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So something really weird just happened in my hobby store. I walked in, and confessed to the store manager that I was ditching my GK squads from my list, because they are less then stellar performers in my most recent games. I play a AM/GK soup mix, of GK Terminator squads and AM/Scion infantry support.

Anyway, I told him I wanted to buy Custodes because they looked awesome and I heard they are pretty awesome mixing with Guard. That's when it happened.

He basically called me out for wanting to play a cheese list, "like a dill weed". He also stated that no one likes Custodes players, and I'm wrong for liking them. "Every loser wants to play SCs on Bikes". He then told me that he could kick anyone's ass with GK, because they are super badass right now. I argued this and said they are overpriced, and hampering my ability to be effective in matched play. The smite never comes off, their weapons are pitiful, and their HQ is a joke.

Am I wrong, are GK's still viable? Their play style required their DS ability, which has been gimped, and they all smite on 5+. Am I not doing it right?

Thanks.

roflmao. Well nobody has claimed store managers are always a) correct b) particularly good marketing guy.

Apart from him being so out of touch about power level he's HORRIBLE sales person. Apart from not insulting customers he basically missed the fact here you are considering NEW ARMY. Rather than insulting you he should be aiming to get you buy models.

Lol. If he's owner that store is likely bust soon. If he's just hireling he'll get kicked out soon.

I can't stop laughing.

Grand master nemesis dreadknights and a few other GK units are actually viable, but most of GK issues are power armour issues, paying too many points for stats that don't mean what they used too.
GK then just pay more points for situational things. Pure GK is dead, as an add in they are still seing tournament play but shield captain on dawn eagle supreme comand detachment is about as predictable as the sunrise for an guard ally.

No.. they are not cheesy or op or anything like that, they DO take a different mindset when facing them, b.c you know its a different army... who would have thought right? A new army needs different tactics to fight.

Anyways, he is a an donkey-cave.

Custodes DO see tournament play.

Grey knights are gak.

That store owner is gak.

Thse are facts.

As a GK player I can say with some surity-

Are the GK dead as an army? No.

Are they competitive as a solo army? Again, No.

Is your store manager an idiot for confronting a customer in the way described? I'd have to give that one a big Yes.

you would think a half decent store manager would say "yeah they really look cool and allow you to play a different style, you should definitely buy some from me and while you are looking at those have you also considered x,y and z units/books/data cards I have available"

You'd be surprised at just how bad a store manager can be.

pm713 wrote:
You'd be surprised at just how bad a store manager can be.

sadly I'm not... half the time I go into a GW or local store I find myself saying "I went into the wrong business I could manage this place 10x better than any local store". Its why I don't doubt his story at all I've seen it happen so many time but it still baffles me when it happens.

I love my grey Knights but stopped playing them because I can’t justify 700 points of subpar units in my list because of the beta ally rules.

I used to just do maybe 3 strike squads and 2-3 inquisitors, but now I have to throw in 2 dreadknight grand masters because their other characters are trash. I just leave my guys on the shelf now tbh.

Asmodios wrote:

pm713 wrote:
You'd be surprised at just how bad a store manager can be.

sadly I'm not... half the time I go into a GW or local store I find myself saying "I went into the wrong business I could manage this place 10x better than any local store". Its why I don't doubt his story at all I've seen it happen so many time but it still baffles me when it happens.

Nah, I'm sure you went into the right business. Even run well, a game store isn't making anyone rich.

1. Your store manager is a total douchebag. I would not stand for being treated this way. Hopefully there is another shop.

2. Grey Knights are abject garbage. As a competitive Tyranids player I have faced every flavor of marines. I have also run Grey Knights in competitive events. I can with authority say that they are beyond garbage, both based on aggregate tournament data, and very specific game experience. I can write a dissertation on why Grey Knights are bad.

3. Grey Knights are not an army that will get better in 8th edition. They are fundamentally flawed from the ground up. To make this faction competitive would either require the most absurd price cut imaginable or a complete redesign, including brand new psychic powers, new HQs, troops, heavies, etc.

4. Custodes are really stupid. Custode Bike Captains are the new cheese and are in every competitive imperium list. They're ridiculously underpriced for what they do and how durable they are. It is actually really dumb they should be so durable. It's like if you could bring multiple copies of Celestine, essentially, in every list. In fact they're better than her, flat out. They ARE cheese.

So yeah. You are:

(a) Correct in your realization that GK are terrible.

(b) Correct in that Custodes would be a great supplement for your gunline armies.

(c) Being mistreated by your store manager.

I don't know if they are complete garbage. I found psilencers to be stupidly deadly. I mean, its a weapon with a high RoF where every wound causes D3 damage. And it can be spammed. That is scat laser levels of stupid.

Plasma is spammed and has flat 2 damage which is better than d3.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
I don't know if they are complete garbage. I found psilencers to be stupidly deadly. I mean, its a weapon with a high RoF where every wound causes D3 damage. And it can be spammed. That is scat laser levels of stupid.

When they hit on 2s, wound most infantry on 2s, have 36” range and can be taken on every troop model for 27 pts then you’ll be entitled to make that absurd and shockingly ignorant claim.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
To the OP: GK are the worst standalone army in the game, and are the worst they have been in 8th edition.

 greyknight12 wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
I don't know if they are complete garbage. I found psilencers to be stupidly deadly. I mean, its a weapon with a high RoF where every wound causes D3 damage. And it can be spammed. That is scat laser levels of stupid.

When they hit on 2s, wound most infantry on 2s, have 36” range and can be taken on every troop model for 27 pts then you’ll be entitled to make that absurd and shockingly ignorant claim.

A basic psilencer has 6 shots, each shot dealing D3 damage and can be buffed with psy rounds. Pretty sure purgation squads can load up on them, resulting in a lot of multidamage shots. How is that not good? The grey knights probably have more D3 damage shots available than any other army. In melee their infantry have D3 damage attacks too.

Scat lasers were hated because they could strip hull points with their high rate of fire, decent strength, were just as effective against infantry, and could be spammed.
Psilencers have lower strength, but they have a higher rate of fire, each shot deals multiple damage, are effective against infantry, and they could be spammed. The lack of AP could be off set with psy bolts with also increases increases strength by 1.
How is that not comparable?

So the cliff's note version is: people are stupid.

I quite like psilencers too, but they don't bandaid a broken army. GK should only be taken in moderation, and never on an empty stomach: have some soup with it.

 grouchoben wrote:
I quite like psilencers too, but they don't bandaid a broken army. GK should only be taken in moderation, and never on an empty stomach: have some soup with it.

Yeah, the fact that they only appear to have 1 good ranged weapon option that's taken to the exclusion of anything else isn't a good indicator of the army's health.
It also appears to be the sort of army where if you don't get first turn to get that alpha strike in you're screwed. Which again, isn't healthy.

Saying the army is complete garbage isn't accurate though, as that would imply there are no good things about the army. And there are; everyone can smite and D3 damage sources are plentiful.

Is everyone taking crazy pills? What is the ideal use case for psilencers, in your mind?

 Marmatag wrote:
Is everyone taking crazy pills? What is the ideal use case for psilencers, in your mind?

Give them to purgation squads, hide them behind terrain and spam astral sight.
A 5 man squad can unload 24 shots in a single turn with no fear of counter fire. Which is pretty good. And by good I mean cheesy as hell.
Especially if you opponent has no psi defense.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Is everyone taking crazy pills? What is the ideal use case for psilencers, in your mind?

Give them to purgation squads, hide them behind terrain and spam astral sight.
A 5 man squad can unload 24 shots in a single turn with no fear of counter fire. Which is pretty good. And by good I mean cheesy as hell.
Especially if you opponent has no psi defense.

Astral Aim doesn't make these guys good. It just gives them the ability to shoot something with their garbage guns.

24 shots for 113 points at strength 4, AP0, at 24" is not impressive. It is not.

There is no such thing as "psi defense" in this game.

Give me an ideal use case for them. What is the best unit to target with psilencers?

If you think this is cheesy, i cannot wait for you to encounter literally any other army in 40k. Your grey knights vs grey knights games must be riveting. One Custode bike captain will slaughter these fools effortlessly.

Grey Knights are possibly worse now than they were during the early half of 5th edition, back when they were far and away the worst army of that era (but their fluff was way cooler, so I lived with it). They're in a really terrible place right now.

 Marmatag wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Marmatag wrote:
Is everyone taking crazy pills? What is the ideal use case for psilencers, in your mind?

Give them to purgation squads, hide them behind terrain and spam astral sight.
A 5 man squad can unload 24 shots in a single turn with no fear of counter fire. Which is pretty good. And by good I mean cheesy as hell.
Especially if you opponent has no psi defense.

Astral Aim doesn't make these guys good. It just gives them the ability to shoot something with their garbage guns.

24 shots for 113 points at strength 4, AP0, at 24" is not impressive. It is not.

There is no such thing as "psi defense" in this game.

Give me an ideal use case for them. What is the best unit to target with psilencers?

If you think this is cheesy, i cannot wait for you to encounter literally any other army in 40k. Your grey knights vs grey knights games must be riveting. One Custode bike captain will slaughter these fools effortlessly.

You left out the D3 damage. You know what hates being shot by a deluge of D3 damage shots? Destroyers. Necron vehicles. Scarabs. Most infantry. You know, the things I field.
How is 24 shots at 24" for 113 points not good? In order to get 24 shots from a single unit I have to have either 12 warriors in 12" range for 144 points, or 10 tesla immortals at 24" for 170 points and hope for 6s. And I still can't shoot through walls, and I only deal 1 point of damage per wound.
I do not play Grey Knights. I play against Grey Knights. And yes, I know about other army's cheese. My necrons are quite capable of some bs too

From what I observed, Purgation squads with psilencer spam is deadly. Everything else in the army...eh, not really? I mean, if given a chance they can deal a lot of damage, but its easy to not give them a chance. Even purgations are only really usable because of Astral Aim, which allows them to avoid retaliation. So basically if you want to effectively play GK you have to hide in a box and shoot things with a wall hack. Which is...lame.
Its basically a curb stomp - either GK wins super hard, or they lose super hard, especially if they lose the psilencer carriers. Which is not good design.

No psy defense in the game? Then what does Deny the Witch do? You know, an ability that defends you from psychic powers

Grey Knights are not great, and can really only shine in friendly type matches.

As far as the manager goes, most guys who run game stores aren’t very astute at the finer points of retail and/or customer service. There are of course many hundreds of exceptions all across the world, but I have seen dozens of game stores go out of business over the years and I have been to a total of two that have thrived and remained operational for 10+ years. That dude sounds like he’ll be in the former category within a year or two.

No GW store manager would ever give you that shpiel. The store manager you're referring to must be a local hobby store, yeah? He's going to happily color his opinion and push you in a direction he feels is right. And here's the bottom line:

I bet for him, custodes sell just fine. But Grey Knights? Those models are sitting in his inventory, not moving. He'll try to push you towards Grey Knights so that he can get them out of his inventory so he can make room for other product that will sell.

Don't listen to that d-bag.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 grouchoben wrote:
I quite like psilencers too, but they don't bandaid a broken army. GK should only be taken in moderation, and never on an empty stomach: have some soup with it.

Yeah, the fact that they only appear to have 1 good ranged weapon option that's taken to the exclusion of anything else isn't a good indicator of the army's health.
It also appears to be the sort of army where if you don't get first turn to get that alpha strike in you're screwed. Which again, isn't healthy.

Saying the army is complete garbage isn't accurate though, as that would imply there are no good things about the army. And there are; everyone can smite and D3 damage sources are plentiful.

Hahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahaha.

Oh you were serious...

 Quickjager wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 grouchoben wrote:
I quite like psilencers too, but they don't bandaid a broken army. GK should only be taken in moderation, and never on an empty stomach: have some soup with it.

Yeah, the fact that they only appear to have 1 good ranged weapon option that's taken to the exclusion of anything else isn't a good indicator of the army's health.
It also appears to be the sort of army where if you don't get first turn to get that alpha strike in you're screwed. Which again, isn't healthy.

Saying the army is complete garbage isn't accurate though, as that would imply there are no good things about the army. And there are; everyone can smite and D3 damage sources are plentiful.

Hahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahaha.

Oh you were serious...

Explain how common access to mortal wounds and D3 damage is a bad thing, compared to every other army.
That's not to say its enough to call the army healthy, but that is a strong point they have going for them.

Of course, the flipside is that there's no reason to take any weapon but a psilencer. I mean, why take a psycannon? It has fewer shots, only deals 1 damage and costs 3x as much. Statistically speaking you can wreck more havoc with psilencers through sheer weight of fire. And that's not healthy. That's just poor design.

I don't think they're terrible, but I have to defer to players with more experience with them.

One problem I have with them is the built-in cost of the nemesis weapons and then trading the weapon out for a special without reducing the base model cost. It just makes the special weapons unattractive. And having the nemesis weapons steers you away from having proper shooting units, because you're paying for the damn things all the time.

Psybolts are killer. Strike Squads are a great unit.

210 points for 40 S5 AP1 shots from a Strike Squad who can get 2A each with pairs of Nemesis Falchions. The 2 CP is steep, but probably warranted. So that basically forces them to use guard to be able to use if often enough. Some people don't like that and that's ok.
152 for 5 Purgators w/ 4 Psycannons is 16 S8 AP2 (but only D1... and 2 CP).

Other things I like...

Teleporting dreadnoughts
Fight again on death dreadknight
Double jump Interceptors

But it's all very CP intensive. You run out fast.

You keep saying "access to D3 damage" like it means something. It's a strength 4 gun with 0 AP, 24" range, and is heavy. That flat out sucks my good sir.

And per point Grey Knights do not have efficient access to mortal wounds.