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That's great for you, want to hear how my all Deff Walker army won a game?

 koooaei wrote:
I think i've explained why i think Crowe is good. You need 2 hq. You're tight on pts. D6 smite is good. He costs a tiny bit more over a champion. I think he's a decent sidegrade. The fact that he has no ds and a 3" smite doesn't matter that much if you're running transports. I've been using a lr/stormraven and Crowe's done good enough.
I've basically run every hq other than Stern and a techmarine and i've listed the ones that i've used AND have seen being used with good results. Simple as that.

If that transport bit actually meant anything, Purifiers would not be terrible. At least for the points Purifiers do more for the points.

If you need a second HQ, you're using either Draigo or another Grandmaster Dreadknight. To say he's a sidegrade to Britherhood Champions is basically an insult to the Brotherhood Champion unit entry.


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 Quickjager wrote:
That's great for you, want to hear how my all Deff Walker army won a game?

He defended the 6th/7th edition Mutilator unit entry simply because he won a couple of games with it. Make of that as you will.

Sometimes the dice favor you, and that lone necron warrior manages to kill Abbaddon the despoiler. Doesn't mean Necron warriors are awesome assault units.

This isn't like Morgoth and wave serpents are balanced gak again is it? Where all contrary evidence points out how wrong they are, but they want to die on the hill.

 Quickjager wrote:
This isn't like Morgoth and wave serpents are balanced gak again is it? Where all contrary evidence points out how wrong they are, but they want to die on the hill.

Oh man I forgot about Morgoth! Do you think of we say Morgoth three times they'll appear? I kinda miss Morgoth's posts in a way as...

OH NO I DID IT

 koooaei wrote:
I think i've explained why i think Crowe is good. You need 2 hq. You're tight on pts. D6 smite is good. He costs a tiny bit more over a champion. I think he's a decent sidegrade. The fact that he has no ds and a 3" smite doesn't matter that much if you're running transports. I've been using a lr/stormraven and Crowe's done good enough.
I've basically run every hq other than Stern and a techmarine and i've listed the ones that i've used AND have seen being used with good results. Simple as that.

Not questioning the truth of the statment here, but rather being interested in the game play tips. How do you make a single stormraven survive long enough in a 2000pts game, so that it can deliver its pay load? Is there something like a more resilient Stormraven from FW, or something like that?

meleti wrote:

 raverrn wrote:

meleti wrote:
Maybe try to come off as a little less ragey just because someone has a higher opinion of a unit than you do? You can make a point about why you feel Crowe isn’t worth it without being a dick.

Maybe don't try and talk up what is objectively, mathematically an /awful/ unit.

Yeah, it’s much better to be an /awful/ person.

Just don’t be a dick. This isn’t difficult.

It's not being a dick, it's pointing out someone is wrong. If you can't handle that you shouldn't be using a public forum.

To be fair I did come down hard. I came down hard because I have never seen something more wrong about the GK codex in a while and I can't stand people anymore who tell me that X unit is good because it worked for me.

Crowe is an irredeemably bad unit, nothing can change that I wrote a post in the tactica thread on why he was bad I'll look for it.

Karol wrote:

 koooaei wrote:
I think i've explained why i think Crowe is good. You need 2 hq. You're tight on pts. D6 smite is good. He costs a tiny bit more over a champion. I think he's a decent sidegrade. The fact that he has no ds and a 3" smite doesn't matter that much if you're running transports. I've been using a lr/stormraven and Crowe's done good enough.
I've basically run every hq other than Stern and a techmarine and i've listed the ones that i've used AND have seen being used with good results. Simple as that.

Not questioning the truth of the statment here, but rather being interested in the game play tips. How do you make a single stormraven survive long enough in a 2000pts game, so that it can deliver its pay load? Is there something like a more resilient Stormraven from FW, or something like that?

I'm playing 1250-1500 pts games. Not sure you can actually guarantee a single vehicle's safety but at this point level they tend to survive long enough to make an impact. Higher pt games are much harder for gk for structural reasons. Firstly, magic doesn't scale in 8th edition and secondly, as you have noticed, you can't rely on a transport deathstar in higher pt games as it gets blown away more and more often before managing to do stuff.

In higher pt games you're basically forced to spread focus and use more ds strikers, dreadknights, razorbacks and stuff like that. So, i don't really have a good arguements for gk in larger games. On the other hand, they've been pretty good at 1250-1500 range for me and from the games i've witnessed.


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Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

He defended the 6th/7th edition Mutilator unit entry simply because he won a couple of games with it. Make of that as you will.

Nevertheless, the games have been won and mutilators were effective. Isn't it leagues ahead of your "worst unit in the game" statement? Worst units don't do something tactically useful better than other units can do. Once again, mutilators worked consistently better than obliterators in all 3 of those games.

Obliterators were mediocre in 6th/7th and still a better choice. For 15 points more, you got:
1. A consistent power fist
2. Not taking up an elite slot that can go to Termicide
3. A few good range weapons, granted lots of them were non-options

Slow and Purposeful on a 2 Wound model that's 55 points, WHILE it wants to be in melee, is the literal definition of bad.

 koooaei wrote:
2+/4++ and 5 wounds throwing D6 mw, some second cast, a bit of stormbolter fire and 6-7 wounds before saves vs t4 is really not bad for one of the cheapest avaliable gk hq.
And once again, you're fixating on some negative ideal you've imagined for some reason while there really is a lot of good stuff going on for gk.
Sure, if you adopt the easiest to understand simplistic raw killing power and pts effeciency ideology, stuff ain't great. But there is also a very important scoring and positioning aspect. You don't need to be more effective at killing and surviving to win games handilly. All you need is to get more vp and don't let your opponent grt ahead. And you can do it much easier by denying ground eith a mixed shooty/mellee army. And gk are pretty good at it.

I'm telling you what works. And you're trying to persuade me it's bad and i should feel bad because?..

2+/4++ is basic for GK.
5 Wounds is pretty stock for HQs in general.
D6 mortal wounds is nice... But only works when you're in melee, basically, and that requires him to survive a round of melee.

Against my standard mob of 30 Plaguebearers, buffed only by the mere presence of a Poxbringer and a Scrivener, he deals the following damage. (He has 5 attacks and rerolls 1s to hit, right?)



1.80 wounds.

In return, the now 28 Plaguebearers do...



2.16 wounds. Toss on any psychic power (Miasma of Pestilence to make Crowe miss more, Virulent Blessing to up the damage and wounding chances, a random Smite to eat some wounds) or a nearby Prince to reroll 1s, and it looks worse for him.

While Crowe will (probably) survive to shoot off a single Smite, that's a measly 2.33 more dead Plaguebearers, so if he lasts to fight three times and Smite once, he gets...

7.73 Plaguebearers. That's 54 points, about, and didn't even knock them below 20 to negate their -1 to-hit.

Admittedly, this is a 210 point unit, buffed by 145 points. So yes, it should do better. But it's still poor showing by Crowe.

You shouldn’t solo charge 30 Plaguebearers with a random GK character. Draigo would have similar results. Honestly charging a big horde of Plaguebearers shouldn’t really be a priority ever, they’re slow and best dealt with at range. Tar pitting in melee is the only way they actually manage to kill much of anything.

Crowe kind of sucks because what he does (assault chaff and craptastic 3” Smite) just isn’t too useful. He’s cheap but he’s also of low value. I’d just take GMDKs and let storm bolters clear chaff.

meleti wrote:
You shouldn’t solo charge 30 Plaguebearers with a random GK character. Draigo would have similar results. Honestly charging a big horde of Plaguebearers shouldn’t really be a priority ever, they’re slow and best dealt with at range. Tar pitting in melee is the only way they actually manage to kill much of anything.

Crowe kind of sucks because what he does (assault chaff and craptastic 3” Smite) just isn’t too useful. He’s cheap but he’s also of low value. I’d just take GMDKs and let storm bolters clear chaff.

7", with potential advance (with a +1" on the advance) and charge? That's slow now?

 JNAProductions wrote:

meleti wrote:
You shouldn’t solo charge 30 Plaguebearers with a random GK character. Draigo would have similar results. Honestly charging a big horde of Plaguebearers shouldn’t really be a priority ever, they’re slow and best dealt with at range. Tar pitting in melee is the only way they actually manage to kill much of anything.

Crowe kind of sucks because what he does (assault chaff and craptastic 3” Smite) just isn’t too useful. He’s cheap but he’s also of low value. I’d just take GMDKs and let storm bolters clear chaff.

7", with potential advance (with a +1" on the advance) and charge? That's slow now?

Yeah, I’d consider foot slogging infantry that actually move 5” and need a character aura to move 7” pretty slow. How are you advancing and charging with Plaguebearers, by the way? That’s not a rule I’m aware of.

The tree.

 JNAProductions wrote:
The tree.

i haven’t played against Gnarlmaws yet. It has to be down at the start of the turn, so ritualing it in for a surprise advance and charge isn’t a thing, but it’s definitely something to watch out for. Still, I wouldn’t call Plaguebearers anything but slow. You’re taking two different supporting units to get them something like an average 20” threat range with the limitation they have to start their turn near the tree.

It’s more than I thought they had, I’ll admit, but I’m still not convinced you should be just charging into he olde 90 Plaguebearers.

Grey Knight Fixes?

Completely new Psychic Power table
+1 leadership (super small boost, I know)
6+ ignores mortal wounds for all models
Full Smite for ALL HQ's.
+1 attack for all models.

perhaps a -1 point reduction for most infantry, -5 for terminators.

Anyways, here’s what I was going to suggest for GK as someone who likes the models a lot, but doesn’t play them since 3rd edition.

1. End smite restrictions for HQs.
2. At least two psychic disciplines, so adding the Librarius discipline at a minimum.
3. I really want a double move power since assault is important for GK. Granted GoI is solid, but double move is stronger.
4. Tougher models. Strike squads and MEQ in general are just super fragile right now. You could also just make them cheap enough that quantity becomes its own quality.

At which point I realized I’ve more or less recreated the Thousand Suns, so I gave up. All hail Tzeentch.

Sunny Side Up wrote:

meleti wrote:
All the changes I can think of just amount to making GK into something more like loyalist TS rules, so I guess my conclusion is to just go play TS instead, as they're an actually functional elite psyker army.

Not really. Thousand Sons are not competitive. Sure, a Supreme Command with Ahriman/Daemon Princes or two behind a Nurgle-Daemon Screen, maybe the odd pre-FAQ Tzaangor blob still hanging around, are competitive. But that's hardly a "Thousand Sons" army. It's just a few cherries from the book picked for a competitive Chaos-Soup variant.

A GK supreme command/Patrol with deep-striking Voldus throwing out a neat 3D6 psy-test vortex of doom on a unit with a big footprint in the middle of a Tau/Guilliman/Astra-Militarum castle probably is a neat thing an Imperial Soup can do in tournaments, but it's also not "a Grey Knight army".

If Grey Knight characters/HQ would get normal smite, people'd play them just like the TS supreme command. Hide three or four characters behind a cheap imperial screen to throw out smites from un-targetable characters.

From a pure gameplay perspective (though it probably doesn't make sense background-wise), it would probably be better if the normal GK (and TS) troops get the full smite, and not the characters, incentivising taking Strike Squads (or Rubric Marines), etc..

TS are absolutely competitive. Sure - they only show up with soup in tournaments but that's true of every imperial/chaos army.

Mmm okay

+1W, +1A cause I don't think it's gonna be that game breaking anyway.
A second psychic power table. Probably lesser spells that are meh but can be cast multiple times then greater spells that can only be cast once
A FnP against strictly perils. Either 5+ or 4+

With that I don't even think they need a points drop, maybe a points increase

I see no one has considered one of those tables that give special abilities as the turns advance. Give them a +1 turn bonus if they are actually fighting Chaos. It might be something to consider than just making units more powerful.

Skaorn wrote:
I see no one has considered one of those tables that give special abilities as the turns advance. Give them a +1 turn bonus if they are actually fighting Chaos. It might be something to consider than just making units more powerful.

I personally think they should, in terms of game rules, back off on "very good vs one faction" army abilities. You make Grey Knights super good against Chaos/Daemons, then they become an almost autowin vs those units, while losing all of their abilities vs anything else.

Instead, any fix for Grey Knights should focus on making them decent all around - small boons vs everything vs one big boon vs a single faction. What those boons would be, I have no idea, but strictly from a game design standpoint that should be the angle to go.

I have said this else where... And I'll say it again.

Please email the FAQ team. 40kfaq@gwplc.com

The more noise you make the more likely we will get a fix.

The Grey Knights should get something like the following,

Psychic Mastery: Grey Knight Psykers ignore the Psychic Focus rule and may cast a psychic power even if it has already been cast that turn. They may not however target the same friendly unit more than once with the same power in the same turn.

Lore of Titan: Grey Knight psykers with this rule may choose their psychic powers from any Psychic discipline available to any psyker with the Imperium key-word in addition to the Sanctic discipline.

Also, bring back some psychic defenses.

Hexagrammic Wards: Enemy psykers suffer -2 to all Psychic power rolls targeting this model/unit. Models with this rule may take Invulnerable saving throws vs Mortal Wounds.

The way I see it, each squad should get the Smite Lite but then an extra Power that they can cast unlimited. Give Strike Squads and Interceptor squads Warp Quake, Purgators get Astral Aim, etc. Then we can rework the Sanctic Discipline entirely so that it isn't janky.

I will say, though, one thing 7th did right was Psykers having several disciplines to choose from. Granted some powers were OP (Invisibility) and some entire branches were bad (Pyromancy), but there was a good amount of choice. We don't need THAT many back, but a few of the original tables and some of those Marine ones would be nice to have back, but modified of course.

kurhanik wrote:

Skaorn wrote:
I see no one has considered one of those tables that give special abilities as the turns advance. Give them a +1 turn bonus if they are actually fighting Chaos. It might be something to consider than just making units more powerful.

I personally think they should, in terms of game rules, back off on "very good vs one faction" army abilities. You make Grey Knights super good against Chaos/Daemons, then they become an almost autowin vs those units, while losing all of their abilities vs anything else.

Instead, any fix for Grey Knights should focus on making them decent all around - small boons vs everything vs one big boon vs a single faction. What those boons would be, I have no idea, but strictly from a game design standpoint that should be the angle to go.

What I mean is that when they fight Chaos they treat each turn on the bonus chart as a turn higher. So if they fight Chaos, on turn 1 they would get the bonus of turn 1 and turn 2 instead of the basic turn 1 bonus against other foes.

I'd be curious what would happen if the one cast per power rule gained an exception for Brotherhood of Psyker units. Getting mass access to Sanctuary, Hammerhand, and Gates seems like it would go a long way towards making GKs relevant with some point adjustments.

I would greatly expand their psychic arsenal with all of the loyalist disciplines, and remove "rites of banishment" from their characters.

I would also expand their wargear, and adjust their stratagems. For instance, DW get special ammo that is vastly superior to psybolt ammo, which costs 2cp. Psybolt ammos could be free and always active, and GK would still struggle right now.

Fold them into the Inquisition like they used to be, therefore making GK and Inquisition stronger.

Much like how the MIlitarum Tempestus used to be their own codex but got folded into Codex: Astra Militarum.

 greyknight12 wrote:
Put the inquisition back in their codex, and make them Codex: Ordo Malleus.

I would be up for just an Codex: Armies of the Inquisition, with Daemonhunters, Witch Hunters, and Xenohunters. But that ship sailed already.


Anyway, on to augmenting the GK.
First would be more psychic powers, or a special rule allowing them to bypass the rule of 1.
Second would be across-the-board price cuts for their infantry units.

I'd also go with D3 smite all the time, 3 against daemons, instead of 1 all the time, 3 against daemons.

The GK don't really seem to have good ability to threaten heavy equipment. With poor AP and Damage across the board, there needs to be a weapon that hits harder. Upping the Psycannon to D2 or D1d3 may help, but probably not a lot. Maybe a stratagem to increase damage dealt, too.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Fold them into the Inquisition like they used to be, therefore making GK and Inquisition stronger.

Much like how the MIlitarum Tempestus used to be their own codex but got folded into Codex: Astra Militarum.

Stormtroopers were part of the IG. Then when the started making every 3 units their own faction [The fact that there was an AdMech army and a Skitarii army speaks volumes], they decided to make an extra MT codex. They they hopefully realized that that's stupid, because there were rules for them in the IG codex too, and put them back in the IG codex.