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From looking around the site it appears that GK is currently the dominante army. Since they appear to be so dominante, I have been surprised by the lack of builds dedicated to defeating them. Are their any such builds or concepts for such a build?

Thinking about it myself, low AP weapons seem like a must to get around all the power armor and terminator armor. Second would be something to deal with all the psycher stuff. Tyranids seem to ahve a decent ability against it by adding additional dice when GKs are attempting to cast psyker powers but that would mean getting close to those GK which seems like a bad idea overall. Maybe dual librarian HQ's would be an option to psychic hood whatever came close.

Coming from the perspective of a Vanilla Marine player, Pedro seemed like a nice first choice so you can load up on sternguard with all the combi-weapons and special ammo options but that wouldn't deal with all the psykers. Another idea would be 2 librarians both with null zone. That might help but it would mean relying on regular troop choices for scoring and they just don't seem to be able to bring the fire power necessary to kill GK consistantly.

Any thoughts?

What about that pysker assassin? Seems like he would be useful in a GK situation. LD7 baby! Plus, how would that work, if the unit is counted as a pysker how does souless work in that situation? Do they all take a no save wound? questions, questions.

Either massive ordnance (IG style str 10 ap2)

OR plasma everywhere

OR squad-wiping power weapon charge

OR melta circus

OR Fusion cascades. Gotta love fusion cascades.

Je suis2 au hazard wrote:Either massive ordnance (IG style str 10 ap2)

OR plasma everywhere

OR squad-wiping power weapon charge

OR melta circus

OR Fusion cascades. Gotta love fusion cascades.

Assuming that you are facing a Draigo/Paladin heavy GK list, then yeh any of these would be good. AP2 and/or anything strength 8 or over. Dark lances would be good too. There wont be an awful lot of models on the board to shoot at, so lots of inst-kill shots would be pretty devastating.

GK are low on numbers and long-ranged fire. Load up on plasma cannons/Fire Prisms/Conversion Beamers/etc., take a psychic hood HQ/Runes of Warding to neutralize their psykers, and stay out of their way as long as possible.

Unless you're playing Orks or 'Nids. Orks, swamp them with numbers; most GK players forget about Incinerators because psycannons are so good and have no template weapons at all to burn up thirty Ork Boyz with. 'Nids, you're screwed.

Or Black Templars with the Abhor the Witch vow? Or tons of Tyranids with Shadow in the Warp?

AnomanderRake wrote:GK are low on numbers and long-ranged fire. Load up on plasma cannons/Fire Prisms/Conversion Beamers/etc., take a psychic hood HQ/Runes of Warding to neutralize their psykers, and stay out of their way as long as possible.

Unless you're playing Orks or 'Nids. Orks, swamp them with numbers; most GK players forget about Incinerators because psycannons are so good and have no template weapons at all to burn up thirty Ork Boyz with. 'Nids, you're screwed.

With Orks, filling your Elites slots with 2x 15 Lootas + 15 Burna Boyz who then ride about in a Wagon are ideal tools to fight GK's. Add on squads of 20-30 Shoota boyz for Troops, a smattering Nobz and a Big Mek w/KFF and as many more Battlewagons as you can squeeze in.
Only Henchmen spam deals with av14 as they can pack lots of meltaguns. A pure GK force is stuck with Stormravens, Dreadnoughts & Land Raiders as melta-weapon platforms meaning those Battlewagons should have a slightly easier time ferrying your lads about.

Just avoid combat with Purifyers as 'winning flame' will simply curbstomp Orks... Average rolls means you're looking at losing almost half your unit before they even start their I6 swings.
Now, your Lootas lighting them up, or best of all 15 Burnas hitting them with their templates? That's a different story!

Use GK yourself. Librarians, Culexus Assassins, Stormravens and Inquisitors with Null Rods or Cotemptor Bolters. Any OSR using Psykout Bomb is good too.

If you're playing Nids I'd avoid taking monstrous creatures. Swarms, backed up by hefty AP2 shooting where you can fit it, is your best bet.

Nids have no AP 2 guns outside Warp Lance which should be reserved for vehicles.

If playing Nids load up on Zoanthropes in a spod, Doom in a Spod and Deathleaper. Combined Deathleaper's Ld reduction ability and Doom to lower their Ld for Spirit Leech. If you spot any purifiers use Its after me on the Knight of the Flame. According to BoP the squad MUST use its Justicar or Knight of the Flame's Ld. By RAW that means even.if.his Ld is lower.

The issue is that the are several GK builds and they all play quite differently. Each one has its hard counters..


1) Draigo-wing [2+ armor, T4+W2, wound allocation, limited vehicles]

The Hard Counter:
Anything S8+ and AP2. [Out of cover they only have a 5++ save.]
Long range guns [only a few guns with more than 24", most of the list is on foot]



2) Crowe Purifier build [3+ armor, lots of Psycannons, INT 6 power weapons, Int 11 cleansing flame, moderate number of tanks]

The hard counter:
AV 14 [limited meltaguns in this build, psycannons can hurt you, but not that well]
Enough anti-tank to de-mech the purifiers
Enough anti-MEQ shooting to take out multiple 5-6 man squads.


3) Coteaz Henchmen list [lots of variety, powerful assault units, MSU shooting units, heavy transport spam]

The hard counter:
Loads of S7-8 weapons. Focus fire to kill a tank due to fortitude.
Difficult terrain tests [assault units lack frag grenades]
anti-infantry firepower you can fire at many targets as there will be a lot of infantry units, but they will not be durable.



Most lists fall somewhere in the middle of these archetypes, often using some elements from each.

At Adepticon, most of the GK lists from the top 16 had Coteaz as the HQ. You can run whatever kind of GK list you want, and then with coteaz add another 5-6 razorbacks to that list for around 500 points or so. The one thing that will help you beat any GK list is to be able to deal with a lot of vehicles with fortitude. If you can do that, then you can beat most "normal" gk lists.

Deadshot wrote:Nids have no AP 2 guns outside Warp Lance which should be reserved for vehicles.

If playing Nids load up on Zoanthropes in a spod, Doom in a Spod and Deathleaper. Combined Deathleaper's Ld reduction ability and Doom to lower their Ld for Spirit Leech. If you spot any purifiers use Its after me on the Knight of the Flame. According to BoP the squad MUST use its Justicar or Knight of the Flame's Ld. By RAW that means even.if.his Ld is lower.

You're forgetting Bioplasma, which admittedly isn't that great and is only mounted on the overpriced Carnifex and Hive Tyrant, but it's AP2 nontheless, and doesn't have get's hot! either, but of course if you pick MCs against the GKs you're fethed. Against the GKs, hormagaunts are something of a better bet than Genestealers since they're going to ignore the Genestealer's save in both phases and the sheer amount of invulnerable saves makes rending even more of a hail mary than usual.

Deadshot wrote:Nids have no AP 2 guns outside Warp Lance which should be reserved for vehicles.

If playing Nids load up on Zoanthropes in a spod, Doom in a Spod and Deathleaper. Combined Deathleaper's Ld reduction ability and Doom to lower their Ld for Spirit Leech. If you spot any purifiers use Its after me on the Knight of the Flame. According to BoP the squad MUST use its Justicar or Knight of the Flame's Ld. By RAW that means even.if.his Ld is lower.

"It's after me!" only works on characters - the Knight of the Flame isn't a character.

He is an upgrade character. It does.

Deadshot wrote:He is an upgrade character. It does.

Fair enough. Apologies.

He's going to take the first wound to the unit though... so I'm not sure how useful that's going to be.

Cleansing Flame at -D3 Ldis quite a bonus. Just don't get close.

Another way to power up Doom is use him and Deathleaper vs Crowe. Crowe loses D3 Ld due to leaper and then Spirit Leech kicks in. Doom grows a couple new wounds and nukes a Purifier Squad.

Deadshot wrote:Cleansing Flame at -D3 Ldis quite a bonus. Just don't get close.

Another way to power up Doom is use him and Deathleaper vs Crowe. Crowe loses D3 Ld due to leaper and then Spirit Leech kicks in. Doom grows a couple new wounds and nukes a Purifier Squad.

How? Crowe can't attach to a purifier squad, so Doom explodes Crowe... and the purifers roll on their normal leadership (of 9)

Deadshot wrote:Nids have no AP 2 guns outside Warp Lance which should be reserved for vehicles.

Ah, my mistake. I thought the Hive Guard weapons were Str8 Ap2.

Hazardous Harry wrote:

Deadshot wrote:Nids have no AP 2 guns outside Warp Lance which should be reserved for vehicles.

Ah, my mistake. I thought the Hive Guard weapons were Str8 Ap2.

Good god I wish.

I also stand corrected. Bioplasma and the Doom's PSA Cataclysm are AP 2 and AP 1 respectivly. But only one.of those is a competitive choice.and that is a unique T4 model with no EW firing a Str 4 shot (if he doesn't Peril) that is guarenteed to wound him in return. I certainly won't be relying on it to tackle Termies and Paladins.

I've found that massed guard infantry can handle them easy enough. A few platoons of veterans with plasma guns, supported by infantry platoons + heavy weapons, and a russ or two can handle them without too much bother. Sisters also do well through weight of numbers backed up by their wargear (and hey adding some guard in there is also fun), plus their Exorcists just mince anything that comes into range (^^ take three).

I play Guard, Sisters and Chaos Marines, and to my recollection have came away with a decent victory against my GK oppoents. Admitedly I don't play power gamer lists, and my opponents always do (I play in a club mostly, whereas the only Gk players I've came up against are in Games Workshop). They really don't do well against infantry heavy MEQ armies is all I can say. =/