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I get that GKs were overpowered in late 5th when they released, no debate about that. However I think 6th toned them down a bit, and 7th brought them back up again (at least in terms of psychic phase), so the new codex nerfing things left right and centre might have been necessary, but lets take a closer look:


Psybolt ammo

I think we can agree that this was overpowered. 4 points per guy if you took a 5 man squad, and cheaper with every additional battle brother was just way too good to turn a dozen or more S4 shots into S5 shots.

It got crazier with a 5 point upgrade for rifleman dreads that now became the bread and butter of almost every GK army to suddenly be spewing four tl-S8 shots instead.

And perhaps the cream of the crop was the LRC or dakka Stormraven with S7 assault cannon and S5 hurricans bolters and pintle mounted stormbolter



Master-crafting sargeant weapons.

What otherwise is now more the domain of Salamanders was available to Gks for a very small price. It was insane in 5th edition, allowing you to re-roll ALL failed hits. It's been nerfed now that you can only re-roll one failed hit, but still a no-brainer upgrade for anybody taking hammers as you want those hits to land. Still it seems weird how the points cost was doubled in the new codex. On the pro side, regular GK Paladins can now master craft all their weapons as well. Not only this, but the wording of the codex seems to extend this to ranged weapons as well (either/or, of course), so this allows you to master craft your 4 psycannons on a 10 man squad as well. Pricey, but sometimes those extra hits may well be worth it.


Changes to NFW

The sword is crappy as always, but even more so now due to the smaller price difference to the halberd and the fact that it no longer gives terminators +1 inv. in cc. I feel sorry for people who modeled their figures with the swords.

The halberd took the biggest nerf, as 2 extra initiative was really what made GKs problematic in cc - now at I4, they are just a nuisance.

Falchions got cheaper by 1 point, which does little to redeem them, but this is mostly due to the overall cc nerf 40k received 6th edition onwards rather than the falchions themselves. Still, I think an extra attack beats +1S anyday, especially if it only costs 2 points more than the halberd

The hammer got nerfed a bit - it stayed the same for PAGKs, but terminators have to pay 10 more points now - and while termies did get cheaper, giving them hammers makes them costlier than their old codex counterparts.

The warding stave took perhaps the biggest hit - while 6th edition turned the otherwise relatively costly (and thus useless) weapons to be a must have for sergeants who wanted to challenge and win challenges, the new dex had merely made it a piece of anti-psychic gear.



Assassins, Inquisitors & henchmen

Okay, they're in their own codices now, so not really gone - just more $ needed to get the rules for them too.


Thawn

A pretty flavourless guy (in game terms) save for his WBB mechanic. But so worth it. Mastery level 2 psyker (aka giving you 2 additional dice) and giving your squad a good chance to survive the entire battle and thus hold that objective, as long as they dont get overrun. Was it necessary for him to go?


Mordrak

A much more interesting character. One of my fav ICs, tbh. Sad that he's gone


Psychic pilot

While relatively inconspicuous in 5th edition, totally a game changer in 7th. At the same time it was fair if GKs were one of the few armies able to bring as many psychic dice to the table as Daemons, making them a natural and fluffy counter-measure to the otherwise ungodly summoning spam.


Cheaper NDKs

Good, but were people really complaining? NDKs were already OPed in 5th; 6th brought them in line somewhat, but I hardly think GK players quit bothering to take them before this new codex made them cheaper. Personally I think the teleporter could have dropped by 25 points, not more, and the weapons are about fairly costed.


Cheaper Terminators

Given the Space Wolf treatment, it's good to see GW is realizing that normal power weapon equipped terminators NEED to be cheaper than powerfist/hammer/claw equipped ones. It's only fair.


Cheaper Librarians

Perhaps the best change in the new dex - a ML3 libby for that cheap is a godsend.


Force Psilencers

Interesting idea, and definitely more attractive weapons now, but still lose out to psycannons especially since they are heavy, and the number of shots and mediocre strength and lack of AP are still the biggest buzzkill. It is just a psychological factor to make the palms of your opponent sweat when these things land hits and he starts to roll his saves. Gatling Psilencer? Now we're talking. That'll definitely make your opponent nervous as hell when you train this baby on his multi-wound models. However, again this is one-upped by the NEW heavy psycannon with its insane alternate firing mode profile. Heavy 6? Hell to the fething YES PLEASE. Was it necessary? Absolutely not, GW.


Thoughts?

In 5th, yes GK were the reason I quit the game (Orks player, no surprise).

The I played a tournament where my opponent brought a list that could outshoot me, and beat me CC. I don't know about 6th, but in 7th they actually seem fun to play now, and fun to play against.

M/C in 5th was exactly the same as now, 1 reroll. Absolutely no way to construe it differently.

Sword has a smaller price difference? How is "free" larger than "X", where X is a positive natural number?

+1S for base 2 attacks, increasing your chance of wounding with ALL attacks, is better than +1A. Especially as I can now wound anything currently in the non-LOW game, and possible S7 against vehicles is very handy

Thawn - agreed, annoying he is gone, but no model = no entry is fairly expected now. This was a housekeeping release, clearly, but no reason he cannot be added back in again later

Ditto Mordrak. My army was conceived around him, so i have 6 models i will struggle to use.

Psychic pilot - was just abusive. WHEN daemons are redone and the stupid horror / Tz herald issues are sorted, things will be much more balanced. WE still get plenty of access to dice, with so many more units being ML2....

NDK - yes, in 5th they were over costed, in 6th even more so, so the price reduction makes sense. Loss of "force" on fists less so, but hammer at 5 points hardly breaks the bank, and gives you a reason to take it.... (in 5th they were over costed, as against other GK armies they went last when being charged, as psyker, or went at I4 if charging but the inevitable halberds chopped him to bits first anyway; Tau still took them down fairly easily, etc. Theres a reason they rarely featured)

CHeaper termies - glad you now agree that this was needed, after the other thread! Still, arguably, far too high a cost for a 2_ save, but thats becaqus too much ranged AP1/2 exists, much more so than all the ranged AP3 put together, by some margin.

Altogether the codex hasnt been "nerfed" - it is stronger than before, and this has been done by mostly bringing units UP in strength, and toning away the stupidity

GK in 5th were broken as gak, unless you had an army that could spam AP 2.

Orks - pretty much screwed.
Daemons - 'sorry, you don't even get to deploy. Good game...'


These days, especially after the codex re-do, they aren't near as abusively good. They are still pretty potent, but not over the top bat gak OP

I bought some GK Terminators a while back, because I really like the fluff and the models. I think a GK army can be one of the most visually striking forces that can be fielded in the game. When it came time to try them out, however, I was really turned off of trying to field a GK army, because the codex had a lot of space devoted to elements I wasn't interested in - Inquisition and all that.

So, I'm quite pleased with the simplicity of the new codex, and am looking forward to using it. I don't think the 7th ed book is overpowered, but I do think there are elements in it that will frustrate some players. Being able to generate LOADS of psychic dice and utterly dominate that phase of the game is the biggest I can think of (my mate thinks my daemons bring a lot of magic casting to the table; he is not prepared for what is to come), and a lucky psilencer shot taking down something like a Wraithknight or Riptide can cause some hair-pulling.

Don't know about the TT mathhammer after so many edition and codex changes, but within the setting itself? Yep. They're pretty much Super-Space Marines, Space Marine+1, the extra special snowflake out of all the other (not so) special snowflakes... etc, etc.

Ascalam - it wasnt "GK" are broken in 5th - it was 2-builds-using-1/10th of the dex, and usually-very-few-GK, that were broken.

Psybolt ammo was not really that bad. S5 stormbolters are only marginally more effective than S4 (15% chance to kill a marine vs. 11%, for example).

The psyfleman dread already got hurt by 7th edition's changes to the vehicle damage table.

Psyrifleman killed in 6th same as 7th - by stripping hull points.

Its more the point that S5 can now hurt light vehicles, even penning sides of chimera etc. Every pip of strength adds surprising amount of utility.

Having assasins and inquistors seperated was a good move, though. The real problem is that there's just no physical copy available. Now, if you play ANY imperial faction, you can bring along GK, Assassins, or Inquisitors and not only benefit from their abilities, but have a synergy with them. I just wish they'd make a big book of all of said factions together and release them instead of digital editions that I can't access.

In 5th GK were broken as all feth. There was no way to fight them since they did everything better than almost every other codex. 6th knocked them hard with the changes to the vehicle damage table and other armies getting better and better ways to kill marines (bladestorm, helldrake, riptide). They were middle of the pack by the time 7th rolled around. Now they are near the bottom with BA.

With the changes in this codex you could effectively merge them with the SM codex by adding a GK unit, the DK, and Drago into the marine book.

-The generic 'Marine' GKs are almost all the same with only minor wargear or psychic powers differentiating them since their weapon costs have been standardized.

-Terminators lost much of their uniqueness without psybolts and free weapon upgrades

-Psyrifle dreds are gone, replaced with the incredibly underwhelming generic dred.

-stormraven lost most of its uniqueness without psybolts and missiles

-Most of the characters got removed or nerfed (crowe is pretty sad now)

-Paladins were pretty meh in 6th but now they are awful with the weapon changes.

-All of the unique psychic powers for GK have been removed. Now its just a table.


So they killed the codex as bad as they did the tyranid one. Sure, they might still have a mono-build that can work, but thats what the new codex was supposed to SOLVE. Nothing outside the DK was improved significantly and so that will have to carry the much reduced ability of the rest of the army. Hopefully they will just put the GK out of their misery in 8th edition and merge them into the Codex:SM.

Munga - they're available as Ebooks, so you can indeed access them.

Munga wrote:
Having assasins and inquistors seperated was a good move, though. The real problem is that there's just no physical copy available. Now, if you play ANY imperial faction, you can bring along GK, Assassins, or Inquisitors and not only benefit from their abilities, but have a synergy with them. I just wish they'd make a big book of all of said factions together and release them instead of digital editions that I can't access.

I haven't been more specific in the search as it is all dependent on what platform you are accessing the internet on at the moment, but this should help: http://www.google.co.uk/search?site=&source=hp&ei=v1P_U9rnPPSh7AaPvoGICw&q=free+ebook+reader&oq=free+ebook+reader&gs_l=mobile-gws-hp.3..0l5.18485.24340.0.28188.18.18.0.9.9.0.692.4962.0j3j10j0j3j1.17.0....0...1c.1.52.mobile-gws-hp..2.16.2679.3.M4w0NqY3bjs
If you don't have a printer, local libraries in England charge 2p a black and white sheet, not sure what they charge in the States.

The only reason this will be unhelpful is if you can only access the internet at work or in the library and therefore have restrictions on downloading an e-reader.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
But you should be able to get around that using an internet cafe as any internet cafe worth their salt has already got e-readers/pdf/office etc already installed in their desktops.

 zephoid wrote:


-The generic 'Marine' GKs are almost all the same with only minor wargear or psychic powers differentiating them since their weapon costs have been standardized.

.

so they're exactly the same, except for all their war gear, the BoP rule and everything else that diffrentiates them?

that's a pretty big differance. especially when you realize that a majority of the space marines codex is "space marines with differnt war gear"

I think the ML3 libbys and Draigo got significantly better in 7th. Draigo is (finally) AP2 at initiative, plus base St7 with the titan sword makes him significantly better in CC than in 6th. I'm most bitter about psybolt being removed, I'm just glad I magnetized my Psyflmen.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Ascalam - it wasnt "GK" are broken in 5th - it was 2-builds-using-1/10th of the dex, and usually-very-few-GK, that were broken.

Fair enough.

Not that anyone I ever ran into ran anything BUT those builds

5 th ed Quakeshunt and purifying flame deserve to be in a very special hell

I don't know how the 7th edition psychic phase brought the Grey Knights back up again when it made it much more difficult to cast psychic powers for an army that relies on it's psychic powers. And although some of the new powers are quite nice they lost some good psychic powers too. I never played Grey Knights in fifth but I did receive some of the residual rage in 6th edition About halfway through sixth pretty much all complaints against them stopped. In 6th and 7th I don't think they were ever bad, but certainly weren't overpowered either.

thraxdown wrote:
I don't know how the 7th edition psychic phase brought the Grey Knights back up again when it made it much more difficult to cast psychic powers for an army that relies on it's psychic powers.

It's kinda like this: GKs are near the top of the ladder when it comes to the psychic phase. But, that ladder has had quite a few rungs knocked out of it for everybody in 7th. So, GK are still near the top, but the top is now lower than it was.

And I think a lot of people forget that 7th Edition, by itself, brought several changes to the GKs even before the new codex came out. With the new psychic phase, GKs cast far less powers than they did before. GKs also lost most of the unique powers they had (Fortitude, Warp Quake, etc.). Also, the change to the vehicle damage table meant that most of the ranged weapons the GKs regularly used for taking down vehicles were reduced to stripping hull points, rather than being able to destroy a vehicle with a single hit. Armies that still have easy access to AP1/2 guns feel this change a bit less.

I remember playing a game against two friends in 5th and I took Draigo. Rest of the army got overwhelmed (was playing against Tyranids and Orks) but Draigo stood in the middle of the board and butchered squad after squad of gaunts, boyz, and even a few MC's that thought'd be cute to come and play.

I sold the army shortly afterwards.

 Frankenberry wrote:
I remember playing a game against two friends in 5th and I took Draigo. Rest of the army got overwhelmed (was playing against Tyranids and Orks) but Draigo stood in the middle of the board and butchered squad after squad of gaunts, boyz, and even a few MC's that thought'd be cute to come and play.

I sold the army shortly afterwards.

eh dragio should be able to do that kinda stuff, other then the MCs he was basicly butchering canon fodder.

 Ascalam wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Ascalam - it wasnt "GK" are broken in 5th - it was 2-builds-using-1/10th of the dex, and usually-very-few-GK, that were broken.

Fair enough.

Not that anyone I ever ran into ran anything BUT those builds

5 th ed Quakeshunt and purifying flame deserve to be in a very special hell

Quakeshunt wasnt really a TAC list though. Against anyone but daemons, and even then only if going first, it was too fragile.

Sadly psyback spam was order of the day, which is a shame as even the old dex had a lot of interesting units you could take, certainly better internal balance than most. Really only one model truly fethed it up (Coteaz) and the mind numbing 5th ed wound allocation did for the other build (Pally spam)

mrfantastical wrote:
In 5th, yes GK were the reason I quit the game (Orks player, no surprise).

5th edition Grey Knights were clearly designed for 6th edition, where they weren't as gross. Alas, as long as 5th edition lasted, they were hella-broken. When Blood Angels codex came out, everyone was kinda grossed out, omg they are so op! Then GK arrived, and completely wiped the floor with the BA...funnily enough, the old Tau codex were a fair match to them: from their perspective, GK were just slightly more expensive Marines.

 Frankenberry wrote:
I remember playing a game against two friends in 5th and I took Draigo. Rest of the army got overwhelmed (was playing against Tyranids and Orks) but Draigo stood in the middle of the board and butchered squad after squad of gaunts, boyz, and even a few MC's that thought'd be cute to come and play.

I sold the army shortly afterwards.

I remember going to a tournament just after Necrons came out, and there were 6 GK armies there. The winning list was a generic Draigo/Paladin list which the guy basically sleep-walked his way to victory. He was even saying "man, this list is so broken..." but didn't care because he wanted to win.

nosferatu1001 wrote:

 Ascalam wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Ascalam - it wasnt "GK" are broken in 5th - it was 2-builds-using-1/10th of the dex, and usually-very-few-GK, that were broken.

Fair enough.

Not that anyone I ever ran into ran anything BUT those builds

5 th ed Quakeshunt and purifying flame deserve to be in a very special hell

Quakeshunt wasnt really a TAC list though. Against anyone but daemons, and even then only if going first, it was too fragile.

Sadly psyback spam was order of the day, which is a shame as even the old dex had a lot of interesting units you could take, certainly better internal balance than most. Really only one model truly fethed it up (Coteaz) and the mind numbing 5th ed wound allocation did for the other build (Pally spam)

*sigh* You didn't need an entire Quakeshunt army to screw over a Daemon player - one single 10 man squad fully spaced out at the front of a GK castle deployment was enough to force the Daemon player to aim at least 19.5" away from the Strike/Interceptor squad itself so as to ensure they wouldn't scatter into the auto mishap bubble.
And as the power went off at the beginning of the turn, you still had the opportunity to both move AND make an additional run movement to push to bubble as far forward as possible.

Plus, remember that Daemons were slow as feth back in 5th and only began the game with 50% of the army available on T1.

Yeah 'were'

 Sir Arun wrote:
I get that GKs were overpowered in late 5th when they released, no debate about that. However I think 6th toned them down a bit, and 7th brought them back up again (at least in terms of psychic phase), so the new codex nerfing things left right and centre might have been necessary, but lets take a closer look:


Psybolt ammo

I think we can agree that this was overpowered. 4 points per guy if you took a 5 man squad, and cheaper with every additional battle brother was just way too good to turn a dozen or more S4 shots into S5 shots.

It got crazier with a 5 point upgrade for rifleman dreads that now became the bread and butter of almost every GK army to suddenly be spewing four tl-S8 shots instead.

And perhaps the cream of the crop was the LRC or dakka Stormraven with S7 assault cannon and S5 hurricans bolters and pintle mounted stormbolter



Master-crafting sargeant weapons.

What otherwise is now more the domain of Salamanders was available to Gks for a very small price. It was insane in 5th edition, allowing you to re-roll ALL failed hits. It's been nerfed now that you can only re-roll one failed hit, but still a no-brainer upgrade for anybody taking hammers as you want those hits to land. Still it seems weird how the points cost was doubled in the new codex. On the pro side, regular GK Paladins can now master craft all their weapons as well. Not only this, but the wording of the codex seems to extend this to ranged weapons as well (either/or, of course), so this allows you to master craft your 4 psycannons on a 10 man squad as well. Pricey, but sometimes those extra hits may well be worth it.


Changes to NFW

The sword is crappy as always, but even more so now due to the smaller price difference to the halberd and the fact that it no longer gives terminators +1 inv. in cc. I feel sorry for people who modeled their figures with the swords.

The halberd took the biggest nerf, as 2 extra initiative was really what made GKs problematic in cc - now at I4, they are just a nuisance.

Falchions got cheaper by 1 point, which does little to redeem them, but this is mostly due to the overall cc nerf 40k received 6th edition onwards rather than the falchions themselves. Still, I think an extra attack beats +1S anyday, especially if it only costs 2 points more than the halberd

The hammer got nerfed a bit - it stayed the same for PAGKs, but terminators have to pay 10 more points now - and while termies did get cheaper, giving them hammers makes them costlier than their old codex counterparts.

The warding stave took perhaps the biggest hit - while 6th edition turned the otherwise relatively costly (and thus useless) weapons to be a must have for sergeants who wanted to challenge and win challenges, the new dex had merely made it a piece of anti-psychic gear.



Assassins, Inquisitors & henchmen

Okay, they're in their own codices now, so not really gone - just more $ needed to get the rules for them too.


Thawn

A pretty flavourless guy (in game terms) save for his WBB mechanic. But so worth it. Mastery level 2 psyker (aka giving you 2 additional dice) and giving your squad a good chance to survive the entire battle and thus hold that objective, as long as they dont get overrun. Was it necessary for him to go?


Mordrak

A much more interesting character. One of my fav ICs, tbh. Sad that he's gone


Psychic pilot

While relatively inconspicuous in 5th edition, totally a game changer in 7th. At the same time it was fair if GKs were one of the few armies able to bring as many psychic dice to the table as Daemons, making them a natural and fluffy counter-measure to the otherwise ungodly summoning spam.


Cheaper NDKs

Good, but were people really complaining? NDKs were already OPed in 5th; 6th brought them in line somewhat, but I hardly think GK players quit bothering to take them before this new codex made them cheaper. Personally I think the teleporter could have dropped by 25 points, not more, and the weapons are about fairly costed.


Cheaper Terminators

Given the Space Wolf treatment, it's good to see GW is realizing that normal power weapon equipped terminators NEED to be cheaper than powerfist/hammer/claw equipped ones. It's only fair.


Cheaper Librarians

Perhaps the best change in the new dex - a ML3 libby for that cheap is a godsend.


Force Psilencers

Interesting idea, and definitely more attractive weapons now, but still lose out to psycannons especially since they are heavy, and the number of shots and mediocre strength and lack of AP are still the biggest buzzkill. It is just a psychological factor to make the palms of your opponent sweat when these things land hits and he starts to roll his saves. Gatling Psilencer? Now we're talking. That'll definitely make your opponent nervous as hell when you train this baby on his multi-wound models. However, again this is one-upped by the NEW heavy psycannon with its insane alternate firing mode profile. Heavy 6? Hell to the fething YES PLEASE. Was it necessary? Absolutely not, GW.


Thoughts?

Hammers now don't make termies more expensive than before by any means, unless you take full units of HammerKnights, which really nobody did. A 10 man termie squad now with two psycannons, two hammers, and (because this is how everyone ran them before) the rest halberds is still approx 40 points cheaper than the old codex.

Falchions are not useless, 4 points actually makes them potentially worthwhile. GK are a great shooty-assault hybrid army. They excel at softening their foe with good shooting, then finishing with good assault.

The Halberd change is a bit of a nerf, yes, but that +1S can also be very beneficial. This allows you to more easily tickle a Wraithknight, or crack open those pretty new Space Wolf dreads.

The warding stave is nothing to compain about. It does it's job, which is to WARD you, in this case from psychic attacks. Just because it's AP4 don't discount it, it's also +2S, so you have a S8 attack at initiative with Hammerhand. And at 5 bucks, why not take one?

Mordrak- I too miss the Haunted Knight, I just recently stripped the paint from 7 ghost knights so I could repurpose them as normal termies. very sad.

NDK- was not overpowered during 6th at all, he was crazy expensive in an already expensive army. At only 4 wounds, when compared to Riptides (who can get 3++ and FNP, have 5 wounds), and Wraithknights (T8, 6 wounds!!), he is fairly priced. Further limiting their awesomeness is only allowing two of them in the Nemesis Detachment.

Libbys- Yes they are cheap as chips, and full of awesome now.

It amazes me that some people are happy that a codex got smaller because it makes it easier to sort through. Now I know this is the sort of thing people just say, but I genuinely, honestly, no exaggeration at all, wonder if people are GW plants when I read that.

 SHUPPET wrote:
It amazes me that some people are happy that a codex got smaller because it makes it easier to sort through. Now I know this is the sort of thing people just say, but I genuinely, honestly, no exaggeration at all, wonder if people are GW plants when I read that.

Maybe they're just looking at the bright side.

If you bought codex grey knights to play Grey Knights, losing the inqusition isn't going to be something you terriably care about.

If you bought codex grey knights to play Grey Knights, losing the inqusition isn't going to be something you terriably care about.

If you played the game competitively... Yea that hurt alot. Before you find cheap GEQ units to hold objective units, as opposed to buying even more redundant strike or terminator models for the job. At least this way could keep them in a rhino and just roll them onto an objective and capture it. if they died alongside the squad inside all your expression was "At least it wasnt a strike squad or terminator squad... that wouldv'e cost me another 75-125pts."

However you are correct if you played the game casually then there indeed is no set-back.