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I know the codex isn't out yet, but if the leaked copy and rumors are close enough to the truth we have a general idea of what this army will do and how it will contend.

The more I examine the GK and compare it to the other current armies I get the subtle sensation that, aside from a few spam lists, Grey Knights are going to have a hard time keeping up.

I base this on the fact that there will be so few of them on the table, their powers will be constantly threatened with the addition of a P. Hood in every Marine Army and that several armies have units that can stand toe to toe with the most elite of GK units and do it with a cheaper price tag.

Again, just basing this on what we've seen, but my initial excitement for playing the biggest, baddest elite army on the table is starting to dwindle. Yes, I understand the fluff is awesome and alluring, but I'm not looking forward to having my beautiful, fluffy-prestige army tabled every game because they just can't keep up and there aren't enough of them to get the job done. I am still entertaining the idea of playing them, but I don't see them becoming a top seat competitive force like I had first hoped- unless of course the codex that hits the stores has some surprises in it for us. All in all- I'm just less excited about the Grey Knights release..

Moving thread to 40K General Discussions.

It's been said many times, but it bears repeating. We don't have the wargear section, and that's pretty obviously a draft version. It's got handwriting all over it. For all you know they could have some sort of psychic penetration ability that lets them roll their eyes at a librarian's Hood. I've been spending some time musing over it, and honestly, the psychic abilities are pretty awesome, but I'm genuinely not sure they actually need them.

I think this is the first time anybody's said the new codex will be underpowered. After reading through it I liked most of what I saw, but all the "test or die" rolls get old real fast. I don't like that sort of thing in my games.

If the Inquisitorial Warband Squad is anything like in the leaked codex...then you can put GKs in the top 5 armies for competition.

I agree. As cool as ghost knights and stuff are, I don't feel like GK really compete at lower points values (under 2000, basically).... But only time will tell. A lot of players want to play pure GK, and others want to play pure henchman/ =][=.... Henchmen seem better than the GK so far

Brother SRM wrote:I think this is the first time anybody's said the new codex will be underpowered. After reading through it I liked most of what I saw, but all the "test or die" rolls get old real fast. I don't like that sort of thing in my games.

Many cooler heads (DRAIGO GUNNA KILL EVERY1 BAWW!) have said that GK overall don't look nearly as powerful as some other codicies appeared prior to release (BA or Nids, for example). This test codex is much more comprehensive, but even if it prints as-is with most of the assumptions about wargear correct, I don't really see it being more powerful than SW or IG. Model counts are low, and while AV isn't as much a problem as in the old GK dex, it still requires some bending-backwards to deal with in a big way through USRs and psychic powers.

A pure GK force looks doable, with some difficulty, and some options (Draigo, 10 Paladins, 1,000 points) are simply unviable from a competitive standpoint.

The hench warbands are where cheese starts flying. Coteaz and massive Jokaero squads, as it's written, can crush near anything with 50 BS3 lascannons. Even if you go without Jokaero for a more 'balanced' approach, 10 man plasma and meltagun squads in transports for a fraction of the "normal" price is some awe-inspiring potency.

GK look doable. GK with Hench support (or rather Coteaz + GK) looks like it's somewhere between competitive and hugely competitive.

One thing which caught my eye was the DreadKnight. For the relatively modest cost, it's 2+/4++, T7, 4 wounds. Even one of those is way too hard to kill for many armies, and you can easily put three in the list.

One can only hope that the codex is just a playtest draft...

The Dreadknight is not that bad (overpowered) when taken in the context of the rest of the GK options.

You can have 3 DKs in a list for a little less than 600 points if taking some modest upgrades, closer to 750 if you kit them out.

The 1250-1400 points remaining doesn't actually go that far with the remaining GK options.

I agree with the previous poster about how we do not even have a copy of the wargear section of the book, and that the "leaked codex" IS NOT what we will be receiving, and that this is a playtest version. With that in mind, GK will not be an easy army to start, but will pay off just like any other if you learn to play it well.

The thing that annoys me the most about the new codex is Draigo's background. The 2nd most annoying thing is warding staves that give you a 2+ invul save. I don't think there should be better than a 4+ invul save available in the game. But now we have stormshields and these warding staves to deal with.

Link to "leaked" play test codex?

The leak was just the playtest, while it's not the real codex, it does show whats ahead for us.

Personally I think it's a fine codex. Small units allow players to pick it up cheaper, and I'm loving the dreadknights personally. Always had a thing for monsterous creatures and terminators, so combo-ing both is kinda winning combo for me. Just waiting till ebay kicks in with everyone selling their stuff after the release because it still can't bum rush guard.

@Shenra use google?

Shenra wrote:Link to "leaked" play test codex?

That's not allowed on Dakka. Sorry.

I wrote some lists in a couple threads on what I thought winning combos would be, but I cant get anything super competitive out of it.

In the guard codex the only problem is the price tag of the models. I could easily pick it up and write a list, take it to a tournament and win with it.

Its not that easy with GK. I have read and read the leaked codex and the units just dont seem to have synergy. There is no dedicated GK anti tank, sure theres psycannons and DK and wenchmen, but we have a short supply of lascannons, no autocannons, no ranged strength 10 other than a single shot range 12 gravitron pistol. You cannot fight on all fronts with GK, the efficiency ratio they have just isnt as big as it should be, their cost is more than their effectiveness. Instant death power weapons are useless against a horde of orks, a herd ( ) of gribblies, a gaggle of gargoyles.

Obliterators will soundly remove 150 points of units every turn, a single enemy lascannon will buy its points back with every kill. If anything I hope this codex to gain significant power by the time it is released, lest even vanilla marines walk all over it.

Jaon wrote:Its not that easy with GK. I have read and read the leaked codex and the units just dont seem to have synergy. There is no dedicated GK anti tank, sure theres psycannons and DK and wenchmen, but we have a short supply of lascannons, no autocannons, no ranged strength 10 other than a single shot range 12 gravitron pistol. You cannot fight on all fronts with GK, the efficiency ratio they have just isnt as big as it should be, their cost is more than their effectiveness. Instant death power weapons are useless against a horde of orks, a herd ( ) of gribblies, a gaggle of gargoyles.

You can take 3 Lascannons for about 100 pts, as a troops choice. Those Lascannons could be 60" and Rending on a 3+.
Heck, take 5 for 175 and they are always rending and 60". (yes, I know rending is silly for Lascannons.)
Vindicare rolls pen on 4d6 and hits 95% of the time.
Psycannons may be rending.
Most of the units are Str 5+ and some roll 2d6 for pen in CC.
Dedicated transports that aren't land raiders.

There's anti-tank in the codex and there's mech in the codex. You're just not looking hard enough.

Also, and I can't say this enough, the book isn't freaking out yet. Chill on the 'I'm dissapointed', 'It's OP', 'It's TEOTWAKI'.

The 2nd most annoying thing is warding staves that give you a 2+ invul save.

I have to agree on this point, however, it wont last forever.
I think necron players may think about pariah's now when against them, or atleast a scythelord.
Gotta love ignoring all saves

The GW writing studio needs a Matt Ward-ing stave.

sourclams wrote:The Dreadknight is not that bad (overpowered) when taken in the context of the rest of the GK options.

You can have 3 DKs in a list for a little less than 600 points if taking some modest upgrades, closer to 750 if you kit them out.

Yes, but that's 750 points which is nearly impossible to remove from the board for most armies. Remember the complaints about Land Raider Achilles? Well, DK is more durable than Achilles - for fraction of the points. This sort of durability in a non-Deathstar unit is potentially very unbalancing.

I don't see henchmen as that big of a deal. Sure they are a nice unit but you can't take more than two of them anyway, and then you are giving up a lot of HQ choices.

Edit: Ok, just re-read Coteaz's entry. Never mind.

That would be assuming you use a normal inquisitor instead of Coteaz, which is unlikely at this point (though depending on what some of that wargear does, may be more likely when it is released).

Backfire wrote:
Yes, but that's 750 points which is nearly impossible to remove from the board for most armies. Remember the complaints about Land Raider Achilles? Well, DK is more durable than Achilles - for fraction of the points. This sort of durability in a non-Deathstar unit is potentially very unbalancing.

That's not true--that DK are more durable than Achilles. DKs will still lose in combat with TH/SS terminators, mostly because they just don't have enough attacks to saturate their saves. That's a big difference.

Also, 750 points is most definitely a deathstar unit.

Never played Grey Knights, never interested in starting them when they update, never saw the leaked info, never wanted to know the juicy numerical info, never interested in looking at the rumors besides the pics (which, to my disappointment were the same as the one I saw on 4chan earlier), never anymore excited


All I am excited is for some snazzy codex artwork and new minis to serve as temporary eye-candy. Then can I move on to buy more Crisis suits and look for anti-GK tactica when someone comes along with an army which will most certainly, metaphorically trample my face in like all others here do on a daily basis.

Unless there is a major revision in the henchmen, this won't be the grey knights codex.

It will be the henchmen codex.

At approximately 15pts per model:

ws5, str5, a4 and fnp henchmen. Really?

power weapon, 3++ henchmen. Really?

Take your pick of melta or plasma gun henchmen. Really?

Let's not even get into the weaponsmiths.

Potential:
Rending heavy flamers.
60" lascannons.
36" meltas.

Really?

If it was just GK's you could deal with it. But str7 ap4 rending psycannons? Really?

Based on the leaked codex, I believe it's a top tier army that is right up there with puppies, vampires and the emo elves.

What I really don't get is how the heck is everybody making so many judgments and criticisms of a codex that we can clearly not confirm? For all we know they rewritten everything we "predicted" could happen.

Especially since I heard that the leaked codex was apparently a 2009 WIP version of the book.

Brother SRM wrote:Especially since I heard that the leaked codex was apparently a 2009 WIP version of the book.

Where did you hear that?

You give the development team too much credit. People have been saying it's from early January. Of 2011

Still, they had a month or two to tweak.

sourclams wrote:

Backfire wrote:
Yes, but that's 750 points which is nearly impossible to remove from the board for most armies. Remember the complaints about Land Raider Achilles? Well, DK is more durable than Achilles - for fraction of the points. This sort of durability in a non-Deathstar unit is potentially very unbalancing.

That's not true--that DK are more durable than Achilles. DKs will still lose in combat with TH/SS terminators, mostly because they just don't have enough attacks to saturate their saves. That's a big difference.

Also, 750 points is most definitely a deathstar unit.

That's the same argument people used with Achilles: "What's the big deal, couple of Broadside teams can still kill it". Not all armies have Broadsides, and not all armies have TH/SS termies. And it's not like TH/SS termies are an auto-cure either, it takes about 3 rounds to kill from them too.

750 points in ONE units is a Deathstar. But it's three separate units. And it's just as durable in its base form which costs about same as AV12 Dread.