Grey Knights Starting Units?

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**Noctem**

Another friend of mine is interested in Grey Knights, he'll be playing casually, not at tournaments. What is a good base to start from since there isn't a Start Collecting! box yet? Also, did I read somewhere that their codex may be coming out after Death Guard? Would that change everything? Thanks!

**MechaEmperor7000**

Considering Grey Knights only really have three sets dedicated to them, he can't really go wrong with any of them.

That said, most people here think that PAGKs are completely worthless, while the Dreadknight has...a rocky history of usefulness. This means the only set that's really a good buy is the Terminators. I'd recommend at least two boxes; You can make all of your special characters by just taking a Terminator and making him fancier (there's plenty of bitz in the box to help you with this) and you will be using more than one character, so use one box to get you two or three characters (including an Ancient and possibly an Apothecary), and use the other box for your basic troop terminators.

Otherwise, if your friend likes PAGKs, get the Strike Box. Despite what GW wants you to believe, all of the power armored GKs share the same box, so the Strike Box is the cheapest out of them all (the other ones only come with half of the contents of the Strike Box).

That would be a good starting point. Dreadknights, Raiders, Dreadnoughts and Stormravens can come later after he's gotten his feet wet (and the codex come out).

**Noctem**

Ok thanks for the info! Do you think there will be new models when they get their codex?

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, will they be allowed to use Primaris marines at all or is using Grey Knights as your army prohibited to JUST their special units?

**BrianDavion**

to run Grey Knights your core is proably gonna be terminators. you'll also need a HQ, but you can buy a box of teminators, kit one out as your brother-captain, pne as your apocathary, and run the remaining 3 as Paladins.

as for named HQs you have a few to choose from, the all star of the GKs HQ is easily Dragio, although despite the fluff I suspect he's not gonna be beating Morty

(someone needs to crunch the numbers on that when it comes out

) Voldus is a good one if you're wanting Dragio but can't afford the points cost. Dragio is cheaper cash wise as he's a stand alone character, Voldus is in the 3 pack "trimvirate of the Primarch" (that said if you have an ultramarines player in your neck of the woods you might be able to secure Voldus pretty cheap off him)

**jeff white**

Named characters are ... at least where I come from, not to be used without the agreement of the opposing player.

I think that BrianDavion gave some good advice, there -
Voldus is a cool enough model and may be available from ebay as a single model as he was the least favorite of that box of three release.
Paladins are awesome.
And my second favorite unit is the strike box just because I like them.

**Marmatag**

Caution: this is opinion.

You will need power armored Grey Knights. Paladins are far too expensive, and terminators are only good if you're going for a Battalion.

Whatever you do, starting as Grey Knights, you should pick up the box of a 10 man strike squad. It comes with the pieces to make interceptors / purgation squads / purifier squads / strike squads. And since most of these look identical, you could build them and test them out in several different roles.

Also, you'll want to pick up 32mm bases. Most of the PAGK boxes ship with 28mm bases.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also following up, the best way to start GK is as a part of another army you already have, filling in troop slots, or something. Because it's tough to field a GK army for less than 500, or less than 1000 points. Everything costs so much.

If you don't already have another army, and you are playing pure GK, you'll be unit-poor.

**SilverAlien**

Noctem wrote:
Ok thanks for the info! Do you think there will be new models when they get their codex?

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, will they be allowed to use Primaris marines at all or is using Grey Knights as your army prohibited to JUST their special units?

We don't know about new models or primaris. New models we assume we would've seen by now, but a variation on primaris marines is possible and the most likely source of anything new.

You can run other space marines alongside grey knights, but they won't have the grey knight keyword. Judging by the SM codex, that means you'll want them in separate detachments.

They also have access to some normal space marine kit like vehicles as part of the grey knights normal options. Which your friend will need eventually, if only so he has something with a range greater than 24". Not important for a new player though, pure infantry is fine.

**Marmatag**

I highly doubt GK will get Primaris Marines.

It flies in the face of the fluff, in that these are incorruptible psyker marines, which the primaris really aren't.

It's also a balance issue, as gate of infinity would actually make Hellblasters really good.

**MechaEmperor7000**

Btw, a modeling tip: Purifiers, Purgation squads and Strike squads have no physical difference between them, only weapon selection (Purifiers can have slightly more special weapons than strike squads, and Purgation squads can have even more). They have different rules but the models are, for all intents and purposes, identical. This way you can build your PAGKs anyway you want and then assign them their battlefield roles as you see fit.

The only exception to this are Interceptors, who have those weird antenna backpacks on them. However even that should be easy since you can glue them on afterwards (or if it's a different backpack, just pry the existing one off and glue on a new one).

As for Terminators, all of them are basically identical. Only the Ancient and Apothecary have unique equipment; even the Grand Master uses the same equipment as a generic Terminator.

(note that Grey knights have a select of melee weapons that drastically differ in use. But with the exception of the Brotherhood Champion, all of them have access to the same weapons, hence who gets what matters less in the long run as long as you have a good idea how many of each you want).

**Crispy78**

jeff white wrote:
Named characters are ... at least where I come from, not to be used without the agreement of the opposing player.

I don't think this is the norm.

**Thadin**

Crispy78 wrote:
jeff white wrote:
Named characters are ... at least where I come from, not to be used without the agreement of the opposing player.

I don't think this is the norm.

The norm in my meta is each army having at least one named character

Casual day of Ghazzy squaring up against Lucius the Eternal. Must he's from a very fluff-strict area where named characters are only allowed in certain fights.

On the topic of Grey Knight units; One thing that's only been mentioned for a named character, is getting some sort of GK Librarian. The Psychic spells that Grey Knights want to be casting are valuable enough that you should think about having a dedicated Psyker. An important point being, Grey Knight Librarians don't actually exsist as a model. You need to use a vanilla Space Marine Librarian in Terminator armor, or kitbash something up. A simple solution I used was the resin Grey Knight Brother-Captain model, with the blade of his Halberd cut off, and a Nemesis Force Staff glued on in place.

And you can't go much wrong with Gate of Infinity-ing around a Razorback with a 5-man squad or a Land Raider with Terminators. But the latter is even more expensive for Grey Knights than it is for normal space marines.

**3orangewhips**

jeff white wrote:
Named characters are ... at least where I come from, not to be used without the agreement of the opposing player.

This is old-school, 3rd edition. I miss those days.

Your friend is going to want Draigo + the boys. Maybe a land raider or a storm raven to boot.

Purifiers aren't bad, especially with their smite spam, but termies are good too-a bit more forgiving.

Dreadknights are situationally good, but a bit of a finesse thing. Cool model though.

A few assassins might give him some mobility.

CONTEXT: My buddies GKs have been slapping me around since 6th.