boring. But I don't like the idea that our big scary units are designed to melt under plasma fire even more readily than many other deathstar units.

 

So... We're talking about:

 

AP1: Broadsides/Hammerheads - um, deepstrike within 24" and open with 8 S7 rending shots on them? Should be good, no?

AP2: Crisis suits - DS team with incinerators? To deny all cover saves? :)

 

As for plasma, I can't help but notice we have access to wargear completely crippling all plasma guns on 40 pts mini - if that is so big issue, maybe grab her and attach her to some nice big Terminator squad for extra toughness? For a bit more, she can also add on 3+ armour and all these nice grenades giving Terminators even more punch in CC.

[Hackbar]

I'd rather not derail this thread into a extended GK vs Tau meatcastle discussion, so let's just say that all of the tools I learned to use with space marines, my brief stint with space wolves, and with black templars, are conspicuously absent or highly limited in the new GK dex. We have the weaknesses of MEQs without the tricks MEQs normally use to circumvent those weaknesses, and the added weakness of an even lower body count.

 

Grey Knights are clearly designed to be good at everything, but not necessarily good enough to out-shoot the shooty armies and out-fight the melee armies, so we have to fall back on the old 'choppa the dakka, dakka the choppa," just like before.

Problem is they can't choppa the dakka if they can't survive the dakka for a round or two or find some way to close without exposing themselves to it.

 

At least with the old GK, if a squad got shot down to just the Justicar, the Justicar could almost do the job on his own with 3 attacks from a WS5 S6 power weapon. The old Terminator squad leader could dish out 4 WS5 S6 power weapon attacks on the charge and follow up with Hammerhand at I1. Often I would deep strike my terminators, losing all but the captain to low AP shooting and 5+ invulnerables, and then carve a bloody path through the enemy because he's just that scary. The new grey knights are not that scary, but are balanced as though they are.

 

The anti-plasma inquisitor strikes me as a little iffy. They'll quickly go splat if the squad eats a pie plate or two, which terminators tend to do. The enemy can ignore the effects of the plasma nerf tube just by firing from outside rapid fire range, or positioning themselves on the opposite side of the squad from the inquisitor. Or, for the sake of not restricting ourselves to considering Tau, what about plasma cannons?

[Brovius]

Instead of the WARD staff, he should have made the SS a 1-per 5-man option, for the same cost. Yes, it'd be expensive, but it will give the GKs more survivability. If we're going to pay 35pts on a SS GK terminator, we should have unlimited access like Wolf Marines

[Entilzha]

Hmm. Perhaps my desire for storm shields is skewed by the fact that my most common opponent is Tau. You don't 'kite' a bunch of AP1 and 2 weapons in an army that can turn off your cover save. That doesn't work very well. When faced with overwhelming ranged firepower, you have to close with the enemy and cut them up in assault. Grey Knights TDA units seem to have been deliberately gimped in their ability to do so. I'm fine with the design decision that we don't want 30 2+/++ bodies marching across the field in a line abreast killing everything they touch. That's boring. But I don't like the idea that our big scary units are designed to melt under plasma fire even more readily than many other deathstar units.

 

So... We're talking about:

 

AP1: Broadsides/Hammerheads - um, deepstrike within 24" and open with 8 S7 rending shots on them? Should be good, no?

AP2: Crisis suits - DS team with incinerators? To deny all cover saves? ;)

 

As for plasma, I can't help but notice we have access to wargear completely crippling all plasma guns on 40 pts mini - if that is so big issue, maybe grab her and attach her to some nice big Terminator squad for extra toughness? For a bit more, she can also add on 3+ armour and all these nice grenades giving Terminators even more punch in CC.

 

They also have Marklights that they can use to reduce or remove cover saves. Take a minus 2 or 3 from your opponates cover saves then let the rapid fire plasma go. Can also use it to increase BS to 5 and now your hitting and wounding on 2s with only your 5+ save. Might not see it all the time but can make the Shrouding alot less effective.

[Grimtooth]

So much Doom and Gloom coming from this thread.

 

You do all know spread across pretty much every forum here at the B&C people are trying to figure out to counter GK right? And yet the cries here are amazing for yet more stuff to what I see is yet another balanced but finesse army.

 

Here is the main thing I see all of you doing:

 

For the most part all of you are complaining about GK killing tailored lists. Too much plasma, too much plas,a, etc, etc, plasma. Og you read most all comers list since the leaked GK codex, barely any at all are making mass changes to plasma. Some might include some by replacing melta weapons that were used to tank hunting with some plasma, but most are sticking to the concept of massed normal fire to put mass saves on TDA for the odds on roll of 1's.

 

Let the codex come out. Let it be played a few months, like all new codices, to see how the meta game evolves. People will make the shift back to all comers list if they even make the shift to plasmapalozza. Problem solved.

[Black Falcon 88]

Your complain that your termies dont have a decated transport yet you do have grenades on your termies something that as far as i can remember no other termie has. So the ball rolls both ways. An army can not be godly in every way other wise everyone who hasnt already switched over to GK's will as they will be the best at everything. There must be a weakness in every army. The fact that you rely heavily on DS and such hurts, but you have the saves to hold out the storm. And a 2+/++ would be brutal and extremely anoying for the oponent and boreing for the player.

GK's have been given so much the fact alone after a long conversation with many at my LGS, your PA GK's should be closer to 25 points standard this being a free power weapon/ force weapon for all being the primary argument and psychic powers but not the point. GW have you an incredible codex with some and few weaknesses this just happens to be one hole for someone to try to crack that gray armor. Besides you dont like it then just deeps strike as many unites in the oponents face some will die but most will still be there. Not to be mean but it sounds like Oliver

"Please sir can I have some more."

[Aidoneus]

I can't speak to other people's opinions, but here's my response to the last two posts.

 

I don't think we're underpowered. Even if we were slightly underpowered, I wouldn't care. I'm so used to being so far behind the curve, that any improvement is fantastic. I will say that the army isn't as powerful as you might think; it's not bad, but it's not something that's going to blow away the power curve or anything.

 

Rather, my complaint is that GW has built up certain standards for options that marines always get. I'm not saying I want land speeders and bikers, or that I particularly needed techmarines. But Land Raiders and Terminators are a fundamental part of our army, and have been for some time. When I look around at what all other Land Raiders and Terminators can do, and see that they get dedicated transport and 3++ Storm Shields, I think "Those would be really handy, and would fit in perfectly with my army. I can't wait until the new codex, when we finally can take them!"

 

But then, after years of waiting and coveting, our new 'dex finally arrives. Don't get me wrong; in many ways, it's a huge improvement. But in other ways, it simply doesn't make sense. They took away Fearlessness for every unit except Purifiers. Why? Not only did they not give us the new Storm Shields, they in fact took away the storm shields we already had, that a lot of players had modeled on their GKTs. Why? And at the same time that they gave us another cool unit to fill our few HS slots, they neglected to let us take even a single Land Raider as a transport (not even for Henchmen, like we could do in our old 'dex). Again, I ask: why?

 

It was put forth early on that Land Raider transports could conceivably have Scouts, and that that might cause balance problems. Perhaps. But that's an easy fix; simply say Grand Strategy can't be used to give a Scout move to a Land Raider-mounted unit. That way, in the other 90% of games, where all we want is three Dread-things and a transport for our GKT, we have that option.

 

It was also put forth that Storm Shields were taken out so that we wouldn't be as good at shooting. But... why? GKs have always been a balanced army, able to react to the enemy's style and pick away at their weaknesses. Why would GW suddenly want to make them a more focused assault list? Even just the GKTs should be able to work in both roles. Now that they've lost Shrouding, mobile 36" Psycannons, and Fearless, it would certainly be nice to be compensated with something to keep them alive inside that 24" threat bubble. Trust me; whatever offensive power we can put out with psybolts and the new psycannons, it still hurts like hell when a 100-some point Vet squad drives up next to you and unloads plasma/melta and a demo charge. There simply should be some way to protect out 40+ (or 50-60+ for Paladins) pts/model termies outside of combat from the immense AP1-2 firepower most armies can put out. As if to add insult to injury, the only good solution we have is to mount up in a Land Raider, thus not only reducing our numbers yet further, but also depriving ourselves of a HS slot!

 

All this leads to my overall point, which is that the design of this codex overall seems haphazard and sloppy. GW took away several of the things that make us unique, but then didn't give us any of the things that are standard for marines. They ramped our psychic powers way up, but gave us no way to protect ourselves from them. They made all our shooting 24" range, but made us more vulnerable within the threat bubble. They took away many of our inherent bonuses and made them psychic powers, which can easily be countered. They still say we exist to fight daemons, but replaced our greater number of high-strength attacks with fewer force weapon attacks, which simply don't help against daemons. Either these were intentional slights against us, in which case I can only question the reasons behind them, or they were the unintentional results of sloppy or unprincipled design, in which case I can only ask why they took so damned long to give us a half-assed codex.

 

So no, it's not a power issue. It's that the entire codex is, at best, a disappointment, or at worst an insult, to we who have been so patiently waiting for so long.

[Gentlemanloser]

All this leads to my overall point, which is that the design of this codex overall seems haphazard and sloppy. GW took away several of the things that make us unique, but then didn't give us any of the things that are standard for marines. They ramped our psychic powers way up, but gave us no way to protect ourselves from them. They made all our shooting 24" range, but made us more vulnerable within the threat bubble. Either these were intentional slights against us, in which case I can only question the reasons behind them, or they were the unintentional results of sloppy or unprincipled design, in which case I can only ask why they took so damned long to give us a half-assed codex.

 

So no, it's not a power issue. It's that the entire codex is, at best, a disappointment, or at worst an insult, to we who have been so patiently waiting for so long.

 

QFT.

 

Well, I'm not disappointed, more bemused. I can't understand the design philosphy behind the 'dex. It just doesn't seem to, well, mesh together with itself.

 

On one hand, if we want to play like C:SM, we can out Marine the Marines, with just Strike Squads in Rhinos (Ultra and Uber Grit hold no candle to us! :P). But what's the playstle of the GK supposed to be?

[Black Falcon 88]

To Aidoneus first off you dont want fearless its nice on the way in but if you start haveing to take lots of fearless saves it does hurt. Last game my templars loost 5-6 guys to those failed saves. As for the storm shields my thinking as to why those were removed is the fact that you would easily and most would be getting a 2+/++ save which would kill other armies. Which would make you extremely hard to kill. The reson also for the no dedicated LR is my guess to try to get people to deep strike more often maybe or to make you think more on what heavy support choices you take. As those dreadknights seem down right broken when beefed up in certain ways.

 

When it comes to the shrouding and the range on your psycannons my only idea is that they are trying to make the GK's more of a go smack your opponent in the face and not sit there and shoot the hell out of the opponent as they approach then go smack them. Yes ive seen a GK castle and it worked well poor SW player didnt see it coming his longfanges were negeted by the shrouding entirely. This way you approach and the opponent can shoot his long range stuff instead of being nulifyed because of a "modifyed night fight rule".

 

You also were sayign that GW took away some thing that made you unique ok shrouding and fearless and trugrit and a few others yes some were hard to take but they also dropped your base point cost of a PA GK and gave him a power weapon that more than makes up for loss of strength in hand to hand. Plus gave you options to do many strange things like +2 Inititave. A group of I6 marines is nasty and will nulifie a lot of my guys before i can do anything. Thats money. Your strange grenades your 30" jump guys, you have lots of vet skills some usefull some not always, your dreadknight, assassains can i have one please you get 3 i think, and i'm sure i can go on.

You were saying you should get stuff that is more in line with C:SM but your not marines. Not in the same sense, your a whole different animal all together you look the same but opperate completly different. Alsmot similar to Chaose Marines and Space Marines, they look the same but thats where it stops.

 

My opinion The Grey Knight codex has the looks of being outright nasty especialy to the hand to hand armies. Is it OP on an all commers list maybe not but in my shop where people will do anything they can to win even when it screws the other guy this book will broken and horribly so.

[HERO]

My opinion The Grey Knight codex has the looks of being outright nasty especialy to the hand to hand armies. Is it OP on an all commers list maybe not but in my shop where people will do anything they can to win even when it screws the other guy this book will broken and horribly so.

 

Damn, your club sucks lol.

[Irbis]

Rather, my complaint is that GW has built up certain standards for options that marines always get. I'm not saying I want land speeders and bikers, or that I particularly needed techmarines. But Land Raiders and Terminators are a fundamental part of our army, and have been for some time. When I look around at what all other Land Raiders and Terminators can do, and see that they get dedicated transport and 3++ Storm Shields, I think "Those would be really handy, and would fit in perfectly with my army. I can't wait until the new codex, when we finally can take them!"

 

That's not Codex: Everymarine. Wolves don't get Shields. BA don't get 40 points Hammernators. SM do, but they're and exception, and frankly, 40 pts Hammernator with 3++ save was a mistake like 12 men Drop Pods, not benchmark you can expect everywhere. Or a buff to weaker lift, something GK don't need at all.

 

They took away Fearlessness for every unit except Purifiers.

 

Good. It's mostly a liability that suits more IQ-deficient units like Tyranid drones or Khorne berserkers, not normal soldiers. And They Shall Know No Fear is better fit by miles, IMHO. Do you really want your GK with A1 and psycannons stuck pointlessly in a battle with Bloodletters until they're all wiped out?

 

Why? Not only did they not give us the new Storm Shields, they in fact took away the storm shields we already had, that a lot of players had modeled on their GKTs. Why? And at the same time that they gave us another cool unit to fill our few HS slots, they neglected to let us take even a single Land Raider as a transport (not even for Henchmen, like we could do in our old 'dex). Again, I ask: why?

 

Took away? :lol: Man, you realize that old GK SS, 4++ save in CC, is now on every single GK TDA unit? That is taking away?

 

Let's flip this, SM, SW and BA are all howling that they pay 15 pts per power weapon, while GK get it free. 15 pts discount on every single model, and you ask why they injected some balance into the system? :huh:

 

By the way, you're wrong. What henchmen with LR? The only unit capable of taking LR in the old Codex was Inquisitor Lord, possibly with a very specific retinue, but not henchmen. Being wrong about new Codex is understandable, it being new and all, but about 10 year old one? :huh:

 

That way, in the other 90% of games, where all we want is three Dread-things and a transport for our GKT, we have that option.

 

Then take 2+1 instead of 3+1. Or take Chimeras, transport problem solved.

 

GKs have always been a balanced army, able to react to the enemy's style and pick away at their weaknesses.

 

Balanced? :huh: When? They were a bunch of cardboard units that always placed at the bottom of the pack.

 

It would certainly be nice to be compensated with something to keep them alive inside that 24" threat bubble.

 

Chimeras. Deep strike. Buying additional 6 scoring Termies instead of that Land Raider. You've got a lot of options.

 

Trust me; whatever offensive power we can put out with psybolts and the new psycannons, it still hurts like hell when a 100-some point Vet squad drives up next to you and unloads plasma/melta and a demo charge.

 

They would need to cover 30" to do that, and that is before the part where Vindicare or Psyrifleman blows the ride out of the most dangerous squad enemy has on the table. Plus, I'd like to know how someone playing against you fit Chimera, vets and special weapons in '100-some' points. You were lied to :P

 

There simply should be some way to protect out 40+ (or 50-60+ for Paladins) pts/model termies outside of combat from the immense AP1-2 firepower most armies can put out.

 

Chimera. Deep Strike. More Termies. These are not elite, you know, they're scoring, you can afford to be aggressive with them like other Codices do with their troops.

 

By the way, remind me, what 'immense AP1-2 firepower' can, say, Orks, Necrons, Tyrannids or Daemons put down on the table?

 

All this leads to my overall point, which is that the design of this codex overall seems haphazard and sloppy. GW took away several of the things that make us unique, but then didn't give us any of the things that are standard for marines.

 

Because they are not standard marines? :huh:

 

You have far more unique things now, so many that Belial and Kantor are crying in the corner, yet you want a copy of Codex:Space Marines? :huh:

 

They still say we exist to fight daemons, but replaced our greater number of high-strength attacks with fewer force weapon attacks, which simply don't help against daemons.

 

Preferred enemy. Demonbane. Psyk-out grenades. All free, standard. A million other things. Enough?

 

Remind me, how many anti-daemon existed in old Codex? That was so crappy, I might add, that technically only daemons affected by GK stuff were Nurglings and Avatars, due to very poor wording? And played by RAW, virtually always ended with massacre for Daemons?

 

Either these were intentional slights against us, in which case I can only question the reasons behind them, or they were the unintentional results of sloppy or unprincipled design, in which case I can only ask why they took so damned long to give us a half-assed codex.

 

Or, maybe, just maybe, they're all in the Codex, and you're critiquing something you haven't had time to even read, much less got to know in full detail.

 

I find that a tiny bit more probable than gaming company insuting customers and the writer personally out to get ya.

[Black Falcon 88]

My opinion The Grey Knight codex has the looks of being outright nasty especialy to the hand to hand armies. Is it OP on an all commers list maybe not but in my shop where people will do anything they can to win even when it screws the other guy this book will broken and horribly so.

 

Damn, your club sucks lol.

 

There are more than one of the space wolf missle spam lists going around. And death wing is still making a potent punch me thinks soon to be GK deathwing, but not everyone is blood thirsty the funny part is the original GK player didnt want this new codex said it would ruin the army. Havent talked to him since release but I do know there was a tourney last week at another store and there were three GK players. So I have a feeling this dex will be a popluar one.

[Aidoneus]

They took away Fearlessness for every unit except Purifiers.

Good. It's mostly a liability that suits more IQ-deficient units like Tyranid drones or Khorne berserkers, not normal soldiers. And They Shall Know No Fear is better fit by miles, IMHO. Do you really want your GK with A1 and psycannons stuck pointlessly in a battle with Bloodletters until they're all wiped out?

First off, I specifically said I was not arguing power. Fearless has a very different playstyle to ATSKNF. It gives you a confidence to be precisely where you want to be and to not run away, not even for a turn. I know the limitations of Fearless in combat, which are unfortunate, but it still makes an overall more predictable army. Plus, I think Grey Knights should be stalwart in the face of overwhelming odds. In point of fact, ATSKNF has been around much longer than the old GK codex, and we were specifically given Fearless in that, which I think was the better fit.

 

Why? Not only did they not give us the new Storm Shields, they in fact took away the storm shields we already had, that a lot of players had modeled on their GKTs. Why? And at the same time that they gave us another cool unit to fill our few HS slots, they neglected to let us take even a single Land Raider as a transport (not even for Henchmen, like we could do in our old 'dex). Again, I ask: why?

Took away? :D Man, you realize that old GK SS, 4++ save in CC, is now on every single GK TDA unit? That is taking away?

No, Swords are on every model that doesn't want another weapon. They also replace the old NFW which were S6 power weapons. And they don't give +1A like the old Storm Shields did. Also, again, this isn't just about power. Many people had modeled storm shields onto their physical models, all of which now can't be used any more, at all.

 

By the way, you're wrong. What henchmen with LR? The only unit capable of taking LR in the old Codex was Inquisitor Lord, possibly with a very specific retinue, but not henchmen. Being wrong about new Codex is understandable, it being new and all, but about 10 year old one? :huh:

Please, before accusing me of not knowing what I'm talking about, at least make sure you're right. That's just embarrassing. Inquisitors and Inquisitor Lords have no transport option, both have access to the exact same retinue (just can take different numbers of henchmen), and any retinue of 10 models or fewer can take a LR transport. It's all on page 22 and 24 of the old 'dex. Please, go read it.

 

Plus, I'd like to know how someone playing against you fit Chimera, vets and special weapons in '100-some' points. You were lied to :P

Again with the telling me I don't know what I'm talking about.

 

Vet squad: 3 Meltaguns, Chimera = 155pts. That's between 1 and 2 hundred, thus qualifying as 100-some. Even with Demolitions or plasma guns it's below 200, and even with both it's exactly 200. Any IG player worth his salt will have at least 2 such units, usually more, and any one such unit will utterly wreck GKTs or, especially, Paladins.

 

There simply should be some way to protect out 40+ (or 50-60+ for Paladins) pts/model termies outside of combat from the immense AP1-2 firepower most armies can put out.

Chimera. Deep Strike. More Termies. These are not elite, you know, they're scoring, you can afford to be aggressive with them like other Codices do with their troops.

My point is precisely that we shouldn't have to be more aggressive with them. I don't want a point-and-click, charge-everything army. That's not what Grey Knights do! Why give us storm bolters, psycannons, and psybolts if we either die while trying to use them or ignore them and charge ahead?

 

By the way, remind me, what 'immense AP1-2 firepower' can, say, Orks, Necrons, Tyrannids or Daemons put down on the table?

Congratulations, you found the 4 armies that can't field a couple dozen such weapons easily. And even Necrons are terrifying to Paladins, with up to 9 mobile lascannons. But now consider every other army out there. Is this really a point you're willing to argue? That an overabundance of low-AP weapons isn't a problem?

 

You have far more unique things now, so many that Belial and Kantor are crying in the corner, yet you want a copy of Codex:Space Marines? :huh:

Simply not true, on either account. We are still quite unique, which is something I'm very glad of, but the new goodies just replaced old ones. I'm not saying we're less unique, but we're certainly not more unique.

 

 

More importantly than any of that is that you're clearly not understanding my underlying point. Maybe I'm not expressing this well enough. I don't care about the POWER of the codex. It's fine. Seriously. What I want is to be able to do what GK are supposed to do well. We're supposed to be able to fight flexibly, unrelentingly, and with mobility. We are not supposed to charge headlong into combat simply because someone thought that an army specifically designed to fight a class of enemy that without exception have invulnerable saves should all be given power weapons. Not only that, but force weapons, when daemons also universally have Eternal Warrior! That's just idiotic! Not weak, just stupid! And we're supposed to be second-only to Deathwing in our use of terminators. They even made ours Troops, and gave us shiny Paladins for Elites. Great! So why can't we have transports for them, like BT, BA, SW, SM, and CSM all do? Is there a particularly good reason? Nope! We just have to buy an inquisitor, buy henchmen, buy a chimera, deploy separately, and then jump in on the first turn. Is that really your suggestions for a reasonable alternative?

 

The codex might be competitive. Again, knowing the limitations of the army, I still think you're exaggerating their formidability. But that's entirely beside the point! My beef with GW is that the changes they made to the GK codex were unprincipled. Many of the individual changes don't make sense, and the direction of change as a whole doesn't fare much better. Put on top of this the dozens of questions that people already need to be FAQed before the codex even officially comes out, and it's obvious that not much thought was put into its development. Given that we've all been waiting for so long, I guess I just expected a little more effort and thought to be put into the new codex.

[Hackbar]

Thank you, Aidoneus, for your excellent summary of how I think most Grey Knight players are feeling right now. The new GK codex is unquestionably new, and shiny, and at least powerful enough that we can go into games without the certain knowledge that we are the underdog. However, many of the design choices made simply don't make sense from a fluff, perspective, a gameplay perspective, or both. The adage 'don't fix it if it ain't broke' comes to mind.

[RolandTHTG]

GKs have always been a balanced army, able to react to the enemy's style and pick away at their weaknesses.

 

 

Balanced? When? They were a bunch of cardboard units that always placed at the bottom of the pack.

 

Well, how about the 2+ years that the "Way of the Water Warrior" was a stickied thread at the top of the forum? Including several discussions and playtests by the Frater that you are debating now. Though unfortunately now gone from the top of this forum (probably because it was origionally written in 4th ed) I know it influenced many of the old grey knight players, and had links and discussions in the chaos and ultramarines sub-forums, in addition to this forum.

 

And as the IG player who did use a 130pt vet squad (in a 55 pt chimera = 185 total) to erase one of Aidoneus's strike squads in playtesting last week, I can state that I was using a legal army list.

[HERO]

GKs have always been a balanced army, able to react to the enemy's style and pick away at their weaknesses.

 

 

Balanced? When? They were a bunch of cardboard units that always placed at the bottom of the pack.

 

Well, how about the 2+ years that the "Way of the Water Warrior" was a stickied thread at the top of the forum? Including several discussions and playtests by the Frater that you are debating now. Though unfortunately now gone from the top of this forum (probably because it was origionally written in 4th ed) I know it influenced many of the old grey knight players, and had links and discussions in the chaos and ultramarines sub-forums, in addition to this forum.

 

And as the IG player who did use a 130pt vet squad (in a 55 pt chimera = 185 total) to erase one of Aidoneus's strike squads in playtesting last week, I can state that I was using a legal army list.

 

Well, IG is just a joke in terms of game balance. They have no direct comparison.

 

As for the "Way of the Water Warrior", I've never liked that article because of it's obvious mentality of use LRs or die.

 

Now even though we just got a brand new codex, I'm still not happy. Why? Because the new book is not who Grey Knights are. Everything that was in the old dex was lost in transition. I'm seriously only playing the army because of the name and the models at this point.

[Inquisitor Fox]

I think we don't have as large of a problem as it first appears.

 

I've been toying with numbers, and about any unit of troops (5 man termies or 10 man strike squad, or 6 man strike squad with transport) seems to come in between 200 and 300 points. Say I take three of these, that's about 800 to 1000 points of an army right there. Most of our powerful HQs are about 200, even an Inquisitor with a moderate retinue is between 200 and 300. So lets say for simplicity we'll take the following:

 

HQ of whatever: 200

2 units termies: about 250 each, for 500

1 unit strike squad, 10 man, minimal upgrades: 250ish

 

Now a land raider for us is between 250 and 300 points, as is a Storm Raven, or the cheaper Dreadnought or Dreadknight between 150 and 200 points (without teleporter). The psiammo TL AC dread is a whopping 135 points as a heavy support choice but that's the budget version compared to the venerable one at just about 200 points.

 

Where exactly are we spending precious HS slots in the above fairly minimum choices, such that in the last 500 to 1000 points of our list we are buying more than we can fit with our existing HS choices without going over the force org chart? Do you really need more than 3 heavy support choices when each realistic choice no matter what slot of the force org chart it's on is between 200 and 300 points? How will it all fit outside of Apocalypse anyway?

 

Having read over the book in snatches, I've really come to the conclusion that one unit of Anything in the book is about 200 to 300 points. It's really picking the combination of units that you want to roll with. In giving myself a fairly minimum mandantory selections I've already spent half to two-thirds of my point budget. Land Raiders are heavy choices? No worries, I only had points for three more units anyway...

 

EDIT: Wow, I just read that over again and decided it wasn't phrased well.. at least not in regular people speak. Let me sum up:

 

I buy a minimum of 2 or 3 troop choices and 1 HQ, and I've spent 1000 points. I only have 500 or 1000 points left anyway. Why are we saying only getting up to three Land Raiders or other heavies is really that big of a restriction? We don't have the points to spend to get Land Raiders AND other heavy options in the first place. The limit is the points total of the game, not the force org chart.

[number6]

Well, how about the 2+ years that the "Way of the Water Warrior" was a stickied thread at the top of the forum? Including several discussions and playtests by the Frater that you are debating now. Though unfortunately now gone from the top of this forum (probably because it was origionally written in 4th ed) I know it influenced many of the old grey knight players, and had links and discussions in the chaos and ultramarines sub-forums, in addition to this forum.

The topic is still available. A search will turn it up easily enough. :P

 

But as you say, it is both 1 game edition and 1 old codex outdated. Therefor its relevance to the game vis-a-vis Codex: Grey Knights is tangential at best.

 

Not that the topic isn't still excellent. But much of it is dependent upon old game rules.

[Hotspur]

As far as I know only blood angels have dedicated landraiders, I don't think that you should use that as the norm instead they are the exception.

 

Black Templars can take Land Raiders as designated transports for any of their troops, terminator or otherwise.

[Grey Mage]

As far as I know only blood angels have dedicated landraiders, I don't think that you should use that as the norm instead they are the exception.

 

Black Templars can take Land Raiders as designated transports for any of their troops, terminator or otherwise.

C:SM allows one unit of each type of terminator to take a dedicated raider, as can SW Wolf Gaurd.

[Grimtooth]

As far as I know only blood angels have dedicated landraiders, I don't think that you should use that as the norm instead they are the exception.

 

Black Templars can take Land Raiders as designated transports for any of their troops, terminator or otherwise.

C:SM allows one unit of each type of terminator to take a dedicated raider, as can SW Wolf Gaurd.

 

 

SW Wolf Guard can only take one LR as a designated transport. The rest have to come from heavy support.

 

I am going to pull a Nostradamus:

 

GK come out and hit the close combat meta game like a train loaded up with nitroglycerin. AP1 and AP2 bitz become scarcer then Paris Hilton's chastity. Horde armies rejoice and lay waste to all in the absence of less dakka. The meta game adjusts to take into account all comers. ???? Profit.