Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hi, i was wondering effective are grey knights when fighting xenos or heretics ? I m speaking in terms of Background ofcourse

Devastating...
I doubt much can withstand them especially since few forces really know about them. Fortunately for them the GK try to keep to Daemons.

Extremely proficient. Considering they have to face literally the most terrifying and powerful force just now in the galaxy, a few orks or Tyranids aren't exactly that dangerous to them. Obviously the Codex makes them look like they have a good track record against these other forces. They very rarely go out of their way to fight anything else but Daemons, and they have a 100% track record against them.

iproxtaco wrote:Extremely proficient. Considering they have to face literally the most terrifying and powerful force just now in the galaxy, a few orks or Tyranids aren't exactly that dangerous to them. Obviously the Codex makes them look like they have a good track record against these other forces. They very rarely go out of their way to fight anything else but Daemons, and they have a 100% track record against them.

Not a 100% track record...
They have lost battles just not many...

No, they haven't. A Grey Knight win is achieved when they stop the Daemonic incursion. They can all die, so long as that is achieved, and so far, they have always won.

iproxtaco wrote:No, they haven't. A Grey Knight win is achieved when they stop the Daemonic incursion. They can all die, so long as that is achieved, and so far, they have always won.

So you know every single battle they have every faced?
Even the ones that haven't been written about?
Or does it say in the new GK book that they have won every battle ever?

Chaos codex. Night Lords invade and slaughter an entire planet of Inquisitor trainees, turning the bones of the fallen into giant daemon summoning icons, then vanished leaving a planet of daemons to kill the incoming Imperial forces. GK FAIL.

Grey Knights clearly didn't fail, as they weren't involved in the event AT ALL. To lose, you have to fight first, or decide not to fight. Do you know of any battles where they have lost? Yeah, thought so.

You still haven't answered my question.

purplefood wrote:

iproxtaco wrote:No, they haven't. A Grey Knight win is achieved when they stop the Daemonic incursion. They can all die, so long as that is achieved, and so far, they have always won.

So you know every single battle they have every faced?
Even the ones that haven't been written about?
Or does it say in the new GK book that they have won every battle ever?

Well with this you will also have to tell us a battle that they lost?

taylor048 wrote:

purplefood wrote:

iproxtaco wrote:No, they haven't. A Grey Knight win is achieved when they stop the Daemonic incursion. They can all die, so long as that is achieved, and so far, they have always won.

So you know every single battle they have every faced?
Even the ones that haven't been written about?
Or does it say in the new GK book that they have won every battle ever?

Well with this you will also have to tell us a battle that they lost?

I'm not the one claiming they have a 100% track record.
They have won a lot but they must have lost some battles.
No force exists for 10,000 years without losing some even if they aren't written about in the fluff.
Let me go find an example...
The Battle of Sarthus Majoris.
As seen in the Gk novel: Hammer of Daemons.
This is the verbatim decription from Lexicanum (NOTE:I have read the book so don't try and say that is isn't accurate) i will spoiler it for those that wish to read the book and haven't done so yet.

I would assume they would not do as well. Because(due to my understanding) one of the main weapons against demons is there psychic mumbo jumbo. If they were so good against other races, I would be pretty sure that the tyranid invasion wouldn't be as "OMG we are getting eaten". Single combat im sure they can pwn anyone, but against army like the nids or necrons they would be pretty hard pressed to win

purplefood wrote:
I'm not the one claiming they have a 100% track record.
They have won a lot but they must have lost some battles.
No force exists for 10,000 years without losing some even if they aren't written about in the fluff.
Let me go find an example...
The Battle of Sarthus Majoris.
As seen in the Gk novel: Hammer of Daemons.
This is the verbatim decription from Lexicanum (NOTE:I have read the book so don't try and say that is isn't accurate) i will spoiler it for those that wish to read the book and haven't done so yet.

Spoiler:

Alaric and his squad are on the planet Sarthus Majoris attempting to stop a daemonic army from taking over the planet. During the fighting, Alaric and the Grey Knights abandon their post to challenge the Chaos Champion leading the force. Alaric is defeated and captured along with Brother Haulvarn

Ironsight wrote:

purplefood wrote:
I'm not the one claiming they have a 100% track record.
They have won a lot but they must have lost some battles.
No force exists for 10,000 years without losing some even if they aren't written about in the fluff.
Let me go find an example...
The Battle of Sarthus Majoris.
As seen in the Gk novel: Hammer of Daemons.
This is the verbatim decription from Lexicanum (NOTE:I have read the book so don't try and say that is isn't accurate) i will spoiler it for those that wish to read the book and haven't done so yet.

Spoiler:

Alaric and his squad are on the planet Sarthus Majoris attempting to stop a daemonic army from taking over the planet. During the fighting, Alaric and the Grey Knights abandon their post to challenge the Chaos Champion leading the force. Alaric is defeated and captured along with Brother Haulvarn

Spoiler:

Yeah, but over the course of the book, Alaric kills that Chaos Champion, starts a civil war on the planet he was taken to and sends a powerful Tzeentchian daemon back to its maker. Grey Knights win!

Also at the start of the trilogy they lose most of the chapter oh khorion ix i beleive. There was no survivors even their supreme grand master died. They killed the daemon tho lol.

taylor048 wrote:Also at the start of the trilogy they lose most of the chapter oh khorion ix i beleive. There was no survivors even their supreme grand master died. They killed the daemon tho lol.

Mandulis was never described as "Supreme" Grand Master, as that title didn't exist pre-Ward. He was a "generic" Grand Master. And 300 dead Knights, while pretty severe, isn't even half the Chapter's strength. Besides, as you pointed out, Ghargatuloth was banished. Thus, the Grey Knights won that one too.

Saying the GK win if the daemon is banished regarless of loses makes no sense. There gets a point where loosing that number of GK isn't worth saving the planet. GK aren't guardsman, they are expensive and time consuming to train.

There are many battles where the GK loses were worse than the daemon loses. Since daemons aren't ever destroyed just sent back to the warp it could easily be argued that the best GK ever get is a draw.

The Grey Knights sole objective is to stop Daemonic incursions, no matter the cost. So far, there isn't a single case where the Grey Knights have failed in this task, even if it's doing an Exterminatus on the planet and killing the whole population. Therefore, they have a 100% track record against Daemons.

Sarthus Majoris.
Daemons won.
Therefore they do not have a 100% track record.

In the latest white dwarf there were battle missions for them. And there it is made cleare that they can fight Xenos, but only if they are corrupted by chaos or make chaos much stronger and more of that things. They can also fight imperial forces, if those Imperium soldiers are corrupted by chaos or have a chaos-virus in them, and they have to die to protect manhy more lives.

What happened after Alaric was captured isn't described though, the Inquisition could have come down and commenced Exterminatus, or more Grey Knights could have arrived and destroyed the Daemons. It isn't clear.

iproxtaco wrote:Grey Knights clearly didn't fail, as they weren't involved in the event AT ALL. To lose, you have to fight first, or decide not to fight. Do you know of any battles where they have lost? Yeah, thought so.

Usually, there's a dramatic pause before you say 'yeah, thought so'. Otherwise you look like an idiot when the person tells you that the Grey Knights were involved and slaughtered at the start of the invasion.

Except that was a completely different example in which the Grey Knights weren't actually involved in. No idiots here.

iproxtaco wrote:What happened after Alaric was captured isn't described though, the Inquisition could have come down and commenced Exterminatus, or more Grey Knights could have arrived and destroyed the Daemons. It isn't clear.

The daemons captured the planet.
The GK lost the battle.
They lost.
What happened afterwards is a seperate battle.

No it isn't. If the Grey Knights were beaten by the Daemons in that case, which I don't debate, other Grey Knights or other Imperial Forces will have arrived, and ultimately the planet would have been taken back or gone through Exterminatus, in which case the Daemons would have been stopped, so the Grey Knights would have won in the end.

iproxtaco wrote:No it isn't. If the Grey Knights were beaten by the Daemons in that case, which I don't debate, other Grey Knights or other Imperial Forces will have arrived, and ultimately the planet would have been taken back or gone through Exterminatus, in which case the Daemons would have been stopped, so the Grey Knights would have won in the end.

The "lost a battle but won the war therefore they win" argument is pathetic. They were beaten, that's the end of it. It doesn't matter what happened after the fight, the fact is that they lost at one point. It's like saying that the Romans lost a fight, but managed to kill the opposition later on and therefore won the fight they lost.

If you lose a fight, you lose a fight.

iproxtaco wrote:No it isn't. If the Grey Knights were beaten by the Daemons in that case, which I don't debate, other Grey Knights or other Imperial Forces will have arrived, and ultimately the planet would have been taken back or gone through Exterminatus, in which case the Daemons would have been stopped, so the Grey Knights would have won in the end.

This is ridiculous logic...

Not really no, it's a fairly good argument. The may have been beaten by the Daemons then, but their objective is to stop the incursions of Daemons. They have never failed in that task, in the end, the have always won the engagements they've been involved in, or the final result is inconclusive, as it is with Alaric.

iproxtaco wrote:Not really no, it's a fairly good argument. The may have been beaten by the Daemons then, but their objective is to stop the incursions of Daemons. They have never failed in that task, in the end, the have always won the engagements they've been involved in, or the final result is inconclusive, as it is with Alaric.

'In the end' is not good enough. 'In the end' the Allies won WW2, but we lost many fights throughout; by your logic, those fights would count as victories, which is absurd.

They failed to stop the Daemons taking the planet.
Daemons score 1 point.
They come back and try again (Key word here is again)
GK score 1 point.
Just because they won the second and completly seperate battle does not make the first battle go away.
They both have a win and a loss.
They may have won in the end but their battle record is still 1 win 1 loss.