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Ok, so...i havent played Grey Knights since 6th rolled out, but i've played them plenty of times in 5th...and won each time... Using Chaos Daemons.

Now i dont run a power-gamer Fatecrusher list, or even have a single Flamer to suicide in...i run, and am proud to run, an all Nurgle Epidemius list. I've always loved Nurgle over all the other gods, and with Epidemius thrown in, my lack-luster daemons go from meh to pretty sweet . As i said, i love Nurgle, and i cant see anything fluffier then a horde of Plaguebearers crawling across the battlefield, reaping souls for the Grandfather as the Plague Wind blows.

My opponents however, have thrown several GK variant armies at me, and all have had their souls reaped by the Plaguefather. I'm Not gunna lie, some of these fights were close...like i only won due to a last-turn objective grab/denial (im lookin at you, GK Interceptors ). But against 3 peoples Draigowing armies, i have tabled them at or by turn 5, i had a drawn-out but one sided fight against a mostly-henchmen army, and i eked out a draw against a mechanized PA GK army. The only weaknesses i seem to have against GKs in particular is Warp Quake, and against any mech armies, from any codex, i am often too slow to react in a timely fashion.

So, have my opponents just been running bad army lists? Have they been relying too much on many of the strengths GKs have against most non-daemonic enemies? Or have the dice gods (Hail Nurgle!) taken a kindly, cyclopean eye on me?

I dont know about 6th Ed., but it seems like the complaints of Grey Knight OPness is just a load over-exaggerated rubbish...

Please enlighten me if i am wrong.

Or then you are a much better player than the GK players you've met. Chaos Daemons players in particular have cried tears of blood about how OP certain GK builds are against their army. Especially the ones that interfere with your deepstriking units.

Yeah, thats one thing, the game i played against the dude with all the Interceptors i was able to seize the initiatve, and avoid most of the Warp Quake shenanigans...

So you got lucky and stole the Initiative.

GK's are a solid army, not OP or OverRated at the moment.

They are really flexible and do a lot of things well.

Spetulhu wrote:
Or then you are a much better player than the GK players you've met. Chaos Daemons players in particular have cried tears of blood about how OP certain GK builds are against their army. Especially the ones that interfere with your deepstriking units.

This x1000.

In 5th ed espeically, Eppy lists were terrible and ranked up there with mono-Khorne as being the worst builds from Codex Daemons;
- You had 0 ranged attacks outside of HQ's and Heavy Support and are almost 100% relyant on combat to pop open transports in the 'Mechhammer' edition.
- You're as slow as slow could possibly be so good luck chasing down those transports. (or anything else)
- The 'Breathbomb' to get the Tally going asap relyed on non-mechanised forces which were rare outside of a few codices. (or stupid opponents who left their units deployed outside of transports!)

It sounds more like your local meta simply didn't go hardcore into the mechfest and/or played more for fun, or else you're just a 'big fish in a small pond.'

GK's is 5th were broken vs Daemons. Warp Quake = auto-lose unless you went first. Coteaz's own Deep Strike shinanigans making Warp Quake even nastier! All the silly grenades - especially psychos & psyk-outs. Daemonbane being an end runaround of our Eternal Warrior rule. Dark Ex making Dreadknights nearly impossible to kill - it even goes so far as to strip your Prince's Mark of Chaos! Clensing Flame, Fortitude making their transports even harder to stop... The list goes on!

And seriously? How the hell did you even get a max Tally vs a Draigowing?! Unless there were non-Pally units, or the GK player didn't wound allocate and/or got seriously unlucky with their saves, and/or you played a 2k+ point game?!?
At the standard 1700-1850pts range, a pure Draigowing almost never had 20 or more models, meaning it was utterly impossible to gain the full Tally.


Hell, GK's are still a serious pain for Daemons even in 6th, since while a few things like the mechfest & Pally abuses have been neutered, other new and equally scary shinanagans such as the BRB 'psychic choir' have replaced them.

I maintain, as I always have, that there is no such thing as an 'unbeatable' or a 'broken' Codex. A few Codexes (very few, if the Tyranid players I hear crowing about the reduced presence of transports in 6th and the Ork players talking about how well their book has aged are any indication) are underpowered, but for the most part the difference between Codexes is how easy they are to build a good list with and win with that list. Grey Knights are lucky to have many viable builds with which they can win games, and they are on the easier side of average for difficulty of play, which tend to lead to grumbles about OPness in the face of people with a more difficult hill to climb to victory.

Well, it was only a matter of time until this thread came back again.

I completely agree with AnomanderRake, no Codex is unbeatable, although there are some match ups that can push that to some extent (in 5th ed I went to a tournament with my mate, he brought his Daemons and his first game was Kill Points against Draigowing).

I agree with you, the GK screams of OP are exaggerations by people who can't beat them, especially now that 6th has toned them down a little.

Its not the codex as such thats broken but the meta armies that have come out of it, dragowing for example in 5th was broken as all hell with multi wound shenanigans and tank poping dreadnoughts it was a true pain to deal with.

If people didnt play broken lists then GK players as a whole would not have such a bad rep but sadly the WAAC crowd latched onto grey knights and ruined their reputaion.

And when even in 6th GK lists are still 50% of the armies in a tournament its very hard to argue they arnt strong.

I play GK and have played them since 3rd ed when it was just Daemon Hunters. In 5th ed their codex did become very strong, but in 6th I feel that the army has slipped into mid tier. And, while it is a very strong mid tier army, save the complaints for when you play Necrons, Space Wolves, or Imperial Guard.

 ShatteredBlade wrote:
I play GK and have played them since 3rd ed when it was just Daemon Hunters. In 5th ed their codex did become very strong, but in 6th I feel that the army has slipped into mid tier. And, while it is a very strong mid tier army, save the complaints for when you play Necrons, Space Wolves, or Imperial Guard.

We're not too far apart. I put them up there with SW and IG and below Necrons who are at the top of the mountain in my book. 6th got rid of some of their tricks, but they still have some amazing upgrades at very little cost.

They can be beat. They can even be beat by daemons. I do think that they have a slight advantage over mid tier books and they have a big advantage over lower tier books.

The daemons thing is an oddity. With the update, daemons are a pretty powerful army. The GK advantage over a pretty powerful army really gives them a leg up on the mid tier armies. Obviously that's all just opinion based.

GKs aren't overpower as long as your list has enough shoots to deal with Sv2+, if you tailor a list against that sure you will have a good fight but if you use an all-comers list with just a few plasmas you will find yourself in problems once those GKs get to CC (Termies and other Sv2+ equivalents with 6th are the only units that can stand to them).

This past sunday for example I played CSM vs GK, and was completely decimating the knight after the first 2 rounds of shots, until draigo and his paladin friend arrived on a stormraven next to all my 3 squads of plasmas (which were holding 1 of the 3 objective) and some havocs. Needless to say the game shifted as every charge he did killed my 10man squads before they could even hit and my hopes of downing his numbers with plasmas between charges were futile as either draigo saved with his 3++ or since my squads were on different positions the wounds got allocated to different paladins, so the only thing I could do is surrender that side and try to get the objectives on the other side where his GKs used to be. I know draigowing is usually 50% of the army in terms of points but still from being a few models from tableing him to get crushed in only 2 turns seems a little wrong, if i had fielded some power axe/fists termies babysitting those marines sure he wouldn't have done nothing at all but again that would be modifying my list to deal with the paladins. Anyway not much you can do unless you have lots of high str low ap shots

 Lord Yayula wrote:
GKs aren't overpower as long as your list has enough shoots to deal with Sv2+, if you tailor a list against that sure you will have a good fight but if you use an all-comers list with just a few plasmas you will find yourself in problems once those GKs get to CC (Termies and other Sv2+ equivalents with 6th are the only units that can stand to them).

This past sunday for example I played CSM vs GK, and was completely decimating the knight after the first 2 rounds of shots, until draigo and his paladin friend arrived on a stormraven next to all my 3 squads of plasmas (which were holding 1 of the 3 objective) and some havocs. Needless to say the game shifted as every charge he did killed my 10man squads before they could even hit and my hopes of downing his numbers with plasmas between charges were futile as either draigo saved with his 3++ or since my squads were on different positions the wounds got allocated to different paladins, so the only thing I could do is surrender that side and try to get the objectives on the other side where his GKs used to be. I know draigowing is usually 50% of the army in terms of points but still from being a few models from tableing him to get crushed in only 2 turns seems a little wrong, if i had fielded some power axe/fists termies babysitting those marines sure he wouldn't have done nothing at all but again that would be modifying my list to deal with the paladins. Anyway not much you can do unless you have lots of high str low ap shots

Vindicators my friend. As a GK player, I am terrified of anything with the Demolisher cannon stats. Sure, the battle cannon is rough on the PAGKS but I'd just send terminators after it or the dread knight. A vindicator? I'm basically stuck fireing my psydreads at it the whole time and dedicating the dreadknight at it as well as all my PAGKS Psycannons at it. One good shot with it and you can nearly tripple the point return on it.

 ShatteredBlade wrote:

Vindicators my friend. As a GK player, I am terrified of anything with the Demolisher cannon stats. Sure, the battle cannon is rough on the PAGKS but I'd just send terminators after it or the dread knight. A vindicator? I'm basically stuck fireing my psydreads at it the whole time and dedicating the dreadknight at it as well as all my PAGKS Psycannons at it. One good shot with it and you can nearly tripple the point return on it.

This is one of the strategies i use. Many people dont like Ku'gath, saying he's over priced and under powered, but i never leave home with out him. A poisoned pie-plate that ignores armour saves? Even before the Tally gets very high, this is a beast.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I maintain, as I always have, that there is no such thing as an 'unbeatable' or a 'broken' Codex. A few Codexes (very few, if the Tyranid players I hear crowing about the reduced presence of transports in 6th and the Ork players talking about how well their book has aged are any indication) are underpowered, but for the most part the difference between Codexes is how easy they are to build a good list with and win with that list. Grey Knights are lucky to have many viable builds with which they can win games, and they are on the easier side of average for difficulty of play, which tend to lead to grumbles about OPness in the face of people with a more difficult hill to climb to victory.

This is largely true, but while no codex is unbeatable and while you can beat Grey Knights with Tyranids or Eldar, you will have to fight against a handicap. This is why there is something wrong with the codex. The game isn't balanced, and it isn't just from GK.

.

I have had a GK Army Tabled Turn two by normal Vanilla Marines with Vidicators and Razorbacks.

I also came tabled Nid List in Close combat using with a single Dreadknight [he got 9 VPs by himself.

I also find it amusing that we keep hearing the same thing over and over.

"Grey Knights got NERFED in 6th!"
"Grey Knights are to OVER POWERED!"

I just want to know, witch is it?
Personly thing they are just a strong army.

Random Dude wrote:
I played against Grey Knights with my Space Wolves (I know that's weird) a couple of weeks ago.
They are totally OP!!!! Grey Knights Dreadnoughts have the ability to lower an attacking unit's leadership by four if they are within 12 inches of the friendly unit being attacked. This was terrible for my rune priest!

OP!!!!!

Only for Psychic powers.

Hardly OP.

Random Dude wrote:
I played against Grey Knights with my Space Wolves (I know that's weird) a couple of weeks ago.
They are totally OP!!!! Grey Knights Dreadnoughts have the ability to lower an attacking unit's leadership by four if they are within 12 inches of the friendly unit being attacked. This was terrible for my rune priest!

I'm not sure are you trolling, but SW player complaining about 12" psychic defence is, how would one put it, pretty hypocritical.

GK are good army in 6e. IG and Necrons are better, but Necrons are currently the strongest army in 40k by large margin.

 Anpu42 wrote:
I have had a GK Army Tabled Turn two by normal Vanilla Marines with Vidicators and Razorbacks.

I also came tabled Nid List in Close combat using with a single Dreadknight [he got 9 VPs by himself.

I also find it amusing that we keep hearing the same thing over and over.

"Grey Knights got NERFED in 6th!"
"Grey Knights are to OVER POWERED!"

I just want to know, witch is it?
Personly thing they are just a strong army.

Grey Knights are a strong army overall, but with the added ability to outright hard-counter many specific types of lists for little to no real pts costs.
For example, take an Ork or Tyranid or non-Tzeentch Daemon player and put them up against a Purifyer list. Guess how much fun that's going to be for the poor blokes who's armies are by design based around being strong close combat forces?!

Grey Knights allow you to play 40k on 'super easy mode'. For alot of opponents, it's not much fun being so badly outclassed and forced to fight a rediculously uphill battle just to compete! They're not the same level of outright 'broken' that say 7th ed Daemons were, but they're the closest 40k has gotten to that level in a good long while.

^this a thousand times.

I strongly dislike GK simply because they're not the most OP army but they're the easiest army for a casual player to pick up and wreck face. Add that to the ludicrous capability to list tailor your army todeal with anyone's army (a simple "oh, what are you playing?" and GK can wipe the floor with most any army) and you get not the best army but certainly the one most open to douchebaggery.

You get casual or younger players simply winning every single game because they don't have to care about terrain, unit dynamics ("oh, I let them get into cc. It's ok everybody gets a force weapon and a power that wounds every enemy model on a 4+ before combat starts"), transport tactics, positioning (heavy weapons that don't need to be placed in a good position because the GKs can fire them as assault because they're SO STRONG).

It just seems like playing them you're trying to play a wargame with at least a little tactics and they're just building a list and rolling a bunch of dice. If you know they're going to be at risk of playing them it's easy to come prepared and even easier to win, because they just seem to attract players looking for a win that requires little thinking as long as they bring a good list, but overall they still irritate me.

And mostly because I feel bad for the honest GK players. The ones who just thought they looked cool or wanted an elite army with a low model count or played them in the old days.

Experiment 626 wrote:

Grey Knights are a strong army overall, but with the added ability to outright hard-counter many specific types of lists for little to no real pts costs.
For example, take an Ork or Tyranid or non-Tzeentch Daemon player and put them up against a Purifyer list. Guess how much fun that's going to be for the poor blokes who's armies are by design based around being strong close combat forces?!

Green tide against purifiers you're correct, but Tyranid Psychic choir will easily give that Purifier list run for their money. Daemons have far more problems with Strike Spam, where losing turn 1 really makes the Daemon players life more difficult.

Also, specifying no Tzeentch daemons in the Daemon list kinda like specifying "No suits of any kind in Tau list, except for the mandatory HQ". Yes, it's doable but considering that all the strong Daemon builds have Tzeentch daemons in them, not really a valid complaint. Especially when you consider that Flamer spam is probably far worse against those CC oriented armies.

the_scotsman wrote:I strongly dislike GK simply because they're not the most OP army but they're the easiest army for a casual player to pick up and wreck face.

Now, here is actually very valid complaint. Though Necrons might be even worse, but for some reason they're not feeling the "hate" even though they were top tier army in 5e after the new codex and arguably the strongest army in 6e.

Purifier army has 2 weaknesses: Lack of shooting for over 24" and high point costs (also take into account Crowe tax) which leads to very low amount of scoring models on table. Killing Rhinos is pretty easy nowadays so the transports don't really protect as well as they used to. Also, most GK armies have problems dealing with AV13 vehicles.

Edit: Lot of people in this thread seem to still base their opinions on how GK were in 5e. GK are not nearly as good as they used to be.

the_scotsman wrote:
^this a thousand times.

You get casual or younger players simply winning every single game because they don't have to care about terrain, unit dynamics ("oh, I let them get into cc. It's ok everybody gets a force weapon and a power that wounds every enemy model on a 4+ before combat starts"), transport tactics, positioning (heavy weapons that don't need to be placed in a good position because the GKs can fire them as assault because they're SO STRONG).

this is so true. Yes you can counter them. Yes you there are other army's that are very strong. But what if you don't want to play competitive. What if you want to play a game that 40k is all about. Where you have two army's fighting a pitched battle where tactics and luck win the day. But GK destroys that. It brings a fifteen man army to the table that, lets face it, does not make any sense and is not fun to play against. Who wants to go to their local store, lay out their five hundred dollar army, an array of tanks and men. And you get destroyed by a fifteen silver dudes with fluff stretching (if there is any fluff supporting it at all) rules. It's just not any fun. 40k should be a game where even if you lose you still had fun, feeling that your men fought hard. Hell maybe they gave that armor column a chance to get off planet or something. But GK takes that away, by people who only give a gak about winning. Yes there are counters (chances are they aren't half as fun to play as that fun nob squad that is way too many points but a good laugh) but the point is that GK can be built so easy and the army so small that its no fun to play against, and that's assuming that you aren't playing against some chortelling mouth breather who has no sense of sportsmanship. Any ways that my two cents.

 Anpu42 wrote:
I have had a GK Army Tabled Turn two by normal Vanilla Marines with Vidicators and Razorbacks.

I also came tabled Nid List in Close combat using with a single Dreadknight [he got 9 VPs by himself.

I also find it amusing that we keep hearing the same thing over and over.

"Grey Knights got NERFED in 6th!"
"Grey Knights are to OVER POWERED!"

I just want to know, witch is it?
Personly thing they are just a strong army.

Its both.
They got nerfed in 6th, but they are STILL overpowered, its just that they used to be even more overpowered.

Back in 5th it was compleatly broken, now its just over the curve-stronger then a balanced codex SHOULD be, but not in a game-braking way no more, a good player can take them down.