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CAD allows for an additional heavy. I could use two Dreadknights and a Purgator squad with four Psycannons. Be a pretty nasty Alpha Strike. That said, I'd lose the ability to bring in any number of units from reserve without scattering if I have my NDKs or HQ around.

Which would be better?

Thanks

SG

When looking at PAGK, you have Strike (troop), Purifiers (Elite), Intercepters (FA), Purgator (Hvy). Strike and Purgator cost the same and have the same options minus Purgator can have 4 special weapons vs 1 special weapon.

Purifiers get Cleansing Flames and +1 Mastery Level for +15 points. And you can field two special weapons per 5. This means they are always better to buy them vs the Purgators. Unless your opponent is fielding Sisters of Silence [In that case your just screwed].

This then comes down to in a NSF you're going to field 2 Dreadknights and all our PAGKs would be Purifiers or Intercepters. You might field 1 strike squad as a troop tax.

If you're attempting to be competitive, you want to minimize the troop tax, which is why people go with the NSF.

The best unit in the codex is the Nemesis Dreadknight, but i'm not sure it's wise to run 3.

If there was a formation of 2 Nemesis Dreadknights and nothing else, Grey Knights would definitely see more play. Dreadtide Wing!

If running pure GKs, the answer is 2x NSF.
only 2 HQ and 2 Troops required and you can have 4 DKs (or 3 DKs and a Purgator unit).

I run my GKs along side my Eldar, so the NSF is the perfect fit as I only want 2 DKs and the min Libby + Termies does not break the bank.

I guess, it is possible to get a little cheesy:

++ GK Nemesis Strike Force (Grey Knights: Codex (2014)) [860pts] ++
+ HQ +
Librarian [110pts]: Nemesis warding stave, Psyker [ML 2]

+ Troops +
Terminator Squad [175pts]: 3x Terminator (sword)
. Terminator (incinerator): Incinerator, Nemesis force sword
. Terminator Justicar: Nemesis force sword

+ Heavy Support +
Nemesis Dreadknight [225pts]: Heavy Incinerator, Heavy Psycannon, Nemesis greatsword and power fist, Personal teleporter

+ Lords of War +
Roboute Guilliman, Primarch of the Ultramarines [350pts]

++ GK Nemesis Strike Force (Grey Knights: Codex (2014)) [990pts] ++
+ HQ +
Librarian [110pts]: Nemesis warding stave, Psyker [ML 2]

+ Troops +
Terminator Squad [185pts]: 3x Terminator (sword)
. Terminator (incinerator): Incinerator, Nemesis Daemon hammer
. Terminator Justicar: Nemesis force sword

+ Heavy Support +
Nemesis Dreadknight [225pts]: Heavy Incinerator, Heavy Psycannon, Nemesis greatsword and power fist, Personal teleporter
Nemesis Dreadknight [225pts]: Heavy Incinerator, Heavy Psycannon, Nemesis greatsword and power fist, Personal teleporter

+ Lords of War +
Kaldor Draigo [245pts]

++ Total: [1850pts] ++

Youn wrote:
I guess, it is possible to get a little cheesy:

++ GK Nemesis Strike Force (Grey Knights: Codex (2014)) [860pts] ++
+ HQ +
Librarian [110pts]: Nemesis warding stave, Psyker [ML 2]

+ Troops +
Terminator Squad [175pts]: 3x Terminator (sword)
. Terminator (incinerator): Incinerator, Nemesis force sword
. Terminator Justicar: Nemesis force sword

+ Heavy Support +
Nemesis Dreadknight [225pts]: Heavy Incinerator, Heavy Psycannon, Nemesis greatsword and power fist, Personal teleporter

+ Lords of War +
Roboute Guilliman, Primarch of the Ultramarines [350pts]

++ GK Nemesis Strike Force (Grey Knights: Codex (2014)) [990pts] ++
+ HQ +
Librarian [110pts]: Nemesis warding stave, Psyker [ML 2]

+ Troops +
Terminator Squad [185pts]: 3x Terminator (sword)
. Terminator (incinerator): Incinerator, Nemesis Daemon hammer
. Terminator Justicar: Nemesis force sword

+ Heavy Support +
Nemesis Dreadknight [225pts]: Heavy Incinerator, Heavy Psycannon, Nemesis greatsword and power fist, Personal teleporter
Nemesis Dreadknight [225pts]: Heavy Incinerator, Heavy Psycannon, Nemesis greatsword and power fist, Personal teleporter

+ Lords of War +
Kaldor Draigo [245pts]

++ Total: [1850pts] ++

Solo grey Knights cannot be cheese. A medium tau list tables then turn 4 no matter what they bring. You straight up lose to a wraith knight with CC and shield.

You could make an invisible Death Star that costs more and is weaker than space marine ones, but the moment you fail to cast it your deleted.

A Purgator squad with four Psycannons.... is not an alpha strike no matter how badly an opponent deploys or how good you deploy.

Salvo, 2/4 and 24 inch range at best. That mean if you are standing on the edge of your deploy and the enemy is at the edge of theirs they still wouldn't be in range. So you would have to move to get into range, but wait! Now you are shooting 12 inches and can't reach still. But lets assume you got master of ambush and you are going first, so you deploy your men 18 inches in sight of the enemy. They fail to seize so you get 16 shots on whatever, which is pretty good it is at LEAST in the worst case 2 wounds on anything (on average). But how many points did it cost? (TBH I haven't looked at PAGK equipment costs for a while) 190 points. On guys who didn't wipe an enemy in one turn, who will likely be wiped in retaliation. This is mind you the BEST case scenario.

For 35 more points investing into a Dreadknight that is all kitted out is better.

I thought it's called codex Dread Knights. What's all that fuzz with Grey?

Always Nemesis Strike Force, and here is why.

Yes, a CAD gives you more HS slots. However, Grey Knights are always running at least 2 HQs. Which means in a CAD you would have 2 HQs and 2 Troops. Which is actually the minimum choices for 2 Nemesis Strike Forces. Which gives you 4 HS slots.

Furthermore, the NSF gives you very good bonuses. You can reroll your Warlord trait, and some of the GK traits are very good. And your deep strikers can roll on turn 1 and get to run and shoot when the DS(which includes DSing using Gate of Infinity).

My current list has 4 HQs, 2 Troops, and 2 Dreadknights. Double NSF.

An agressively played GK army can crush most xeno armies pretty quickly, between jumps, shunts, and gate dropping templates and rending Str 7. Tau markerlights desolve. DKs pop Riptides with Str 4 Psilencers. Play fast, focus on soft targets over harder targets first while hugging cover and using LoS blocking to reduce attrition.

Thinga the at hurt a well played GK army are the exact same things that hurt any well played army: Grav cancer and Scat-Bikes.

SJ

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
An agressively played GK army can crush most xeno armies pretty quickly, between jumps, shunts, and gate dropping templates and rending Str 7. Tau markerlights desolve. DKs pop Riptides with Str 4 Psilencers. Play fast, focus on soft targets over harder targets first while hugging cover and using LoS blocking to reduce attrition.

Thinga the at hurt a well played GK army are the exact same things that hurt any well played army: Grav cancer and Scat-Bikes.

SJ

You need force to get the psylencer off. You then will hit 9 shoots, wound with 1.5, and the tide then has a 2+ up save. You'd need to shoot 4-5 dreads to kill a riptide, when an equal amount of tides for roughly the same price purges 2-3 dreads a turn, or double that if they blow the riptide wing single use double tap.

Also keep in mind the fact that tau has 2-3 up saves on all good models, which is what grey Knights can't handle. Also a well used stormsurge will delete two dread Knights turn one. You will not hide out of LOS because very little LOS blocking terrain hides a dread knight, and the moment you poke out to shoot or set up a charge you'll get desolved.

I'm not mentioning terminators or power armored blokes much because a single riptide or stormsurge one shots a 200 point blob of them instantly.

Which is why you don't run CAD grey knights. And why you only bring 1 NSF. So you can ally in something else to round out your army.

Grav isn't a cancer, it's a requirement to survive. The fact that you can easily throw in battle brother grav cents in a pod is a huge boost.

If space marines didn't have grav they would have no credible answers to monstrous creatures, period.

The problem with grav isn't that it is a great MC killer. The problem with grav is that it is a great everything killer. Make it unable to hurt vehicles and work of toughness rather then armour save would be my suggestion.

Also to the guy trying to convince me GK don't have massive problems dealing with tau, you haven't played a good tau player. The only build that works remotely is a draigo+libby palladin deathstar and that's too immoble to do the damage in kill points or score points in objective/maelstrom based game play.

The insane part is that if you gave GK back half of the things that made them OP in 5th, they would still be below SW or Tau. AP2 melee on everything isn't as insane anymore with the kind of death-stars you see nowadays. Similarly Purifiers as troops would be impossible to be run competitively as the Psycannon change ruins the Rhino-Bunker spam. Psybolts on Heavy Bolter Razorbacks would be simply outclassed by how efficent everything else is nowadays (cept you Orks, keep trucking). Psychic Phase FAQ fethed up any kind of Psychic synergy a Termie squad with a Libby and Grand-master had, because they can only cast 3 max spells still; LOOK AT THAT GK GET WEAKER THE MORE TOGETHER GREY KNIGHTS ARE! It's a fething joke. Exact opposite of fluff where together they are stronger.

8th needs a big change if this codex does become anything except Codex: Dreadknight and ML3 Libby.

Earth127 wrote:
The problem with grav isn't that it is a great MC killer. The problem with grav is that it is a great everything killer. Make it unable to hurt vehicles and work of toughness rather then armour save would be my suggestion.

Also to the guy trying to convince me GK don't have massive problems dealing with tau, you haven't played a good tau player. The only build that works remotely is a draigo+libby palladin deathstar and that's too immoble to do the damage in kill points or score points in objective/maelstrom based game play.

I don't agree that it's great against everything, but granting that, if you took away grav being very strong, can you genuinely say marines would be competitive? Look at Grey Knights and Blood Angels. There are limitations on formations, but at the end of the day they're lacking those grav dice and they're bottom tier. If psycannons fired grav shots GK would be viable immediately.

I kinda wish the Psycannons and Incinerators got back their 4tth edition rule of ignoring invul saves. May not make them powerful, but at least it would make them flavourful (since every daemon army barring flying circus would hate their guts).

 Marmatag wrote:

Earth127 wrote:
The problem with grav isn't that it is a great MC killer. The problem with grav is that it is a great everything killer. Make it unable to hurt vehicles and work of toughness rather then armour save would be my suggestion.

Also to the guy trying to convince me GK don't have massive problems dealing with tau, you haven't played a good tau player. The only build that works remotely is a draigo+libby palladin deathstar and that's too immoble to do the damage in kill points or score points in objective/maelstrom based game play.

I don't agree that it's great against everything, but granting that, if you took away grav being very strong, can you genuinely say marines would be competitive? Look at Grey Knights and Blood Angels. There are limitations on formations, but at the end of the day they're lacking those grav dice and they're bottom tier. If psycannons fired grav shots GK would be viable immediately.

How is grav not great against everything? You got one scenario, Daemons, as the outlier as everything else that is good against grav is weak to boltguns.

It's not that good vs super heavy walkers, especially grav w/o grav amps.

Demons are reason enough not to spam it, though.

Grav can struggle vs layered saves, particularly on multiwound units like Wulfen. They can rock a 3++/5+++ and your grav is wounding on 4. Good luck with that. And before you ask, I see this unit CONSTANTLY.

Not much is truly WEAK to boltguns.

Everything is bad against layered saves, Grav is no exception so that point goes out the window. Against Superheavy Walkers I would almost agree if it weren't for the fact grav has a large amount of rerolls on the wound/glance/pen. A list can expect to lose a Knight to grav focus fire reasonably well.

As for Deamons the only remaining special weapon I would consider TAC and able to handle them fairly well is plasma. So it comes down to one or the other, I'm going to still take Grav...

You don't need to wipe someone in one turn with boltguns, but anything Grav is weak to is NORMALLY very vulnerable to moderate-large RoF weapons... Orks, IG, Tyranids, Layered saves, etc.

Only grav cannons can reroll. Grav guns and cataphron weapons can't reroll. But SHW are pretty niche.

Yeah, sometimes you DO need to wipe someone in one turn. Wulfen, for example.

GW overdid it with grav, but they overdid it with MCs like DK and Riptide first. 2+ armor shouldn't exist on MCs, and if it does, it should be VERY expensive, not easily spammable. 2+ armor layered on T6 is brutal to deal with without grav. If BA didn't have grav access, I would just pack it up vs DKs, because I'd have no chance at all.

I said you don't have to wipe someone in one turn with boltguns; there ARE other weapons in an army unless a person is slightly insane. TFC, Sternguard Special Ammo, pretty much any template weapon so long as it isn't a flamer pistol.

The Dreadknight wasn't even a problem last edition, UNLESS the player doubled down and had a Draigo/2 Solodin CAD. which would lead to 3-4 Dreadknights on the table. But that wasn't the reason anyone hated GK in 5th or 6th. No Crowe was the issue or Coteaz and Henchmen.

Well it was a big part for me. It's just so much better than dreadnoughts after they put in hull points.

One more point about grav: it has no way to ever deny FNP. So a grot with FNP gets the roll. It's still not a reason to not bring them, but it's why I listed layered saves. BA layered saves, for example, are easily removed, but grav can never get rid of the FNP. I've actually soaked a lot of grav fire with a single stormshield with FNP before.

That would soak up a lot of anything... plasma, small arms fire, etc. So it's a moot point. In fact the only thing I can see getting past that in a point efficent manner would be a Str8 blast, which is pretty rare except... you know. Riptide.

Just remember Dreadknights were jokes compared to the rest of the GK codex until the latest one. 70 point drop base was the tipping point into OP for them.

So the Riptide was the REAL first offender, since the 5th ed DK was so expensive. Figures. I hate that thing so much.

Yea, turns out dropping 70 points off base and another 15-25 on weapon upgrades makes a unit OP. They did increase the base price of the shunt teleporter by 20 points for some reason.

GK and BA are both in a kind of power armor hell where you have to do incredibly bizarre things to survive an Eldar CAD.

I still remember people saying GK stole Tau tech, can't blame them lol.

The disconnect between fluff and crunch is so enormous. There's no way the Imperium could stand up to Riptides and Ghostkeels from the crunch. The Tau would kill power armor units faster than the Imperium can make power armor. And that's just the Tau.

If GW is not going to have the game reflect the fluff at ALL, why have the game or why have the fluff? Just stop with one or the other.

I haven't read the new GK codex, but BA can accomplish ZERO of the victories from my codex fluff on the tabletop. Oh yes, the mighty admantium shelled Land Raider! One shotted by Eldar. Next.

Scratch that just looked at my old 5th. I got it backwards they dropped the teleporter price from 75 to 20, that is why they are so much cheaper. So Whereas you could get one base w/ nothing but a teleporter, now you get everything for the same cost AND a melee weapon and two guns.

So essentially what was 300 points (A wraithknight lol), became 215.

Edit: I know I just want my GKT squads with Inquisition Stormtroopers support back, and be decent.

 Quickjager wrote:
Yea, turns out dropping 70 points off base and another 15-25 on weapon upgrades makes a unit OP. They did increase the base price of the shunt teleporter by 20 points for some reason.

Problem is it's not op and dies to anything with ap 2 after 5 wounds. If anything balanced, and needs a buff. Why do you guys think these things are op when riptides and scatter bikes, dedtroyer spam and grav the codex and 3+ retooling jink saves, 2+ re-rolling invuln the codex and thunder wolves are a thing? Dread Knights are hard to spam, and die too easily to be spooky.