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Daemons are warp spawn and that is pure chaos - literally anything can happen and does. GK can do the d3 MW Smite to Daemons now and that is really good for them too.

Actually, the daemon rule is fluffed as the fact that the Grey Knights only deploy to face the largest and most dangerous of daemonic incursions. So to represent such a large and especially dangerous incursion, the daemons get more units.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Actually, the daemon rule is fluffed as the fact that the Grey Knights only deploy to face the largest and most dangerous of daemonic incursions. So to represent such a large and especially dangerous incursion, the daemons get more units.

yeah which would be fine if GKs had the kinda special rules to really make them worth while vs Deamons. as I said the 5th edition GK codex gave them a TON of anti-deamon rules (to the point where they had a blatently unfair advantage) GKs don't have any anti-deamon stratigiums. pretty much the only thing they have is "yeah your smite actually works against deamons."

Most GK units could do with a noticeable points drop. Adding to that, points drops for most weapons (except flacions, as those are by far the best option).

I'd say drop points by 2 or 3 points for most power armor units, 8 for GK terminators, 7 for Paladins, 10 for any HQ other than the GMDK, 10 for the dreadknight, 1 for all melee weapons other than the flacions, and a 20% drop for heavy weapons.

On top of that, let the HQ's use full smite.

Most people are forgetting 1 thing

Nearly EVERYTHING in the GK Codex is Psychic

Squads doing a Triple tap of Purge Soul, Stormbolters and Power Weapons in Melee is NASTY

Granted, Purge Soul isnt as Effective vs Imperium armies+Necrons, but you just take a different power instead (I.E Gate of Infinity)

 cuda1179 wrote:
...he dreadknight, 1 for all melee weapons other than the flacions, and a 20% drop for heavy weapons.

The only melee weapon that costs anything is the hammer.

 Smotejob wrote:
Any other grey knights players salty about the Custodes rules? There stuff is most comparable to our paladins, to which the Custodes are more powerful for cheaper.

Not at all.
GK are anti-daemon psykers
AC are the Emperors personal guard

Gameplay-wise I think they're about as close as Black Templars are to Grey Knights.

 commander dante wrote:
Most people are forgetting 1 thing

Nearly EVERYTHING in the GK Codex is Psychic

Squads doing a Triple tap of Purge Soul, Stormbolters and Power Weapons in Melee is NASTY

Granted, Purge Soul isnt as Effective vs Imperium armies+Necrons, but you just take a different power instead (I.E Gate of Infinity)

Except you can only cast each of their very limited selection of powers once. Which boils down their HQs using the real powers and the squad being left with only being able to baby smite. It’s really not that much of a bonus (1 mortal wound) when it comes down to it in the game.

 Primark G wrote:
That is very fluffy for daemons though so it makes sense to me.

Okay yes everybody loves fluffy additions to the game, as long as they are done right. A tide of demons coming forth from the warp is pretty cool, but its really a double edged sword seeing as how you can only use it against gery knights as opposed to Eldar or thousand sons who can also pump out Mortal wounds at almost the same rate.

Just like eldar grey knights have a rule that sees almost no use, ancient doom is even more niche than deamon hunters, how often does a Slannesh deamon player face a Eldar player?

From what I can see is GK are too fluffy for their own good.

GK are back to where they were before Ward. It’s a thing now.

Why are you so toxic?

 Primark G wrote:
GK are back to where they were before Ward. It’s a thing now.

pre-ward they had access to inqustion troops to pad out their rosters

I apologize as coming across as toxic. I played Grey Knights prior to 5th edition and I played them twice at major events back then. What I don’t like is the negativity towards Custodians in the OP. I honestly think GK are still valid as a component but not as an entire army. Just look at how good Soup lists are doing in general. If you really love GK I think there are some good options.

 Primark G wrote:
I apologize as coming across as toxic. I played Grey Knights prior to 5th edition and I played them twice at major events back then. What I don’t like is the negativity towards Custodians in the OP. I honestly think GK are still valid as a component but not as an entire army. Just look at how good Soup lists are doing in general. If you really love GK I think there are some good options.

I started in 4th and they were my second army. Your anecdote of your history really doesn't work here.

Why do you say that?

I brought this up in another thread, but I feel like the Grey Knights are bogged down by a few things:

1. Being Space Marines: Excluding Primaris (whom I'm sure will make a debut in the Grey Knights army eventually), the Grey Knights suffer from being MEQ and taking that baggage everywhere they go. Hence why they have 1 attack base and why they don't really have the statline that feels "elite" when compared to regular Marines.

2. Being forced to double up on shooting and melee: When a unit has to take both shooting and melee options it pulls them too many directions and honestly makes them worse at both. If they didn't need to carry shooting options along with melee ones (in the case of Terminators) or need to load up a shooting based squad with melee weapons you don't need (PAGK for example) they'd be more point efficient and more capable of being set up for specific jobs effectively. Basically specialization is what helps a unit feel more elite (example: Custodes are melee focused with small amounts of shooting to support them on the way in, or we have assault terminators who don't pay for shooting they don't need or use). When you have to take both (example: regular terminators) the unit feels bloated and you often try to find ways to shave points off stuff you don't want or need in the unit so you can focus more on the things you actually want to do with the unit.

3. Points spent on special rules: While being psykers will always make them more expensive than you'd like, the anti-daemon rules are going to cause a points increase on everything. Considering most armies don't even pay for traits anymore, this shouldn't apply to Grey Knights, but from what we can tell it looks like it does anyways.

4. Lack of a chaffe option: Be it a scout unit or Inquisitorial Alcolytes, people seem to be very hung up on the lack of a cheap troop choice that can help fill out the army. While I don't feel every army should have a chaffe option built in, I can understand the appeal of wanting to min-max an army for CP, or just try to get past the stuff you don't care about as cheaply as possible so you can focus on the big toys you really want. Not my way of building an army, but I can understand the desire.

5. Lack of new options: Primaris are going into every Marine army it seems, except the Grey Knights who could really use them. Guess you can ally them in as Exorcists chapter Primaris, but as it stand the lack of new toys isn't helping the Grey Knights any.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Actually, the daemon rule is fluffed as the fact that the Grey Knights only deploy to face the largest and most dangerous of daemonic incursions. So to represent such a large and especially dangerous incursion, the daemons get more units.

Pretty sure its a throwback to a Daemonhunters mission that gave a Daemons player free replacement units in something that was like Meatgrinder.

I expect Grey Knights to get primaris at a later date because it would most likely be a new kit.
They aren't gonna let all those force weapons just sit there and there will probably a wrist mounted bolt rifle variant to keep up with tradition

 Primark G wrote:
Why do you say that?

You claim veteran status as though it mattered for you defending the army's current state. It's a toxic attitude whether you like it or not.

I was just proving you can't throw out the whole "I've been playing since ______" and expect anything to stick in a meaningful way.

I'd laugh if they made a GK version of Inceptors with two psylancers. Or what about HellBlasters with a larger version of a psycannon?

 Primark G wrote:
GK main purpose is to fight daemons and that they do that rather well now, right?

They re-roll wounds in the fight phase, and their 12” smite does 3 mortal wounds instead of one.
Daemons have access to normal smite, powers that can strip their invul saves, and CC units that will shred GK for cheap. And none of GK’s bonuses extend to CSM, just daemons. They aren’t good at fighting daemons...AM is better against daemons though sheer weight of fire.

Going to sound weird here, but I almost think giving more attacks to GK is too much. Maybe a special rule that lets them gain an attack on the charge? That is what made them work reliably in the past.

Definitely need points drops army wide and normal smite on characters. Those two are basically non negotiable.

Grey Knights (in theory) should be fighting Daemons through quality rather than the quantity of a horde (though Hive Fleet Kronos doubles down and uses hordes with anti-psyker traits to make Daemons extra sad so there is that).

As I've said, part of the problem is the lack of specialization. Nearly every squad has to gear up for melee and range and does neither especially well. PAGK especially should be loading up on anti-daemon/psyker (you know, to stop daemon summoning/spawning rogue psykers) shooting with weapons designed to break Daemon Engines while a unit like Purifiers could easily be a close combat oriented unit designed to form a wall of blades to protect PAGK from the charging hordes.

Likewise the Terminators should be coming in both choppy and shooty variants instead of having the only option being on that does both (this is why vanilla Terminators are considered worse than assault terminators after all: they lack focus meaning you spend points on stuff you don't want or need in the unit).

With that we would see an army that could built more appropiately into a short range army that plays more like a Psychic Sisters army (short range shooting in power armour backed by melee specialist units) than worse Marines.

And honestly they probably should be 2 attacks base (or 1 attack base and +1 attack for using their Nemesis Force Weapons) to make them feel more "elite" when compared to regular Marines.

That and giving them access to more psychic powers (say, the Vanilla Marine powers for instance) for diversity's sake could be good too. That or give them multiple disciplines Chaos Daemons style with different units having access to different ones.

I think this boils down to power armoured units across the board being lack luster.
Frankly I think marines should have an extra wound for starters. Maybe an extra attack.
My reasoning is pretty simple marines are really easy to kill. When I finish a game I generally only have a hand full remaining. Even Paladins get shot off easily in some cases

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Primark G wrote:
Why do you say that?

You claim veteran status as though it mattered for you defending the army's current state. It's a toxic attitude whether you like it or not.

I was just proving you can't throw out the whole "I've been playing since ______" and expect anything to stick in a meaningful way.

That is just opinion.

Here is something else to think about too you don’t see any SW players moaning about how good are Custodes. And here is the thing there is a direct corillary.

 Primark G wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 Primark G wrote:
Why do you say that?

You claim veteran status as though it mattered for you defending the army's current state. It's a toxic attitude whether you like it or not.

I was just proving you can't throw out the whole "I've been playing since ______" and expect anything to stick in a meaningful way.

That is just opinion.

Here is something else to think about too you don’t see any SW players moaning about how good are Custodes. And here is the thing there is a direct corillary.

Space Wolves have little parallels to Custodes and also haven't had a codex made yet. You seemed to have forgotten that real quick.

 fraser1191 wrote:
I think this boils down to power armoured units across the board being lack luster.
Frankly I think marines should have an extra wound for starters. Maybe an extra attack.
My reasoning is pretty simple marines are really easy to kill. When I finish a game I generally only have a hand full remaining. Even Paladins get shot off easily in some cases

I can't say I've played a lot of games, or watched a lot of battle reports, but from what I can tell, in most games there usually isn't much left of either army when all is said and done.

I can support buffing Grey Knight attacks, but not regular Marines (gotta make them feel elite somehow after all), and extra wounds really should stay on Primaris marines alone (if we buff vanilla Marines then both Primaris and Custodes would need a buff and we don't need 3 Custodes rocking 12 wounds total).

If anything should be done is baking in re-roll 1s standard to hit rolls with captains unlocking rerolling all hits (or perhaps giving a +1 to hit instead). Marines should feel like the most reliable faction to go with them being on the lower model counts compared to other armies.

No the point is SW used to be very competitive in fifth edition like GK.

Gk definitely are a low-tier army. I collected a lot them, I converted 95% of my army. I feel let down.

I'm not saying we need a top-tier tourney busting broken list. But when I see seasoned veteran players struggling against a young newb with an army made up entirely of Starter Set marines plus whatever he found in the second-hand box, you know there is a problem.


Hypothetically, if GK kept their rules 100% as they are, how many points would they actually need to be to make them a viable, but pretty average, army? I'd have to say 18 points per model for a strike squad including their storm bolter.

 Primark G wrote:
No the point is SW used to be very competitive in fifth edition like GK.

Honesty I have to wonder if even the Emperor of Mankind himself could fathom the points you're trying to make.

Space Woves don't currenly have a codex and barely have any special rules right now. Naturally this means they're going to be fairly lackluster on the table. The only army doing reasonably well despite lacking a codex right now is Sisters and that's mostly due to finally having an appropriate points cost on an army of power armoured glass cannons.

Grey Knights suffer currently from a lot of problems and pointing at an army that has yet to see an update and telling people they're basically the same thing is nonsense. That is unless you're trying to say the Grey Knight update is just as much as a proper codex as the Space Wolves entries in the index, in which case I can probably agree.

You don’t understand my point. GK and SW were both top tier in fifth edition.