6th Edition and GK changes/Tactical - revisited (updated for FAQ V1.4 and some Eldar)

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**l0k1**

Mike712 wrote:
Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:I was going to start a new topic about GK but I might as well save room and post my question here:

I bought 30 Paladins a month ago that I have yet to build since I was waiting for 6th to come out. Now that I have the rule book and have read it through I'm wondering how should I equip them??? Since wound allocation has changed and they no longer need to all be unique I was thinking something like this:

3 units of ten:

1 Apothacary w/Halberd,
1 Brother Banner w/ Psycannon
5 Halberds (2 with psycannons)
1 Warding Stave and storm bolter
2 Daemonhammers (1 with Psycannon)

Banner means you can never use hammerhand, I'd leave it out to be honest, hammerhand is way to useful to lose.

To my knowledge the banner grants +1 attack to all in the unit and when making the psychic test to activate force weapons they automatically pass. It doesn't day you HAVE to always use that power to activate force weapons.

**Xca|iber**

Yeah, the Banner is a great choice. It never says you must use the Force weapon activation, just that you always pass the test when you take it.

**Grey Templar**

Activating your FWs has a point against regular Assault Marines. They can't take their FnP against activated FWs, they can if you use HH.

**wuestenfux**

Enigwolf wrote:
sudojoe wrote:http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/459859.page
I'm seeing lists along the lines of:

destroyer lord + fast mover wraiths x 1 maybe 2 squads, but usually just one now to get in there and kill folks.

Warriors with gauss backed up by ghost arks and some immortals with tesla to out shoot infantry

death ray fliers for all around killiness.

It's very hard to assault tesla immortals I've found out through trial and error...

stupid death ray is very powerful. And dlord + wraiths are just silly for perferred enemy. And lance teks + solar pulse is still annoying but not as bad since cover saves are less meaningful since I don't have that much low AP stuff in my list.

I'm seeing this list start happening a lot too, and frankly, against Wraiths, sheer volume of fire is needed to kill them, which GK just don't really have enough of. Their 3+ Invul makes a mockery of high-strength weapons which our lists have a ton of. I HAVE been experimenting around with counters, however, and so far only Paladins have had much of a chance.

Don't let them get the charge on you, and stay away from the whip coils. Rad grenades and psychotroke grenades are almost must-haves. Don't even bother activating force weapons, just stack as many Hammerhands (and Might of Titan) until you wound on a 2+ (which should be enough to instant-death them with 2x strength). Have a single Warding Stave and do combat placement such that hits are taken on that one Warding Stave, and use Look Out, Sir! if needed.

Also, Wraiths have a low Initiative, so capitalize on that with the Librarian's Warp Rift. Template + test to remove as casualty with no saves = dead wraiths. If possible, stick someone with Empyrean Brain Mines (initiative!) in too during close combat (and toss them a Warding Stave for good measure), and challenge their Destroyer Lord. With luck, their DL will fail and won't be able to do jack in the Challenge, leaving you to dish out free hits on him.

For their fliers, either grab a fortification or bring in a Storm Raven. They can field 2 Doom Scythes for almost the price of 1 Storm Raven, but with POTM you can shoot down both in one turn. Whatever you do, make sure your Storm Raven enters from reserve AFTER his fliers do. Death rays = rather dead Storm Raven. And when you enter, try to place your Storm Raven right in front of his Doom Scythes such that IF you miss/don't shoot down one of his Doom Scythes, you force him to either switch from Zoom to Hover to shoot at you (thus losing his Zoom protection), or he has to use Zoom's mandatory 18" move to fly past your Storm Raven, meaning that he can't turn to shoot it in that same turn.

Just my two cents, hope it helps some.

Very good advice.

Necron flyers have shooting arcs and so are less flexible than a Storm Raven.

**Mike712**

l0k1 wrote:
Mike712 wrote:
Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote:I was going to start a new topic about GK but I might as well save room and post my question here:

I bought 30 Paladins a month ago that I have yet to build since I was waiting for 6th to come out. Now that I have the rule book and have read it through I'm wondering how should I equip them??? Since wound allocation has changed and they no longer need to all be unique I was thinking something like this:

3 units of ten:

1 Apothacary w/Halberd,
1 Brother Banner w/ Psycannon
5 Halberds (2 with psycannons)
1 Warding Stave and storm bolter
2 Daemonhammers (1 with Psycannon)

Banner means you can never use hammerhand, I'd leave it out to be honest, hammerhand is way to useful to lose.

To my knowledge the banner grants +1 attack to all in the unit and when making the psychic test to activate force weapons they automatically pass. It doesn't day you HAVE to always use that power to activate force weapons.

So you choose to take the psychic test and auitomatically pass it? Because a GW staff member who plays GKs and is usually pretty spot on with rules told me otherwise and said the test is always automatically passed using up your single force point barring the use of any other psychic powers. I'm going to GW today if he's working I'll discuss that point of view with him since having the choice does make sense to me.

**sudojoe**

Grey Templar wrote:Activating your FWs has a point against regular Assault Marines. They can't take their FnP against activated FWs, they can if you use HH.

With a rad grenade and 2 hammer hands, you can skip the FW activation too but good point on FnP, I'll update it to the first post.

So..... first, sorry for breaking the other thread :( I'm bad I know. I wont do it again.

lol I'm kind of almost glad you did if that was you. It got me off my lazy butt and rewrite the whole thing. I feel like I've rewritten the codex now and I'll keep trying to keep the first page updated as a general GK 6th edition stragety guide.

Thanks for the encouragement against the necrons. I'll probably have to rework my purifiers list completely a few more times but so far it's been kind of a blood bath. Already tabled 3x and I don't even have that much reserves.

**Joe Mama**

What are your guys thoughts on henchmen squad size? Since 5 out of 6 missions don't let troops score in vehicles, what's a good number for squad size, for let's say backfield objective campers?

8 warrior acolyte dudes with bolters is only 40 points. 12 is 60 points. With a cheap transport that's 100 points. If nothing else they can hang out in cover and go to ground and make it a little more annoying to remove them from the objective by shooting....

**Enigwolf**

I was tabled twice by my friend's Doomscythe + Wraiths/DL + Necrons in Ghost Ark spam. He's still running undefeated in my FLGS with that list.

First game, I tabled in turn 2. 2nd game, I tabled in turn 3.5 with bad dice rolls (Paladins died in transit...) The third time I showed up with my army and my list, he opted not to play with me. lol.

For backfield camping, a pretty solid firebase for me has been Coteaz + 2 Plascannon servitors + 1 Jokaero. Take a techmarine and bolster a piece of terrain from 4+ to 3+, stick Coteaz+retinue there with psyfleman dreads. Using said techmarine, get 3 Servoskulls and cover the rest of your deployment zone from deepstrikers. Don't rely on Coteaz's out-of-turn shooting, a deepstriking Crisis team with shield drones will ruin your day - they're tough enough to take on the firepower you're hitting them with on your out-of-turn shot.

**Joe Mama**

No meatshield guys? Just 2 servitors and Jokaero? That can't be right...

**Enigwolf**

Joe Mama wrote:No meatshield guys? Just 2 servitors and Jokaero? That can't be right...

Mind, my list is a lot of experimentation - very little researching up till now. I've been relying a lot on 3+ cover save with them, though now you mention it, meatshield for wound allocation might actually be a good idea... (Oh, Tau with Markerlights make a mockery of that coversave, by the way)

**serotol**

with the new divination powers shooty and the proliferation of psyckers, henchmen squads just became a lot more good.

Yesterday I played against a very shooty space wolves list @2000pt, it had:
2 fully armed long fang units,
3 10-man greyhunters units,
a predator anihilator,
a whirlwind,
a 10-man wolfguard unit with shields and fists mainly,
and finally....
3 rune priests and stormcaller

I knew he was going to make a shooty list with some psykers (I didn´t know he would use SO MANY) so I decided to fight fire with fire and took:

hereticus inquisitor
psyocculum
mastery level 1

xenos inquisitor
rad & psyco nades
mastery level 1

6 psykers
crusader
2 warriors w/bolters
3 servitors w/plasma cannons

6 psykers
crusader
5 warriors w/bolter

10-man strike squad
2 psycannons
psybolts
in rhino

10-man strike squad
2 psycannons
psybolts
in rhino

7-man terminator squad
banner
stave
....
xenos inq here

vindicare

dreadknight

landraider crusader
psybolt
MM

and the two henchmen units did wonderful, they killed the predator, a unit of long fangs, a rune priest and THE WOLF GUARD. the hereticus inquisitor was with the unit with the plasma servitors and gave the BS 10 against psykers and with precience he gave rerolls to hit to the other psyker unit.

finnaly i must remark that the dreadknight has become a lot more resilent in CC with its character status.

**Enigwolf**

serotol, where'd you park your two henchmen squads? Did you just rely on the Psykers/servitors to kill stuff, or did the acolytes with bolters do some damage? As I was telling Joe earlier, I didn't take Crusaders like you did 'cause I stuck them in 3+ cover, but actually, having a few henchmen bodies in the form of warrior acolytes isn't such a bad idea come to think about it. Have you considered sticking a Jokaero in there?

(also, list-catering much? LOL. I'm also surprised he didn't field Thunderwolves and instead had 4 psykers to fight an anti-psyker army. And whirlwinds? Who brings those anyways...?)

**serotol**

surprisingly the whirlwind did a lot cause it denied cover and killed many henchmen, I parked the unit with the servitors in some ruins with the inquisitor and thanks to pre-mesuring I placed the just out of rage of some of the long fangs, the other unit was inside of a house.
the warriors with bolters didn´t do anything in shooting because of their range, but they were excelent meatshields.
and finally a jokaero is very expensive and would take the space of a meatshield. I might consider using one in a heavy servitor unit like this one:

hereticus inquisitor
psyocculum
mastery
(asuming the other army has at least 3 psykers)

3 plama cannon servitors
1 or 2 jokaero
1 or 2 crusaders
and then fill the unit with bolter warriors and maybe some plasma guns

im also thinking in spamming psykers using coteaz but thats another deal

**Gatekeeper**

so I had a bit of luck last night. Or it was awesome tactical skill.......yeah that's it. Anyways.....

Two purifier squads of 5, with 2 psycannons each (4 total) in a gun line. they each have a psyback near them and then walk up with two psyfleman dreads behind the gunline. The key is i put in a techmarine (due to some post i read on on some forum) and he pretty much kept the gunline and dreads firing for most of the game.

I thought this was a great tactic. what do you think? am i crazy?

**serotol**

Are the purifiers for counter assault? because their 24¨ shooting is not gonna help the gunline

**Enigwolf**

Techmarine can only repair once per turn. And even then it's not a terribly great chance if everything gets hit - you can only make 1 repair per turn (GK FAQ).

Vehicles got a lot weaker and you're going to see them glanced to death very, very, very, fast.

**sudojoe**

Vehicles got a lot weaker and you're going to see them glanced to death very, very, very, fast.

Instead of just going by anectodal evidence, I found a very accessable math hammer version to help you compare just how long your vehicles will last

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/461330.page

Just for kicks, in case you don't want to DL and run it, I'll just throw in a few numbers into my first page post under the transports section. If you want the full version, it's available by the above link.

TLDR version:

Assaults really start to wreck vehicles. Beware of the now fearless scarabs! 5-8 x more likely for your rhinos to die but we're still talking about just 10% chance to wreck from a 5 man block of shots at rapid fire. vs 20 shots, you'll be wrecked about 38.6%. You will almost always need at least something to counter attack/tarpit.

**Grugknuckle**

Hey Sudojoe,

Here is the math-hammer run down on the Necrons that you requested. To do these computations, I'm using the spreadsheet I created and made available for download here...

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/461330.page

Make sure you get the updated version as I have fixed a couple of bugs and added the cover save feature.

If you want to simulate guass weapons, all you have to do is set the weapon strength to the armor value minus 6. That way, penetrating hits are impossible and the ONLY way to destroy the vehicle is by glance-wrecking.

So for example, if you want to see the stats on 10 Necron warriors rapid firing their guass weapons at your Vindicator (AV 13), set

Armor = 13
Hull points = 3 ( I think, but check the book )
Ballistic Skill = 4
Weapon Strength = 7
AP = 5
Cover / Jink = 7

When I did this,
10 shots gives 9.06% to wreck your vehicle
20 shots gives 38.66% to wreck your vehicle.

On the other hand if allow for the Necrons to move 6" and take snap shots, then you set the same as above but with BS = 1. In this case the results are

10 shots gives 0.22% to wreck your vehicle
20 shots gives 1.72% to wreck your vehicle.

Now suppose your vehicle has cover but the necrons are at full BS 4. To do this, set Cover / Jink to 5 and BS to 4. Then the results are

10 shots gives 3.29% to wreck your vehicle
20 shots gives 18.13% to wreck your vehicle.

If the Necrons are shooting snap shots AND your vehicle has cover then the odds are very slim.

10 shots gives 0.07% to wreck your vehicle
20 shots gives 0.57% to wreck your vehicle.

So the moral of the story is - keep necron warriors at least 18" away from your vehicles and use cover if possible.

Here is another trick you can do with this spread sheet. If you want to know what the odds are of losing just one hull point, then set the hull points to 1. Play with this and see what you come up with.

**whitedragon**

Grugknuckle wrote:He
On the other hand if allow for the Necrons to move 6" and take snap shots, then you set the same as above but with BS = 1.

We're talking about Necron warriors right? Why would they have to take snap shots for moving with Rapid Fire weapons?

**serotol**

^^^This, moral of the story, just dont take expensive vehicles agaist necrons.

**Joe Mama**

So henchmen are cheap as heck and can take some nice weapons GK doesn't have access to or good access to (multi-melta, melta, plasma, plasma cannons etc; ). But they are also a little weak. Now with the new vehicle rules is sticking them in a vehicle a good idea?

**sudojoe**

Joe Mama wrote:So henchmen are cheap as heck and can take some nice weapons GK doesn't have access to or good access to (multi-melta, melta, plasma, plasma cannons etc; ). But they are also a little weak. Now with the new vehicle rules is sticking them in a vehicle a good idea?

It actually still is a good idea since you tend to park the shooty elements far from the front. (well at least 24' since that's the range of your stuff anyway but most tanks will have at least that range as well so armor fighting is not without impunity)

Can hurt alot of infantry with them though and a chimera's front armor is quite sturdy. ML + HB still gets quite a few shots even with snap fire. should get at least 1 hit with a str 5 or 6 gun in there on just about anything.

**Stoffer**

I'm thinking of adding servitors with multimeltas because they're 10 points a piece, which is silly.

**Grey Templar**

Remember that only 3 Servitors can have a ranged weapon. You can't take a unit of 12 with MM/Plasma Cannon/HB

**Stoffer**

Yep. In fact, it's probably not viable to do more than a single squad of 3, due to them not working terribly well outside of having inquisitors with them.

**Joe Mama**

Stoffer wrote:Yep. In fact, it's probably not viable to do more than a single squad of 3, due to them not working terribly well outside of having inquisitors with them.

But still, 3 MM for 30 points sounds good to me. Even moreso if your inquisitor has the psychic power which lets you reroll to hit!

I already built my MM servitors out of random parts. I really should take a picture of them. One of the parts I used I am not sure where it came from.

**Grugknuckle**

whitedragon wrote:
Grugknuckle wrote:He
On the other hand if allow for the Necrons to move 6" and take snap shots, then you set the same as above but with BS = 1.

We're talking about Necron warriors right? Why would they have to take snap shots for moving with Rapid Fire weapons?

Now that you mention it, you're right. I don't know what I was thinking. I was probably severely under-caffeinated.

**praetorian_aak**

They would use snap fire vs flyers.

**wuestenfux**

serotol wrote:^^^This, moral of the story, just dont take expensive vehicles agaist necrons.

In fact, this is the first edition where this assertion becomes true. Glancing to death is where Necron Warriors do excel now.

**l0k1**

Didn't Necrons glance vehicles to death in 3rd or 4th edition too? Almost positive they did this in a previous edition.