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BladeWalker wrote:
That's my understanding of it as well. I was using it totally bass ackwards in the last game of a tourney a few weeks back as I was just learning GK book... luckily it was against a good friend of mine and he tabled me anyway... lol.

Yeah, that can happen if you're not familiar with the intricacies of the new codex. But once you know how to put an synergistic army together, your grey knights are going to be hard to beat.

A-P wrote: Interesting report. The pictures really make the battle alive and easy to follow .

About the only thing that strikes me as odd is the seeming lack of terrain. The battlefield
feels really empty. Was this a conscious choice?

The terrain may not be tall, but it's about 20-25% of the map (there's 1 mid to large block of terrain in each of the 6 quadrants).

Due to the large amount of models we have (we're talking 8K here total), we decided that was about the right amount of terrain to place on the map. Any more and you're going to have difficulties putting models down, especially the deepstriking daemons.

Probably in slightly smaller games, we would bump up the number of terrain.

Two things puzzle me:
Why didnt you take a banner for the paladin squad, that´s peanut points for 9 extra attacks with guaranteed force weapon instantkills.
Why take swords on psycannon paladins? Swords are used to save instantkill things that bypass the 2w of the paladins, expensive psycannon paladins are not suppose to block instant death attacks.

So excited for the next turn! AH!

I should have the rest of the report out a little later today.

Pyriel- wrote:Two things puzzle me:
Why didnt you take a banner for the paladin squad, that´s peanut points for 9 extra attacks with guaranteed force weapon instantkills.
Why take swords on psycannon paladins? Swords are used to save instantkill things that bypass the 2w of the paladins, expensive psycannon paladins are not suppose to block instant death attacks.

Ok, reasons for my paladin layout:

1. Tried to keep it WYSIWYG as much as possible. The only thing not WYSIWYG there is 1 incinerator (used as the 4th psycannon) and the Warding Stave (used a broken halberd as the WS guy). Didn't have the Brotherhood Banner so didn't take it this time. Also didn't have falchions so didn't take those as well.

2. I took swords on psycannons because I had to in order to make them unique. Also, due to WYSIWYG, one of the psycannon guys already had a sword.

3. Swords are good. The units that I see my paladins taking on are uber-units, that is, units with a lot of power attacks. That's why I like a mix of half halberds and half swords. They're particularly useful against the more assaulty armies - daemons with monstrous creatures and khorne units, tyranid monstrous creatures and rending genestealers and orks with power klaw nobs. You can be sure that these armies are going to spread their power attack wounds over a lot of the knights. The more swords, the better the chance I will have against these armies.

4. I'm still inexperienced with paladins. This is my first time using them. I'll probably adjust their configurations after this match.

Ah, I had no idea about the wysiwyg since pretty much half the minis on the table were proxied in my eyes.

I run my 10 paladins (when I use them) with halbeards on the psycannon dudes and swords on the rest. Things like banner and warding stave can be put on the psycannon carriers since you dont want to or want to be as safe as possible when taking saves with them.

You could do that, but it wouldn't be optimal. Why? Because of wound allocation shenanigans. Ideally, you want all the wargear combinations to be different so that you could spread across 10 wounds before you even have to remove a single model. Thus, it's usually better to put banners and staves separately by themselves, especially in 10-man units (in smaller 5-man units, it's ok to put them on psycannon models).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Battle report completed.

Great report, thanks a lot!

As expected, it was bloody! Cool turn-out for the Daemons, I was really dreading the outcome after the effects of the Paladins first charge...

Cilithan

I'm really not sold on the paladins. The concept is cool but I've yet to see 'em shine, and for a unit with that price it's quite underwhelming.

You could do that, but it wouldn't be optimal. Why? Because of wound allocation shenanigans. Ideally, you want all the wargear combinations to be different so that you could spread across 10 wounds before you even have to remove a single model. Thus, it's usually better to put banners and staves separately by themselves, especially in 10-man units (in smaller 5-man units, it's ok to put them on psycannon models).

That I thought was so universal that I didnt bother to include all the other options of things like falchions, mastercrafts etc.

My point is that the shooty paladins ought to be hitting first with halbeards, hence things like a banner on them as well as mastercrafts on psycannons, halbeards etc, all to make them use up the non-sword slots while staying unique.

The rest should have as many swords as possible for cheaper allocations of things like powerfist/claws etc. Those too can be made unique by mastercrafting stormbolters and/or swords. On top of that there is the apotechary and stave and falchion, enough to make all unique. But that is really not needed, when you have 10 of them you can have 2 or 3 geared out the same as very few situations will take advantage of precisely all 10 needing to be unique.

I was really hoping the Grey Knights would pull a win. Reeeeeally hoping. Ah well, sucky out come. Good game all in all. In retrospect that Dreadknight may have been better off shooting some of the units around him since the game did go on to turn 7. But hind sight is 20/20. Damn Daemons.

Wow. Great report Jy2; I was worried your reports would suffer from being such a huge battle, but it was as good as ever. Thanks man, pleasure to read and for once I was actually right.

Looking forward to your post-game assessments, I think Dreadknights are looking to be a solid unit overall.

SPOILER ALERT: If you have not read the report yet, please go back to p.1 and do so first before reading the Post-Game Analysis.


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


POST-GAME ANALYSIS - THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE OK:
Ok, this time I'm going to do my Post-game Analysis a little differently than what I've been doing. I'm going to call it The Good, the Bad and the OK. First, let's start off with:


THE BAD:
Interceptors - Normally they do alright, but they just stunk this game. Their only real contribution was to make 1 Nurgle daemon prince mishap and kill a couple of fiends. Quite underwhelming for 680pts.

Grey Knight Land Raider Redeemer - I was disappointed that it died so quickly. Only killed 1 bloodcrusher and cause 2W to another 2. I expected a lot more from it....but I will still use it again in the future.

Grey Knight Grandmaster - Man, what did he do? Nothing. His buffs - the grenades - while decent, wasn't earth-shattering. He didn't even get to strike a blow in combat!

Librarian - Another disappointing performance from another HQ with such a high potential. My 260pt librarian basically killed just 1 bloodcrusher with Warp Rift. That's all. Might of Titan was helpful, but his Dark Excommunication against the bloodcrushers really didn't make a difference. I wiped them out before they could even attack back.

Bloodcrushers - Put a couple of wounds on the dreadknight and paladins. That's it. Should have done much more for 540pts of lean, mean killing machines.

Nurgle Daemon Prince - 645pts of daemon royalty managed only to take out Crowe. WTF?!? Though in their weak defense, one did mishap.


THE OK:
Crowe - The relatively cheap Crowe took out a 215pt Nurgle daemon prince.

Draigo - He did take out Skarbrand, but other than that, didn't do too much.

Plaguebearers - Did what was needed of them, and that was to claim objectives (well, an objective). As long as they can do that, then they're ok.

Pink Horrors - Helped to bring down the dreadknight and claimed an objective.

Fiends of Slaanesh - Did wipe out a unit of interceptors.

Flesh Hounds - The only thing I was really expecting them to do was to tarpit one of my valuable units. That they did by tying up my dreadknight. Basically, they're a decent distraction, tarpit unit against the knights.

Bloodthirsters - Though both died to shooting, at least they were able to take out my Librarian, my Grandmaster (actually, he took himself out) and a unit of purifiers.

Fateweaver - He contributed absolutely nothing to the offense (didn't kill a single soul), but his bubble of protection was what kept a few units alive - his bloodthirster, the tzeentch DP's, Skarbrand and many more. He also almost succeeded in keeping my purifiers off my objective. If he would've killed just a little, I would have elevated him to The Good status.


THE GOOD:
Dreadknight - They killed 1 unit of fiends, 1 unit of pink horrors, 1 unit of plaguebearers on an objective and the flesh hounds. Moreover, they locked up 1 unit of bloodcrushers in assault, practically rendering them useless with Dark Excommunication for a couple of turns. That's a lot more than what the majority of my army did.

Paladins - Despite the fact that they died, I was actually quite pleased with their performance. They incapacitated one of the blight drones and killed a bloodthirster with their shooting. Then in combat, they wiped out 1 unit of bloodcrushers and brought 2 Tzeentch daemon princes down to only 1W left each. More importantly, they kept Skarbrand, the bloodcrushers and 2 DP's locked in combat and unable to do any damage for quite a while.

Flamers of Tzeentch - Put 1W on both my Grandmaster and my Librarian and killed a bunch of purifiers. Then helped to take down my last dreadknight. Not bad at all for a 105pt unit.

Tzeentch Daemon Prince - Though they had help from Fateweaver, basically this 380pt pair took on and then took out my 690pt paladins.

Skarbrand - This guy is so good that he deserves to be the runner-up for the MVP. Destroyed my 295pt land raider and then took out the Draigo. More importantly, daemons were hanging on thanks to him giving them Preferred Enemy.


And now...


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


THE MVP's:
Grey Knights:
Purifiers:
They were the lifeblood of my Grey Knight army, and they killed a lot. Some of the daemons to fall under their mighty psycannons and nemesis force weapons include 2 Nurgle daemon princes, 1 unit of fiends, 1 unit of bloodcrushers, 1 unit of contesting pink horrors, 1 contesting bloodthirster and finally, Fateweaver. They also almost destroyed the Nurgle blight drone.


Daemons:
Nurgle Blight Drones: They were amazing in this game. With their large blast, they were a major threat to my guys all game long. Even after I blew away their most dangerous guns, they still contributed. 1 blight drone survived 3 turns of continuous fire from 1 purifier squad to contest and win the game at the very end. Makes me want to buy 1 or 2 of these guys from Forgeworld now.

Excellent report as always!
Thanks

BBJ

Daemons are 2-0! Maybe this is why its codex grey knights instead of codex daemon hunters

Arent blight drones apocalypse use only?
If so it was a poor wat to really highlite a GK vs deamons standard battle.
It´s like highliting a normal 40k army by making it face baneblades.

If I´m wrong about the blightdrones then I apologize, been a long time since I read the deamon codex.

kenshin620 wrote:Daemons are 2-0! Maybe this is why its codex grey knights instead of codex daemon hunters

Daemons are proving that they can still compete against the new knights.

Pyriel- wrote:Arent blight drones apocalypse use only?
If so it was a poor wat to really highlite a GK vs deamons standard battle.
It´s like highliting a normal 40k army by making it face baneblades.

If I´m wrong about the blightdrones then I apologize, been a long time since I read the deamon codex.

Blight drones and Grey Knight Land Raider Redeemers, like any of the Forgeworld units, are always permissions-only. Even if you have the models and the rulebook for them, you still need your opponent's permission in order to use them. None of the Forgeworld stuff are standard....only units from White Dwarf like the eldar night spinners.

And this battle was only for fun. We've never put in any requirement that the MVP of the game needs to be an "official" 40k unit.

BTW, the blight drones is not a super-heavy or gargantuan unit (the real "Apoc" units). They're more like a regular fast skimmer, though with a soulgrinder mawcannon. As a matter of fact, they are sanctioned at the Adepticon Gladiator events (thus, you can actually use 3 blight drones in the Adepticon Gladiator challenge).

Edit: In reference to the GK vs Daemons comment

I did not write the game up I played last week but I played an all terminator GK army with my Slaanesh Daemons. I pulled out a draw after getting my non-preferred wave, rolling terrible (I put 100 attacks into 5 terminators and killed 3...) and then getting no reserves on turn 2.

Preferred enemy is a bit brutal, but at the end of the day GK are power armoured models and Daemons have a tendency to do quite well against power armour. That said the stormbolters really shine against a Daemon army.

Very cool report, nice pictures and all.

However I am pretty confused by the amount of normal wounds the daemons were suffering. Why not use the force weapons? Unless I'm missing something, you always want to use force weapons against multiple wound enemies.

@calypso2ts:

Stormbolter-spam really is a double-edged sword. Yeah, they work great against daemons and other foot armies. Problem is, competitive GK's are usually meched-up with minimal 5-man MSU units. Thus, they don't really take advantage of stormbolters (and don't usually need to as they main strength is against mech-opponents).

Foot-GK's, on the other hand, can really take advantage of stormbolter-spam. However, they are more vulnerable against armies with multiple large blasts and have problems against MSU-mech opponents.

Overall though, I think stormbolters on GK's are better than their Preferred Enemy against daemons.


@ph34r:

Deamons all have Eternal Warrior and thus are immune to the "force" part of the force weapons. What they do suffer against, however, is the Daemonbane special rule of grey knight nemesis weapons.

Fortunately for my opponent, he made all his LD rolls against it.

Wow, what a surprising outcome. I think you should do a 2nd rematch, but using a mechanized list. It's much easier for Daemons to deal with foot-list without having to crack AV shells.

I'm surprised by the Paladin's performance, but then again, having an invuln gives them a fighting chance against an army that mostly ignores armor saves in assault. Perhaps a foot-GK Terminators, Paladin, and Dreadknights backed with moderate psy-storm bolters? The more 4++ the better!

Nice report, thanks for sharing!

Edit:

BTW, that's a really small board for 4000pts.

TURTLES!!!!!!!
Interesting, some better psychic tests would have turned this (mainly as you HQs could have actually dealt damage) other than that it seemed really tight...

SabrX wrote:Wow, what a surprising outcome. I think you should do a 2nd rematch, but using a mechanized list. It's much easier for Daemons to deal with foot-list without having to crack AV shells.

I'm surprised by the Paladin's performance, but then again, having an invuln gives them a fighting chance against an army that mostly ignores armor saves in assault. Perhaps a foot-GK Terminators, Paladin, and Dreadknights backed with moderate psy-storm bolters? The more 4++ the better!

Nice report, thanks for sharing!

Edit:

BTW, that's a really small board for 4000pts.

Next time I go against daemons, I think I will bring my all-comer's mech-GK list. However, I'm not sure it will fare much better. That list is great against other mech armies but hasn't really quite proven itself against an all-foot army. As a matter of fact, in my last game, they lost to tyranids. Then again, you've got to try out your "all-comer's" list against all-comers.

GK terminators can hold their own in combat against other uber-units thanks to their 4++ swords and 2++ warding staves. You just need to play them carefully as thunderhammer/storm shield termies they are not. But keep in mind their weakness is still against shooty armies and really need a transport for some protection. The moment you put them in transports, however, model count drops drastically. Anyways, I'm not sure how competitive a terminator/paladin/dreadknight army could be. They could be strong against some armies but absolutely horrible against others.

Yeah, that is a small board for 4K. Realistically, we probably need 25% more board space.

Imperial Monkey wrote:TURTLES!!!!!!!
Interesting, some better psychic tests would have turned this (mainly as you HQs could have actually dealt damage) other than that it seemed really tight...

This time, I didn't feel that the failed psychic powers were really a problem at all compared to my 1st game against daemons. Honestly, I don't think my grandmaster, with just 1W left, would survive against his bloodthirster (though he may have delayed him 1 more turn....which might have affected the game). Oh well.

Yet another great Battle Report! I knew the GK would have some trouble with that list...I'm going up against some Daemons soon, and I'm not too excited about it...something tells me my Tau would have some difficulty

Lets hope you win the next one! You've had some rough luck lately

Wow, blessing of the blood god is pretty crazy good vs GK.

mega_bassist wrote:Yet another great Battle Report! I knew the GK would have some trouble with that list...I'm going up against some Daemons soon, and I'm not too excited about it...something tells me my Tau would have some difficulty

Lets hope you win the next one! You've had some rough luck lately

That would depend on what type of daemon build he brought. One thing I would recommend is to bring a lot of screening units. Proxy if he doesn't mind. A tau list like the one I faced in this batrep could work.

daedalus-templarius wrote:Wow, blessing of the blood god is pretty crazy good vs GK.

Well. Guess daemons needed something to offset Warp Quake and Dark Excommunication.