The crucible list

[Archadeus]

David Ozawa won first at the crucible gt with GKs and he came up with a pretty interesting list. Yes he loaded up on dreadknights, but surprisingly not that many interceptors. I've always loved purifiers so seeing him center his list around a 10 man brick of purifiers really excited me. He took 4 psilencers and decided not to combat squad them.

 

In his list he favored draigo and an apothecary, over techmarines, to really get as much value out of them as possible. It makes alot of sense stacking -1 dmg and the 6+ fnp with sanctuary on top. This allowed them to sit midboard and really threaten the objectives especially with draigo sitting right behind them. The dreads were the hammer and the purifiers were the anvil. He also took heavy weapons on every squad which is very different and makes sense for squads in the back holding objectives.

 

I'm happy to finally see some variety come out on top, and one of my favorite units at that. What do you guys think? Anyone had success with purifiers?

[Prot]

Interesting, but I feel like the whole Dreadknight thing is overwhelmingly present in all these lists. 

 

Personally I moved to 2 NDK's, 2 Dreadnoughts, and enjoyed some extra point for infantry (like Purifiers).  It's almost like I'm mentally preparing for GW to say the NDK (specifically in HQ form) is going to get wacked. What will be interesting is seeing how GK competitively react. Maybe I shouldn't say that.... I mean there is plenty of nasty stuff out there now that has never (will never?) be addressed, and when you look at the limited units GK has available, it's almost certain the GK will have the NDK front and center.

 

I haven't had great success with my Purifiers. Are you saying he took 4 Psilencers in the Purifier squad? That's interesting. 

 

I have even been using a cheap Purgation squad lately and it's not bad. But I am also trying to keep Crowe in the list which is turning out to be extremely difficult. (It still burns me how mediocre he is, and unnecessary especially when you compare him to the TS new Infernal Master model.) Anyway, thanks for the info. 

[Archadeus]

I dont find it overwhelming at all, i love dreadknights since they are grey knights specific and we need them to be good since they are our most reliable/durable gun platform. My competetive list has 4 dreads and 40 pagk bodies and i love the way it plays 9th. I dont think GKs are going to get wacked at all considering admech and drukari exist, not to mention ork freebooters taking over now. Im less afraid of us getting nerfed but the new codexes just getting even more and more broken.

 

I have tried a fun list with crowe and 15 purifiers in a crusader against custodes and man did he hate them. but yes he brought psilencers since they dont cost points and if anything charges him he has 6 halberds and draigo to deal with it anyway. I think crowe is a decent counter charge unit but other than that he probably doesnt have much place out side of the party bus. maybe pair him with terminators and drop on an objective out of line of sight or midboard for control.

[Prot]

I dont find it overwhelming at all, i love dreadknights since they are grey knights specific and we need them to be good since they are our most reliable/durable gun platform.

 

 

 

So let me reiterate the entire sentence I wrote for clarity:

 

 

 

Interesting, but I feel like the whole Dreadknight thing is overwhelmingly present in all these lists.

 

There's a big difference. "Overwhelmingly present" means, well... the NDK model is massively used in all these lists. As opposed to the model/rules are overwhelming. 

 

What I meant by that is GW often points the nerf gun in a certain direction when it simply sees the perceived over use of a certain unit. In my experience over several editions, this can be a bad sign for a unit.

 

I agree with you in that the NDK is a strong factor in the background, but if you play that card, I do recall some old fiction that cited these guys were very, very rare. Regardless.... I am simply preparing myself for the worst. 

 

I can foresee GW hitting the Grandmaster NDK with a strong point hike. Heck at this point I think you could make Crowe 50 points and you would still hardly see him.

 

Going through all these top, competitive GK lists it doesn't take long to see commonalities; The base rule or detachment rules hardly matter at all. You can still do 'well' in these events because the GK base rules for the NDK, and the base model (which counts for 90% of the codex) is just rock solid.

 

This is all great. I just think over analyzing what brotherhood this guy took vs. that guy is almost inconsequential as long as your base is as many NDK's as you can fit, then core strike bodies.

 

The GK codex isn't like Black Templars where you are going to see only one 'Brotherhood' or 'Vow' taken to almost every event. This GK codex is just very flexible and solid at its core.

 

I think it has its challenges for sure, and I don't think Drunkhari are a walk in the park, and frankly I don't know how you beat Admech with it, but it's a solid all-comers codex that hopefully GW leaves alone. I'd love to see some GW love for the Termies, and some of the HQ's though.

 

Personally I love the Crowe model and background, so I guess even without that bias I can say quite honestly that TS Infernal Master is infinitely more versatile and usable than Crowe which is so weird to me.

 

Anyway, I finally did some research on that Crucible list/tournament. David Ozawa, beyond any doubt, is an excellent player. But we'd be remiss to leave out a very notable factor in his win.... most of the Art of War crew were at that event, and somehow he avoided every single one of them, including Nick Nanivati's GK which have a decidedly different angle on the army and do show us that there are a few ways to skin a cat. 

 

Ironically I just watch Nick's version suffer a very solid defeat against Custodes yesterday. 

 

What I take from all this is there's still a lot of paper/rock/scissors in 40K for most codexes!

Edited November 4, 2021 by Prot