Honestly, without it gray knight (and tzeentch) could easily get broken.
Not being able to spam the single best all-purpose spell for every psyker keeps things in check.
I mean, pre-codex my 1ksons were limited to 3 spells, so naturally I didn't bother putting many psykers.
And then I saw just how much a psyker can do, and boy I wished I could play more of them. because if I could precience multiple rubric/SOT teams, it would be brutal.
If I could warptime several heavy hitter, it would be brutal.
Heck, even gaze could be brutal if spammed as a second mortal wound source with smites.
Yep. I'm not a fan. Grey Knights and Thousand Sons are supposed to be psychic heavy armies, but Psychic Focus gimps that. At least there are now 6 spells instead of 3..
koooaei wrote: Smite from almost every unit in the codex is deadly. Even a small force can easilly manage 5+ smites and a couple powers per turn.
Except our Smite is worse than everybody elses, except against Daemons. We can only do 1 Mortal Wound instead of D3.
I get that maybe being able to cast Sanctuary multiple times on the same unit would be broken, but you could simply say you can't target a friendly unit multiple times with the same power. It would be perfectly fair to cast sanctuary on multiple units, just not on the same unit.
Otherwise, GKs just suck. We're paying for all these powers we can't use.
Just gonna have to ask all my opponents if we house rule it to where you can cast the same power multiple times, but can't target the same friendly unit more than once with the same power.
So no 2+ Invuln paladins, but you can have 4+ invuln on all the terminators.
All I hear from this is "I wanna spam and get 2++ saves waaaaaa!"
The only change I would make to the rule is changing it to manifest rather than attempt. That way if you accidentally blow your brains out on the first attempt another guy can try again.
How dare they make your entire army not be as powerful in the psychic phase as everyone else's best spell casters.
Getting to smite with every unit on a 4+ is MASSIVE when you consider you also do d3 damage with your melee attack and have double the range damage output of a normal tactical marine. You also add +1 to deny the witch.
You psychic toolbox is massive, and your soldiers are very capable. If you don't want to deal with psychic focus, then play narrative or open play.
No reason to come in a cry about something that doesn't have to affect you at all, and honestly isn't that big a deal to begin with.
BaconCatBug wrote: All I hear from this is "I wanna spam and get 2++ saves waaaaaa!"
The only change I would make to the rule is changing it to manifest rather than attempt. That way if you accidentally blow your brains out on the first attempt another guy can try again.
Agreed. Psychic Focus in necessary for balance, but it should not be attempts that count, only if the power actually goes through.
Can't every single unit in the GK codex pick one of those six spells and smite? Alongside being able to deny with every single unit in the army? While getting a +1 to both Manifesting and denying?
Giving units additional Inv saves, +1 Wound in melee, ability to fire beyond hard cover without penalty and ignoring cover save, ability to LD war, vortex of doom..
Some of those would be a bit much if you could cast it from every single strike squad per turn.
Yeah, it's annoying. The main consequence of this is that it's kind of silly to run a Grey Knights army -- instead you just want a single detachment. I've had some success with a small battalion attached to a Sisters list. The GM in NDK gets his invuln save improved and a big Strike Squad gets Astral Aim and Hammerhand, and each can use an ammunition stratagems. I'd be looking at severely diminishing returns with a bigger force, so instead I just bring much cheaper bolters from another army. I guess GW just doesn't really intend for GKs to be a standalone thing.
Wait, wait, wait... this ISN'T a joke post? Really?
Look, if you don't like Psychic Focus, ask your opponents if they want to play a Narrative or Open game, and make note to mention that you want to not worry about Psychic Focus. I'd be totally down for doing that myself!
Gee, if only GW could balance powers so they could scale properly, and not make them so you can only attempt to cast once per turn, whether it's a 500-point game or a 5000-point game.
Why not make it so Imperial Guard may only attempt to issue each Order only once per turn? For balance of course. Naturally, they must roll 2d6, and on a 2 or 12, the Officer accidentally electrocutes himself with the Vox-Relay. It's ok though, because although they're powerful bonuses that can do things like let large units shoot twice or fight twice, there's no way to deny them.
It's a joke that people think Psychic Focus is anything resembling a balanced mechanic, simply due to its nonscalability. Remember how awesome 5e White Dwarf Sisters when they only got D6 Faith Points per turn, regardless of the point level?
I think for the psychic driven armies. Tzeetch and Greyknights - they should have stratagems that allows a spell to be duplicated. That's something I was really hoping for and was disappointed wasn't in the codex. However - we did get Grandmaster Dreadknights - and I think I am happier with this.
The main problem is - no terminators unit will live without sanctuary so with sanctuary going on your GMDK every turn - terminators cant even be considered. That's my biggest problem. Obviously it would be stupid if all my units could cast vortex of doom but being able to cast it twice would be totally fair. It's not like armies are limited to the number of las cannons they can bring.
Grey Templar wrote: My Grey Knights are limited to 6 powers a turn max? That's totally unfair since we're balanced around each unit having a psychic power from Sanctic.
Maybe if we could use other disciplines, but we're stuck with Sanctic and thats it.
Psychic Focus needs to just get errata'd into non-existence.
Did you consider maybe you're balanced around not being able to have every unit cast those powers and mostly just casting weaker smite? It seems reasonable to me that this is the case especially because your smite is not full strength. Play testing obviously showed that casting multiples of the same spell was too powerful. So I think it is reasonable to think that you are balanced around having the ability to use those powers but not balanced around using them every single turn.
The only change I could see making is changing it to each power can only be manifested 1 time instead of attempted. But if you get rid of psychic focus get ready for things like entire ork armies charging turn 1 with Da Jump spam, or CSM spamming warptime to charge turn 1 etc.
Even your suggestion of each unit getting targeted once is broken. Lets you gate your entire army every turn.
You are also not really paying for it.
Regular marine = 13 points
Strike Squad = 19 points
Nemesis Force sword = free
Force Sword = 12 points
If a regular marine could take a force sword he would be 6 points more than a GK. So lets chalk that up to a discount due to having fewer attacks than things that can take Force swords in most marine factions (though your characters benefit from that same discount)
On top of that you get a weak version of smite, re-roll wounds against daemons, the ability to deny psychic powers, and teleport strike vs Chapter tactics. So lets call that a wash for this purpose.
So you are paying 6 points for a force sword, seems to me that maybe you were balanced around not having every squad cast any power every turn.
MagicJuggler wrote: Gee, if only GW could balance powers so they could scale properly, and not make them so you can only attempt to cast once per turn, whether it's a 500-point game or a 5000-point game.
Why not make it so Imperial Guard may only attempt to issue eacu Order only once per turn? For balance of course. Naturally, they must roll 2d6, and on a 2 or 12, the Officer accidentally electrocutes himself with the Vox-Relay. It's ok though, because although they're powerful bonuses that can do things like let large units shoot twice or fight twice, there's no way to deny them.
It's a joke that people think Psychic Focus is anything resembling a balanced mechanic, simply due to its nonscalability. Remember how awesome 5e White Dwarf Sisters when they only got D6 Faith Points per turn, regardless of the point level?
Yeah - I pretty much have to agree with you here. At 2000 points Gk's have trouble because of psychic focus but at 5000 points - why would you even bring them to a game? The rule has 0 scale-ability. It's almost like GW is trying to encourage people to play open play.
Why not make it so Imperial Guard may only attempt to issue eacu Order only once per turn? For balance of course. Naturally, they must roll 2d6, and on a 2 or 12, the Officer accidentally electrocutes himself with the Vox-Relay.
The guardsmen stare at the body of their fallen officer.
"Did he get his vox-relay wet?"
"He didn't even have a vox-relay!"
I said it before il say it again. House rule it so psychic powers don't stack with themselves. As long as you cannot pile the same debuff/buff onto a single unit it's all pretty fair.
Lance845 wrote: I said it before il say it again. House rule it so psychic powers don't stack with themselves. As long as you cannot pile the same debuff/buff onto a single unit it's all pretty fair.
Wait thats no part of the rules already? I figured it was lol
MagicJuggler wrote: Gee, if only GW could balance powers so they could scale properly, and not make them so you can only attempt to cast once per turn, whether it's a 500-point game or a 5000-point game.
Why not make it so Imperial Guard may only attempt to issue eacu Order only once per turn? For balance of course. Naturally, they must roll 2d6, and on a 2 or 12, the Officer accidentally electrocutes himself with the Vox-Relay. It's ok though, because although they're powerful bonuses that can do things like let large units shoot twice or fight twice, there's no way to deny them.
It's a joke that people think Psychic Focus is anything resembling a balanced mechanic, simply due to its nonscalability. Remember how awesome 5e White Dwarf Sisters when they only got D6 Faith Points per turn, regardless of the point level?
Yeah - I pretty much have to agree with you here. At 2000 points Gk's have trouble because of psychic focus but at 5000 points - why would you even bring them to a game? The rule has 0 scale-ability. It's almost like GW is trying to encourage people to play open play.
For 5k points why wouldn't you use open/narrative play are you really playing competitive 5k point games? The rule is meant for balance at levels of competitive play.
Lance845 wrote: I said it before il say it again. House rule it so psychic powers don't stack with themselves. As long as you cannot pile the same debuff/buff onto a single unit it's all pretty fair.
Ah yes, the ability to cast Vortex of Doom with every strike squad is going to be very fair, not counting the shenanigans you can pull with Gift of Chaos.
Wait thats no part of the rules already? I figured it was lol
It is technically because you can only cast the same spell once per phase.
Lance845 wrote: I said it before il say it again. House rule it so psychic powers don't stack with themselves. As long as you cannot pile the same debuff/buff onto a single unit it's all pretty fair.
Doesn't really work for all powers though, things like gate are super powerful if you can use them on every unit every turn.
MagicJuggler wrote: Gee, if only GW could balance powers so they could scale properly, and not make them so you can only attempt to cast once per turn, whether it's a 500-point game or a 5000-point game.
Why not make it so Imperial Guard may only attempt to issue eacu Order only once per turn? For balance of course. Naturally, they must roll 2d6, and on a 2 or 12, the Officer accidentally electrocutes himself with the Vox-Relay. It's ok though, because although they're powerful bonuses that can do things like let large units shoot twice or fight twice, there's no way to deny them.
It's a joke that people think Psychic Focus is anything resembling a balanced mechanic, simply due to its nonscalability. Remember how awesome 5e White Dwarf Sisters when they only got D6 Faith Points per turn, regardless of the point level?
Yeah - I pretty much have to agree with you here. At 2000 points Gk's have trouble because of psychic focus but at 5000 points - why would you even bring them to a game? The rule has 0 scale-ability. It's almost like GW is trying to encourage people to play open play.
For 5k points why wouldn't you use open/narrative play are you really playing competitive 5k point games? The rule is meant for balance at levels of competitive play.
I suppose it is designed for 2000 point games. My group likes to play by the same rules all the time but switch up the point levels so we can use more of our models. It's a bunch of power gamers though so - not playing by competitive rules is a no go. Which is why i really don't like this psychic focus rule.
It was implemented as a way of balancing out the psychic phase for psychic heavy armies.
But what they should really have done was actually create good rules for the psychic phase instead of porting over this AoS garbage.
There needs to be a system of dice/spell management coupled with a system that scales with the game size.
As it stands right now it's just a random roll. Sometimes it goes off, sometimes it doesn't. There's not even a way to increase odds of getting off that major game altering power, or conversely increasing odds of stopping that game winning power.
MagicJuggler wrote: Gee, if only GW could balance powers so they could scale properly, and not make them so you can only attempt to cast once per turn, whether it's a 500-point game or a 5000-point game.
Why not make it so Imperial Guard may only attempt to issue eacu Order only once per turn? For balance of course. Naturally, they must roll 2d6, and on a 2 or 12, the Officer accidentally electrocutes himself with the Vox-Relay. It's ok though, because although they're powerful bonuses that can do things like let large units shoot twice or fight twice, there's no way to deny them.
It's a joke that people think Psychic Focus is anything resembling a balanced mechanic, simply due to its nonscalability. Remember how awesome 5e White Dwarf Sisters when they only got D6 Faith Points per turn, regardless of the point level?
Yeah - I pretty much have to agree with you here. At 2000 points Gk's have trouble because of psychic focus but at 5000 points - why would you even bring them to a game? The rule has 0 scale-ability. It's almost like GW is trying to encourage people to play open play.
For 5k points why wouldn't you use open/narrative play are you really playing competitive 5k point games? The rule is meant for balance at levels of competitive play.
I suppose it is designed for 2000 point games. My group likes to play by the same rules all the time but switch up the point levels so we can use more of our models. It's a bunch of power gamers though so - not playing by competitive rules is a no go. Which is why i really don't like this psychic focus rule.
That is a group problem not a rules problem. Competitive APOC level games have always been terrible, I wouldn't want to play an apoc game in this edition unless it was power level.
Or GW could attempt to rebalance the powers. But sure "may only cast once" is way better.
It also does not totally incentivize taking the best possible Psyker foe getting critical powers (Magnus is to Chaos what Eldrad was to 4e Eldar), and it totally does not incentivize saving such powers for the best possible unit. Why bother casting Gate on a Strike Squad when you can cast it on Paladins? And yes, this is an exaggerated vacum example, but the principle applies. Invisibility was an insanely dangerous power, but there was a dramatic difference between using it on a Tactical Squad versus using it on Grav-Cents.
What GW *should* have done IMO was refine the 7e psyker system, so there were more WC per caster, but no "pooling." Rather than casting and denial being all-or-nothing success thresholds, casting would be by "Degrees of Success", and Denial would simply subtract successes from casting, rather than the 7e system of "you needed 5 sixes to deny but only rolled 4", or needing to roll higher than the caster to deny. "Try rolling a 13."
Even being a Thousand Son's player I am going to have to disagree with the OP. I think one of the biggest issues with psychic powers in 40,000 has always been the ability to spam them. The rule of one certainly would have helped make 6th more tolerable for non-psychics and probably would have helped a lot in 7th (I only played a few games of 7th so I am not sure). But even going back further, Eldar would spam both Doom and Guide and does anyone remember Lash of Slaneesh? Using that multiple times was really broken. I think that if they allowed psychic powers to be cast more than once, it would really make psychics really over powered. I do agree however that the rule of one should be cast and not attempt. Also, I do think that the really psychic armies (Grey Knights, Thousand Sons, Tzeencth deamons, probably even Eldar) should have more than 6 powers, probably more like 9 or 12. I don't think Grey Knights would be broken if they had access to their powers and the general marine powers. I am really hoping that Thousand Sons get to use the Heretic powers, and then get like three Tzeentch or powers or maybe a small three power "Change" school. Also for Grey Knights, Thousand Sons and other psychic armies there really should be a stratagem that allows to cast a spell an additional time in Match play. That would help and I don't think would be really overpowered, especially if it was like 2 or 3 CP. Finally, for all the Grey Knight players, at least your psychic squads can even cast a normal power. My 30/50 point aspiring sorcerers can only cast baby smite.
I remember Lash. Lash was a boogeyman used to scare scrub players because it was an infantry-manipulating gimmick in a game of Razorback spam. Besides, you only got 2 of them and since it was a Psychic Shooting attack, its use was really limited.
What was more jarring was how 5e Marine Librarians were "take 2 powers for free at army creation." Smite and Null Zone were not on the same level. Ditto Jaws versus Thunderclap.
MagicJuggler wrote: I remember Lash. Lash was a boogeyman used to scare scrub players because it was an infantry-manipulating gimmick in a game of Razorback spam.
MagicJuggler wrote: Gee, if only GW could balance powers so they could scale properly, and not make them so you can only attempt to cast once per turn, whether it's a 500-point game or a 5000-point game.
Why not make it so Imperial Guard may only attempt to issue eacu Order only once per turn? For balance of course. Naturally, they must roll 2d6, and on a 2 or 12, the Officer accidentally electrocutes himself with the Vox-Relay. It's ok though, because although they're powerful bonuses that can do things like let large units shoot twice or fight twice, there's no way to deny them.
It's a joke that people think Psychic Focus is anything resembling a balanced mechanic, simply due to its nonscalability. Remember how awesome 5e White Dwarf Sisters when they only got D6 Faith Points per turn, regardless of the point level?
Yeah - I pretty much have to agree with you here. At 2000 points Gk's have trouble because of psychic focus but at 5000 points - why would you even bring them to a game? The rule has 0 scale-ability. It's almost like GW is trying to encourage people to play open play.
Who plays 5000 points? The game is clearly not really meant to be played at that level. And if you were playing a 5000 point game, you could just use open play, which allows psychic powers to be cast many times.
Scalability is the trickiest thing, IMO, for Psyker powers. It would require different rules for different abilities. Fury of the Ancients isn't too terribly dangerous if you could spam that. But if you could load up on Farseers and hand out Doom and Guide like candy, it would be absolutely devastating, more so than how strong that combo of Psyker buff/debuffs already are.
But once again, comparing it to another power, it brings in to question why something like Hammerhand cannot cast by all Grey Knight units in the same turn, if they so desire to. +1 to your Wound Rolls in melee is a big buff, but again, something like Gate of Infinity is on a different level and would need a different ruling.
Not all Psyker powers were created equal, obviously.
A little tag such as "Your Army can attempt to Manifest [specific power] an [x] amount of times per Psychic phase, across all units" or however the wording would be, that would enable lesser Psyker powers to be used more often, and the truly powerful ones, limited to once per psyker phase, as it is right now, in Matched Play.
MagicJuggler wrote: I remember Lash. Lash was a boogeyman used to scare scrub players because it was an infantry-manipulating gimmick in a game of Razorback spam.
Ahh the good ole lash and vindicator trick.
Back when blasts were half-strength vs vehicles if they weren't centered? Sure. Oh yeah, but sure you could take T4 Obliterators at 70 points per lascannon shot to help you! Just had to deal with cover being 4+ by default, and 50% cover. Oh yeah, and don't even think of going up against Eldar, since Runes of Warding meant you took Psychic Tests on 3d6, and any roll of 12+ caused Perils. I swear, Eldrad killed more Rune Priests by simply sitting back and putting on a trollface as their heads exploded.
MagicJuggler wrote: Gee, if only GW could balance powers so they could scale properly, and not make them so you can only attempt to cast once per turn, whether it's a 500-point game or a 5000-point game.
Why not make it so Imperial Guard may only attempt to issue eacu Order only once per turn? For balance of course. Naturally, they must roll 2d6, and on a 2 or 12, the Officer accidentally electrocutes himself with the Vox-Relay. It's ok though, because although they're powerful bonuses that can do things like let large units shoot twice or fight twice, there's no way to deny them.
It's a joke that people think Psychic Focus is anything resembling a balanced mechanic, simply due to its nonscalability. Remember how awesome 5e White Dwarf Sisters when they only got D6 Faith Points per turn, regardless of the point level?
Yeah - I pretty much have to agree with you here. At 2000 points Gk's have trouble because of psychic focus but at 5000 points - why would you even bring them to a game? The rule has 0 scale-ability. It's almost like GW is trying to encourage people to play open play.
For 5k points why wouldn't you use open/narrative play are you really playing competitive 5k point games? The rule is meant for balance at levels of competitive play.
I suppose it is designed for 2000 point games. My group likes to play by the same rules all the time but switch up the point levels so we can use more of our models. It's a bunch of power gamers though so - not playing by competitive rules is a no go. Which is why i really don't like this psychic focus rule.
Ok, but you're already going off-road when you decide to "switch it up" like that. You're going against the balance that the game was designed for and then saying "we're power gamers, going against balance is a no-go." No, you're already doing it.
Psychic focus scales terribly. Yes. But it works just fine for the level it's balanced for.
Rubric and Scarab Occult Sorcerers would also like to jump in on this.
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Lance845 wrote: I said it before il say it again. House rule it so psychic powers don't stack with themselves. As long as you cannot pile the same debuff/buff onto a single unit it's all pretty fair.
Yeah.... wait till every unit in Chaos gets to Prescience themselves. Or Warp Time up the table and assault turn 1.
MagicJuggler wrote: I remember Lash. Lash was a boogeyman used to scare scrub players because it was an infantry-manipulating gimmick in a game of Razorback spam.
Ahh the good ole lash and vindicator trick.
Back when blasts were half-strength vs vehicles if they weren't centered? Sure. Oh yeah, but sure you could take T4 Obliterators at 70 points per lascannon shot to help you! Just had to deal with cover being 4+ by default, and 50% cover. Oh yeah, and don't even think of going up against Eldar, since Runes of Warding meant you took Psychic Tests on 3d6, and any roll of 12+ caused Perils. I swear, Eldrad killed more Rune Priests by simply sitting back and putting on a trollface as their heads exploded.
Oh yea Runes of Warding. I forgot about that. Would kill my little, overpriced aspiring sorcerer who was trying to use Bolt of Change for what was basically a laser-cannon shot. I also forgot about Jaws. Actually thinking about it after playing 2nd - 6th, and my little experience with 7th, these are probably the best psychic rules GW ever developed.
MagicJuggler wrote: I remember Lash. Lash was a boogeyman used to scare scrub players because it was an infantry-manipulating gimmick in a game of Razorback spam.
Ahh the good ole lash and vindicator trick.
Back when blasts were half-strength vs vehicles if they weren't centered? Sure. Oh yeah, but sure you could take T4 Obliterators at 70 points per lascannon shot to help you! Just had to deal with cover being 4+ by default, and 50% cover. Oh yeah, and don't even think of going up against Eldar, since Runes of Warding meant you took Psychic Tests on 3d6, and any roll of 12+ caused Perils. I swear, Eldrad killed more Rune Priests by simply sitting back and putting on a trollface as their heads exploded.
Oh yea Runes of Warding. I forgot about that. Would kill my little, overpriced aspiring sorcerer who was trying to use Bolt of Change for what was basically a laser-cannon shot. I also forgot about Jaws. Actually thinking about it after playing 2nd - 6th, and my little experience with 7th, these are probably the best psychic rules GW ever developed.
I actually liked 7th best because I liked the idea of warp charge, resource allocation, etc. It could be the brief dalliance I had with Warmachine talking though. The system clearly had its flaws, yet they truly didn't become 100% noticable until Wrath of Magnus basically doubled down on said flaws for such a system. Also, Siphon Magic was the worst-designed power ever.
Really, rewriting Wrath of Magnus has been sort of a homebrew obsession of mine, simply because I was so angry over how sloppy the rules for it were.
MagicJuggler wrote: Gee, if only GW could balance powers so they could scale properly, and not make them so you can only attempt to cast once per turn, whether it's a 500-point game or a 5000-point game.
Why not make it so Imperial Guard may only attempt to issue eacu Order only once per turn? For balance of course. Naturally, they must roll 2d6, and on a 2 or 12, the Officer accidentally electrocutes himself with the Vox-Relay. It's ok though, because although they're powerful bonuses that can do things like let large units shoot twice or fight twice, there's no way to deny them.
It's a joke that people think Psychic Focus is anything resembling a balanced mechanic, simply due to its nonscalability. Remember how awesome 5e White Dwarf Sisters when they only got D6 Faith Points per turn, regardless of the point level?
Yeah - I pretty much have to agree with you here. At 2000 points Gk's have trouble because of psychic focus but at 5000 points - why would you even bring them to a game? The rule has 0 scale-ability. It's almost like GW is trying to encourage people to play open play.
For 5k points why wouldn't you use open/narrative play are you really playing competitive 5k point games? The rule is meant for balance at levels of competitive play.
I suppose it is designed for 2000 point games. My group likes to play by the same rules all the time but switch up the point levels so we can use more of our models. It's a bunch of power gamers though so - not playing by competitive rules is a no go. Which is why i really don't like this psychic focus rule.
Ok, but you're already going off-road when you decide to "switch it up" like that. You're going against the balance that the game was designed for and then saying "we're power gamers, going against balance is a no-go." No, you're already doing it.
Psychic focus scales terribly. Yes. But it works just fine for the level it's balanced for.
MagicJuggler wrote: Gee, if only GW could balance powers so they could scale properly, and not make them so you can only attempt to cast once per turn, whether it's a 500-point game or a 5000-point game.
Why not make it so Imperial Guard may only attempt to issue eacu Order only once per turn? For balance of course. Naturally, they must roll 2d6, and on a 2 or 12, the Officer accidentally electrocutes himself with the Vox-Relay. It's ok though, because although they're powerful bonuses that can do things like let large units shoot twice or fight twice, there's no way to deny them.
It's a joke that people think Psychic Focus is anything resembling a balanced mechanic, simply due to its nonscalability. Remember how awesome 5e White Dwarf Sisters when they only got D6 Faith Points per turn, regardless of the point level?
Yeah - I pretty much have to agree with you here. At 2000 points Gk's have trouble because of psychic focus but at 5000 points - why would you even bring them to a game? The rule has 0 scale-ability. It's almost like GW is trying to encourage people to play open play.
For 5k points why wouldn't you use open/narrative play are you really playing competitive 5k point games? The rule is meant for balance at levels of competitive play.
I suppose it is designed for 2000 point games. My group likes to play by the same rules all the time but switch up the point levels so we can use more of our models. It's a bunch of power gamers though so - not playing by competitive rules is a no go. Which is why i really don't like this psychic focus rule.
Ok, but you're already going off-road when you decide to "switch it up" like that. You're going against the balance that the game was designed for and then saying "we're power gamers, going against balance is a no-go." No, you're already doing it.
Psychic focus scales terribly. Yes. But it works just fine for the level it's balanced for.
Why is only 2000 points considered competitive?
Because to have balance between the sheer amount of different kind of units that we have in 40k, you have to pick a number. Some will be stronger at lesser and some will be stronger at higher points numbers. You have to pick a size and balance everyone around that. You can't balance at all points levels. It's a fool's errand. It cannot succeed. It would of course be bloody helpful if GW came out and said "oh yeah, and we're balancing for X points." In Malifaux the balance is for 50 points, but you can go lower or higher (higher is unusual, lower does have rules suggestions) but anything other than 50 tends to get grossly imbalanced. Low points games are dominated by summoner lists.
Does anyone else here feel that Psykers are paying double for the 'benefit' of smite spam though?
I mean these specialized psyker heavy armies tend to have far fewer units than other armies. Their units are smaller generally than other armies. And these armies tend to have more 'fluff' units like Cultists to try and compensate for these failures.
So right off the bat they're paying a premium for the benefit of the smite spam that alone probably outweighs the spell completely. Then you have to factor in the high risk of actually using psychic powers and the likelyhood you'll lose 25% of your psykers due to self inflicted wounds than due to enemy combat.
So while I agree with some in this thread that limiting the spells in some fashion was needed and psychic focus may be reasonable, the benefits of psykers really aren't compensating for the drawbacks.
If we left the ability to only use 1 spell a turn shouldn't perils be less severe for these armies?
MagicJuggler wrote: I remember Lash. Lash was a boogeyman used to scare scrub players because it was an infantry-manipulating gimmick in a game of Razorback spam.
Ahh the good ole lash and vindicator trick.
Back when blasts were half-strength vs vehicles if they weren't centered? Sure. Oh yeah, but sure you could take T4 Obliterators at 70 points per lascannon shot to help you! Just had to deal with cover being 4+ by default, and 50% cover. Oh yeah, and don't even think of going up against Eldar, since Runes of Warding meant you took Psychic Tests on 3d6, and any roll of 12+ caused Perils. I swear, Eldrad killed more Rune Priests by simply sitting back and putting on a trollface as their heads exploded.
Oh yea Runes of Warding. I forgot about that. Would kill my little, overpriced aspiring sorcerer who was trying to use Bolt of Change for what was basically a laser-cannon shot. I also forgot about Jaws. Actually thinking about it after playing 2nd - 6th, and my little experience with 7th, these are probably the best psychic rules GW ever developed.
I actually liked 7th best because I liked the idea of warp charge, resource allocation, etc. It could be the brief dalliance I had with Warmachine talking though. The system clearly had its flaws, yet they truly didn't become 100% noticable until Wrath of Magnus basically doubled down on said flaws for such a system. Also, Siphon Magic was the worst-designed power ever.
Really, rewriting Wrath of Magnus has been sort of a homebrew obsession of mine, simply because I was so angry over how sloppy the rules for it were.
I disagree with your assessment that the flaws weren't noticeable until wrath of magnus. I saw them from the get go, 7th as written was a terrible set of psychic rules. 8th is by far superior as far as balance is concerned. Could better rules exist sure, but your argument always seems to be "make powers weaker" at that point why not just make powers like auras/attacks from other characters and call it a day. GW wants them to be cool unique things that are risky to use, which is what 8th makes them, better than any previous edition.
Grey Templar wrote: My Grey Knights are limited to 6 powers a turn max? That's totally unfair since we're balanced around each unit having a psychic power from Sanctic.
Maybe if we could use other disciplines, but we're stuck with Sanctic and thats it.
Psychic Focus needs to just get errata'd into non-existence.
Did you consider maybe you're balanced around not being able to have every unit cast those powers and mostly just casting weaker smite? It seems reasonable to me that this is the case especially because your smite is not full strength. Play testing obviously showed that casting multiples of the same spell was too powerful. So I think it is reasonable to think that you are balanced around having the ability to use those powers but not balanced around using them every single turn.
GW? Playtesting? Lol.
And GKs are clearly paying a lot of points for that Smite+1 Sanctic Power over equivalent marine units(plus some points for the force weapons). So we're paying a hella lot of points for abilities we cannot use each turn.
And our Smite is pretty damn awful. It's a 91% chance of causing 1 mortal wound to a unit within 12". Sounds ok, but then you realize that it comes with the price tag of a 5.5% chance of losing D3 wounds off the unit. Plus your opponent gets a chance to deny it. If you have 5 units casting smite each turn because they have nothing else to do with the psychic phase, thats around a 25% chance of at least 1 Perils on one of your units. Also completely ignoring the chance of your units periling on any of the actual good powers.
Grey Knights should be good at psychic powers, not completely gimped at psychic powers.
Oh, and Purge Soul still is kinda lame for a psychic power. It's basically a potentially better Smite, but still only range 12. So we might as well say that our discipline only have 5 actually useful powers that feel like psychic powers.
Regular marine = 13 points
Strike Squad = 19 points
Nemesis Force sword = free
Force Sword = 12 points
If a regular marine could take a force sword he would be 6 points more than a GK. So lets chalk that up to a discount due to having fewer attacks than things that can take Force swords in most marine factions (though your characters benefit from that same discount)
On top of that you get a weak version of smite, re-roll wounds against daemons, the ability to deny psychic powers, and teleport strike vs Chapter tactics. So lets call that a wash for this purpose.
So you are paying 6 points for a force sword, seems to me that maybe you were balanced around not having every squad cast any power every turn.
There is a valid point here, but I have some criticisms. Grey Knights do get a lot for the points spent when you start adding the differences between standard marines and strikes up ala carte. Fundamentally however, any given model in the game should be paying (moderately to significantly) more for optional equipment than a model with it built in. The rationale is because when you can only take as many of them as you need, you can better optimize a unit for a given purpose. There are also some drawbacks to the way this is handled in the current system. GK do not get any point reduction for replacing their NFW with a psycannon, for example. And the Terminator weapons are grossly more expensive for the privilege of... I guess keeping theirs? Since relentless isn't a thing anymore, I'm not sure what the justification is otherwise, but that's probably another topic right there.
Of course, when an army can potentially consist of 20-50 primaris psykers unless you house rule a limit to detachments (and that list would likely be deceptively powerful) I don't see anything out of hand about giving GK the Scooty Puff Senior version of smite, or at least on the HQs. Hell, at least the _librarian_. As it stands now, I don't know why you would take one now.
You'll see that this trend continues if you compare guard to marines as well (though that gets trickier because of the profile changes not having a point cost).
nintura wrote: So wait, GK's get Smite-Lite AND another power on all their guys?
Yeah. Bad smite and a power that 80% of the time you can never use because you'll have given it to your Librarian to cast. So it really might as well not be there at all.
Only thing that makes them feel like psykers is they can all attempt to deny.
Without psychic focus the game would be totally and supremely broken. And the psychich phase in 7th edition was about as much fun as a severe flogging.
pismakron wrote: Without psychic focus the game would be totally and supremely broken. And the psychich phase in 7th edition was about as much fun as a severe flogging.
Except it goes too far. Sure, it would be broken to get 2+ invulns on every Grey Knight unit. But giving different units all +1 invuln or Hammerhand would be totally fine.
Psychic Focus basically makes psyker heavy armies wasted points.
The GK ability to do so many psychic powers from their already very strong units is bordering on obscenely powerful already. They don't need to be able to cast them even more. The best psychics in other armies are already barely better than the basic Grey Knight.
Plus, don't you get access to six powers now? Ork's only get 3, and only two of those are actually useful. IG psykers only get 3 too. Think yourself lucky (unless I'm mistaken).
If GK get to use multiple powers each each turn, then I should get to use multiple Canticles each turn. 5 shroudpalms for 1++ saves for all my troops please thanks totally fair.
Librarian? Whats that...he gets no bonus to cast or anything. It's a worthless model for the GK. Imagine that - GK librarians are the worst Librarians in the game...
Grey Templar wrote: Only thing that makes them feel like psykers is they can all attempt to deny.
Which you'd understand how powerful it is if you tried out an army like Tau or Adeptus Mechanicus instead.
Xenomancers wrote: Librarian? Whats that...he gets no bonus to cast or anything. It's a worthless model for the GK. Imagine that - GK librarians are the worst Librarians in the game...
He's not really useless... his job can just be done by the rest of the army, which is perfectly in line with the fluff.
Niiru wrote: The GK ability to do so many psychic powers from their already very strong units is bordering on obscenely powerful already. They don't need to be able to cast them even more. The best psychics in other armies are already barely better than the basic Grey Knight.
Plus, don't you get access to six powers now? Ork's only get 3, and only two of those are actually useful. IG psykers only get 3 too. Think yourself lucky (unless I'm mistaken).
If GK get to use multiple powers each each turn, then I should get to use multiple Canticles each turn. 5 shroudpalms for 1++ saves for all my troops please thanks totally fair.
Except its not "so many psychic powers". thats the problem. Turn 1. Nothing is really in melee or within 12" range. So Hammerhand, Purge Soul, Vortex of Doom, and Smite are all useless. Which leaves Sanctuary, Astral Aim, and Gate of Infinity, which could get 1 unit in range to use one of the other powers potentially.
My current 1850 list gets 10 powers of choice from Sanctic. But I can only, at most, cast 6 of them each turn. So 4 of my power slots are totally wasted each turn. And realistically several of the others are as well since on any given turn there will likely be 1-2 powers I don't want to cast/have no target for. Plus whatever my opponent denies or if I fail.
If I fail to cast Sanctuary, well too bad that was my one use of Sanctuary this turn. Now I'm totally screwed even though there are 3 other units with Sanctuary who could cast it. Or if I cast sanctuary but my opponent denies it, I am similarly screwed.
pismakron wrote: Without psychic focus the game would be totally and supremely broken. And the psychich phase in 7th edition was about as much fun as a severe flogging.
Except it goes too far. Sure, it would be broken to get 2+ invulns on every Grey Knight unit. But giving different units all +1 invuln or Hammerhand would be totally fine.
Psychic Focus basically makes psyker heavy armies wasted points.
I don't know about that. I have 372 points worth of dedicated psykers in my current 2000 points list, and without psychich focus it would be instawin whenever I got first turn. I dunno, maybe there will be more psychic powers on the codexes.
Grey Templar wrote: My Grey Knights are limited to 6 powers a turn max? That's totally unfair since we're balanced around each unit having a psychic power from Sanctic.
Maybe if we could use other disciplines, but we're stuck with Sanctic and thats it.
Psychic Focus needs to just get errata'd into non-existence.
Did you consider maybe you're balanced around not being able to have every unit cast those powers and mostly just casting weaker smite? It seems reasonable to me that this is the case especially because your smite is not full strength. Play testing obviously showed that casting multiples of the same spell was too powerful. So I think it is reasonable to think that you are balanced around having the ability to use those powers but not balanced around using them every single turn.
GW? Playtesting? Lol.
And GKs are clearly paying a lot of points for that Smite+1 Sanctic Power over equivalent marine units(plus some points for the force weapons). So we're paying a hella lot of points for abilities we cannot use each turn.
And our Smite is pretty damn awful. It's a 91% chance of causing 1 mortal wound to a unit within 12". Sounds ok, but then you realize that it comes with the price tag of a 5.5% chance of losing D3 wounds off the unit. Plus your opponent gets a chance to deny it. If you have 5 units casting smite each turn because they have nothing else to do with the psychic phase, thats around a 25% chance of at least 1 Perils on one of your units. Also completely ignoring the chance of your units periling on any of the actual good powers.
Grey Knights should be good at psychic powers, not completely gimped at psychic powers.
Oh, and Purge Soul still is kinda lame for a psychic power. It's basically a potentially better Smite, but still only range 12. So we might as well say that our discipline only have 5 actually useful powers that feel like psychic powers.
Show me those points, I broke it down for you you pay 6 points per model more than a regular marine, and have a forceweapon. Is you argument that having a force weapon is not worth 6 points when a power sword is 4? SO tell me where these extra points are? You are paying for having force weapons on every model, there is not a lot of points for Smite + 1 power, you are paying a minimal amount for these abilities at best. remember you also get teleport strike.
Sure you can perils, but mortal wounds are a very strong ability. And you can use CP re-rolls to prevent perils to an extent.
You also leave out on purge soul that it is better than smite, because you choose the target, so you can snipe characters and do more wounds to enemy units potentially up to 10 Mortal wounds to some low LD units. It isn't great but if you could use it every turn instead of smite you generally would.
As for play testing it has been openly discussed what testing was done, maybe you don't like it but it happened.
He's not really useless... his job can just be done by the rest of the army, which is perfectly in line with the fluff.
Not at all. In the fluff, Grey Knight line troopers focus their psychic abilities on their force weapons and defensive abilities. And maybe the occasional offensive zap. Librarians are the ones who handle the more difficult powers.
Yet yeah, its totally better to not take Librarians at all.
pismakron wrote: Without psychic focus the game would be totally and supremely broken. And the psychich phase in 7th edition was about as much fun as a severe flogging.
Except it goes too far. Sure, it would be broken to get 2+ invulns on every Grey Knight unit. But giving different units all +1 invuln or Hammerhand would be totally fine.
Psychic Focus basically makes psyker heavy armies wasted points.
Well.. no. Because that basically would mean your whole army would be permanently +1 better on all saves, plus +1 to wound rolls, plus whatever spare on smites, and that would be insanely powerful for their points. I'd be willing to let you play that as a house rule, but only if you increased the points cost of each unit appropriately.
The whole point of the limitation is that you need to strategically use your powers, picking and choosing the units that you think would make best use of the bonuses. And if you get it wrong, and your opponent managed to outflank you and hit a unit that isn't under the bonus, then they get to make some kills.
In your version, Grey Knights never have any weaknesses to exploit, and are always covered in magic armour and always do double damage in combat and no you can't hurt me because I'm now in my invisible cloak NO TAKEBACKS I'M TAKING MY BALL AND GOING HOME
Show me those points, I broke it down for you you pay 6 points per model more than a regular marine, and have a forceweapon. Is you argument that having a force weapon is not worth 6 points when a power sword is 4? SO tell me where these extra points are? You are paying for having force weapons on every model, there is not a lot of points for Smite + 1 power, you are paying a minimal amount for these abilities at best. remember you also get teleport strike.
You're not taking into account losing the vanilla marine rules and options. Opportunity cost is a thing you know.
nintura wrote: So wait, GK's get Smite-Lite AND another power on all their guys?
Yeah. Bad smite and a power that 80% of the time you can never use because you'll have given it to your Librarian to cast. So it really might as well not be there at all.
Only thing that makes them feel like psykers is they can all attempt to deny.
You're getting 2 powers and you're complaining.... We get Smite-Light and that's it. Nothing more. We have to use a strategem just to TRADE in smite-lite.
I'm gonna be real honest here, this entire thread reads like when the rip tide got needed and all the tau players cried. Sorry your powers are not over powered anymore?
Regular marine = 13 points
Strike Squad = 19 points
Nemesis Force sword = free
Force Sword = 12 points
If a regular marine could take a force sword he would be 6 points more than a GK. So lets chalk that up to a discount due to having fewer attacks than things that can take Force swords in most marine factions (though your characters benefit from that same discount)
On top of that you get a weak version of smite, re-roll wounds against daemons, the ability to deny psychic powers, and teleport strike vs Chapter tactics. So lets call that a wash for this purpose.
So you are paying 6 points for a force sword, seems to me that maybe you were balanced around not having every squad cast any power every turn.
There is a valid point here, but I have some criticisms. Grey Knights do get a lot for the points spent when you start adding the differences between standard marines and strikes up ala carte. Fundamentally however, any given model in the game should be paying (moderately to significantly) more for optional equipment than a model with it built in. The rationale is because when you can only take as many of them as you need, you can better optimize a unit for a given purpose. There are also some drawbacks to the way this is handled in the current system. GK do not get any point reduction for replacing their NFW with a psycannon, for example. And the Terminator weapons are grossly more expensive for the privilege of... I guess keeping theirs? Since relentless isn't a thing anymore, I'm not sure what the justification is otherwise, but that's probably another topic right there.
Of course, when an army can potentially consist of 20-50 primaris psykers unless you house rule a limit to detachments (and that list would likely be deceptively powerful) I don't see anything out of hand about giving GK the Scooty Puff Senior version of smite, or at least on the HQs. Hell, at least the _librarian_. As it stands now, I don't know why you would take one now.
You'll see that this trend continues if you compare guard to marines as well (though that gets trickier because of the profile changes not having a point cost).
I agree that GK characters should have regular smite, it is dumb that they don't. I don't agree on troops, and the house rule to detachment limits is straight from the rule book recommendations and what most tournaments seem to be using.
I also agree to a point about paying more for optional equipment, however that doesn't mean the force weapons in GK are worth less than 6 points on a strike model when marines pay 12 for them, at least not significantly so. A power sword is 4 points and straight up worse than a NF sword. They also do get a point reduction for giving up the force weapon. Which suggests again that the force weapon is being valued a 6 points (the difference between terminator and power armor weapon costs) by GW. Which is the difference between tactical marines and GK. GK units have the same issue they always have, they have a ton of bells and whistles you don't actually want that you pay some amount of points for. If I could run a strike squad at 15 points per model (with storm bolters included in that price) and no force weapons I would every day.
pismakron wrote: Without psychic focus the game would be totally and supremely broken. And the psychich phase in 7th edition was about as much fun as a severe flogging.
Except it goes too far. Sure, it would be broken to get 2+ invulns on every Grey Knight unit. But giving different units all +1 invuln or Hammerhand would be totally fine.
Psychic Focus basically makes psyker heavy armies wasted points.
You have yet to show any place those points have been wasted.
MagicJuggler wrote: I remember Lash. Lash was a boogeyman used to scare scrub players because it was an infantry-manipulating gimmick in a game of Razorback spam.
Ahh the good ole lash and vindicator trick.
Back when blasts were half-strength vs vehicles if they weren't centered? Sure. Oh yeah, but sure you could take T4 Obliterators at 70 points per lascannon shot to help you! Just had to deal with cover being 4+ by default, and 50% cover. Oh yeah, and don't even think of going up against Eldar, since Runes of Warding meant you took Psychic Tests on 3d6, and any roll of 12+ caused Perils. I swear, Eldrad killed more Rune Priests by simply sitting back and putting on a trollface as their heads exploded.
Oh yea Runes of Warding. I forgot about that. Would kill my little, overpriced aspiring sorcerer who was trying to use Bolt of Change for what was basically a laser-cannon shot. I also forgot about Jaws. Actually thinking about it after playing 2nd - 6th, and my little experience with 7th, these are probably the best psychic rules GW ever developed.
I actually liked 7th best because I liked the idea of warp charge, resource allocation, etc. It could be the brief dalliance I had with Warmachine talking though. The system clearly had its flaws, yet they truly didn't become 100% noticable until Wrath of Magnus basically doubled down on said flaws for such a system. Also, Siphon Magic was the worst-designed power ever.
Really, rewriting Wrath of Magnus has been sort of a homebrew obsession of mine, simply because I was so angry over how sloppy the rules for it were.
I disagree with your assessment that the flaws weren't noticeable until wrath of magnus. I saw them from the get go, 7th as written was a terrible set of psychic rules. 8th is by far superior as far as balance is concerned. Could better rules exist sure, but your argument always seems to be "make powers weaker" at that point why not just make powers like auras/attacks from other characters and call it a day. GW wants them to be cool unique things that are risky to use, which is what 8th makes them, better than any previous edition.
And I disagree with your assessment that they're cool unique things, especially ones that are risky to use. The issues with Psyker powers in 7th were that scaling was logarithmic for linear costs, thus making it favor supercasters and buffing super units. Likewise casting and denial were binary. All issues in 8th. The game has changed them from being a support techpiece, to being "another gun" in an extreme form, as armies like Tzeentch Smitespam demonstrate.
Show me those points, I broke it down for you you pay 6 points per model more than a regular marine, and have a forceweapon. Is you argument that having a force weapon is not worth 6 points when a power sword is 4? SO tell me where these extra points are? You are paying for having force weapons on every model, there is not a lot of points for Smite + 1 power, you are paying a minimal amount for these abilities at best. remember you also get teleport strike.
You're not taking into account losing the vanilla marine rules and options. Opportunity cost is a thing you know.
What rules and options?
Combat squads - both have it
ATSKNF - both have it
Chapter tactics - GK get psychic powers/deny, teleport strike on tons of units, re-roll wounds against daemons so that is a wash at worst. now maybe you like other CT better but this would be the GK chapter tactic.
Other units? - I guess but you have units they don't have as well.
Weapon options? I guess you cannot take things like devestators, or predators, but you have some access to alternatives that fill those roles.
Backspacehacker wrote: I'm gonna be real honest here, this entire thread reads like when the rip tide got needed and all the tau players cried. Sorry your powers are not over powered anymore?
First off, you'll have to prove that they were overpowered last edition. Psychic powers were just the one thing Grey Knights were actually strong at doing.
Second, even if they were OP. Thats no excuse for nerfing them below the power curve. If you just disallowed targeting the same friendly unit with the same power it would be perfectly fine.
So, I play Grey Knights as my main army. I go to at least 1 tournament a month.
Psychic Focus isn't inherently the problem with our army. 6 spells per turn is actually pretty good, we are one of few armies in the game that will actually be doing this. Also, every one of our powers is useful. Hammerhand is probably the most situational, and i'd imagine it's the least cast.
In a general sense, I would say that if you fail a power, you should be allowed to attempt it again from a different psyker. But, that's a broad change that could easily imbalance other, stronger psychic armies.
My core problem is that our smite is simply too weak.
I would revise it as follows: Base Range: 18" Base Damage: 1 mortal wound Vs Daemons: 3 mortal wounds, regardless of casting score Vs Non-Daemons: a roll of 10+ results in D3 mortal wounds
This would generally give me a reason to cast it. If they insist on keeping it at 12", we should be able to pick the *model* that's affected.
I would also alter Grey Knights such that we can ignore perils on double sixes once per phase. Call it Legendary Psykers rule.
If i'm being a bit greedy, i would also give us back Cleansing Flame as a 7th power. Yeah, I know, it breaks the mould, but still.
Cleansing Flame All enemy units within 3D6" of the Psyker suffer 1 mortal wound, and suffer a -1 to hit penalty for the controlling player's next turn on a 4+.
MagicJuggler wrote: I remember Lash. Lash was a boogeyman used to scare scrub players because it was an infantry-manipulating gimmick in a game of Razorback spam.
Ahh the good ole lash and vindicator trick.
Back when blasts were half-strength vs vehicles if they weren't centered? Sure. Oh yeah, but sure you could take T4 Obliterators at 70 points per lascannon shot to help you! Just had to deal with cover being 4+ by default, and 50% cover. Oh yeah, and don't even think of going up against Eldar, since Runes of Warding meant you took Psychic Tests on 3d6, and any roll of 12+ caused Perils. I swear, Eldrad killed more Rune Priests by simply sitting back and putting on a trollface as their heads exploded.
Oh yea Runes of Warding. I forgot about that. Would kill my little, overpriced aspiring sorcerer who was trying to use Bolt of Change for what was basically a laser-cannon shot. I also forgot about Jaws. Actually thinking about it after playing 2nd - 6th, and my little experience with 7th, these are probably the best psychic rules GW ever developed.
I actually liked 7th best because I liked the idea of warp charge, resource allocation, etc. It could be the brief dalliance I had with Warmachine talking though. The system clearly had its flaws, yet they truly didn't become 100% noticable until Wrath of Magnus basically doubled down on said flaws for such a system. Also, Siphon Magic was the worst-designed power ever.
Really, rewriting Wrath of Magnus has been sort of a homebrew obsession of mine, simply because I was so angry over how sloppy the rules for it were.
I disagree with your assessment that the flaws weren't noticeable until wrath of magnus. I saw them from the get go, 7th as written was a terrible set of psychic rules. 8th is by far superior as far as balance is concerned. Could better rules exist sure, but your argument always seems to be "make powers weaker" at that point why not just make powers like auras/attacks from other characters and call it a day. GW wants them to be cool unique things that are risky to use, which is what 8th makes them, better than any previous edition.
And I disagree with your assessment that they're cool unique things, especially ones that are risky to use. The issues with Psyker powers in 7th were that scaling was logarithmic for linear costs, thus making it favor supercasters and buffing super units. Likewise casting and denial were binary. All issues in 8th. The game has changed them from being a support techpiece, to being "another gun" in an extreme form, as armies like Tzeentch Smitespam demonstrate.
8th has allowed armies with single psykers to actually use them, unlike 7th. Denial is even to cast in 8th, 7th if you were a super psyker army, you got off all your powers, and denied your opponents. Far less all or nothing in 8th than in 7th.
You can design a system that is different, but that isn't what exists in the game. You can think they aren't cool unique things, but it is how they are written for most armies.
Backspacehacker wrote: I'm gonna be real honest here, this entire thread reads like when the rip tide got needed and all the tau players cried. Sorry your powers are not over powered anymore?
First off, you'll have to prove that they were overpowered last edition. Psychic powers were just the one thing Grey Knights were actually strong at doing.
Second, even if they were OP. Thats no excuse for nerfing them below the power curve. If you just disallowed targeting the same friendly unit with the same power it would be perfectly fine.
Again no it wouldn't, a whole army that can gate is not fine, a whole army that can snipe characters with mortal wounds, not fine, a whole army that deals D3 mortal wounds per unit ever turn not fine (which is why they don't have full smite.)
The only fix needed is to make it limited to a single successful cast. The rule forces variety of powers. Otherwise people would spam only the single best power.
Show me those points, I broke it down for you you pay 6 points per model more than a regular marine, and have a forceweapon. Is you argument that having a force weapon is not worth 6 points when a power sword is 4? SO tell me where these extra points are? You are paying for having force weapons on every model, there is not a lot of points for Smite + 1 power, you are paying a minimal amount for these abilities at best. remember you also get teleport strike.
You're not taking into account losing the vanilla marine rules and options. Opportunity cost is a thing you know.
What rules and options?
Combat squads - both have it
ATSKNF - both have it
Chapter tactics - GK get psychic powers/deny, teleport strike on tons of units, re-roll wounds against daemons so that is a wash at worst. now maybe you like other CT better but this would be the GK chapter tactic.
Other units? - I guess but you have units they don't have as well.
Weapon options? I guess you cannot take things like devestators, or predators, but you have some access to alternatives that fill those roles.
No weapons with >24" range on our basic infantry.
Overreliance on our Strategems, which means we have to take lots of troops choices and HQs to get a decent number of command points. Which means very few points to spend on those "other units nobody else gets".
Only half of our units can use Teleport strike in matched play. How would you like it if only half your Vanilla marine units could benefit from your chapter tactics?
Most of the time, the only power half to 2/3 of our lists can cast is Smite. At range 12 and only 1 mortal wound(with the chance of perils killing D3 of your models). Again, how would you like it if only half your units could use your chapter tactics?
Show me those points, I broke it down for you you pay 6 points per model more than a regular marine, and have a forceweapon. Is you argument that having a force weapon is not worth 6 points when a power sword is 4? SO tell me where these extra points are? You are paying for having force weapons on every model, there is not a lot of points for Smite + 1 power, you are paying a minimal amount for these abilities at best. remember you also get teleport strike.
You're not taking into account losing the vanilla marine rules and options. Opportunity cost is a thing you know.
What rules and options?
Combat squads - both have it
ATSKNF - both have it
Chapter tactics - GK get psychic powers/deny, teleport strike on tons of units, re-roll wounds against daemons so that is a wash at worst. now maybe you like other CT better but this would be the GK chapter tactic.
Other units? - I guess but you have units they don't have as well.
Weapon options? I guess you cannot take things like devestators, or predators, but you have some access to alternatives that fill those roles.
No weapons with >24" range on our basic infantry.
Overreliance on our Strategems, which means we have to take lots of troops choices and HQs to get a decent number of command points. Which means very few points to spend on those "other units nobody else gets".
Only half of our units can use Teleport strike in matched play. How would you like it if only half your Vanilla marine units could benefit from your chapter tactics?
Most of the time, the only power half to 2/3 of our lists can cast is Smite. At range 12 and only 1 mortal wound(with the chance of perils killing D3 of your models). Again, how would you like it if only half your units could use your chapter tactics?
Except they all get smite, and deny, and another power, so they all still benefit. Any over 24+ weapon is paid for on other troops, usually at high cost. Also, if a space marine player makes you of you know vehicles it is quite possible that half their units don't use their chapter tactics....or any imperial fist assault units, shoot black Templars etc etc. Not uncommon at all.
You trade not having long range weapons for better mid range shooting. So....still not showing how you are paying a ton of points for something, that you just flat are not paying a ton of points for.
I dont get this. Grey Knights are not the most powerful psykers. They are just all psykers. That's the stipulation for getting into the chapter. They are not super psykers. The fact that you can have two powers on each squad, and still be cheaper than say Rubrics, is just disgusting. The fact that you want your every day Grey Knight trooper to be a better Psyker than a Thousand Sons Scarab Occult Terminator Psyker is just disgusting and pointless.
Marmatag wrote: So, I play Grey Knights as my main army. I go to at least 1 tournament a month.
Psychic Focus isn't inherently the problem with our army. 6 spells per turn is actually pretty good, we are one of few armies in the game that will actually be doing this. Also, every one of our powers is useful. Hammerhand is probably the most situational, and i'd imagine it's the least cast.
In a general sense, I would say that if you fail a power, you should be allowed to attempt it again from a different psyker. But, that's a broad change that could easily imbalance other, stronger psychic armies.
My core problem is that our smite is simply too weak.
I would revise it as follows:
Base Range: 18"
Base Damage: 1 mortal wound
Vs Daemons: 3 mortal wounds, regardless of casting score
Vs Non-Daemons: a roll of 10+ results in D3 mortal wounds
This would generally give me a reason to cast it. If they insist on keeping it at 12", we should be able to pick the *model* that's affected.
I would also alter Grey Knights such that we can ignore perils on double sixes once per phase. Call it Legendary Psykers rule.
If i'm being a bit greedy, i would also give us back Cleansing Flame as a 7th power. Yeah, I know, it breaks the mould, but still.
Cleansing Flame All enemy units within 3D6" of the Psyker suffer 1 mortal wound, and suffer a -1 to hit penalty for the controlling player's next turn on a 4+.
I agree that it feels like it unfairly limits psychic heavy armies.
That being said, however, if it didn't exist, GKs would be pretty damn broken. Every single unit being able to teleport more or less at will, every turn? One librarian spamming vortex of doom, or granting multiple units sanctuary?
I wish there were a bit more middle ground, but an all-teleporting-all-the-time army is completely broken in just about every mission.
MagicJuggler wrote: I remember Lash. Lash was a boogeyman used to scare scrub players because it was an infantry-manipulating gimmick in a game of Razorback spam.
Ahh the good ole lash and vindicator trick.
Back when blasts were half-strength vs vehicles if they weren't centered? Sure. Oh yeah, but sure you could take T4 Obliterators at 70 points per lascannon shot to help you! Just had to deal with cover being 4+ by default, and 50% cover. Oh yeah, and don't even think of going up against Eldar, since Runes of Warding meant you took Psychic Tests on 3d6, and any roll of 12+ caused Perils. I swear, Eldrad killed more Rune Priests by simply sitting back and putting on a trollface as their heads exploded.
Oh yea Runes of Warding. I forgot about that. Would kill my little, overpriced aspiring sorcerer who was trying to use Bolt of Change for what was basically a laser-cannon shot. I also forgot about Jaws. Actually thinking about it after playing 2nd - 6th, and my little experience with 7th, these are probably the best psychic rules GW ever developed.
I actually liked 7th best because I liked the idea of warp charge, resource allocation, etc. It could be the brief dalliance I had with Warmachine talking though. The system clearly had its flaws, yet they truly didn't become 100% noticable until Wrath of Magnus basically doubled down on said flaws for such a system. Also, Siphon Magic was the worst-designed power ever.
Really, rewriting Wrath of Magnus has been sort of a homebrew obsession of mine, simply because I was so angry over how sloppy the rules for it were.
I disagree with your assessment that the flaws weren't noticeable until wrath of magnus. I saw them from the get go, 7th as written was a terrible set of psychic rules. 8th is by far superior as far as balance is concerned. Could better rules exist sure, but your argument always seems to be "make powers weaker" at that point why not just make powers like auras/attacks from other characters and call it a day. GW wants them to be cool unique things that are risky to use, which is what 8th makes them, better than any previous edition.
And I disagree with your assessment that they're cool unique things, especially ones that are risky to use. The issues with Psyker powers in 7th were that scaling was logarithmic for linear costs, thus making it favor supercasters and buffing super units. Likewise casting and denial were binary. All issues in 8th. The game has changed them from being a support techpiece, to being "another gun" in an extreme form, as armies like Tzeentch Smitespam demonstrate.
8th has allowed armies with single psykers to actually use them, unlike 7th. Denial is even to cast in 8th, 7th if you were a super psyker army, you got off all your powers, and denied your opponents. Far less all or nothing in 8th than in 7th.
You can design a system that is different, but that isn't what exists in the game. You can think they aren't cool unique things, but it is how they are written for most armies.
In 8th, the attacker wins ties versus denial, and the strongest powers are high in WC cost, so the powers you want to deny the most are the ones you have the least chance of doing so. Either way, it's binary. Unlike a squad of Marines shooting at a squad of Orks, you don't get a normalized distribution. Either you cast the power or you don't.
And as mentioned, Wrath of Magnus compounded this. While Daemon armies could get large amounts of WC already, such armies tended to rely on Fateweaver, Grimoire, and stacking defensive buffs on Plague Drones and Screamers. True summoning didn't really take off until Wrath of Magnus added Horror Splitting, and Heralds Anarchic. That the top LVO list this year was able to combine that with an Ordnance Tyrant gunline is what took it over the top. Summoning by itself was an annoyance, but deadly as support to an army that was actually doing something.
nintura wrote: I dont get this. Grey Knights are not the most powerful psykers. They are just all psykers. That's the stipulation for getting into the chapter. They are not super psykers. The fact that you can have two powers on each squad, and still be cheaper than say Rubrics, is just disgusting. The fact that you want your every day Gray Knight trooper to be a better Psyker than a Thousand Sons Scarab Occult Terminator Psyker is just disgusting and pointless.
False - greyknights are the most powerful psykers. They are specifically chosen based on their psychic abilities. They don't recruit like a regular chapter.
Kap'n Krump wrote: I agree that it feels like it unfairly limits psychic heavy armies.
That being said, however, if it didn't exist, GKs would be pretty damn broken. Every single unit being able to teleport more or less at will, every turn? One librarian spamming vortex of doom, or granting multiple units sanctuary?
I wish there were a bit more middle ground, but an all-teleporting-all-the-time army is completely broken in just about every mission.
Forget spamming powers. These people are talking about each unit being able to cast a full powered Smite. Could you imagine that? How many smites would you fit into an 1850 list? 6? 10?
nintura wrote: I dont get this. Grey Knights are not the most powerful psykers. They are just all psykers. That's the stipulation for getting into the chapter. They are not super psykers. The fact that you can have two powers on each squad, and still be cheaper than say Rubrics, is just disgusting. The fact that you want your every day Gray Knight trooper to be a better Psyker than a Thousand Sons Scarab Occult Terminator Psyker is just disgusting and pointless.
False - greyknights are the most powerful psykers. They are specifically chosen based on their psychic abilities. They don't recruit like a regular chapter.
False. 1k Sons were the original sorcerer chapter and fluff wise are still more powerful psychically. The only other faction that you would put above them would be Ulthwe.
Kap'n Krump wrote: I agree that it feels like it unfairly limits psychic heavy armies.
That being said, however, if it didn't exist, GKs would be pretty damn broken. Every single unit being able to teleport more or less at will, every turn? One librarian spamming vortex of doom, or granting multiple units sanctuary?
I wish there were a bit more middle ground, but an all-teleporting-all-the-time army is completely broken in just about every mission.
Forget spamming powers. These people are talking about each unit being able to cast a full powered Smite. Could you imagine that? How many smites would you fit into an 1850 list? 6? 10?
Actually, Astra Militarum can cast a lot more, with Primaris Psykers. Daemons can also cast a lot more full power smites.
Even if our smite isn't full power smite, it's not hard to see that 1 mortal wound is simply too weak.
Kap'n Krump wrote: I agree that it feels like it unfairly limits psychic heavy armies.
That being said, however, if it didn't exist, GKs would be pretty damn broken. Every single unit being able to teleport more or less at will, every turn? One librarian spamming vortex of doom, or granting multiple units sanctuary?
I wish there were a bit more middle ground, but an all-teleporting-all-the-time army is completely broken in just about every mission.
Forget spamming powers. These people are talking about each unit being able to cast a full powered Smite. Could you imagine that? How many smites would you fit into an 1850 list? 6? 10?
Actually, Astra Militarum can cast a lot more, with Primaris Psykers. Daemons can also cast a lot more full power smites.
Im not talking about who can cast more. These people are talking about every greyknight squad being able to cast a full on smite skill. Every squad. Hitting for multiple mortal wounds.
False. 1k Sons were the original sorcerer chapter and fluff wise are still more powerful psychically. The only other faction that you would put above them would be Ulthwe.
Grey Knights could easily be the loyal offshoot of Magnus' army.
Forget spamming powers. These people are talking about each unit being able to cast a full powered Smite. Could you imagine that? How many smites would you fit into an 1850 list? 6? 10?
Primaris psykers can net you 10 papa-smites. And that's something doable in a two detachment, 1850 point list. Wouldn't even be a quarter of the points.
Im not talking about who can cast more. These people are talking about every greyknight squad being able to cast a full on smite skill. Every squad. Hitting for multiple mortal wounds.
Right, and they'd have to be within 12" to do it, and as a faction, their infantry casting smite don't have any weapons outside of psilencers, incinerators, psycannons, and storm bolters.
We're not going to deep strike melta, plasma, etc.
We should get a normal smite on a cast of 10+, and should have an 18" smite.
Forget spamming powers. These people are talking about each unit being able to cast a full powered Smite. Could you imagine that? How many smites would you fit into an 1850 list? 6? 10?
Primaris psykers can net you 10 papa-smites. And that's something doable in a two detachment, 1850 point list. Wouldn't even be a quarter of the points.
Thank you, a million times this. it's something present in ETC lists.
Kap'n Krump wrote: I agree that it feels like it unfairly limits psychic heavy armies.
That being said, however, if it didn't exist, GKs would be pretty damn broken. Every single unit being able to teleport more or less at will, every turn? One librarian spamming vortex of doom, or granting multiple units sanctuary?
I wish there were a bit more middle ground, but an all-teleporting-all-the-time army is completely broken in just about every mission.
Forget spamming powers. These people are talking about each unit being able to cast a full powered Smite. Could you imagine that? How many smites would you fit into an 1850 list? 6? 10?
Actually, Astra Militarum can cast a lot more, with Primaris Psykers. Daemons can also cast a lot more full power smites.
Im not talking about who can cast more. These people are talking about every greyknight squad being able to cast a full on smite skill. Every squad. Hitting for multiple mortal wounds.
I don't know about full on smite. But at least D3 wounds. Range 12 instead of 18 is already a big drawback. Especially since its not just 1 psyker, its 5-10 psykers.
Thousand Sons were not all psykers, unlike Grey Knights. Just a lot of them. Grey Knights every member is a full on psyker capable of being a librarian. The basic dudes in the terminator and strike squads just aren't there yet. Its why they'd get slightly worse smite and only one power of choice. But they should at least be allowed to use that power of choice, and not be relegated to being "bad smite" monkeys.
Forget spamming powers. These people are talking about each unit being able to cast a full powered Smite. Could you imagine that? How many smites would you fit into an 1850 list? 6? 10?
Primaris psykers can net you 10 papa-smites. And that's something doable in a two detachment, 1850 point list. Wouldn't even be a quarter of the points.
That's because they are the new shiny marines and they need to sell. All this bitching about not being equal. Imagine being a 300 point troops unit and still ONLY getting smite-lite and NO second power.
Forget spamming powers. These people are talking about each unit being able to cast a full powered Smite. Could you imagine that? How many smites would you fit into an 1850 list? 6? 10?
Primaris psykers can net you 10 papa-smites. And that's something doable in a two detachment, 1850 point list. Wouldn't even be a quarter of the points.
That's because they are the new shiny marines and they need to sell. All this bitching about not being equal. Imagine being a 300 point troops unit and still ONLY getting smite-lite and NO second power.
No, primaris psykers are NOT marines, they're Astra Militarum. They're like 40 points.
Imagine a 250 point infantry unit with 1 cast that IS smite lite. That's grey knights.
Forget spamming powers. These people are talking about each unit being able to cast a full powered Smite. Could you imagine that? How many smites would you fit into an 1850 list? 6? 10?
Primaris psykers can net you 10 papa-smites. And that's something doable in a two detachment, 1850 point list. Wouldn't even be a quarter of the points.
That's because they are the new shiny marines and they need to sell. All this bitching about not being equal. Imagine being a 300 point troops unit and still ONLY getting smite-lite and NO second power.
Primarus Psykers are Imperial guard. They're super cheap.
Grey Knights are ~300 points a squad and I only get smite-lite and a 2nd power that realistically I will never use.
Forget spamming powers. These people are talking about each unit being able to cast a full powered Smite. Could you imagine that? How many smites would you fit into an 1850 list? 6? 10?
Primaris psykers can net you 10 papa-smites. And that's something doable in a two detachment, 1850 point list. Wouldn't even be a quarter of the points.
That's because they are the new shiny marines and they need to sell. All this bitching about not being equal. Imagine being a 300 point troops unit and still ONLY getting smite-lite and NO second power.
No, primaris psykers are NOT marines, they're Astra Militarum. They're like 40 points.
Imagine a 250 point infantry unit with 1 cast that IS smite lite. That's grey knights.
272 point infantry unit with 1 cast that IS smite lite. That's Thousand Sons. You at least get a second power for more options. Oh and all your weapons are force right?
Forget spamming powers. These people are talking about each unit being able to cast a full powered Smite. Could you imagine that? How many smites would you fit into an 1850 list? 6? 10?
Primaris psykers can net you 10 papa-smites. And that's something doable in a two detachment, 1850 point list. Wouldn't even be a quarter of the points.
That's because they are the new shiny marines and they need to sell. All this bitching about not being equal. Imagine being a 300 point troops unit and still ONLY getting smite-lite and NO second power.
No, primaris psykers are NOT marines, they're Astra Militarum. They're like 40 points.
Imagine a 250 point infantry unit with 1 cast that IS smite lite. That's grey knights.
272 point infantry unit with 1 cast that IS smite lite. That's Thousand Sons. You at least get a second power for more options.
Thousand Sons are not all psykers, unlike Grey Knights. Only the Sorcerors of the thousand sons were psykers. Their rank and file were normal marines. Grey Knights, everybody is a psyker.
Forget spamming powers. These people are talking about each unit being able to cast a full powered Smite. Could you imagine that? How many smites would you fit into an 1850 list? 6? 10?
Primaris psykers can net you 10 papa-smites. And that's something doable in a two detachment, 1850 point list. Wouldn't even be a quarter of the points.
That's because they are the new shiny marines and they need to sell. All this bitching about not being equal. Imagine being a 300 point troops unit and still ONLY getting smite-lite and NO second power.
No, primaris psykers are NOT marines, they're Astra Militarum. They're like 40 points.
Imagine a 250 point infantry unit with 1 cast that IS smite lite. That's grey knights.
272 point infantry unit with 1 cast that IS smite lite. That's Thousand Sons. You at least get a second power for more options.
Thousand Sons are not all psykers, unlike Grey Knights. Only the Sorcerors of the thousand sons were psykers. Their rank and file were normal marines. Grey Knights, everybody is a psyker.
I believe I said that right? Pretty sure. Thousand Sons were the original psykers, and now backed up by the god of sorcery. They were the most devastating legion prior to the Heresy because of their sorcery.
Having your whole faction as psykers does not make you the most powerful. 100 white belts does not a Chuck Norris make.
They're still just a chapter of Chaos Space Marines who have more than typical number of psykers. But Grey Knights still should beat the pants off of them in number and power of their psychic powers, because 100% of Grey Knights are psykers. Only maybe 5% of Thousand Sons are psykers.
Forget spamming powers. These people are talking about each unit being able to cast a full powered Smite. Could you imagine that? How many smites would you fit into an 1850 list? 6? 10?
Primaris psykers can net you 10 papa-smites. And that's something doable in a two detachment, 1850 point list. Wouldn't even be a quarter of the points.
That's because they are the new shiny marines and they need to sell. All this bitching about not being equal. Imagine being a 300 point troops unit and still ONLY getting smite-lite and NO second power.
No, primaris psykers are NOT marines, they're Astra Militarum. They're like 40 points.
Imagine a 250 point infantry unit with 1 cast that IS smite lite. That's grey knights.
272 point infantry unit with 1 cast that IS smite lite. That's Thousand Sons. You at least get a second power for more options. Oh and all your weapons are force right?
Call me when power armor can reliably make it into melee, then we'll talk about how our force weapons are strong, on our 1 base attack models. Anyway, this is digressing.
Chaos Space Marines are ranked much higher than GK. You simply have WAY more tools.
Just for comparison, a 10 man strike squad is 210 points. A 10 man Rubric Squad is 225. So 15 more points. The strike squad has double the shots. Now the Rubrics have the -2AP (don't call it rend, it is not called that in 40k). Personally I would take the double shots over the -2AP any day, but lets call it a wash. Both squads can cast baby smite. I don't have the codex, but I am guessing Grey Knights smite is slightly worse for some reason now. So small advantage to Rubrics. However, we are 1 move point slower, can't teleport on turn one (that is huge by the way), we only have one force weapon, while your whole squad has them, and your squad gets to cast a regular power, which includes the ability to teleport again all at +1 to powers! We have the all is dust rule, and the 5++, both of which are good for survivablity, but I don't think compete with the ability to teleport, and have all force weapons.
Although I will say that your HQs not getting real smite is a total slap in the face, especially with the rule of one, so I would be pretty pissed about that too.
They're still just a chapter of Chaos Space Marines who have more than typical number of psykers. But Grey Knights still should beat the pants off of them in number and power of their psychic powers, because 100% of Grey Knights are psykers. Only maybe 5% of Thousand Sons are psykers.
Again, you're trying to argue quantity over quality. You aren't bringing 100% of the legion to bear. You're bringing a company. Again, like I said, 100 white belts does not equal a Chuck Norris.
They're still just a chapter of Chaos Space Marines who have more than typical number of psykers. But Grey Knights still should beat the pants off of them in number and power of their psychic powers, because 100% of Grey Knights are psykers. Only maybe 5% of Thousand Sons are psykers.
And this while true is still totally irrelevant to the core gameplay problem that our smite is too weak. Cherry picking one chaos space marines unit as proof that GK psykers are strong is nonsense.
Forget spamming powers. These people are talking about each unit being able to cast a full powered Smite. Could you imagine that? How many smites would you fit into an 1850 list? 6? 10?
Primaris psykers can net you 10 papa-smites. And that's something doable in a two detachment, 1850 point list. Wouldn't even be a quarter of the points.
That's because they are the new shiny marines and they need to sell. All this bitching about not being equal. Imagine being a 300 point troops unit and still ONLY getting smite-lite and NO second power.
No, primaris psykers are NOT marines, they're Astra Militarum. They're like 40 points.
Imagine a 250 point infantry unit with 1 cast that IS smite lite. That's grey knights.
272 point infantry unit with 1 cast that IS smite lite. That's Thousand Sons. You at least get a second power for more options. Oh and all your weapons are force right?
Call me when power armor can reliably make it into melee, then we'll talk about how our force weapons are strong, on our 1 base attack models. Anyway, this is digressing.
Chaos Space Marines are ranked much higher than GK. You simply have WAY more tools.
yeah, because you're comparing one legion to an entire faction. That would be like comparing Thousand Sons to the entirety of the Space Marines codex.... Your 1 base attack doing d3 wounds at -2 or -3 ap is better than our 1 base attack doing 1 damage at -0.
xeen wrote: Just for comparison, a 10 man strike squad is 210 points. A 10 man Rubric Squad is 225. So 15 more points. The strike squad has double the shots. Now the Rubrics have the -2AP (don't call it rend, it is not called that in 40k). Personally I would take the double shots over the -2AP any day, but lets call it a wash. Both squads can cast baby smite. I don't have the codex, but I am guessing Grey Knights smite is slightly worse for some reason now. So small advantage to Rubrics. However, we are 1 move point slower, can't teleport on turn one (that is huge by the way), we only have one force weapon, while your whole squad has them, and your squad gets to cast a regular power, which includes the ability to teleport again all at +1 to powers! We have the all is dust rule, and the 5++, both of which are good for survivablity, but I don't think compete with the ability to teleport, and have all force weapons.
Although I will say that your HQs not getting real smite is a total slap in the face, especially with the rule of one, so I would be pretty pissed about that too.
Let's not forget another huge advantage. Having access to literally anything that has the Imperial keyword and their 150 codexes.
Martel732 wrote: I don't know the details, but I'm willing to bet GK have all the problems elite infantry has in this game in spades.
Pretty much.
The core problem is we pay for a lot of tools (deep strike, psyker) that really we cannot use. Our cheapest troop choice is 21 points per model. You can't even make a Grey Knights Brigade under 2000 points unless you start bringing absolute trash like multiple units of servitors, and heavy weapons squads with no heavy weapons.
We pay an insane price for what we have.
Asking for our smite to be better than it is, truly is not an unfair ask, regardless of the cost of 1 random thousand sons unit looked at in a vacuum.
Martel732 wrote: I don't know the details, but I'm willing to bet GK have all the problems elite infantry has in this game in spades.
Except a couple things:
1: They aren't elite. They are troops. And elite. And fast attack.
2: They can teleport turn 1 and every turn thereafter.
Are you for real? We can cast Gate of Infinity once per turn. That's 1 unit moving. Once we deep strike we're foot slogging. My current list has only 1 model deep striking, because transports are better.
Backspacehacker wrote: I'm gonna be real honest here, this entire thread reads like when the rip tide got needed and all the tau players cried. Sorry your powers are not over powered anymore?
First off, you'll have to prove that they were overpowered last edition. Psychic powers were just the one thing Grey Knights were actually strong at doing.
Second, even if they were OP. Thats no excuse for nerfing them below the power curve. If you just disallowed targeting the same friendly unit with the same power it would be perfectly fine.
Grey Knights still have all the strengths of space marines in general, along with some unique units and options of their own, which puts them well ahead of the curve compared to a lot of the other army choices out there. Their current psychic abilities are also better than most other armies, in fact I think only Eldar (and maybe Daemons?) can rival them (which is as it should be).
I did just re-read the Grey Knights powers list though, and you forgot a few things.
1) Your normal Smite is a bit weaker than usual (except against Demons), but your Purifiers have a short range heavy flamer version that *always* does D6 Mortal Wounds. Nothing to be sneezed at.
2) The best psychic power that Orks get access to is Da Jump. You also get access to it, except your version is better. And it's not even your best power. You have a middling-strength power, that is better than everything that Orks get access to. And you're complaining. AdMech don't have access to ANY powers, not even smite, without taking allies (which is a much bigger points tax than grey knights have to deal with).
3) Hammerhand and Sanctuary are both amazing powers. Even if these two were the ONLY powers you had access to, you would still have a psychic school better than most other armies.
4) You can shoot around corners, through buildings, and generally magic bullet your way into the deepest fox-holes, and murder people who NO LONGER GET COVER SAVES from your attacks.
So if you had your way, and could cast spells as often as you wanted, then every model in your army would have -
5++ armour save, or +1 to an existing invulnerable save.
+1 to all To Wound rolls in melee, letting you murder carnifexes / land raiders / Baneblades on a 5+.
The ability to shoot anyone within range, even if they are behind a wall, for full damage with no cover saves allowed.
The ability to instantly teleport to any location on the board. And still advance/charge/shoot. You can cast this on LAND RAIDERS. You can just plop it down right next to your enemy and unleash flaming rapid fire hell on them. For free. And then next turn, pick it up and move it anywhere else. Your whole army would just pop in and out like gophers, totally uncatchable by any pure melee army. And even if they did catch you, you'd get 5++ or better saves, and be able to kill their best fighters on (probably) a 3+ .
This is my quick and dirty interpretation of the rules, so I may be mistaken, but at first blush your psychic powers seem good, useful, and fun. I'm tempted to trade in my Orks for grey knights, just because you get a better version of Da Jump.
BUT if you had your way, and could cast multiple powers multiple times, the game would be hideously, hideously broken.
Martel732 wrote: I don't know the details, but I'm willing to bet GK have all the problems elite infantry has in this game in spades.
Pretty much.
The core problem is we pay for a lot of tools (deep strike, psyker) that really we cannot use. Our cheapest troop choice is 21 points per model. You can't even make a Grey Knights Brigade under 2000 points unless you start bringing absolute trash like multiple units of servitors, and heavy weapons squads with no heavy weapons.
We pay an insane price for what we have.
Asking for our smite to be better than it is, truly is not an unfair ask, regardless of the cost of 1 random thousand sons unit looked at in a vacuum.
Really? because to make a brigade we have to take cultists or brimstones. Both of which are worse than standard guardsmen. And it's not just our Rubric troops. It's also our Terminators. Our basic troop is 20. Yes our defenses are better, but your offense is better. And you have a second power. You're an elite army. You're going to pay through the nose to play. Welcome to our world. Our cheapest brigade, and that's taking Chaos spawn by the way, and forgefiends, is 2268.
I don't really see that a GK army would be overpowered with full-strength Smite. They're not great as-is even though they've got a codex with stratagems and warlord traits and all that. Aside from a single Dreadknight that you buff with Sanctuary, all their stuff feels too expensive for what you're getting.
I just have a very hard time justifying more than maybe a single GM in NDK and a handful of Strike Squads. At that point why would I bring more GKs instead of just bringing a detachment of Sisters or Guard? Maybe you fill out a battalion or use a spearhead instead but that's it.
This is the big problem with psychic focus -- you're encouraged to work around it by bringing allies, but lots of people don't really want to bring allies. They want to field a GK army, or a Thousand Sons army, or whatever. My little 600 point patrol detachment of GKs is handing out a boosted invulnerable save to all of its dreadknights and is casting Hammerhand and Astral Aim on two-thirds of its regular troops. What's more, all of my GKs can deep strike -- I don't have to have any of them walk, where they're much less effective.
With the points I save by not bringing more GKs who would do much less than the ones I already have, I can easily bring an allied brigade and more, and this gives me enough CP so that most of my GKs are shooting at +1S and -1AP for the first two turns, and I can easily afford to buff the dreadknight's save to a 2++. Having real Smite would at least give me a reason to take more GKs, while not buffing the actually-best way to use GKs currently, since I'd still want to use Sanctuary and Hammerhand and maybe Vortex.
Are you for real? We can cast Gate of Infinity once per turn. That's 1 unit moving. Once we deep strike we're foot slogging. My current list has only 1 model deep striking, because transports are better.
Yeah, I'm quite for real. You deep strike once per turn? We walk 5". oh wait, we can Warp Time. Ok, we can walk another 5".
I agree that Psychic Focus as written is fine, and removing it would make the game, and the psychic phase, totally broken.
But we're not "space marines +1," if you look at the rankings we're actually "space marines -1," fact of the matter is you can make a more competitive space marines army with 0 Grey Knights, than you can with an army including Grey Knights.
And that's because of how force multipliers work in 8th edition. You are rewarded for keeping faction keywords together, so smorgasbording GK into DA would be incredibly unwise and inefficient.
If we accept that Grey Knights should stand on their own as their own army, they could use a boost, and i think smite should be that boost.
You're glossing over that casting a power is not guaranteed. And if you fail to manifest the power, that is your one chance that turn, weather it's successful, fails, or gets denied. It seems only fair, given that each time you cast a power there is a 5.5% chance of suffering D3 mortal wounds and you paid good points for these powers, you should be allowed to cast multiple times.
Thank you, a million times this. it's something present in ETC lists.
Well, and if you wanted to go TOTALLY silly, you could include the 15 point baby smites from Astropaths. You can max out the detachments and get a cool 9 of those. 135 points. We're up to 535 now, and we have 10 full smites and 9 baby smites, all on characters.
Crap, you're right. That's what I get for not using battlescribe. You could drop an astropath then to fit it into 1850. It'd still work for 2000 though. I genuinely cannot even wrap my head around how effective (or not) of a list it would be.
I suppose at 2000 you could add a couple transports to help all the characters along. Even otherwise, characters alone on foot, that's still 19 characters that could only be shot one at a time. That's gotta be SUPER annoying.
Dunno if this has been mentioned in the 4 or so pages of "who is the worst?" contest, but I have an idea that might be a fix:
For T-Sons, allow them to swap out a single spell for Smite, which can be cast with no limits (well, the 1-per-army limit anyways). As a consequence, the entire detachment loses out on the ability to use Smite completely in exchange for one spell chosen by the player. This is to represent how T-Sons are sorcerors to a fault, maybe mastering a single spell that they can cast with expertise over all others, but losing out on the "basics". If multiple detachments are used to get different spells, it represent different detachments being different "covens" of sorcerors specializing in different things.
For GKs: Still allowed to use Smite, but individual, non-character squads lose it. Instead, each individual squad can cast their specialist spell once each (as in, two squads with the same spell can both cast it in the same turn, but only once per squad). This is to represent how the GKs are a disciplined army of psykers, trained to channel their powers in a different way than other psykers and only really "cut loose" after they have made a name for themselves.
I was a big fan of warp charges. I would have preferred keeping that and preventing psykers from sharing points. Powers that are still too strong could get a one use per player turn on a case by case basis. Problem solved right? Maybe give ties for deny to the defender.
malcontent999 wrote: I was a big fan of warp charges. I would have preferred keeping that and preventing psykers from sharing points. Powers that are still too strong could get a one use per player turn on a case by case basis. Problem solved right? Maybe give ties for deny to the defender.
Again Monday night quarterbacking here, how it should have happened was every psyker knows force which caused say 3 wounds. Kept all the old powers, made focused witch fire spells do mortal wounds, have the current casting system, turned warp charge 1 powers into casting value 6, 2 charge into casting value 8 and 3 charge into casting value 10. Or make them value of 8 and tone them back.
The one complaint I have about powers this edition is they are super boring, there is nothing really cool
The warp charge system made it pretty difficult to get any use out of just 1 psyker. I wouldn't go with that system again.
I like the streamlined fast psychic phase.
Smite, as a power, doesn't feel balanced though, faction to faction. Grey Knights may as well not have smite. If i could drop smite from my squads and get points back i would do it in a heart beat.
Marmatag wrote: The warp charge system made it pretty difficult to get any use out of just 1 psyker. I wouldn't go with that system again.
I like the streamlined fast psychic phase.
Smite, as a power, doesn't feel balanced though, faction to faction. Grey Knights may as well not have smite. If i could drop smite from my squads and get points back i would do it in a heart beat.
Problem with smite as the default power was it gave a way to wound anything with out any save, so you get issues like the blue horror lists
Marmatag wrote: The warp charge system made it pretty difficult to get any use out of just 1 psyker. I wouldn't go with that system again.
I like the streamlined fast psychic phase.
How do warp charges make 1 psykers difficult to use? I imagine if we stuck with charges but prevented sharing, everyone would get enough per psyker to cast a power or 2 per player turn.
I'm displeased with all the streamlining. It just becomes samey and boring for me.
Marmatag wrote: The warp charge system made it pretty difficult to get any use out of just 1 psyker. I wouldn't go with that system again.
I like the streamlined fast psychic phase.
How do warp charges make 1 psykers difficult to use? I imagine if we stuck with charges but prevented sharing, everyone would get enough per psyker to cast a power or 2 per player turn.
I'm displeased with all the streamlining. It just becomes samey and boring for me.
Okay, if you have 1 librarian in your army, and I have an army full of Daemons, you'll get what, 2 warp charges, and i'll have like 30. When you try to cast your 1 power, i'll throw 30 dice at you and deny offhand.
Marmatag wrote: The warp charge system made it pretty difficult to get any use out of just 1 psyker. I wouldn't go with that system again.
I like the streamlined fast psychic phase.
How do warp charges make 1 psykers difficult to use? I imagine if we stuck with charges but prevented sharing, everyone would get enough per psyker to cast a power or 2 per player turn.
I'm displeased with all the streamlining. It just becomes samey and boring for me.
Wasn't the issue because you only had one psyker worth of charges, vs an opponent who was likely to have more than that, and so you were much more likely to have your power denied? Have to say it's been a long time since I played that edition, but I vaguely remember if you're only going to bring one psyker you might as well bring none and save the points.
Marmatag wrote: The warp charge system made it pretty difficult to get any use out of just 1 psyker. I wouldn't go with that system again.
I like the streamlined fast psychic phase.
How do warp charges make 1 psykers difficult to use? I imagine if we stuck with charges but prevented sharing, everyone would get enough per psyker to cast a power or 2 per player turn.
I'm displeased with all the streamlining. It just becomes samey and boring for me.
Remove the D6 bonus WC, make it 1+MLWC per Psyker, then add the option to Push. Pushing gives a "free die" for any power (though you must spend at least one WC as normal), but if that die matches any of the other dice used, you suffer Perils.
Marmatag wrote: The warp charge system made it pretty difficult to get any use out of just 1 psyker. I wouldn't go with that system again.
I like the streamlined fast psychic phase.
How do warp charges make 1 psykers difficult to use? I imagine if we stuck with charges but prevented sharing, everyone would get enough per psyker to cast a power or 2 per player turn.
I'm displeased with all the streamlining. It just becomes samey and boring for me.
Okay, if you have 1 librarian in your army, and I have an army full of Daemons, you'll get what, 2 warp charges, and i'll have like 30. When you try to cast your 1 power, i'll throw 30 dice at you and deny offhand.
We're talking rebalance, so why would daemons get 30? Plus, if charges are restricted per psykers, no one's throwing all their charges at once anyway.
Marmatag wrote: The warp charge system made it pretty difficult to get any use out of just 1 psyker. I wouldn't go with that system again.
I like the streamlined fast psychic phase.
How do warp charges make 1 psykers difficult to use? I imagine if we stuck with charges but prevented sharing, everyone would get enough per psyker to cast a power or 2 per player turn.
I'm displeased with all the streamlining. It just becomes samey and boring for me.
Wasn't the issue because you only had one psyker worth of charges, vs an opponent who was likely to have more than that, and so you were much more likely to have your power denied? Have to say it's been a long time since I played that edition, but I vaguely remember if you're only going to bring one psyker you might as well bring none and save the points.
True, but that was an issue because of pooling charges. If charges couldn't be pooled it wouldn't be as easy to swamp an opponent with dice.
There were other issues of course. One of the funniest side effects of 7th was that since the Psychic Phase came before the mlvement phase, and Running/Turbo was in the shooting phase, Biker Psykers were hilariously mobile, almost akin to Psychic Crisis Suits. Move 12, Shriek, Turbo 12. On one hand, this was cool because it allowed for other armies to do what used to exclusively be a Tau or Eldar trick. On the other hand, it led to stuff like fly-by Summoning and Gaze of Magnus.
Such tricks should be allowed, provided the game has proper interrupt mechanisms.
The previous system was better because it scaled. They just should have limited the number of dice you could throw at a single power. GWs main problem is they rarely try to refine a good mechanic. They see that it's not great as is, so instead of trying to fix it they just go with a different mechanic entirely.
They should have kept the previous warp charge system, but added a stipulation that you cannot throw more than 6 dice to cast a power.
No, the previous system was NOT better. Grey Knights were awful in the psychic phase and got wrecked by Daemons, the army they were designed to fight. You think we peril a lot in this edition? Perils of the warp was a super common thing for us in 7th.
Just because there is a balance issue with Grey Knights being underpowered doesn't mean the whole system has to be redesigned. 7th edition psychic phase was so much worse than what we have now. Did anyone else here play Grey Knights in 7th? Good luck casting 6 powers in a turn. We can reliably do this in 8th edition.
The challenge here is that our psychic units pay for powers they cannot use - a fair complaint - and that smite is baked into the cost of our models, and our smite is generally not worth the risk. You have a squad of incinerators in flamer range of their target. Do you risk the perils to try and cause 1 mortal wound? You could lose 3 flamers, or 3d6 hits, to get 1 mortal wound. Worth it?
Wow, the complaining of the spoiled. GK might be underpowered, but it's not because of your psychic phase. There are armies who are far off worse than you and you're asking for buffs.
You want no psychic focus? Fine, but now you perils on any doubles, before rerolls are applied, perils instantly kill the casting unit and still does the mortal wound explosion.
There, psychic is fair again now.
OR, less satirically, make the unique powers terrible. Immune to battle shock, automatically runs at least 4 inches, +1 to hit against units with supersonic in the shooting phase, +1 to cast for another nearby unit, -1 bravery to an enemy within 18", Heal 1 wound on a friendly model but perils on any doubles. There, there's your no psychic focus power tree.
You don't get to spam unlimited mortal wound+gain invul saves+Strength forever. sorry.
Marmatag wrote: No, the previous system was NOT better. Grey Knights were awful in the psychic phase and got wrecked by Daemons, the army they were designed to fight. You think we peril a lot in this edition? Perils of the warp was a super common thing for us in 7th.
Just because there is a balance issue with Grey Knights being underpowered doesn't mean the whole system has to be redesigned. 7th edition psychic phase was so much worse than what we have now. Did anyone else here play Grey Knights in 7th? Good luck casting 6 powers in a turn. We can reliably do this in 8th edition.
The challenge here is that our psychic units pay for powers they cannot use - a fair complaint - and that smite is baked into the cost of our models, and our smite is generally not worth the risk. You have a squad of incinerators in flamer range of their target. Do you risk the perils to try and cause 1 mortal wound? You could lose 3 flamers, or 3d6 hits, to get 1 mortal wound. Worth it?
This is really the main problem with psychic armies right now, not the inability to cast the same spell more than once. I rarely use the smite for my aspiring sorcerer for this reason. Why risk a perils for what is probably going to be 1 mortal wound? And with Thousand Sons, if the sorcerer dies, it does more moral wounds, so that is potentially 6 mortal wounds on a perils. Unless 1 wound is going to finish a unit, or lower it on the damage chart, I never use the baby smite. However, I have gotten four full sorcerers to smite one unit and boy is it deadly. I think I did 8 mortal wounds to a vehicle. Basically killed it. So I don't think giving unit psychics full smite would be balanced.
Personally I think all psychic units (aka non-HQ or lords of war) should use the old horror rule. Smite, but on 1D6 (not reduced to1). And even if you gave Grey Knights and Thousand Sons +1, smite would still fail 50% of the time, and you would never get the D6 mortal wounds. It would also be way easier to deny. It would allow for a unit of psychics to be useful, but not over the top. Also it would make it so you could use it, as there would not be perils.
Marmatag wrote: No, the previous system was NOT better. Grey Knights were awful in the psychic phase and got wrecked by Daemons, the army they were designed to fight. You think we peril a lot in this edition? Perils of the warp was a super common thing for us in 7th.
The real issues with Grey Knights are holdovers from 5th, with a general "early 7e nerfbat" (ironically at a time when people said that GW was finally bringing back balance to 40k). Razorbacks and other vehicles losing Psychic Pilot was to be expected, but removing Psybolt Ammo hurt. As powerful as the Psyfleman was in 5th, it became relatively weaker in 6th because of flyers/hullpoints, and 7th only gradually nerfed flyers in turn. Thus, GK were left as an army without truly functional long-ranged anti-tank/anti-monster capabilities.
Add the general internal imbalancing that they went through, and you had an army that functionally became Terminators&Dreadknights, Final Destination. Purifiers were a decent all-arounder unit since they were ML 2 with guaranteed Cleansing Flame, so they could be one part fire support, one part crowd control, one part Psy battery, but their lack of DS really hurt, and they didn't synergize well with the rest of the GK army. I always imagined they would have comedic potential with a Librarian Dread ally build, but ah well.
Strike Squad: 105 points. 5 models
- 5 different melee weapons to choose from
- 3 different ranged weapons to choose from
- 2 powers, one of which you get to choose
- 2 ranged shots up to 24", 4 at 12" or less
- 3+ save
- bigger codex and far more access via <Imperial>
- 6" movement
Rubric Squad: 125 points. 5 models
- 0 melee weapons
- 2 ranged weapons (3 if you include the icon)
- 1 power, smite-lite
- 5" movement
- 3+, 5++, All is dust
- -2 AP bolter. 1 shot at 24 and 2 at 12"
Your shooting is arguably better, your ability to move are better, your psychic is better, your melee is better, your options in general are better. Your points are cheaper.
Martel732 wrote: "Our cheapest troop choice is 21 points per model."
Is that for T4, W1, 3+ ?
Yep - would you believe it the best unit in our codex as well? Except for the infamous grey knight grand master in a dread-knight (yeah - this thing is a beast).
Automatically Appended Next Post:
nintura wrote: Strike Squad: 105 points. 5 models
- 5 different melee weapons to choose from
- 3 different ranged weapons to choose from
- 2 powers, one of which you get to choose
- 2 ranged shots up to 24", 4 at 12" or less
- 3+ save
- bigger codex and far more access via <Imperial>
- 6" movement
Rubric Squad: 125 points. 5 models
- 0 melee weapons
- 2 ranged weapons (3 if you include the icon)
- 1 power, smite-lite
- 5" movement
- 3+, 5++, All is dust
- -2 AP bolter. 1 shot at 24 and 2 at 12"
Your shooting is arguably better, your ability to move are better, your psychic is better, your melee is better, your options in general are better. Your points are cheaper.
Our defense is better. Our models look cooler.
Don't they have some ability to improve their armor save more when in cover or something?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
nintura wrote: Strike Squad: 105 points. 5 models
- 5 different melee weapons to choose from
- 3 different ranged weapons to choose from
- 2 powers, one of which you get to choose
- 2 ranged shots up to 24", 4 at 12" or less
- 3+ save
- bigger codex and far more access via <Imperial>
- 6" movement
Rubric Squad: 125 points. 5 models
- 0 melee weapons
- 2 ranged weapons (3 if you include the icon)
- 1 power, smite-lite
- 5" movement
- 3+, 5++, All is dust
- -2 AP bolter. 1 shot at 24 and 2 at 12"
Your shooting is arguably better, your ability to move are better, your psychic is better, your melee is better, your options in general are better. Your points are cheaper.
Our defense is better. Our models look cooler.
You are comparing the star of the GK codex to a very average unit for Thousand sons. The guy magnus...hes pretty good isnt he? Gk players aren't complaining about strike squads. Rather the fact that our smite is terrible - most people would be glad to see the strike squad marine nerfed if we could actually use our powers instead of launching 12 inch baby smites.
To calrify the rubric comparison. They also get a +1 to their save if the weapon only causes 1 damage, meaning bolt guns they get a 2 plus and even bolt rilfes with a -1 still get a 3+
On top of that rubrics have a lot more synergy and MUCH better shooting.
I think I'd be ok with GKs getting full powered smite, but only if a squad size has a certain amount of models, say, more than 5. Maybe large units like naughs and knights getting a flat 2.
But hell, as it is, on Wednesday I lost a battlewagon from full health to nothing but GK smite and storm bolters. I kind of feel like GK smite spam is pretty decent as-is.
But that may be partly due to the fact that for some damnfool reason, battlewagons are exactly as durable v. storm bolters as warbikers.
And also the fact that for a different damnfool reason, storm bolters essentially became twin-linked now for free, while twin linked shootas went from 2 to 4. Balance!
I still the fairest solution is to make it so on a score of 10+ the smite goes from 1 damage to D3 damage. And against Daemons, it's a flat 3 damage regardless. We should also get the 18" range that everyone else does.
This seems much better to me.
Psychic Focus is not the problem. Our core discipline is strong.
You are comparing the star of the GK codex to a very average unit for Thousand sons. The guy magnus...hes pretty good isnt he? Gk players aren't complaining about strike squads. Rather the fact that our smite is terrible - most people would be glad to see the strike squad marine nerfed if we could actually use our powers instead of launching 12 inch baby smites.
No, they don't improve their save any more in cover than anyone else does. You're thinking of All is Dust. IF they are hit by a weapon that does 1 damage in it's profile, they get a +1 save. They are amazing against small arms fire, yes.
And you want to compare a super heavy vs a troops? I was comparing Troops vs troops since they are most alike. 5 models to 5. Both with 1 psyker. ANY of your units are better than our Rubrics. We both have smite lite, yet you still get a second power. You're still cheaper.
Backspacehacker wrote: To calrify the rubric comparison. They also get a +1 to their save if the weapon only causes 1 damage, meaning bolt guns they get a 2 plus and even bolt rilfes with a -1 still get a 3+
On top of that rubrics have a lot more synergy and MUCH better shooting.
Thanks for clarifying. So they have a 2+ save effectively vs anything that does 1 damage. So if they are in cover - assault cannons and heavy bolters and bolt rifles and auto cannons...they have a 2 plus save. More that justifies the cost difference. That's a pretty big feature to leave out in comparison.
does this also affect their invo save? or just armor save?
Backspacehacker wrote: To calrify the rubric comparison. They also get a +1 to their save if the weapon only causes 1 damage, meaning bolt guns they get a 2 plus and even bolt rilfes with a -1 still get a 3+
On top of that rubrics have a lot more synergy and MUCH better shooting.
Not necessarily. Yes, we get -2 ap. However you get twice as many shots meaning the potential for twice the amount of kills. You're also more mobile with more options meaning you can possibly stay out of range and shoot things down. Rubrics are extremely slow.
Backspacehacker wrote: To calrify the rubric comparison. They also get a +1 to their save if the weapon only causes 1 damage, meaning bolt guns they get a 2 plus and even bolt rilfes with a -1 still get a 3+
On top of that rubrics have a lot more synergy and MUCH better shooting.
Thanks for clarifying. So they have a 2+ save effectively vs anything that does 1 damage. So if they are in cover - assault cannons and heavy bolters and bolt rifles and auto cannons...they have a 2 plus save. More that justifies the cost difference. That's a pretty big feature to leave out in comparison.
You realize you can get in cover too right? And again, read what I said. I did include it. I believe I said we are better defensively as well? However your killing power and utility is leagues ahead.
To answer your invuln question, yes it does affect it. But how many weapons will give you a -4 and only do 1 damage?
Backspacehacker wrote: To calrify the rubric comparison. They also get a +1 to their save if the weapon only causes 1 damage, meaning bolt guns they get a 2 plus and even bolt rilfes with a -1 still get a 3+
On top of that rubrics have a lot more synergy and MUCH better shooting.
Not necessarily. Yes, we get -2 ap. However you get twice as many shots meaning the potential for twice the amount of kills. You're also more mobile with more options meaning you can possibly stay out of range and shoot things down. Rubrics are extremely slow.
Backspacehacker wrote: To calrify the rubric comparison. They also get a +1 to their save if the weapon only causes 1 damage, meaning bolt guns they get a 2 plus and even bolt rilfes with a -1 still get a 3+
On top of that rubrics have a lot more synergy and MUCH better shooting.
Thanks for clarifying. So they have a 2+ save effectively vs anything that does 1 damage. So if they are in cover - assault cannons and heavy bolters and bolt rifles and auto cannons...they have a 2 plus save. More that justifies the cost difference. That's a pretty big feature to leave out in comparison.
You realize you can get in cover too right? And again, read what I said. I did include it.
They have a 1+ save in cover is all I'm saying. Didn't see where you included this talent. Seems fair between the two too me to be honest. Except I feel in general that the ability to deep-strike for free is somewhat problematic. Balanced out somewhat that greyknight have no access to big guns.
Backspacehacker wrote: To calrify the rubric comparison. They also get a +1 to their save if the weapon only causes 1 damage, meaning bolt guns they get a 2 plus and even bolt rilfes with a -1 still get a 3+
On top of that rubrics have a lot more synergy and MUCH better shooting.
Not necessarily. Yes, we get -2 ap. However you get twice as many shots meaning the potential for twice the amount of kills. You're also more mobile with more options meaning you can possibly stay out of range and shoot things down. Rubrics are extremely slow.
Backspacehacker wrote: To calrify the rubric comparison. They also get a +1 to their save if the weapon only causes 1 damage, meaning bolt guns they get a 2 plus and even bolt rilfes with a -1 still get a 3+
On top of that rubrics have a lot more synergy and MUCH better shooting.
Thanks for clarifying. So they have a 2+ save effectively vs anything that does 1 damage. So if they are in cover - assault cannons and heavy bolters and bolt rifles and auto cannons...they have a 2 plus save. More that justifies the cost difference. That's a pretty big feature to leave out in comparison.
You realize you can get in cover too right? And again, read what I said. I did include it.
They have a 1+ save in cover is all I'm saying. Didn't see where you included this talent. Seems fair between the two too me to be honest. Except I feel in general that the ability to deep-strike for free is somewhat problematic. Balanced out somewhat that greyknight have no access to big guns.
That's not a talent? Everyone gets a +1 save in cover.... and our big guns is a heavy 4 -3 1 damage. For 35 or 40 points requiring a squad of 10 (272 point squad now)
Thousand Sons as an army have much better access to shooting. The strike squad is probably the most efficient Grey Knights shooting infantry in the entire codex.
Let that sink in... You're comparing Rubrics to one of our most efficient shooting options in the entire codex, and even then, they're basically on PAR with Rubric shooting *assuming no heavy weapons,* because GK "heavy weapons" are really sub par. And the second we take them, we lose out on precious melee attacks.
There's a reason most people run strike squads as Falchions + Storm Bolters with no specials.
When you start firing the strength 8+ weaponry at range with your models, take a pause and remember that outside of our limited vehicle access, we have *none of this.*
Marmatag wrote: I still the fairest solution is to make it so on a score of 10+ the smite goes from 1 damage to D3 damage. And against Daemons, it's a flat 3 damage regardless. We should also get the 18" range that everyone else does.
This seems much better to me.
I'd be on board with that. It does seem unfair that GK's still risk perils on double 6s, but get no additional benefit to smite for rolling high.
Marmatag wrote: I still the fairest solution is to make it so on a score of 10+ the smite goes from 1 damage to D3 damage. And against Daemons, it's a flat 3 damage regardless. We should also get the 18" range that everyone else does.
This seems much better to me.
I'd be on board with that. It does seem unfair that GK's still risk perils on double 6s, but get no additional benefit to smite for rolling high.
Thanks. I don't think i'm asking for the world here. I'm fine with double 6s being a perils. Just give me a *reason* to risk casting smite.
Marmatag wrote: Thousand Sons as an army have much better access to shooting. The strike squad is probably the most efficient Grey Knights shooting infantry in the entire codex.
Let that sink in... You're comparing Rubrics to one of our most efficient shooting options in the entire codex, and even then, they're basically on PAR with Rubric shooting *assuming no heavy weapons,* because GK "heavy weapons" are really sub par. And the second we take them, we lose out on precious melee attacks.
There's a reason most people run strike squads as Falchions + Storm Bolters with no specials.
When you start firing the strength 8+ weaponry at range with your models, take a pause and remember that outside of our limited vehicle access, we have *none of this.*
You're not a shooting army.. you have storm bolters. Your strength lies in melee where you get -3 ap and d3 damage or whatever weapon you decide at the time. Let that sink in. You're using your army wrong. And uh, what S8 weaponry is that? Because we only have 1, and that's on our terminators. Where are you getting your information from
For the record I play Grey Knights and I'm fine with them (and psychic powers) as-is. In fact I'm pretty enthused about them (not normal for me because Spess Mahreens are my least favourite part of the setting) and if they release a Start Collecting box with a Dreadknight I'd be all over that.
Sim-Life wrote: For the record I play Grey Knights and I'm fine with them (and psychic powers) as-is. In fact I'm pretty enthused about them (not normal for me because Spess Mahreens are my least favourite part of the setting) and if they release a Start Collecting box with a Dreadknight I'd be all over that.
Yeah - I'm willing to let the pot simmer here, with the new codex.
Psybolt/Psychic ammunition, new powers, new units... Let's see where it goes.
This thread is definitely an overreaction. Psychic focus is critical to game balance.
As far as scaling goes, if you're playing over 2000 points, just negotiate the power usage with your opponent. Maybe at 4000 points you can cast each power twice, but only once per model/unit.
Sim-Life wrote: For the record I play Grey Knights and I'm fine with them (and psychic powers) as-is. In fact I'm pretty enthused about them (not normal for me because Spess Mahreens are my least favourite part of the setting) and if they release a Start Collecting box with a Dreadknight I'd be all over that.
This thread is definitely an overreaction. Psychic focus is critical to game balance.
Properly designed powers are. Psychic focus is a slapdash patch that gives the illusion of balance. By that logic, Wraithknights were balanced for ITC, because you could only take one Lord of War. Or Forgeworld was balanced for Nova because you couldn't duplicare FW units...meaning you only used it for a Skatach Wraithknight!
Sim-Life wrote: For the record I play Grey Knights and I'm fine with them (and psychic powers) as-is. In fact I'm pretty enthused about them (not normal for me because Spess Mahreens are my least favourite part of the setting) and if they release a Start Collecting box with a Dreadknight I'd be all over that.
This thread is definitely an overreaction. Psychic focus is critical to game balance.
Properly designed powers are. Psychic focus is a slapdash patch that gives the illusion of balance.
They are properly designed under the assumption they're cast once per turn.
Sim-Life wrote: For the record I play Grey Knights and I'm fine with them (and psychic powers) as-is. In fact I'm pretty enthused about them (not normal for me because Spess Mahreens are my least favourite part of the setting) and if they release a Start Collecting box with a Dreadknight I'd be all over that.
This thread is definitely an overreaction. Psychic focus is critical to game balance.
Properly designed powers are. Psychic focus is a slapdash patch that gives the illusion of balance.
They are properly designed under the assumption they're cast once per turn.
And Guard and Sisters are properly designed under the assumption you can repeat-use their non-psychic equivalent powers. Gee, I wonder which army is currently winning the excuse that are 8e tournaments...hint, it's not Grey Knights.
Sim-Life wrote: For the record I play Grey Knights and I'm fine with them (and psychic powers) as-is. In fact I'm pretty enthused about them (not normal for me because Spess Mahreens are my least favourite part of the setting) and if they release a Start Collecting box with a Dreadknight I'd be all over that.
This thread is definitely an overreaction. Psychic focus is critical to game balance.
Properly designed powers are. Psychic focus is a slapdash patch that gives the illusion of balance.
They are properly designed under the assumption they're cast once per turn.
And Guard and Sisters are properly designed under the assumption you can repeat-use their non-psychic equivalent powers. Gee, I wonder which army is currently winning the excuse that are 8e tournaments...hint, it's not Grey Knights.
Astra Militarum won 4 places in the top 10 in that last big tournie. I couldn't find lists though. The first place guy had nearly perfect games.
Sim-Life wrote: For the record I play Grey Knights and I'm fine with them (and psychic powers) as-is. In fact I'm pretty enthused about them (not normal for me because Spess Mahreens are my least favourite part of the setting) and if they release a Start Collecting box with a Dreadknight I'd be all over that.
This thread is definitely an overreaction. Psychic focus is critical to game balance.
Properly designed powers are. Psychic focus is a slapdash patch that gives the illusion of balance.
They are properly designed under the assumption they're cast once per turn.
And Guard and Sisters are properly designed under the assumption you can repeat-use their non-psychic equivalent powers. Gee, I wonder which army is currently winning the excuse that are 8e tournaments...hint, it's not Grey Knights.
Did you just accuse Sisters of being over-powered?
Sim-Life wrote: For the record I play Grey Knights and I'm fine with them (and psychic powers) as-is. In fact I'm pretty enthused about them (not normal for me because Spess Mahreens are my least favourite part of the setting) and if they release a Start Collecting box with a Dreadknight I'd be all over that.
This thread is definitely an overreaction. Psychic focus is critical to game balance.
Properly designed powers are. Psychic focus is a slapdash patch that gives the illusion of balance.
They are properly designed under the assumption they're cast once per turn.
And Guard and Sisters are properly designed under the assumption you can repeat-use their non-psychic equivalent powers. Gee, I wonder which army is currently winning the excuse that are 8e tournaments...hint, it's not Grey Knights.
Did you just accuse Sisters of being over-powered?
No. Just that it's disingenious to say that saying "but you can only attempt to use it once per turn" is a valid design strategy in a scalable game, despite GW breaking their own rule on the matter.
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nintura 736693 9560587 wrote:Astra Militarum won 4 places in the top 10 in that last big tournie. I couldn't find lists though. The first place guy had nearly perfect games.
First place was Conscript spam, Stormtroopers and Basilisks. 2nd place was Conscript spam and Elysians, with Celestine showing up because why not? 3rd place was Conscript spam and Stormravens. 4th was Gun Drones and Tau Commanders. No non-commander Crisis Suits of course.
None of that has anything to do with the psychic phase... AM is out of hand because of undercosted shooting & defense, not because you can't cast warptime 5 times per turn.
And Guard and Sisters are properly designed under the assumption you can repeat-use their non-psychic equivalent powers. Gee, I wonder which army is currently winning the excuse that are 8e tournaments...hint, it's not Grey Knights.
Sisters? You mean the Acts of Faith ability they have?
They have to pay 40 points per Act of Faith, and even then they only work 50% of the time. And they don't get smite at all.
I might consider a strike squad being allowed to use a psychic power on themselves, if you increased their points cost by 40 points, and removed smite. Though you'd also have to nerf some of their psychic powers too, cos they're mostly better than the Acts of Faith.
So yeh, nerf the powers, remove smite entirely, and increase cost by 40 points (lets say +8 points per model), and it would be potentially ok.
Sim-Life wrote: For the record I play Grey Knights and I'm fine with them (and psychic powers) as-is. In fact I'm pretty enthused about them (not normal for me because Spess Mahreens are my least favourite part of the setting) and if they release a Start Collecting box with a Dreadknight I'd be all over that.
This thread is definitely an overreaction. Psychic focus is critical to game balance.
Properly designed powers are. Psychic focus is a slapdash patch that gives the illusion of balance.
They are properly designed under the assumption they're cast once per turn.
And Guard and Sisters are properly designed under the assumption you can repeat-use their non-psychic equivalent powers. Gee, I wonder which army is currently winning the excuse that are 8e tournaments...hint, it's not Grey Knights.
Did you just accuse Sisters of being over-powered?
No. Just that it's disingenious to say that saying "but you can only attempt to use it once per turn" is a valid design strategy in a scalable game, despite GW breaking their own rule on the matter.
It's also disingenious to compare Acts Of Faith to Psychic Powers.
Acts Of Faith you're looking at MAYBE 3 of them a turn. One army wide one, one from Celestine and one from a Imagifier which has a 50% chance of failure. On top of that, Sisters are already a very limited army coupled with an even more limited range of weapons. Acts Of Faith are basically the only thing making them playable and they're already an incredibly restricted army both in terms of variety of units and how often AoF can be used, even then how useful AoF are is debatable depending on whats giving them out. They also have no access to psykers within their own army (as in if you take a pure Adeptus Ministorum army) and their Deny The Witch may as well not exist.
Now IG are a completely different kettle of fish. They're a fully fleshed out army in terms of units and weapons available to them with access to proper psykers within their own army list, so I actually agree with you somewhat that order need looked at in terms of using the same one more than once a turn since they're basically "free" psychic powers that carry no chance of failure and you can get a load of orders fairly cheaply.
But in terms of how the psychic phase works, I think it's fine as is. As I said, I think GKs are fine and all those 4+ Babysmites stack up and other powers being one use is absolutely a good way to balance things because it means you have to actually THINK about when and where to use powers rather than just spamming them until they work and having contingency plans for when they don't.
No limit on Smite, so those units/characters that can manifest multiple psychic powers each time can cast Smite multiple times. Mortal wounds on a 4+ in addition to what they can do in the shooting/assault phase shouldn't be underestimated.
Means you have to think about where you want to use each of the Sanctic powers you bring, as well as with what unit and what unit it'd be used on... and precludes broken combos from springing up such as universal +1 to invuln/5++ invulns in the whole army, or the whole army Gating into your face on the first turn.
Sim-Life wrote: For the record I play Grey Knights and I'm fine with them (and psychic powers) as-is. In fact I'm pretty enthused about them (not normal for me because Spess Mahreens are my least favourite part of the setting) and if they release a Start Collecting box with a Dreadknight I'd be all over that.
This thread is definitely an overreaction. Psychic focus is critical to game balance.
Properly designed powers are. Psychic focus is a slapdash patch that gives the illusion of balance.
They are properly designed under the assumption they're cast once per turn.
And Guard and Sisters are properly designed under the assumption you can repeat-use their non-psychic equivalent powers. Gee, I wonder which army is currently winning the excuse that are 8e tournaments...hint, it's not Grey Knights.
Did you just accuse Sisters of being over-powered?
No. Just that it's disingenious to say that saying "but you can only attempt to use it once per turn" is a valid design strategy in a scalable game, despite GW breaking their own rule on the matter.
It's also disingenious to compare Acts Of Faith to Psychic Powers.
Acts Of Faith you're looking at MAYBE 3 of them a turn. One army wide one, one from Celestine and one from a Imagifier which has a 50% chance of failure. On top of that, Sisters are already a very limited army coupled with an even more limited range of weapons. Acts Of Faith are basically the only thing making them playable and they're already an incredibly restricted army both in terms of variety of units and how often AoF can be used, even then how useful AoF are is debatable depending on whats giving them out. They also have no access to psykers within their own army (as in if you take a pure Adeptus Ministorum army) and their Deny The Witch may as well not exist.
Correction: Repressors and Immolators are what have and continue to make Sisters playable. Historically, their ability to spam cheap Melta, though Stormtroopers do it better due to 8e having a dumbed down Deepstrike mechanic precluding the need for transports. "How useful they are is debatable depending on what's giving them out." You mean like Psychic Powers or Orders, hmm?
Sim-Life wrote: For the record I play Grey Knights and I'm fine with them (and psychic powers) as-is. In fact I'm pretty enthused about them (not normal for me because Spess Mahreens are my least favourite part of the setting) and if they release a Start Collecting box with a Dreadknight I'd be all over that.
This thread is definitely an overreaction. Psychic focus is critical to game balance.
Properly designed powers are. Psychic focus is a slapdash patch that gives the illusion of balance.
They are properly designed under the assumption they're cast once per turn.
And Guard and Sisters are properly designed under the assumption you can repeat-use their non-psychic equivalent powers. Gee, I wonder which army is currently winning the excuse that are 8e tournaments...hint, it's not Grey Knights.
Did you just accuse Sisters of being over-powered?
No. Just that it's disingenious to say that saying "but you can only attempt to use it once per turn" is a valid design strategy in a scalable game, despite GW breaking their own rule on the matter.
It's also disingenious to compare Acts Of Faith to Psychic Powers.
Acts Of Faith you're looking at MAYBE 3 of them a turn. One army wide one, one from Celestine and one from a Imagifier which has a 50% chance of failure. On top of that, Sisters are already a very limited army coupled with an even more limited range of weapons. Acts Of Faith are basically the only thing making them playable and they're already an incredibly restricted army both in terms of variety of units and how often AoF can be used, even then how useful AoF are is debatable depending on whats giving them out. They also have no access to psykers within their own army (as in if you take a pure Adeptus Ministorum army) and their Deny The Witch may as well not exist.
Correction: Repressors and Immolators are what have and continue to make Sisters playable. Historically, their ability to spam cheap Melta, though Stormtroopers do it better due to 8e having a dumbed down Deepstrike mechanic precluding the need for transports. "How useful they are is debatable depending on what's giving them out." You mean like Psychic Powers or Orders, hmm?
I've been getting on fine with only one or two transports.
As for the latter, I meant Imagifiers. 40pts for a 50% chance is expensive. Grey Knights babysmite is much cheaper and much more reliable.
Sim-Life wrote: For the record I play Grey Knights and I'm fine with them (and psychic powers) as-is. In fact I'm pretty enthused about them (not normal for me because Spess Mahreens are my least favourite part of the setting) and if they release a Start Collecting box with a Dreadknight I'd be all over that.
This thread is definitely an overreaction. Psychic focus is critical to game balance.
Properly designed powers are. Psychic focus is a slapdash patch that gives the illusion of balance.
They are properly designed under the assumption they're cast once per turn.
And Guard and Sisters are properly designed under the assumption you can repeat-use their non-psychic equivalent powers. Gee, I wonder which army is currently winning the excuse that are 8e tournaments...hint, it's not Grey Knights.
Yaknow, the day GK won turnaments was a sad day to 40k.
Because they are such a subset niche of an army that is hardly an army to begin with. they are a SPECIALIZED FORCE supposed to be used for ONE MISSION-take out daemons.
They are not and never supposed to have been anything else. sure you could take them as a stand-alone army, but the intention was also to have them as a small subset of a bigger army, not as your entire army.
"But they have a codex!" you say. well, as several points so did the assassins. are you going to try to claim they are an actual army?
GK are supposed to be a subset of a mixed inquisition force, or a subset of a marine force.
They are not supposed to go out and fight hordes of guardsmen and orks, swarms of nids, or even squads of marines.
They are supposed to hunt daemons, and dear god they excel at it now. if I am going to face anyone I know might pack some GK, I'd probably leave my daemons behind and avoid giving my sorcerers disks.
If you own a full army of them, kodus to you. but you should have known that they are not a full army. they never were well-rounded and the only times they were top-tier, is when they had a broken combo. with broken stuff out of the way it was obvious they would not stand on the top. just like thousand sons won't. (and that's why i mix them with tzeentch daemons, to have a proper full-sized army list with enough tools to work with)
They do however insure a daemon army would never again be dominant in the meta. because if it does-a GK army would smack it down with ease.
Quickjager wrote: Boomwolf that is the most dumb thing I have seen in this thread.
The fact is they are a faction in a game. A game should be balanced.
The fact you think otherwise is incredibly shortsighted.
Exalted. The idea that "well, that army is not a real army anyway" is basically excusing sloppy game design. Said armies should be "Turing complete" in a way, having tools to be all-comers. Look at Daemons in 5th edition as an example of how not to design an army: They had a lot of units that were all some variation of "Kill enemy infantry in melee and hope to glance vehicles to death." Fatrcrusher slayed Marines, until it came across a single Dreadnought. Or how Orks versus Land Raiders boiled down to "is Ramming a type of Tank Shock?"
I believe he means they should have remained as they were in 4th, they had a few units, but the mainstay was them being part of Inquisition who filled out the rest.
ZebioLizard2 wrote: I believe he means they should have remained as they were in 4th, they had a few units, but the mainstay was them being part of Inquisition who filled out the rest.
This. Further, judging by the Dakka stats, GK aren't that bad off. They're sitting at a 1:1 win loss ratio. Sure, they're not taking top spot at tournaments, but in a game with around 20 factions, is that really a reasonable expectation to have them all viable at the highest level of play? Blizzard spent years getting the balance right for THREE factions in Starcraft.
Guard can definitely do with some tuning down for sure with their 61% win rate and strong showing in the tournament scene. But GK look like theyre doing fine at a 50% win rate. Compare this to Deathwatch who have something like a mid 20% win rate.
I've been reading this thread for a while and it is interesting, but that one statement from Boomwolf deserved an answer. Saying an army isn't a REAL army and shouldn't be a concern balance-wise is a cop out and undermines basic gameplay and enjoyment.
Quickjager wrote: I've been reading this thread for a while and it is interesting, but that one statement from Boomwolf deserved an answer. Saying an army isn't a REAL army and shouldn't be a concern balance-wise is a cop out and undermines basic gameplay and enjoyment.
I recall in that third edition Daemonhunters book, there was a section talking about how one could justify the reason the army would be fighting things that weren't daemons, army by army.
Quickjager wrote: I've been reading this thread for a while and it is interesting, but that one statement from Boomwolf deserved an answer. Saying an army isn't a REAL army and shouldn't be a concern balance-wise is a cop out and undermines basic gameplay and enjoyment.
Because, they are not?
Even fluff-wise, they are not?
They never HAVE been, except in gamer's minds?
They are a specialist taskforce. not an army. there is a big distinction between the two.
The fact they are as diverse as they currently are is preplexing given that far FAR bigger factions out there have a far shorter unit lists, let alone having them even more diverse.
Especially given that to begin with they don't HAVE armies at their disposal. you got about a thousand of them and that's it. casualty replenishment is slow and extremely expensive and as such they are never used as a general-purpose taskforce, only on highly specialized tasks, or as a tiny detachment as part of a far grander force.
Saying "they are thier own army and all armies should be balanced" is a sad error caused by the days of 5th where the inqusition took a backseat, and allies were not a thing.
Because there is absolutely ZERO need for all "armies" in the game to be equal, as your very definition of what consists an "army" is wrong.
For some reason you assume "1 codex=1 army", but that's just not true. an army can consist of 2, 3 or even more codcies at once, and it makes SENSE. it fits thematically, it works in-game, its just the way the world of 40k is built.
You got the IoM with tons of different subfations each with his own odd quirks and specializations who go to battle together and sometimes don't quite get along-but they still do.
Just like IK are NOT a true stand-alone army, just like scions are not, just like assassins and inquisiors-the GK never were a true full army, nor should they be. sure you CAN play them as solo-codex, just like you CAN play assassins, but it was never the intention.
The place they are now is far above what they "need" to be, if any they are spoiled in how much attention and choices are given to such a small sub-sub-faction, especially when you compare them to all the other specialist taskforces out there who have far less, and a big chunk of sub-factions who are, despite being far bigger and more varied from GK of the fluff level, barely get any mention in the rules. (like how some CSM legions don't even have a single named character for good measure)
GK do not make an army. they should NOT make an army, because once they do make a full army, you lose the purpose of having them as a separate force from regular marines to begin with.
They are a specialized taskforce, who is supposed to do just one thing in the fluff, and are never, ever, EVER used as a generic taskforce. equipping them with all manners of anti-tank, anti-ork or anti-whatevernotdaemon because the "balance between armies" is absurd considering that as their fluff goes, they shouldn't be fighting these things to begin with, and are neither trained nor equipped for it because its simply not their concern.
To make it worse, if you truly want every "faction" to be a stand-alone plausible army and have them all balanced, than all shread of uniqness of the GK must be thrown away and all their anti-daemon specialization ignored (5th much?) because as long as GK are a plausible stand-alone force that can fight equally against every other codex, AND they got the anti-daemon specialities, daemons are simply not viable, because they are fair against everyone except the random GK match where its an assured loss as you are fighting someone who is supposedly a fair match, and then they get a huge pile of spesific bonuses against you to top it off because you happened to be what they specifically noted out to counter.
You really can't eat the cake and have it. a GK army can't be both anti-daemon specialist and a generalist take-all-comer. a choice must be made, and the (correct) choice was made to have them focus on their job, rather than reducing them to yet another bland marine codex (who we have far too many who are far too similar of to begin with.)
And 40 is not starcraft or some other RTS where you choose one faction and you have to make do with it. an army in 40k is not by definition a single subfaction. especially in the Impeium who is not exactly limited in it's options. things like Tau and Orks have to be TAC because they got nobody to work with, GK have plenty. and they are assumed to.
Quickjager wrote: You are assuming GK players care at ALL about tt rules that are designed for them to screw demons players over.
News flash!
Literally not a single one does.
ITT: players who play the elite of the elite deployed by the High Lords to fight Daemons, who train to fight only Daemons, who exist solely to fight Daemons, who are specially equipped to fight Daemons, who work for Daemonhunters to help hunt Daemons get upset when their army is specialized against Daemons.
Tell me why you would play grey knights if you don't want to hunt daemons?
Quickjager wrote: The same reason you play the fething game, they look cool!
Oh gak!
That's your fault for listening to the GW redshirt that didn't tell you that some armies were not designed to be playable as all-comers. Wish I learned that earlier before I played Orks.
It's almost like Games Workshop forgot that they're also a rule company as much as a model company. 8e didn't sell Stormravens because they're pretty...
Besides you and Boomwolf are arguing crunch should fit fluff. Where the hell are my unlimited psychic powers? Oh wait it's like they tried introducing balance!
Quickjager wrote: Besides you and Boomwolf are arguing crunch should fit fluff. Where the hell are my unlimited psychic powers? Oh wait it's like they tried introducing balance!
Except in the laziest possible way. "I can only cast one Infernal Gaze or one Warptime. Clearly, my name is Robin Cruddace and Infernal Gaze is superior."
Oh, and all-or-nothing and wild result swings are also totally balanced. After all, Stomp deleted anything under it "only" on a 6. Helbrutes get a free action "only" on a 6. Best bring more loaded dice! For balance, of course.
Quickjager wrote: You are assuming GK players care at ALL about tt rules that are designed for them to screw demons players over.
News flash!
Literally not a single one does.
ITT: players who play the elite of the elite deployed by the High Lords to fight Daemons, who train to fight only Daemons, who exist solely to fight Daemons, who are specially equipped to fight Daemons, who work for Daemonhunters to help hunt Daemons get upset when their army is specialized against Daemons.
Tell me why you would play grey knights if you don't want to hunt daemons?
I want to hunt Heretics and sometimes the Grey Knights tag along.
Quickjager wrote: Besides you and Boomwolf are arguing crunch should fit fluff. Where the hell are my unlimited psychic powers? Oh wait it's like they tried introducing balance!
Actually, I mostly agree with them. You chose to play a specialist, elite army that has huge bonuses against Demons, and yet you *also* want them to have a wide variety of tools and bonuses against every other army too, and yet STILL have their huge bonuses against demons. So you want a specialist elite army with tools for every situation at a low cost. Oh and with unlimited psychic powers.
I can now see why Draigo is the figurehead for the Grey Knights. The Mary-Sue-iest of the Mary-Sues.
Grey Knights are already well balanced, going by their win/loss reports. There are a lot of other armies that need work, long before Grey Knights need anything.
Quickjager wrote: Besides you and Boomwolf are arguing crunch should fit fluff. Where the hell are my unlimited psychic powers? Oh wait it's like they tried introducing balance!
Actually, I mostly agree with them. You chose to play a specialist, elite army that has huge bonuses against Demons, and yet you *also* want them to have a wide variety of tools and bonuses against every other army too, and yet STILL have their huge bonuses against demons. So you want a specialist elite army with tools for every situation at a low cost. Oh and with unlimited psychic powers.
I can now see why Draigo is the figurehead for the Grey Knights. The Mary-Sue-iest of the Mary-Sues.
Grey Knights are already well balanced, going by their win/loss reports. There are a lot of other armies that need work, long before Grey Knights need anything.
Aaaaan exalted. Everyone wants their army to be the best. They only see the flaws and want those fixed.
What exactly is the issue? GK seem fine to me when looking at their rules, their stats and how they work on the table. Yes, going above 2k points reduces their effectiveness, but the Matched Play rules are intended for just that - 2000 points matches.
Sisters could argue that they get only 1 AoF at all for free, which is really strong when combined with Celestine at 1000 points and fine at 2000 points.
So, yeah. the limit is meant for 2000 points, and it's not like GK are getting run over by everyone else all the time - see actual stats.
Someone kept yelling "but this is not a proper balance mechanic" - what exactly do you propose then? I've not read all of the thread, granted, but I haven't seen an actual suggestion - did I miss that? Letting psyker-heavy forces spam all the powers all the time isn't a solution since then those armies would be way too strong at 2000 points.
MagicJuggler wrote:What GW *should* have done IMO was refine the 7e psyker system, so there were more WC per caster, but no "pooling." Rather than casting and denial being all-or-nothing success thresholds, casting would be by "Degrees of Success", and Denial would simply subtract successes from casting, rather than the 7e system of "you needed 5 sixes to deny but only rolled 4", or needing to roll higher than the caster to deny. "Try rolling a 13."
What I mean by degrees of success, is that powers themselves start off weak, but rolling extra successes (up to 4 total) would improve the overall effect, while Denial can reduce the overall strength rather than it being binary pass-fail.
Grey Templar wrote: Except our Smite is worse than everybody elses, except against Daemons. We can only do 1 Mortal Wound instead of D3.
Really? So my 1 wound Aspering Sorcerer that I pay 43 points minimum for is better off how? I can very occasionally (~10%) have the chance to do 3 wounds but then I will fail to cast anything twice as much (8% comapred to 19.5%) as you do. Let's not even touch on the fact that when I perils I am losing a minimum of 43 points compared to your 19, and I lose the ability to cast spells with the unit, which can't cast anything but a reduced smite anyways, remind me agian why I'm paying 30 more points for a unit that can't cast spells and can't do any damage with shooting massive points for an upgrade. On top of that I have to make sure my Aspering Sorcerers aren't within 6" of my Charcters or ill be stripping wounds off of them as well. My Aspiring Sorcerers sucks pretty bad but I'm still not willng to say there the worst, because I am almost certain there are the worst.
MagicJuggler wrote:What GW *should* have done IMO was refine the 7e psyker system, so there were more WC per caster, but no "pooling." Rather than casting and denial being all-or-nothing success thresholds, casting would be by "Degrees of Success", and Denial would simply subtract successes from casting, rather than the 7e system of "you needed 5 sixes to deny but only rolled 4", or needing to roll higher than the caster to deny. "Try rolling a 13."
What I mean by degrees of success, is that powers themselves start off weak, but rolling extra successes (up to 4 total) would improve the overall effect, while Denial can reduce the overall strength rather than it being binary pass-fail.
Thanks!
I'd say that a refined psyker system slows the game down and the current iteration is a lot faster than what you propose. I don't think the Psychic phase should be much more complex than other "army special rules" like orders or Acts of Faith. It's fair that it is a bit more complex since quite a few armies have access to it, but it shouldn't be too much.
Grey Templar wrote: Except our Smite is worse than everybody elses, except against Daemons. We can only do 1 Mortal Wound instead of D3.
Really? So my 1 wound Aspering Sorcerer that I pay 43 points minimum for is better off how? I can very occasionally (~10%) have the chance to do 3 wounds but then I will fail to cast anything twice as much (8% comapred to 19.5%) as you do. Let's not even touch on the fact that when I perils I am losing a minimum of 43 points compared to your 19, and I lose the ability to cast spells with the unit, which can't cast anything but a reduced smite anyways, remind me agian why I'm paying 30 more points for a unit that can't cast spells and can't do any damage with shooting massive points for an upgrade. On top of that I have to make sure my Aspering Sorcerers aren't within 6" of my Charcters or ill be stripping wounds off of them as well. My Aspiring Sorcerers sucks pretty bad but I'm still not willng to say there the worst, because I am almost certain there are the worst.
Your unit being bad doesn't preclude mine from being bad too. Just because someone has it worse off doesn't mean you lose all rights to want better.
Thousand Sons sound like they got a raw deal, again. Just like the last 4 chaos codices. Doesn't mean that Grey Knights haven't also gotten a raw deal too.
Grey Templar wrote: Except our Smite is worse than everybody elses, except against Daemons. We can only do 1 Mortal Wound instead of D3.
Really? So my 1 wound Aspering Sorcerer that I pay 43 points minimum for is better off how? I can very occasionally (~10%) have the chance to do 3 wounds but then I will fail to cast anything twice as much (8% comapred to 19.5%) as you do. Let's not even touch on the fact that when I perils I am losing a minimum of 43 points compared to your 19, and I lose the ability to cast spells with the unit, which can't cast anything but a reduced smite anyways, remind me agian why I'm paying 30 more points for a unit that can't cast spells and can't do any damage with shooting massive points for an upgrade. On top of that I have to make sure my Aspering Sorcerers aren't within 6" of my Charcters or ill be stripping wounds off of them as well. My Aspiring Sorcerers sucks pretty bad but I'm still not willng to say there the worst, because I am almost certain there are the worst.
Your unit being bad doesn't preclude mine from being bad too. Just because someone has it worse off doesn't mean you lose all rights to want better.
Thousand Sons sound like they got a raw deal, again. Just like the last 4 chaos codices. Doesn't mean that Grey Knights haven't also gotten a raw deal too.
Primarch. Own Codex soon. Cry me a river.
Let me add: My Scout Marines are even worse psykers than TSons and GK.
Love how this thread has dwindled down into - greyknights aren't a real army.
You know...every chapter has a mortal enemy. For Ultramarines it's tyrandis, crimson fists it orks, dark angels it's CSM, so GK having a daemon mortal enemy doesn't make them "not a real army".
Most people get into greyknights because they have played marines - realized marines aren't really an elite style army and then see greyknights and see the elite units they want. Also - all these bonuses against daemons havn't even resulted in beating daemons in the majority of the games I play against them.
Xenomancers wrote: Love how this thread has dwindled down into - greyknights aren't a real army.
You know...every chapter has a mortal enemy. For Ultramarines it's tyrandis, crimson fists it orks, dark angels it's CSM, so GK having a daemon mortal enemy doesn't make them "not a real army".
Because Grey Knights don't have daemons as a "mortal enemy", they have daemons as their ONLY enemy. Tyranids could be chewing Terra alive and the Grey Knights wouldn't fight them because it's not their job.
MagicJuggler wrote:What GW *should* have done IMO was refine the 7e psyker system, so there were more WC per caster, but no "pooling." Rather than casting and denial being all-or-nothing success thresholds, casting would be by "Degrees of Success", and Denial would simply subtract successes from casting, rather than the 7e system of "you needed 5 sixes to deny but only rolled 4", or needing to roll higher than the caster to deny. "Try rolling a 13."
What I mean by degrees of success, is that powers themselves start off weak, but rolling extra successes (up to 4 total) would improve the overall effect, while Denial can reduce the overall strength rather than it being binary pass-fail.
Thanks!
I'd say that a refined psyker system slows the game down and the current iteration is a lot faster than what you propose. I don't think the Psychic phase should be much more complex than other "army special rules" like orders or Acts of Faith. It's fair that it is a bit more complex since quite a few armies have access to it, but it shouldn't be too much.
I understand where you're coming from, in terms of simplicity vs complexity. That being said, the non-binary casting system was partially inspired by how Kings of War handles magic, which is...admittedly extremely streamlined. KoW is the sort of game where you roll X dice to hit your own unit, and each success moves it 1" or so.
Of course, you could also add a rule for certain Psykers to be Bound. (Remember how WHFB used to have Bound Spells before 8th made them pointless?). A Bound Psyker can cast one power automatically at X successes (usually only one), thus letting you represent things from Horrors to Eldar Warlocks. What happens to a Lord of Change when it Perils? Does Tzeentch pull it into the Warp to recite spells on a chalkboard, Simpsons-style? ("I will not roll double 1s. I will not roll double 1s.")
Xenomancers wrote: Love how this thread has dwindled down into - greyknights aren't a real army.
You know...every chapter has a mortal enemy. For Ultramarines it's tyrandis, crimson fists it orks, dark angels it's CSM, so GK having a daemon mortal enemy doesn't make them "not a real army".
Because Grey Knights don't have daemons as a "mortal enemy", they have daemons as their ONLY enemy. Tyranids could be chewing Terra alive and the Grey Knights wouldn't fight them because it's not their job.
This, essentially.
A rivalry and hatred between armies is not the same thing as "built to task".
Grey Templar wrote: Except our Smite is worse than everybody elses, except against Daemons. We can only do 1 Mortal Wound instead of D3.
Really? So my 1 wound Aspering Sorcerer that I pay 43 points minimum for is better off how? I can very occasionally (~10%) have the chance to do 3 wounds but then I will fail to cast anything twice as much (8% comapred to 19.5%) as you do. Let's not even touch on the fact that when I perils I am losing a minimum of 43 points compared to your 19, and I lose the ability to cast spells with the unit, which can't cast anything but a reduced smite anyways, remind me agian why I'm paying 30 more points for a unit that can't cast spells and can't do any damage with shooting massive points for an upgrade. On top of that I have to make sure my Aspering Sorcerers aren't within 6" of my Charcters or ill be stripping wounds off of them as well. My Aspiring Sorcerers sucks pretty bad but I'm still not willng to say there the worst, because I am almost certain there are the worst.
Lets not forget, GK get a second psyker power as well.
Grey Templar wrote: Except our Smite is worse than everybody elses, except against Daemons. We can only do 1 Mortal Wound instead of D3.
Really? So my 1 wound Aspering Sorcerer that I pay 43 points minimum for is better off how? I can very occasionally (~10%) have the chance to do 3 wounds but then I will fail to cast anything twice as much (8% comapred to 19.5%) as you do. Let's not even touch on the fact that when I perils I am losing a minimum of 43 points compared to your 19, and I lose the ability to cast spells with the unit, which can't cast anything but a reduced smite anyways, remind me agian why I'm paying 30 more points for a unit that can't cast spells and can't do any damage with shooting massive points for an upgrade. On top of that I have to make sure my Aspering Sorcerers aren't within 6" of my Charcters or ill be stripping wounds off of them as well. My Aspiring Sorcerers sucks pretty bad but I'm still not willng to say there the worst, because I am almost certain there are the worst.
Your unit being bad doesn't preclude mine from being bad too. Just because someone has it worse off doesn't mean you lose all rights to want better.
Thousand Sons sound like they got a raw deal, again. Just like the last 4 chaos codices. Doesn't mean that Grey Knights haven't also gotten a raw deal too.
Primarch. Own Codex soon. Cry me a river.
Let me add: My Scout Marines are even worse psykers than TSons and GK.
Own codex soon? You've got yours already. So what? Primarch? You mean that 400+ point unit that dies in a turn of shooting if you're not careful and slow him down? He's awesome, sure. But people will refuse to play against him, or he'll do very little and you just lost 25% of your army. Sure, you can cheese him by taking the Changeling and other support units. But by himself, he's not a game winner.
I've seen a few people (or maybe it was just one?) saying that, if psychic focus was removed, every GK unit would have +1 Invuln, +1 to melee wound rolls, be Gating left and right and still be casting Vortex of Doom.
Two things to that:
1) You're going to fail some powers. You do have +1, so you'll succeed on more than you fail. But you will NOT make them all.
2) Limited powers. Unless you somehow get three casts per unit, you cannot have Hammerhand, Gate, and Sanctuary up on every unit, let alone be Vortexing as well.
As to the thread's purpose, I agree that Psychic Focus is dumb. Better to make balanced powers (which, honestly, most are) than put unneeded limitations on them.
Xenomancers wrote: Love how this thread has dwindled down into - greyknights aren't a real army.
You know...every chapter has a mortal enemy. For Ultramarines it's tyrandis, crimson fists it orks, dark angels it's CSM, so GK having a daemon mortal enemy doesn't make them "not a real army".
Because Grey Knights don't have daemons as a "mortal enemy", they have daemons as their ONLY enemy. Tyranids could be chewing Terra alive and the Grey Knights wouldn't fight them because it's not their job.
Totally incorrect. If Terra was under siege, the Grey Knights would defend it. Their headquarters is in the same system too for crying out loud.
The old daemon hunters codex had specific justifications for grey knights to fight every army. The leader of the opposing force could be secretly possessed, be in possession of a daemonic artifact, or be an unwitting pawn in some daemon's schemes. The enemy force could have witnessed a daemonic incursion and needs to be eliminated to contain the taint. The damn codex has them fighting most other factions in the game. Remember the first war for Armageddon?
Unit1126PLL wrote: The problem with making "balanced powers" is that they are still essentially free bonuses.
An example of a balanced power would be like "this unit gains a 6++ save" which people would then complain is awful and rarely used
Except they are not. Because every psyker pays for the ability to cast it's powers. And if they can cast more than one a turn they pay for that ability too. Unless you have more than (Number of powers) psykers. Then you pay for the ability to cast more than one power a turn but only cast smite with most of them.
JNAProductions wrote: So something like ignoring penalties for running away, or doubling your number of shots with your basic gun, or fighting twice on your turn...
Would those are considered balanced?
Two Orders usable only on a unit within 6"... only one Order per unit... on a 30pt T3 W4 5++ character that isn't a close combat machine or can cast mortal wound-causing 18" powers on anybody around him too?
Outside of Conscripts, which is an argument tread so often that even the Death Guard want nothing to do with that horse, Orders are balanced in the context of the army they're usable in.
The Sanctic Powers list is balanced around the use of Psychic Focus. +1 to Wound is absolutely better in 8th Ed than a +1 to Strength would be, and being able to cast it more than once per turn would easily become unbalanced. Gating units with a free deep strike move on a 5+ with 2d6 would absolutely be broken if you could cast it more than once per turn.
So sure, give GK a rule to ignore Psychic Focus. But then the entire Sanctic Psychic powers list needs to be redone to accommodate it.
Own codex soon? You've got yours already. So what? Primarch? You mean that 400+ point unit that dies in a turn of shooting if you're not careful and slow him down? He's awesome, sure. But people will refuse to play against him, or he'll do very little and you just lost 25% of your army. Sure, you can cheese him by taking the Changeling and other support units. But by himself, he's not a game winner.
Own codex soon? You've got yours already. So what? Primarch? You mean that 400+ point unit that dies in a turn of shooting if you're not careful and slow him down? He's awesome, sure. But people will refuse to play against him, or he'll do very little and you just lost 25% of your army. Sure, you can cheese him by taking the Changeling and other support units. But by himself, he's not a game winner.
3++ ? How do you reliably kill that in one turn?
Go watch some batreps. it happens more often than you think. Even then you dont need to kill him, only get him low enough to where he loses effectiveness.
Own codex soon? You've got yours already. So what? Primarch? You mean that 400+ point unit that dies in a turn of shooting if you're not careful and slow him down? He's awesome, sure. But people will refuse to play against him, or he'll do very little and you just lost 25% of your army. Sure, you can cheese him by taking the Changeling and other support units. But by himself, he's not a game winner.
3++ ? How do you reliably kill that in one turn?
Go watch some batreps. it happens more often than you think. Even then you dont need to kill him, only get him low enough to where he loses effectiveness.
I've played against him myself. Even at 3 wounds he's not bad. A Land Raider loses HALF its movement speed just by dropping one tier, by comparison. Magnus loses what at half wounds, 2 inches of movement, 1 attack and his plus to psychic tests goes down to +1? Oh no!
*edit* And that Land Raider might have a 2+ save, but it has no invuln save, most assuredly not a 3++ rerolling 1's. And they're not that far apart in points. A Land Raider (Godhammer) is 391 points if I give him all 3 addon weapons.
MagicJuggler wrote: Said armies should be "Turing complete" in a way, having tools to be all-comers.
That's not what Turing-complete means. At all. Doesn't even work as an analogy.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Sim-Life wrote: It's also disingenious to compare Acts Of Faith to Psychic Powers.
Acts Of Faith you're looking at MAYBE 3 of them a turn. One army wide one, one from Celestine and one from a Imagifier which has a 50% chance of failure.
And the way they are designed makes them useless on most units. Anything that is in a transport can't make use of them. Units that wants to move fast can't use them either except for one per army (if you don't roll a 1) can't use them either because they will distance their imagifer. Seriously acts of faith are SO restricted that comparing them to psychic power is pretty damn shortsighted.
Unit1126PLL wrote: The problem with making "balanced powers" is that they are still essentially free bonuses.
An example of a balanced power would be like "this unit gains a 6++ save" which people would then complain is awful and rarely used
Except they are not. Because every psyker pays for the ability to cast it's powers. And if they can cast more than one a turn they pay for that ability too. Unless you have more than (Number of powers) psykers. Then you pay for the ability to cast more than one power a turn but only cast smite with most of them.
Someone already crunched the numbers earlier, they really don't pay for it that much.
MagicJuggler wrote: Said armies should be "Turing complete" in a way, having tools to be all-comers.
That's not what Turing-complete means. At all. Doesn't even work as an analogy.
I used quotes for a reason. Unless you're arguing that GW should keep publishing incomplete rules for armies, in which case we're not seeing eye to eye on things. 7e gave us its share of gak armies that simply didn't work on their own without proper formations: Deathwatch, both Admech, and Harlequins, were all painfully one-dimensional additions, and the argument that "they're not real armies anyway" is a cop-out. Why make models with rules that render them unplayable except in the most casual of games? Of all the "new armies" that came out, only Genestealer Cults had an army with the tools to truly run "all comers", and that was the result of looting small bits of the Guard codex.
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote: And the way they are designed makes them useless on most units. Anything that is in a transport can't make use of them. Units that wants to move fast can't use them either except for one per army (if you don't roll a 1) can't use them either because they will distance their imagifer. Seriously acts of faith are SO restricted that comparing them to psychic power is pretty damn shortsighted.
You also cannot Deny them, they don't blow up on you, and are far better for saving CP rerolls on compared to any other "free action" army non-Imperials get. And, they give extra actions, period. When was the last time Orks were rooting about Flash Gitz being awesome? Oh wait, they weren't, because building abilities that rely on triggering a 6 on a single d6 is shoddy and creates power roulette.
Xenomancers wrote: Love how this thread has dwindled down into - greyknights aren't a real army.
You know...every chapter has a mortal enemy. For Ultramarines it's tyrandis, crimson fists it orks, dark angels it's CSM, so GK having a daemon mortal enemy doesn't make them "not a real army".
Because Grey Knights don't have daemons as a "mortal enemy", they have daemons as their ONLY enemy. Tyranids could be chewing Terra alive and the Grey Knights wouldn't fight them because it's not their job.
And they're trained to fight where there is a Daemon insurrection and to get to that they might have to fight other enemies. One of several dozen justifications in the old codex, because one might ask why Daemonhunters might not always fight daemons. Another one was that the particular army might have a tainted artifact and they need to retrieve it and destroy it before it falls in the wrong hands.
If you really want to talk about fitting fluff, maybe you should've read it first.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Can we at least agree the regular HQ units should have regular Smite?
Xenomancers wrote: Love how this thread has dwindled down into - greyknights aren't a real army.
You know...every chapter has a mortal enemy. For Ultramarines it's tyrandis, crimson fists it orks, dark angels it's CSM, so GK having a daemon mortal enemy doesn't make them "not a real army".
Because Grey Knights don't have daemons as a "mortal enemy", they have daemons as their ONLY enemy. Tyranids could be chewing Terra alive and the Grey Knights wouldn't fight them because it's not their job.
And they're trained to fight where there is a Daemon insurrection and to get to that they might have to fight other enemies. One of several dozen justifications in the old codex, because one might ask why Daemonhunters might not always fight daemons. Another one was that the particular army might have a tainted artifact and they need to retrieve it and destroy it before it falls in the wrong hands.
If you really want to talk about fitting fluff, maybe you should've read it first.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Can we at least agree the regular HQ units should have regular Smite?
OK now... see, I could see myself agreeing to this, because it *does* make sense. I wouldn't necessarily say *all* HQ units, but I would say that the Grand Master and the Librarian should get the full version of smite. Basically, any model that can choose two psychic powers, should be powerful enough to use the full version of smite.
Actually, looking at the codex... the Librarian already gets the full version of smite! So it would just need to be the Grand Master that gets the change.
What I really wish they did was this. You can cast as many powers as you want but each psychic power had a power level. Say vortex is lvl 3 - so only libby and grand masters can use it. strike squads would be lvl 1 so they could only cast maybe hammer hand or purge soul. they could have used a system like that across the board. It has it's own intrinsic limit on how many times you can cast the big powers. Because at 2k points you can only fit so many grand masters and libby in your list.
Xenomancers wrote: Love how this thread has dwindled down into - greyknights aren't a real army.
You know...every chapter has a mortal enemy. For Ultramarines it's tyrandis, crimson fists it orks, dark angels it's CSM, so GK having a daemon mortal enemy doesn't make them "not a real army".
Because Grey Knights don't have daemons as a "mortal enemy", they have daemons as their ONLY enemy. Tyranids could be chewing Terra alive and the Grey Knights wouldn't fight them because it's not their job.
And they're trained to fight where there is a Daemon insurrection and to get to that they might have to fight other enemies. One of several dozen justifications in the old codex, because one might ask why Daemonhunters might not always fight daemons. Another one was that the particular army might have a tainted artifact and they need to retrieve it and destroy it before it falls in the wrong hands.
If you really want to talk about fitting fluff, maybe you should've read it first.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Can we at least agree the regular HQ units should have regular Smite?
OK now... see, I could see myself agreeing to this, because it *does* make sense. I wouldn't necessarily say *all* HQ units, but I would say that the Grand Master and the Librarian should get the full version of smite. Basically, any model that can choose two psychic powers, should be powerful enough to use the full version of smite.
Actually, looking at the codex... the Librarian already gets the full version of smite! So it would just need to be the Grand Master that gets the change.
Libby has rights of banishment. it makes your smite baby smite.
Xenomancers wrote: -Snip-
Can we at least agree the regular HQ units should have regular Smite?
OK now... see, I could see myself agreeing to this, because it *does* make sense. I wouldn't necessarily say *all* HQ units, but I would say that the Grand Master and the Librarian should get the full version of smite. Basically, any model that can choose two psychic powers, should be powerful enough to use the full version of smite.
Actually, looking at the codex... the Librarian already gets the full version of smite! So it would just need to be the Grand Master that gets the change.
Libby has rights of banishment. it makes your smite baby smite.
Ahh, I saw they got the Libby from the standard Space Marine codex, I just didn't read on to see that he gains the Rites of Banish ability in the process. I just assumed he was standard Libby with <GREY KNIGHTS> keyword as his chapter.
Ok so yeh, I'd agree that the Librarian should really have the full smite, and probably the Grand Master too. I doubt many people on here would disagree with that. I wouldn't even argue that as a house rule.
It does mean that you could make sure you cast your normal spells with lowly grey knights, so that your HQ's are always free to smite away. But I don't think this would be unbalanced tbh.
Yeah that's what I'm talking about: even with the quotes it makes little to no sense. Unless you found a way to compute stuff with your armies?
MagicJuggler wrote: You also cannot Deny them, they don't blow up on you, and are far better for saving CP rerolls on compared to any other "free action" army non-Imperials get.
Given they don't work with most of the army there really isn't any necessity to do anything more with them to prevent spam though, is there?
150 conscripts getting to fire twice with no counter play or restriction - Yet I can't cast hammer hand twice with the same army for +1 to wound for a single squad. Which do you think does more damage?
Xenomancers wrote: 150 conscripts getting to fire twice with no counter play or restriction - Yet I can't cast hammer hand twice with the same army for +1 to wound for a single squad. Which do you think does more damage?
Once again, somehow the 150 conscripts are magically all in range anf LOS of a target. Reminds me of the time where you stated Magnus could be "easily one shotted" by a Shadowsword despite it actually only having a 30% chance of doing 2D6 out of his 18 wounds. I really want to play as this fantasy version of Guard you have in your head, I might actually start placing in tournaments.
Xenomancers wrote: you have a very flawed concept of the game. how hard is it to get a unit that cant be killed in range to fire at 24 inches? Oh yeah - its not.
you are right though - volcano cannon is terrible vs magnus...oh yeah it's not.
Oh man, now my conscripts are unkillable too! And yes, getting ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY models all in 24" range and LOS without my opponent being an idiot is pretty god damned hard or do you play on a completely flat table?
How is a less than 1 in 3 chance of doing an average of 1/3rd of his wound pool GOOD? Yeah, maybe if I totally luck out and Magnus rolls garbage on his 3++ rerolling 1's save then it's good. Just played a game where I dumped a 60 shot lasgun barrage into him for an astounding 1 damage. By the end of the five round game I got him down to TWELVE. And he had actually hurt himself for one of those from perils. Lascannons just bounced right off of him, and mass lasgun/plasma fire just did chip wounds.
I mean, unless you get to circle the enemy unit, I'm not even sure its physically possible to get so many of them in range, let alone doing it in an actual game.
Massive hordes sounds great on paper, until you actually try to put so many models on an actual table and see you are starting to have a rather large distance build up between the front and the back of the blob.
And that's assuming a flat table, once you introduce even a bit of terrain the entire plan goes to hell. and if you actually use a proper amount, you will find that it's nigh-impossible to actually use the blob properly.
MagicJuggler wrote:What GW *should* have done IMO was refine the 7e psyker system, so there were more WC per caster, but no "pooling." Rather than casting and denial being all-or-nothing success thresholds, casting would be by "Degrees of Success", and Denial would simply subtract successes from casting, rather than the 7e system of "you needed 5 sixes to deny but only rolled 4", or needing to roll higher than the caster to deny. "Try rolling a 13."
What I mean by degrees of success, is that powers themselves start off weak, but rolling extra successes (up to 4 total) would improve the overall effect, while Denial can reduce the overall strength rather than it being binary pass-fail.
Oh goody, instead of a 45 minute psychic phase where it's completely pointless for me to be even in the goddam building unless I have 14 psykers, it can now be a 2.5 hour psychic phase where I still don't have any real chance of making a significant impact on the game with less than a dozen psychic dice , but now I don't even get a bathroom break.
Indeed, the psychic phase in the 7th ed was out of hand. Now you can buff or debuff one unit here and there. That's enough for a game with 5 to 7 rounds. The psychic phase shouldnt win or loose you the game.
This is all such a stupid discussion. They even give you the option to not use the matched play rules. It's not their fault if 99.9% of people want to play a game with even the vaguest resemblance of balance.
The matched play rules are pretty much "What made 7th a massive pile of gak? Let's make it so you can't do that!"
No more Taudar superfriends? Done! No more Eldar or Grey Knights doing idiotic things in the Psychic Phase? Done! Daemons can't summon an additional 2000 points of models out of thin air for free, thus making the game 2000pts vs 4000pts? Done! Armies that are entirely in reserve for the majority of the game, thus denying you turns to shoot their objective holding units, can no longer do so? FETHING DONE!
Play open. Pick and choose the rules from matched that make the game balanced/fun. House rule to flavor.
Just plain matched isn't even that great. You basically need advanced rules beyond it to make the game any kind of playable. Cities of death have a few good ones. Death from the skies allowing fliers to leave the table and come back. Without Advanced Terrain rule you might as well being playing on a flat table.
BaconCatBug wrote: This is all such a stupid discussion. They even give you the option to not use the matched play rules. It's not their fault if 99.9% of people want to play a game with even the vaguest resemblance of balance.
The matched play rules are pretty much "What made 7th a massive pile of gak? Let's make it so you can't do that!"
No more Taudar superfriends? Done!
No more Eldar or Grey Knights doing idiotic things in the Psychic Phase? Done!
Daemons can't summon an additional 2000 points of models out of thin air for free, thus making the game 2000pts vs 4000pts? Done!
Armies that are entirely in reserve for the majority of the game, thus denying you turns to shoot their objective holding units, can no longer do so? FETHING DONE!
Lance845 wrote: Play open. Pick and choose the rules from matched that make the game balanced/fun. House rule to flavor.
Just plain matched isn't even that great. You basically need advanced rules beyond it to make the game any kind of playable. Cities of death have a few good ones. Death from the skies allowing fliers to leave the table and come back. Without Advanced Terrain rule you might as well being playing on a flat table.
Might as well play a different game at that rate. Shame company-level gaming in general is dying in lieu of skirmish-scale gaming.
BaconCatBug wrote: This is all such a stupid discussion. They even give you the option to not use the matched play rules. It's not their fault if 99.9% of people want to play a game with even the vaguest resemblance of balance.
The matched play rules are pretty much "What made 7th a massive pile of gak? Let's make it so you can't do that!"
No more Taudar superfriends? Done!
No more Eldar or Grey Knights doing idiotic things in the Psychic Phase? Done!
Daemons can't summon an additional 2000 points of models out of thin air for free, thus making the game 2000pts vs 4000pts? Done!
Armies that are entirely in reserve for the majority of the game, thus denying you turns to shoot their objective holding units, can no longer do so? FETHING DONE!
You... really don't know 7th do you?
The hyperbole is real in this thread. Especially since most Eldar armies in tournaments didn't even bother with Psykers.
BaconCatBug wrote: This is all such a stupid discussion. They even give you the option to not use the matched play rules. It's not their fault if 99.9% of people want to play a game with even the vaguest resemblance of balance.
The matched play rules are pretty much "What made 7th a massive pile of gak? Let's make it so you can't do that!"
No more Taudar superfriends? Done!
No more Eldar or Grey Knights doing idiotic things in the Psychic Phase? Done!
Daemons can't summon an additional 2000 points of models out of thin air for free, thus making the game 2000pts vs 4000pts? Done!
Armies that are entirely in reserve for the majority of the game, thus denying you turns to shoot their objective holding units, can no longer do so? FETHING DONE!
Also you still have yet to respond to me about Grey Knights fighting other forces. Just saying.
Indeed, the psychic phase in the 7th ed was out of hand. Now you can buff or debuff one unit here and there. That's enough for a game with 5 to 7 rounds. The psychic phase shouldnt win or loose you the game.
The shooting phase shouldn't win or lose you the game.
The fight phase shouldn't win or lose you the game.
Kinda stupid if you apply it elsewhere. Not all armies get each phase equally. And that's ok.
The psychic phase is just as much of a phase as the shooting and fight. No reason an army whose main unique flavor is "they're all psykers" shouldn't be able to do a lot of it's "winning" during the psychic phase. Instead of relegating it into obscurity. Especially when the fluff clearly portrays psykers as things which can potentially annihilate whole planets.
Indeed, the psychic phase in the 7th ed was out of hand. Now you can buff or debuff one unit here and there. That's enough for a game with 5 to 7 rounds. The psychic phase shouldnt win or loose you the game.
The shooting phase shouldn't win or lose you the game.
The fight phase shouldn't win or lose you the game.
Kinda stupid if you apply it elsewhere. Not all armies get each phase equally. And that's ok.
The psychic phase is just as much of a phase as the shooting and fight. No reason an army whose main unique flavor is "they're all psykers" shouldn't be able to do a lot of it's "winning" during the psychic phase. Instead of relegating it into obscurity. Especially when the fluff clearly portrays psykers as things which can potentially annihilate whole planets.
So long as the army that wins in the psychic phase sacrifices as much shooting and fighting to not win in those phases.
Khorne Zerkers give up a lot to win the fight phase.
I am not convinced that an army with a storm bolter and force weapon on every single model will lose the other phases badly enough to make them justified in winning the psychic phase.
We practically give up the shooting phase with nothing >24'' except on expensive vehicles.
We aren't great in shooting, and our melee is good but not the best. Seems fair that we could be the best psykers. Especially since our dudes are hideously expensive.
Grey Templar wrote: We practically give up the shooting phase with nothing >24'' except on expensive vehicles.
We aren't great in shooting, and our melee is good but not the best. Seems fair that we could be the best psykers. Especially since our dudes are hideously expensive.
Compared to what Berserkers give up to win the fight phase, being "not great" in shooting and "not the best" in melee simply isn't bad enough.
Units exist that focus on one phase instead of any others. The Malefic Lord has "bare fists" as his close combat weapon and no shooting weapon. That is a unit that focuses to win one phase and one phase only.
Grey Knights absolutely do not focus on the psychic phase the way Khorne Berzerkers focus on the fight phase. They have no business "winning" the Psychic Phase.
My gaming group house ruled the whole psychic thing, every parker can cast without Psychic Focus, but the same unit cannot be affected by the same spell twice. Every game with my Thousand sons has been very close so far(around 50% win).
Just an idea, I know it doesn't matter for tourney play. But has anyone considered the possibility that TS might ignore this when the codex comes out, or get a different version?
Grey Templar wrote: We practically give up the shooting phase with nothing >24'' except on expensive vehicles.
We aren't great in shooting, and our melee is good but not the best. Seems fair that we could be the best psykers. Especially since our dudes are hideously expensive.
Compared to what Berserkers give up to win the fight phase, being "not great" in shooting and "not the best" in melee simply isn't bad enough.
Units exist that focus on one phase instead of any others. The Malefic Lord has "bare fists" as his close combat weapon and no shooting weapon. That is a unit that focuses to win one phase and one phase only.
Grey Knights absolutely do not focus on the psychic phase the way Khorne Berzerkers focus on the fight phase. They have no business "winning" the Psychic Phase.
Having fought and krumped GK quite a fair bit, I'll throw in my 2 cents. Realistically, back in 7th edition, Grey Knights were not exactly that good. Yes, they could throw down more Warp Charge than most armies, but they didn't have the powers to use it on. Force, Hammerhand and that's it. The cost to use such powers generally outpaced the investment in extra Psykers too.
For anti-tank they got Psycannons. Now, they were good in 5th. 7th made them Salvo weapons. They were costly, and required forfeiting your Nemesis Weapon if you weren't a Terminator. Consider that for the same cost as a single Strike Squad, you got a Tacsquad with Grav Cannon, and said squad probably got a turn of rerolling hits due to Tactical Doctrine. Pretty much every other weapon in the GK arsenal lacked a range of > 24, and other than the Interceptors and Dreadknights, the entire army moves at infantry speed.
In many ways, the real advantage the GK had over other armies was being resilient to Witchfires and Maledictions. Alas, the 7e Psy system made it disproportionately difficult to deny Blessings or Summons, and a Culexus could assist in the first. As far as units capable of using their excess Warp Charge, it was either Librarians or Purifiers, and points were generally so tight that adding in allied Psykers wasn't exactly economical.
If you saw GK in tournaments, it was to add Draigo to a Gravcent unit since he was a guaranteed Gate vector for them This was before the Gladius of course. There arguably wasn't any unit in the GK army worth using Gate for in the first place.
The army as a whole became Terminators & Dreadknights, Final Destination, and Purifiers were an excellent unit without a purpose.
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote: I don't know if you are talking to me or someone else but if you are talking to me, conscripts can't make acts of faith…
Ah, but they can! Just like they can freely march across the board, are immune to enemies attacks and never have any terrain blocking their fire and are always within short range and always have FRFSRF applied to them.
The thing that hurts us the most in this edition is boots on the ground. We're a deep strike army only a few vehicles eligible to take weapons with a range >24". Yet we can't actually deep strike because boots on the ground. Interceptors are not an answer. In my competitive list i'll deep strike maybe 1 unit. If you really want to buff Grey Knights give us some way to get higher than 50% in reserve / off the table - provided the units are performing an actual deep strike. We don't need Grey Knights being a vehicle to exploit ravenspam.
I'll repeat what I said earlier: Smite should be: 1 wound, on a 10+ it's D3. It's always 3 against Daemons regardless of roll.
The thing that hurts us the most in this edition is boots on the ground. We're a deep strike army only a few vehicles eligible to take weapons with a range >24". Yet we can't actually deep strike because boots on the ground. Interceptors are not an answer. In my competitive list i'll deep strike maybe 1 unit. If you really want to buff Grey Knights give us some way to get higher than 50% in reserve / off the table - provided the units are performing an actual deep strike. We don't need Grey Knights being a vehicle to exploit ravenspam.
I'll repeat what I said earlier:
Smite should be: 1 wound, on a 10+ it's D3. It's always 3 against Daemons regardless of roll.
Why aren't interceptors an answer? I'd rather they just be strike squads but since we can only cast 1 spell of each a turn. I can only gate in 1 additional strike squad. The way i play greyknights is to get as many units as close as possible turn1. Intercepts help me move that number closer to 100% - storm ravens help too. The opponent having to deploy a huge amount of his army before I even place a model is a big benefit to. Best part is on a typical board the only thing that can go wrong for me is losing a storm raven - every game so far lives even If I don't go first. 3-4 las cannons is the most that an army can get on it usually. 2 strikes can hop into the raven - 1 can gate and 3 interceptors shunt. This gives the raven a nice punch turn 2 when 10 strikes basically auto-charge anything I chose.
It's been really brutal - I've actually be asked to tone it down with my friends so far. They are playing with indexes mind you.
The thing that hurts us the most in this edition is boots on the ground. We're a deep strike army only a few vehicles eligible to take weapons with a range >24". Yet we can't actually deep strike because boots on the ground. Interceptors are not an answer. In my competitive list i'll deep strike maybe 1 unit. If you really want to buff Grey Knights give us some way to get higher than 50% in reserve / off the table - provided the units are performing an actual deep strike. We don't need Grey Knights being a vehicle to exploit ravenspam.
I'll repeat what I said earlier:
Smite should be: 1 wound, on a 10+ it's D3. It's always 3 against Daemons regardless of roll.
Why aren't interceptors an answer? I'd rather they just be strike squads but since we can only cast 1 spell of each a turn. I can only gate in 1 additional strike squad. The way i play greyknights is to get as many units as close as possible turn1. Intercepts help me move that number closer to 100% - storm ravens help too. The opponent having to deploy a huge amount of his army before I even place a model is a big benefit to. Best part is on a typical board the only thing that can go wrong for me is losing a storm raven - every game so far lives even If I don't go first. 3-4 las cannons is the most that an army can get on it usually. 2 strikes can hop into the raven - 1 can gate and 3 interceptors shunt. This gives the raven a nice punch turn 2 when 10 strikes basically auto-charge anything I chose.
It's been really brutal - I've actually be asked to tone it down with my friends so far. They are playing with indexes mind you.
2 storm ravens and 2 units of interceptors is almost 900 points, or almost half your list. If you're using a GMNDK, you're looking at roughly 1150 points right there for 2 ravens, 2 interceptors, and a GMNDK. And you haven't met force org requirements yet to get even 1 command point.
We can talk in the GK tactica thread and share lists if you want. If you give up on a battalion and are comfortable running with only 4 command points then interceptors are fine.
Kharne the Befriender wrote: My gaming group house ruled the whole psychic thing, every parker can cast without Psychic Focus, but the same unit cannot be affected by the same spell twice. Every game with my Thousand sons has been very close so far(around 50% win).
Just an idea, I know it doesn't matter for tourney play. But has anyone considered the possibility that TS might ignore this when the codex comes out, or get a different version?
I hope they don't because if they dont the only other option is to give them a gak ton of spells. Like 15 spells 5 tables of 3 maybe?
Xenomancers wrote: 150 conscripts getting to fire twice with no counter play or restriction - Yet I can't cast hammer hand twice with the same army for +1 to wound for a single squad. Which do you think does more damage?
Also consider: An entire army of Supreme Command Detachments with Daemon Princes casting warptime on themselves.
Xenomancers wrote: 150 conscripts getting to fire twice with no counter play or restriction - Yet I can't cast hammer hand twice with the same army for +1 to wound for a single squad. Which do you think does more damage?
Also consider: An entire army of Supreme Command Detachments with Daemon Princes casting warptime on themselves.
Psychic Focus exists for a reason.
Yeah remember Psychic focus isnt there to screw GKs over it s there to screw every army over.
I will say this again. GKs have one of the best Psychic buffs they get +1 to ALL casts if you changed thier smite to do D3 mortal wounds on 10+ they would put out 5 mortal wound per 4 squads. 16 squads would dish out 20 mortal wounds and be beasts in CC and have decent mid range shooting. As a comparison my actual army of Psykers only puts out 3.75 mortal wounds per turn with 4 squads compared to your 3.95 mortal wounds per turn. That is the difference a +1 makes with psychic powers.
So 16 Strike Squads would cost you roughly 1700 points.
Comparatively, 16 Primaris Psykers would cost you 640, and they know real smite.
If the problem is cheap smite logically a 40 point unit should not know 18" full smite.
I understand the logic behind nerfed smite. I do feel that for the cost of our units, we should get a better smite. It doesn't need to be fully powerful smite. But the minimum cost of our troop squad is 105 points. We inherently lose out on things other factions can get, for instance, it is not really possible to run a Grey Knights brigade.
Remember, we only get the +1 if we have a detachment that is Grey Knights. So it's not free.
Yea, said primaris psykers die to a stiff breeze, and can't do much other than smite.
The 16 strike squads bring forth 80 sets of stormbolters and force weapons, while wearing actual armor.
SLIGHT difference in value.
If all GK had is psyker power, giving them real smite might be proper, but its far from it.
They have decent shooting, decent durablity and very good melee abilities.
Not even counting the super hard counter they present to deamons.
Marmatag wrote: So 16 Strike Squads would cost you roughly 1700 points.
Comparatively, 16 Primaris Psykers would cost you 640, and they know real smite.
That's a false equivalence and you know it.
One hell of a false equivalence.
16 SQUADS of Grey Knights compared to 16 T3 5+ save single models that take mortal wounds every time they perils within range of a Commissar.
I'm pretty sure the fact that you're getting 80 T4, 3+ save, Storm Bolter and Force Weapon wielding marines is the reason you're a bit more expensive than those 16 T3, 5+ save laspistol wielding psykers. Whether or not your smite is weaker is pretty much a moot point. You could slaughter those 16 psykers with bolter fire alone.
BoomWolf wrote: Yea, said primaris psykers die to a stiff breeze, and can't do much other than smite.
The 16 strike squads bring forth 80 sets of stormbolters and force weapons, while wearing actual armor.
SLIGHT difference in value.
If all GK had is psyker power, giving them real smite might be proper, but its far from it.
They have decent shooting, decent durablity and very good melee abilities.
Not even counting the super hard counter they present to deamons.
They don't need actual armor because of the price point to spam them.
ITT: People comparing a well balanced codex against the most broken and op things in the game right now and saying their dex is weak.
GK players, say it with me now: "psilencers are 4 points". The army is fine. 24 psilencer shots on a purgation squad is 113 points.
The fact that we pay 21 points for a model with a gk statline is insane. 10 strikes with their strategem fires 40 heavy bolter shots then charges having 21 d3 damage weapons for slightly more than 200 points.
They aren't and shouldn't be the instant win button many are apparently saying they should be in this thread. Read codex and try to think outside the box before you complain.
Nobody is asking for an instant win button. They're comparing them against the strongest things in the game because some people actually do play this competitively. Some of those people are Grey Knight players too.
We can't really though. Not at the top league. The really competitive stuff curb stomp mono-GK. Having real smite, at least on characters, would help with that. A lot if everyone had it
If you are comparing things to the strongest things in the game rather then actually asking for balance.. You are pretty much asking for an I-Win button.
Audustum wrote: We can't really though. Not at the top league. The really competitive stuff curb stomp mono-GK.
This is basically it right here. The needle may shift because we have new powers and stratagems before other people do, but that is only temporary.
GK can be balanced without an improved smite. But a buff would have to happen somewhere to improve Grey Knights. We cannot hold a candle to the more powerful factions, and are below the middle of the pack. In major tournaments, pretty much everyone is doing better than Grey Knights. Including Orks.
Audustum wrote: Nobody is asking for an instant win button. They're comparing them against the strongest things in the game because some people actually do play this competitively. Some of those people are Grey Knight players too.
We can't really though. Not at the top league. The really competitive stuff curb stomp mono-GK. Having real smite, at least on characters, would help with that. A lot if everyone had it
The answer isn't to buff grey knights which are in a perfectly fine spot as they are now. The answer is to nerf the worst offenders such as brims and conscripts. I play competitively and I play GK too. 670 odd points gets you 124 psilencer shots. Are you telling me that isn't competitive? 7 grandmaster dreadknights is also hard for many armies to deal with. Smite needs to be nerfed on it's own. The answer isn't to give everyone D3 damage smite, it's to bring everyone else's smite down to 1 mw and on a 10+ d3 damage.
I'm sorry, but if you're having trouble doing well with GK you're either taking the wrong units, getting outplayed, or you're playing against guard artillery with 100+ conscripts, but what army doesn't have trouble with that?
Xenomancers wrote: 150 conscripts getting to fire twice with no counter play or restriction - Yet I can't cast hammer hand twice with the same army for +1 to wound for a single squad. Which do you think does more damage?
Also consider: An entire army of Supreme Command Detachments with Daemon Princes casting warptime on themselves.
Psychic Focus exists for a reason.
Maybe spells that let you move twice are a problem then.
Audustum wrote: Nobody is asking for an instant win button. They're comparing them against the strongest things in the game because some people actually do play this competitively. Some of those people are Grey Knight players too.
We can't really though. Not at the top league. The really competitive stuff curb stomp mono-GK. Having real smite, at least on characters, would help with that. A lot if everyone had it
The answer isn't to buff grey knights which are in a perfectly fine spot as they are now. The answer is to nerf the worst offenders such as brims and conscripts. I play competitively and I play GK too. 670 odd points gets you 124 psilencer shots. Are you telling me that isn't competitive? 7 grandmaster dreadknights is also hard for many armies to deal with. Smite needs to be nerfed on it's own. The answer isn't to give everyone D3 damage smite, it's to bring everyone else's smite down to 1 mw and on a 10+ d3 damage.
I'm sorry, but if you're having trouble doing well with GK you're either taking the wrong units, getting outplayed, or you're playing against guard artillery with 100+ conscripts, but what army doesn't have trouble with that?
124 Psilencer Shots at 24", with no AP, at S4. Hitting on 3s, that's 82.67 hits. Wounding on 4s, probably, is 41.33 wounds. With a 3+ save is 13.78 wounds, which does explode into d3 damage apiece.
Congrats! Your shooting killed about three minimum Tactical Squads! You killed (let's average points costs to 18 PPM, counting for special weapons) 250 points, about. Do that two more times to make your points back.
And those Gradnamster Dreadknights are going to be focus fired down FAST. They aren't that scary, or survivable.
Because a squad of power armoured bods with storm bolters and amazing statlines are the equivalent of a T3 mightaswellnothavearmour save bod, right?
They're not directly comparable. The argument being made here is that, if the intent of baby-smite was to keep an army from spamming piles of full strength smite, then primaris psykers should have had some type of babysmite as well, as doing it with them is cheap and effective.
Also, lets not pretend 10+ primaris psykers would not be tedious to get rid of. You can only ever shoot the first one, so if you wanted to get rid of them, you'd have to dedicate decent amounts of firepower to them from each of your squads.
Audustum wrote: Nobody is asking for an instant win button. They're comparing them against the strongest things in the game because some people actually do play this competitively. Some of those people are Grey Knight players too.
We can't really though. Not at the top league. The really competitive stuff curb stomp mono-GK. Having real smite, at least on characters, would help with that. A lot if everyone had it
The answer isn't to buff grey knights which are in a perfectly fine spot as they are now. The answer is to nerf the worst offenders such as brims and conscripts. I play competitively and I play GK too. 670 odd points gets you 124 psilencer shots. Are you telling me that isn't competitive?
Yes, I'll tell you that. A ton of Purgation squad Psilencers is not competitive. They are a situational unit which is generally worth including as a single squad. Moreso now with psychic ammunition, but that costs 2 CP and can only affect 1 squad.
Because a squad of power armoured bods with storm bolters and amazing statlines are the equivalent of a T3 mightaswellnothavearmour save bod, right?
They're not directly comparable. The argument being made here is that, if the intent of baby-smite was to keep an army from spamming piles of full strength smite, then primaris psykers should have had some type of babysmite as well, as doing it with them is cheap and effective.
Also, lets not pretend 10+ primaris psykers would not be tedious to get rid of. You can only ever shoot the first one, so if you wanted to get rid of them, you'd have to dedicate decent amounts of firepower to them from each of your squads.
Exactly.
And smite spam IS effective with Primaris Psykers. it's worth pointing out too, that with a small points investment, you can do this AND have room for all that nasty artillery. So when stuff does get too close to your lines, boom, smite city.
Audustum wrote: Nobody is asking for an instant win button. They're comparing them against the strongest things in the game because some people actually do play this competitively. Some of those people are Grey Knight players too.
We can't really though. Not at the top league. The really competitive stuff curb stomp mono-GK. Having real smite, at least on characters, would help with that. A lot if everyone had it
The answer isn't to buff grey knights which are in a perfectly fine spot as they are now. The answer is to nerf the worst offenders such as brims and conscripts.
Buffing and nerfing are two ways of doing the same thing. You want to move GK relative to others so you can nerf them or buff GK.
I play competitively and I play GK too. 670 odd points gets you 124 psilencer shots. Are you telling me that isn't competitive? 7 grandmaster dreadknights is also hard for many armies to deal with. Smite needs to be nerfed on it's own. The answer isn't to give everyone D3 damage smite, it's to bring everyone else's smite down to 1 mw and on a 10+ d3 damage.
I'm sorry, but if you're having trouble doing well with GK you're either taking the wrong units, getting outplayed, or you're playing against guard artillery with 100+ conscripts, but what army doesn't have trouble with that?
i'll say it: none of that is competitive. All of that will get easily wiped out by artillery, Guilliman parking lot, heavy fliers, Falchion-class super-heavies, Daemons or plasma spam.
I play competitively and I play GK too. 670 odd points gets you 124 psilencer shots. Are you telling me that isn't competitive? 7 grandmaster dreadknights is also hard for many armies to deal with. Smite needs to be nerfed on it's own. The answer isn't to give everyone D3 damage smite, it's to bring everyone else's smite down to 1 mw and on a 10+ d3 damage.
I'm sorry, but if you're having trouble doing well with GK you're either taking the wrong units, getting outplayed, or you're playing against guard artillery with 100+ conscripts, but what army doesn't have trouble with that?
i'll say it: none of that is competitive. All of that will get easily wiped out by artillery, Guilliman parking lot, heavy fliers, Falchion-class super-heavies, Daemons or plasma spam.
Are Demons that overpowered now? I thought most of their "unlimited respawns" shenanigans had been stopped
You can't bring more than 15 to a competitive match because of the detachment limits (3, suggested) in Matched Play - and those 15 would be all 3 Supreme Command detachments.
So yes, there is a limit to how many smites you can do; it just comes in the form of FOC detachment limits rather than points.
I play competitively and I play GK too. 670 odd points gets you 124 psilencer shots. Are you telling me that isn't competitive? 7 grandmaster dreadknights is also hard for many armies to deal with. Smite needs to be nerfed on it's own. The answer isn't to give everyone D3 damage smite, it's to bring everyone else's smite down to 1 mw and on a 10+ d3 damage.
I'm sorry, but if you're having trouble doing well with GK you're either taking the wrong units, getting outplayed, or you're playing against guard artillery with 100+ conscripts, but what army doesn't have trouble with that?
i'll say it: none of that is competitive. All of that will get easily wiped out by artillery, Guilliman parking lot, heavy fliers, Falchion-class super-heavies, Daemons or plasma spam.
Are Demons that overpowered now? I thought most of their "unlimited respawns" shenanigans had been stopped
It was mostly from Horrors. We'll have to see if it stays though since I think they got a points bump.
I play competitively and I play GK too. 670 odd points gets you 124 psilencer shots. Are you telling me that isn't competitive? 7 grandmaster dreadknights is also hard for many armies to deal with. Smite needs to be nerfed on it's own. The answer isn't to give everyone D3 damage smite, it's to bring everyone else's smite down to 1 mw and on a 10+ d3 damage.
I'm sorry, but if you're having trouble doing well with GK you're either taking the wrong units, getting outplayed, or you're playing against guard artillery with 100+ conscripts, but what army doesn't have trouble with that?
i'll say it: none of that is competitive. All of that will get easily wiped out by artillery, Guilliman parking lot, heavy fliers, Falchion-class super-heavies, Daemons or plasma spam.
Are Demons that overpowered now? I thought most of their "unlimited respawns" shenanigans had been stopped
It was mostly from Horrors. We'll have to see if it stays though since I think they got a points bump.
I play competitively and I play GK too. 670 odd points gets you 124 psilencer shots. Are you telling me that isn't competitive? 7 grandmaster dreadknights is also hard for many armies to deal with. Smite needs to be nerfed on it's own. The answer isn't to give everyone D3 damage smite, it's to bring everyone else's smite down to 1 mw and on a 10+ d3 damage.
I'm sorry, but if you're having trouble doing well with GK you're either taking the wrong units, getting outplayed, or you're playing against guard artillery with 100+ conscripts, but what army doesn't have trouble with that?
i'll say it: none of that is competitive. All of that will get easily wiped out by artillery, Guilliman parking lot, heavy fliers, Falchion-class super-heavies, Daemons or plasma spam.
Are Demons that overpowered now? I thought most of their "unlimited respawns" shenanigans had been stopped
It was mostly from Horrors. We'll have to see if it stays though since I think they got a points bump.
Brimstones got a point bump and a smite nerf.
People didn't take Brimstones for the Smite. They took them as a screen for the Heralds behind them that did Smite.
It's a nerf, but one that arguably shows that GW really doesn't know game design
I play competitively and I play GK too. 670 odd points gets you 124 psilencer shots. Are you telling me that isn't competitive? 7 grandmaster dreadknights is also hard for many armies to deal with. Smite needs to be nerfed on it's own. The answer isn't to give everyone D3 damage smite, it's to bring everyone else's smite down to 1 mw and on a 10+ d3 damage.
I'm sorry, but if you're having trouble doing well with GK you're either taking the wrong units, getting outplayed, or you're playing against guard artillery with 100+ conscripts, but what army doesn't have trouble with that?
i'll say it: none of that is competitive. All of that will get easily wiped out by artillery, Guilliman parking lot, heavy fliers, Falchion-class super-heavies, Daemons or plasma spam.
Are Demons that overpowered now? I thought most of their "unlimited respawns" shenanigans had been stopped
It was mostly from Horrors. We'll have to see if it stays though since I think they got a points bump.
Brimstones got a point bump and a smite nerf.
People didn't take Brimstones for the Smite. They took them as a screen for the Heralds behind them that did Smite.
It's a nerf, but one that arguably shows that GW really doesn't know game design
Yeah, the point bump is what I need to see play out much more than the smite nerf.
Psychic Focus: Each time a player attempts to manifest the same power after the first they have a cumulative -1 penalty on their attempbto manifest. EXAMPLE: the second time a player attempts to cast The Horror its 2d6 -1. The third time its 2d6-2.
The only exception to this is Smite.
The effects from psychic powers do not stack with themselves.
Because a squad of power armoured bods with storm bolters and amazing statlines are the equivalent of a T3 mightaswellnothavearmour save bod, right?
They're not directly comparable. The argument being made here is that, if the intent of baby-smite was to keep an army from spamming piles of full strength smite, then primaris psykers should have had some type of babysmite as well, as doing it with them is cheap and effective.
Also, lets not pretend 10+ primaris psykers would not be tedious to get rid of. You can only ever shoot the first one, so if you wanted to get rid of them, you'd have to dedicate decent amounts of firepower to them from each of your squads.
There is a limit on how many slots you can dedicate to each type though, isnt there? I dont use them, but IIR they are still a HQ slot, meaning they are limited to a maximum of two.
That said, i still do not get this detachment malarky and such.
Marmatag wrote: So 16 Strike Squads would cost you roughly 1700 points.
Comparatively, 16 Primaris Psykers would cost you 640, and they know real smite.
That's a false equivalence and you know it.
One hell of a false equivalence.
16 SQUADS of Grey Knights compared to 16 T3 5+ save single models that take mortal wounds every time they perils within range of a Commissar.
I'm pretty sure the fact that you're getting 80 T4, 3+ save, Storm Bolter and Force Weapon wielding marines is the reason you're a bit more expensive than those 16 T3, 5+ save laspistol wielding psykers. Whether or not your smite is weaker is pretty much a moot point. You could slaughter those 16 psykers with bolter fire alone.
Is this seriously a comparison being made with something other than sarcastic intent? Beyond the impossibility of fielding more than 15 Primaris Psykers in your usual Matched Play game (3 detachments max, typically, and often no duplicate detachments either)... those 80 Marines also bring with them 160 24" Rapid Firing STR 4 shots. And 80 AP-3 Damage D3 melee hits. And have access to the six Sanctic powers to the Primaris Psyker's three in the Psykana tree.
But yes I guess if you ignore all that then 16 mortal wounds on a 4+ each that ignores the area effect of Perils doesn't sound as impressive as 16 d3 mortal wounds on a 5+ each with a chance to cause d6 mortal wounds on a 10+ w/Perils' area of effect.
In that case Repulsors need a massive buff because the base version only comes with two Storm Bolters and a full squad of ten Grey Knights gets 10 Storm Bolters for way cheaper. Repulsors should cost 21ppm, get Babysmite and access to Sanctic - ignore all the other weapons and stuff it gets until they're on the board, it's not pertinent to this discussion.
The meta is still shaking out, and we're only three Codices into 8th - and who knows how massively things will shift yet again when GW releases their Matched Play ruleset magnum opus in December, let alone other Codices. It's likely if there are big balance changes to some of the current major offenders, or perceived major offenders, in the present-day meta (such as Conscripts+Commissars+Orders) they will be contained in that book... probably until the relevant Codex comes out.
And I don't believe we've had a major tournament occur since the CSM and GK Codex came out to yet see or say how those Codices have affected the meta in any kind of meaningful way.
Because a squad of power armoured bods with storm bolters and amazing statlines are the equivalent of a T3 mightaswellnothavearmour save bod, right?
They're not directly comparable. The argument being made here is that, if the intent of baby-smite was to keep an army from spamming piles of full strength smite, then primaris psykers should have had some type of babysmite as well, as doing it with them is cheap and effective.
Also, lets not pretend 10+ primaris psykers would not be tedious to get rid of. You can only ever shoot the first one, so if you wanted to get rid of them, you'd have to dedicate decent amounts of firepower to them from each of your squads.
There is a limit on how many slots you can dedicate to each type though, isnt there? I dont use them, but IIR they are still a HQ slot, meaning they are limited to a maximum of two.
That said, i still do not get this detachment malarky and such.
10 Primaris Psykers is just 2 Supreme Command Detachments.
Though if you are playing in an event that limits the number of detachments, or have a general convention locally that limits you that's a lot of detachments set aside for Primaris Psykers.
There is a limit on how many slots you can dedicate to each type though, isnt there? I dont use them, but IIR they are still a HQ slot, meaning they are limited to a maximum of two.
That said, i still do not get this detachment malarky and such.
It's technically stuck under the rules for organized play, or whatever it's called. They make recommendations for number of detachments allowed at a given point level, but it's not really understatement to call it "recommendations".
So it's technically there and "a good thing" and everyone's been adhering to it so far from what I've seen, but I'm going to call it half a step above a "house rule".
Regardless, GW's current convention is that at 2000 points, you'll be allowed 3 detachments, though I think various tournament scenes have been doing 2. Regardless, two gets you 10 primaris psykers max, and whatever I said earlier for the crazy number of astropaths you can bring. The primaris spam list was seriously something we were considering surprisingly competitive in the AM tactics thread a couple weeks ago.
Psychic Focus: Each time a player attempts to manifest the same power after the first they have a cumulative -1 penalty on their attempbto manifest. EXAMPLE: the second time a player attempts to cast The Horror its 2d6 -1. The third time its 2d6-2.
The only exception to this is Smite.
The effects from psychic powers do not stack with themselves.
Okay im just going to point out the obvious here. Smite being able to be cast multiple times, just like most spells, is a bad Idea. Worst case Senario I can think of is Magnus dumping out 21 mortal wounds on average with Ahriman and a couple other exalted sorcerers you could easily push that number over 50 and not break 1k points.
He clearly means that the same dude still can't case the same spell multiple times, but that each dude after the first can cast again at increasing difficulty.
BoomWolf wrote: He clearly means that the same dude still can't case the same spell multiple times, but that each dude after the first can cast again at increasing difficulty.
Your right not sure why my brain went there. But still imagine Purifier Squads all casting thier AOE Smite and Vortex of doom every turn.
BoomWolf wrote: He clearly means that the same dude still can't case the same spell multiple times, but that each dude after the first can cast again at increasing difficulty.
Your right not sure why my brain went there. But still imagine Purifier Squads all casting thier AOE Smite and Vortex of doom every turn.
Lets clear up some other misconceptions here.
I am NOT proposing that you change how many powers a unit can manifest. Simply wether or not the same power can be manifested more than once a turn.
Purfiers know Smite and 1 other power. Purifiers can manifest 1 power in each psychic phase and can deny 1 power.
I am NOT saying that Purifiers should instead be able to manifest 2 powers a turn. I AM saying that if you have 3 units of Purfiers and they all want to manifest Vortex (WC value 8) that the first unit could cast it normally, the second would have a -1 (effectively making it WC 9) and the last would have a -2 (making it WC 10). They would NOT be able to cast both Smite and Vortex each. Simply that by one casting Vortex it would not remove the ability for every other unit in the army from casting it. By the time the 5th unit in the army attempts to cast Vortex they would only succeed on a 12 which would also cause a perils and be incredibly unlikely to go off at all.
People are correct that psychic focus does not scale at all and is bull gak for that reason. It hinders psychic heavy armies. It's nonsense. It's also true that there needs to be practical limitations. A escalation of difficulty and the inability for buffs/debuffs to stack are a practical soft cap that allows psychic armies to scale up with the higher point games without making them disgustingly powerful.
BoomWolf wrote: He clearly means that the same dude still can't case the same spell multiple times, but that each dude after the first can cast again at increasing difficulty.
Your right not sure why my brain went there. But still imagine Purifier Squads all casting thier AOE Smite and Vortex of doom every turn.
Lets clear up some other misconceptions here.
I am NOT proposing that you change how many powers a unit can manifest. Simply wether or not the same power can be manifested more than once a turn.
Purfiers know Smite and 1 other power. Purifiers can manifest 1 power in each psychic phase and can deny 1 power.
I am NOT saying that Purifiers should instead be able to manifest 2 powers a turn. I AM saying that if you have 3 units of Purfiers and they all want to manifest Vortex (WC value 8) that the first unit could cast it normally, the second would have a -1 (effectively making it WC 9) and the last would have a -2 (making it WC 10). They would NOT be able to cast both Smite and Vortex each. Simply that by one casting Vortex it would not remove the ability for every other unit in the army from casting it. By the time the 5th unit in the army attempts to cast Vortex they would only succeed on a 12 which would also cause a perils and be incredibly unlikely to go off at all.
People are correct that psychic focus does not scale at all and is bull gak for that reason. It hinders psychic heavy armies. It's nonsense. It's also true that there needs to be practical limitations. A escalation of difficulty and the inability for buffs/debuffs to stack are a practical soft cap that allows psychic armies to scale up with the higher point games without making them disgustingly powerful.
One small note is that battle-forged GKs get a +1 to Psychic tests and Deny the Witch - the latter being something most people have ignored. On top of every unit being able to manifest Psychic powers they can also Deny the Witch at least once each.
I do like the idea, though. I feel like it'd still require a balance pass over Psychic powers - or maybe have a higher escalation for successful ones vs failures. Like a stacking -2 to manifest if another unit/attempt to manifest it was successful in that turn, and a -1 if another unit/attempt failed to manifest it in that turn.
Otherwise, Vortex doesn't necessarily beat out Purge Souls - which, other than Perils, has no risk for the caster and with most non-character units being LD8 vs a GK strike squad's LD8 lets you cause a max of 6 mortal wounds (and an 'average' of ~3) to a target unit on a 4+ w/2d6. Even with only the -1 that means you could spam Purge Souls at least 3 times before casting it again is as difficult as using Vortex. 3d6 mortal wounds? Hitting WC12 w/only a -1 means you can cause up to 8d6+/-LD difference mortal wounds in a single Psychic phase.
BoomWolf wrote: He clearly means that the same dude still can't case the same spell multiple times, but that each dude after the first can cast again at increasing difficulty.
Your right not sure why my brain went there. But still imagine Purifier Squads all casting thier AOE Smite and Vortex of doom every turn.
Lets clear up some other misconceptions here.
I am NOT proposing that you change how many powers a unit can manifest. Simply wether or not the same power can be manifested more than once a turn.
Purfiers know Smite and 1 other power. Purifiers can manifest 1 power in each psychic phase and can deny 1 power.
I am NOT saying that Purifiers should instead be able to manifest 2 powers a turn. I AM saying that if you have 3 units of Purfiers and they all want to manifest Vortex (WC value 8) that the first unit could cast it normally, the second would have a -1 (effectively making it WC 9) and the last would have a -2 (making it WC 10). They would NOT be able to cast both Smite and Vortex each. Simply that by one casting Vortex it would not remove the ability for every other unit in the army from casting it. By the time the 5th unit in the army attempts to cast Vortex they would only succeed on a 12 which would also cause a perils and be incredibly unlikely to go off at all.
People are correct that psychic focus does not scale at all and is bull gak for that reason. It hinders psychic heavy armies. It's nonsense. It's also true that there needs to be practical limitations. A escalation of difficulty and the inability for buffs/debuffs to stack are a practical soft cap that allows psychic armies to scale up with the higher point games without making them disgustingly powerful.
A minor niggle, but I would suggest that instead of giving a -1 modifier to the roll, instead actually say "After each attempt, the Warp Charge value increases by 1.
Yes, this sounds like it results in the same outcome, but I mention it because of how hit modifiers effect things like plasma Gets Hot. If you + or - a psychic roll, what would happen about the perils results? I guess it might be that a double-6 is still perils, even though it only "results" as a 10 instead of a 12. I don't have my codex to hand to actually check the wording of the psychic test rules.
Either way, i just thought it would be easier/tidier to modify the WC number by 1 each time. Maybe not.
I still think if you're going to allow multiple castings of a power it is best to go back and look at the powers again.
Some of them are super dumb if you can cast them more than once, even with a -1 to the roll. My superheavy tank company could bring like 6 Astropaths along just to have a whole bunch of goes at making my Baneblades gain a 2+ armour save. Having one with a 2+ is hilarious enough, having all 3 with a 2+ just sounds really stupid.
Xenomancers wrote: That is essentially the GK chapter tactic. You might notice they don't have a chapter tactic.
This. Meaning you can't bring assassins in your GK detachment anymore.
Not a huge deal though because any Imperium list should have a battalion of Imperial Guard anyway. But still.
In reality a competitive GK list won't be spamming that many smites. You're going to have a lot of vehicles - storm ravens, storm hawk, assault cannon razorbacks... none of these have psychic pilot.
This idea that GK are dropping in and casting a billion smites is just not how the army plays. In reality it's more likely to see maybe 3-4 smites, tops, from a GK army in a turn. because a lot of the units that can cast smite, would prefer to cast other powers.
Draigo knows 2 powers. He will probably be casting Purge Soul. I usually also equip him with Gate of Infinity to bail when needed, or for mobility in general. So he might smite.
GMNDK knows 2 powers unless you take lore master. He'll be casting Vortex, and Sanctuary.
Individual squads will know powers useful to them, or their transports. Depending on their role, they may not be even close enough to make use of casting smite. For instance, Psilencer Purgators need to be within 24" of their target. So if you're 13-24" away, can't even cast smite anyway.
10 man squads will probably cast hammerhand on themselves, if you have any.
I mean the list goes on. This idea that we'd be pumping out 15 smites a turn just isn't true.
If i could make one minor change to Grey Knights - aside from updating points values, and things like that, or sweeping changes that redefine the game - i would make psychic ammunition and psybolt ammunition cost 1cp each, instead of 2. it's a minor change that would have a huge benefit. we could be using these both every turn. Changing our smite to real smite would help, for absolute certain, but that's unlikely to happen, and in reality we don't have that many psykers to make true use of it.
GW has already struck down our best stratagem - limiting it to 1 turn use only. Conscripts are still 3 points. GW has no intention of making GK's good. When GK are good people just bring up fifth edition - "not this again - GK's shouldn't even bee a real army" nonsense.
BoomWolf wrote: He clearly means that the same dude still can't case the same spell multiple times, but that each dude after the first can cast again at increasing difficulty.
Your right not sure why my brain went there. But still imagine Purifier Squads all casting thier AOE Smite and Vortex of doom every turn.
Lets clear up some other misconceptions here.
I am NOT proposing that you change how many powers a unit can manifest. Simply wether or not the same power can be manifested more than once a turn.
Purfiers know Smite and 1 other power. Purifiers can manifest 1 power in each psychic phase and can deny 1 power.
I am NOT saying that Purifiers should instead be able to manifest 2 powers a turn. I AM saying that if you have 3 units of Purfiers and they all want to manifest Vortex (WC value 8) that the first unit could cast it normally, the second would have a -1 (effectively making it WC 9) and the last would have a -2 (making it WC 10). They would NOT be able to cast both Smite and Vortex each. Simply that by one casting Vortex it would not remove the ability for every other unit in the army from casting it. By the time the 5th unit in the army attempts to cast Vortex they would only succeed on a 12 which would also cause a perils and be incredibly unlikely to go off at all.
People are correct that psychic focus does not scale at all and is bull gak for that reason. It hinders psychic heavy armies. It's nonsense. It's also true that there needs to be practical limitations. A escalation of difficulty and the inability for buffs/debuffs to stack are a practical soft cap that allows psychic armies to scale up with the higher point games without making them disgustingly powerful.
A minor niggle, but I would suggest that instead of giving a -1 modifier to the roll, instead actually say "After each attempt, the Warp Charge value increases by 1.
Yes, this sounds like it results in the same outcome, but I mention it because of how hit modifiers effect things like plasma Gets Hot. If you + or - a psychic roll, what would happen about the perils results? I guess it might be that a double-6 is still perils, even though it only "results" as a 10 instead of a 12. I don't have my codex to hand to actually check the wording of the psychic test rules.
Either way, i just thought it would be easier/tidier to modify the WC number by 1 each time. Maybe not.
Perils is on the roll of a double 1 or double 6, not the result of a 2 or a 12.
