Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Before my big battle against Daemons tomorrow, I had a trial game against another Guard player at my LGS today. I decided to use my all-infantry Grey Knights for 2 main reasons:


1) I wanted to test out the GK alpha-strike army. Whether it is an objectives game or not, I'm going to give my guys scout and attempt a Turn 1 assault! Can it work? And against an army such as Guards?

2) I wanted to see if a foot-list can compete against a mech one (or in this case, semi-mech), especially against an army with the firepower of the guards.


This was also my chance to try out 1 new unit....the dreaded Vindicare! There's a lot of hype around him, but I'm kind of hesitant about him due to his fragility. I felt that the loss of his stealth suit has really hurt his survivability. Sure, he may get a 3+ cover save, but just 1 missile launcher will kill him. He could do well...if the enemy doesn't have too much ranged shooting. Otherwise, he'll probably die fast.

I also wanted to test out Orbital Bombardment. S10 AP1 pie plate that does full damage to vehicles anywhere on the blast marker? Hell yeah!!! It'll literally be a hit-or-miss type of investment, though in larger games, it'll probably be more hit than miss.


So my plan was to alpha-strike my opponent with my scouting units (up to 3). It turned out, however, that I wasn't the only army who could scout. My opponent has 5 units that could scout as well!



So without further ado, my list:


Grey Knights 2K

Grey Knight Grandmaster - Orbital Bombardment

Vindicare

10x Strike Squad - 2x Psycannons, Psybolt Ammo
10x Strike Squad - 2x Psycannons, Psybolt Ammo

10x Interceptors - 2x Psycannons, Psybolt Ammo, MC-Daemonhammer, Warding Stave (I had 50pts left over)
10x Interceptors - 2x Psycannons, Psybolt Ammo, MC-Daemonhammer, Warding Stave

Dread Knight - Heavy Incinerator, Personal Teleporter
Dread Knight - Heavy Incinerator, Personal Teleporter



Imperial Guards 2K

This is just an approximation, as I didn't get his list.

Company Command Squad - Straken, Nork Deddog, Astropath, Officer of the Fleet, Medic, Banner, Vets w/Grenade Launchers, Chimera
Primaris Psyker
1x Ministorum Priest w/Eviscerator

(I shall refer to this unit as his Strakenstar unit)

Techpriest Enginseer w/2 buddies

Veterans - 3x Meltas (Not sure what else)
Veterans - 3x Meltas
Penal Legion Squad
Penal Legion Squad
Penal Legion Squad

Banewolf - Heavy Flamer
Vendetta (Veterans here)
Vendetta (Veterans here)

2x Hydras
Leman Russ Executioner - Plasma Cannon sponsoons
Manticore


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


PRE-GAME ANALYSIS:

Grey Knights:
Objectives or not, I'm going to play aggressively and shove my knights right down his throat (my interceptors and dreadknights, that is). This is not a very balanced list as I hardly have any ranged AT. Unlike my other games, I'm not looking to shoot it out here. I need to get close to the enemy as fast as possible. I will scout my guys (interceptors first, then dreadknights) and try to achieve a 1st turn assault. I do hope to get 1st turn, but I will be prepared for it if I don't.

I may have some trouble getting to his tanks, but at least he's got some infantry for me to assault. I will try NOT to wipe them out in 1 turn, as that would leave me out in the open to get shot to pieces. How would I achieve that? By trying to multi-charge several units. My psycannons may play a big role here in trying to de-mech his tanks. I don't really expect my orbital bombardment to do much, and I don't expect my vindicare to survive for long.

I need to take out his vendettas as quickly as possible. I just don't like vendettas. They will be a big pain, especially if my opponent is smart enough to keep them outside of my vindicare's range.

In objectives games, I will combat-squad my strike squads. Of course in annihilation, I will keep them together. Pitched battle and Spearhead won't really affect me too much, but Dawn of War will throw a huge monkey wrench into my alpha-strike plans.

For my plan to work, I need 1st turn and I don't want Dawn of War. No alpha-strike is without its risks.


Imperial Guards:
He needs to screen out his vehicles with infantry. Now this presents 2 dilemmas here. Firstly, they are worth kill points in Annihilation. Secondly, they are needed for objectives in mission-based objectives. Now it is a risk for him, but the rewards are huge! By sacrificing his 80pt troops, he could potentially take out my 235pt dreadknight or worse yet, my 340pt interceptors!!! Definitely a risk worth taking IMO.

He's got enough shooting to really hurt me out in the open. His vendettas can easily take out my dreadknights without cover (and it is indeed hard to find cover for them). His banewolf and leman russ execution are made to take out MEQ's. Straken's unit (yes, all 500pts of it!) cannot be taken lightly in assault. If he keeps his vendettas out of the range of my vindicare, they should be relatively safe from my shooting. My vindicare is the only one that really threatens them.

The key for him here is the terrain. The more terrain there is, the better my chance. Or course his banewolf doesn't care about terrain, but cover will help me against the rest of his army.

Well...make that terrain, 1st turn and DoW deployment.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Mission: Seize Ground - 4 Objectives

Deployment: Spearhead

Initiative: Grey Knights


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Deployment:


Grey Knights deployment. Strike squads combat-squad. Assault marines are proxies for my interceptor grey knights (with meltaguns as psycannons).


Imperial Guards deployment. He's proxying the right chimera as a banewolf.


As we both have scout units (my Grandmaster gave me 3 scouting units), we roll off to see who makes their scout moves first. IG wins and goes first. Vendettas move flat-out. Penal legions advance and spread out. Now if I shoot at his vendettas, they'll get cover, and if I assault them, I'm hitting on 6's.


My left interceptors shunt 30" with their scout move, keeping at least 12" away from his vendetta.


Right interceptors and 1 dreadknight just move normally for their scout moves.

IG then fails to seize the initiative.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Grey Knights 1

Grey Knights advance.


Interceptors get read to multicharge vendetta and penal legions. I position it so that the majority of my jump infantry is going against the vendetta and only 2 his legionnaires. That is because I don't want to wipe them out and be left in the open to get shot up.


Other interceptors also get ready to multi-charge. Little did I know that his legionnaires were stubborn....which is actually better for me.

In my shooting phase, psycannons don't do anything. Vindicare pens his vendetta but he makes his cover save. I target his leman russ executioner with my orbital bombardment but it scatters and blows off the multi-laser on his HQ's chimera. I make a mistake here, thinking the lance strike was a large blast when it was actually a small one.


I then multi-charge. I fail to get off hammerhand so attack the cruising vendetta with krak grenades instead.


I blow up the vendetta with 1 successful krak (hammer didn't even get to strike). The explosion kills 7 of his melta-vets and 3 penal legions. Assault from 2 of my interceptor knights then kill another 2 legionnaires while he kills 1 knight in return. The stubborn legionnaires stay locked in combat.


Right interceptors multi-charge both squads of penal legions.


I kill a bunch of penal legions. 1 squad fails morale and runs off the board. The other stays locked in combat. Good, now both squads of interceptors cannot be shot to death.


Imperial Guards 1

IG movement. Everyone backs up. Vendetta goes flat-out. Straken's unit disembarks....


....and moves towards combat.


Shooting by his executioner puts 2 wounds on the lead dreadknight.


Hydras put 1W on the vindicare in cover.


My right interceptors are not able to wipe out his legionnaires as I pound his them to just 1 man. He sticks around due to his stubbornness.


Finally, his Strakenstar furiously assaults my interceptors. I kill off some of his guys and despite my 2++ invuln, he wipes out my unit after combat and No Retreat saves. 340 points gone, just like that.


Grey Knights 2

GK movement. My combat squads advance and go after objectives.


Dreadknights go after his HQ unit.


Left dreadknight roasts several guys from the command squad. Right dreadknight wipes out his 4 legionnaires and 1 of his 3 melta-vets. Because I targeted the legionnaires, now my right dreadknight cannot assault because that squad is gone.


Vindicare wrecks his other vendetta despite cover. Combined stormbolter-fire from 1 combat squad kills 6. They pass pinning but fail morale and huff it off the board.

My orbital bombardment doesn't hit anything.


Charge! My dreadknight kills his Primaris psyker and Nordog. In return, he only puts 1W on my dreadknight with Straken.


Interceptors kill off his lone legionnaire and considate 6".


Imperial Guards 2
Not much movement from him. Leman russ backs up and banewolf goes after my assault marines. Techpriest goes and repairs his chimera's multi-laser.


His hydras shoot down my vindicare, despite him going to ground for the 2+ cover.


Executioner puts 1W on my other dreadknight.


Banewolf kills 3 interceptors.


They then fail morale and flee 15". Luckily for me, there are no enemy units within 6" of them so they will auto-rally next turn.


In assault, we both whiff and fail to cause a single wound to each other (thanks to bad rolling and good 5+ invuln saves).


Grey Knights 3

Interceptors auto-regroup and go after Straken and melta-vets. Other dreadknight goes after his executioner.

Again, my orbital bombardment doesn't hit anything.


In assault, my dreadknight blows up his executioner.


In the other assault, Straken's unit takes down my dreadknight and 1 interceptor. In return, I take down his Straken's entourage and Priest. Only Straken (with just 1W left) and melta-vets remain.


Imperial Guards 3

He goes after my dreadknight with everything he's got. In my 2 games with them so far, seems like everyone wants to kill the dreadknight.


Shooting puts 2W on my dreadknight (1W left). His techpriest unit then charges my dreadknight.


IG PLAY OF THE GAME/GK HALL OF SHAME - My dreadknight hits them 3 times but roll 1,1,1 to wound. Thanks to barely being within Straken's furious charge bubble, they manage to kill my DK.


In the other assault, my interceptors wipe out Straken and the veterans.



I've got 1 objective here.


Another objective here.


And a 3rd objective here.

He doesn't even have any troops left to claim any objectives, so with that, he concedes.




Victory to the Grey Knights!!!

The Imperial Guard list is filled with odds and ends that are not particularily effective. Nork and techpriests? That' s a lot point that are probably not going to do anything useful... I really hope i'm proven false. Go guard!!

So you should add to your poll: guard will lose cause of mispent ponts.

Interesting list, I'm not sure who is going to win this one.

looks to be a good game though, and we get a chance to see how well possible first turn assaults will work out.

Best of luck!

Interesting matchup. Gonna vote GK's since I want them to win...

Option 4: GK will win because the Guard army sucks. No focus whatsoever. Penal Legion? Vet airmobile? Mech? Straken Footguard? Nork Deddog?

500pt Straken star?
Mein Gott

I voted GK, the Lance option for Orbital Bombardment is a regular blast not the large one btw. You should have taken 2 Grand Masters to give them most scouting possible...

Yeah, that IG list is playing with no focus. I'd love for it to be able to win, but I don't see that happening.

tell me if im mistaken but dont the models in a given unit have the same stats as the majority of the models in the unit for wounding rolls. thus in the stracken star wouldnt nog have the same t3?

BladeWalker wrote:I voted GK, the Lance option for Orbital Bombardment is a regular blast not the large one btw. You should have taken 2 Grand Masters to give them most scouting possible...

Oopsie! Well, it didn't make much of a difference in the game anyways. 2 GM's would have been too expensive.

TheMicah25 wrote:tell me if im mistaken but dont the models in a given unit have the same stats as the majority of the models in the unit for wounding rolls. thus in the stracken star wouldnt nog have the same t3?

Yes. I would be wounding them based on T3, and then he could allocate on whoever he wanted. But the difference would be Nog and Straken still getting FNP against S6/7 weapons.

I think people put too little faith in non-spammed lists and too much faith in pure spam.
Im not saying your list is bad or anything against you, id just be too bored of my army all being the same haha


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I have mabe 2 kabalite and 2 wych squads the same in my army

Spam isn't good. Redundancy of essential list elements is good.

Pvt. Jet wrote:Spam isn't good. Redundancy of essential list elements is good.

Absolutely

The IG list is pretty horrible. Nork, tech priest and a quarter of his pts in HQ. What is straken doing there anyways? Giving furious charge to nork?

His heavy and fast is pretty good, but the rest of the list is really bad.

I'm putting my money on Guard actually. Whilst I feel the GK list is good, I also believe some people are underestimating the Guard list. There's many threats that pose a problem to an MeQ in his list and GK's go down just as easily as any other Space Marine.
I've also heard good things about Straken as a dedicated assault unit, so I also believe that could be interesting.
On of the things that really does it for me however, is that the GK power/force weapons would have little benefit against IG.

Although Jy2 is a talented player (who makes great reports I might add. ) I reckon the guard will just beat him here. Then again, I've only ever predicted one of these Bat Reps right once...

Battle report now completed.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mantle wrote:I think people put too little faith in non-spammed lists and too much faith in pure spam.
Im not saying your list is bad or anything against you, id just be too bored of my army all being the same haha

Yeah, that's why I try new units or tactics each game such as the vindicare and orbital bombardment this game. Last game, I tried out interceptors and the dreadknight and decided to give them another go this game. I'm having a lot of fun with the jump units.

But as Pvt. Jet pointed out, I always take at least 2 of my core choices for redundancy reasons.

Illumini wrote:The IG list is pretty horrible. Nork, tech priest and a quarter of his pts in HQ. What is straken doing there anyways? Giving furious charge to nork?

His heavy and fast is pretty good, but the rest of the list is really bad.

I agree. While surprisingly effective, assault IG, especially with a "deathstar" unit, is not my cup of tea. The idea is that Straken will buff up the 3 penal squads with furious charge. Penal legions can be effective in assault for just an 80pt unit....if they can get the charge off. Unfortunately, in this game, they couldn't get the charge off.

I guess he built his army this way because in our LGS, there are a lot of marine players.

Just Dave wrote:
On of the things that really does it for me however, is that the GK power/force weapons would have little benefit against IG.

Yeah, that was one of my concerns as well - overkilling IG infantry units and then getting shot to death. I had to do my assaults so that I would kill off or break his squad in his assault phase, not mine. I wasn't aware at first, but in this case, his penal legionnaires being stubborn really made that much, much easier to do.

Just Dave wrote:
Although Jy2 is a talented player (who makes great reports I might add. ) I reckon the guard will just beat him here. Then again, I've only ever predicted one of these Bat Reps right once...

Don't worry, you'll get another chance in my GK vs Daemons battle report.

Dang it! Wrong again!

Good game though man, well played on your behalf; I did not see it being so one-sided (thank god for those Penal Legionnaires!). I'm really impressed by Interceptors so far too, although Straken really laid down the hurt!

Great report as ever, well detailed with good pictures; yours definitely are my favourite reports, I must admit.

I look forward to the unit review; particularly in regards to the Dreadknight and Vindicare.

And yeah, I've already voted for your Daemon one; narrowly in your favour. Good luck.

"Yeah, that was one of my concerns as well - overkilling IG infantry units and then getting shot to death."

This is maybe where conscripts and chenkov actually become very useful, as you can remove them at any time. Yeh gonna remove them, now demolishers open fire! is that viable???

Today I actually saw a Paladin Army wiped first turn.

I'm very happy to see you decided not to make your battle reports around that kind of an army, because absolutely everyone in my area besides me is doing that.

Battle Report thoroughly enjoyed. Please keep putting these out, it's very entertaining. Does the dreadknight come with the giant sword? Or did you just pay for a dread with only an incinerator and a Personal Teleporter?

grayspark wrote:Today I actually saw a Paladin Army wiped first turn.

I'm very happy to see you decided not to make your battle reports around that kind of an army, because absolutely everyone in my area besides me is doing that.

I will probably use them eventually, but only in fun lists and not my competitive ones. IMO I don't think they're a very good unit. It's not that they suck....they could do well against the right build....it's just that they aren't terribly efficient units and have no mobility (unlike thunderwolf cavalry) unless they take expensive transports. I just don't like those types of units.

Any decent, balanced army can take on a Paladin army.

gpfunk wrote:Battle Report thoroughly enjoyed. Please keep putting these out, it's very entertaining. Does the dreadknight come with the giant sword? Or did you just pay for a dread with only an incinerator and a Personal Teleporter?

No, I didn't pay for the Nemesis greatsword. That's actually the store's model and it just happens to have it modeled on (cuz it just looks so much cooler). Mine isn't here yet, but when it comes, I'm going to magnetize all the weapons.

Congratulations for winning.

Nice tactic in multi-charging and allocating more attacks on the Vendetta over the legionaries. Seeing as you like footslogger lists so much, I think you should consider a tech priest to increase cover saves and cast hammerhead in assault.

Wow, you are not having much luck with your Dreadknights.

Good battle report, thanks for sharing!

Thanks.

The problem with techpriests is that it forces you to play a stagnant game. You would be too tempted to sit in cover and shoot....but that's not a good thing when your psycannons are only 24". GK's need to move around to be successful. They can't play like smurfs and just sit in cover with their heavy weapon combat squads. For them, it's much better to get a librarian with shrouding for a mobile 3+ cover instead.

Dreadknights were alright. I expect my dreadknights to die. If they don't, then I am not playing them right. Why? Because if the opponent is shooting at them, that means they are not shooting at my more valuable knights. Yes, one of the primary contributions of the dreadknight is to draw fire....lots of it. In this game, I consider them a success because they drew a lot of fire, took out the leman russ executioner, kept my opponent on the defensive by falling back, helped to finish off 1-2 units and helped to weaken and then tie up Straken's unit. Whether they lived or died is of little importance.

I was just wondering do Interceptors count as jump troops as well as having a 30" shunt?

Humbaba wrote:I was just wondering do Interceptors count as jump troops as well as having a 30" shunt?

Yep, they sure do. So you can move 12 normally with them.

dang thats pretty nice

I don't think shunt can be used as the scout move...
but other than that good job on the battle report.
I know the shunt/scout thing is still being debated but the general consensus, as far as I'm aware, is that it's not allowed.

It could be the angle, but on turn 1, the multi-charge with the black Death Company model as your Interceptors looks illegal. While it wouldn't have mattered much in the long term, it looks like there is more than a 2" coherency gap there.

Illumini wrote:The IG list is pretty horrible. Nork, tech priest and a quarter of his pts in HQ. What is straken doing there anyways? Giving furious charge to nork?

His heavy and fast is pretty good, but the rest of the list is really bad.

I agree here. I run Straken in the majority of my IG lists and love him. Straken swings a WS5 Chain Fist 4 times at his normal initiative - while being hidden in the squad and rocking T4 and a 3+/5++ save. He also turns any unit within 12" into a respectable assault threat against MEQ, and a seriously dangerous threat to other GEQ. Heck, half the reason I run him is that I get annoyed with practically-mirror-matches with other Guard, and Straken gives me a HUGE advantage once the transports start blowing up.

That said, spending 565 points on a GEQ "Deathstar" is absolutely inadvisable. Pick one "extra" and stick with it. Nork is overpriced but at least functional, Priests are good if you are clever with charges, and Primaris Psykers do have Force Weapons, but just sticking them all together is a gigantic waste of points. You're much better off just getting more Troops and having Straken use his amazing aura on someone other than himself.

Basically the HQ and Troops section of this guard list practically made me gag. Everything else is stellar. I would wholeheartedly advise your friend to drop most of the fixin's on Straken's Squad, the Penal Legion, and the Techpriest to pick up some Power Blobs. I think he'll be much happier with those than Penal Legion.

Either way, I'm glad you're enjoying success with your Grey Knights, and you came up with a good battle plan. Kudos, and good luck with the next one.

Post-game Anaylsis:
It was a fun trick - the scouting GK alpha-strike tactic - but I wouldn't rely on it too much. Too many things can go wrong. You have to rely on getting 1st turn and not getting Dawn of War deployment. Also, experienced players with balanced lists should know how to counter this rather easily by just sacrificing a screening unit. Also, this is not really a tactic you would want to try against strong assault armies. Basically, for this tactic to work, you need the right conditions and against the right army. I was lucky that I got both this game.

As for my list, it's not a particularly strong GK list. It's rather an unbalanced one with little ranged shooting. I'd also have problems against a heavily meched army. My opponent's list also wasn't really optimized as well. An assaulty IG list? While it is somewhat effective against regular marine infantry, it just can't stand up to more specialized assault units nor an optimized-MEQ list. It's also playing against the strength of IG, which is its shooting. So overall, I felt that it was a fair matchup as we both brought imperfect lists.

The IG player made some mistakes. He should have screened out his units and not allow me to multicharge. For example, his 2 penal legions should not be side-by-side. One should have been in front to screen out the other one as well as to provide cover for them. Also, his other penal legions should have either screened off his vendetta or his vendetta should have moved away from them to prevent a multi-charge. Basically, he needed to feed me 1 sacrificial unit who I could potentially wipe out on my own assault phase and then be left out in the open for his shooting.

Also, moving his vendettas in range of my vindicare was another mistake as well. They could've easily stayed out of his range and then focus-fired on my dreadknights or even my interceptors. Better yet, take out my vindicare and they have free reign across the board.

As for my mistake, I forgot that the vindicare could infiltrate. I should have infiltrated him closer so that I threaten more of his army. Instead, I placed him in my deployment zone where his range was 12" less and there was a LOS-blocking tower in the middle of the board.


Now the Grey Knight units.....


Grandmaster: B. He didn't do anything this game but fire his orbital bombardment. If not for the mistake I made with the blast marker, I'm not sure I would've hit anything. But he is absolutely essential to a GK alpha-strike list. By giving all 3 of my units Scout, I'd have to consider him above-average this game, even though he hardly did anything.

Orbital Bombardment: C-. Not really worth the points, unless you are playing against a parking lot or a horde army. Overall, I wasn't very impressed and wouldn't use this option on any of my optimized lists.

Vindicare: B+. This guy has scary-good potential. I can see why opponents are so concerned about him and rightly so. But his drawback, as was shown in this game, is that he is easy to take out by any army with some ranged shooting. That helps to balance him out somewhat. He almost always hit and his shots are pretty much guaranteed to pen against most vehicles. AP1 makes his gun quite effective as well. However, cover by vehicles is the limiting factor here. Any vehicle with cover has a 50% chance to shrug off his penetration so his shooting isn't full-proof.

One of the viable ways to use him IMO is to grab a techmarine GK and give him a conversion beamer. Now boost up whatever ruins you put your vindicare in and join the techmarine to a cheap squad in cover far away. Now you have 2 deadly AT options and your vindicare has a 2+ cover. This is something I will probably try in a future game.

Strike Squad: B-. They weren't really needed here to do much, so they just went to grab objectives.

Interceptor Squad: A. They were my main workhorses here. Grandmaster and strike squads didn't really do too much. My interceptors blew up a vendetta, wiped out his 500pt+ command squad (with the help of 1 dreadknight) and killed 3 of his troops. I'm finding them to be a very reliable unit as long as they are protected.

Dreadknight: B. The dreadknights did better this game than they did in my 2 other games against tyranids or daemons. They drew a lot of fire, destroyed the leman russ executioner, helped to take weaken and lock down my opponent's strakenstar unit until help in the form of interceptors arrived and finished off 1 of his troops. Too bad the heavy incinerator can't really do much to AV12 vehicles. A respectable performance this time around, but their efficiency cannot compare to the psyfleman dreads. I probably won't use the dreadknight in my competitive lists.


-------------------------------------------------------------------


MVP's:
Grey Knights:
Grey Knight Interceptor Squad: Another spectacular performance by an exceptional unit. Highly recommended for a foot-GK list.


Imperial Guards:
Strakenstar: While that unit was ultra-expensive for a guard unit, it also did the most damage, which is more than I can say for the rest of his army. It went through my 340pt interceptor unit and my 235pt dreadknight. I have to admit, it is a highly effective assault unit and will surprise a lot of people not prepared for it. It'll easily kill off non-assault MEQ units on the charge and has some resilience. I think if my opponent were to build this a little differently (i.e. get rid of the primaris psyker and some of the upgrades, get more infantry, dump the tech enginseer), it could be an effective build. Not highly competitive, but it could surprise some armies.






Automatically Appended Next Post:

bedeporter wrote:I don't think shunt can be used as the scout move...
but other than that good job on the battle report.
I know the shunt/scout thing is still being debated but the general consensus, as far as I'm aware, is that it's not allowed.

Hmmm....gotta check out that debate at YMDC. One thing its got going for it, though, is that it's got precedent. Both turbo-boosting and moving flat-out is allowed with the Scout movement. I don't really see shunting as any different from that.

puma713 wrote:It could be the angle, but on turn 1, the multi-charge with the black Death Company model as your Interceptors looks illegal. While it wouldn't have mattered much in the long term, it looks like there is more than a 2" coherency gap there.

I measured and they were exactly at 2" coherency. But even if they weren't in coherency, I still would have made the multi-charge as all I had to do was move one guy who couldn't make it into base with the enemy and use him to bridge the 2 assaults.

Also, as you can see from the photo, I could've actually moved my models closer to each other. I didn't "stretch" out my models and there was space left where I could've fitted another GK model.

KestrelM1 wrote:
I agree here. I run Straken in the majority of my IG lists and love him. Straken swings a WS5 Chain Fist 4 times at his normal initiative - while being hidden in the squad and rocking T4 and a 3+/5++ save. He also turns any unit within 12" into a respectable assault threat against MEQ, and a seriously dangerous threat to other GEQ. Heck, half the reason I run him is that I get annoyed with practically-mirror-matches with other Guard, and Straken gives me a HUGE advantage once the transports start blowing up.

That said, spending 565 points on a GEQ "Deathstar" is absolutely inadvisable. Pick one "extra" and stick with it. Nork is overpriced but at least functional, Priests are good if you are clever with charges, and Primaris Psykers do have Force Weapons, but just sticking them all together is a gigantic waste of points. You're much better off just getting more Troops and having Straken use his amazing aura on someone other than himself.

Basically the HQ and Troops section of this guard list practically made me gag. Everything else is stellar. I would wholeheartedly advise your friend to drop most of the fixin's on Straken's Squad, the Penal Legion, and the Techpriest to pick up some Power Blobs. I think he'll be much happier with those than Penal Legion.

Either way, I'm glad you're enjoying success with your Grey Knights, and you came up with a good battle plan. Kudos, and good luck with the next one.

Thanks, and spoken like a true IG general.