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 greyknight12 wrote:
I have a strong feeling that “doing it right” involves playing your GK as allies to AM. Otherwise tournament results don’t support there being any good way to play the army.

I've been suspecting that for a while. I think that they wanted to make GK a "not just marines" codex again like it was back in the DH days, but they didn't want to reprint scions and inquisition a bunch of times, so they just made it GK units. That still doesn't handwave away why they made PAGK practically identical units that take up different FOC slots.

I want to hear someone admit it though.

As a new GK player I tried using a Draigo bubble with my troops and it turned out pretty well. It might be that we misplayed the rules but when my opponent charged my strike force (4 stormbolters + 1 psilencer) he pretty much disintegrated due to the reroll almost doubling the amount of hits I got. According to my math (please correct me if I'm wrong) but I get about 80% more 6's with Draigo's reroll ability.

I think for my next game I'm going to make sure that I make Draigo's aura 12" for 3 turns (and burn all of my CPs) just because all of those rerolls can mean so much.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
almost doubling the amount of hits I got. According to my math (please correct me if I'm wrong) but I get about 80% more 6's with Draigo's reroll ability.

I think for my next game I'm going to make sure that I make Draigo's aura 12" for 3 turns (and burn all of my CPs) just because all of those rerolls can mean so much.

1/6 Chance of hitting in overwatch = 16.667%

With reroll: 1/6 + ((1 - 1/6)/6) = 30.556%

30.556/16.667= 1.8333; so you actually hit 83.333% more. On average. Yeah, rerolls are just The Best, which is why it's probably pretty good that we don't get as many of them in this edition for power balancing reasons. Rerolling only 1s is a little more restrained.

As for expanding Draigo's aura, how many more units will that cover for you? Pure GK don't have so many units that you can afford to cluster on one side of the board for most of the game. I like to save some CPs for the psilenser buffs or rerolling an important psychic power or something.

What a joke. What an absolute joke.

Please teach me the right way to play Grey Knights that includes not actually playing Grey Knights.

Would you care to elucidate your "joke"? If you don't have anything to add to the discussion then why are you posting?

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
Would you care to elucidate your "joke"? If you don't have anything to add to the discussion then why are you posting?

He's not talking about you. On the last page a response from Reecius of Frontline Gaming was posted essentially saying that relying on Smite for GK was 'doing it wrong', so we shouldn't be worried about the upcoming nerf.

It is a joke, just not the Ha Ha kind.

Further to the discussion I'm not sure why people consider baby smite to be a non-issue. On average, regular D3 smite does 2 mortal wounds to a target (ignoring the D6 result). Our smite does one. Range is not an issue as GK want to be in rapid fire/charge range all the time anyway.

That's still pretty much 50% of the effectiveness of regular smite by my reckoning. On every unit in the army it is not something to be scoffed at, and certainly not 'doing it wrong'.

Thanks for the explanation.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So how does Reecius play GK? Or at least, what is he proposing regarding GK and smiting?

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
Thanks for the explanation.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So how does Reecius play GK? Or at least, what is he proposing regarding GK and smiting?

FLG are part of the playtesting group which GW use for new rules. There is currently a beta test rule put out by GW as an attempt to control the smite spam in other armies, whereby each attempted cast of smite beyond the first incurs a further -1 modifier to the psychic test, and the effect is cumulative. It will probably have the intended effect on smite spam (kinda), but for armies like GK where we have no choice but to take a whole heap of psykers, its just a straight up nerf.

I know about the Beta rule. I'm asking what does Reecius suggest that we do about the nerf? I know he said that it doesn't hurt GK players because GK players shouldn't be dependent on smite. What was the basis for his opinion and what does he suggest that we do to overcome this nerf (if anything)?

BTW where did his statement originally come from? Maybe I should look at that thread for answers to my question.

It was from the LVO thread: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/60/733325.page#9779219

Looks like he responded to my question from the other day:

 Reecius wrote:

Most successful, competitive GK players use lots of Strikes, sometimes Dreadknight Grand Masters and Interceptors but not always, moderate character support, and deep strike in using things like Astra Aim and Psilencers to lay down a boatload of multi-damage firepower. Same goes with their Devastator squad (the name of which escapes me).

If you play them with a detachment of say, Astra Militarum to compliment them, they work very well together. Playing pure GK is very challenging but that is not because they aren't good, just because they (like most elite armies) lack some of the essential tools you need to succeed in the hyper-aggressive 8th ed competitive meta. You have to be able to screen effectively, and elite armies by their nature aren;t good at that unless they have a hyper-durable unit like Bullgryn, or some Nurgle units that can take a vicious punch.

Lacking that, you are just waiting to get alpha struck out of a tournament. That is why GK struggle and why they can be tough to play pure in a competitive setting.

They have amazing units and elements to them, but their 1 damage smite is certainly not a cornerstone of their competitive strategy. Their other powers are better by a mile. The baby smite is something you do when you don't have anything else to do, not something you rely on to win games.

It's the answer I figured it would be. I don't imagine that makes a whole lot of other people happy though.

Hahaha...

Literally: 'play them with Astra Militarum' was his answer to doing it right.

That's so insulting.

How about not nerfing them and fixing the bloated points costs?

Edit: Also, if by his own admission baby smite is such a non-issue, there should be no harm in omitting Grey Knights from the beta rule? Again I fail to rationalise his thought process: one one hand he is saying that GK are weak, while his other hand is justifying a nerf that will apply to them across the board. He's delusional...

So he basically avoided the question.

Can't trust him further than I can throw him.

He is right on 1 aspect- GKs do need a cheap chaff unit of some sort or some other way to soak up an alpha strike at a reasonable cost.

I agree with you. I'm a mono codex player and want to be able to have a viable competitive army.

 daedalus wrote:
It was from the LVO thread: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/60/733325.page#9779219

Looks like he responded to my question from the other day:

 Reecius wrote:

Most successful, competitive GK players use lots of Strikes, sometimes Dreadknight Grand Masters and Interceptors but not always, moderate character support, and deep strike in using things like Astra Aim and Psilencers to lay down a boatload of multi-damage firepower. Same goes with their Devastator squad (the name of which escapes me).

If you play them with a detachment of say, Astra Militarum to compliment them, they work very well together. Playing pure GK is very challenging but that is not because they aren't good, just because they (like most elite armies) lack some of the essential tools you need to succeed in the hyper-aggressive 8th ed competitive meta. You have to be able to screen effectively, and elite armies by their nature aren;t good at that unless they have a hyper-durable unit like Bullgryn, or some Nurgle units that can take a vicious punch.

Lacking that, you are just waiting to get alpha struck out of a tournament. That is why GK struggle and why they can be tough to play pure in a competitive setting.

They have amazing units and elements to them, but their 1 damage smite is certainly not a cornerstone of their competitive strategy. Their other powers are better by a mile. The baby smite is something you do when you don't have anything else to do, not something you rely on to win games.

It's the answer I figured it would be. I don't imagine that makes a whole lot of other people happy though.

Because it's a bs answer.

(a) If you're making it harder to cast smite, the restriction of GK smite is wholly unfair. GK smite was set to 1 wound in a time when you could easily cast as many smites as you wanted. Now that there is a mechanism to prevent this, there is no logical reason for GK to have a restricted smite.

(b) GK are complimented well by AM, but it's EQUALLY ACCURATE to say that GK have no place in an AM list, and pure AM lists are better than GK + AM. They are not adding value, when you start doing analysis and putting together a competitive list. So to say that GK competitive mechanism is to be a drag on a tuned AM list, so therefore GK are viable, is wholly disingenuous.

(c) Reecius seems to take the stance that GK should not be able to function as a standalone army. This is always a tacitly inserted in any GK balance discussion by people who don't seem to understand that an army should be able to stand on its own in some degree. What will we do when the ITC format, or 40k format, evolves to restrict souping, as it should? On this note, the best Tyranid lists pre-codex were heavily including Imperial Guard. That is absolutely bs. And the same thing is happening here with GK, it's just more acceptable because GK are human, too? It's not good balance for every bad army to use AM as a crutch, because AM is wholly overpowered.

Of course this is nothing new, and also probably represents GW's feeling on the topic as well.

Anyone want to buy some Grey Knights?

 Marmatag wrote:
Because it's a bs answer.

I mean, it is and it isn't. From a practical point of view, it's the best answer you're going to get in an unofficial / short term, and it would probably take fewer IG assets to make work than you'd think. I keep saying that a 3rd ed Daemonhunters style list would probably actually be pretty competitive now, or at least, viable. I might actually have time for a game this weekend. Maybe I'll give it a shot.

The problem is that this kind of attitude isn't coming from me or any other nobody. It's coming from someone who actually has a line of communication with GW. I won't say that he or any other individual has the chance to change this kind of stuff, but I'm willing to guess there's some level of influence there that could do something.

So I guess I'll agree that it's a total bs answer from a "how it should be" point of view, but it's quickly working out to be the "how it is" answer.

 daedalus wrote:


So I guess I'll agree that it's a total bs answer from a "how it should be" point of view, but it's quickly working out to be the "how it is" answer.

GW put these Beta rules out so we could take a look at "how it could be". If one of the organisations which does rule testing for GW is resigned to 'how it is', what hope is there for change?

But that's silly, first it's something everyone obviously knows - "if your army sucks right now play another one" isn't exactly groundbreaking and second, that's only "how it is" right now because the math just doesn't work out.

Any number of numerical changes, from lowering point costs to increasing unit durability, could balance things. If they want to get fancier maybe allow Santic powers to be cast twice per turn or something.

Anyway I wouldn't worry about what Reecius or any other playtester says, they don't seem to actually have any real influence, just wait to see if the constant rules update process GW promised actually delivers on balance improvements.

He does have influence. He runs the LVO, one of the biggest gaming conventions in the US. The results from the LVO also could be an influence on GWs rule makers.

The biggest favor they could do GK is to revamp how they determine what faction is represented. Rather than just looking at the Warlord they should look at the narrowest level word that all of the models in an army have in common

I'm going to play devil's advocate for a second. There's some validity to Reece's side of the debate:

It might be counter-intuitive, but smite is actually the lowest portion of a GK army damage output (unless you're weird and run Purifiers or Crowe... then you have reason to be mad!). So think of Smite as a cherry-on-top of the damage output of your Shooting & Fight phases. I ran the numbers, estimated against various toughness levels and weighted towards what a GK marine is inclined to shoot/fight.

Before beta-smite, Smite on a 4+ (+1 for pure-GK detachment) is a reliable 1 Mortal Wound x 92% chance to roll a 4+ = 0.92 Damage per unit.
Averages show the damage breakdown of a GK Marine (w/ rapid-fire SB & Falchions) is about 0.39 (Shooting) & 0.56 (Fight) per turn. So multiply those values by five for a 5-man strike/interceptor squad. That's roughly 1.95 (Shooting) & 2.8 (Fight) per turn.

So the total breakdown is 0.92(Psychic) -->1.95 (Shooting) -->2.8 (Fight).
These estimates ignore force multiplier auras (Draigo, GM, Chaplain, Ancient), which would increase Shooting & Fight output even further.

Here you see Smite is about 16% of our total damage output in a single turn. The beta-smite rules would hurt that portion, but luckily it's the smallest chunk of our damage.

No one misunderstands that, the point is that a) because the minor smite is pre-nerfed it clearly doesn't need to be affected by the real smite "fix" and b) an army which is struggling to be competitive really shouldn't be burdened with any kind of reduction in ability.

Also, you'll find that the smite damage percentage grows dramatically based on the durability of the target. For example attacking something like a humble Rhino equivalent T7, 3+ save then Smite does more damage than the stormbolters.

Nairul wrote:
I'm going to play devil's advocate for a second. There's some validity to Reece's side of the debate:

It might be counter-intuitive, but smite is actually the lowest portion of a GK army damage output (unless you're weird and run Purifiers or Crowe... then you have reason to be mad!). So think of Smite as a cherry-on-top of the damage output of your Shooting & Fight phases. I ran the numbers, estimated against various toughness levels and weighted towards what a GK marine is inclined to shoot/fight.

Before beta-smite, Smite on a 4+ (+1 for pure-GK detachment) is a reliable 1 Mortal Wound x 92% chance to roll a 4+ = 0.92 Damage per unit.
Averages show the damage breakdown of a GK Marine (w/ rapid-fire SB & Falchions) is about 0.39 (Shooting) & 0.56 (Fight) per turn. So multiply those values by five for a 5-man strike/interceptor squad. That's roughly 1.95 (Shooting) & 2.8 (Fight) per turn.

So the total breakdown is 0.92(Psychic) -->1.95 (Shooting) -->2.8 (Fight).
These estimates ignore force multiplier auras (Draigo, GM, Chaplain, Ancient), which would increase Shooting & Fight output even further.

Here you see Smite is about 16% of our total damage output in a single turn. The beta-smite rules would hurt that portion, but luckily it's the smallest chunk of our damage.

The following was incorrect, I thought rites of banishment were rolled on 1d6 like some other mini-smites, please ignore

It's too bad that GKs are so bloated. Even against chaos they don't really get much done. re-rolling wounds on daemons is fine, but I wouldn't want to tie up GKs in CC with almost any daemon unit due to the low attack #s, and the fact that the AP on the force weapons (weapons presumably taken for their effectiveness vs daemons...) is useless against the invul save that daemons predominantly use. The boys in Grey could really use some love...


P.S. if anyone has any good uses for GK in an AM army, I'd love to hear them! I want a reason to bring them for some more serious games, but right now they're just for super casual. Unfortunately, hate the GMNDK model and don't have the skills to do a conversion I'd be proud of. Any compelling units better than what my vanilla AM could take?

 Commissar_Rex wrote:
I'm not sure I see where that math is coming from. Before beta smite rules we have a 50% chance/squad to hit that smite... not sure where 92% is coming from?

Smite, as a psyker power, is cast on 2d6 with a target number (abbreviated TN) of 5. Grey Knights have a bonus to their roll of +1, setting our TN at 4.
There are three total results on a 2d6 roll that fail to generate a 4 (1,1; 2,1; 1,2) and thirty-three results that generate a 4 or higher of the 36 possible results 2d6 can generate. 33/36 = 11/12 = 91.6(repeating)% or roughly 92%

I'm more curious how you ended up at 50%

ryzouken wrote:

 Commissar_Rex wrote:
I'm not sure I see where that math is coming from. Before beta smite rules we have a 50% chance/squad to hit that smite... not sure where 92% is coming from?

Smite, as a psyker power, is cast on 2d6 with a target number (abbreviated TN) of 5. Grey Knights have a bonus to their roll of +1, setting our TN at 4.
There are three total results on a 2d6 roll that fail to generate a 4 (1,1; 2,1; 1,2) and thirty-three results that generate a 4 or higher of the 36 possible results 2d6 can generate. 33/36 = 11/12 = 91.6(repeating)% or roughly 92%

I'm more curious how you ended up at 50%

I guess I don't read so good. I thought the rites of banishment was cast on 1d6 like some other mini-smite units (astropaths, brimstones, etc). Sorry!

Is there a distinction between Smite and named spells like Purifying Flame (or the Eldar warlock spell?) for the beta rule or would the smite restriction still apply to those spells even though they are different names? Seems it would be easy enough for GW to say Smite as in non-modified specifically the Smite named spell versus the other versions which are typically lower damage?

the cosmic serpent wrote:
Is there a distinction between Smite and named spells like Purifying Flame (or the Eldar warlock spell?) for the beta rule or would the smite restriction still apply to those spells even though they are different names?

There is not. Destructor and similar abilities refer to the act of casting smite when delineating what modifications are made. Thus, when a warlock casts destructor, they're casting smite.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
So he basically avoided the question.

Can't trust him further than I can throw him.

Well, look at the source. This is the same guy that said some armies were intentionally designed to be bad in 8th because he didn't like them in 7th.

Reecius absolutely has influence. Do you think it's a coincidence that he loves Astra Militarum and they got a phenomenal codex?

It's pretty obvious we didn't have a fan like that among the play testers.

 DarknessEternal wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
So he basically avoided the question.

Can't trust him further than I can throw him.

Well, look at the source. This is the same guy that said some armies were intentionally designed to be bad in 8th because he didn't like them in 7th.

You spout crap like that around without even a source.

This has been going on all 8th edition goddammit, I want a source. Or better yet, stop bashing Reece and FLG in general.

 Fueli wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:
So he basically avoided the question.

Can't trust him further than I can throw him.

Well, look at the source. This is the same guy that said some armies were intentionally designed to be bad in 8th because he didn't like them in 7th.

You spout crap like that around without even a source.

This has been going on all 8th edition goddammit, I want a source. Or better yet, stop bashing Reece and FLG in general.

He did say something to that effect though. I'll have to find the source on my next break (or hopefully someone else does it) but this did happen.

Yes, the FLG crew has been quite open and vocal about their dislike of Grey Knight and Tau armies. There is no question on that regard. Their recent statement on how GK players aren’t playing right if they use Smite really does need to be backed up by them on what they think the right way to play GK is, other than play AM. Telling GK players to play AM instead just causes the FLG crew to lose all credibility on their being even remotely unbiased. That was not only a useless statement, it was an insult to their fan base.

SJ