So how OP are we anyway?

[Brother Captain Kezef]

I've been surfing a few forums of late and it seems that there is a growing consensus that grey knights are OP, some go so far as to say gamebreaking. Allot of bandwagoners have jumped on Grey Knights and allot of cookie-cutter builds have appeared.

 

I've played GK since the oiginal 'dex and like many of us vets played in the dark days of 4th and early 5th ed when we where outdated. Is it sour grapes or isthere truth, has matt ward made us op?

[Gentlemanloser]

Army Wide Power Weapons. Cheap as chips Twin Linked S8 to pwn transports. A dearth of I6 so we go first in CC. More Shooting than most other armies can even dream of. Making MCs cry. We ruin Deep Striking (Edit: And outflanking. And Infiltrating). Basically, with Psychic Communion, we pwn deployment.

 

We outshoot most armies. We out CC most armies. We Nuke deathstars and MCs with ease.

 

Our limiting factor is really our lack of Meltaguns. But we can get around that with the Vindicare, Psycannons, and S10 CC attacks on AV10 rear armour.

 

There's not really anything else we're sub-par at. Really.

[breng77]

IMO if they had just not put fortitude in the dex everything else would not be as big a deal. Or at least made it a paid upgrade. Paying 5 points essentially to ignore 1/3rd of the damage table is too good. Without that ability other armies could deal with our dreads much easier.

 

That and vehicle psybolts are a bit too cheap. If they were 10 points or 5 points per weapon, it would be a bit more fair. Then psyfledreads would run around 145. Still cheap but it adds up over a list. If fortitude was then say 15 points (so 10 points more than now.). You would be at 155. It would also probably not be on every vehicle as it is now.

 

Beyond that I think Cotaez is really the only other issue. He is way under costed, they should have either limited which henchmen he could make troops, made a minimum squad size on those henchmen squads, say 10 , to be troops. Or have given the henchmen as troops rule to say kazamarov.

 

IMO if they had just not put fortitude in the dex everything else would not be as big a deal. Or at least made it a paid upgrade. Paying 5 points essentially to ignore 1/3rd of the damage table is too good. Without that ability other armies could deal with our dreads much easier.

 

That and vehicle psybolts are a bit too cheap. If they were 10 points or 5 points per weapon, it would be a bit more fair. Then psyfledreads would run around 145. Still cheap but it adds up over a list. If fortitude was then say 15 points (so 10 points more than now.). You would be at 155. It would also probably not be on every vehicle as it is now.

 

Beyond that I think Cotaez is really the only other issue. He is way under costed, they should have either limited which henchmen he could make troops, made a minimum squad size on those henchmen squads, say 10 , to be troops. Or have given the henchmen as troops rule to say kazamarov.

[number6]

Coteaz spam is a truly awesome army build. Perhaps the single best army build currently. It has tons of scoring units, tons of shooting, tons of mobility, and can fit in CC units as well, if you want them. It's still beatable, but only by another optimized MSU build. (E.g., DE venom spam, IG melta vet spam, etc.)

 

Outsize of Coteaz spam, any army that includes even a couple of GK infantry units -- or one or more dreadknights -- is merely "another good 5th edition army" along with all the other 5e army codexes (outside of Tyranids, which are, unfortunately, God-awful).

 

One caveat: GKs are THE premier Xenos army killer. Partially, this is because most of the Xenos armies remain unupdated. And partially, this is just the way it has always been. Even the old Daemonhunters were able to beat up on the Xenos armies right up until the release of Codex: Grey Knights. (They were increasingly less effective against Imperials as 5e rolled on, but against Xenos, they remained VERY competitive.) GKs hold all the trump cards when it comes to fighting Xenos, and there's very little that they can do about it. Even a fully optimized DE army can struggle against a merely "good" GK army, just because GKs can deal with them at any range, in any kind of combat.

 

It's this fact of GKs >> Xenos and GKs being truly decent Jacks of All Trades -- plus the Coteaz spam builds -- that makes people think the GK codex is overpowered. It isn't; it's merely A Good Codex. All armies deserve a codex this well built.

 

What opponents of GK armies need to do is buck up and Learn 2 Play. If you're facing a Coteax Spam list, you either need to build an optimized MSU list yourself, or simply recognize that you're unwilling to play 40K at that level of competition.

[Jacinda]

It's this fact of GKs >> Xenos and GKs being truly decent Jacks of All Trades -- plus the Coteaz spam builds -- that makes people think the GK codex is overpowered. It isn't; it's merely A Good Codex. All armies deserve a codex this well built.

So ....

It's not that GK are overpowered, it's that all the other codices suck.

Thanks for clearing that up :)

[Captain Idaho]

The Codex has some very competetive options, but internal balance is good enough that we don't see the same builds over and over again.

 

My Space Marines give as a good as they get against Grey Knights, but I can't see my Necrons beating them no matter what I do. Admitedly I haven't used Necrons much, but there are things I just am scared of and will struggle against. I'm going to try as best I can of course. -_-

 

There are some good choices I really don't think are "fair" though and that's Psyfileman Dreadnoughts for so cheap and Halberds, particularly on Terminators, Paladins and characters. These 2 parts are fundamentally game breaking in conjunction with the rest of the list for some armies, in my opinion. Then again it could be because Marines need an update (pretty much re-tuning things like Devastators would make a difference actually) whilst Grey Knights actually think Tyranids are Daemons... :ermm:

 

Still, maybe 6th edition will restore a little balance for us all?

[Gentlemanloser]

I'd actually say that our codex is so good, that the poor internal balance isn't a problem. You can use the 'weaker' balanced options, and not hamstring yourself, like other Codexes.

[dswanick]

"Internal balance" is irrelevant in a game which forces players to use different rule sets (ie Codexs) against each other. If each player used the same Codex in a given game, internal balance would be all fine and dandy. So long as Codex: Grey Knights is pitted against Codex: Tau, Codex: Space Marines, and Codex: Chaos Space Marines, etdc... - it is an OP Codex with unbalanced rules.

 

In addition to all the examples listed above I would add Grenades to the mix(off the top of my head). No other Codex (to my knowledge) allows one model with a Grenade to give the benefit to all other friendly units engaged in CC with the same enemy units. Add that to the army wide Strorm Bolters, Power Weapons, prolific +2I Power Weapons (I6, really?!? When a "normal" I is supposed to be 3, a super-human I is supposed to be 4, and an uber-elite/preternatural I should be 5?), undercosted units, +1S to half the ranged arsenal, Mastercrafted Wound Allocation shenanigans, undercosted units, and army lists which out-"Blood Angels" Blood Angels lists, out-"Space Wolves" Space Wolves lists, out-kills Zenos and Psychers when the force is supposed to be anti-Daemons. And the only "down-side" most people can come up with is "it struggles against AV14". :ermm:

[Warsmith Aznable]

It's this fact of GKs >> Xenos and GKs being truly decent Jacks of All Trades -- plus the Coteaz spam builds -- that makes people think the GK codex is overpowered. It isn't; it's merely A Good Codex. All armies deserve a codex this well built.

So ....

It's not that GK are overpowered, it's that all the other codices suck.

Thanks for clearing that up :ermm:

 

Yes. I think it's an awesome codex, and my complaint, as someone who has to play against it all the time, isn't that it's OP, but that my own codices are lame. Some of the fluff in the 'Ward-lore' is bothersome, but as far as table top play I think it's neat.

 

You can use the 'weaker' balanced options, and not hamstring yourself, like other Codexes.

 

My biggest complaint about the two codices I use is that this isn't possible. So C:GK seems like a good direction, generally speaking.

[*Furyou Miko]

Necrons were laughing at GK, until they got an update too and lost Pariahs.

 

Coteaz pretty much allows you to out-spam the Imperial Guard, which is just wrong.

 

I haven't had a chance to do it yet, but I really want to see how my Sisters stand up to them without our anti-psyker defences. I just got back from slaughtering a Calgar smurf list, so I'd really like to see how we measure up.

[the jeske]

IMO if they had just not put fortitude in the dex everything else would not be as big a deal. Or at least made it a paid upgrade. Paying 5 points essentially to ignore 1/3rd of the damage table is too good. Without that ability other armies could deal with our dreads much easier.

 

That and vehicle psybolts are a bit too cheap.

<= this + probably granades but not for all builds and mostly on inq , maybe techmarines [and then we are talking more then 1500pts]. + GK got of tons of stuff that was avoided before . same psychic powers stacking for example , not game breaking but makes you think , why GW ? or how they get a whole mini phase before hth due to neds or purfi psychic powers etc.

 

in general a razorbuild that doesnt need counter units because each minimax is a counter unit [with psychic power and with possible and viable anti deep strike/anti psychic power buffs] and that cant be stun locked does provide a rather problematic army to face . + for some dex playing GK just isnt fun in anyway , a GK player can build the worse of the worse army and a nid player will still ask "they do what?" . but that is normal nids had that with SW too.

[number6]

It's this fact of GKs >> Xenos and GKs being truly decent Jacks of All Trades -- plus the Coteaz spam builds -- that makes people think the GK codex is overpowered. It isn't; it's merely A Good Codex. All armies deserve a codex this well built.

So ....

It's not that GK are overpowered, it's that all the other codices suck.

Thanks for clearing that up ;)

:lol:

 

Not exactly. ;)

 

More like: All the Xenos codexes suck in comparison to GKs. Though I do think DE and Necrons can put up a decent fight.

 

GKs vs Imperials is going to be an even matchup. Again, I do think Coteaz spam is one of the best builds available, so even if you are playing Imperials against GKs, you need to bring your own optimized MSU build to defeat it. In this environment, GKs are merely one among many, and don't actually stand out.

[*Furyou Miko]

Amusingly, Necrons will struggle against a 'normal' GK army, but breeze right through a Coteaz army, unless its replete with power armour and crusaders.

[Hellios]

My issues with CGKs...

 

1)Being able to get I6 far to easily... Not a problem if they boost up DE/CWE I but for Space marines (who all have force weapons...) to be striking before most Eldar is a serious problem considering thaty speed is one of the Eldar's strengths and that Eldar are not that numerous... If wave serpents were cheaper it might be bearable but I'll admit the Eldar have problems in general now. I however feel it is wrong that when standard Grey Knights go before some of the Eldar dedicated combat units >.< I could live with the same time...

 

2)Force weapons on everyone is also an issue... I suggested giving them all power weapons (before the dex came out...) and I think that would have helped with the small elite army thing they had going on... Force weapons everywhere totally screws with nids... So yeah unless they want to give all nids in Synapse eternal warrior.

 

3)Cheap vehicles that you can't shake or stun... Even worse with the amount of cheap fire power they have.

 

1) I think this is just wrong... I5 would have been ok... That or they need to raise the initiative of Eldar, Zerkers and Noise marines.

 

2) Mainly an issue for codices that use a lot of MCs... So I guess this could be solved by fixing nids which is considered on of the weaker dexes. Cleansing flame and force weapons everywhere really make the nids sad...

 

3) Increase the cost of these abilities a little bit... I feel sorry for the Dark Eldar who already have to deal with the lance curse... then having to deal with 1/3 of the damage they manage to do not doing anything.

[Reclusiarch Darius]

Ohlookitsthisthreadagain

 

Short version: Haters gonna hate. Knights are now a Tier 1 40k army, whereas we were in Tier 3 hell previously (languishing beside Tau and Daemons). Just wait till CSM come out, I bet serious money people will switch their vitriol to 'omg spiky mahrines are teh broekenzzz!!!1!!!'. Same thing happened with Nob Bikers, same thing happened with Imperial Guard (although it is still insane how much they thrown down at every point level).

Long story short, if you're not a Tier 1 codex, of course you need to expect it to be a tough matchup. I have Tau myself, so I'm on the other side of this as well. It sucks, but them's the breaks, Imperial > Xenos is always going to be true to some extent.

 

tl;dr below

 

'Boo hoo they get halberds': Cool story bro. You do realise how few squads we field, regardless of point value? And without Henchmen, we have to fill out our Troops with either expensive Terminator blob (they work, but below 2k it's hard to fit them in), or with Strike squads. Strike squads do not have halberds, they are rarely joined by grenade-toting heroes either, and they fold in combat with a lot of stuff (ie anything designed for hacking face). Purifiers wear power armour, so they die just as easily as Strike squads in the Shooting phase. Pro-tip; if you outrange Knights (ie more than 24"), you can shoot them up for a turn whilst they move into range, scoring free kills and potentially killing important squad members (like psycannon caddies, hammers, Bro Banners etc).

Interestingly, Tyranid players who use Warriors well (ie bonesword+whip) have a pretty good counter to halberds; even though the FAQ says a halberdier is I3 after modifiers (go to 1, then add 2), you still go first. Only Paladins can really look at boneswords and go 'yeah I don't care', and SitW make our force weapon power less reliable, so you might not die in that round of combat.

 

'Paladins/Draigo/crybaby central': Oh look, it's yet another player who doesn't understand how to counter Deathstars. You kill them the same way everything dies in 'no Sweeping Advance' 40k; feed them stuff you don't care about, shoot, rinse and repeat. It's a slow ball of death that slowly walks up the field, shooting and assaulting ONE target per turn. For the lists with actual hard counters (Demolisher cannons, Doomsday Ark, Stormhammers etc), take the required unit in your lists and use it to full effect. Draigowing has been beaten in both casual play and at real tournaments, so nobody has excuses as to 'it's all too hard'. It is difficult, but not impossible.

Draigo will still die if you make him fail four 2+ saves, or 3+ if you hit him with an AP2/power weapon. Ideally you want to nuke away his bodyguard first, then focus fire him to death. Breaking his armour save is probably preferable, he eats lascannon and melta, so massed S6/7 is probably the way to go.

 

'Those grenades are OP': Yeah, but did you also know they're only available on ICs? Kill the character, the grenades go away. Also, Tech-Marines have a single wound, so torrenting attacks onto them works very well. I find it hilarious this is one of the most common complaints, when grenades only affect maybe two units, usually one, in the entire army.

 

'Cheap vehicles who can't be stun-locked': Nope, we pay precisely the same price as all other Marines, then get a 5pt tax for 'Fortitude'. Remember, it's a psychic power, so good players who remembered to bring psychic counters to fight a PSYCHIC ARMY have a way to negate it. Also, 'Fortitude' doesn't prevent the primary strategy of killing tanks, which is killing them dead. If you don't bring the tools to reliably kill AV11-AV12 at range, you are going to be even more behind against the true armour-spam lists of BA, SW and IG (who bring a bazillion gunboats and drown you in far more targets). Remember, without Henchmen, Knights still need squads to buy transports for, and as I mentioned before, we struggle to bring more than a handful of squads.

A side-note about PsyDreads, who I will concede are underpriced; they still die in close-combat, and meltaguns/railguns/lascannons still murder them. Mass S7/8 will also get through as well, 'Fortitude' cannot protect against 'Weapon Destroyed' or 'blown sky high' damage.

 

 

Tune in next year this time for 'Chaos Space Marines: Why Are They So OP?'

[Gentlemanloser]

so good players who remembered to bring psychic counters to fight a PSYCHIC ARMY have a way to negate it.

 

Aye, I face a lot of good Deldar players who shut down my Pyschics.

 

Oh wait...

 

:lol:

[Chengar Qordath]

so good players who remembered to bring psychic counters to fight a PSYCHIC ARMY have a way to negate it.

 

Aye, I face a lot of good Deldar players who shut down my Pyschics.

 

Oh wait...

 

:lol:

At least the Dark Eldar get the Crucible of Malediction for dealing with Psykers; several armies don't even get that much in the way of anti-psychic tools.

 

GW really needs to overhaul the way psychic counters are handled; right now some armies have decent psychic defense, some have absolutely none at all, and some like the Eldar can have game-breakingly good psychic defense.

[Reclusiarch Darius]

Crucible is pretty randomsauce, but when it works, oh god enjoy no squad leaders forever. Hurts Knights the worst funnily enough, as only we have the psykers everywhere to make it's random AOE worthwhile.

 

I think it's a design decision on GW's part. Eldar should have the best psychic defenses, they were mind-battling Necrons before any of the other races (except Orks, but they have their own psychic shenanigans). DE don't use psykers and forbid the use of such powers, so Crucible seems like a good compromise. You're right though, Tau desperately need something, most of the other xenos have something anti-psychic going on (or their own psykers).

[Captain Idaho]

It's a tough one, because admitting your army is over powered is lessening the value of your skill in the view of some players, so they deny it stubbornly as if it's an attack on them. On the other hand, crying over powered when you lose bad is often a last resort to try and save face after suffering a beating.

 

Truth of the matter is somewhere inbetween I believe. No one is going to take you seriously if you say 5pts to ignore shaken/stun results when all other armies pay three times the amount for count as shaken isn't a bargain that takes away entire Codex book's strengths at combatting GK vehicles, or if you say initiative 6 on strength 5 power weapons on units is not going to break every other assault unit in the game. Likewise, GK are expensive right? Well they cost the same as Space Marines actually, except for probably the difference of a single Attack Bike.

 

On the other hand, a couple Leman Russ Demolishers and a few Vendettas in an Imperial Guard list will make a mess of any Grey Knight list that doesn't play really well.

 

So what I am saying is the GK Codex is woefully unbalanced against some armies which is undeniable (how are Necrons going to win through attrition when they can't even inflict glances on GK vehicles to shake them and stop them firing?), yet there are ways to beat them.

 

Incidently, when I said the Codex had good internal balance I was saying that the Codex has lots of units and choices that work in games of 40k thus don't have obsolete choices like Space Marine Techmarines, Blood Claws or Devastators, or units like Blood Angel Assault Marines or Long Fangs that are so good in comparison to their peers they are chosen almost exclusively.

[the jeske]

Well they cost the same as Space Marines actually, except for probably the difference of a single Attack Bike.

I have a better example .

6 NM sonic blasters , blast master . 185 .

 

6GK psycannon [force weapons on all dudes ,w.quake] in a razorback with blessed ammo 180 pts wut 0_o ????

 

both units are troops ment to be movable and able to do both assault and shoting well .

[Gentlemanloser]

Sadly, the CSM dex is an edition out of date.

 

And *all* the old codexes pale in comparison to all the new 5th edition Dexes (bar Nids...).

[Chengar Qordath]

Crucible is pretty randomsauce, but when it works, oh god enjoy no squad leaders forever. Hurts Knights the worst funnily enough, as only we have the psykers everywhere to make it's random AOE worthwhile.

 

I think it's a design decision on GW's part. Eldar should have the best psychic defenses, they were mind-battling Necrons before any of the other races (except Orks, but they have their own psychic shenanigans). DE don't use psykers and forbid the use of such powers, so Crucible seems like a good compromise. You're right though, Tau desperately need something, most of the other xenos have something anti-psychic going on (or their own psykers).

Eldar having some of the best psychic defense in the game is fine. Eldar having a psychic defense with unlimited range that makes Ld 10 models fail more than 84% of their psychic tests and suffer from Perils over 76% of the time is going a bit too far.

 

Obviously different armies need different ways of handling psychics, but when there are five codices with no anti-psychic options at all (IG, Chaos Marines, Sisters of Battle, Tau, and Orks) and four other codices with extremely limited anti-psychic options (Necrons, Chaos Demons, Dark Eldar, Black Templars) there's a problem. It certainly kills the "Deal with psykers by bringing psychic defense" option for a lot of players.

[RedemptionNL]

Eldar having a psychic defense with unlimited range that makes Ld 10 models fail more than 84% of their psychic tests and suffer from Perils over 76% of the time is going a bit too far.

 

Don't hyperbole. Chance of rolling 11 or more on a 3d6 is exactly 50%, and 12 or more is 37.5%. Note that this 50% is the same chance as the 4+ of a Space Wolves' Runic Weapon or Necron Gloom Prison and the 3d6 of a Tyranid's Shadow in the Warp. A Psychic Hoods success rate with both Psykers being Ld10 is 41.6%. But Psychic Defenses like the Runic Weapon or Psychic hood already require you to pass a Psychic Test before the nullification test is taken, which is another 8.3% chance of failure on Ld10. If you add that up, the chance of the opponent failing to get his Psychic Power off with both Psykers being Ld10:

 

Runic Weapon and Gloom Prison: 54.15%

Runes of Warding and Shadow in the Warp: 50%

Psychic Hood: 46.4%

 

The only thing 'wrong' with Runes of Warding is the unlimited range, which is an artifact from a time where Psychic Hoods were unlimited range as well. I wouldn't be suprised if it was reduced to 24" in their next codex to match other psychic defenses.

[Chengar Qordath]

Eldar having a psychic defense with unlimited range that makes Ld 10 models fail more than 84% of their psychic tests and suffer from Perils over 76% of the time is going a bit too far.

Don't hyperbole.

You missed the fact that Runes stacks with itself thanks to the new Eldar FAQ, bumping it up to 4d6.

[RedemptionNL]

Eldar having a psychic defense with unlimited range that makes Ld 10 models fail more than 84% of their psychic tests and suffer from Perils over 76% of the time is going a bit too far.

Don't hyperbole.

You missed the fact that Runes stacks with itself thanks to the new Eldar FAQ, bumping it up to 4d6.

 

I doubt you'll get many players to agree to that ruling. The FAQ states they roll an extra die, not that it stacks, and other instances of the same rule (Furious Charge, Astropath's reserve bonus) aren't cumulative unless specified otherwise (Hammerhand, Autarch's reserve bonus). For example the lastest INAT FAQ states:

 

ELD.26D.01 – Q: Are multiple instances of Runes of Warding in the same Eldar army cumulative with each other (meaning opposing psykers take their psychic tests using 4D6)?

A: No, multiple instances of Runes of Warding in the same army still only add a single extra D6 to enemy psychic tests [clarification].