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I play Grey Knights. Daemon players refuse to play with me. That, or they are just messing around and expecting to get butchered from the outset. Honestly, it's not fun when your opponent is not playing his best. Everyone I play with who does not have an army list before going to the game puts a Cullexus Assassin in their army, or a bunch of Grav weapons knowing my army will have lots of Psykers and 2+ armor save. I can't force people to make army list before going to store because this is just pickup games with whoever you end up with.

Is this how the Warhammer 40k community is heading towards even in regular games? Is the balance issue really that pathetic? Does anyone here experience the same thing?

Discrimination is a bit extreme.

List-tailoring is nothing new. Inform them what you're bringing and ask if they wouldn't mind balancing it a bit. I would try befriending some of the people and trying to set up games with them at a later point as well.

Well, I'm more the stay at home hobbyist, so hopefully you dont mind my perspective. I do frown on the gk myself heh, and I bet there are a fair amount of people that feel similar.

It could also be something your doing - with your list, your reputation etc.

Either way, I'd just just try to be extra nice with whom you play, offer to play a 1k point game then a 2k point game. This way, hist list building surprises wont be as bad on either the first or second.

It could be your area for now. Maybe Ina few years some new blood will change things.

You could do the best/right thing and switch to 30k. Maybe a few others will follow you. :p

It sounds like more of a problem regarding the people that you are playing against. I suggest that everyone brings a TAC list and then you randomly determine who is playing against who to avoid list tailoring.

bibotot wrote:
Is the balance issue really that pathetic?

In a word, yes.

Bring a vindicair and snipe their culuxus.

No real counter to grab except a strong chin sadly.

I have been out of the loop- does the Grey Knights auto-win versus Daemon armies still exist?

Because I know Grey Knights suffer from a hell of a bad reputation of balance versus Daemons.

Try being automatically hated as an Eldar player, when your army does not have scatterbikes, wraithknights, multiple wave serpents, or warwalkers.

 jonolikespie wrote:

bibotot wrote:
Is the balance issue really that pathetic?

In a word, yes.

Indeed. Altough the balance problems are easy to solve with the right people. Unfortenately, it is the people who seem to be the problem in your case. Try to arrange a game where the list is already decided on before knowing the opponent's list. There will probably be people at your store who come there frequently. Try chatting to them about it. Pick-up games are never much fun in my experience, and in 40k the balance problems make pick-up games even worse than usual. Try to get a regular gaming group together, and you will have more fun.

If nothing else helps, get some more diversity in your army (allies maybe? Grey Knights are kinda one-sided) so you can also tailor your lists.

Grey Knights don't auto win against anyone, including Daemons. They never really did, even in 5th. And in today's grav-centric meta, Grey Knights require a lot of skill to play versus just about everyone else's point and click play style. So, the OP's opponents are just being douche bags.

The only good advice is to bring more than army, and play the one at the least disadvange when your opponent tailors.

SJ

I've recently been starting to play GK and my friend I play all the time plays daemons. Out of the 4 or 5 games we've played hes tabled me all but one time in which I was able to keep my last squad of purifiers alive until the end of the game to win on VP's.

I feel that playing as GK's you really need to play very cautiously and not make many mistakes. They can be a very balls to the wall army with all the shunting and deep striking into peoples faces but their low model count makes them pretty easy to wipe off the table.

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
Grey Knights don't auto win against anyone, including Daemons. They never really did, even in 5th. And in today's grav-centric meta, Grey Knights require a lot of skill to play versus just about everyone else's point and click play style. So, the OP's opponents are just being douche bags.

The only good advice is to bring more than army, and play the one at the least disadvange when your opponent tailors.

SJ

Not even the one where you deny them the ability to deepstrike anything onto nearly the entire board? I thought I remember that being a method. (Never played either Grey Knights or Daemons in my area, so I never read their rules).

 AegisGrimm wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
Grey Knights don't auto win against anyone, including Daemons. They never really did, even in 5th. And in today's grav-centric meta, Grey Knights require a lot of skill to play versus just about everyone else's point and click play style. So, the OP's opponents are just being douche bags.

The only good advice is to bring more than army, and play the one at the least disadvange when your opponent tailors.

SJ

Not even the one where you deny them the ability to deepstrike anything onto nearly the entire board? I thought I remember that being a method. (Never played either Grey Knights or Daemons in my area, so I never read their rules).

That was sort of hard to pull off even in 5th, but it did exist. It no longer exists, for 2 reasons.
1) Grey Knights no longer have access to that power.
2) Daemons no longer are required to start in reserves.

List tailoring is just one of those things in some environments, unfortunately.

If you've got more than one army then simply don't tell people what army you have with you before they make their list.

If you've only got one army and everyone knows that then there isn't a lot you can do.

Daemons are built to challenge grey knights particularly, it's just subtle. All the poison, rending, instant death, and psychic powers kinda just give us a base unfair advantage against a heavily armored enemy. They need their special rules, in my opinion, to keep from getting pwned by daemons.

I've charged too many terminator squads with greater daemons to refuse to play against them. They go down hard. It's alot of points easily taken away by our combat statlines. I've even had a squad of bloodletters + herald kill a full unit of terminators and go on to harass other units in a grey knights game regardless of their tailored special rules. People shouldn't be so salty about it until they've played alot of games vs. Grey Knights.

That said, if he knows your list before he builds his it's never going to be a good game, in my opinion. That holds true for all armies. It's a truly unfair advantage to see your opponent's list and then build yours.

The fix for a Culexus assassin is quite simple: carve him up in cc with a Dreadknight. He has almost no way to hurt the Dreadknight, the knight instant deaths him, and you hit him on 5s in melee (many people get this wrong. He does NOT have Invis: he makes you WS1 BS1, which means you always hit on 5s in melee). He's just T4 and not EW so you just need an average of 2 landed hits to get thru his 4++ and gib him.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also it's worth remembering you can also hit him with blasts and flamer templates, since he's not true Invis. The last time I played against one I shot him with a manticore and he just evaporated. It's not even a waste of your heavy ordnance because he costs as much as a tank.

I understand your 'problem'. I myself find the best games are ones where you are pretty much going in blind. Quite often I will play games where I don't know what army I will face, or at the very least won't know what's going to be in my opponents list.

When I got back into 40k and looking for pick up games I tried to keep things blind if at all possible when it came to the army matchups. I approached this in a few different ways.

1. I'd arrange a time for a game in advance, but I would specifically tell my opponent that I didn't want to know what army they were going to play because I enjoyed surprises. It's a little harder for them to ask you when you've made that statement. And if they do ask, tell them you haven't decided which army to bring yet.

2. Keep an eye out for the players who are ready to play. If they have a list ready, it's less likely to be tailored. And remember, you can gently encourage folks to have some lists ready, so that you can spend more time playing instead of setting up and waiting on them.

3. Change the points values. I don't know what points values you usually play, but change it up. If you always play 1500+, suggest playing 1000pts. Suggest a couple of combat patrols at 500pts. They are really quick and it gives you a chance to rework your list too. Personally I don't like playing more than 1500pts.

4. Engage in an arms race. As someone suggested, if they take the anti-psycher assassin, take the Vindicare. Only works if you are willing to spend money buying models to counter your opponents collection. Personally not a big fan of this option.

5. Diversify your list. In the age of formations and allies this should be simple enough. Especially for an Imperial faction player. Although I must admit, I have never used allies in any of my own armies. The closest I have come to allies is playing doubles. Actually that is another idea, try to get a doubles game.

6. Finally, become 40k friends with some of your opponents. It opens up avenues of conversation that practical strangers might not engage in. You can suggest scenarios, or ongoing mini campaigns etc... all to keep things changing up and fresh. Having like minded people to play with can make a big difference.

Anyway, your post reminded me of a few issues I had to deal with when I got back into 40k. Even recently I reconnected with an old friend after 25 years and followed this basic approach when playing him the first few games. It didn't take long before we had an understanding as to what sort of games we'd play. Our last couple games have actually been rough narrative scenarios we just sort of hashed out, pretty fun actually.

Hope some of this helps.

 AegisGrimm wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
Grey Knights don't auto win against anyone, including Daemons. They never really did, even in 5th. And in today's grav-centric meta, Grey Knights require a lot of skill to play versus just about everyone else's point and click play style. So, the OP's opponents are just being douche bags.

The only good advice is to bring more than army, and play the one at the least disadvange when your opponent tailors.

SJ

Not even the one where you deny them the ability to deepstrike anything onto nearly the entire board? I thought I remember that being a method. (Never played either Grey Knights or Daemons in my area, so I never read their rules).

Grey Knights in 5th could effortlessly murder double their total pts amount of Daemons... Pretty much the only thing Daemons could do back then was take Fateweaver + as many Fiends & Princes as was possible. And even then it was a complete crap shoot.

Warp Quake was auto-win, unless the Daemon player could go first (hope Coteaz wasn't around) and/or if the GK was able to fail a whole bunch of Ld9-10 psychic tests. A full 10-man squad that would spread itself out & maximise it's full 2" coherency, could easily 'lock off' an area roughly 30" - 22" that was an automatic Mishap. (now add an additional 7.1" to account for potential average scatter rolls!)
Then there was the ability to simply 'juggle' misshaping units within active Quake bubbles in order to guarantee a 50/50 shot at auto-wiping any Deep Strikers, otherwise they'd just get kicked back into reserves.

And this without taking into account all the basic GK bonuses such as Rad/Psycho 'nades, super cheap Psyflemen Dreads, 'Winning' Flame, Dark Ex (which could even strip a Prince's mark of Chaos!), psy bolts, Draigo, wound-allocation BS Pallies, etc...

The only people who could think that GK's were 'balanced' against Daemons in 5th, were WaaC's GK players who enjoyed their free victories.



Are Grey Knights still broken as gak against Daemons? Not in the least. If anything, Daemons are the more powerful book on paper, as they now can out-psychic the Knights, out assault them, and semi-tailor their characters to taste.

The only part of the Daemon army that still actively struggles against GK's is Tzeentch, since Horrors & Tzheralds rely on Witchfires to inflict damage, and Warpflame can go badly wrong if you're not careful.

the_scotsman wrote:
The fix for a Culexus assassin is quite simple: carve him up in cc with a Dreadknight. He has almost no way to hurt the Dreadknight, the knight instant deaths him, and you hit him on 5s in melee (many people get this wrong. He does NOT have Invis: he makes you WS1 BS1, which means you always hit on 5s in melee). He's just T4 and not EW so you just need an average of 2 landed hits to get thru his 4++ and gib him.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also it's worth remembering you can also hit him with blasts and flamer templates, since he's not true Invis. The last time I played against one I shot him with a manticore and he just evaporated. It's not even a waste of your heavy ordnance because he costs as much as a tank.

The Cullexus can Instant Kill the Dreadknight. If he does not do it first, then my Dreadknight can beat him to crap. It's kinda 50 - 50 who gets the win, but the Cullexus is usually cheaper than a Dreadknight with upgrades you cannot miss (Heavy Incinerator and Personal Teleporter). I do believe the Gatling Psylencer and Instant Kill the Cullexus as well, but the chance is also 50 - 50.

Unfortunately, GK have no S8 blast. I play Eldar allies and they don't have it either. Vortex of Doom and Psychic Maelstrorm do not work on the Cullexus.

Counter-tailor. Bring a VSG. BAM! Their grav is useless. Murderize cullexus in mellee. A couple hammers to the face and it's dead. Now he's got to come up close to do you harm. And guess who's more choppy up close.

Experiment 626 wrote:
Then there was the ability to simply 'juggle' misshaping units within active Quake bubbles in order to guarantee a 50/50 shot at auto-wiping any Deep Strikers, otherwise they'd just get kicked back into reserves.

Please stop spreading this disinformation. The juggling did not happen , not under the actual written rules

You were placed in a valid deepstrije formation. It was not another deepstrike. There was no mishap,again.

List tailoring is bad.

^^this

What should be done is to take a list before you know who your going to play.

I'll be honest, Grey Knights are a tough match-up for Daemons - Preferred Enemy is a hell of a powerful rule and Daemonbane is just sickening - but at the same time it's far from a foregone conclusion.

The fact that Dreadknights don't have a daemonbane force weapon by default anymore makes things a lot easier, and you can do a lot with malefic daemonology to swing maelstrom games your way by summoning lil' disposable units.

Also, if people have trouble with daemons, if they use khorne, consider suggesting that they try the same army as khorne daemonkin; sometimes armies suit the latter better than the former.

Regardless, there are plenty of things daemons can do to mess with grey knights. Heavy close-combat walkers with 3++ or even 2++ saves is quite feasible, as are (if you really want to be mean) even superheavy walkers with the same.

bibotot wrote:
I play Grey Knights. Daemon players refuse to play with me. That, or they are just messing around and expecting to get butchered from the outset. Honestly, it's not fun when your opponent is not playing his best. Everyone I play with who does not have an army list before going to the game puts a Cullexus Assassin in their army, or a bunch of Grav weapons knowing my army will have lots of Psykers and 2+ armor save. I can't force people to make army list before going to store because this is just pickup games with whoever you end up with.

Is this how the Warhammer 40k community is heading towards even in regular games? Is the balance issue really that pathetic? Does anyone here experience the same thing?

Bring a broken list and you'll change the meta. No one is going to line up to lose against you. Knowing you're a possible opponent influences their choices. Pretty natural. and if you enjoy such chess games, you will moderate your list to be more flexible and thus disallow their counters from being as impactful...

And the wheel turns.

EDIT fun fact: I was down to my fourth choice of army due to painting projects and i asked my (probable) top table opponent what we should bring (we're buddies and both pretty good). He said my Haemonculus Coven. i was like "Cool" and did it because he said he was bringing his Dark eldar too.

What does he do? Brings a hard counter for my army and a Stormlord. Lol. Still was a decent game but yeah... Can be a little annoying.