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I've been hearing a lot about how Grey Knights are going to destroy horde type/cc heavy armies like Orks. So, my question is, given what we know about the Grey Knight codex, what are the best builds/tactics to use against them? I currently play a Kan Wall army, but I'm not sure how well that will work against them. I've heard they have trouble popping open tanks, so does that mean the best tactic would be a Battlewagon spam type army? Or, should I consider actually breaking down and try to build a shooty ork army? Just wondering what the first impression if for the Ork players? How do you plan on taking on the Grey Knights?

Don't try to assault GK units unless you know exactly what each unit does. Purifiers will kill any sized mob for instance. That being said, GKs are just like any Meq book, shoot high volume of fire at the, and watch them die. Assaults need to be picked out though, and nobs are awful against an army of all force weapons. Regular strike squads and GKT squads are good targets for big mobs. PKs are actually useful against GK termies, as the best invul they get is normally a 4++, and one model can take a 2++.

Bring burna boyz and wagonz.
Max out a unit in said wagonz.
Park it by a unit (not pures) and open fire.

Failing that, make full use of them as power weapons.

20 Boyz in a Battlewagon.

The only area in which Grey Knights have quantity over quality is in their Storm Bolters, so negate those by bring wagons. Small, elite units (Burnas) will get chewed up at higher initiative and strength. Mass boyz attacks + the Klaw will allow you to take them down.

And actually, wont see too many Purifiers out there. This is for 2 reasons. First, taking Crowe is dumb. He is, literally, one of the worst 150 points a player can take in ANY codex. The number of characters worse than him are countable on one hand. So then, your opponent will need to spend a pretty sizable amount of points on troops, typically. This limits the number of Purifiers a player can bring, as there are lots of other attractive options in the book.

That said, you'll typically see Purifiers as elites, when you do see them. The other problem that they run into is transports. A Rhino or Razorback is easy to pop, and doesn't allow them to charge out of it. Land Raiders are Heavy Support (a VERY competitive slot), and Stormravens are fragile and expensive.

If you do see Purifiers, just run away from them. Or throw a Dread at them. Or Ghazghkull. You should have one of the two of those in your army.

And if you're worst nightmare comes true, and you're across the table from Crowe and 6x10 Purifiers... well, shake your opponents hand, and ask him to play a different list.

notabot187 wrote:and one model can take a 2++.

Who can take a 2++?

Punch them with Ghazzy, which as all ork players know, is the appropriate answer for all of 40k.

Titan? Punch it with Ghazzy. Dread? Punch it with Ghazzy. Swarmlord? Punch it with Ghazzy. Dreadknight? Laugh it into submission, then punch it with Ghazzy.

Will wrote:

notabot187 wrote:and one model can take a 2++.

Who can take a 2++?

Most units can take a single model weapon upgrade that gives a 2++ Its called a nemisis warding staff, its pretty pricey, but people will take it to put the high strength low AP shots on, instead of just losing a guy. So guess where the first PK hit is going?

The good news is that it isn't a cheap upgrade, and only one model can take it per squad. The bad news is it hurts single PKs units greatly: PKs get 4 attacks on the charge, 2 hit, 1.66 wounds, 5/6 chance to negate a wound, average production of a nob with PK ends up less than one GK. Since you have the rest of the squad with it, the GK player can put all the normal wounds on regular guys, which is 2 or 3+ (termies as troops, and paladins which can also have FNP) and all the PK hits on the warding staff which will probably negate all of the PK hits. You can't send nobs into it, since every wound caused by the squad will insta gib them on a passed LD test, and you only get a 5+ invul (if you paid for it)

So the ork tactic is basicly to spam small arms fire, and normal horde CC attacks to hope and just force saves. This won't work against purifiers (SC lets them be troops), which will kill half your squad no matter the size before real combat even starts (which counts towards combat res), and still go first.

Sounds like the sky is falling? Not really, but it is why I said you really need to know exactly what the squad has before you commit to assault. It is generally safer to try and outshoot the most likely early GK lists (as people like to tool for assault when a codex is new and elite for some reason)

Nemesis Warding Stave is only for CC, is it not?

notabot187 wrote: Since you have the rest of the squad with it, the GK player can put all the normal wounds on regular guys, which is 2 or 3+ (termies as troops, and paladins which can also have FNP) and all the PK hits on the warding staff which will probably negate all of the PK hits.

Wound allocation is done for each Initiative step so all the Klaw wounds will go to idifferent models.

SlaveToDorkness wrote:

notabot187 wrote: Since you have the rest of the squad with it, the GK player can put all the normal wounds on regular guys, which is 2 or 3+ (termies as troops, and paladins which can also have FNP) and all the PK hits on the warding staff which will probably negate all of the PK hits.

Wound allocation is done for each Initiative step so all the Klaw wounds will go to idifferent models.

Ah, yes ty, got ahead of myself, and yes warding staff is CC only

I would think Orks would do ok considering GKs pay for PWs on every guy, which are pretty useless vs. most Ork infantry.

Of course having not seen the codex, and it being the latest Pwnage out, I'm sure they don't actually pay much for all-PWs.

I'm pretty sure kan wall would do fine against them. Their numbers can only account for so much when swarmed by 90+ boyz on top of kanz.

Nobz are utterly hopeless, slow multi-wound models are the Grey Knights' bread and butter.

Straight up hordes will be torn apart by Paladins and Purifiers. A Paladin squad with an apothecary will be nigh unkillable by a horde army.

Kan Wallz will easily break to massed psycannon fire.

Orkz are in a pretty tough position against Grey Knights.

Wagon spam might work, but just know that as soon as you expose your side armour, you'll lose a wagon. Psycannons are not forgiving weapons.

Loota Spam could prove effective. 45-135 S7 shots will force a lot of saves. The only problem with this strategy is that a unit or two of Interceptors will utterly crush a squad of lootaz.

I say your best bet would be to spam something and hope that your opponent doesn't have the proper counter available. Grey Knights have some crazy good units/options, but they're all very, very expensive, so there are bound to be a few holes in most GK lists. GKs look to be a very tough matchup for Orkz, so expect most of your matchups to be pretty close.

Madmax1 wrote:I've been hearing a lot about how Grey Knights are going to destroy horde type/cc heavy armies like Orks. So, my question is, given what we know about the Grey Knight codex, what are the best builds/tactics to use against them? I currently play a Kan Wall army, but I'm not sure how well that will work against them. I've heard they have trouble popping open tanks, so does that mean the best tactic would be a Battlewagon spam type army? Or, should I consider actually breaking down and try to build a shooty ork army? Just wondering what the first impression if for the Ork players? How do you plan on taking on the Grey Knights?

If you play a kan-wall, fear not. Psycannons no longer bypass invulnerable saves, and they don't ignore cover either. While virtually every GK has a force-weapon, your kan wall is packing walkers and 1 wound infantry models, so you have nothing to fear from them - and they come with 1 attack base. =D

If you don't already back up your kan-wall with 2-3 units of Lootas, you'll find them quite effective now. Definitely worthy of note is that all those Psycannons are 24" - and you'll be outranging them with all your Lootas; you can literally get a free turn of firing while they close range to *you*. Also worthy of note though, is that all the storm-bolters can be upgraded with psyammo to be STR5; and with 2 shots each at 24", they can glance your killa-kans.

While purifiers can stick three psycannons into a single unit, a regular strike squad can fit two - so they aren't really that much more of a threat - *everything* is equally threatening. Deal with it like you would any other space marine army.

Dashofpepper wrote:
While purifiers can stick three psycannons into a single unit, a regular strike squad can fit two - so they aren't really that much more of a threat - *everything* is equally threatening. Deal with it like you would any other space marine army.

Four, actually. And if they make it into combat with your boyz, Cleansing Flame will kill over 40% of them before any attacks are made, and the purifiers will kill off a few with their actual attacks to boot. If you need to get into combat, try to assault the Purifiers with your kanz to minimize the effect of cleansing flame.

And be prepared to write off your lootas if your opponent gets first turn and has Interceptors.

Fafnir wrote:Nobz are utterly hopeless, slow multi-wound models are the Grey Knights' bread and butter.

Straight up hordes will be torn apart by Paladins and Purifiers. A Paladin squad with an apothecary will be nigh unkillable by a horde army.

Kan Wallz will easily break to massed psycannon fire.

Orkz are in a pretty tough position against Grey Knights.

Wagon spam might work, but just know that as soon as you expose your side armour, you'll lose a wagon. Psycannons are not forgiving weapons.

Loota Spam could prove effective. 45-135 S7 shots will force a lot of saves. The only problem with this strategy is that a unit or two of Interceptors will utterly crush a squad of lootaz.

I say your best bet would be to spam something and hope that your opponent doesn't have the proper counter available. Grey Knights have some crazy good units/options, but they're all very, very expensive, so there are bound to be a few holes in most GK lists. GKs look to be a very tough matchup for Orkz, so expect most of your matchups to be pretty close.

Purifiers are the anti horde unit. Their psychic power wounds everybody who charged them on a 4+. Ork boys can't charge purifiers, but that's only 1 possible GK build. If purifiers are limited to a unit or 2 lootas and shoota boys should work just fine against them. There is 1 special character that allows purifiers to be taken as troops allowing the GK player to spam them becoming a hard counter to orcs, but it's not going to be a common build.

Interceptors are jump infantry, any good ork player can keep a single unit of jump infantry off his lootas.

Warding staffs are a 2+ invo in CC only, limit 1 per squad.

The apothecary in a FNP paladin unit costs 130 points with each additional paladin costing a minimum of 55 with tons of upgrades available. They are going to be a nasty and expensive unit.

Nobz need to be careful of GK force weapons as they insta kill nobs. Pklaws also insta kill paladins, which are horribly expensive.

GK rifleman dreads are S8 AC. Wagons will work great against rifleman dreads, as will any mob with a power klaw.

It's a tough fight for orks, but not completely hopeless (Unless it's a list built around the purifier as troops special character)

Fafnir wrote:

And be prepared to write off your lootas if your opponent gets first turn and has Interceptors.

Why is that? The normal grot screen that protects Lootas from a scout-move/alpha-strike-assault should work equally well against them?

schadenfreude wrote:
Purifiers are the anti horde unit. Their psychic power wounds everybody who charged them on a 4+. Ork boys can't charge purifiers, but that's only 1 possible GK build. If purifiers are limited to a unit or 2 lootas and shoota boys should work just fine against them. There is 1 special character that allows purifiers to be taken as troops allowing the GK player to spam them becoming a hard counter to orcs, but it's not going to be a common build.

You don't even have to do that. All you need to do is take 2 squads of 10 purifiers, combat squad them, and then assault the horde. That's 4 uses of cleansing flame a turn, and will utterly decimate any horde. And Purifiers are considered by many to be the best non-inquisitional unit in the codex. Expect to face plenty of them.

Interceptors are jump infantry, any good ork player can keep a single unit of jump infantry off his lootas.

Not if they get first turn. Grand Master uses Grand Strategy to give Interceptors scouts. Interceptors then warp shunt 30" with their scout movement. On their turn, they jump another 12" and finally assault 6".

Warding staffs are a 2+ invo in CC only, limit 1 per squad.

And the only unit in the entire army that can actually get a chance to use one against Grey Knights would be a unit of Boyz with a klaw nob (everything else will get force weapon'd before it gets a chance to use it). And if that's the case, then you really only need one model with a 2++ to soak it up. And even if it's only in CC, it's not like Orkz have enough low AP weaponry to be exceptionally threatening anyway.

The apothecary in a FNP paladin unit costs 130 points with each additional paladin costing a minimum of 55 with tons of upgrades available. They are going to be a nasty and expensive unit.

Yep. You take 10 paladins, and you'll need to inflict 120 armour saves on average before anything starts dropping. You won't come across it often, but it's definetly possible.

Nobz need to be careful of GK force weapons as they insta kill nobs. Pklaws also insta kill paladins, which are horribly expensive.

Against a unit of paladins, a nob squad won't even get a chance to strike with its klaws. I would never recommend taking a unit of nobz against Grey Knights, they negate any strengths that the unit has (multiple wounds, FNP save, wound allocation, etc.).

GK rifleman dreads are S8 AC. Wagons will work great against rifleman dreads, as will any mob with a power klaw.

Still, with weak side armour and a wide side profile, a player utilizing battlewagons needs to be very careful.

Well it sounds to me like Im already on the right path then. Ive been playing for the last few months, with out my nobs. I decided that, yes they are a great unit, but can I do it without them? So far yes, Ive done pretty well without the use of nobs. Granted Ive been playing with alot of new players, but even a few times against the seasoned players, Ive done well without them. Id be pissed if I payed all those points for nobs, just to have a GK unit wipe the floor with them.


Ive yet to see the codex, but from what Ive been reading around here, they definitely seem overpowered, some units more then others for sure. Love that codex creep, that they swear doesnt happen

KingCracker wrote:Well it sounds to me like Im already on the right path then. Ive been playing for the last few months, with out my nobs. I decided that, yes they are a great unit, but can I do it without them? So far yes, Ive done pretty well without the use of nobs. Granted Ive been playing with alot of new players, but even a few times against the seasoned players, Ive done well without them. Id be pissed if I payed all those points for nobs, just to have a GK unit wipe the floor with them.


Ive yet to see the codex, but from what Ive been reading around here, they definitely seem overpowered, some units more then others for sure. Love that codex creep, that they swear doesnt happen

The GK book is actually reasonably balanced, at least compared to the other 5ed books. The problem is Orks are a 4th ed book, supposedly made with 5 in mind (lies if you have actually analyzed it), made with a different design philosophy. Orks being a low Initiative, poor armor save army happen to get hurt worse by GK gimmicks than other armies. Orks got handicapped hard from day one, their old book would probably do better against current grey knights than their current one (choppa special rule, mobbing up, scar boyz ect). The new book wasn't that bad when it came out (as many can attest) and can still make good builds, but they are definitely starting to struggle as more 5ed books come along.

And THATS why I keep saying we need an updated codex. Dont need any new minis or redone things, just updated rules. Cmon GW, that would be EASY to pull off

While there may be a few hard units to deal with, you have a lot of options in your "Standard" all comers list.


1) The war for Scout moves. You have Coptas, they have interceptors. If the list is relying on a first turn strike, you can negate this with your scout moves. Depending on who makes scout moves first, you can move your deffcoptas into defensive positions to force the enemy to end their scout moves further away from the main force, wasting their shunt move and maybe ruining their "Grand Strategy"

2) Battle Wagons. Meltas are few and far between. (storm raven, vindacre, land rider, is that it?) Just like playing against any other army, if you expose the side of a wagon, it is gone. If your wagons stay alive, you can Tank shock and Ram and pick assaults that are favorable. It will be just like Every other game. Purifies will hurt, but that is what a Burna Wagon is for.

3) Kan Wall. Again, you have the winning tools here. Psycannons have a short range, and I think that they will not be spammed the way people though they were. You will have a lot fo firepower and a lot of boys. Against purifies you either need to shoot them with shootas, or tie them up with walkers (if there are no PF equivalents in the unit). Purifiers are the main anti-horde unit, so if you can deal with them, then you are set.

4) The Paladins. I am honestly not very afraid of these guys. They are a huge blob of 2+, Wound Allocated, FNP Terminators, BUT it looks like you pay a fair price for them. THEN you have to either buy a Storm raven (that lootas shoot out of the Sky) or a Land Raider (that you RAM to Death). If the wrong guy dies to massed fire, (the one with a PF equivalent) then you can just tie them up with walkers and be done with it. They will be huge and scary, but anything that costs around 600-700 pts for 5 guys should be good. You could probably send 3X30 sets of boys at them, as STILL be up in points when all was said and done.


Here are the only adjustments I see happening,
1) Nobs are taken less. They are just not as good when there are a ton of force weapons around.
2) Nobs are replaced with a Burna Wagon. Purify those Purifiers with Fires.

Anything that is mentioned as good in the GK codex is something you wouldn't put nobz against even if it were part of any other army. Nobz against termis? Bad idea. Dreads? Don't do that. MC? No, those splatter nobz all over the battlefield! Units with more than one power weapon? Better send your nobz somewhere else. Seems like a no-brainer to not take nobz against an army thats best at units that murder them.

I just want to bring up two big problems for Orks (well, three):

Purifiers, everybody knows about these. Especially when combat squadded, their psypower rapes hordes. Add in multiassaults, and the fact that they can actually fight their way out of a paper bag on their own, huge huge problems.

Vindicare Assassin--I think this is a big problem that's getting glossed over for Orks in particular. One shot, one kill--and that kill is the PK Nob. He's also great against battlewagons, so double whammy there.

Might of Titan--no idea how common MoT Libbies will be, but I'll guess they're taken rather frequently due to the low amount of anti tank in the lists. MoT makes a Kan wall suddenly suck. S5 (or S6) +2d6 has to roll badly to not pen AV11. Multiplied by about 30 attacks.... even two Kan squadrons loses every model at higher initiative.

Quite frankly the GK codex looks lilke it was built to kill Orks all day. Mass psy powers versus a list with 0 psy def, ability to single out valuable models (and 2 wounds per shot via Vindicare is ultra efficient at killing Nobs), mass force weapons at S5 or higher to deal with low I multiwound models, and USRs handed out to boost speed or CC ability.

Seriously, what does a winning Ork list look like in this environment? You can't rely on non-meched mobs due to Vindicare, but Trukk mobs aren't fighty enough to drag even a basic GKST down (if they get there through mass S4-5-7 dakka).

You can't rely on Nobs, even individualized cybork Nobz, because there will be enough wounds handed out at higher I to saturate ID everywhere.

Depending on FAQ, Ghaz isn't remarkably good as Vindie can take away his invul.

Kan wall is still probably a better bet, but not super attractive (although a stronger build in all comers settings).

It looks like the way to do it is a weird amalgamation of Battlewagons, Burna Boyz, Lootas behind grot screens, and Deffkoptas for tying up dudes like the Vindicare.

Dreadknights are still a problem, though, and I think the best counter is probably to simply throw a boy mob at it and tarpit it for an entire game. If you have the PK Nob you'll kill it, if you don't have the PK Nob due to Vindicare assassination you'll at least keep it bogged down until it's rescued by another squad.

y0disisray wrote:I'm pretty sure kan wall would do fine against them. Their numbers can only account for so much when swarmed by 90+ boyz on top of kanz.

You're totally right. You also have rookits from 9 kans flying at his low number of units. 18 rokkits shots will do some damage. The ones that hit anyway. Plus if you got lootas in the back firing and a buzzcopta popping transports you should be just fine. Not to mention 90 boys cleaning up what's left. A kan wall is a competitive list that can handle it's own.

Oh yeah and a KFF! If they can't hit ya they can't hurt ya.

skycapt44 wrote:

y0disisray wrote:I'm pretty sure kan wall would do fine against them. Their numbers can only account for so much when swarmed by 90+ boyz on top of kanz.

You're totally right. You also have rookits from 9 kans flying at his low number of units. 18 rokkits shots will do some damage. The ones that hit anyway. Plus if you got lootas in the back firing and a buzzcopta popping transports you should be just fine. Not to mention 90 boys cleaning up what's left. A kan wall is a competitive list that can handle it's own.

Oh yeah and a KFF! If they can't hit ya they can't hurt ya.

The issue with the KFF is that something like a Vindicare could aim for the Big Mek. With his 2-wound-a-shot round all it takes is one failed save and your cover goes away. And, as Svendrex mentioned, scout moving can block off enemy scout moves. The issue is that this works both ways, your deffkopta won't be assaulting anything valuable first turn if it's blocked off.

True, but most kan walls have 2 KFF's. The Vindicare has to hit also. Not to mention if you have first move you could take it out first go (if it's not blocked of course).

It's gonna come down to the rolls of course but the point is a kan wall is still a good list to beat any GK list. Which is the answer to the first question posted by the discussion poster.

skycapt44 wrote:True, but most kan walls have 2 KFF's. The Vindicare has to hit also. Not to mention if you have first move you could take it out first go (if it's not blocked of course).

It's gonna come down to the rolls of course but the point is a kan wall is still a good list to beat any GK list. Which is the answer to the first question posted by the discussion poster.

Not saying it's bad or impossible to win, just pointing out that the Big Meks would be vulnerable. Oh, and the Vindicare hitting shouldn't be an issue, what with BS8 and everything...

in all honesty, I dont think gk's will be too bad, if you can play equal to or outplay the GK player.

You /really/ need to be able to identify each individual GK unit and what they are good at.

In general:
-you can expect every unit to have a thunder hammer, at least one (and probably only one)
-stormbolters will absolutely shred units caught out of cover.
-inquisitorial henchmen squads with stormbolters are /bad news
-dont get stormbolted, don't get purified, those are pretty much the only dangers.

normal gk squads are, for all intensive purposes just marines, remember they only have 1 attack each so kans or boys should be able to take them once they hit combat

Purifiers are bad news, but not world ending.
In a tourney setting most will have halbards, you don't care about this since you are going last
Cleansing flames only effects models in base contact, so if you charge "short" on a flank, its still going to hurt, but it shouldn't hit as many boys
Many people will be combat squadding purifiers to double cleaning flame, use this to focus looter or burner fire on the psycannon squad (or close combat squad depending on your army), also remember that the psycannon models dont have power weapons so they should go down quickly in cc.!

assassin really needs to be chased down by a truk, bikers, or something, he will go down quickly in close combat.

Wrong.

Clensing flame is a 4+ for every model in the unit attacking the purifiers to take a wound.