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I bought the codex and have given it a brief read through. Aside from having a huge number of options and units, I'm not seeing what's so overpowered. Is it the Nemesis force weapons? The Hamnerhand psychic power? Something else?

Can someone enlighten me on this?

Power weapons on every unit, Draigo, paladins, just things that the army allows you to do...

Take a random browse on the interwebs, and you shall see...


Von Chogg

Nothing makes them more special than another codex in 6th imo, if your gunning them down, you're making points back at an alarming rate because excluding inquisition, its 20points base per model. And they die just like any other marine. But if you allow them to do what they are good at, you probably will be destroyed. A surviving strike squad grey knight after watching his whole unit be massicared by Doom, can still destroy him with a missed save and a passed psy test on 3d6. GKs can be brutal but they can also be delt with handely.

Bede19025 wrote:I bought the codex and have given it a brief read through. Aside from having a huge number of options and units, I'm not seeing what's so overpowered. Is it the Nemesis force weapons? The Hamnerhand psychic power? Something else?

Can someone enlighten me on this?

Basically, they're pretty much Codex: Space Marines x10. Anything any other marine codex can do, the GK's can do the same or very similar for little overall increases in points costs...

For example, you want a termy army? Why play Deathwing or Loganwing when you can have basic termies backed up by pallies? Add in much better delivery systems with the stormraven and the insanely undercosted psyflemen dreads, AND grenade caddies in the form of techmarines... And yes, you can easily run it as Draigo + Libby for HQ's which means all your termies are Troops and still have the slots to take 3 techmarines with rad & 'I-win' grenades.

Or if you want roflestomp hordes and/or just play an insanely strong mech list, pay the 'Crowe tax' and now you have upto 6 squads of scoring Purifyers who utterly demolish hordes due to clensing flame + cheap weapon upgrades on 2A GK's. And of corse, because Crowe makes them Troops, you can still pack your grenade caddy techmarines and psyflemen in the Hevay slots.

Saying GK's are combat specialists and you need to shoot them isn't really true either, since their main weapon upgrades are effectively 'better' assault cannons. Or else they can throw enough transports on the board to make IG jealous and hit you with an av11 or av12 wall of death. (psybacks are stupidly cheap for what you get)
Maybe if you're IG or venomspam DE you can out shoot the knights, but anyone who also needs to get within the basic 24" is in for a world of hurt due to every GK coming equiped with a storm bolter.
And for other elite armies that rely on combat, such as Chaos Marines or BA's, getting in close to GK's isn't much better since those power weapons really hurt those armies.



What really grinds people most of all is that GK's have no 'bad' choices, and there better units are hard-counters to multiple armies. For example, Purifyers make it rediculously hard for Orks or Tyranids to compete, while Strike & Interceptor squads auto-nerf anyone who plays a deep strike game. (Daemons may as well not even bother trying since we have to always deep strike!)
Armies that should easily outclass GK's in assaults, such as Dark Eldar can be beaten by a simple 15pts upgrade that can be taken upto 5 times in any GK army! Meanwhile, armies that universally lack the ability to spam medium to long range high strenght/low ap weaponry will get rolled over by Paladin heavy lists since they're forced to try wieght of fire/attacks and/or rely on things like power fists/ high strength MC's. (and yet again, GK's are a hard-counter to multi-wound gribblies thanks to universal force sticks on everyone)

Overall, GK's are simply no fun to fight because they're hard-counters are just too over the top. Yes they can be beaten, but especially with their power lists, (Draigowing, Crowewing, Henchmen spam), alot of armies will require at least some list tailoring to do it, especially the older books or more niche armies like Tyranids & Daemons.

Experiment 626 wrote:

Bede19025 wrote:I bought the codex and have given it a brief read through. Aside from having a huge number of options and units, I'm not seeing what's so overpowered. Is it the Nemesis force weapons? The Hamnerhand psychic power? Something else?

Can someone enlighten me on this?

Basically, they're pretty much Codex: Space Marines x10. Anything any other marine codex can do, the GK's can do the same or very similar for little overall increases in points costs...

For example, you want a termy army? Why play Deathwing or Loganwing when you can have basic termies backed up by pallies? Add in much better delivery systems with the stormraven and the insanely undercosted psyflemen dreads, AND grenade caddies in the form of techmarines... And yes, you can easily run it as Draigo + Libby for HQ's which means all your termies are Troops and still have the slots to take 3 techmarines with rad & 'I-win' grenades.

Or if you want roflestomp hordes and/or just play an insanely strong mech list, pay the 'Crowe tax' and now you have upto 6 squads of scoring Purifyers who utterly demolish hordes due to clensing flame + cheap weapon upgrades on 2A GK's. And of corse, because Crowe makes them Troops, you can still pack your grenade caddy techmarines and psyflemen in the Hevay slots.

Saying GK's are combat specialists and you need to shoot them isn't really true either, since their main weapon upgrades are effectively 'better' assault cannons. Or else they can throw enough transports on the board to make IG jealous and hit you with an av11 or av12 wall of death. (psybacks are stupidly cheap for what you get)
Maybe if you're IG or venomspam DE you can out shoot the knights, but anyone who also needs to get within the basic 24" is in for a world of hurt due to every GK coming equiped with a storm bolter.
And for other elite armies that rely on combat, such as Chaos Marines or BA's, getting in close to GK's isn't much better since those power weapons really hurt those armies.



What really grinds people most of all is that GK's have no 'bad' choices, and there better units are hard-counters to multiple armies. For example, Purifyers make it rediculously hard for Orks or Tyranids to compete, while Strike & Interceptor squads auto-nerf anyone who plays a deep strike game. (Daemons may as well not even bother trying since we have to always deep strike!)
Armies that should easily outclass GK's in assaults, such as Dark Eldar can be beaten by a simple 15pts upgrade that can be taken upto 5 times in any GK army! Meanwhile, armies that universally lack the ability to spam medium to long range high strenght/low ap weaponry will get rolled over by Paladin heavy lists since they're forced to try wieght of fire/attacks and/or rely on things like power fists/ high strength MC's. (and yet again, GK's are a hard-counter to multi-wound gribblies thanks to universal force sticks on everyone)

Overall, GK's are simply no fun to fight because they're hard-counters are just too over the top. Yes they can be beaten, but especially with their power lists, (Draigowing, Crowewing, Henchmen spam), alot of armies will require at least some list tailoring to do it, especially the older books or more niche armies like Tyranids & Daemons.

Wow you must have been roflstomped hard by Grey Knights a few times. Grey Knights have taken a hit here in 6th, their free Storm Bolters are not as great seeing as how rapid fire weapons can move an fire. Grey Knight Terminators have always been troop choices, but get squished by normal terminators now, seeing as how that 5+ invuln can't stand up to well to a power fist to the face. An that I6 halberd won't negate the normal terminators 2+ armour, so yea good first see what good it does.

Paladins are going to written out of Grey Knight lists, and it suprises me that there are still people writing up Draigowing armies. Paladins will be killed by assault terminators all day long and twice on Sunday. You can give them Deamon Hammers and hope the assault termies fail their 3+ Storm Shield Save. An Draigo is dare I say it mediocre compared to say Lysander. Lysander will hammer Draigo into the ground, and Draigo can't even negate Lysanders 2+ save anymore thanks to the change in power weapons.

Grey Knights are still very good, but they are not the end all be all of armies.

Oh yea you wanna talk ridiculously underpriced units, check out the Imperial Guard Vendetta now that is ridiculously underpriced. Grey Knights get Str8 autocannons instead of the Str7 ones that ever other marine codex can use.

Agree that GK have been brought to heel somewhat with 6th. Most of the hate you are seeing is a result of the year or so (IIRC they were released around Spring 2011) that people suffered with 5th edition grey knights. Also, one of the very few armies I do not enjoy playing against is purifier spam.

My biggest complaint is that their terminators have grenades

They are very good in melee and short ranged shooting.

If you let them do either of these, they will destroy you. But if you melee them on your own terms or shoot them to death they start losing very quickly. Anything that kills Marines, kills GKs even better because of the expense.



Alot of players make mistakes facing GKs.

Ork and Tyranid players will face a Draigostar and stupidly try to kill it in melee. Dumb , thats exactly what Draigowing wants you to do. Ignore it, play the mission and win. Draigowing is incredibly bad in 6th because one unit can only hold one objective. Cool, let them have their objective of choice. You arn't taking it back. Just grab the other 4 and laugh as the Paladins realize they cannot win.

Same thing with Purifiers. Why the hell are you assaulting them with Boyz/gants? That's what they eat for breakfast. Shoot the buggers, or assault them with Terminators of your own. GKs of all stripes hate 2+ saves as only Daemonhammers are Ap2, and no GK player takes more then a couple hammers per squad.

The only Grey Knight HQ I would take in TDA is either Mordrak or an Ordo Malleus Inquisitor because he is cheap with a Psycannon an a hammer, only problem there is that the Inquisitor has to footslog with a normal squad or hitch a ride in a Storm Raven.

Mordrak I think is going to see some love allied with other marine chapters. I will run Logan with 5 MM Long Fangs and a Rune Priest. Having the priest so close to Mordrak means Hammerhand isn't getting through some of the time but having 5 TL MM in the enemies face is worth it. I am gonna run the Wolves as allies, have Logan's and a Wolf Guard Pod come in on turn one with Mordrak an then a Grey Hunter pod turn 2 with some Storm Ravens. grrrr I might have to take a 2nd Inquisitor to make sure I get communion off.

Grey Templar wrote:They are very good in melee and short ranged shooting.

If you let them do either of these, they will destroy you. But if you melee them on your own terms or shoot them to death they start losing very quickly. Anything that kills Marines, kills GKs even better because of the expense.



Alot of players make mistakes facing GKs.

Ork and Tyranid players will face a Draigostar and stupidly try to kill it in melee. Dumb , thats exactly what Draigowing wants you to do. Ignore it, play the mission and win. Draigowing is incredibly bad in 6th because one unit can only hold one objective. Cool, let them have their objective of choice. You arn't taking it back. Just grab the other 4 and laugh as the Paladins realize they cannot win.

Same thing with Purifiers. Why the hell are you assaulting them with Boyz/gants? That's what they eat for breakfast. Shoot the buggers, or assault them with Terminators of your own. GKs of all stripes hate 2+ saves as only Daemonhammers are Ap2, and no GK player takes more then a couple hammers per squad.

But that's the whole point; Orks & Tyranids don't have 'easy answers' to a Purifyer list, they **must** bring specific units to combat them!

Shoota boyz are only so-so because they can't dance outside of the Purifyers range, and they're only BS2 meaning it'll take them long enough to shoot down the Purifyers that they'll very likely be wiped out or crippled in return.
Orks need to bring Lootas, mounted Burnas, Kans/Dreads, MAN's and/or vehicles to deal with a Purifyer spam list. Their bread and butter units which the army revolved around are totally ineffective.

Tyranids are in an even worse spot as their shooting is even more limited than Orks! Devourer gaunts cost a crapload of pts, while basic gun-gaunts are only BS3 w/12" range guns. The bigger gribblies are frighteningly susceptible to being ID'd by force weapons, while Warriors are joke when facing down psyflemen dreads.
Hormagaunts and Genestealers again are utterly useless because of clesning flame. It simple skews the fight too far in favour of the Purifyers, while the cheaper halberds means they can still get in their swings at the same time as the 'stealers.

Sure, it's not impossible for either army to beat Purifyers, but it's not fun because the game is so heavily slanted in favour of the GK's due to their OTT hard-counters!


As mentioned in another thread, no one enjoys a game where things happen such as;
- you lose most/all of your army but only kill 10 GK's

- your assault units lose half their guys before combat even begins

- your characters or 200+ pts units kill themselves, or can't fight for a round, or get dropped to a single attack because of a 15pts upgrade

- your army can't even deploy on the table, or you're forced to deploy 36" or more away from a gunline because you lost the roll for first turn

- you're facing an av12 wall of death because your opponent can get 40pts 'units'

- your killy monster of death loses every single one of his abilities he's paid pts for

It's just not fun facing crap like that, and after you've suffered a few games being forced to at least partially tailor your list just so you can try to compete, you don't really feel like even putting models on the table come the ump'teenth time.

Do the orks have no Lootas?

2 rounds of shooting from 20 shoota boyz.

1st round they kill 3 Purifiers.

Second round, if say the orks have taken 6 casualities from enemy shooting, they kill another 2 before assaulting in.

Thats half a purifier squad dead before the assault.


The math shows the 5 Purifiers winning combat, but only 2 of them are alive after its all over on average. Not really a surprise. 10 Purifiers with gear(2 psycanons, hammer, and 7 Halberds) is 279 points. 20 Shoota boyz is 120. I'd hope the Purifiers can win that fight.

Grey Templar wrote:Do the orks have no Lootas?

2 rounds of shooting from 20 shoota boyz.

1st round they kill 3 Purifiers.

Second round, if say the orks have taken 6 casualities from enemy shooting, they kill another 2 before assaulting in.

Thats half a purifier squad dead before the assault.


The math shows the 5 Purifiers winning combat, but only 2 of them are alive after its all over on average. Not really a surprise. 10 Purifiers with gear(2 psycanons, hammer, and 7 Halberds) is 279 points. 20 Shoota boyz is 120. I'd hope the Purifiers can win that fight.

your theoretical Purifier squad would kill 10 boyz at 24", before the orks ever get to shooting. Then what's left of the boys kill 1 purifier and the purifers wipe out what's left the next turn, before they even get into assault.