A Grey Knight DIY

[AmCjkh]

Hello everyone, I'm looking to get back into the hobby after maybe an 8 year hiatus. Back in 3rd and 4th edition I played Blood Angels, but in the old Daemonhunters codex and now the new Grey Knight codex I've really liked how Grey Knight infantry worked. I think the medium range mobile shooting of storm bolters is just so much cooler and more flexible than the rapid fire rules for bolters. So the way their infantry handle on foot at range is a big draw to Grey Knights for me, compared to say rhino-bound Grey Hunters or whatnot.

 

I have a bit of a question about what people think of a DIY Grey Knight army. I've built enough normal tactical and assault marines in the past, and I want to dig through my bits and hunt online to work in true scale. That means I'm not working with the official Grey Knight models, which would be way too expensive to chop up and convert :) . Second, while I just said I like how storm bolters work rules-wise I can't stand how they look. They shoot 24" on the move, so why are they as stubby as a bolt pistol? Also, why do they have two barrels? That should make aiming even harder, the only double barreled guns I can think of are shotguns. Finally, I really don't get how a Grey Knight is supposed to strap that to his wrist, aim it one handed, and still hit anything reliably.

 

It makes sense to me that, if I wanted to shoot at maximum range, I might sheath my sword and aim with two hands. To that purpose I picked up a bunch of sheathed swords to model that. Also, I think modified bolters with larger magazines and the like make more sense as long range assault guns than those stubby things PAGKs carry. I like the shooting aspect of Grey Knights rules wise, which is hard to reconcile with the big swords and the wrist mounted guns.

 

Next, I think this dreadnought is the coolest thing I've seen in a while, and I've collected the bits I need for it too. Again, doesn't really scream Grey Knights.

 

Finally, I really dig purple schemes. I've done my research and I like the extreme highlighting 'Eavy Metal style, and I want to use a hybrid of old Frontierpediatry's bold edged blue with the Nightshade/Imperial/Amethyst purple triad from Reaper Master Series.

 

Now this leaves me with a Grey Knight army that doesn't have the distinctive visual features of Grey Knights :) . My models wouldn't have the wrist mounted style storm bolters, will be lacking some of the overt heraldry, and most obviously will be a purple toned black. Do you guys think people will object to this? In all the 40k universe the only counts-as I can think of for Grey Knights are pre-heresy Thousand Sons, but that's not trying to do, so I don't know how to fluff this dream I have. I think loyalist Dornian Heresy Emperor's Children would be gorgeous, but rules wise not so much and I don't like the aesthetics of pre-heresy armor, which they would undoubtedly still use. I've thought of running them as other armies, but they don't make sense as Space Wolves/Blood Angels/Black Templar, and tactical squads, those poor things, or even Sternguard don't even get close to representing the type of infantry I want to field on the table top. A regular DIY chapter would fit the painting and modeling but completely miss on the gaming aspect. Do you guys have any ideas for how I can reconcile my conflicting gaming and painting/modeling interests? A good part of me wants to just field these models anyway and ignore what people say because my Grey Knights are unusually tall, actually aiming their guns, and suddenly purple ^_^ .

[Arikel]

I'll just leave a couple points here.

 

1. My take on storm bolters is that they are not supposed to be accurate weapons, instead they are fully automatic spray and pray smg styled weapons akin to our Modern Mac 10's, Uzi's and Tec 9's but using boltgun ammo. I can understand not liking the wrist mounted look, on the off chance that you want standard storm bolters there are plastic ones in the SM commander kit and in the SW kit. If you aren't going to go with the standard look then you will need to make you're bolters look substantially different from the regular bolter type. A start might be to use something like the 2nd edition bolters( http://lh4.ggpht.com/_oD1DZk4ZFKM/TOnooU-5...tion_bolter.jpg ) or one of the forgeworld bolter marks and then do what ya can to jazz em up.

 

2. Use the rules you want for the army you have made, simple as that in my opinion, as long as everything is more or less wysiwyg. You could go with a specific diy brotherhood of the grey knights, I know you mentioned not using much iconography but in this case maybe try to pick up the grey knight shoulder pads that have the chapter icon, and paint that shoulder up in standard Grey knights colors, like a chapter specialist wears one shoulder pad in his chapter colors. You could also see if there are transfers with the chapter symbol or freehand/sculpt it yourself if you are good at painting or sculpting. If that wouldn't be possible then i would suggest doing a diy chapter because I don't think the gk capabilities could be shoehorned into any existing chapters fluffs. Or just don't care about fluffs, and be happy with your awesome minis;).

[The Holy Heretic]

People are gonna say you suck.. That you're a fluff raper and a codex creep sheep.

 

But who cares? Its your time and money ;)

[AmCjkh]

It's definitely going to take me a while to paint and model, so by the time this army is actually table worthy there should be other new shiny codecies for the codex creep players to play :) .

[adamv6]

I don't get your take on the stormbolter. For me it makes perfect sense that it is double barrelled, you want to put more bolts in the air, you use more barrels!

Also, GK's training on Titan makes a normal SM's training regime look like Sunday school, so the fact a GK can run around concentrating his psychic energy into a sword that's as long as he is tall, whilst snapping off a couple of well placed bolts from a wrist mounted weapon is perfectly reasonable!

[spartan249]

Well, I actually don't think that storm bolters are that far fetched a concept. While the idea of the gun itself is a bit ridiculous, you have to consider the war god it's mounted on and his masterfully sculpted armor. This guy, who supposedly has far more capability and training then any normal human, is cased in powered armor that also contains systems to control where the weapon is aiming at and almost completely control any recoil. Given his capability, equipment, and armament, I think achieving the represented level of competence with a weapon system like the Storm Bolter is perfectly reasonable. Besides, large and unwieldy ranged weapons only hinder the user in terms of SAWC (Size and Weight Constraints), which makes the transition from ranged to melee much clumsier. Such a weakness is anathema to the requirements of the Grey Knights, who need to be able to do the work of multiple space marines at once given their limited numbers.