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Fortitude has been a game changer with Grey Knights. If your opponent does not have psyker defense fortitude is so broken. Grey Knights get to ignore 2/3 of glances and 1/3 of penetrating hits most of the time. Fortitude is game winning all by itself when you have two mechanized armies and one ignores the stuns and shaken. The ability to keep shooting or advancing to objectives is game winning. The shake or stun and move on to the next vehicle no longer applies when playing against grey knights.

Even with psyker defense you don't know when you will block the fortitude with a hood 42% chance, a runic weapon 50%, or eldar runes of warding 50%. Fortitude although unreliable with a psyker defense still can win you the game by getting your vehicle to the objective or letting you shoot when you normally couldn't because of stunned or shaken.

This is really hard to deal with because normally if you stun a vehicle you know it can't make a last minute objective grab driving 12 and dumping out the guys unless it has extra armor. So you have to play as if every grey knight vehicle has extra armor.

Dealing with predicting incoming fire next turn is also difficult if you stun a bunch of grey knight vehicles you don't know if you will roll average or low or hot for your hood/ runic weapon so determining when to use smokes even if you stunned some vehicles they may be come unstunned and still shoot you. This is harder to decide.

Fortitude is just one of the most broken powers because its universally good versus everyone and flat out wins games. Jaws is broken yes but only really good against low init things. Fortitude effects everyone.

How is fortitude changing your game?

Well, for me, it's causing a lot of bad warhammer players to QQ about it on message boards I frequent. So that is getting kind of old.

Best way to counter it is with AP 1 and lots of Ordnance.

Unfortunately, most of the armies that have those available already use those quite a bit, and others (like DE) don't have a large supply of it.

How is fortitude changing your game?

It isn't. I expect every enemy armored vehicle to be EA equipped.

Shoot it till it wrecks or explodes.

Don't want it shooting? Shoot its guns off.

SOFDC wrote:Don't want it shooting? Shoot its guns off.

Because everyone knows how to roll 3's/5's on their dice.

What's the difference between an EA equipped Dread and a Fortitude Dread? The Fortitude hurts you next turn.

What's the difference between an EA equipped Dread and a Fortitude Dread? The Fortitude hurts you next turn.

Ever had occasion to see a EA bloodfist dread in CC get shaken? Or any other walker, for that matter?

Fortitude bothers me no more than EA. Land raiders still get to shoot at you. Stormravens still get to shoot at you. (And both of these do so even without EA!) Rhinos and razorbacks still get to make last minute objective grabs, at minimum the occupants get to move up and disembark to shoot. Shooting vehicles and dreads still get to at minimum move and/or use smoke or get behind cover to come back and hit me in the gut in following turns. Walkers in CC still hit you in the face.

The fact that it's only a 5 point increase for better-than-15-point upgrade is ridiculous, I grant you, but so are about 10,000 other things in the SW/BA/GK codices.
SW get to nullify it on a 4+. Shadow in the warp and runes of warding make using the power dicey or an exercise in futility. When they redo the BT codex, there will almost certainly be a host of anti-psyker goodies there as well.

TL;DR: Mountain out of a molehill. Lets blow up the world about those pesky CSM Rhinos with Daemonic possession next. They don't even have a psychic test! This is clearly broken!

The funny thing is I always find my flying cardboard boxes to be more durable than any meq vehicle. You'd be surprised how many vehicles you can blow up when you have 17 lances in a 1500pts game. So to answer your question, "with what gun were you planning to shoot with?"

Meh, I haven't found it to be a big deal.

It's just Daemonic Possession from CSM in psychic power form.

SOFDC wrote:

Mountain out of a molehill.

QFT.


Its not a big deal. Lots of things ignore shaken & stunned results. By that logic my squadrons of Killa-kans are broken because vehicle squadrons ignore stunned & shaken. Likewise vehicles with daemonic possession, and landraiders.

I think that to call it 'game winning' is a tad of an overstatement.

It doesn't change the game. Just like 'extra extra armour'. As in better extra armour. You can immobilise a rhino with a bolter so if you shoot if with an actual anti tank weapon, the fact is has fortitude will not help it out.

Yes its like extra armor in the same way a lascannon is like a railgun.. Both can kill tanks but if one army suddenly had ALL their lascannons upgraded to railguns then hmm i wonder who would be better

Extra armor is 15 pts, fortitude is 5 pts

This lets you ignore 33% of the damage table on pens, and 66% on glances most of the time. Extra armor does not allow you to shoot (which obviously is a big deal on razorbacks, dreads and psycannons inside rhinos)

As a tournament player for 10 years I would say *bad* players are not the ones QQing about fortitude.. its those who are totally underestimating it who are gonna get crushed by someone with EQUAL skill yet has this ability on their side

Its probably the best vehicle upgrade in the entire game, all for 5 pts and to beat it every army needs a psychic hood basically. Although its not horribly effective against CC armies (but who wins without anti-transport shooting spam nowadays?). Comparing it to possession is just as bad as extra armor as once again its 5 points! and doesnt reduce BS. You have to *always* take point cost into account when you compare something. 25% the price for a better ability?

Sure it can be beaten but never ever underestimate an extremely powerful ability

I haven't found Fortitude to be a big factor in tournament games I've played against GK so far. If I really need to stop a vehicle, I kill it.

Avariel wrote:How is fortitude changing your game?

my whole army book is centered around stunning vehicles, not destroying them and fortitude just completely breaks everything. I have to manuver around to hide most of my force from everything but one vehicles while hoping to get a good result that wont be fortituded off.



Why did they make it Ld 10, thats almost autopass. Are the psykers they use as pilots the most powerful psykers in the army? Ld8 would be far less broken.

Exergy wrote:my whole army book is centered around stunning vehicles

This. I'm not sure why this is so hard for other people in this thread to understand. A basic principle of 5E is the so-called "fire suppression" with mass S7-8 non-AP 1 weapons. Stun something, and move on. If you get a better result, great!

Against GK this is thrown out the window.

Exergy wrote:Why did they make it Ld 10, thats almost autopass. Are the psykers they use as pilots the most powerful psykers in the army? Ld8 would be far less broken.

Good point - why are their pilots/drivers more attuned with psychic powers than their Strike Squads?

its easier to keep the vehicle's machine spirit calmed then it is to activate a Force Weapon.

and the drivers of a vehicle will have spent alot of time intuned with the vehicle and the vehicle will know it's pilot.

This is a great example of why you take weapons that can actually DESTROY your target instead of praying for lucky rends and Autocannon pen rolls.

Between my Vendettas, Manticores, and 15 Meltaguns I have barely noticed a difference.

somerandomdude wrote:

Exergy wrote:my whole army book is centered around stunning vehicles

This. I'm not sure why this is so hard for other people in this thread to understand. A basic principle of 5E is the so-called "fire suppression" with mass S7-8 non-AP 1 weapons. Stun something, and move on. If you get a better result, great!

I don't have any trouble understanding it.

If your strats and army builds depended on shaking and stunning and you play an army with no psychic defense, you're now at a disadvantage against GK.

It doesn't mean the game is broken, it just means your particular strat doesn't work anymore. So you have to adjust.

Just like people who played rhino-rush-daemonbomb or fish-o-fury fire warriors or FNP khorne bikers or tri-falcon harlequins etc. etc. all had to adjust when the rules changed and those strats were no longer viable (or available).

I adjusted my mech Eldar army by adding more long-range Str8 shooting and keeping the farseer with runes of warding in. It's just the reality of the game that you can't play the same way for 10 years continuously--you have to tweak sometimes when new books come out.

I adjusted my mech Eldar army by adding more long-range Str8 shooting and keeping the farseer with runes of warding in. It's just the reality of the game that you can't play the same way for 10 years continuously--you have to tweak sometimes when new books come out.

Which in turn makes you weaker against non-Gks, and thus you'll do worse in competitive events if you don't fight GKs.

Eldar don't have cost-effective S8 long range shooting besides the incredibly vulnerable war walkers

Even if you do penetrating hit with non AP1 weapons that are high strength the fact remains that they ignore 1/3rd of the total damage. For 5 pts thats a huge benefit in their favor its a mech vs mech fight. I suggest playing against someone with equal skill and seeing if you can beat them despite them ignoring 33% of the results. If its truly someone with equal skill then you wont be able to given non-extreme probability

"Shooting transports" is not a particular strat like FNP khorne bikers (?????) or Tri falcon armies, those are called army lists. Destroying and stunning vehicles is called 5th edition 40k. There is a difference

Low strength or high strength weapons, it doesnt matter because they ignore 1/3rd of all hits.

The main problem is once the Gks shoot *your* vehicles youre pretty much screwed to shoot back because yours get stunned and then they ignore your return shots.

I actually have tournament caliber armies for GK, BA, IG and SW so I know the power lists and how 40k plays at high levels.

Who cares about IG melta guns when psycannons demolish those chimeras and Dread skill the manticores. IG vets are good on the defensive but they are next to useless against 24" range guns that can move and fire. (Or they can move 12" and get out but ill trade a razorback/rhino for melta vets). You should ALWAYS base your strategies on going SECOND because then you're not caught unprepared. Coteaz will make it so you cant steal the initiative basically and they may steal it more often. Vendettas will die vs shooty GK lists as they do vs everything really

odorofdeath wrote:This is a great example of why you take weapons that can actually DESTROY your target instead of praying for lucky rends and Autocannon pen rolls.

Between my Vendettas, Manticores, and 15 Meltaguns I have barely noticed a difference.

exactly, not all armies have access to AP1 weaponry.


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Flavius Infernus wrote:I don't have any trouble understanding it.

If your strats and army builds depended on shaking and stunning and you play an army with no psychic defense, you're now at a disadvantage against GK.

It doesn't mean the game is broken, it just means your particular strat doesn't work anymore. So you have to adjust.

When half the armies out there have NO psychic defense and a large portion of them dont have access to AP1 weapons then yes the game is broken.

Or you could put it this way. The game is not broken for the half of the game that has psychic defense. You should adjust your strategy by playing another army.

Nobody ever said that 40k was balanced though it still beats fantasy in that aspect most of the time. Even still we see the best of our players winning with 'lesser' armies on a rather regular basis so perhaps we just have tourny level, but not top tier players and lower complaining while the rest adjust and win regardless.

GKs need their defensive abilities. Raising points cost for offense is great, until you realize that you still die like cheaper marines. Same with their terminators. They die to plasma fire just like anybody else. These weaknesses need to be made up for in other areas.

Ultimately, the only way Fortitude screws you is if you don't account for it. If people can win with Necrons these days, then people can figure out how to deal with Fortitude.

Ultimately, it means that a mech GK army will be more mobile than similar armies, but there will ultimately be fewer units. Realize that this means focusing your fire more in order to kill them rather than to stun them, and also know that you'll be engaging the opponent at a different pace than you would a different marine army.

Also, if you're glancing an opponent to death and counting on stunning to take care of the job, you a) need to do it differently against GKs and b) probably want to up your firepower in general anyway.

Kirasu wrote:

I adjusted my mech Eldar army by adding more long-range Str8 shooting and keeping the farseer with runes of warding in. It's just the reality of the game that you can't play the same way for 10 years continuously--you have to tweak sometimes when new books come out.

Which in turn makes you weaker against non-Gks, and thus you'll do worse in competitive events if you don't fight GKs.

Eldar don't have cost-effective S8 long range shooting besides the incredibly vulnerable war walkers

EML falcons. They have actually made my str6 spam mech Eldar army overall stronger against a wider range of opponents--including Mech guard who also have a lot of AR12. At Colonial I was able to get away with all str6 at range and still do pretty well, but psiflemen with fortitude laugh at str6.

Couple of weeks ago I played against a GK opponent of equal/better skill in a tournament and won by killing his storm ravens and psifleman dreads from across the table with my EML falcons. Having enough shots to consistently score penetrating hits (as opposed to glancing hits) at range is what makes the difference.

The list and the tactics are interrelated. If you only take assault cannon razorbacks in your list you can expect to have a hard time tactically against GK vehicles because the only tactic available to you is to shoot assault cannons.

GKs are more expensive overall, so they don't pack as many units or as many vehicles into their armies. If a tournament army doesn't have enough firepower to outgun a numerically smaller army without depending on shaking/stunning, it may be time to look at tweaking that army.


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Kirasu wrote:

The main problem is once the Gks shoot *your* vehicles youre pretty much screwed to shoot back because yours get stunned and then they ignore your return shots.

Yeah, I can see this, but because the GK army should be smaller, he should never have enough shots to shake/stun everything in your whole army. Even if you can't use reserves and other shenanigans to get the first shot (seizing the initiative is not a tactic), a well-constructed tournament army should be able to fight effectively with only half its units.

Grey Knights do have slightly fewer units on average but not necessarily as you can have razorbacks filled with cheap henchmen to balance out the expensive units. However most of the grey knight units have at least a 24 inch range with psy cannons and storm bolters while with other Marines you have a 12 inch range with meltas and bolters.

Grey Knights don't have to stun or shake all your vehicle they just have to shake enough to supress your long range fire.

AP1 is great if you can get there to use it as most AP1 is on meltas which is 12 inch range and your getting shot by auto cannons and psy cannons before that.

Playing as if all your opponents vehicles have extra armor isn't an issue, its an issue when your opponents vehicles all can possibly keep shooting even when shaken or stunned for only 5 more points. You don't always roll well for damage results or your hood/runic weapon if you have one

Eldar might actually be pretty good against grey knights, boardwide runes of warding give you protection and a good chance of causing perils which most likely will keep the tank stunned.

I wouldn't rely on Runes to stop Fortitude.

the average on 3d6 is 10 which is passing for a vehicle.

it just makes it less likely for them to pass.


and god help you if he has a Vindicare. that Farseer is Priority target #1.

Fortitude is pretty bad against armies that can do nothing about it (i.e. no psychic defense). However, you just have to adjust. Not much else you can do about it. Just like when Jaws of the World Wolf came out, tyranid players thought they were pretty much screwed. Or even before that, there was (and still is) dual-lash. Because of that, you started to see more people mech up, especially in competitive, tournament play. Granted, lash wasn't the sole reason for the change in meta, but it helped more people to "adjust" their games in competitive play.

Fortitude, and in a sense - Warp Quake, Cleansing Flame and Dark Excommunication - are all meta-shifting powers, especially against the right army. You can't stop them, at least not without psychic defense. The only thing you can really do is to "tweak" your army or your strategy. Now I'm not talking about list-tailoring, I'm talking about making small changes that don't throw off your all-comer's list against the other 9 armies that are not the Grey Knights.

I think the main issue is that there isnt really any way to deal with fortitude if you dont have psychic defense.. You just have to be able to pump out more damage to give yourself the original probability.

If you're already at an optimal list and you need to do 33% more penetrating hits to each vehicle.. just how are you going to do that? More than likely you'll just have to suffer doing 33% less hits to the vehicle

If youre facing someone with equal skill and equal power list youre simply going to have a very rough time

Grey Templar wrote:I wouldn't rely on Runes to stop Fortitude.

the average on 3d6 is 10 which is passing for a vehicle.

it just makes it less likely for them to pass.


and god help you if he has a Vindicare. that Farseer is Priority target #1.

If by "less likely" you mean "incredibly less likely and with significant risk," then yes. The average on 3d6 is actually 10.5, which is a failure. Let's say that it's roughly a 50% to succeed, just for argument. That's a HUGE step down from the 90% chance of succeeding with 2d6 on LD10, with a SIGNIFICANTLY higher chance of perils.

Also, any competitive Eldar player with half a brain will have Eldrad, who takes at least two Vindicare shots to kill, through a 3+ Invulnerable save, and will likely have him in a Fortune-d transport, making him far from easy to take out. Make no mistake, Runes of Warding/Witnessing are going to make life hell for Grey Knight players, and are the ideal solution to Fortitude and pretty much every other Grey Knight power.

odorofdeath wrote:This is a great example of why you take weapons that can actually DESTROY your target instead of praying for lucky rends and Autocannon pen rolls.

Between my Vendettas, Manticores, and 15 Meltaguns I have barely noticed a difference.

Translation: "I run the most competitive army in the current meta. If I'm not concerned, then all other armies must be having an equally easy time!"

Sorry, but no. Other armies may have legitimate reasons or lack the resources you do. Many armies cannot spam melta or artillery nearly as efficiently. Some armies barely have AP1 weapons (Like Dark Eldar) or have them on units that can throw your game off is spammed (fire dragons are great but are not scoring). Other armies like Orks actually benefitted a lot from glancing vehicles into scrap (with Lootas), since their higher Strength guns are either quirky or vulnerable.

Fortitude has been a game changer with Grey Knights. If your opponent does not have psyker defense fortitude is so broken. Grey Knights get to ignore 2/3 of glances and 1/3 of penetrating hits most of the time. Fortitude is game winning all by itself when you have two mechanized armies and one ignores the stuns and shaken. The ability to keep shooting or advancing to objectives is game winning. The shake or stun and move on to the next vehicle no longer applies when playing against grey knights.

Even with psyker defense you don't know when you will block the fortitude with a hood 42% chance, a runic weapon 50%, or eldar runes of warding 50%. Fortitude although unreliable with a psyker defense still can win you the game by getting your vehicle to the objective or letting you shoot when you normally couldn't because of stunned or shaken.

That has to be one of the most ridiculous things I heard this year.

Ultimately, it's here and it's staying. No use getting all QQ over it.

With some armies, getting a shaken result is good enough. Who cares if the Leman Russ can still move when it can't shoot? Other armies, shaken isn't good enough. I certainly care if the Land Radier can still deliver the cargo. Some things need to be shot until they're dead. Scoring unit in a Chimera on an objective? Only wrecked and explodes matter, so you can get at the goodies.

Some armies get Daemonic Infestation (or a Monolith), which ignores all shaken and stunned results, so we should be used to these kinds of things by now. Eldar get an upgrade that makes you roll twice on the table and take the lowest result. There are Venerable Dreads that can force a reroll. GKs now just have an extra thing that makes you think. It only breaks the game if you try and treat them exactly the same way as other armies. And really, that's just *your* game breaking.

The real answer is one of target priority: focus on the biggest threat until it's sufficiently neutralised. Sometimes that means weapon destroyed, sometimes that means immobilised, sometimes it means destroyed. Expecting Stunned to do the job just means you're doing it by half measures, and that's your fault for not realizing the difference.