How to Win with Grey Knights in 10th Edition

[Valerian]

By Maxwell Holliston. Posted to Facebook Warhammer 40K: Grey Knights group on 3 July.

 

I, Valerian, have cleaned it up a bit, however.

 

How to Win with Grey Knights in 10th Edition

 

This Army is insanely powerful if you know how to use it effectively.

 

If you're trying to win and not just throw together a "whatever" list to play against your buddies then any list creation must begin with one core idea in mind: maximize strengths and minimize weaknesses. Our strength is mobility, our weakness is anti-tank or high toughness models. What we want to do is maximize how many proverbial swings we get at the things we excel at and minimize how many times per game we have to do something we're crappy at.

 

That means instead of trying to find weird ways to enhance Terminators or Paladins into killing anything that isn't a Marine in close combat, we instead ignore this premise completely. It's like a football team winning the Super Bowl; you win it by giving yourself as many chances at the postseason as possible with an "accuracy by volume of fire" mindset. What we DON'T do is try to force the army to do something it isn't built for. WE DO NOT build Draigo led Terminator bombs to try and kill Wraithguard or Dreadnoughts. That's like trying to turn an Imperial Guard squad into a close combat unit. We accept them for what they're good at and copy/paste.

 

What we're amazing at:

-Mobility

-Mulching low to medium toughness infantry

-Focused mortal wounds (via the Radiant Strike stratagem)

 

What we're terrible at:

-Dealing with high Toughness models

-Dispersed mortal wounds

 

To give ourselves as many chances at maximizing our Teleport Assault ability, we need to correspondingly maximize how many units we have available at any given time to do so. Many people complain about our model count, but they're doing it completely wrong; we compensate for expensive, flashy, and ultimately useless things like Terminators, Paladins, and named Characters by focusing on the things that maximize our main ability: mobility. We get to move up to three units per turn anywhere we need them (to the objectives). 

 

The Teleport Assault ability is disgustingly overpowered, and we need to ensure we're using this on all three units that can use it, every turn, without fail!  And the only way we guarantee that is by increasing our numbers to the point where no one is going to be able to bog us down and keep these three units from moving wherever I want them every turn.

 

Recommended Army List:

 

CHARACTER

Brotherhood Champion (115 points)

• Warlord

• 1x Nemesis force weapon

1x Storm bolter

• Enhancement: Sigil of Exigence

 

BATTLELINE

Strike Squad (135 points)

• 1x Justicar

• 1x Nemesis force weapon

1x Storm bolter

• 4x Grey Knight

• 4x Nemesis force weapon

4x Storm bolter

 

Strike Squad (135 points)

• 1x Justicar

• 1x Nemesis force weapon

1x Storm bolter

• 4x Grey Knight

• 4x Nemesis force weapon

4x Storm bolter

 

Strike Squad (135 points)

• 1x Justicar

• 1x Nemesis force weapon

1x Storm bolter

• 4x Grey Knight

• 4x Nemesis force weapon

4x Storm bolter

 

Strike Squad (135 points)

• 1x Justicar

• 1x Nemesis force weapon

1x Storm bolter

• 4x Grey Knight

• 4x Nemesis force weapon

4x Storm bolter

 

Strike Squad (135 points)

• 1x Justicar

• 1x Nemesis force weapon

1x Storm bolter

• 4x Grey Knight

• 4x Nemesis force weapon

4x Storm bolter

 

Strike Squad (135 points)

• 1x Justicar

• 1x Nemesis force weapon

1x Storm bolter

• 4x Grey Knight

• 4x Nemesis force weapon

4x Storm bolter

 

OTHER DATASHEETS

 

Grey Knights Stormhawk Interceptor (160 points)

• 1x Armoured hull

1x Las-talon

1x Twin assault cannon

1x Typhoon missile launcher

 

Interceptor Squad (160 points)

• 1x Interceptor Justicar

• 1x Nemesis force weapon

1x Storm bolter

• 4x Interceptor

• 4x Nemesis force weapon

4x Storm bolter

 

Interceptor Squad (160 points)

• 1x Interceptor Justicar

• 1x Nemesis force weapon

1x Storm bolter

• 4x Interceptor

• 4x Nemesis force weapon

4x Storm bolter

 

Interceptor Squad (160 points)

• 1x Interceptor Justicar

• 1x Nemesis force weapon

1x Storm bolter

• 4x Interceptor

• 4x Nemesis force weapon

4x Storm bolter

 

Nemesis Dreadknight (215 points)

• 1x Gatling psilencer

1x Heavy psycannon

1x Nemesis daemon greathammer

 

Nemesis Dreadknight (215 points)

• 1x Gatling psilencer

1x Heavy psycannon

1x Nemesis daemon greathammer

 

The Dreadknights and Stormhawk exist to splash/threaten some limited anti-tank but mostly serve as a “distraction carnifex” (Hey, shoot at me! I'm dangerous, put your heavy weapons into me and please ignore my Strike Squads!). I want the enemy shooting at stuff that really doesn't matter; my Strike and Interceptor Squads are the lifeblood of the army. I want them alive at all possible costs. The Dreadknights and Stormhawk exist to take high Strength shots until they die in glorious distraction, eating fire that could possibly be levied at my PAGK instead.

 

Leverage your elite mobility to stretch out their army. Grey Knights are faster than literally every other faction, and a poor player can be easily manipulated into bad positioning. Sometimes I "spend units" (meaning I deliberately put them into a poor position to die) to "move" one of their units. Most players cannot resist the opportunity to kill one of your units because most people think that means it will help them win. This thought process is patently untrue; the Shooting and Fight phases are the least important in the game. Movement is everything, yours and theirs. Movement IS combat. Maximize your own, and manipulate theirs.

 

That's really it. Stretch out their lines by deliberately sacrificing some of your own units in key moments. Sneak your Dreadknights around the field, hiding behind cover and terrain, prolonging how long it takes to shoot them off the board (like hide them, don't charge units unless you're in a bad position with no other choice and your Dreadknight is on 2 wounds left; move them around to keep lascannons coming their way for as many turns as possible). Build your army list to jam as many 2+ Armor Save PAGK and OC bodies into it as possible, and count on the fact that your opponent probably built their list to fish for a stupid combo.

 

Frequently Asked Questions:

 

Question: "How do you deal with armor?"

Answer: I don't. I ignore it. Next question.

 

Question: "What if they bring a Knight?"

Answer: Avoid it. Use cover. Make him run all over the board, stupid with blood lust. Feed it 5 man squads all game by making him charge. I win just by forcing him to move it where I want him to.

 

Question: "What about Imperial Guard and all their tanks? You didn't bring any anti-tank!"

Answer: You're right, I didn't on purpose. Kill his chaff with your million Storm bolters and S6 Nemesis force weapons. Hide from the tanks to minimize the damage they can do per turn. Enjoy winning 80-15 if you just let him shoot up your army and avoid attacking them.

 

Final Tips:

 

- Never fish for 5+ to Wound. Statistically you cut your lethality by half. If it isn't T4 or lower, I'm not shooting it with Storm bolters. If it isn't T6 or lower, I'm not charging it. If you do, consider that fight lost, your unit destroyed, and table control given to the opponent. Then make a post about "how bad GK are" on Facebook and Reddit.

 

Surgically target elite infantry with heavy weapons on the Stormhawk Interceptor. Eradicators, Aggressors, Terminators, etc. I ignore Land Raiders completely.

 

Sacrifice units on their charge, rarely yours. Make them move where you want them to by offering up a unit in sacrifice. Controlling their movement is better than cocaine.

 

Army composition exists to support the idea of "I want to win, badly." If you like Terminators and Paladins and named Characters I'm not saying you can't win with them, I'm saying it's going to be a lot harder. 

 

You will not kill everything off the table with this list. You will likely not even kill half of their army with this list. This list is not built for killing enemy units; it is for playing the objectives and winning games with little else considered. It is not an easy list to play if you're used to just pointing units at other units to roll dice; if you didn't take the Supremacy or Domination secondaries the last couple editions, this will be a hard list for most of you to use at first.

 

Good luck boys. We are the hammer.

 

—--------------

I won 2 more games yesterday, bringing my W/L to 15-1 in the new edition.  Only loss, so far, has been against Imperial Knights.

[jimboslice]

I haven’t played nearly as many games of tenth but am currently 1-2.  One win against drukhari, 2 losses to Black Templar.  
 

My lists have been moving to more infantry heavy, with my last game being nothing but infantry.  Unfortunately I have more terminators ready than power armor marines but I think what’s written above is a good plan for winning with our current points costs.  Mobility is great but killing power is just not there even with terminators/paladins.  I’ll be building another 15 strike marines and trying a very similar list to what’s posted above.

 

With another couple of units I could probably have taken one of the games vs BT.  At the end of round 5 I only had 5 models left on the board but was close enough in points that it could easily have swung my way if I had a few more on the board to deny him some secondary points.  Even with the game as it was I could have won but for a couple crucial charges that I failed.

Edited July 5, 2023 by jimboslice

[OverchargeThis!]

This is a very good analysis. It takes what we've got and puts it to good use. 

 

Do you think there would be merit in dropping the flyer and an Interceptor squad for three librarians. I think the pure mortal wounds output would be superior to the flyer's contribution to armor killing, and the loss of the squad is only a net loss of two infantry models.

[Icosiel]

This is excellent. I'm using this as inspiration for my Tacoma list.

[Corvus Fortis]

I am not sold on it at all, to be honest. There's a lot of stuff based on trying to catch opponent off-guard. There's a lot of focus on vehicles, but what about fast/strudy melee armies, which want to get close by themselves? 

Stormhawk is just a flying rhino which will be popped the moment it makes into the line of sight of something with good AV weapon or two. NDKs are all about lucky rolls - 4+ to-hit, 4+ invluln. Strikes themselves simply do not apply any pressure, unlike our named characters. And, most importantly, no librarians? I can understand why discard any other hero, but them. 

I like the idea of bringing more strikes, but they need some good distraction to support them. I woild look at Voldus + 10 paladins/terminators.