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I’m getting back into 40k, and I’m looking at grey knights or ravern guard.
Just wanted to know how would I build the armies and what makes them really strong atm ?

Scerri101 wrote:
I’m getting back into 40k, and I’m looking at grey knights or ravern guard.
Just wanted to know how would I build the armies and what makes them really strong atm ?

Raven Guard can infiltrate Aggressors [and a lot of other things, though Aggressors were fairly popular] to start right in front of the enemy line to deliver a devastating early threat that has no problems reaching it's targets, and then keep up the pressure with all the good stuff about being a Space Marine.


Grey Knights can put out a abnormally large number of mortal wounds per turn, deep strike many units, and have pretty solid anti-infantry shooting that can be tuned up with powers and stratagems.



That said, if you're looking for "Really Strong", Raven Guard were up there with Iron Hands before Centurion Bomb was killed, and Aggressor Bomb is only somewhat weaker. Grey Knights on the other hand were basically nearing last place on the competitive totem pole, and their buffs just sort of made them not-last place anymore and somewhere in the mid range.

The strength of Marines is that, no matter the colour, you can always play the flavour of the month and you have nigh-constant rules and model support.

The strength of Grey Knights is that they are the best looking marines, in my opinion. I like the GK models. Unfortunately, GW keeps trying to make the most elite-est elite-y elite marine-like entities, and they’ve been left behind without real model support for a long time. Rules wise, they’ve been pigeon-holed. They are really a half-faction, missing key elements that would let them function as a self-contained force.

Unless you *love and can’t live without* the GK aesthetic, Raven Guard / Normal Marines are the way to go that’s effectively future-proof.

GKs are basically decent until you invest in Paladin bombs. Meanwhile, the internal balance of their units is still a fething joke. However, Raven Guard and their successors can be ran a number of different ways, which means more variety for your army.

I suggest picking up the Rule book & Codex books 1st (+ the relevant FAQs), studying both forces, and THEN deciding how to spend $ going forward.

But, to echo others;
GK - high pts, low model count, limited options. Great looking models, but the force can be hard to very hard to run.
RG - all the flexibility of Marines + their own bonuses. Downside? Black is a pretty boring color to paint/look at.

Well, all good comments so far.
My vote goes to GK as I play it.
This is one of the best looking armies at the battle field.

GK are a lot better and fun now, then a few months ago, RG are very good. Only difference is that RG are good with new models, and GK have old models. If GW ever decides to phase out old models, GK players could be in trouble. RG have no such problems.

Plus RG have the only jump pack primaris character.

How would a list of ravern guard look like? Or is there other armies people recommend

Scerri101 wrote:
How would a list of ravern guard look like? Or is there other armies people recommend

Iron Hands or Imperial Fists.

ccs wrote:I suggest picking up the Rule book & Codex books 1st (+ the relevant FAQs), studying both forces, and THEN deciding how to spend $ going forward.

But, to echo others;
GK - high pts, low model count, limited options. Great looking models, but the force can be hard to very hard to run.
RG - all the flexibility of Marines + their own bonuses. Downside? Black is a pretty boring color to paint/look at.

I would absolutely not suggest picking up two codecies before you chose your army. You only need the codex for the army you choose in the end.

I usually recommend buying the codex last, and if you have friends with it, you might even be able to put it off until after a few demonstration games.

First, look at the website to decide which units you like best aesthetically, that you can see yourself painting up. Make sure you're at least fine with the Troop choices, because you'll be doing a lot of them. Then, you can gather information online, between asking on forums like you're doing now, reading online tactica, and being able to preview most of the stats on Battlescribe, you shouldn't really need the codex until you really get going in earnest.

wuestenfux wrote:Well, all good comments so far.
My vote goes to GK as I play it.
This is one of the best looking armies at the battle field.

My one wish is that we got Vindicators and Predators, so I could have squadrons of daemon-hunting psychic tanks. Katherine <3 tanks.

I would love to see a GK Predator with psycannon sponsons and some sort of big psychic cannon turret, maybe a twin heavy psycannon or something along those lines, stuff that utilizes some of the GK specific weaponry would be neat and relatively easy to fold in.

If you have any interest in Inquisition or SOUP, I'd say GK are better suited to that. Personally I love them; GW has de-emphasized the concept of chambers militant this edition, but GK will ALWAYS be the chamber militant of the Ordo Malleus for me.

PenitentJake wrote:
If you have any interest in Inquisition or SOUP, I'd say GK are better suited to that. Personally I love them; GW has de-emphasized the concept of chambers militant this edition, but GK will ALWAYS be the chamber militant of the Ordo Malleus for me.

Actually GKs would be worse with allies as they lose the Tides.

PenitentJake wrote:If you have any interest in Inquisition or SOUP, I'd say GK are better suited to that. Personally I love them; GW has de-emphasized the concept of chambers militant this edition, but GK will ALWAYS be the chamber militant of the Ordo Malleus for me.

This definitely, is why I like GK & SoB. I really should get deathwatch too, I already have a kill team...

Vaktathi wrote:I would love to see a GK Predator with psycannon sponsons and some sort of big psychic cannon turret, maybe a twin heavy psycannon or something along those lines, stuff that utilizes some of the GK specific weaponry would be neat and relatively easy to fold in.

Like, I can totally imagine a Predator with psycannon sponsons, and maybe psy-shells for the autocannon so it's S8 AP-2 or something. Maybe I'll buy a predator and make one anyway when I hit Ro3 on SW Predators.

 wuestenfux wrote:

Scerri101 wrote:
How would a list of ravern guard look like? Or is there other armies people recommend

Iron Hands or Imperial Fists.

Maybe a month ago. Not so much with post-errata Doctines.

Sarcasm aside though, the correct answer is almost always "Pick the models you like more, the rules are constantly changing. But now that we've said that, here's how those armies are doing right now..."

Six months ago we'd have been warning you that Marines were in a bad place and Grey Knights were in an appalling place and we'd have been right to do so, but "Pick the models you like etc etc" would still have been the proper opening.

What is the meta atm btw?

Scerri101 wrote:
What is the meta atm btw?

Uhh, good question. What with the lockdown and everything, we haven't been able to see much of it at all.

Codex: Space Marines, particularly Iron Hands and Raven Guard, were extraordinarily dominant with their supplement buffs, but right at the end of February an FAQ was dropped to nerf them, and then 2 weeks later we went into lockdown, so we didn't really get to see what the effect of the nerfs were. Personally, I suspect they weren't enough:
There were three major changes:
You can no longer stay in devastator doctrine all game. This stops the Iron Hands getting their devastator bonus all game, and limits it to a turn 1 alpha strike ability.
You can no longer target Dreadnoughts with Cogitated Martyrdom, and Duty Eternal only reduces damage by 1 instead of halving it. This stops the indestructible Leviathan Dreadnought. However, a <10 wound Dreadnought [like, for example, a quadlas Mortis] can still be made a character, and would be essentially unkillable since there are very few weapons that can target characters and meaningfully damage dreadnoughts. It doesn't stop the invincible dreadnought, it just makes it smaller.
You can no longer use Master of Ambush on Centurions. Centurion bomb is dead... long live Aggressor bomb. Once again, it doesn't stop the problem, it just makes it smaller.
Notably, the ability to take custom chapter tactics but still gain access to stratagems, doctrines, and relics as if you had not was unchanged, where as every other faction in the game loses their subfaction stratagems and relics for taking a custom subfaction. This was leading to the Stealthy+Master Artisans Iron Hands, basically stacking all the best buffs.


The most important change was to doctrines. This was a major nerf to Iron Hands, since a big part of their relative OP-ness was getting to ignore move-fire penalties and all heavy weapons having a permanent captain bonus. Now, they only get it on turn 1. This also reduces somewhat the cheesiness of custom chapter tactics, mostly through preventing you from permanently stacking the super doctrine with the custom tactic.

The Dreadnought change stops the Leviathan of Indestructibility, but I ask you, while yes, a Leviathan Dreadnought that's very hard to kill is bad, a Mortis Dreadnought that you just can't kill is not a whole lot better at the end of the day. That said, it's also my opinion that the invincible Leviathan was just one part of the show, and the other 85% of the show took a big hit, so there's that at least.

Raven Guard though, was hit only minimally. Demoting the unit being infiltrated from Assault Centurions to Aggressors is much less of a blow than losing all the free stacking special rules all game, and Raven Guard already have super-Stealthy as their chapter tactic so they're not really abusing the stacking free special abilities of custom tactics. Mostly the big step down is in survivability, going from 4 to 3 wounds per model [which is a bigger deal than it sounds] and Sv2+ to 3+ is a pretty serious drop is survivability of the unit which should make it much less oppressive, but it still sounds very oppressive.

Another thing to consider: used Grey Knight models go for a lot less than new Primaris ones.

I want to note that the nerf to Infiltrate for RG didn't entirely eliminate the problem. Ravenguard also have Strike From the Shadows to deploy a unit from reserve, and that didn't get nerfed. RG and White Scar successors with Long-range Marksmen can still drop a Centurion bomb on turn two.

The change to Dotrines also reigned in Imperial Fists, but their +1D vs Vehicles for Heavy weapons wasn't enough to make them meta defining by itself.

I also want to point out that Ad Mech can easily snipe out a sub-W10 character Dreadnaught with guns they were probably bringing anyway and most Marine chapters can counter-build if it gets to be too prevalent. It's a nasty thing to spring on a faction that can't deal with it, but the odds of going four rounds in a tournament without running into a list or two that can blow right through character dread are probably going to turn out to be fairly low.

The truth is the meta is obscure right now, we've had supplements but not much chance to bang them against each other to figure out what's good. My bet is that the grey knights are now a lot better than people give them credit for, the tides of the warp are just flat better than doctrines, and list set up to abuse them are going to be top tier.