Grey Knights the autowin army! Duh...not!

[Farseer Macleod]

Hey guys, have you had people moan about GKs being just too strong? That they can't be beaten? Well among our gaming group one person in particular has claimed that GKs are an auto win army, and he set out to prove it. He challenged me to use his army, Space puppies, and he'd use my GKs. We each had a week to make a 3000 point list and prove once and for all who was right!

Our game was pitched battle, kill points. The game commenced with GKs going first, their three storm ravens pressing my lines right from the get go. With massive exchanges of firepower from the wolves and a little luck his storm ravens were down by turn 2 and then the slaughter commenced with each of us claiming a kill point then losing a kill point.
This went on and on, the sheer amount of wrecked vehicles piling up in my deployment zone creating cover and obstacles for both of us. Turn 5 ended and we were tied 9KP each. Both of us had a couple of easy KPs left on the table, even if the game continued for another turn we had no idea who would win...the game ended turn 5.

My friend was livid, claiming I had drawn on the luck of the dice, the game ending. He insisted that should there be another turn he would definately win, no question. I pointed out that he had as many easy KP as I did on the table, he owned the left half of the table and I owned the right. I could easily draw and the true outcome would be from the CC between my weaponless Venerable-dreadnought and his 2+ armour warrior acolytes with Coteaz. (Jokaeros made his power armour 2+ with their mods.) He backed down but wasn't happy, we let the score sit, that's just the luck of the dice.

That was 2 weeks ago and today we met up for another game, this time he challenged me to a rematch, same lists, no modifications. He will definately win this time! Spear head deployment, capture and control. It was the same again, Storm Ravens pressing down on my line, my formation not letting the Storm Ravens pass over my front lines, I kept it tight, they had no choice but to go around if they wanted to get to my objective.
My longfangs did me pround taking down two storm Ravens, My lines press forward and blast away at the enemy, whittling them down. I wasn't able to push any further though. My vehicles were soon wrecks and once again we began to slaughter each other in a combo of shooting and CC.
My Wolf Guard with Storm shield and wolf claw combo manages to slaughter a dreadknight and a 9 man strong squad of Death cult assassins, they win but are severly crippled and retreat back into their landraider, only 2 of them left along with a wolf priest. They later come and finish off a strike squad which was just over whelming one of my last scoring units that were sitting on my home objective, the rest of them were dead, I could only draw. Game ends turn 5 again, my friend can't even claim he would of won if the game went on, he had nothing close enough to even try and shoot my last razorback with my last scoring unit holed up inside.

"I can't win with the Grey Knights!" My friend curses... There are not an auto-win army but they are strong. Their power weapons eat marines and their storm bolters hurt horde from a distance but they aren't auto-win.

I made a mistake that potentially cost me this game and I remembered too late for even it to be considered by the best of sportmen to go back and change...my two dreads that I took were venerable...I forgot this fact...SHIT!!! I had deep struck a Dread close to his objective turn 3. If I had remembered he was venerable he might have lived long enough to wipe out the henchmen squad sitting on the objective or at least contest it. Oh well...

The problem I had was I was constantly on the defensive, those storm ravens just pressure any gaps in your defense and even heavy armour is practically pointless against the flat-out multi-melta. By the time you've finished mopping up what was in the Ravens the rest of his army arrives. I had no chance to move up the field, I only got to the half way point not including my drop pods.

[Tuatara]

I made a mistake that potentially cost me this game and I remembered too late for even it to be considered by the best of sportmen to go back and change...my two dreads that I took were venerable...I forgot this fact...SHIT!!! I had deep struck a Dread close to his objective turn 3. If I had remembered he was venerable he might have lived long enough to wipe out the henchmen squad sitting on the objective or at least contest it. Oh well...

I totally agree with you and those comments are exactly why. The list is not the be-all and end-all. It's the general conducting the army. We had a guy who was unbeatable at a couple of tournaments with his Orks. A tournament later, someone else decided to run the exact same list. He came half way up the pack.

[Spiketrap]

GKs hate-
Battle cannons
Reapers
Plasma guns
Punishers
Bloodcrushers
Seer councils
Flamestorm cannons
Fire warriors in cover
Genestealers
Banshees
Melta cannons
Psychic hoods
Assault cannons
Plasma cannons
Thousand sons
THSS Terminators

The list goes on. In the end, a Gk is a MEQ. It dies just as easy. The difference is they are few in number. Each casualty is felt. A player who knows how to keep his dudes alive will win. A player who doesnt will not. They are not broken, but are very versatile.

Wait, we have str6 flamers that teleport 30 inches. I may retract my point.

[Talljester]

there are definetely armies that will be fighting uphill battles against grey knights, *coughdaemonscough*
but any army with melta/plasma spam can really lay some hurt on our guys,
killing them just the same as any other marine,

sure they're powerful, but we really feel it in the points cost,
no unit is disposable, and no one unit on it's on is going to pull of some crazy RAMBO-esque crap,
any experienced player has a fair chance of beating us,
the only players that I find complaining are younger players who don't realise they're just space marines with fancy toys.

[A.T.]

any experienced player has a fair chance of beating us,

I play sisters normally but take my old GK out of the box from time to time and it's a world apart in terms of how much easier games are to win.

I wouldn't call them autowin, but 'fair' doesn't come into it - some 40k armies are simply much stronger than others and GK are up at the top of that curve with other high power books like guard.


As for high cost and no unit being disposable - henchmen are cheap and cheerful, a few units (like psyriflemen) are significantly better than their counterparts for minimal additional outlay, and again as a sisters player I envy the GK's incredibly cheap access to heavy flamer weapons and scoring units.

Low model count GK armies are a choice, not a necessity. The codex has arguably the widest range of playstyles of all the current books, save perhaps guard, and any problems with specific opponents and units are as much a result of the GK player's preferred unit choices than any weakness in the codex itself - all of those units in the 'gk hate' list can be suitably countered with at least one of the GK's many options.

[Talljester]

Grey knights are definetely a top tier army, no doubt about it,
I do however think 6th ed will change this,

no more wound allocation, rapid fire weapons firing full range,
any psyker being able to counter psychic powers, (although twin linked flamers shooting 6" is definetely a buff)

new armies have always been more and more "powerfull"
maybe it's a selling point, maybe it'll change now that matt ward is gone.

They do have they're advantages, but it wont last long, all the other armies will be brought up to par.
The game is changing with every new codex, and will continue to do so,

[Farseer Macleod]

Grey knights are definetely a top tier army, no doubt about it,
I do however think 6th ed will change this,

no more wound allocation, rapid fire weapons firing full range,
any psyker being able to counter psychic powers, (although twin linked flamers shooting 6" is definetely a buff)

new armies have always been more and more "powerfull"
maybe it's a selling point, maybe it'll change now that matt ward is gone.

They do have they're advantages, but it wont last long, all the other armies will be brought up to par.
The game is changing with every new codex, and will continue to do so,

I do think something will change with 6th ed since gks are meant to be 6th edition ready. What I think they'll change is how force weapons work. Its the rulebook that makes them power weapons and they are the thing that just kills marines in CC.

[Talljester]

From what I've read of the leaked 6th ed book,

force weapons will be inflicting ID 2
there are 3 tiers of insta death,
4 points of str above they're toughness inflicts 2 wounds, 5 points 3 and 6 points 4
Force weapons will inflict 2 wounds.

Troops in transports also won't count as scoring,
and it's back to 4th ed rules for wound alocation.

That nerfs draigo wing,
rules out henchman razorback/chimera spam,
and stops force weapons from absoluting owning MC's

it also says that rapid fire weapons can fire at full range even if you moved,
levelling the play field between normal marines and grey knights.

The one Buff we get out of this is that power weapons give a 5++ "parry" invulnerable in combat,
granting normal grey knights with swords a 4++ in combat.

these rules may not be concrete but the book seems really legit,
129 pages, well formatted, room for pics and page numbers left out for "fluff"

it sounds like this new edition will really level the playing field.

[A.T.]

129 pages, well formatted, room for pics and page numbers left out for "fluff"

That leaked ruleset was debunked some time back.

[Tuatara]

it sounds like this new edition will really level the playing field.

Not sure how much is true of the rumours. It doesn't matter to me as I have stayed away from them. However, if this last bit is true, then.... "great". I hate winning and then being told the only reason I won was because I'm playing a broken army. I'm sorry, but I was winning games before the new codex. Not many I'll grant you, but most of that was due to inexperience. I was winning games though, what was their excuse then? However, if the playing field is levelled, then at least I'll know how much is me and how much is the codex.


Maybe I don't want to know the answer to that one...