Can anybody beat grey knights

[andrew55]

I play Dark Angels myself and i cannot beat the GK's no matter what list i use.

4 out of 4 defeats andthey werent even close!

I have 4k company and 3k deathwing and every time i play grey knights, i find that i am outnumbered by far better models.

for me to field a tactical squad with no upgrades, i pay 165 points. for grey knights it is around 200 points.

this may sound like i have an advantage but that extra 35 points gets a GK player 10 force power weapons, 10 storm bolters and loads of shiny powers.

that works out around 3 points per model for a storm bolter and a power weapon (which is better than a power weapon) and cool powers.

 

GK's vehicles are like 5 points more expensive, but that gives them a power which means they can discount crew stunned and shaken results, DA pay 15 points for extra armour which isn't as good as fortitude.

 

GK's dreadnoughts (and probably other vehicles) can pay 5 points to make assault cannons STR7

DA can get a dozer blade for 5 points!

 

The problem i am finding is that GKs pay 3 - 10 times less in points for things that are better than anything i can buy. Until we get a new codex (probably in about 5 - 9 years) i am probably going to have to just simply not play grey knights, they can shoot better than anything i can field (20 points for STR 5 storm bolters makes this even worse) and in close combat i have no hope, as GK's are pretty much getting nemesis force weapons for 1 point per model.

I work this out as GK's paying 1 point for a storm bolter, 1 point for phsycic powers and 1 point for nemesis force weapon. i pay 15 points for a power weapon and i can only have 1 in a tactical squad.

You even get better powerfists (nemesis demonhammers) for 10 points, DA pay 25 for a powerfist.

 

anyone else have problems like this?

or any suggestions on beating GK's

[d@n]

codex DA wasnt brilliant when it came out and now its a very old and out dated dex. Dont worry you'll be getting a new dex soon enough, that will most likely wipe the floor with grey knights.

[andrew55]

it is just infuriating how little GK's pay for all their equipment and things, I can see them winning in every tournament from now until the rest of the game is balanced around their codex. I dont think they actually looked at points costs of any other armybook in the game and did no play testing at all when they wrote the GK book!

[breng77]

You play the only "competitive" DA list at the moment, Deathwing spamming Cyclones and TH/SS, with the addition of cheap typhoon Speeders, possibly some bikes. And if you are list Tailoring possibly running Eziekiel for the table wide LD 10 Hood (of at least a Libby), if you can shut down GK powers you are much better off. But TH/SS termies have a decent chance against most GK squads in CC, they don't care about I 6 because they strike last anyway, and the power weapons are mitigated some by the 3+ invul saves. You also have an advantage at long range (GKs are great at mid range shooting, so you need to keep them at range, or in close combat.) THinking about it 3 LR deathwing could pose an issue for GKs.

[andrew55]

i had 2 land raiders and a crusader.

psycannons (which he had about 12 of them) and str 7 assault cannons just ripped them to pieces. i had 7 squads of terminators last night, two of those squads had 3 thunderhammers and ss's 2 land raiders, a land raider crusader, dreadnought, drop pod and chaplain.

lasted 3 turns his STR 5 stormbolter STR7 assault cannons just tore me to pieces. a 2+ save is good but when you have to take 100+ saves a turn you start failing loads. I really think ill have to just refuse to play GK's until our codex becomes balanced.

 

My 4k company was outnumered by superior models also. like i say when something starts out 35 points more expensive than our tactical squads, by the time you actually arm them with something, they become more expensive as GK's are paying peanuts for much better stuff!

[breng77]

It really depends on his list, but a DW squad with a cyclone ML, should help limit his mobility, in addition if you deepstruck in Belial and FNP termies, to absorb fire, it also seems that you are playing quite a lot of points, play at 2k points or less and you will likely have a better chance. At lower points he won't have every imaginiable upgrade because he won't be able to afford them. Just looking at your list remarks the games you are playing are at least 2600 points, that is quite a lot of points, and that helps your opponent a lot more than it helps you (DA don't really gain much new at above 2000 points)

[Droma]

I don't normally respond with posts like this but....

 

GK are fine your list or your tactics are poor. Autocannons and Psycannons are also not going to rip apart 3 av14 tanks before they deliver their squads for an assault. So far you've done nothing but rant I haven't seen his lists or yours or a battle report. Without those myself or the rest of the board members can't give you any better advice to improve your game. So stop the rants because GK are not unbeatable by any means and give us more to go on if you want any constructive feedback.

[Corton]

I did, and I was using predominantly Green wing. Plasma Cannons are good, as is concentrated fire, and ravenwing. Deathwing wither and die when you face Grey Knights, but are a wonderful sacrificial unit if used in limited numbers. For the most part, when I face Grey Knights (which I think is every other friendly game I have played since their 're-birth' in the shop), I lean for a more fire-power loaded army;

 

Company Master -Power Weapon

Chaplain or Libby-no upgrades (they don't really need anything)

 

5 Deathwing- all w TH/SS n 1 Cyclone

Dreadnought-Plasma Cannon, Missile Launcher (very underestimated combination)

 

10 Tactical-Missile Launcher, Melta, Sgt. w Power Weapon

10 Tactical-Plasma Cannon, Flamer

10 Tactical-Multi-Melta, Flamer, Power Fist

 

Razorback-Twin-Las

RazorBack-Twin Heavy bolter, Stormy

 

Ravenwing-3, 2 w Melta, Power Weapon, Multi-Attack Bike

Ravenwing-3, 2 w Melta, Power Weapon, Multi-Attack Bike

Lansdpeeder Typhoon w Multi-Melta

 

10 Devastator-2 Plasmacannon, 2 Lascannon

Predator-AutoCannon, Spopnson Heavies, Storm Bolter

 

This is my stock list, as it equally covers all four tenants; speed, flexibility, assault capacity, and firepower. Grey Knight terminators can be overcome w Plasma Cannons (4 that can saturate 3 targets per turn), as Can their lesser Power Armoured brethren. Storm...whatevers (..the flying bricks!) can be put out of their misery w Las fire. Psy-Dreads are good targets for Ravenwing-flanking bikes OR DS speeder. Deathwing can be used to deny area, be used as a throw away unit, block movement, blow up lurkers, or just become a general nuisance if your opponent ignores them (just don't DS 1st turn-will be shot to pieces). In regards to 'icky' units (dreadknights, Special chara-crap-ters, Joke-monkeys), a combination of all four tenants are best suited. And remember, you are playing a very Psychic army, and we have the best anti-psyker in the game-Ezekial with his un-limited range hood.

[chaplain belisarius]

may i suggest lots of plasma, followed by some vindicators, some dreads and some deathwing to counter assault with? that should sort them out...:D

[Tanhausen]

Kinda agree with Droma... Only faced once GK in tourney and I basically tabled them ;)

 

What you cant do if fight in their terms...

[Pinning Test]

Grey Knights share some of our own weaknesses: very few, elite models, which means, lots of shooting kills several units that your opponent can't afford to lose. More or less, the complaint you have about your own terminators.

 

To my experience, the DA codex will never manage a wipe-out, but you can easily find yourself ahead in kill-points, capturing and contesting most or all the objectives, by the 5th turn.

 

If you try and match your strongest unit with their strongest unit, they're going to kick your ass seven ways from Sunday. But that's not how 40k is played. Get your units against the enemy units they're equipped to kill at the right timing. Think ahead how your moves are going to play out.

 

If you still believe the GK are unbeatable:

Get the GK codex. Read it. Write a list for it, or study your opponent's list.

You will find out, what every competitive player knows: every list and every codex, has weaknesses.

 

And for Heaven's sake don't be that guy:

"Dear arbiter,

Mr. Scissor is ridiculously overpowered. Please, make sure he is nerfed with the next update. Mr. Rock is fine.

 

Respectfully,

Mr. Paper"

[Slim]

Played against Grey Knights for the first time this week. It was my friend's new force so we had agreed that I would bring a bland list so we could see what they can do. I took 5 razorbacks with 50 combat-squadded Tacticals and an Interrogator Chaplain at 1500 points.

 

Table quarters and three objectives between us. The game was a draw even with my weak list and my friend being a good player. The Grey Knights suffered due to small units (they die like normal marines) and relatively low leadership... Focus fire and expect losses in close assault.

[Pavement Artist]

The trick is, never....EVER get into combat with them. They're ridiculously frustrating for me as a dark eldar player when they can whip out initiative 6 troops, on top of being massively resilient.

[breng77]

That really depends, Deathwing Terminators can hold their own against a number of GK units, the 3++ save helps to negate the power weapons, and I 1 troops don't care if you are I 6

[RayJ]

Coming from someone who plays both armies:

 

Grey Knights do not pay for any special defenses, so they will have more firepower than us at all times. Grey Knights are primarily a shooting army. Remember this. If you try to beat them at the small arms shooting game, you're gonna need to be both extremely clever and extremely lucky.

 

Grey Knights are NOT an assault army, though they do have units that are good at assault (purifiers, terminators, death cult assassins) and those that are great at assault (paladins, grand masters). The basic GK is merely above average, since they only get 1 attack each.

 

They key is to pay attention to the upgrades (or lack thereof) that each unit has. If you've whittled down their standard units with shooting, you can probably take them on in assault. You will, however sustain decent to large losses for doing so. Plasma is actually going to be your greatest weapon against Grey Knights, with missiles coming in second.

 

I know that not many DA lists use plasma, but you will see a small shift in the tournament environment to using more of it. For us, a single Ravenwing squad and/or Devastator squad will be the best sources, as we still need those same units for our anti-tank capabilities. Dreadnoughts with plasma cannons will be EXTREMELY useful against GK. While the standard guys have power weapons they fight at strength 4 or 5, and so will rely on glancing with krak grenades to try and deal with a walker in close combat. The plasma cannon will be excellent for power armor and terminator armor alike.

 

When deciding on whether or not to hit a unit in combat, make sure to take into account the effect of grenades. Rad Grenades, Blind Grenades, and Psychotroke Grenades each can ruin your day. Rad Grenades, however are the biggest cuplrit. Combined with a single casting of hammerhand, each GK can wound you on 2+, and they will be striking before you, even without halberds. You need to be prepared to take many invulnerable saves or to lose many power armored guys.

 

Their list relies heavily on synergies and great versatility. Try to focus them hard to remove psycannons, daemon hammers, and terminators as quickly as possible. Psychic defenses will weaken this army's combat punch a little, but not by enough for you to worry about investing in our crappy librarians. As I said, they will kill you with shooting just fine. GKs use assault as a means of sweeping up units they have just shot to pieces to save themselves from small arms fire.

[CaterpillarHomicide]

I recently beat Grey Knights with Deathwing + Greenwing.

 

LRC + Terminator Assault Squad + Belial

Venerable Dreadnought Plasma Cannon + Heavy Flamer

2X Rhino + Tactical Squad + Meltagun + Powerfist

+5 more shooty Terminators.

+5 Missile Devastators.

VS

Terminator Squad X2 +Thawn

Purifiers

Dreadknight

Storm Raven (One of the Terminator Squads)

Librarian

+ Whatever the basic Grey Knights are called. X2

 

Turn 1:

He moved up his whole force, and shot at the missile devs and LRC to no avail.

Killed the Storm Raven, Dreadknight, and most of the two Terminator Squads... But that damn Thawn lived...

Turn 2:

Thawn + Terminators preformed epically and killed my assault terminators ('cept for Belial +1), LRC (Purifiers did this one)t and a few Tactical marines.

Took out the Purifiers + Terminators (-Thawn) and consolidated towards towards his two objective holding squads + Librarian.

Turn 3:

Librarian + Grey Knights McMurded the Tactical marines (-2).

Belial +1 and the two Tacticals (with a little help from the missile devs and rhinos) heavily weakened the two squads then charged. Tactical marines became Tacical Marine and the Librarian Periled failing to kill Belial. Floating Powerfist and Belial +1 killed quite a few, then No Retreat! won me the game.

[Brother-Captain Sharp]

Grey Knights share some of our own weaknesses: very few, elite models, which means, lots of shooting kills several units that your opponent can't afford to lose. More or less, the complaint you have about your own terminators.

 

To my experience, the DA codex will never manage a wipe-out, but you can easily find yourself ahead in kill-points, capturing and contesting most or all the objectives, by the 5th turn.

A good Deathwing list can wipe a GK army if you can eliminate their mobility early. Cyclones go a long way towards isolating the individual squads, which can then be overwhelmed by assaults or shooting. Land Raiders getting rended to death can be avoided for the first couple of turns with good placement for cover saves, and as soon as they deliver their cargo you're good. Of course, a game is never a given, but isolation of individual GK units really diminishes their effectiveness, just like any other army.

 

The lack of storm shields will swing assaults in your favor if you're packing a good few on your assault units.

[Brother Immolator]

Finally someone else who uses a ML/PC dread!!!

 

I agree that GKs are not unbetable but the price tag we pay for our toys is a little bit of the edge compaired to theirs.

Though a combined raven/death army with a vindy and speeders is going to ruin their day.

 

Plasma has an easy counter and i dont know why gks dont use it so much.Its called plasma syphon.

[cypherkk]

In the games I've seen played against GK with marines. The ones with vindicators tend to do extremely well. One list had 3 and the GK never made it across the board.

[HJL]

i used a deathwing list that relied heavily on th+ss and 3 vindicators against them last week and did ok. i kept the vindicators in a pack so he didnt dare go near them and then pounded anything that stuck its head out with s10 and mashed up the rest with thunder hammers.

[Droma]

Mech deathwing does well against them. They have to get lucky to take out your AV14 before they hits his lines. 5x TH/SH also hold up very well in combat against even paladins. If you survive to swing you are taking him out with instant death as he's not likely to pass a whole lot of 5+ inv saves.

[Brother Immolator]

Thats indeed the way Dorma.If i use more than one vindi i cluster them together as to negate the vurnerable side armor.

Venerable dreads with plasma and missiles in cover had done the trick many times as well as our little Missile and Assault cannon speeders.

Keep em mobile and out of the enemies range and they thin GKs down considerably.

 

Gks have the same problem with us simple marines.They dont take well to backets of dice thrown at them.

 

Also try a libby or better Ezekiel as an H.Q.An unlimited range psichic hood does wonders against their powers.

[CaptainKael]

Wow, all you guys seem to have it nice with seemingly more "purish" GK armies. My meta is overrun at the moment with Coteaz henchman spam (Death Cult/Crusader/Techmarine [to make attacks H:3/W:2 at I6] and Monkey/psycher), Vindicare assasins (just to tackle that AV14 vehicle with its average AP of 17 before rending), and Mordrak.

 

DW/RW builds don't do too well there. Servo skulls deny us our scout move while they keep theirs from Grand Strategy; not to mention making those templates super accurate (at S10 AP1). They also bring just enough strike squads to blanket half the board, so deep strikes are out (besides Coteaz anti-DS rule). LRs are handled by the Vindicare. This leaves us nothing but to foot slog DW across the board and to outflank RW. Yeah SS are helpful, but they can't pass that many saves. Also, we could (mostly) outrange them with CMLs, but that is short lived and in objective games hurt us. Not to mention lack of effectiveness when used against cover.

 

**Before anyone says that type of list is imbalanced versus other armies, my meta game is over 80% Space Marine variants. So everyone playing GK are packing on the I6 PW attacks and AP2/3 shooting.**

[Droma]

With the FAQ henchmen are troops so it cuts down on a lot of the spam. Make sure the army your playing with is legal with the faq. Also doesn't the vindicare only get one turbo penetrator round? I wasn't suggesting to take just one land raider you know. Three of them bearing down on him will survive to do some hurt vindicare or no vindicare.

 

Even if that's the type of list you're playing against it's not the most common and with the FAQ most of those players are now screwed so I wouldn't really worry about them too much.

[breng77]

Wow, all you guys seem to have it nice with seemingly more "purish" GK armies. My meta is overrun at the moment with Coteaz henchman spam (Death Cult/Crusader/Techmarine [to make attacks H:3/W:2 at I6] and Monkey/psycher), Vindicare assasins (just to tackle that AV14 vehicle with its average AP of 17 before rending), and Mordrak.

 

Running on Foot? if not you blow up their vehicles and watch guys die (trust me I have done henchmen my self T 3 and a 5+ save (3+ on crusaders) die pretty well in explosions. Jokero miss alot in my experience, and the psykers are Meh (if you bing a hood they are total garbage.)

 

 

DW/RW builds don't do too well there. Servo skulls deny us our scout move while they keep theirs from Grand Strategy; not to mention making those templates super accurate (at S10 AP1). They also bring just enough strike squads to blanket half the board, so deep strikes are out (besides Coteaz anti-DS rule). LRs are handled by the Vindicare. This leaves us nothing but to foot slog DW across the board and to outflank RW. Yeah SS are helpful, but they can't pass that many saves. Also, we could (mostly) outrange them with CMLs, but that is short lived and in objective games hurt us. Not to mention lack of effectiveness when used against cover.

 

How do they get enough strike squads to cover half the board, and enough henchman to really be spam? You need at least 2 strike squads to cover half the board. Which means 4 Henchmen units at most (so 2 CC squads and 2 Joke/Psykers?, hardly game breaking). In order to stop DWA they need first turn to use warp quake to block your deepstrike. Remember that Servo Skulls must be placed outside your deployment and are destroyed whey you move near them (RW bikes = dead servoskulls on turn 1)

 

Also doesn't the vindicare only get one turbo penetrator round?

 

NO that was in the old codex, he can shoot as many as he wants now.