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From my blog: http://prometheusatwar.com/2012/07/6th-ed-and-grey-knights-part-2-a-unit-by-unit-analysis-and-tactica/

Following up from Wednesday’s post, I wanted to continue my break down of how 6th edition has effected various Grey Knight units. We did troops (including Henchmen) yesterday, so I think it’s time to move on to Elites.



Purifiers

Upsides of 6th:

There will be many more hordes now! Orks and Tyranids are back. Cleansing Flame is one of the better anti-horde powers in the game, and you’ll have plenty of chances to use it.

Good Dakka. Purifiers don’t really have the same level of dakka output Strike Squads do (per pt), but the extra psycannons can be nice, and they’re less afraid of being assaulted.

Free Incinerators! Flamers will be huge in 6th ed, you watch.

Downsides of 6th:

Again, you’re going to be on foot a lot more, and purifiers are very expensive per wound.

Total Change (not a pure weight by bullet points): +2 I think it mostly comes down to cleansing flame and the fact you’re going to see a lot more hordes.



Paladins

Upsides of 6th:

ZOMG, wound allocation. Wasn’t one of the main points of 6th edition to change wound allocation so that multi-wound (individually equipped) units got less silly? And then, they make every paladin a character, complete with Look Out Sir! rolls. An entire article can (and probably will) be written on this subject, but suffice to say it is at least as good as the old wound allocation for paladins. It’s worse in some ways, better in others, but mostly better with a character such as Draigo to tank for the unit.

Related, but different, you not longer have to spend extra points making sure each model is individually equipped.

Precision Shots. Hey guess what? Every 6 you get to decide where the shot goes. hey, at least it’s less silly than Nobz doign the same thing.

The Divination psychic discipline. In almost any large squad, you’re going to dedicate a psyker to take divination and use it on this squad. The primaris power alone is fantastic. 16 twin linked psycannon shots? yeah, that’s goign to happen.

Obviously, they benefit from AP3 power weapons same as any other terminator. Not going to help against Thunderhammer – Stormshield terminators, but again, shoot them.

Challenges. Take them on any model you want, depending on the situation. Solodins can now take on a squad with a powerfist sergeant, just challenge him. He either accepts or doesn’t, but either way you kill a bunch of dudes.

Overwatch? Yeah, short of orks, these guys rock at it more than any other unit. Especially with those Divination powers.

Downsides of 6th:

Uh, there will be more plasma? Except there will likely be less melta, so even this seems good.

Oh, I almost forgot, Kill points. Kill points are 1/6 of book missions now, and Draigo-wing just auto-wins at that mission type. But who knows how often Tournaments run kill points? I’ve been to a tournament where every single mission had kill points primary. Feast of Blades I know is still 1/3.

It’s an official rule that a unit can only score one objective.

Total Change: +5!!! These guys got a ton of benefits, almost no downside. Kill point missions aside, you still can’t run your entire army on them, and I’d even say that the pure Draigo-wing army is a little less viable than before. But as an individual performer, paladins have only gotten better.

Keep in mind that you can Deny the Witch on Cleansing Flame, and from my experience fighting paladins the shenanigans are weaker in 6th.

In 5th, I knew I'd have to wound everyone before one model went down.

In 6th, I can torrent the squad and you'll fail enough 4+ LOS that I can probably kill a few guys. Having Draigo tank is nice, until your opponent shifts 6" and now he's not the closest anymore.

You're right that Deny the witch is everywhere, but on most units (especially the "horde" type) it's only a 6+. I think the fact you will have so many more opportunities to use it far outweighs that.

The wound allocation is different, but I think you'll find it's more useful, most times. The key is to Look Out Sir!, even when you don't need to, to distribute those wounds towards the "back" (which, as you pointed out, what the "back" is can shift) early on. That way, say if you had 2 failed saves, there's only 1/4 chance in that resulting in the front paladin dying.

The new allocation is better when you're taking multiple Str 8 Ap2 weapons from the front and keep Draigo towards the enemy. (say, 3 or 4 dark lances) Previously, some of those wounds were going to get allocated to reg paladins, and half of them were going to die (assuming cover).

It's worse when you're taking multiple close range Str 8 hits like meltas. Then, as you pointed out, you only have a 4+ to assign it to Draigo. But, again, if you had taken more than one, only 1 of them would have been assigned to Draigo anyway, so as long as you're takign more than one, it's STILL better.

It's a new skill that will take a while to pick up. I've found that most of time, when we're talking about just regular dakka, I'm able to get 1 wound on most of the paladins before 1 guy winds up taking 2 and dies. Now, under the old rules, we were almost guranteed to get everyone down to 1 wound from dakka, so it's slightly worse there. But it's really much better against Str 8 AP2, so on the whole, I think we win out.

I'm curious as to your thoughts on the following and effective counters as I seem to have the most problems with these (copy pasted from the other gk thread)

so far the biggest threats to me have been in order of annoyance:

1) Necron doomscythe - always alpha strikes something or things to death and hard to kill

2) Necron overlord with MSS and goodies, still cheap and killy as all get out. Also really strong still with 2+ armor and WBB along with MSS

3) destroyer lord + wraiths, omg, so annoying to fight, shooting them is tough when they get some nice assault moves and jetpack speed

4) immortal/gauss blocks - overwatch is insane and kills all the vehicles as well as being hard as heck to kill. Also WBB rolls make them really survivable, also the tesla barges and transport scythes. Mass flying transports with super survivability and with really good guns... really?

5) LR BT squadrons and to a lesser degree earthshaker squadrons

6) rune of warding + eldrad + shadow field, at least they aren't that fast just getting fleet but my gawd that rerollable 2+ invul is just stupid powerful.

7) Flying monstrous creature spam (ah-la daemons but with perferred enemy shooting, they have just been a pain to my other armies and not much to Gk's, the nids are acutally quite tough still

Anyways, that's the top threats for me. Mass missle launchers from wolves don't scare me as nearly as much anymore. I'll rank them probably around #8.

Any ideas on countering the top threats? (ya I got alot of necrons in the area)

The rest of our ideas are posted here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/460371.page

sudojoe wrote:I'm curious as to your thoughts on the following and effective counters as I seem to have the most problems with these (copy pasted from the other gk thread)

so far the biggest threats to me have been in order of annoyance:

1) Necron doomscythe - always alpha strikes something or things to death and hard to kill

2) Necron overlord with MSS and goodies, still cheap and killy as all get out. Also really strong still with 2+ armor and WBB along with MSS

3) destroyer lord + wraiths, omg, so annoying to fight, shooting them is tough when they get some nice assault moves and jetpack speed

4) immortal/gauss blocks - overwatch is insane and kills all the vehicles as well as being hard as heck to kill. Also WBB rolls make them really survivable, also the tesla barges and transport scythes. Mass flying transports with super survivability and with really good guns... really?

5) LR BT squadrons and to a lesser degree earthshaker squadrons

6) rune of warding + eldrad + shadow field, at least they aren't that fast just getting fleet but my gawd that rerollable 2+ invul is just stupid powerful.

7) Flying monstrous creature spam (ah-la daemons but with perferred enemy shooting, they have just been a pain to my other armies and not much to Gk's, the nids are acutally quite tough still

Anyways, that's the top threats for me. Mass missle launchers from wolves don't scare me as nearly as much anymore. I'll rank them probably around #8.

Any ideas on countering the top threats? (ya I got alot of necrons in the area)

The rest of our ideas are posted here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/460371.page

1) I mean, Flyers are broken, GW seems to have done that on purpose in order to sell expensive Flyer models, and I don't think there's much you can do about that. One thing to keep in mind, is that if you can make the doomscythe jink, it won't be able to use it's deathray next turn, and that's something. You can split fire with a Storm Raven, and hopefully make two doomscythes Jink. "Make them roll dice until they lose, as they say" You also want to go second, and use pscyhic communion, to make sure your flyers come on after theirs. Is that enough to make it fair? Oh hells no.

2) So there's a whole complicated rock/paper/sciccors to challenges now, that is more than I can go through here. But I actually think Mind Shackle Scarabs are less of a problem here than they used to be, because you are much more in controll of who the Lord is in BtB with. (ICs used to have to consolidate in first) Challenge with someone expendable! This is one of the things you have to plan for ahead of time. Warding Staves are your friend! Who cares if you hit yourself d3 times, if you save on a 2+? Alternatively, you can use a naked Justicar, let him kill himself off. Regardles, with the lord occupied, you're likely to kill the squad off around him.

3) Wraiths suffer much more under the new allocation rules than Paladins. If he's tanking with the Destroyer Lord, then you just need to be mobile and get around him to dakka down the wraiths. ALso keep in mind that's a lot of pts, a similar value of GK + character should be able to win.

4) Wait, how are they overwatching your vehicles? (Dreads aside) Yeah, again flyers are broken, don't know what to tell you. Necrons can basically kill any vehicle you bring, but it is good to keep in mind that Gauss is not any better at killing AV 11 than any other Str 5 weapon. Weep for the Land Raider player, though (like me). Killing big blocks of warriors and immortals isn't really any different than it was in 5th.

5) Mur. Not real worried about this. Deep strike next to them with hammers. (or outflank)

6) This combo is not legal. Fortune specifically says it only targets Eldar. (I am aware of the shenanigans people are using to claim you can do it. Well, no you can't) Also, the archon doesn't have anything to get through 2+ saves.

7) Shoot them, you'll hit them, eventually they'll fall down. But don't ignore the mass of termagaunts or stealers on the ground while you're doing it. One of my best friends plays tyranids, he beat me last week for the first time in years. It's not overpowered, though.

for most of them I agree with you but typically what I've depended on for #2 and #3 was assault.

My purifiers used to make a mess of things but overwatch really starts to thin down my numbers quite a lot. I've noticed that I'm actually leaning more towards 10 or at least 8 man squad sized units to get into assault or I'd actually loose since on average with a 5 man squad, I get shot down to 4 from vehicle explosion/wreck pile out and usually only 2-3 make it into combat after overwatch. Cleansing flame like you said can be resisted now on a 6+ so not as dependable as it used to there but decent (not too bad chance to pass psy test roll on a ld 9, then enemy not rolling a 6). I just can't do enough wounds otherwise with my now 6-9 attacks on the charge needing 4's and even 3's to wound I'm only looking at 2 -3 wounds, 4 if I'm lucky. Then I'd get wiped out or at least tarpitted for a turn.

#2 has the problem of a single lord not attached to anything charging a squad and challenging me or even if I don't challenge, he challenges my justicar. I can most certainly tarpit him with the staff but he essentially saves himself from the bunches of hammers and other power weapons all around if I accept or shrugging off the halberds and kill the hammer with the warscythe at higher initive if I don't accept. Unless I throw in more hammers I don't feel like I have too much of a chance. Also if I refuse the challenge, then he can MSS one more guy and with my luck it's usually the hammer so I end up killing a few more of my own expensive guys too. Guess just keep shooting 'em?

All in all though, I agree with your synopsis. Pretty much what I'm seeing as well lately. I like the website pictures too btw

A single lord charging your purifiers should lose. You need to control your positioning more, so that he doesn't wind up in combat with your hammer. This is something you control. Also remember that in a challenge, you'll get a reroll for every 5 extra guys you have watching.

Overwatch shouldn't be as deadly to you as you're describing.