Dealing with Grey Knights

[Araith]

A friend of mine has recently started buliding a Grey Knights army. I've helped him develop the concept and I have to admit I'm somewhat at a loss of how to deal with his army, because they largely best the strengths of my own army. For starters I'll present our armies, at 1750 pts.

 

 

Wolf Priest on bike

Rune Priest : jaws and storm caller

2x 8 Grey Hunters + WG, with a Rhino

1x 10 Grey Hunters, with a Rhino

1x 5 Grey Hunters + WG, with a Razorback

5 Swiftclaws + attack bike

Land Speeder Typhoon

5 Long Fangs : 2 missile launchers, 2 lascannons, with a TL-las Razorback

Vindicator

 

 

Librarian : Might of Titan, Quicksilver, Shrouding, and perhaps another

Inquisitor : rad grenades

4x full strike squad : 2 psycannons, daemon hammer, psybolts

1x 10 interceptors : 2 psycannons, daemon hammer, psybolts

8 Purifiers : halberds, psybolts

 

He plays his army with a very strong firebase of strike squads. The Purifiers with the Inquisitor serve as a counter-attack unit and the interceptors are his mobile strike force.

He is considering dropping the Inquisitor and replacing one strike squad with a second interceptor squad, since they've apparently proved rather effective . With the relatively short ranged projection of the rest of his army, I can imagine he's right.

 

 

The general problem I foresee is that I don't have the long range fire power to destroy him at range, that he does have the firepower to quickly bring down Rhino's when they get within range of his guns, and that he outclasses me in short range fire power and in close combat.

One gamble I could see working is to try set up a massed charge by most of my army against all of his strike squads. If denied the charge Grey Knights might have power weapons, but lack the amount of attacks to stand against our troops. It is imperitive to charge and deal with most of his army at once, because after my charge the Purifiers would strike back and probably destroy anything they touch. Yes, I would primarily target them with my long range fire power, but even a few Purifiers are a danger. If at that point I haven't dealt with or bogged down all of his strike squads, they too will charge and probably destroy all Grey Hunters in the open. So it would be a gamble; if it misfires my army will vaporize.

Otherwise, staying away from them is not a very good option. Perhaps in objective games I can delay the confrontation, but eventually I would have to deal with them up close. In kill points it's not an option at all, because my long range firepower isn't going to score much of a kill point against such a mass of marines with 3+ cover saves.

Yes, this is all theorizing. I haven't actually faced him yet or seen him do battle; these are just my worries.

 

So, any suggestions, ideas and experience in dealing with Grey Knights?

[Nrthstar]

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.p...howtopic=226106

 

One of our many discussions. They start at page 4 and work backwards. Rhino rune priests up, get whatever razor or land raider you can and long fangs you can. Use your massive 25 inch to 48 inch advantage as much as possible. Murderous hurricane is great. My dreads hold up pretty well in cc since I don't see a lot of hammers.

[Araith]

Those are fine ideas on list building, but I'm not looking to change my army to better destroy his'. Presented above is my general (tournament) army that works well and it's with this army that I want to try defeat my friend. What I'm looking for are ideas on how to deal with his army tactically. And this army doesn't have a whole lot of long range fire power to take advantage of.

 

As regards your thoughts on that, you're right my Rune Priest will be invaluable in suppressing the Grey Knights' psychic powers.

Murderous hurricane is an idea... for the past half year or so I've been using jaws (living lightning before that) specifically in an attempt to get rid of bothersome models I otherwise have trouble dealing with. It sees only sporadic use, although when I need it I'm glad I have it. Murderous hurricane then might work well against massed Grey Knights, except that it has a range of 24". By the time I can cast that I'm already in their range: they don't need to move up to 12" to bring about their firepower.

[Grimtooth]

Hold back.

 

Are you using the Storm Caller for vehicle cover saves? Changing tactics so that popping smoke would be better so you could use Tempest Wrath and Murderous Hurricane instead, both more effective against the Interceptors.

 

Your Vindicator matches range with all those nasty psycannons, so another hold back option with this as well. Preferably in a position that will give it a really nice cover save if not fully blocking LOS from where the anticipated Interceptor's teleport shunt will take them. Wait for the teleport shunt, then move into position to pie plate them while they are standing around.

 

Pour what other long range firepower you can into the units, one unit at a time. Concentrated fire gets past terminator saves, even with FnP.

 

I would say once you have eliminated the Purifiers and Interceptors, you are more in a position to take the fight to the Strike Squads. They are not running Halberds, so you will be on equal grounds at Initiative at least.

[Araith]

Cover saves for my rhino convoy is indeed what I normally use storm caller for. Smoke launchers provide a better save, but they only last for one turn; after that storm caller comes into play. It also helps the vindicator get a cover save while it fires, if I cannot cover it up enough with terrain or my rhino's. It's half the reason I have a Rune Priest to begin with.

 

Holding back and decimating or destroying the Purifiers and the interceptors before moving in for the kill could work. With especially the Purifiers gone I should be able to take on his troops.

I just hope it will work. With 3+ cover saves (thanks to Sanctuary) they're resilient against krak missiles and I don't have the rate of fire at long range to reliably bring them down in a short time despite that. And I'm afraid a short time is all I have if he starts marching up the field.

[FenrisWolf]

Well, the problem with not changing your army is then you have essentially helped him build a list to beat yours, at least subconsciously. I don't know if tactics alone will be enough to give victory in all cases. As you say, it comes down to dice at that point.

[dragon950]

Best thing you can do is to get rid of storm caller, if you can't decide on anything else then go for fury of the wolf spirts. If he takes a wound they have to pass a ld test or run away. Also try to replace one of your lascannons with a plasma cannon, it amy be a change, but it will be worth it when you melt 2-3 of his grey kinghts.

[guthmaer]

so far ive found that ulrik is useful against a dreadknight, ragnar with a full squad of wg all with frost blades makes a nice mess and lukas the trickster have him attack their star unit he can hold it up for a bit or like happned with me his stasis bomb goes off trapping them.

[Araith]

Well, the problem with not changing your army is then you have essentially helped him build a list to beat yours, at least subconsciously. I don't know if tactics alone will be enough to give victory in all cases. As you say, it comes down to dice at that point.

Hehe. Though I like the thought, the basic concept of the army is his'; my input was mostly in the details, the tuning. So I cannot take credit for the large mass of Grey Knights that I expect having trouble dealing with. ^^

There will always be armies you're not prepared to deal with, you're right there, but I'm not going to admit that's the case here without trying.

 

Best thing you can do is to get rid of storm caller, if you can't decide on anything else then go for fury of the wolf spirts. If he takes a wound they have to pass a ld test or run away.

So would they if I'd force a normal morale check. Then where would this power add a lot? Meanwhile storm caller helps keep my rhino convoy from falling apart.

 

so far ive found that ulrik is useful against a dreadknight, ragnar with a full squad of wg all with frost blades makes a nice mess and lukas the trickster have him attack their star unit he can hold it up for a bit or like happned with me his stasis bomb goes off trapping them.

Fun ideas to try out (and Ragnar with such a wolf guard would indeed make a mess of anything), but it doesn't help me tackle him with my current list.

[Decoy]

I think the problem is that your current list isn't that good. I'd say it's closer to "bad". The only -real- armor you have is that Vindicator, and Psycannons (especially eight of them) can tear through it in one round of shooting. Interceptors used to foil your shooting (through one means or another) will allow him to keep the fire on your guys while his sacrificial lamb unit keeps you tied up in the backfield. Your bikes aren't durable enough to stand up to them in close combat or at short range, your speeder needs to be within his range to be most efffective, and your transports are woefully limited for the amount of firepower coming at them.

 

As a general rule of thumb, if your opponent has more squads than you have vehicles, your armor saturation is weak at best. This only compounds your own lack of (considerable) long range firepower, meaning you're making yourself suffer in the long, mid, -and- short games. To top it all off, you have fewer scoring units than he does, and you have far more KPs to lose than him. Theoretically, if he had just one model left on the battlefield and you had two full units, he could still win in both KP and Objective missions.

 

I know you say you don't want to change your current list, but from what I can gather, you're setting yourself up to fail. It'll be an uphill challenge, to be sure, so maybe if you like a hard game, stick with your list as it stands. Otherwise, I'd say tweak it a bit.

 

I'll be back (hopefully) in a few to actually discuss potential tactics and whatnot.

[Nrthstar]

Decoy Is, unfortunately for you dead on. I understand your list has done well in the past, but part of 40k is adapting to the new codex.

 

Your army was designed to own the mid range with a sprinkle of long range and some decent assault. We're not the princes of assault anymore though. Nor are we the power house of midrange. grey knights have taken the title now.

 

Now I have seen and I have done the mathhammer, and we can still win in both situations through some nasty attrition. You would think this is great since we'll have more boots and treads on the ground than them, but the problem is, like decoy said, you have far more easy kp s for him while he has so few for you. And if it's not annihilation, he has more objective takers.

 

Your list strengths are now your weaknesses. My opinion of course, I'm sorry I can't give you anything positive to use, but getting close to gk is like getting close to bloodletters, you just don't do it as a marine

[HERO]

Ragnar + WGT with combi-plasmas in a LR will work.

 

Just be careful of charging into I6 Force Halberds ;)

[Nrthstar]

Ragnar + WGT with combi-plasmas in a LR will work.

 

Just be careful of charging into I6 Force Halberds ;)

 

You'll put the hurting on a squad for sure, but at 500 points for the squad and 250 for the transport minimum, that's half the list at 1500. You have a hq that can be insta gibbed by any grey knight since they all have force weapons and he lacks eternal warrior, and 5 guys that will likely lose a guy per round. Now a fully loaded redeemer or crusader will take out some guy's before combat happens, so maybe you only lose .5 of your guys a turn, which is s a till terrible as this unit is 1/3 your army.

 

perfect scenario: this death squad takes on unit with no transport and no halbreds and no invulnerable staff. Basically a bait squad. You roll up, shoot them down some, then you hop out, assault and destroy them all with your i 5. No wounds, but unless your opponent is ignoring this unit, which let's face it, he's not, your boys are now the center of every s5 bolter, rifle dread and dread knight within 2 feet.

 

Maybe in a 2.5k and up game, minimum it would be worth it.

[HERO]

You're playing against GK. Everything they have is a quarter of their list, especially when killing Terminators and Paladins. I see no reason not to throw one Anvil against another and seeing which one is heavier.

[Nrthstar]

Spoken like a wolf, I admire that, but when our anvil destroys one if their's and they destroy ours and they still have 3 more anvils to a couple of our rocks, well, you get the idea. I've dragged that metaphor far enough haha.

 

sides, we're off topic, the goal here is to give some ideas on how to make the original army list posted, and to be honest I am interested to see a better general than I figure out how to do just that. cause knowing is half the battle.

[Vantius]

I dont know how good of friends you are with this guy, but you could always just ask him what he has trouble with. My friends and I are pretty cool with each other, so we arent shy about telling each other what we hate or cant deal with from opposing armies.

 

Also, try trolling the grey knight forums. Im sure they are asking all the questions about how do deal with x, y, and z problems.

[dragon950]

Narmally you would need to kill 50% of the models in the squad, with fury of the wolf spirts you just need to cause a wound for them to take a test.

[Eric the Green]

Also, try trolling the grey knight forums. Im sure they are asking all the questions about how do deal with x, y, and z problems.

Interestingly I haven't seen too many threads like this over on the inquisition forum. I've been lurking there fairly regularly since the new book dropped, trying to find threads about their weaknesses. Havn't had much luck, lots of rants about fluff and the occaisional one about how they want other marine's toys.

 

Not sure what that indicates, but its interesting.

[commander alexander]

As far as flat out tactics, and not list building, here is what advice I can give you (I own the GK, but haven't played with it yet);

 

-Keep out of close combat with them with anything that doesn't have an invulnerable save. All their CC weapons are force weapons.

 

-Make use of that 24" range as others have said. Treat it like a 'nid army in a sense, stay back and shoot at it for as long as you can before getting in cc.

 

-They are fast, lots of deepstriking units, remember that, so keep your units in cover.

 

-Because many of their units have the deepstrike rule, you are not as likely to encounter transport vehicles. Make use of that, once there on the table, they are foot slogging from there.

 

-Storm ravens are not that scary its an armor 12 fast land raider. Try to take it out with lascannons if you have them, as they are immune to the melta rule.

 

-Dreadknights are like carnifexes or hive tyrants, but with actual guns. They do have invul saves though, so bolter fire is as effective as just about anything else.

 

-They are also more expensive than us, so we have numbers on them for a change.

[Donutzot]

You need more power of the suns that always helps against grey knights