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So I've played about 8 games versus a player in my area that runs a Dragowing of grey knights. I've lost every one of those games. Now i'm not a new player but i cant seem to come up with anything to beat it. My primary army is my dark eldar which I haven't seem to come up with a list to beat his. At 2000 points he runs Drago, 2 squads each of 10 paladins with 4 pyscannons, apothecary, and brotherhood banner, and a rifleman ven dread. For my list I have access to pretty much everything in the DE codex. so what works well and what should I take Dakka?

A load of blasters and darklances. Venoms with with added splinter cannons; in a 2000 game you put atleast or 9 of them you can easily cause enough wounds to kill a few every round, with a narthium (sp?) that becomes less viable. Blasters and darklances will bypass the armour and FNP and will ID.

If you want to stray off the beaten track a little, voidravens with implosion missiles. Oh yes and put nightshields (and flickerfieldsif they don't already have them) on your vehicles since that shortens their already shorter than yours threat range.

I echo the above, I would also ensure that, if given the opportunity, you deploy very heavily focused on one flank or the other. This is kind of standard DE practice anyway, so apologies if I'm telling you how to suck eggs, but a bias to one flank will really exploit his low model count and short range.

3 x 4 x Trueborn w blasters in dakka Venoms will really hurt his Paladins though, just focus on one unit at a time. I've also had some success with Razorwings deep striking and unleashing everything at them, the majority of its weapons are low ap, but the volume of saves it forces means he can't pass them all!

Mhmm, he has such a low model count that you just saturate him with fire.

3 Ravagers should easily take the Dread in a turn. Blaster born should take out half the Paladins in turn two. From there onwards, just swamp him - make him roll enough dice and he'll roll 1s eventually. Incubi, I've found, are rather effective against terminators too - 3 power weapon attacks on the charge at strength 4 WS5 striking first will cut them down to size.

Lord_Vader wrote:Mhmm, he has such a low model count that you just saturate him with fire.

3 Ravagers should easily take the Dread in a turn. Blaster born should take out half the Paladins in turn two. From there onwards, just swamp him - make him roll enough dice and he'll roll 1s eventually. Incubi, I've found, are rather effective against terminators too - 3 power weapon attacks on the charge at strength 4 WS5 striking first will cut them down to size.

Incubi won't be nearly as effective against GK terminators, or as the OP said, the guy is using paladins, who will have halberds so go before the incubi and even if they do get wounded will only take one wound and still be alive

I would discourage melee in general against grey knights. They've got a rather large list of things that make that a generally bad proposition. Better to just saturate them with volume of fire -- it's not like a 3+ save is going to get any better if you stick them in cover.

Corollax wrote:I would discourage melee in general against grey knights. They've got a rather large list of things that make that a generally bad proposition. Better to just saturate them with volume of fire -- it's not like a 3+ save is going to get any better if you stick them in cover.

I don't know how many attacks Paladins get but I bet that a large squad of Wyches could tarpit them ok, especially if they already have a pain token.

3 Ravagers should easily take the Dread in a turn.

Really?

Nine shots. 6 hits. 1 glance 2 pens. Assuming no cover then you have 5/9 chance of at least one wrecked or destroyed. But it's venerable so he can get you to re-roll. So you're looking at each penetration roll being 1/3 to destroy rerolled so actually 1/9. Giving him a 64/81 or about 3/4 chance of surviving.

And that's without cover. In cover, your chances are much worse.

You've a decent chance of immobilising or removing a weapon from a venerable dreadnought not in cover if firing 3 ravagers. No more than that.

I'll post a bit more on this later but personally i'd ignore theb dreadnought and shoot up the squads - worst case is you'd lose a vehicle a turn to the dreadnought but it's not actually the main threat and you're wasting ID fire by targeting it.

Well, DE can bring a large amount of dark matter shots to bear that can kill Paladins instantly. And if you put night shields on the tanks, GK will have a hard time to reach them with their 24'' guns. As said, I'd avoid melee and shoot the Paladins in the first place.

Against 5 man squads, the witchy brand of fairy works very well as a tarpit, especially with a shardnet thrown in but bigger squads of paladins with a banner can hurt wyches quite quickly.

Say 8 paladins with force weapons and counter-attack (which I would probably take against a wychy fairy list) - addin their banner and you have over 30 attacks. Say 20 hits and a conservative 16 wounds. Even with the fairy skipping 4+ save, that's most of a typical 8 or nine wych squad dead. In this instance I'd throw the wyches (plus haywires) against the dreadnought and just shoot the paladins with darklight and splinterfire.

3 ravagers, 6 raiders, 3 units of trueborn is what? 27 darklight? hitting on 3+. 18 hits, 15 wounds (ID) allowfor a cover save is 7-8 dead paladins. Even with Draigo eating hits, you're likely to get 4-5

In most cases, i think dealing with paladins is counter-intuitive to a degree. Here it's using AT against the troops and your usual anti-troop assault force against the vehicle.

Tank shock.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/414094.page

Take that upgrade that lets you tank shock on as many cheap skimmers as you can, make sure there's nobody on board your skimmers (because they die if you immobilize going fast in your turn) and just shock him over and over again until all his paladins fall back off the table.

You will lose some skimmers, but one failed Ld test means wiping out an entire unit of paladins without having to get past their armor, their wounds, their FNP, or the allocation of single shots to Draigo.

And send some non-tank-shocking units to kill the dread.

After you wipe out his entire force a couple of times, maybe he'll be convinced that the Draigowing's one critical weakness makes it not worth playing anymore.

In fact, tank shocking is an option if you field lots of skimmers (with the corresponding upgrade). This could work since a Draigowing has a very limited number of units (Paladins).

Tank Shock only works one time in 12 if a character is with the unit, 1 in 6 otherwise (same as your chance of immobilising). aside from the fact that you're tailoring a list specifically to beat a foot paladin list (tank shock will be much harder to pull off against a 2 x 5 man unit paladin list with dreadnought and raven support) and hardly anyone takes that upgrade for space fairies in an all-comers list, it hardly makes a Draigo/Paladin list 'not worth playing anymore'. It's not a 'critical weakness' unless your definition of 'critical' is what most people would describe as 'moderate'.

I completely agree that tank-shock is a much underused tactic and is a good one against paladins, but it's not actually helpful to overstate the case. If you get them to fail leadership and fall back and if you have other vehicles positioned to be able to tank shock them in their subsequent position (line of sight? direct path?)

Space fairies are better lancing paladins to death with trueborn, raiders and ravagers and launching the odd tank-shock with their venoms.

I thought the OP asked about a tailored list?

The other thread I linked to is a discussion of how all-comers Eldar lists can tank-shock draigowing armies off the table. I was drawing on my experience of having tank-shocked paladin and BA deathstars off the table with Eldar, Mech Guard and Vanilla Marine all-comer mech armies.

The more I use the tactic, the more persuaded I become that it is a critical weakness of GK armies that rely heavily on paladins.

To the original OP, trueborn w/ blasters and ravagers w/ darklances is all you need. You'll saturate the paladins with so many Str 8 AP 2 shots that you'll cut them down in a couple of turns and due to your venoms/raiders you'll be able to dance out of assault range. The psycannons/dreads will hamper this a bit by popping a transport or two each turn, but you have numbers on your side and really shouldn't struggle with this too much. I really wouldn't bother with melee units much, tarpitting paladins will hurt you more them then since you can't shoot them now and with their 2+/5++ (and usually FnP) you could be stuck with them for a few rounds.

lord_bobbington wrote:

Lord_Vader wrote:Mhmm, he has such a low model count that you just saturate him with fire.

3 Ravagers should easily take the Dread in a turn. Blaster born should take out half the Paladins in turn two. From there onwards, just swamp him - make him roll enough dice and he'll roll 1s eventually. Incubi, I've found, are rather effective against terminators too - 3 power weapon attacks on the charge at strength 4 WS5 striking first will cut them down to size.

Incubi won't be nearly as effective against GK terminators, or as the OP said, the guy is using paladins, who will have halberds so go before the incubi and even if they do get wounded will only take one wound and still be alive

Wait, the GK are striking before I5 guys?
What exactly do the Halberds do?

Halberds make the models I6.

Well, halberds will bring the Incubi into a world of hurt. They will get heavily decimented with T3 before they can strike back and then the Paladins will use wound allocation to stay alive.

Tarpit the vendread with wyches. It only has 2 attacks and the wyches have a 4++ invo, or 1 attack if there is a shardnet in the group.

Tank shock to cluster paladins then have a haemonculus detach from a unit, disembark, and drop a shattershard on them. Repeat the same thing next turn and the turn after with a different heamonculus.

A mentioned, venom spam with 3 ravagers, and 3 units of 4 trueborn with 4 blasters. 5 x5warriors w/baster on venom, then a unit of wyches on raider. Tapit the dread with wyches, using haywires to inflict some damage. All vehicles take ff/nf and just dance away from him, unloading splinter cannon/rifle fire, and dark light him. With 17 blasters and 9 lances, you should be able to wipe out a unit of paladins a turn. They don't get armor, no FNP, and are insta killed. All that stands in the way is cover or termie 5+ invun, and this also bypasses wound allocation. Splinter fire just. Adds to the misery forcing crap tons of saves.

Personally I have fought this kind of gk army numerous times and the above has tabled them no later then the top of 4th turn. (and that was just to mop up the weapon less and immobilized dread, and the last 2 fleeing paladins)

DarthSpader wrote: With 17 blasters and 9 lances, you should be able to wipe out a unit of paladins a turn. They don't get armor, no FNP, and are insta killed. All that stands in the way is cover or termie 5+ invun, and this also bypasses wound allocation.

Except for Draigo, who has a 3+ invul and eternal warrior. All your single-shot guns go on Draigo, so you can discount most of those shots in your tally of firepower, plus subtract one shot off the top of each ravager and multi-blaster volley.

If the librarian goes into the other unit, then he can use the stealth psychic power to give that unit 3+ cover. If they're sitting on objectives, you have to move them or lose the game.

If you're shooting Draigowing armies to death with blasters and lances, then your opponent's armies aren't being built/played properly IMHO.

Your still hoping those 3+ saves pass. When I force that 10-11 man unit to take 40 saves a round, and 7 of those are ap 2 instant death, that unit WILL suffer some serious casualties. And it may not even be my entire army shooting. Some examples:
Say I have to move the warrior venoms 12" to either get out of your 18" range, or close the gap, so I'm Not counting passenger fire.
- 5 venoms at 12 shots each is 60 shots. Say 40 of those hit, and 20 wound. Yup your termies have 2+/FNP, but roll 20 dice. I bet you'll see more then a few ones. Then the lances from raider and ravager... 10 lances, 7 hit and 6 wound. Draigo can't take them all, so,there's another 3-4 termies gone. (based on a 4+ non Libby cover save) with that alone and. Even with wound allocation half the units termies are gone, and a few more are wounded. If I need to, I can add in the 36 shots from trueborn venoms, and possibly a 12" move disembark and 12 blasters going in as well.

And if DE use their movement correctly this can all be done for the most part out of 24" range. Forcing the gk to either sit and take it, or venture out of cover to maybe hurt one unit, of omg 125pt warrior squad! The dread is incapacated either because it's hiding, doesn't have Los or engaged with wyches. If not, ok it drops another cheap vehicle.

The gk list above, (Draigo, and 2 gigantic blobs of paladins with a ven psyfle dread) just dosent have the speed, numbers, or even units to compete with a fast moving MSU dark eldar army, that reduces your range to 18", forces you to hug cover, and even then can put the hurt on, and can pretty much avoid any return fire the gk can try to put out.

And if it's objectives, DE player can just place a few out of cover in the open. Most games feature 3 or more, with DE placing at least one of those. meaning they can claim one, and force the gk to either risk open ground, or ignore the objective. Enron if they camp 2 of 3 in cover, DE just have to shift one of those units off, effectively splitting the GK force in half, and engaging the weaker part with 100% of their army.

In a "bases" game, same thing. GK Draigo wing won't have the speed to get onto the DE base, and if they try a deep strike claim, it opens them up a ton of fire they won't get cover from. 11 paladins with 14 effective wounds (counting draigos EW) taking 20 lances with only 5+ invuns, and maybe a few on draigos 3+? Say bye bye. Or just camp your own base, and at best you'll get a draw. But thats hoping your 22 models can withstand 5 turns of dark eldar shooting.

Don't get me wrong, I like GK, and even have a force in the works, I just don't think a Draigo wing army as mentioned by the OP can really compete with a DE venom spam list. The DE win on range, speed, numbers, target saturation, volume of fire, and point efficiency. yea the paladins will ace whatever they fight in cc, but they have to walk there, or DS, or blow points on storm raven / land raider. And even then, De can still outrage out move and out shoot the GK.

All of the above with a few little liquifier drive by runs thrown in for good measure. You win if he shoots the Haemy+otherwise empty transport (Assuming Wyches bailed to try and haywire or otherwise hide like pansies) unless it's KP.

I just don't think a Draigo wing army as mentioned by the OP can really compete with a DE venom spam list.

I agree, I don't think foot paladins are terribly strong, especially when faced with many lance shots (which can't all be lumped on Draigo as he can't be with both squads and even with his 3+ and eternal warrior, around 22 shots (= c15 hits = 12 wounds) should be enough to kill him anyway That's 22 shots producing wounds allocated to Draigo, to be clear)

Lets presume 3 ravagers, 3 squads of trueborn with blasters and 6 raiders firing at Draigo's unit.

Raider get 2/3 hits = 5/9 wounds = 5/27 of a wound on Draigo.

So once the six raiders have shot, Draigo has taken 10/9 wounds.

Now ravagers fire. Each ravager gets 2 hits = 5/3 wounds.

Draigo takes one and so adds 1/3 to his wounds making 13/9.

Paladins take 2/3 and so 1/3 (assuming cover) paladins are killed.

Three ravagers mean Draigo is on 19/9 wounds taken and one paladin is dead.

Now the trueborn fire.

Each squad has 8/3 hits = 20/9 wounds.

Draigo takes one, adding 1/3 to his wounds.

The paladins take 11/9, saving half so 11/18 per squad.

4 squads means Draigo must add 4/3 to his wounds so he's now on 31/9 wounds taken (so basically reduced to one wound)
The paladins must add 22/9 killed so another two models.

an entire turn's fire has killed three paladins and reduced Draigo to one wound. That's actually pretty good. Next turn Draigo simply won't be able to absorb the firepower in the same way or he'll be dead early so everything will likely be taken on the paladins.

There's really little need for tailoring with shock prows because decent all comers space fairly list should comfortably destroy the paladins with lance firepower inside 5 turns (maybe less if you add in other firepower too)

I prefer venoms over raiders. More efficient. And splinter fire can do scary things to terminaters. Simply because of the volume. Yea 2+ and FNP will negate much of it. But a few wounds will get through, and those add up. Especially when you only have 22 models and 24 wounds on the table. (plus it dosent care about your cover, high T etc) My venom spam army can at 2000 pts put out 108 cannon shots, 25-50 rifle shots, 17 blasters and 10 lances. I don't care how tough they are but you put down 3 units that need 24" and are on foot against that, and one unit faces the entire army firing - eliminating that unit. Next turn, repeat, and third turn your tabled.

Well 108 splinter shots mean 72 hits = 36 wounds = 6 failed saves. With FNP, that's 3 wounds taken.And thosewounded models (assuming wound allocation abuse is done properly) will then be the first to take the ID hits. So the splinter cannons, in this particular instance, don't add a great deal (though they are good weapons in most circumstances, no doubt).

I don't pretend to understand your mathhammer, Artemo, not sure how you can get 5/27ths of a wound. Maybe I'm wrong, but it looks like you're assuming some kind of cumulative wounding? But in the game, either you wound or you don't, so there aren't any fractional wounds and I'm pretty sure that's not how probability works (or else everybody would win a couple of dollars on the lottery every time, but nobody would ever win a big prize).

Here's what I see when I look at Darth Spader's sample list shooting at the Draigo unit specifically:

5 raiders shoot, they get 3 or 4 hits/wounds, each of those goes onto Draigo and he saves 2/3 of them so probably takes one wound. Single-shot raiders aren't going to be effective against Draigo's unit because it just takes them too long to punch through Draigo's wounds. They'll do it eventually, but the game will end before then most likely.

3 ravs shoot, each one expects 2 hits, one of those goes on Draigo who saves 2/3, So probably from the shooting of all 3 ravagers, Draigo takes a wound and 1-2 paladins fail cover saves and die.

So all the lance weapons shooting for a whole turn at that one unit can expect to put a couple of wounds on Draigo, and kill a paladin or two.

The blasters are more effective because the massed shots will tend to get past D and into the unit to actually kill models, but range 18 puts them in range of psycannon and stormbolter counterfire (even with night shields). So a smart player playing the listed army would knock down the venoms first--since we don't expect the darklances to do any significant damage for a couple of turns until after Draigo starts to get low on wounds--then the ravagers.

incorrect on the wound allocation. 3 wounds taken on multi wound models means 3 wounded palladins. now if they take instant death from lances, those must be allocated to unwounded models first. second, say i inflict 5 wounds of said instant death, draigo cant take all of them, in say a 10 man unit plus draigo taking 6 blaster/lance wounds, draigo can only take one. you cant "double" up unless you have more wounds then guys. finally, if the DE player does it correctly, blasters are used as sort of the finish move, or shoot from the venom. str 5 storm bolters have a chance (glance on 5+) but its not horribly reliable. 20 shots hitting on 3+ means 14 hits, but only 2-3 glance, maybe 1 pen. FF can probally stop one of those, and its unlikley to get a wrecked or explodes result. and even if you DO manage it, ok you knocked down 1 unit out of 12 vehicles. (3 tb, 5 warrior, 1 wych/raider, 3 rav). next round, you take the above all over again, even furthar reducing the palladin squad.

this is also sort of assuming draigo and his boys are camping in cover, on an objective, (holding majority - wich is unlikley). more likley, hes camping in cover in his deployment zone, and the DE can either sit back and snipe away at 36" plus to avoid giving up KP, or simply ignore the stuff he dosent have to. minimum 3 objectives...1 placed by DE means GK can only really reliably claim 2 in best of circumstance. (hoping for win on the objective placment, minimum objective roll, followed by winning the table side roll off). even in that case, all the DE have to do is claim one, then shoot off the unit taking a second, or at the very least avoid untill last turn, then 24" move into contest range. game ends 1-0-1 DE win.

now if they take instant death from lances, those must be allocated to unwounded models first.

only within each wound group. You need to allocate ID on unwounded models within a wound group. 'If the unit includes different models, first allocate the wounds suffered. Then take saves for identical models'. Only after saves are made must you remove whole models if possible. Ten paladins can quite easily be ten separate wound groups.

Personally i would never spend all those ravager shots on a single rifleman when there's paladins around. I'd direct those 9 AP1 shots on them every time. The rifledread can only disable one paper plane each turn anyway, and this can be countered with screening and cover/flickerfields which might even keep you safe from it if you're lucky.

I'd pour everything into the same target unit every single turn until it's dead or greatly reduced. Keep the pressure up, ignore your own losses, and place yourself well.

In this matchup id seriously consider a crucible as well