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So I've moved back to my chaos and eldar now that their dexes are out. But I have a lot of GK left over from the days when everyone hated them. I've got lots of troops GKSS, GKT, and purifiers. A couple rhinos, razorbacks, knights, and land raiders.

I don't have henchment, and won't buy any any time soon because I'm building my eldar back up right now.

Is there any way to make GK viable for competative play without using henchment or draigo? Although, i do have draigo if I have to.

A list running a lot of strikes as a core, backed up by interceptors for mobility, Termies for tough melee, purifiers for horde control and DK for burning and bashing things can be pretty good. By that, I mean don't expect to take it to a tourney and win against the toughest netlists, but you should be able to take it down the store or club and have a good game with a decent chance of winning. It depends on how competitive your meta is.

If you post what you have, I can help you make a more specific list, but on the whole, SS, DK and GKT are all viable for semi-competitive builds.

Pretty much every competitive GK army these days runs Coteaz and 3 Dreadknights. After that it is mostly a mix of Henchmen, Ravens, Interceptors, and allies. GK took the biggest hit of all the Marine armies from the sudden increase in cover ignoring AP1-3 weapons as their Marines cost much more than those of other armies. Strikes are still good, but spamming them like before won't work in an all-comers environment as half the armies you face will toast them on foot. Run maybe 2 units max. and Deep Strike them late in the game if you can while using cheaper Henchmen bunkered down to hold home objectives.

Thanks for the input. I'm the only 4 helldrake wielding douche at my FLGS but it recently expanded to 16 tables so we may get a bunch of new guys from the area at our big tournaments. Its recently got much more competitive so I'm not sure I'd ever run this in a tournament unless it was good enough. I'm at work so I'll try to remember what I have off the top of my head. I mostly ran purifiers.

power armor dudes:
6 hammers
4 halberds
10 psycannons
4 incinerators
14 swords/stormbolter (this doesn't seem right but math says so)

Termites
2 psycannon
2 hammers
2 halberds
2 standard
2 apothicaries

2 knights, all weapons available via magnets

4 rhino/razorbacks (swapable) with either HB or psycannon

Redeemer

HQ
2 inquisitors 1 w/PA incinerator and hammer. The other is all xenos with alien poison weapons
Draigo
Purifier dude (i cannot remember his name even though he was my normal HQ lol)

My list was kinda odd, I didn't net list it, and I started shifting around right before chaos came out.

Ok, here's my suggestion for a good 1500 list. It won't be unstoppable, but you should be able to put up a good fight.


Grand master with sword (use draigo as proxy): 175

10 strikes, 2 psycannons, halberd, psybolt: 245
Razorback, HB psybolt: 50

10 strikes, 2 psycannons, halberd, psybolt: 245
Razorback, HB, psybolt: 50

5 Purifiers, 2 psycannon, 3 halberd: 146
Rhino: 40

5 paladins, 2 psycannons, 2 hammer, halberd: 315

NDK: Teleporter, incinerator: 235


Total: 1501 (if your opponent is picky, just drop a halberd on the purifiers)

Combat-squad the strike, half DS, half in razors, Paladins can go with GM and DS them. DK should play aggressive, using teleporter to get in the enemy face. 5 paladins, a GM and a DK on T2 should be enough of a threat to take a lot of fire off your strikes and purifers, who can go for objectives and support respectively. Use the strikes to pick off weak units, don't be afraid of melee with weak targets, as it can potentially keep you safe from shooting.

Focus on force concentration, move as fast as possible to get to mid-range quickly, stick to shooting fighty stuff and fighting shooty stuff. It's a but rough and ready, but should hold up in friendly games. Your weaknesses are low model count, so you have to make every points count. If you plan to get a few more models, I'd suggest at least one more SS and possibly some interceptors.

Hope that helps.

Paladins really aren't worth it without Draigo; a Raven or another Dreadknight would be a better all-round choice for the army.

Paladins are still completely worth it without Draigo. they're 2 wound termies with a large blast psychic power, 2 Psycannons, and improved Weapon Skill...AND the GM can still make them scoring.

Yea but with so much S8 Ap2 guns around the main point of draigo is to tank the odd lascannon style wound that comes through on the squad, without that then the paladins would drop quite quickly.

Precisely. Without Draigo who cares about 2W. If I saw Paladins across the table and Draigo wasn't attached I'd immediately go and buy my opponent a beer for handing me such easy and expensive kills.

The killer is in the details.

It's almost like you need to utilize tactics in order to keep those guns away from the Paladins...I've used them to great effect, and I never run Draigo. But maybe that's just me. Also, where is there "so much" S8 AP2? Just off the top of my head, I'm thinking Bright Lances, Pulse Lasers, Dark Lances, Lascannons, Meltas; none of which are fielded in great amounts, with the exception being Dark Eldar Ravager Spam.

People bring those weapons to deal with high AV vehicles or high toughness MCs anyway, doubling out paladins is just a bonus. You're also forgetting all the various S10 weapons, many of them are area weapons as well (e.g. Vindicator, IG artillery rockets).

Anyway how exactly do you keep 48" range guns away from Paladins? What tactics allow your 24" shooting/melee units to be useful while staying away from a four foot bubble the opponent puts anywhere he wants?

Well, you should be able to hide them behind LOS for at least part of the army, either through terrain or other units, and if you DS them well, you can be in CC within a turn, so only have to take one turn of firepower. Additionally, if they are shooting the paladins, then those weapons are not hitting your DK/LR/SR, and if they are in squads, they aren't shooting small arms at your PA guys, keeping them a lot safer as well. Also, a NWS can go a long way to tanking a few shots.

U could give a couple swords to help... Let em have a 4+ invul instead. Not dragio, but something.

The 4+ from the swords only works in CC, unfortunately.

At 1500pts, I play an all-TDA Ghostwing list. That's 26-27 Terminators depending on options taken. How do I survive turn 1? By playing smart. Mordrak's FttF ability allows me to place him exactly where I want him and his squad + Libby w/ Homer in order to best survive until turn 2, at which point the reserve arrives in the form of a 10man GKT squad via Psychic Communion guided Deep Strike. This can be behind LoS blocking terrain or right in the middle of my opponent's deployment. My choice.

SJ

Well, my personal favorite in putting my Pallies where I want them is Deep Strike. Couple that with a few chep Servo-Skulls and you have deadly accurate teleporting that puts you in position for side armor shots on those tanks.

Another, more expensive method is using a Land raider to deliver them. While more expensive, it has the added bonus of having some S9 guns of its own to pop those nasty threats to my Pallies en route.

The more I read some of these posts, the more I'm convinced people must think models in terminator armor have some rule that they mus walk across a wide open board from as far away as possible and just hope they make it...