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Audustum wrote:

Bartali wrote:

Audustum wrote:

 Aetare wrote:
What's the strength on them?

Psilencers or Psycannons? It's 4 for Psilencers and 7 for Psycannons. With the changes to the Wound chart though I'm not sure that's huge.


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 TheMostWize wrote:
Dreadnoughts might be better than knights. Cheaper point wise with similar fire power

Yeah but Knights are 12" move still and can cast Purge Soul or Gate, which I don't think Dreads can. That's a big difference.

Nope, NDKs are now M8"

Yeah, my brain forgot to look at titles and just went "left-most box = move".

That said, I'm still not seeing why the Dread is preferable. I'd much have a Psilencer or Heavy Incinerator than most of his loadouts and with a Greatsword my Dreadknights are only about 20 points more than they were in 7th. Plus the Dreadknight gets a 5++, which I think only Custodes Dreadnoughts boast outside of HQ's.

I'll look more tonight but the Dreadknight seems better at a glance.

 Marmatag wrote:
Psilencers will only win out if you can make use of the D3 damage. If you can't make use of the D3 damage, they lose horribly.

And I would argue neither gun does very well against vehicles.

Sternguard with super charged combi plasma is still going to be way more effective than Psilencers, just make sure you have a way to reroll the 1s.

EDIT - I think we should set a baseline target though, and factor in what volume of shots we're throwing. Psilencers *are* better than they used to be in a big way.

Wouldn't those Sternguard also be way more expensive? Terminators are only paying 10 points per Psilencer. Just within the Grey Knight world, the 2 damage average on a Psilencer is much better than the 1 damage on a Psycannon.

We'd probably need 2 baselines, because the Psilencer is at a disadvantage for sure against a 1W model with no FNP due to overkill. A 2W model or a 1W with FNP changes things.

That's certainly fair.

I guess it boils down to what role you see these guys having in your army.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a heavy weapon simply left out of a squad altogether to save on points.

These primary role would be against low toughness, mediocre or bad save models with 2+ wounds.

What fits that description, that you would see with any regularity, that also wouldn't take cover?

 Marmatag wrote:

Audustum wrote:

Bartali wrote:

Audustum wrote:

 Aetare wrote:
What's the strength on them?

Psilencers or Psycannons? It's 4 for Psilencers and 7 for Psycannons. With the changes to the Wound chart though I'm not sure that's huge.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 TheMostWize wrote:
Dreadnoughts might be better than knights. Cheaper point wise with similar fire power

Yeah but Knights are 12" move still and can cast Purge Soul or Gate, which I don't think Dreads can. That's a big difference.

Nope, NDKs are now M8"

Yeah, my brain forgot to look at titles and just went "left-most box = move".

That said, I'm still not seeing why the Dread is preferable. I'd much have a Psilencer or Heavy Incinerator than most of his loadouts and with a Greatsword my Dreadknights are only about 20 points more than they were in 7th. Plus the Dreadknight gets a 5++, which I think only Custodes Dreadnoughts boast outside of HQ's.

I'll look more tonight but the Dreadknight seems better at a glance.

 Marmatag wrote:
Psilencers will only win out if you can make use of the D3 damage. If you can't make use of the D3 damage, they lose horribly.

And I would argue neither gun does very well against vehicles.

Sternguard with super charged combi plasma is still going to be way more effective than Psilencers, just make sure you have a way to reroll the 1s.

EDIT - I think we should set a baseline target though, and factor in what volume of shots we're throwing. Psilencers *are* better than they used to be in a big way.

Wouldn't those Sternguard also be way more expensive? Terminators are only paying 10 points per Psilencer. Just within the Grey Knight world, the 2 damage average on a Psilencer is much better than the 1 damage on a Psycannon.

We'd probably need 2 baselines, because the Psilencer is at a disadvantage for sure against a 1W model with no FNP due to overkill. A 2W model or a 1W with FNP changes things.

That's certainly fair.

I guess it boils down to what role you see these guys having in your army.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a heavy weapon simply left out of a squad altogether to save on points.

These primary role would be against low toughness, mediocre or bad save models with 2+ wounds.

What fits that description, that you would see with any regularity, that also wouldn't take cover?

What I saw in 7th and what I might see in 8th aren't likely to be the same, but if I was just looking at possibilities we can also include things that rely more on invulnerable than armor, like Daemons. AP ratings don't matter much there. Kinda fits the fluff of GK too that their weapons might lack AP because they're opponent uses different save mechanics.

Outside of Daemons, some of the Ork units like Nobz and Warbikers are probably borderline. Krootox Riders and Kroot Shapers definitely fit the bill. Tyranid Warriors, Ripper Swarms, Lictors and Zoanthropes too. Actually, a lot of Tyranid seems to fit this as you can throw in Venomthropes and Sky-Slasher Swarms too. Aberrants from GSC seem to fit the bill as well.

I'm not so sure the bad save is a requirement.

Against terminators they would likely fair well with 2 wounds a piece right? Sure ap modifiers are likely going to be useful. I'm not a mathhammer guy dunno how to use the crazy formulas for anything but just at a glance they seem like they'll be effective. I guess game play will be the true way to see how they perform.

 TheMostWize wrote:
I'm not so sure the bad save is a requirement.

Against terminators they would likely fair well with 2 wounds a piece right? Sure ap modifiers are likely going to be useful. I'm not a mathhammer guy dunno how to use the crazy formulas for anything but just at a glance they seem like they'll be effective. I guess game play will be the true way to see how they perform.

Versus Terminators.

Assumptions:
Psilencer does not move, and can fire without penalty.
No negative modifiers to hit, like cover.

Hit chance: 4/6
Wound chance: 3/6
Bypass save chance: 1/6

So an expected 12 out of every 216 shots will get through (each individual shot has a 5.6% chance to strike a terminator to get a damage roll).

After that, you have a 4/6 (8/12) chance to flat out kill the terminator with the damage roll, and a 2/6 (4/12) chance to only deal 1 wound. So in an absolute best case scenario against the expected result, that's 10 terminators dead for 216 shots.

I wouldn't call this an anti-terminator weapon.



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Where this gun really shines is volume of fire against targets with high wounds and bad saves.

Consider against a Daemon with 5-7 toughness, who has only a 5++ save. (I can't imagine a daemon with lots of wounds having low toughness. If someone can think of the example, there's your primo-use-case for this gun).

In the same scenario, that's (4/6) [3+] hit, (2/6) wound [5+], and (4/6) [Bypass Save], for a net 32/216 unsaved wounds, with an expected 64 damage.

Damage per shot, that comes out to roughly 30%. That's not terrible, for a gun that is (a) cheap and (b) fires a lot of bullets.

This gun also does well against units like Guardsmen or Ork Boyz, the lower toughness and bad saves means the volume of fire is king. You don't need to mathhammer that to see it though. Although at that point you may as well just use a storm bolter.

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/334163-8th-edition-mathhammer/#entry4773303

Link has mathhammer done with both close combat and rangrd weapons against varying targets.

Falchions and Psilencers seem to come out on top. With Justicars taking Hammers.

That's interesting analysis as it compares the relative cost of the weapons.

That said, an already low point cost will skew that analysis. 20 points for a Psycannon and 10 points for a Psilencer. It's not enough of a cost delta to have a big impact in a 2000+ point game, and when you look at the data you'll see that the Psilencer is twice as cheap as the Psycannon. For an extra 10 points i'll take the weapon that can damage most toughness, and get through a 2+/3+ save with a little more ease.

Is there anywhere online to look at the changes to the GK units? or is it all just in the core book?

I've been out of the loop for a while after having 2 little dreadknights of my own.

The current leaks with the indexes is the only infor right now for any army. They will eventually release codexes for each aemy but they released 5 books with every army getting updates to set everything at a balance for the start of 8th.

I imagine once codexes start coming out we may see more customization options for some units.

Other than that just the book info that was all leaked should be avaialable in the news and rumors section here on dakla.

I ran my own figures when it comes to Psilencers and they broadly agree with previous mathhammer, however it should be noted that the mathammer linked above fails to take into account incinerators which are fairly viable. My figures are as follows:



This table only considers the amount points to inflict a wound when equipped to a strike, terminator or paladin squad. It is presumed all weapons are in range. Please note rather than give a figure for amount of wounds per point I have instead stipulated the amount of pts you will need to inflict a wound.

The conclusions I reached are broadly as follows:

1) Stormbolters do not compare well to any special weapons on wound per point basis. Presuming you are in range every special weapon be it a psilencer or a psycannon does more damage per point spent . You need to understand the stormbolters are not free (they costs 2 pts each) and that they are on intrinsically expensive platforms (Grey knights) so the increased damage of special weapons actually makes them more point efficient. This means from the perspective of range combat at least a purgation squad is significantly more point efficient in damage output then a strike squad]
2) Psilencers are great and should be the go to weapon at most cases. At only 2 pts more then a generic stormbolter they cause significantly more damage at range.
3) Psycannons are no longer the go to weapon and should probably be phased out in a competitive list. Psilencer have the same range and do more wounds per point only being eclipsed vs T8 or better targets which GK can cover well enough will Smite Spam.
4) Incinerators are the most damaging of the special weapons presuming you are in range to use them, topping the charts pretty much regardless of toughness and armour save for wound to point efficiency. This is account of their good base strength, large number of auto hitting attacks and av reduction. This is particularly notable on terminators/paladins where the increased cost of psilencers by comparison to incinerators widens the cost performance difference. The trade off of course is that there effective range is lacklustre compared to psilencers and does not marry well with teleporting/gating. One benefit of note is that incinerators are even better vs flyers since they they auto hit them too.

My view is that most GK should be rocking psilencers where possible but the odd incinerator wont go amiss. Any units using jump packs or transports may wish to consider incinerators over psilencers since they are the optimal choice once you get into range and provide decent AA too. For example if I were to field a few units of strikes/termies, a purgation squad, a interceptor squad and some paladins in a raider I would probably be running psilencers on the strikes, terminators and purgation squad and incinerators on the interceptor and paladins.

Very well written Jiro and thanks for providing numbers to back up your claims.

I completely forgot about smite when trying to deal with high T models. I had been considering putting an incinerator on interceptors the thing that hurts is the 9" requirement. Can't lay it down when landing.

I will still likely run Psilencers in my Paladins for the versatility of the unit. When targets aren't in range due to being wiped out or what have you.

 TheMostWize wrote:
Very well written Jiro and thanks for providing numbers to back up your claims.

I completely forgot about smite when trying to deal with high T models. I had been considering putting an incinerator on interceptors the thing that hurts is the 9" requirement. Can't lay it down when landing.

I will still likely run Psilencers in my Paladins for the versatility of the unit. When targets aren't in range due to being wiped out or what have you.

Sounds like a plan. Incinerators are nice but their range can present an issue and does not work well if you need to kite to avoid your opponent which has long been a staple for GK when dealing with certain armies.

For those unfamiliar with GK and kiting, GK are a small elite army who can ill afford to trade blows evenly due to their cost of their units. The are good at all ranges but do not excel particularly at any of them (to be honest there ranged dps in 7th was not great but it was true of 5th and it has notably improved with 8th to make this statement not entirely disingenuous). Accordingly GK armies will fight in very different ways depending on their enemy. Against shooty armies (such as the Tau) they will seek to close them down and force them into combat. By contrast against assault armies (such as Orks) GK will kite, fleeing while thinning down the enemy sufficiently that the inevitable close combat will hopefully be turned in their favor.

In view of the need to remain flexible I would definitely run psilencers as standard for units that have need to be flexible since they are effective in more roles. One positive aspect in favour of incinerators is that with smite becoming an important element of GK's ranged damage output is and the fact stormbolters are rapid fire the new sweet spot for shooting has become 12 inches. GK players will now want to get within 12" where possible to dish out the pain. In light of this my view is that if you are moving to within 12 inches of an enemy, 4 more inches is not that much more of an ask.

Very true. Was thinking of running a 10 man Paladins squad with 4 psilencers combat squaded to give a pseudo heavy weapon squad for closing ranged targets.

That being said the idea of 4 incinerators might work as well. Probably end up magnetizing those weapons for easy swaps.

So then the question now is do you feel that flachions are superior to halberds. I see how hammers are better on justicars since now they swing at the same speed and since especially in Paladins the paragon is a 2+ naturally adding +1 to rolls isn't a huge deal for the extra damage.

Have any additional mathhammer for melee or do you mind doing some as well to bounce off the previously linked spreadsheet?

Wait, we pay for storm bolters now?

Yea you pay for everything a model comes with. Admittedly the system is a little odd but I guess it makes sense. When you look at model cost it literally only includes the model and no extras. So you have to pay for a units base wargear

I was just pointing out land raiders and the costs are crazy now. A standard raider comes in at. 356pts. A crusader comes in at 287.

Do we have the option to simply not take the storm bolter?

No. It is still standard equipment.

Marmatag wrote:Wait, we pay for storm bolters now?

Yes we do. The new point mechanic provides a base cost for a unit minus the weapons it has equipped for which you refer to the appropriate weapon cost table. Storm bolters are 2 pts a piece on the table which adds up quickly and is why psilencers, at 4pts each, seem like a steal.

TheMostWize wrote:Very true. Was thinking of running a 10 man Paladins squad with 4 psilencers combat squaded to give a pseudo heavy weapon squad for closing ranged targets.

That being said the idea of 4 incinerators might work as well. Probably end up magnetizing those weapons for easy swaps.

So then the question now is do you feel that flachions are superior to halberds. I see how hammers are better on justicars since now they swing at the same speed and since especially in Paladins the paragon is a 2+ naturally adding +1 to rolls isn't a huge deal for the extra damage.

Have any additional mathhammer for melee or do you mind doing some as well to bounce off the previously linked spreadsheet?

Not as yet but will do soon. I think I will limit it to just the strikes, termies and paladins and their respective sergeants since that provides a broad enough scope to draw conclusions. I might also consider dreadknights too (have you to consider merits of guns etc) and consider merits of transports.

My prediction is that for standard power armoured units such as strikes, interceptors etc that spending anything on cc weapons, falchions included, except for on sergeant equivalents wont be cost effective due to their only having 1 base attack and you would be better off taking one of the free options but as the base cost of the unit rises the benefit of the additional attack may become substantial enough that it could justify the increased outlay. I will consider the matter in depth and post again when possible.

Are psilencers 4 points for a terminator or paladin? or is that for PAGK only?

They are not 4 points for terminators. They are 10. But I'm not sure we are supposed to be listing point values for specific items.

 TheMostWize wrote:
They are not 4 points for terminators. They are 10. But I'm not sure we are supposed to be listing point values for specific items.

I think it's okay if the information is freely accessible on the web, right?

It's hard to judge if the 8 points would be worth it because we don't know how much we've got to spend in a matched play game.

4 Psilencers in a squad of 10 paladins is low relative to their overall cost. it's not like GK are overflowing with options.

Perhaps but old codexes were also freely avaliable and I think it was still an issue.

Either way no harm done.

I believe it has been noted that match play is expected to run at 2k.