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Grey Knights are in a rough spot at the moment, more so now that their whole reason for existing got a shiny new codex along with the associated codex power creep.

Regular Storm Bolters just don't seem to cut it anymore and GK's "special" weapons are kind of lack luster too. Unless you're maximizing MW spam it seems like GK are always at a disadvantage in the current state of 40k.

How about letting them upgrade their Storm Bolters to Combi-Bolters (Melta, Flamer, Plasma and/or Grav)?

I'd assume they would cost an additional 5 ppm and maybe limited to 1 or 2 models per 5 man in the unit to keep them from Sternguard silliness.

Thoughts? Comments?

Make Astral Aim back to it's 8th version. Give it ignores LoS, Ignores Invuln, and make their Nemesis weapons deal MWs. Done.

Or, here's a silly idea - how about we delete all the idiotic, game-breaking gak and inflation from the game? Make S4 T4 superhuman statline again, and most of other stuff S3 T3 like it used to be? No more orkstodes, cu-daemons, whatever the inflated crap Tau and Eldar are doing - and now magically S4 guns will be good again! Imagine that! It might just work!

 Irbis wrote:
Or, here's a silly idea - how about we delete all the idiotic, game-breaking gak and inflation from the game? Make S4 T4 superhuman statline again, and most of other stuff S3 T3 like it used to be? No more orkstodes, cu-daemons, whatever the inflated crap Tau and Eldar are doing - and now magically S4 guns will be good again! Imagine that! It might just work!

In other words "Nerf everything that you don't play so that your power fantasy isn't derailed". Oh Irby, time to change the record. Or at least find a new one without that giant scratch in it.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Irbis wrote:
Or, here's a silly idea - how about we delete all the idiotic, game-breaking gak and inflation from the game? Make S4 T4 superhuman statline again, and most of other stuff S3 T3 like it used to be? No more orkstodes, cu-daemons, whatever the inflated crap Tau and Eldar are doing - and now magically S4 guns will be good again! Imagine that! It might just work!

In other words "Nerf everything that you don't play so that your power fantasy isn't derailed". Oh Irby, time to change the record. Or at least find a new one without that giant scratch in it.

Point of order: Trying to unravel two decades of power creep instead of piling more power creep on top of it isn't going to be the easiest way to fix GK as suggested in the OP.

BUT: HOW WILL WE SELL MORE MODELS? WONT ANYONE THINK OF THE POWER GAMERS?!?!?

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Irbis wrote:
Or, here's a silly idea - how about we delete all the idiotic, game-breaking gak and inflation from the game? Make S4 T4 superhuman statline again, and most of other stuff S3 T3 like it used to be? No more orkstodes, cu-daemons, whatever the inflated crap Tau and Eldar are doing - and now magically S4 guns will be good again! Imagine that! It might just work!

In other words "Nerf everything that you don't play so that your power fantasy isn't derailed". Oh Irby, time to change the record. Or at least find a new one without that giant scratch in it.

Point of order: Trying to unravel two decades of power creep instead of piling more power creep on top of it isn't going to be the easiest way to fix GK as suggested in the OP.

No, it wouldn't be. But the person I was responding to has no interest in "unraveling two decades of power creep". Notice that there was no mention of bringing Primaris Marines to 1W and removing all of the extra AP from their weapons compared to normal Marines? Or, as they refer to them as "Squats"?

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Irbis wrote:
Or, here's a silly idea - how about we delete all the idiotic, game-breaking gak and inflation from the game? Make S4 T4 superhuman statline again, and most of other stuff S3 T3 like it used to be? No more orkstodes, cu-daemons, whatever the inflated crap Tau and Eldar are doing - and now magically S4 guns will be good again! Imagine that! It might just work!

In other words "Nerf everything that you don't play so that your power fantasy isn't derailed". Oh Irby, time to change the record. Or at least find a new one without that giant scratch in it.

Point of order: Trying to unravel two decades of power creep instead of piling more power creep on top of it isn't going to be the easiest way to fix GK as suggested in the OP.

No, it wouldn't be. But the person I was responding to has no interest in "unraveling two decades of power creep". Notice that there was no mention of bringing Primaris Marines to 1W and removing all of the extra AP from their weapons compared to normal Marines? Or, as they refer to them as "Squats"?

Plus Ibris said it would make S4 guns good again as if they were in the first place LOL

Buff their weakest secondary so they get an average of 5 more VP per game, that'll move them to be roughly balanced, that would be the easiest and a decent solution.

Reducing points costs, especially on units that don't get brought and little to none on the units that already get brought. That's how you fix internal and external balance at the same time, do the reverse on overperforming armies. That means we don't have the constant deluge of errata where GW are trying to fix the issues they caused with the last errata where they tried to fix the issues caused by the errata before that. But that's not the easiest option.

 Lord Clinto wrote:
Grey Knights are in a rough spot at the moment, more so now that their whole reason for existing got a shiny new codex along with the associated codex power creep.

Regular Storm Bolters just don't seem to cut it anymore and GK's "special" weapons are kind of lack luster too. Unless you're maximizing MW spam it seems like GK are always at a disadvantage in the current state of 40k.

How about letting them upgrade their Storm Bolters to Combi-Bolters (Melta, Flamer, Plasma and/or Grav)?

I'd assume they would cost an additional 5 ppm and maybe limited to 1 or 2 models per 5 man in the unit to keep them from Sternguard silliness.

Thoughts? Comments?

Your idea is bad because models don't come with those options, so most people would not benefit, even if the combi-weapons were more cost-effective it would not fix the faction as a whole, it would only benefit competitive players.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Irbis wrote:
Or, here's a silly idea - how about we delete all the idiotic, game-breaking gak and inflation from the game? Make S4 T4 superhuman statline again, and most of other stuff S3 T3 like it used to be? No more orkstodes, cu-daemons, whatever the inflated crap Tau and Eldar are doing - and now magically S4 guns will be good again! Imagine that! It might just work!

In other words "Nerf everything that you don't play so that your power fantasy isn't derailed". Oh Irby, time to change the record. Or at least find a new one without that giant scratch in it.

Point of order: Trying to unravel two decades of power creep instead of piling more power creep on top of it isn't going to be the easiest way to fix GK as suggested in the OP.

No, it wouldn't be. But the person I was responding to has no interest in "unraveling two decades of power creep". Notice that there was no mention of bringing Primaris Marines to 1W and removing all of the extra AP from their weapons compared to normal Marines? Or, as they refer to them as "Squats"?

Plus Ibris said it would make S4 guns good again as if they were in the first place LOL

Skitarii Rangers were OP in 9th, Intercessors in 8th, Necron Warriors in 6th. Balance always comes down to pts, any weapon S can be good regardless of the Toughness of units in the game assuming the pts efficiency on the weapon is good compared to the pts efficiency of weapons with other S values.

The most important and urgent fix for Grey Knights is a new set of sculpts.

Are their sculpts really that old? I guess they could give them the MK6 treatment, or primarzise them like deathwatch.

But mostly I think they would benefit from changes to the main fame. If damage stats were removed and instant death brought in they would have a bit of power through the Force rule of old, letting them combat elites decently if you were willing to risk a perils roll.

They are meant to be a combat army with plenty of boltgun backup correct? Perhaps another physic power or two to buff their shooting? Perhaps a difficult one that lets you ignore damage mitigation? Pretty much getting a version of the nightbringers rule, even on one unit, would give them a nice tool to use. Especially if it worked in combat as well.

I just don't want them to do their regular swing of becoming high top tier for most of an edition again. Getting tired of that honestly.

 Lord Clinto wrote:
Grey Knights are in a rough spot at the moment, more so now that their whole reason for existing got a shiny new codex along with the associated codex power creep.

By all accounts on the forums I frequent, they actually do better into Chaos Daemons now. Things like Paladins do well against most Daemons and also don't care about the meta-picks like Flamers of Tzeentch.

I'm not saying that they don't need to change, just that the match up of GK vs CD is more in favour of GK these days.

I think what would help would be some sort of addon giving them that extra help against the new Daemons book. Could simply be a PDF released online. People will whine and bitch about rules bloat but this is literally what the Grey Knights are supposed to do, makes sense they'd have a boost.

 Valkyrie wrote:
I think what would help would be some sort of addon giving them that extra help against the new Daemons book. Could simply be a PDF released online. People will whine and bitch about rules bloat but this is literally what the Grey Knights are supposed to do, makes sense they'd have a boost.

Sure. Give anti-gk rules to daemons as well. You realize right anti-x rules are impossible to balance unless you give counter help.

tneva82 wrote:

 Valkyrie wrote:
I think what would help would be some sort of addon giving them that extra help against the new Daemons book. Could simply be a PDF released online. People will whine and bitch about rules bloat but this is literally what the Grey Knights are supposed to do, makes sense they'd have a boost.

Sure. Give anti-gk rules to daemons as well. You realize right anti-x rules are impossible to balance unless you give counter help.

Yeah why not.

Combi-weapons aren't available models - and would look a bit ugly with the wrist-mounted weapons that knights are associated with.

I think they could probably do with a little tweak - they need an FAQ update anyway, so that Draigo's Daemon Slayer warlord trait works again.

I suspect that if you want to push the ability of regular troops up, without a boost that spills over onto other marines, restoring sone of the capability of psybolts might work: giving regular storm bolter knights increased damage from hits or similar.

And yes, I'm fine with daemons and knights having matched pairs of powerful anti-one-another rules.

Make bolters affected by "Psy-bolt ammunition" count as psi-weapons for tides and the +1 Damage power, as it pretty much was in 8th.

Make Gate and Amplification WC 6 instead of 7. The army bases itself around those two powers and them having a high WC after the Casting Bonuses were gutted is an issue (While other psychic heavy armies like Eldar, Nids and TS still have insane bonuses, GK have to rely on the 3d6-cast stratagem if you want more than a 55% chance of getting your plan off. And you still have to make the charge afterwards)

Units being able to select powers from their Santic discipline (maybe only the first 3-4 with a reshuffle so that you can't just grab Purifying Flame on everyone) would be nice. Being able to cast the +1 save on Dreadknights would make them competitive again and compensates them having no Armor of Contempt (as if they were too tanky beforehand).

Daemons Codex has had it's FAQs but nothing about how our Warlord Traits or items work with them has been adressed.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
BUT: HOW WILL WE SELL MORE MODELS? WONT ANYONE THINK OF THE POWER GAMERS?!?!?

GK don't get new models.

Just give us back blessed ammo +1str and -1AP. Would help a lot. Anyway, GK are in a much better state then most loyalist armies anyway right now.

GK are the last thing that need tweaking currently. Imperial Fists need more love.

Honest suggestion: Give each sub faction a bonus to their main weapon. Give IF Bolter buffs, give Salamanders Flamer/melta Buffs,
Give IH Dread buffs, give UM Ld buffs, and give WS charge buffs. Give BA melee buffs, and DA plasma buffs. Give GK psyker buffs, and DW gets to pick.

Release all the codices at once, so that the creep and power-nerf layover isn't a problem.

10th is right around the corner, but

of course they won't do that. It's too good of an idea and I'm guessing there's some money reason for the codex creep.

 Just_Breathe wrote:
Release all the codices at once,

this

imagine Magic (the G.) releasing colours in separate years

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

 Irbis wrote:
Or, here's a silly idea - how about we delete all the idiotic, game-breaking gak and inflation from the game? Make S4 T4 superhuman statline again, and most of other stuff S3 T3 like it used to be? No more orkstodes, cu-daemons, whatever the inflated crap Tau and Eldar are doing - and now magically S4 guns will be good again! Imagine that! It might just work!

In other words "Nerf everything that you don't play so that your power fantasy isn't derailed". Oh Irby, time to change the record. Or at least find a new one without that giant scratch in it.

Point of order: Trying to unravel two decades of power creep instead of piling more power creep on top of it isn't going to be the easiest way to fix GK as suggested in the OP.

TBF, undoing some of the power creep might not be the easiest way to help Grey Knights, but it's probably a good idea. (And would probably help the game as a whole.)

I'm not a GK player. Can someone explain to me what their perceived problems are?

Based on the opening post, it sounds like Lord Clinto feels they lack damage output. If that's the case, then obviously doing one of a million different things could make them more killy. But I'm always hesitant to make increased lethality a goal when it comes to 40k. Especially given how lethal the game already is in general. If we assume that GK are behind the curve on damage output, then it makes sense to want to boost their damage output, but it also makes sense to want to lower everyone else's.

Without knowing enough about how the faction plays to be particularly insightful... I've always had the impression that GK tend to be kind of a one-trick pony. Every edition, it seems like they're pretty much only good at one or two overall strategies, and the faction sinks or swims based on whether or not the meta is equipped to deal with those strategies. Sometimes that strategy has been MW spam. Sometimes mass deepstrike/Gate shenanigans. Sometimes it's just about throwing an army of terminators and extra powerful marine characters (Draigo/Crowe) forward and counting on their terminator armor and powerswords to overwhelm the enemy. But whatever the case, it seems like the army's lack of unit diversity means that they're basically only as good as whatever big trick the designers decided to build that edition's codex around.

So with that in mind, maybe try to give the faction a little more flexibility in the form of either psychic powers or some sort of army-wide playstyle option. So if you want to run the Teleport Shenanigans army, let them choose a rule that lets them cast Gate more reliably and use teleportation rule smore often. If you want to make mechanized GK work, give them a rule that lets troops disembark and charge after the transport moves or something. Or alternatively, tweak their psychic power list, and just give them the ability to cast the same powers multiple times. That is, let a given GK troop squad have the ability to smite a thing, teleport themselves, put up sanctuary, or put up hammerhand each turn regardless of whether or not someone has already cast those powers.

In an edition where any marine player can have an entire army of terminators, the thing that makes GK GK isn't their choice of units; it's that all those units are psyers.

When you add Inquisition units they start to have quite a spread, if you don't make storm bolters too amazing then their power weapons and heavy weapons will have their say. Cost things appropriately and vehicles with guns will have a say versus dudes with Smite. Adding an army of renown that does smite better and an army of renown that does deep strike better does not increase the likelihood of parity between the two strategies. If after a year or two the codex turns out to not be great at offering a deep strike-centric playstyle and Terminators are already a good unit, then comes the time to release an army of renown to balance things out, this also reduces the amount of bloat, because smite maybe never needed extra rules to be a good strategy to rely on.

Generally, GW doesn't adjust costs based on rules, which is a big problem when Iron Hands pay X+2 for a Land Raider with X+1 power (already overpriced) and Grey Knights pay X+2 for a Land Raider with X power, it's immediately apparent that it is not worth it. The removal of these free rules or at least points adjustments made prior to release and after release to account for these rules differences need to be made. A tonne of this stuff just gets ignored.

Having 4 powers on a Troops squad would be bad for the internal consistency of the game when Eldrad has 4 powers.

I think Terminators should have the same role in SM and GK. I don't think it's particularly scary to have an army of Terminators, so I think they should all be Troops, unless the Elites role was changed. No Prisoners should doubly reward killing 2+ Sv models to punish spamming them because 3+ Sv models are vulnerable to AP- and AP-3, but 2+ Sv models are not vulnerable to AP- (which most weapons should be).

5th edition's weird AP system meant that Terminators were only really worth it into AP3, where they had a sixfold increase in durability over Tactical Marines, but left them less durable per point against every other type of weapon which was weird and generally made them trash, the weird deep strike mechanics that Drop Pods ignored made them worse.

 Manchild 1984 wrote:

 Just_Breathe wrote:
Release all the codices at once,

this

imagine Magic (the G.) releasing colours in separate years

Magic isn't balanced on release though, quite deliberately because finding the gems, the hidden gems and throwing out the trash is part of the hobby according to the designers. GW's products where they released all the factions at once (Apocalypse, Mordheim, Bloodbowl) have all been unbalanced as well, only Bloodbowl has an excuse, Apocalypse just never came near a spreadsheet, a competitive playtester with influence or a random dice roller.

 vict0988 wrote:
When you add Inquisition units they start to have quite a spread,

Do you? I was under the impression that inquisition units mostly just gave you some T3 bodies with short-mid range shooting plus whatever Jokaero do now. And short-mid ranged shooting is kind of already a thing GK do if I'm not mistaken. But I may be overlooking something.

quote]Generally, GW doesn't adjust costs based on rules, which is a big problem when Iron Hands pay X+2 for a Land Raider with X+1 power (already overpriced) and Grey Knights pay X+2 for a Land Raider with X power, it's immediately apparent that it is not worth it. The removal of these free rules or at least points adjustments made prior to release and after release to account for these rules differences need to be made. A tonne of this stuff just gets ignored.

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I feel like being a "troop" is extremely arbitrary and doesn't do much to support the fluff or game mechanics. So I'd maybe prefer to get rid of battlefield roles altogether (except maybe HQ, flyer, LoW, and Fortifications). But that's a whole other rant.

You were in support of something like Decurions right? I think the current paradigm is good enough and checking lists is much easier in a standardised system rather than an individualised one, tonnes of things are to me not good enough. I am really disappointed that AoC didn't get removed, I'm not sure whether to keep skipping seasons or just bite the bullet and dive back in.

 Wyldhunt wrote:


I'm not a GK player. Can someone explain to me what their perceived problems are?

Based on the opening post, it sounds like Lord Clinto feels they lack damage output. If that's the case, then obviously doing one of a million different things could make them more killy. But I'm always hesitant to make increased lethality a goal when it comes to 40k. Especially given how lethal the game already is in general. If we assume that GK are behind the curve on damage output, then it makes sense to want to boost their damage output, but it also makes sense to want to lower everyone else's.

Without knowing enough about how the faction plays to be particularly insightful... I've always had the impression that GK tend to be kind of a one-trick pony. Every edition, it seems like they're pretty much only good at one or two overall strategies, and the faction sinks or swims based on whether or not the meta is equipped to deal with those strategies. Sometimes that strategy has been MW spam. Sometimes mass deepstrike/Gate shenanigans. Sometimes it's just about throwing an army of terminators and extra powerful marine characters (Draigo/Crowe) forward and counting on their terminator armor and powerswords to overwhelm the enemy. But whatever the case, it seems like the army's lack of unit diversity means that they're basically only as good as whatever big trick the designers decided to build that edition's codex around.

GK are a one trick pony, because the game is not very well suited for elite armies with marine resiliance. And this is not an plea to let GK run around with +4inv or something similar. The more elite, the more high cost the less the things are good. From time to time there are rule interaction, mostly unintended, where you can plant a brick of paladins with 4 heavy weapons, who shot from outside of LoS, but can't be shot back or something similar. But those things are under a burden of most of the marine stuff, in general, being bad.

Lets look at the marine factions that do good. They are fast, and they don't use marines. Sang guard is mini termintors with jumppacks. Bile lists are based around possessed which more or less auto win vs melee armies, because of how good fighting on death is.

The GK modus operandi, was always pepper stuff with storm bolters. It killed hordes and could do plink dmg to stuff like meq. Tougher stuff like monsters, tanks, teq etc were delt, or not, with smite and melee. The NDK is, or rather was till GW started handing out ignore inv rules, also very important as it was more or less the only , besides maybe the MM dreadnought, good shoting support unit GK had. Mind you GK are still doing WAY better, then most regular marines. So asking for changes to them right now, is a more in the line of asking to be able to beat or fight the good lists. The mid tier stuff , the games where the opponent doesn't know what GK can do, can be okeyish, if the GK player has a proper list.

GK rules are tight to marine rules to a degree, which means that unless GK are marines++ , when marines mid tier, then they always feel rather mono build or even weak. Plus they have a ton of rules that do nothing. Like having demon slayer warlord trait that no longer works on demons etc.

 vict0988 wrote:

 Wyldhunt wrote:
I feel like being a "troop" is extremely arbitrary and doesn't do much to support the fluff or game mechanics. So I'd maybe prefer to get rid of battlefield roles altogether (except maybe HQ, flyer, LoW, and Fortifications). But that's a whole other rant.

You were in support of something like Decurions right?

Nah. At least, not in the sense that there would be unit restrictions or what have you. I was thinking more along the lines of "chapter tactics" that significantly change the playstyle of the army without providing a raw power boost. So something to allow thematic mass deepstrikingbut at the cost of preventing psychic powers on turn 1, or an updated version of their rule that makes them harder to target at a distance provided the units that benefit from it spend their turn performing actions. Maybe a mechanic to let squad leaders and characters allocate their attacks to enemy squad leaders to lean into the knightly challenge thing and provide benefits against daemons but at the cost that enemies can do the same thing right back. That sort of thing.

It's a fuzzy, half-baked idea, but I basically like the idea of doing something similar with all the factions: get rid of chapter tactics and doctrine-slot rules in favor of "army themes" (WIP name) that emphasizes changing the way the army plays over simply making the army more powerful. So instead of Ulthwe handing out rerolls and invuln saves and such, and instead of getting auto-6s from Strands of Fate, maybe it lets you take warlock sergeants in guardian squads and allows psykers to cast powers through other allied casters. Change the contents of your codex away from being an arms race and towards creating interesting new ways to play with your toys.

So no detachments at all during army construction? I'm asking because I am assuming you want to get rid of Troops and I want to know what kind of effect you want that to have and what effect you think it would have.

 vict0988 wrote:
So no detachments at all during army construction? I'm asking because I am assuming you want to get rid of Troops and I want to know what kind of effect you want that to have and what effect you think it would have.

No detachments. The way I picture it working is that your army can be made up of whatever units you want from a single codex; maybe with a requirement that you have at least one character for the sake of having a warlord, but there are ways around that. One of the "army themes" for each faction would basically be the "take some allies" theme that lets you ally in an additional codex but wouldn't provide any other benefits or special mechanics. The pile of extra unit options would be your share of extra rules complications that you'd be bringing to the game. Things like inquisitors and assassins would be able to join in any imperial army without needing to use the "take some allies" theme. The small factions like harlequins and custodes would maybe be able to join appropriate armies in limited numbers and/or have their own army themes that are modified versions of the "take some allies" theme.

I'm imagining that stratagems and relics have largely been turned into character command phase abilities or 0-1 wargear options in this scenario. The rule of 3 would still be in place, though some units could have a special rule breaking that if you wanted to keep certain units (like former troops) spammable.

And then yeah, I'd roll Troop/Elite/FA/HS and maybe HQs and Transports into a battlefield role or else do away with battlefield roles entirely. Because battlefield roles are pretty arbitrary and don't do a great job of representing what units are actually capable of or how they're used in the fluff. The intended mechanical benefits of this are:
Mechanical: If your unit has unappealing troops, no more troop tax.
Hobby: No feeling compelled to buy and build a bunch of troop units you aren't enthusiastic about just to avoid a big CP penalty.
Theme/Narrative: Some factions or army concepts just don't work well with troops or make more sense without them. Army composition is a big part of how you tell your army's story. So if your fluff says your faction uses bansheens or jetbikes or terminators or whatever to the point that Troop units are rare or unheard of, then being forced to take those troop units could be argued to weaken the theme of your army. Or maybe it's not a faction thing. Maybe you just want to play a game where the idea is that your army is launching a sneak attack with its stealthy and jump units, and none of your troops fit that description particularly well.