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Hi guys

I've been playing with the grey Knights quite a bit and I find that I like using the silencer since it has force you can effectively mow down most things 1 turn. With instant death like flyrants and daemon Princes. Just wondering what you guys thought about that or should I just have the cannon?

Thanks

I think it gets overlooked, you can always give it another ranged weapon and a teleporter. Rate of fire means you will probably kill your target in a single round of shooting. Thing is, afterwards you have got a very expensive model that isn't best equipped for the rest of the fight (as the psilencer will only kill 1 meq per turn statistically). If you are playing a big game and can afford an expensive assassin, I'd go for it. In smaller games, with the psycannon able to pop tanks and the incinerator good for blobs, I'd go for maximum potential.

The Gatling Psilencer is an excellent second weapon on your second NDK. The Heavy Psycannon will always be your first choice, while the Heavy Incinerator is still a great second weapon on any NDK. I've found that pairing the Hammer with the Psilencer helps dealing with enemies that might be resistant to ID.

SJ

Against things like Warriors, Zoanthropes and Biovores, the Gatling Psylencer is the best.

Heavily meta dependant. I play a lot of TWC based Space Wolves and Tyranids, so Gatling Psilencers make it on to both of my Dreadknights.

If Lady Luck favours you, the psilencer can be a good choice (for some reason, everybody always acts like successfully casting force is a given, it's not). Personally, I prefer the reliability of the Psycannon and incinerator.

Agreed on meta dependant, against MCs and elites it could be super useful.

I'm a fan of it for the multiple shots you get against MEQs etc. Force or no force, 12 S4 shots is quite nice at BS4 and really increases the shootiness of the model.

If you do the math its not that good at ID'ing MCs. Lets look at a Flyrant (that is on the ground for some reason)

12 shots at BS4 to 8 hits
S4 vs T6 so 6+ to wound so 1.33 wounds
Then they get they're 3+ armor save so you only do .44 wounds.

That is pathetic. Even against something like a DP you're still at less then a wound. Plus thats ignoring that most MCs are flying or if they're on the ground they have 2+ armor like the riptide.

You can't hit a flyer with a flamer template, so between the Psilencer and the Incinerator, it's the Psilencer that might harm the flyer. Keep in mind that you will always be takng the Psycannon, which means however unlikely it may be, the Psilencer can ID a Riptide or a Flyrant.

SJ

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
You can't hit a flyer with a flamer template, so between the Psilencer and the Incinerator, it's the Psilencer that might harm the flyer. Keep in mind that you will always be takng the Psycannon, which means however unlikely it may be, the Psilencer can ID a Riptide or a Flyrant.

SJ

A Flyer won't be threatened by the Gatling either, and you can basically ignore a Flyrant with the Knight.

Ripide? Teleport Shunt and charge it?

Against daemons and KDK, the gatling psilencer is gold. Daemons get saves against everything, so the AP- is not a drawback, and the high rate of fire and ID mechanic makes Khornedogs, spawn, and flamers a lot more likely to cower in cover.

Can't charge after a Shunt, but you can shoot after a Shunt. And why is it you think a Psilencer can't hit a Flyrant?

SJ

 CrownAxe wrote:
If you do the math its not that good at ID'ing MCs. Lets look at a Flyrant (that is on the ground for some reason)

12 shots at BS4 to 8 hits
S4 vs T6 so 6+ to wound so 1.33 wounds
Then they get they're 3+ armor save so you only do .44 wounds.

That is pathetic. Even against something like a DP you're still at less then a wound. Plus thats ignoring that most MCs are flying or if they're on the ground they have 2+ armor like the riptide.

44% to kill an MC outright, and you call it pathetic?
Are you sane? Is there anything in the remote price tag capable of this?
Because even D don't get that. It will cause more wounds while trying, but won't do a 44% kill.
This wrecks TMC, deamons Princes/greaters, and the new stormsurge.


Psilencer is a seriously good and very underrated weapon. It's just situational (MC without 2+,and decent against hordes)

It's actually less than a 44% chance. Because, again, successfully casting force is never guaranteed.

[Math-quibble]
36% to kill an MC (assuming 12 shots, hitting on 3s, wounding on 6s, 3+ save) assuming you successfully cast Force.
Average number of wounds inflicted =/= chance of inflicting a wound.
We now return you to your regular Dakka.
[/Math-quibble]

36% is slightly better than a 5+ to ID, beating out Str D's 6+ to ID or a Stomp's 6+ to remove. Not too shabby.

SJ

I have used NDk's for awhile and personally tested different load outs. The psycannon , like most are saying , are a given. Ive had great success with the psilencer. Although force isnt a given , its pretty close , and if it doesn't pop for some reason , you arent dedicated to shooting the model you wanted to instant kill , just shoot an easier target and roll force on next knight. Problem averted. A point no one mentioned is the psilencer works good in overwatch because the large number of shots. You should get at least 2 hits , not huge by any means , but add it to the pile. And Id like to point out that If youre trying to kill a multiwound model with the ID , you may have a libby around to cast the divination primaris "Prescience" which would totally change the % chance others have talked about. Furthermore , If you rolled Misfortune , adding rending to the psilencer further increases your % chance by being AP2. Theres alot of what ifs there , but Its not that unusual to have a libby or two in a GK list. Libbys , IMO , generally run telepathy to gamble on invis , or run divination and get the always solid PRESCIENCE. Personally , Im running the incinerator as my second weapon because I am tight for points. With torrents You get close to the same effective range , you can hurt vehicles now. Its more effective against infantry than the psilencer , and the soulblaze helps against multiwound models , albeit not as effectively as force. Thats my 2 cents.

EDIT: I thought i should mention that I was getting a third dreadknight into my list. And that I was contemplating equipping them in such a way that I had every weapon loadout possible. (NDK1 incinerator psylencer , NDK2 incin psycannon , NDK3 psylenc , pysc). Reason I thought this was worth mentioning was I didnt know if you had 3 dreadknights you were trying to figure out how to dress up. This configuration is the most flexible and I feel is more well rounded on points.

 BoomWolf wrote:

 CrownAxe wrote:
If you do the math its not that good at ID'ing MCs. Lets look at a Flyrant (that is on the ground for some reason)

12 shots at BS4 to 8 hits
S4 vs T6 so 6+ to wound so 1.33 wounds
Then they get they're 3+ armor save so you only do .44 wounds.

That is pathetic. Even against something like a DP you're still at less then a wound. Plus thats ignoring that most MCs are flying or if they're on the ground they have 2+ armor like the riptide.

44% to kill an MC outright, and you call it pathetic?
Are you sane? Is there anything in the remote price tag capable of this?
Because even D don't get that. It will cause more wounds while trying, but won't do a 44% kill.
This wrecks TMC, deamons Princes/greaters, and the new stormsurge.


Psilencer is a seriously good and very underrated weapon. It's just situational (MC without 2+,and decent against hordes)

No offense, but you don't understand the math involved if you think expected outcome is the same thing as probability of success. The odds of success are likely significantly lower than that, probably not even in the teens.

No offense, but you don't understand the math involved if you think expected outcome is the same thing as probability of success. The odds of success are likely significantly lower than that, probably not even in the teens.

Care to elaborate the difference for us simpletons? Maybe with some facts?

jonman_t wrote:

No offense, but you don't understand the math involved if you think expected outcome is the same thing as probability of success. The odds of success are likely significantly lower than that, probably not even in the teens.

Care to elaborate the difference for us simpletons? Maybe with some facts?

CrownAxe's workings (see above) give us the average number of wounds inflicted. Each turn the weapon would inflict an average of 0.44 wounds (ignoring Instand Death).
This does not mean that the chance of dealing a wound is 0.44.

Example: Let's say that the tour of duty for an Allied bomber crew in WW2 is 5 missions, and the average crew has a 20% chance of being shot down per mission. What is the chance of the crew being shot down before they complete their tour?
The natural assumption would be that we can multiple the duration of the tour (5 missions) by the chance of getting shot down (20%) to give us the total chance of being shot during the whole tour. 5 x 20% = 100%, so we say that there's a 100% chance of the crew getting shot down.
However, this isn't true. Some lucky pilots could complete several tours without being shot down at all.
The correct method is to the take the probability and, instead of multiplying it by the duration, raise it to the power of the duration.
There's an 80% chance of going a mission without getting shot down.
0.8 to the power of 5 is 0.33 (approx). The chance of going 5 missions without getting shot down is therefore approximately one third.
This means that the chance of being shot down is 2/3.

DarkLink said that there's a difference between "expected outcome" and "probability of success". Let's see if we can demonstrate that:
The "expected outcome" is that a force of bombers will suffer 100% losses every 5 missions (assuming that losses are replaced after each mission). Launch 5 sorties in a row, each of 100 bombers? You'll lose 100 bombers.
The "probability of success" (the chance of any given bomber surviving all 5 sorties) is 1/3.

Let's apply this method to the psilencer. What result do we get?
Well, the chance of inflicting an unsaved wound is:
(Hitting with a BS of 4) * (wounding on a 6+) * (getting through a 3+ save)
(2/3)* (1/6) * (1/3)
We can simplify this to (2/18)*(1/3), and then to (1/9) * (1/3), and then to (1/27).
So, each shot has a 1/27 chance of inflicting an unsaved wound.
This means that for every shot we fire, there's a 26/27 chance that it fails to do anything.
If we fire 12 shots, there's a (26/27) ^ 12 chance of us doing nothing. Poking a calculator tells us this is 64%

If there's a 64% chance of the shots doing nothing, then it follows that there's a 36% chance of us doing something. And remember, if the dread has Force active then that "something" is the enemy creature suffering Instant Death.

If you've got an queries, just ask. I'll try to answer in a coherent manner.

A few notes: First, I plucked those bomber crew numbers from my posterior.
Second, I've never played with, or against, a psilencer. My understand of its stats comes entirely from the posts above.

Edit notes: added section on "expected outcome" and "probability of success" in the middle.
Edit notes: corrected spelling.

I've only played my friend's Grey Knights once. On turn one his two NDKs teleported from the other end of the battlefield, successfully activated Force, and brutally mowed down my daemon prince warlord. My thoughts? I didn't enjoy it much...

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
It's actually less than a 44% chance. Because, again, successfully casting force is never guaranteed.

Pretty much can be with the right list.

 Arkaine wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
It's actually less than a 44% chance. Because, again, successfully casting force is never guaranteed.

Pretty much can be with the right list.

And that "right list" would be?

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Arkaine wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
It's actually less than a 44% chance. Because, again, successfully casting force is never guaranteed.

Pretty much can be with the right list.

And that "right list" would be?

Grey Knight Brotherhood formation which grants 3+ warp generation. Combined with Domina Liber Daemonica which lets you re-roll 1s for Sanctic powers, you are effectively only failing warp generation on a 2 for all your other powers. Which means you can totally afford to throw a lot of dice at Force (which succeeds on a 3+). In an army where even tanks generate warp rolls.

 Arkaine wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

 Arkaine wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
It's actually less than a 44% chance. Because, again, successfully casting force is never guaranteed.

Pretty much can be with the right list.

And that "right list" would be?

Grey Knight Brotherhood formation which grants 3+ warp generation. Combined with Domina Liber Daemonica which lets you re-roll 1s for Sanctic powers, you are effectively only failing warp generation on a 2 for all your other powers. Which means you can totally afford to throw a lot of dice at Force (which succeeds on a 3+). In an army where even tanks generate warp rolls.

Oh, good, a formation that is ridiculously expensive to play, only allows one Dreadknight, AND the Grand Master has to still be alive to get the "warp charge on a 3+" ability. Have you ever seen, or even heard of, anyone fielding that formation?

Also, GK tanks don't have Psychic Pilot anymore.

Yeah, no one runs the big formation. And sure, you can always throw 10 dice at force on your Dreadknight, but frankly you have better stuff to do with those dice. You're realistically going to throw 3-4 dice at it, so probably an 80% chance of success, and your opponent can possibly block it. Mallich's correct about the 36% chance, so casting force drops it to about 29%, with the chance for your opponent to block it (all told, probably around 25% ballpark).

Then, keep in mind that basically all the 3+ armor MCs are nids, who have easy access to 2+ cover saves and/or flyers. So that Flyrant will either be in the air, or toughing it out with 2+ cover, dropping the odds of success to ~4% and 12.5% respectively. Daemons, similarly, have easy access to 2+ cover, 2+ invulns, and rerollable 2+ saves, making them similarly difficult to kill.

The psilencer can't hurt the Wraithknight, Wraithlord, etc, Riptides et al come with 2+ armor and the Ghostkeel can easily get a 2+ cover save and is super cheap. Against MCs, there really aren't any good targets for the psilencer. Realistically for all of these things, you need to have a different tool in your list (allies with grav, assault, dedicated anti-flyer, etc).

Against multi-wound non-eternal warrior infantry, there aren't a whole lot of good targets either. Broadsides get 2+ armor and are only 2 wounds each. Tyranid Warriors are vulnerable, unless they're in cover for a 2+, and no one runs Warriors anyways. Daemons have a couple of multi-wound units, but they all have access to crazy saves and your opponent can shut down Force pretty well, plus almost no one runs Bloodcrushers and the like and Grey Knights already murder them in assault anyways so you should be shooting at other targets.



Meanwhile, the Incinerator meaningfully solves some issues Grey Knights have in the meta, namely killing bodies and getting past cover saves. You can kill blobs of nids, orks, guardsmen, etc that would otherwise bog you down. You can put wounds on Ravenwing bikes jinking for a rerollable 2+, and in ITC format you can use the Incinerator to put wounds on Invisible units. The Incinerator actually does stuff. The Psilencers... it's not worthless, but I'd much rather take an Incinerator and use a different unit that's actually effective at killing what the Psilencer tries to be good at rather than wasting the points and the Incinerator slot.

Whilst force isn't garuanteed, and getting a wound is hard on a monstrous creature, it does still include the potential to murder any non-eternal warrior monster stone dead.

And yes, that matches my calculations, too - against something akin to a tyranid monster, you've got ~ a 1/3 chance of the psilencer butchering it in one burst.

More usefully, that's a 10% chance of blowing a swooping bloodthirster, hive tyrant or daemon prince of nurgle out of the air as flaming kibble (the latter has a lower toughness but a better save so it works out the same odds).


Against a riptide, you've got about a 20% chance of landing a wound - which, again, isn't bad when talking about instant death.

Against a ghostkeel, it's even better - firstly the odds go up to over a 1/3 because it's only T5.

That's far from garuanteed, but it's not bad, especially since (a) if you take multiple dreadknights they are a big part of your army's punch, (b) no other weapon you could mount on them has the ability to even target such units, (c) with the 360' arc of fire of a monstrous creature and the speed of personal teleporters you can maintain reliable fire on them from multiple knights and (d) they're fairly common choices in their respective armies

Plus, it can happily pay for itself against a horde with multiple wounds and/or feel no pain. Finally, it makes for a very efficient overwatch weapon - no-one likes 6 stormbolters to the face in addition to wall of death, especially when the survivors have to face a really nasty monstrous creature.

The Psilencer is heavily meta depandent, and I find it tends to work quite well for my partnered with the Psycannon. I'm normally going to want to have Force up anyway as I'll probably be thinking about going and punching something after shooting.
Re Incinerators - I tend to put these on Interceptors. The Dreadknight is the only platform where a Psilencer is worth taking.

Yeah, no one runs the big formation. And sure, you can always throw 10 dice at force on your Dreadknight, but frankly you have better stuff to do with those dice. You're realistically going to throw 3-4 dice at it, so probably an 80% chance of success, and your opponent can possibly block it. Mallich's correct about the 36% chance, so casting force drops it to about 29%, with the chance for your opponent to block it (all told, probably around 25% ballpark).

3-4 dice is realistic , but if your hellbent on pulling it off to swat something big down , you can put more. What other psychic power will you use that will give you the advantage of removing 200+ points of the board? With gk the way it is , you should be getting at least 10-12 dice. Thats at least 2 spells you can force out.

80% chance of success is wrong for 3-4 dice. More likely 95%. 4 and up and reroll 1's.

And your opponent can NOT SIMPLY block it. Remember , for each success you get on a 4 up , he needs a 6. Its not an easy task to deny. If he has not extra dice , pretty much goes off. If he has psykers , then you throw more dice in and its pretty much guaranteed. If somehow , the 5% chance everything goes wrong , most gk armys have another dreadknight to fire.

You mention cover saves alot. Unless its in area terrain , then shunt behind them. Half the enemies cover saved are neutralized. I have had great success against meganobs and nobs , and paladins. Also independant characters attached to squads. I shunt over with 2-3 dks, obliterate the fodder , force , ID , next...

From all these points , you will have to reconsider your position.