Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So, after playing 8th with my grey Knights, I've found several things that leads me to believe the grey Knights have been nerfed. As it stands, all the power armored knights are pretty useless, and most the special weapons are overpriced and do relatively little. Psychic focus hits grey Knights really hard, and our nerfed smite is a slap in the face. Grey knight librarians also are fairly worthless when they bring nothing that other grey Knights have. Dreadknights got hurt too, as did both of our terminators. Even kaldor isnt quite worth it when he no longer can put a storm shield in a squad.

Let me start by mentioning that power armored grey Knights are pretty much hurt to the point of uselessness unless your running strike squads. The hit to flamers, and the fact incinerators no longer read "and the hoard is dead" anymore on their stat sheet as well as the fact that shunt is gone practically means interceptors are rather lackluster. They're just power armored guys with deep strike now. Purifiers also got hit by the nerf to our heavy weapons. A psycannon will reliable maybe do one wound to a tank or unit of marines. Str 7 ap-1 1 wound is anemic on a 20 point weapon. This is compounded by the fact purifiers lost an attack, got a point raise and had cleansing flame nerfed to near uselessness. The same heavy weapons problem hurts purgation squads as well. As it stands only strike squads were left in the same spot they were in, and though they got a few nice buffs, they're still a 21 point model with 1 wound and 3+.

Now let's talk about terminators. The terminators we have got a price raise when they would of been fine at 2 wounds and keeping the same price point. Thunder hammers getting hit with a price raise and heavy weapons getting ruined really hurts these guys, and sadly any weapon that'll ignore their armor should put them down in one hit. The second would should of been free to compensate for all the ap3 1d3 wound stuff out there. Sadly, I suspect terminators are squishy as ever, and cost more. This same problem is true of paladins, who got nerfed hard. They lost the apothecary upgrade and lost the banner, which now means they've no reason to be picked up over custodians or even other terminators. They're worse than ever.

Dreadknight weapons are bad. The incinerator Has shorter range, hits less, and ignores less armor and costs double. The psycannon does d3 wounds but is only good at killing 1 wound infantry, and the psycanon will do 1-2 wounds if your lucky against a tank. They've less attacks now, and lost the access to a 4+ invuln. Now haywire works on them, and they lost shunt. Dreadknights already were easy to kill by most good armies, so this unilateral nerf seems pretty rough. The big kicker is the loss in attacks as he losses wounds.

Kaldor can't guard units with his shield or bounce buddies around anymore and psychic focus means you should probably barrow a different chapter's librarian, or just invite a fluffy inquisitor for your HQ taxes.

Right now dread Knights still are the best grey knight unit even after being nerfed hard. We are still Codex Dreadknight, only this time kaldor no longer has any utility, and termies are questionable as troops. The two power armored units which were almost good now are bad, and librarians which were good now are made useless by the troops having the same powers. The attacker swinging first actually I've seen hurts us more than anything most of the time, and we really don't have shooting or the numbers needed to really be spooky.

I don't see why GW thought we needed nerfs across the board, but every unit seems to have been hit hard.

I agree with a lot of what is written here. The biggest problem with gate of infinity is that you only target the unit, not the radius-conjoined buff units.

So if you want Draigo to gate a terminator squad, he's left behind. Does that make sense? The only use i've found for Gate of Infinity is to remove land raiders from melee combat, and deposit them in rapid fire range of what just charged them.

Take Purge Soul, while it's nice you can target a specific unit within 12" and potentially deal mortal wounds, units that have leadership modifiers are flat out immune to this power. For instance, Orks, will never suffer because of Mob Rule. Good luck beating a 20 +D6 on your leadership roll.

They are limited to 3 weapons at range that suck something awful. Their terminators can't take storm shields. Their HQ buffs are completely redundant. Reroll 1s! Oh look! Reroll 1s! Blade of the Antwyr is ridiculous, who thought this was balanced? Oops, i forgot the storm bolter. It now can fire 4 shots. But these are strength 4 ap0, so good luck wounding anything.

All in all, i would say Grey Knights are pathetic, and all of their army weaknesses in 7th have been worsened in 8th. Especially their anti-vehicle. They have *none* now. At least before, you could rely on rending weapons to get you there with volume of fire. Now, Your ability to kill a land raider outside of melee doesn't exist.

Its almost as if 8th is a different game from 7th

And all factions are different.

All grey knight units shooting output was doubled with Storm Bolters being rapid fire 2, thats 4 shots for each dude in 12 inches, also with the buff to melee weapons and force weapons they do a scary amount of wounds now in combat with very high negative ap modifiers

Incinerators are crazy good now as they have a negative AP modifier as well as being high strength. Especially the Dreadknight version being 12 inches.

Draigo is still a beat stick that gives everyone rerolls within 6 inches, can reroll and can still actually teleport people if you give him gate, and he can cast 2 powers. Smite is not to be underestimated as very few things can give mortal wounds and your entire army can cast it.

Dreadnaughts are a good choice now

Your main problem is comparing 7th to 8th, which for all intents and purposes apples to oranges.

No. No reason at all for the nerfs.

(An army built around Terminators/Dreadnaughts still sort of works; things that up and ignore 2+ armour are a lot harder to come by, new Deep Strike and the new cover rules are pretty helpful, four shots at half range out of storm bolters matters a lot more now, and Dreadnaughts as gun platforms are a lot better than they were in 7th; but PAGK are still terrible (and got even more so, what with 26pt 1-Attack Purifiers and no-Fire-Point transports), the power-level costs are useless because they assume you're going wall-to-wall hammers, the Dreadknight is an overpriced gimmick who would almost always be better replaced with 1.5 Dreadnaughts, and the characters are bizzarely expensive for no readily apparent reason).

Now if you're playing a mode without the rule of 1 on psychic powers the army is a little better, since your mandatory all-falchions melee loadout is wounding anything up to T7 on 3+ and you can combo Sanctioned Psykers with Purge Soul to keep a sustained mortal-wounds drain on hard targets, but as-written GK are pretty bad right now.

Submit this feedback to GW after some more play testing, they will be doing yearly updates after all

One thing that surprised me quite a bit was that dreadknights remain pretty cheap. I added it up a little while ago, and I think they're ~220 points now, and were around that in 7th.

Compare to, say, a riptide, which went from mid 200s to high 300s - low 400s.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
No. No reason at all for the nerfs.

(An army built around Terminators/Dreadnaughts still sort of works; things that up and ignore 2+ armour are a lot harder to come by, new Deep Strike and the new cover rules are pretty helpful, four shots at half range out of storm bolters matters a lot more now, and Dreadnaughts as gun platforms are a lot better than they were in 7th; but PAGK are still terrible (and got even more so, what with 26pt 1-Attack Purifiers and no-Fire-Point transports), the power-level costs are useless because they assume you're going wall-to-wall hammers, the Dreadknight is an overpriced gimmick who would almost always be better replaced with 1.5 Dreadnaughts, and the characters are bizzarely expensive for no readily apparent reason).

Now if you're playing a mode without the rule of 1 on psychic powers the army is a little better, since your mandatory all-falchions melee loadout is wounding anything up to T7 on 3+ and you can combo Sanctioned Psykers with Purge Soul to keep a sustained mortal-wounds drain on hard targets, but as-written GK are pretty bad right now.

Very few things ignore 2+s completely, but most put you equal to or less than your natural 5+ invuln. Dreadknight weapons are overpriced and suck at shooting.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 WrentheFaceless wrote:
Its almost as if 8th is a different game from 7th

And all factions are different.

All grey knight units shooting output was doubled with Storm Bolters being rapid fire 2, thats 4 shots for each dude in 12 inches, also with the buff to melee weapons and force weapons they do a scary amount of wounds now in combat with very high negative ap modifiers

Incinerators are crazy good now as they have a negative AP modifier as well as being high strength. Especially the Dreadknight version being 12 inches.

Draigo is still a beat stick that gives everyone rerolls within 6 inches, can reroll and can still actually teleport people if you give him gate, and he can cast 2 powers. Smite is not to be underestimated as very few things can give mortal wounds and your entire army can cast it.

Dreadnaughts are a good choice now

Your main problem is comparing 7th to 8th, which for all intents and purposes apples to oranges.

Storm bolter buff is nice, but if you Shoot anything within 12 feet with them your making your charge impossible as they'll pick wounds from the front. If your not shooting infantry, storm bolters are useless. Kaldor is bad, as he cannot stick with gating squads. Gate targets units, so he can't come with. Incinerators are horrible. Most models it deleted get saves now, and it is bad at infantry. It got its range nerfed. Anything where the 2 wounds matter will get a save, anything that gets hurt by the ignores cover doesn't care about losing 2 wounds.

Your right, 8th plays differently. It plays in such a way as to nerf grey Knights.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Rippy wrote:
Submit this feedback to GW after some more play testing, they will be doing yearly updates after all

Played 7 games. Started optimistic, now I'm disappointed.

A shame for Grey Knights to suck. Maybe if GW is mercifull they'll give us a Inquisition codex mixing Grey Knights, Deathwatch and Sisters of Battle and give "chapter tactics" in the form of different rules for the different Ordos, that you lose if you mix your Inquisitors with units from more than one Ordos.

From what i've seen pagk put a lot of hurt but are easy to kill. So, glasscannons like usual, i guess. You definitely nee a bunch of rhinos to play gk now.

Why would you take PAGK when you can do anything better with Death Company? At least there i'll get some nice codex benefits like black rage and a 6+ FNP, as well as the ability to put a power fist or two in the squad, and take pistols that are FAR superior to storm bolters.

10 death company with power swords, plasma pistols, and jump packs cost 310 points.

10 interceptors with power swords & storm bolters cost 250 points.

That's 60 points difference, for:
1. 20 extra attacks in melee (black rage, +1 base).
2. FNP on 6
3. The ability to further buff this squad with an HQ that is far superior than just "reroll 1s," and is mobile enough to keep up.
4. 10 plasma pistol shots in the shooting phase, and can be fired in close combat.
5. The ability to mix and match weapons. So you want to have some power swords, but not pay for all of them, so you can get extra attacks to clear hordes? No problem you have that flexibility.

If you drop the plasma pistols, the Death Company are cheaper.

Can someone explain to me why you'd ever take interceptors over Death Company?

Jaxler isn't wrong; there is no reason to play with half the codex again.

Paladins, Dreadknights, Razorbacks.

Barebones as possible, because we lack the QUALITY to compete with numbers.

 koooaei wrote:
From what i've seen pagk put a lot of hurt but are easy to kill. So, glasscannons like usual, i guess. You definitely nee a bunch of rhinos to play gk now.

That's true, but in all honestly you're better off taking terminators. They get there faster and cost less than PWGKs in a rhino.

I think these guys will pretty much stay shelved for me unfortunately until they get some love except for when I want to play a fluff game and reminisce about the times using GK as melee specialist in Dawn of War.

well a squad of GTKs might be a fun fluffy thing to toss in an Imperial army otherwise. :(

I must be having a totally different set of games then you guys are having. I have had no issue with my PAGKs. I mostly run purifiers and stormravens though with crowe as a commander.

I have difficulties on Imperial guard armies with 150 conscripts but that is about it. Vs Blood angels they have had zero issue. Against Thousand sons I have had no issues.

Psycannons for Power armored guys got better. When moving 4 shots at 4+ to hit is better than 2 shots at 3+ to hit. not to mention there isn't a reduction to range now.

Agreed on most accounts... Gonna give it a few more games.

Every unit spitting out smite mortal wounds is a nerf?

I'm gonna sound like fething Tau player in 7th talking about nova wounds...

If you literally average out the smite wounds and perils over the course of the game for a unit, you will be trading somewhere 2.5 succesful smites, 1.5 failed, 1.5 perils. A single perils will kill more points of your own guys, than of your opponents. Unless they too are Grey Knights.

The only unit this does not hold true for is purifiers. Who are over costed by about 4 points per model.

Grey Knights don't deserve to be called a psychic army.

But hey let's take everything out of context like you did! Someone who doesn't play Grey Knights doesn't understand how few model we field. If we take barebone squads of cheapest unit possible, we only spit out 15 POSSIBLE smites per turn. Which is horrible.

Edit: if you could aim where the smite went or if we had a unnerfed smite range maybe that would be acceptable. Or if we didn't perils, or if we could get the supercharge version of smite. Or we manifested it easier.

 Quickjager wrote:
I'm gonna sound like fething Tau player in 7th talking about nova wounds...

If you literally average out the smite wounds and perils over the course of the game for a unit, you will be trading somewhere 2.5 succesful smites, 1.5 failed, 1.5 perils. A single perils will kill more points of your own guys, than of your opponents. Unless they too are Grey Knights.

The only unit this does not hold true for is purifiers. Who are over costed by about 4 points per model.

Grey Knights don't deserve to be called a psychic army.

But hey let's take everything out of context like you did! Someone who doesn't play Grey Knights doesn't understand how few model we field. If we take barebone squads of cheapest unit possible, we only spit out 15 POSSIBLE smites per turn. Which is horrible.

Edit: if you could aim where the smite went or if we had a unnerfed smite range maybe that would be acceptable. Or if we didn't perils, or if we could get the supercharge version of smite. Or we manifested it easier.

I think you're being a little harsh on the guy, but really I think the big issue is that our Smite is capped at 1 Mortal Wound unless you're a Daemon. I had a Daemon player smite one of my Terminators for 5 Mortal Wounds in my last game. I'd need 5 entire units of Grey Knights successfully casting to pull that off. While his odds aren't huge for doing that every turn, mine are drastically smaller. Especially when you factor in that a Grey Knight army, since it's elite, will be fielding, what, 8 units? 10?

About time they got a nerf. They've been one of the most vicious armies in the game ever since they got their own dex.

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
About time they got a nerf. They've been one of the most vicious armies in the game ever since they got their own dex.

....... you ever played against them with the 7th edition codex did you? they where a one trick pony.

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
About time they got a nerf. They've been one of the most vicious armies in the game ever since they got their own dex.

Not in 7th ed. And that doesn't make reason for being underpowered. If you seriously think they deserve being underpowered because of past then you ain't looking for balance but for revenge.

Audustum wrote:

 Quickjager wrote:
I'm gonna sound like fething Tau player in 7th talking about nova wounds...

If you literally average out the smite wounds and perils over the course of the game for a unit, you will be trading somewhere 2.5 succesful smites, 1.5 failed, 1.5 perils. A single perils will kill more points of your own guys, than of your opponents. Unless they too are Grey Knights.

The only unit this does not hold true for is purifiers. Who are over costed by about 4 points per model.

Grey Knights don't deserve to be called a psychic army.

But hey let's take everything out of context like you did! Someone who doesn't play Grey Knights doesn't understand how few model we field. If we take barebone squads of cheapest unit possible, we only spit out 15 POSSIBLE smites per turn. Which is horrible.

Edit: if you could aim where the smite went or if we had a unnerfed smite range maybe that would be acceptable. Or if we didn't perils, or if we could get the supercharge version of smite. Or we manifested it easier.

I think you're being a little harsh on the guy, but really I think the big issue is that our Smite is capped at 1 Mortal Wound unless you're a Daemon. I had a Daemon player smite one of my Terminators for 5 Mortal Wounds in my last game. I'd need 5 entire units of Grey Knights successfully casting to pull that off. While his odds aren't huge for doing that every turn, mine are drastically smaller. Especially when you factor in that a Grey Knight army, since it's elite, will be fielding, what, 8 units? 10?

If you were playing against a Daemon list, wouldn't each smite do an automatic 3 mortal wounds if successful? I thought they were nerfed against all comers except our empyrean friends...

cuda1179 wrote:Psycannons for Power armored guys got better. When moving 4 shots at 4+ to hit is better than 2 shots at 3+ to hit. not to mention there isn't a reduction to range now.

Problem is the psycannon can't kill any tanks anymore, it lost rend. It's only sorta good at killing medium infantry, and tbh it's not even amazing at that. It can barely hurt any tough stuff at the huge cost of 20 points.

Youn wrote:I must be having a totally different set of games then you guys are having. I have had no issue with my PAGKs. I mostly run purifiers and stormravens though with crowe as a commander.

I have difficulties on Imperial guard armies with 150 conscripts but that is about it. Vs Blood angels they have had zero issue. Against Thousand sons I have had no issues.

Your purifiers should be doing a lot with them 11-21 attacks on the charge for an almost 300 point unit, before taking into account the cost of the raven. Also, remember, you're not going to wound well with power swords. Your extra wounds mean nothing to fodder too. Also, the turn after you arrive you will die horribly to small arms fodder when whatever blob you charged walks back. Congrats your 300 points with a 200+ point delivery just killed a unit maybe.

The best right now is small unit spam. 150 gaurd/conscripts/gaunts/orks is the meta

Hückleberry wrote:Every unit spitting out smite mortal wounds is a nerf?

It is when you lost hammer hand and are about as likely to hurt your 20 point model as you are to put a wound maybe on a tank/multiwound model, or kill A gaurdsmen. Sounds like a bad trade.

KingmanHighborn wrote:About time they got a nerf. They've been one of the most vicious armies in the game ever since they got their own dex.

Did you even play 7th/6th? They got nerfed consistently the whole time. In fact, without dreadknights, they were about as good as DE or orks, and in the same boat of tyrnaids as far as "Everything sucks, but we've a unit." If you said what you just said about tyrnaids people would go "Lol what? that's silly, why do you want one of the bad codexes nerfed?"

Wanting one of the worst codexes nerfed because they were broken more than an edition ago ago is silly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Aetare wrote:

Audustum wrote:

 Quickjager wrote:
I'm gonna sound like fething Tau player in 7th talking about nova wounds...

If you literally average out the smite wounds and perils over the course of the game for a unit, you will be trading somewhere 2.5 succesful smites, 1.5 failed, 1.5 perils. A single perils will kill more points of your own guys, than of your opponents. Unless they too are Grey Knights.

The only unit this does not hold true for is purifiers. Who are over costed by about 4 points per model.

Grey Knights don't deserve to be called a psychic army.

But hey let's take everything out of context like you did! Someone who doesn't play Grey Knights doesn't understand how few model we field. If we take barebone squads of cheapest unit possible, we only spit out 15 POSSIBLE smites per turn. Which is horrible.

Edit: if you could aim where the smite went or if we had a unnerfed smite range maybe that would be acceptable. Or if we didn't perils, or if we could get the supercharge version of smite. Or we manifested it easier.

I think you're being a little harsh on the guy, but really I think the big issue is that our Smite is capped at 1 Mortal Wound unless you're a Daemon. I had a Daemon player smite one of my Terminators for 5 Mortal Wounds in my last game. I'd need 5 entire units of Grey Knights successfully casting to pull that off. While his odds aren't huge for doing that every turn, mine are drastically smaller. Especially when you factor in that a Grey Knight army, since it's elite, will be fielding, what, 8 units? 10?

If you were playing against a Daemon list, wouldn't each smite do an automatic 3 mortal wounds if successful? I thought they were nerfed against all comers except our empyrean friends...

Lets be honest, grey knights should get a bonus against demons, not be horrible unless against demons.

 Quickjager wrote:
If you literally average out the smite wounds and perils over the course of the game for a unit, you will be trading somewhere 2.5 succesful smites, 1.5 failed, 1.5 perils. A single perils will kill more points of your own guys, than of your opponents. Unless they too are Grey Knights..

How do you perils 1/6th of the time? Perils is on double 1s or double 6s, not just any double.
Smite is successfully manifested 83% of the time, and you peril 5% of the time. If you take an average of 2 wounds when you perils (so we're assuming your unit still has at least 4 wounds left), you still deal 7.5 wounds to the enemy per wound you deal to yourself.
I'm not saying GK's nerfed smite is any good (and it's definitely not worth what GKs pay for it), but it's still worth casting, unless you're fighting conscripts.

 Aetare wrote:

Audustum wrote:

 Quickjager wrote:
I'm gonna sound like fething Tau player in 7th talking about nova wounds...

If you literally average out the smite wounds and perils over the course of the game for a unit, you will be trading somewhere 2.5 succesful smites, 1.5 failed, 1.5 perils. A single perils will kill more points of your own guys, than of your opponents. Unless they too are Grey Knights.

The only unit this does not hold true for is purifiers. Who are over costed by about 4 points per model.

Grey Knights don't deserve to be called a psychic army.

But hey let's take everything out of context like you did! Someone who doesn't play Grey Knights doesn't understand how few model we field. If we take barebone squads of cheapest unit possible, we only spit out 15 POSSIBLE smites per turn. Which is horrible.

Edit: if you could aim where the smite went or if we had a unnerfed smite range maybe that would be acceptable. Or if we didn't perils, or if we could get the supercharge version of smite. Or we manifested it easier.

I think you're being a little harsh on the guy, but really I think the big issue is that our Smite is capped at 1 Mortal Wound unless you're a Daemon. I had a Daemon player smite one of my Terminators for 5 Mortal Wounds in my last game. I'd need 5 entire units of Grey Knights successfully casting to pull that off. While his odds aren't huge for doing that every turn, mine are drastically smaller. Especially when you factor in that a Grey Knight army, since it's elite, will be fielding, what, 8 units? 10?

If you were playing against a Daemon list, wouldn't each smite do an automatic 3 mortal wounds if successful? I thought they were nerfed against all comers except our empyrean friends...

You're right, it does more to Daemons, which is why I said "unless you're a Daemon".

Grey Knights got nerfed? This is news to me. I saw them annihilate Nurgle marines, and the Dreadknight is grossly undercosted with what it can do. The strategy is obviously still "Bring 3 Dreadknights, win games". But you can also have your infantry annihilate whatever they touch with force weapons.

Forgive me if I am ignorant in this case but PAGKs don't seem awful when 10 can output 40 shots on turn 1 with precision deep strikes? It seems like you can apply fairly consistent pressure with the army with decent zone control by combining some deepstrike with some Razorbacks and then 3 DKs.

I've played against a list similar to that and found it to be an effective list that is capable of winning games.

If you try to play GK like you did in 7th you will struggle I think. Their power actually lies in strike squad marines and paladins - which were two of the worst units in the game in 7th. Dread-knights are nothing like they were in 7th. They aren't a bad option but dreadnoughts are better.

Getting into CC doesnt tie up units anymore so how is a dreadknight going to break an army with 4 CC attacks? The answer is - it wont. Plus it moves only 8 rather than 12 now. It's guns aren't great ether.

GK elite infantry units are better than whats in the space marine codex I can assure you - much better. We have access to their excellent predators and dreads - use them - win games.