Can anybody beat grey knights

[Brother Immolator]

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.**

 

The way i see it man plasma spam is the way to go.Get 2 vendreads in cover with missile/plasma arms and a couple of vindies.There is only that much the penetrator and jokaero can hit.He cant be poping a vehicle every turn use cover.I6 doesnt concearn you,termies play last anyway and you wont charge grey knights with anything else.If he wastes points on halberts its your gain.Id drop the LR and the TH/SS termies in favour of shootie termies with assault cannons or CMLS.Speeders with Missiles and assault cannons too.Use them in maximum range to avoid his psycannons and inflict cassaulties.Take out his Henchmen with these.They have 5+ save only paper thin.

 

The fact that you play objectives means you can destroy his henchmen easily because they have almost no armor,and then move those speeders to capture(if you have samy they can)those objectives last turn.Since he uses Coteaz those henchmen are troops thereby he fills his slots with them,how he gets strike squads?

 

Anyway thats what i would try anyway.Those things are the top of my head,there are many other things to go round since you know what he plays and his list is more than unbalanced you can pull off many surpirses.Thats the problem with meta armies.They expect you to use a list and then you use another.

 

EDIT:Regarding ravenwing bikes:The fact that they can charge first and can have a power weapon doesnt mean they are assault based.Equip them with plasma rifles.Toughness 5 means a lot more resilience.Plus if they are scoring their increased movement can capture those objectives last turn.

Dont see this as a coherent list but as an indication as to what you can field.Perhaps i might taylor one if you tell me the points values you play.

[Brother-Captain Sharp]

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).

Are you talking about the orbital strikes? Servo Skulls do not reduce their scatter, as per the FAQ.

[CaptainKael]

To be honest, the last match I had against those GK players was pre-FAQ. At 2000 pts, I was seeing 2-3 strike squads, usually 5 man. As for the henchman, it was mostly psycher. I have already built in Ezekial as of my last 2 games. One game took until the last round to kill him, the other the first turn. Only 1 squad of death cult/crusader but they kill a squad of 5 DW with TH/SS when they hit; never get the chance to strike. And as noted above, the Vindicare has no limit to the number of shots of a particular type.

 

Also doesn't help that I am currently in a largely unregulated league with declared missions and no formal set of lists turned in at the beginning. Sometimes that brings out the less than pleasant crowd of gamers.

[breng77]

Still though, based on what you said that is 2-3 Strikes, 1 DCA squad, and 2-3 Psyker Squads. As for the DCA squad you need to stop their vehicle and make them walk, they have no durablility against shooting. (sure they have some 3+ saves, but on a T 3 body that squad takes tons of wounds if you shoot them with pretty much anything. Having already pre-set missions means that if you want to win, you game the mission, if you are playing objectives play Ravenwing with MSU squads (since KPs don't matter), play the reserves game, then control contest turn 5, Playing Kill points go minimum KP and KPs that are tough to get (Deathwing squads)

[Grand Master Raziel]

Just wanted to make a quick point regarding the feasability of using Ezekial to counter GK psychic shenanigans - instead of paying his outrageous price tag for his sucktacular powers, you can take an allied Witch Hunters Inquisitor Lord with the minimum 3 Henchmen retinue and a psychic hood for about 85pts. There's your Ld10 table-wide hood for half the points of Zeke. If you want to really stick it to the GK player, you can get him for about 100pts with the Hammer of the Witches power. HotW is bad for psykers, appears to have unlimited range, and has no LOS requirements. He'd only have to kill 4-5 GKs or 2 GKTs to earn his points back, and if he can mess with their reliance on psy-powers while he's doing it, that'd be the best 100pts you could spend against GKs - and you'd still be paying a lot less points than you would for Zeke.

[breng77]

The problem with the inquisitor lord is that he cannot safely hide inside a squad (other than henchman, who are not all that great). I'm not saying Zeke is great, but to make the inquisitor really worth it you are probably going to pay for him, a decent number of henchmen (or at least some good ones), wargear for the inquisitor, and probably a ride for him. So while you can theoretically save points,/get more for the points you spend, it is all about if the unit of an IL and his henchman fit in your army, and if you have the Witch hunters print codex which would be the only legal means of getting the allied IL.

[Grand Master Raziel]

Granted, you can't hide the Inquisitor Lord in a squad, but you can hide him deep in your deployment zone. With a unit consisting of 4 figures on 23mm bases, they shouldn't be hard to keep totally out of your opponent's LOS. Granted, a good opponent who really wants to will still find a way to kill him, but the same can be said of any unit in the game.

 

Besides, it's not like Ezekial is going to be that much safer in a squad, because I'd think any squad a player has in his list is going to be actively engaging the opposition in some way. So, you can have Zeke in a squad exposed to enemy retaliation or the Inquisitor Lord tucked safely in a building or behind a Rhino. If I was a betting man, I'd put my money on the Inquisitor Lord generally outlasting Zeke unless your opponent goes out of his way to eliminate him. And, if he does that, the unit he's dispatched to kill the Inquisitor Lord is probably much more expensive than the Lord himself, and will be exposed to being annhilated the following turn. So, even if you lose the Inquisitor Lord in that fashion, it's still a net win.

[shabbadoo]

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 don't think they actually looked at points costs of any other army book in the game and did no play testing at all when they wrote the GK book!

Oh so melodramatic, and I think they did look at points values. :devil: GK are not paying that little for *equipment* in many cases, but for *psychic abilities*. Last time I checked, extra armor couldn't be nullified on a 4+ by a psychic hood every time you wanted to use it. So, put a Librarian or two in your army list. The DA Librarian power Hellfire is actually pretty dang good against GK, and the Force Barrier power is rather useful too, seeing as the GK are all armed with power weapons/force weapons/thunder hammers. A variety of things in the DA army list can give GK trouble. In most cases it is best to just shoot them up, feeding them sacrificial units if they get too close, and then shoot them up some more.

 

I've seen GK get mauled by a variety of forces, including armies they supposedly excel at killing- Daemons. I've also seen the reverse, and most everything in between. I guess that means that, in the grand scheme of 40K armies, they are balanced well enough. :angry: GK are not the end all, be all.

[Grand Master Raziel]

Just a couple points of correction: psy-hoods don't nullify powers on a straight roll, they roll off against the figure with the opposing power. shabbadoo knows this, I think he meant to state that Librarians have about a 50/50 chance of nullifying any given power (it's a little worse, but not much).

 

That said, what I think he's forgetting is that DA Librarians are Ld9, unless he's referring to using Ezekial. A psy-hood backed by Ld9 needs to beat the opposing roll by 2 in order to nullify a power. That's hardly ever going to happen. That combined with the facts that we pay 25pts more for our Librarians and the sucktacularness of their power means Librarians are hardly ever going to make it into the list of a sensible DA player.

 

Now, as far as Ezekial goes...I don't know. If he was 130pts, maybe even as much as 150pts, he might be worth it, but 170pts is a lot to ask for his crap powers and lack of an invulnerable save. I know I wouldn't include him in any take-all-comers lists. So, if I were going to throw him in a list vs a GK player, I'm list-tailoring, and if I'm doing that I might as well just take the Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor Lord with Hammer of the Witches so he can sit in the safest part of the board cancelling powers left and right while thinking GKs to death.

[Brother Immolator]

The problem with the witch hunter inquisitor is that you wont play DA anymore.But witch hunters with generic inducted marines(even if they are DA).You cant go the other way around since the DA dex doesnt support inducted allies. So no death wing no ravenwing etc.And you have to work with the FOC limitations,say

one heavy support no tank slot.Plus with the new upcoming sisters codex,its 99% sure that you wont be able to induct allies so the plan goes down the drain.

[breng77]

The witch hunters book allows them to ally to the DA codex, and for me the only thing that Zeke would really need to be worth it is be able to be in terminator armor so he could deepstrike with a Deathwing squad if needed and gain an invulnerable save. The big issues with Zeke are that you end up paying points for a lot of fairly useless stuff, especially in RW or DW builds. He gets everything mastercrafted, which is ok on the force weapon, but on his pistol...., his fearless aura only really helps at all if you are playing greenwing, and he gets the addition of mind worm, probably one of the worst powers in the game. My only argument for including him/a regular libby, over the Inquisitor would be monetary, eventually the witch hunters allies will be removed (in many cases they already are if you don't own the WH codex.) so you would be paying for models you may never use again. Eventually, DA will get a new dex (and following GWs trend of making bad stuff great), zeke will probably be the next Mephiston (or at least a decent option)

[Brother Immolator]

All i can say without quoting from inside the very witch hunters codex and repeating my self is look at said codex page 25.

[breng77]

Yeah that covers it, it says that Witch hunter units from the mentioned FOC slots can be taken as allies to armies from the listed codices, which includes all space marine varients. (it is in the big grey box on the bottom of the page, that says Witch hunters as allies)

[Brother Immolator]

It uses the grey box to refer to the models not the rules.Look what it sais at the left under the designers note.And reread the Using inducted Imperial guard or allied Space marines contingents paragraph:It states you need to use the Codex space marines or Codex imperial guard.

 

And i state this again:You can use space marines as allies but not the other way around,there are no entries in the DA or marine DExes to allow you to take witch hunters allies.And frankly i cant imagine the reason to do so since our hood is unlimited in range too.

[breng77]

nope, does not work that way, the grey box states that you can take Witch hunters allies in any of the following codices... then goes on to mention which codices, then it goes on to say that inducted guard or allied space marines cannot be part of this allied contingent (so you cannot ally Space wolves and guard for instance), then it goes on to list the FOC slots that you can chose from for the allied witch hunters. This is separate from the inducted guard or allied space marines into a WH force, which lists specific models that can be inducted/ Allied to a WH army (the units are listed on P 26). You do not need an entry in the marine dexes to allow allies as the WH dex states that they can be allied, this was the same for the previous daemonhunter dex, hence all the inquisitors, mysitcs and Grey Knights running around in Guard armies before the new Grey Knight Dex hit.

[shabbadoo]

Just a couple points of correction: psy-hoods don't nullify powers on a straight roll, they roll off against the figure with the opposing power. shabbadoo knows this, I think he meant to state that Librarians have about a 50/50 chance of nullifying any given power (it's a little worse, but not much).

 

That said, what I think he's forgetting is that DA Librarians are Ld9, unless he's referring to using Ezekial. A psy-hood backed by Ld9 needs to beat the opposing roll by 2 in order to nullify a power. That's hardly ever going to happen. That combined with the facts that we pay 25pts more for our Librarians and the sucktacularness of their power means Librarians are hardly ever going to make it into the list of a sensible DA player.

Yeah, that, sort of. :lol: I should has posted "50%" rather than "4+". Most GK squads are Ld 9, so even a pud DA Librarian stands a chance; Ezekiel more so. The Psychic Pilot thing is a bit harder to deal with than most of the squads oddly enough. Go figure.

 

GK have a lot of firepower, but it is mostly AP 4 or 5. So, basic power armor does well in numbers, if you stay away from the GK in Assault.

[Bartali]

GK are fine your list or your tactics are poor.

 

Before the OP gets lost, this probably needs to be repeated again. Perhaps post your list up ?

 

DA should have no problem in CC against a 'pure' GK list

[Grand Master Raziel]

I can't get into the particulars of the legality of fielding an allied Inquisitor Lord with a DA army because I don't have my books available. I'll check later, but suffice it to say I'm confident it's legal to do - the rules allowing one to do so being in Codex: Witchhunters. I've never played a Witchhunters army, but I used to use Codex: Daemonhunters quite extensively, and the allies rules were the same for both books.

 

And frankly i cant imagine the reason to do so since our hood is unlimited in range too.

 

1: Ld10 psy-hood for considerably less than Ezekial costs.

2: You can stick him in the safest part of your deployment zone you have available to make it hard for your opponent to get at him.

3: Better psychic powers (vs GKs, I think Hammer of the Witches would be a laugh-riot).

 

The only downside to the Inquisitor Lord is that he can't be your cumpulsory HQ choice, but for what you'd pay for Ezekial, you could comfortably get the Inquisitor Lord and a Chaplain, and for a few points more give the Inquisitor Lord a psychic power that just makes psykers start going away. If the stated goal is to tool up against GKs, I can't think of why you wouldn't bring him.

 

Most GK squads are Ld 9, so even a pud DA Librarian stands a chance; Ezekiel more so.

 

A fair point. I forgot about the squads. Up until Codex: Grey Knights, most psykers you might want to try to use a psy-hood against were Ld10. It does make the DA Librarian a little more viable against them, but we're still paying too much for crap powers. Force Barrier prevents you from using the Libby's force sword, and Hellfire pretty much requires some enhanced mobility to make it worthwhile. That means jump pack, bike, or ride in a track. With the first two options, you kind of have to commit to having a similiarly equipped squad to accompany the Libby. Both are horrendously overpriced, and in particular linking the Libby up with a Ravenwing Attack Squadron means that squadron isn't making a Scout move or outflanking. What really gets me, though, is the possibility of rolling a S0-S3 attack. Granted, it's remote, but having already gotten the Libby into range to try and use Hellfire and passed the psychic test, one shouldn't have to have the additional possibility of the attack being harmless. If Hellfire were a D6+4 for strength, or even a D3+4, I wouldn't have a problem for it. 2d6-2, though...what the hell was JJ thinking?

 

Sorry, rant over. Anyway, regarding assault vs GKs, I'd say it depends on the matchup in question. With basic GKs, the tactical situation is not dissimilar to whether or not to assault Howling Banshees. It's sure better to assault them than to be assaulted by them. What to expect depends on the two units that might be in the fight. I wouldn't try to out-assault most GK units with Tactical Marines, but Assault Marines ought to do okay against Strike Squads, Interceptor Squads, and Purgation Squads. Yeah, most of the figures in the GK units will ignore armor saves, but the Assault Squad is swinging a lot more attacks (I'm assuming getting the charge here). Led by a Chaplain, an Assault Squad should do surprisingly well.

 

The units to watch out for are Terminators, Paladins, and Purifiers. Purifiers in particular have some nasty damage potential, especially if equipped with a mix of halberds and falchions. I don't think I'd even pitch THSS Terminators in against Purifiers unless I really had to. Maybe a Dreadnought, if the GK player forgot to include a NF-Hammer in the squad - maybe even if he didn't forget but only included one. Paladins don't have the potential damage-output per points-spent ratio of Purifiers, but units of Paladins can be given FNP and designed to fully exploit the worst parts of the wound allocation rules. The one thing they don't generally have going for them is good invulnerable saves. So, I'd hit them with DWTs (either with hammers or with PFs) or with units that have one or two PFs shielded by a lot of expendable meatshields.

 

I'm almost tempted to state taking Azrael would be worthwhile, but there's the fact that GKs have force weapons all over the place that says it wouldn't. It basically turns Azrael's 4 wounds into a de-facto 1 wound. Still, 5 attacks standing still with a S6 power weapon, plus granting a 4++ to every member of the unit he's in...that one's tricky. If you can control where he winds up in the combat so he's not got a lot of incoming attacks against him (maybe even place him up against the guys with psycannons/incinerators so he doesn't have FW attacks coming on on him), then he could be golden. Still, the GK player would only have to be lucky once to make all that go away, and for his cost you could practically get a Land Raider - or an Interrogator Chaplain and my much-trumpeted Inquisitor Lord.

[breng77]

I think you would need TH/SS termies to fight on even footing with Paladins at all, the fact that they would go before your fists, and likely kill most of them, is very bad for the DWTs, you really need those 3+ saves to survive their swing, then hammer them back. That said I totally agree on Helfire, if you take enemy psychic defense into account you are looking at getting into range Rolling to pass your test, making it past psychic defense, and then rolling the 2d6-2 (which is usually on odds going to be slightly better than a heavy flamer.) Sure 1 in 216 times it will roll up S 10 AP 1, but it is more likey to be S 0 AP does not matter.

[Brother Immolator]

Had to restudy the witch hunters dex a couple of times.And it seems that you are right.The wording took the better of me(after all english is not my mother tonque).Anyways an inquisitor lord seems a viable choice.

 

I agree with the analysis regarding the need for an antipsicher.However i dont wholeheartedly agree to the fact of using assault terminators against them.Remember that although their non terminator units have less attacks than what a da can use to assault the GK(assault squads,terminators)they have powerweapons,all of them.Plus by the time you have placed your assault squads close for the charge you would have received so much stormbolter and psicannon fire to be tottaly manageble by them even they get assaulted.And lets not forget cleansing flame.

 

Azrael is a solid choice but as said before force weapons are a huge issue.I would mount sam on his bike and take an psiker personaly.

 

I believe the answer to counter grey knights is mobility.A solid death/raven list with lots of plasma and long range attacks to outrange and whittle down their squads and call in terminators to finish them up.With the occasional last minute objective contesting or stealing.

[breng77]

In my experience, our DW termies can hold up Point for point against even the better GK assault units, as for storm bolter fire it really depends on the list you are facing and those that pump out the most fire, don't bring much in the way of CC. FOrce them to take out multiple targets, and you will get in with something. Also their non terminator units are vunerable to missile fire, and other than purifiers are not fearless, so if you can force morale there is always a possiblity that they will run.

[Brother Rathul]

I always thought that as the supreme special forces of the Imperium, they'd be impossible to beat anyways? ^_^

[Brother Immolator]

In my experience, our DW termies can hold up Point for point against even the better GK assault units, as for storm bolter fire it really depends on the list you are facing and those that pump out the most fire, don't bring much in the way of CC. FOrce them to take out multiple targets, and you will get in with something. Also their non terminator units are vunerable to missile fire, and other than purifiers are not fearless, so if you can force morale there is always a possiblity that they will run.

 

Yes they can but power and force weapons are the bane of terminators.I also count their stormbolters almost always with psibolt ammunition loaded.

[breng77]

That is interesting because I have yet to see anyone with Grey knights (other than myself) field squads with Psybolt ammo. It seems that most armies I have seen are either running Hechman spam (so no psybolts) or 5 man squads for most of the GK squads, at which point Psybolt ammo is not a worthwhile upgrade. As for power weapons, they hurt, but against storm shields they are not all that great, when you consider a strike squad with power weapons, against TH/Ss termies, it is the equivalent of a space marine tactical squad hitting another space marine squad. Then you run into a 5 man squad, and they are just not going to do much (6 attacks will probably not even kill a terminator, if the strikes charge they might manage to kill 1 terminator, the other 4 termies will kill around 4 Gks, and win combat.

[Brother Immolator]

All that said,i do have to advice you to double check his list,because i dont think it might be too legal as was suggested before.

3+ Inv in henchmen is nice but any save has a tendency to fail when it needs to be rolled a thousand times over,especially with T3 they would be dying even to rapid firing bolters...

 

Also i would suggest again to revise your list since you play taylored games(after all you know what you will face)