Basic Grey Knight Paladin Army

[Bean]

Alright, so my wife and I are planning to take a tentative foray into the world of Grey Knights. We want to start off with a relatively small army, and we think that Paladins are the best way to accomplish this. This is the army I'm thinking about buying:

275 - Draigo
315 - Paladin with Halberd and Psycannon, Paladin with Sword and Psycannon, Paladin with Halberd, Paladin with Sword, Paladin with Hammer
315 - ditto
315 - ditto
135 - Dreadnought with two twin-linked autocannons, psybolt ammunitiion
135 - ditto

It comes to1490 points, total. It's only 18 models, but the paladins all have two wounds and are unique within their units (so they're harder to kill due to wound allocation). It has good shooting and good combat (and Draigo, of course, is a monster in combat).

Is this what people generally think of when they think about a Paladin army, and do people generally think that this type of army will be worth playing?

[Splug]

That is more or less the concept behind a paladin force. Armies built around mass-saves and small arms fire will have problems with an army like this. On the other hand, armies designed around heavy anti-tank weapons, particularly lascannons or dark lances, will have a significant advantage against you. Another thing to be worried of would be dreadnoughts, who will potentially eat one or two paladins before the deamonhammers even get to swing.

The biggest problem you will probably run into with that army is that you are only really presenting three units. They are durable against most types of combat or fire, but they cannot cover a lot of ground, effectively threaten multiple points/units, and run the risk of being bogged down by swarms. A mob of ork boys will not be able to kill the paladins effectively, but the paladins will take a turn or two to get through 20 orks. You don't really have enough storm bolters to shoot a boy squad to death, either.

Time will tell whether that kind of list is effective in a tournament environment. My gut reaction is no - you're too reliant on 4+ cover to not instant-kill those terminators and cannot be in enough places at a time - but 28 points per wound for a 2+ save model is hard to find. I do believe it would be an interesting army for casual games - I just don't know about tournaments.

[Dominic]

Since you were looking for a cheap force, might I suggest re-working the theme a bit:

For roughly the same cost you could have 25 regular terminators (with a whole host of upgrades), and 2 inquisitors with psychic communion (and 3 skulls each). This way you'll still have your cheap buy army, but with 2 more scoring units, and a little more competitive IMO.

However, if you want to stick with Draigo-wing I would also considering losing the swords for MC halberds, its much better to hit first than to take 4++ saves; if you can kill more models, you'll have to make less saves, which considering the fragility of terminators, seems like a good idea.

[Bean]

Since you were looking for a cheap force, might I suggest re-working the theme a bit:

For roughly the same cost you could have 25 regular terminators (with a whole host of upgrades), and 2 inquisitors with psychic communion (and 3 skulls each). This way you'll still have your cheap buy army, but with 2 more scoring units, and a little more competitive IMO.

However, if you want to stick with Draigo-wing I would also considering losing the swords for MC halberds, its much better to hit first than to take 4++ saves; if you can kill more models, you'll have to make less saves, which considering the fragility of terminators, seems like a good idea.

I'm basically not interested in playing Inquisitors, and I don't think the army should generally rely on reserves, with so few units.

I'm not sure about Draigo-wing, and I'm considering an army with more regular terminators, instead, but that's an easy change to make later on if the Draigo wing doesn't work out--it's the same stuff, just more of it.

Also, while I agree that MC-Halberds are better than swords, there just aren't any points for them. It'd take 30 points to swap out every sword for a MC halberd. The list has ten points left, but what else would you drop. A psycannon? Definitely not. Autocannons or Psybolts off the dreads? Again, clearly not worth it.

[Tynskel]

I'd swap out one more paladin unit and get another dread in there. Since there will be more points, maybe upgrade them to Venerables.

Also, think about using an Assault Cannon + Autocannon. Str 7 Assault cannons are cool. The only drawback would be range.

However, the nature of the army means that the dreads should be near the paladins for protection.

[DarkLink]

I'd keep the Paladins. The Dreads are nice, but they're the only vehicles and you're going to be lacking bodies bigtime. The Dreads will pop 2 or 3 Rhinos, then die to enemy AT. Meanwhile, your Paladins will move up, spread out and completely control the midfield unless your opponent has the firepower to take them out.

I played a 1500pt game with 6 Paladins and a GM, and all those psycannon shots are intimidating. My oppenent spend almost the whole game putting half his army into the Paladins, and while he eventually killed them all thanks to JotWW (and I failed 2/3 of my I tests, so my opponent got lucky there) his advance was completely tied up for four or five turns by a single unit. You've got three.

You'll have the firepower to more or less kill three light vehicles a turn, and you can pop Land Raiders when you really have to through sheer weight of fire.


Further playtesting will tell, but I think Paladin armies will function by controlling the midfield via sheer durability, pinning the opponent down in their own deployment zone, while a couple of cheap scoring units hold the fort and pick off targets of opportunity.


Edit:
Incidentally, in my game the Dread's Reinforced Aegis completely suppressed my opponent's psychic powers for about 2 turns before they died. Then he spent 3 turns shooting JotWW and Murderous Hurricane from 3 Rune Priests into the Paladins before he finally managed to kill them all, and even then he only caused 1 or 2 wounds aside from JotWW. Had he not taken Rune Priests, the Paladins would have eaten half his army alive.

[Bean]

Yeah, Reinforced Aegis is a pretty solid psychic defense.

[Kawauso]

Paladin lists are looking pretty fun/fluffy to work out, in addition to being really cheap money-wise, so I've been trying to figure one out as well.

Don't forget that a unit of Paladins can take FOUR psycannons, and that thanks to being in terminator armour they always fire 4 shots (so, 16 if there are 4 in a unit), and that thanks to rending, psycannons can pop AV14. ;) It's worth considering. Would make it harder to do the wound allocation shenanigans it seems you're going for, though.

[Bean]

A unit of paladins can have four psycannons, but only if there are ten of them--it's two psycannons per five guys. Until you've maxed out your troop selections, you should be playing them in units of five--two units of five with two assault cannons are substantially better than one unit of ten with four.

And yes, the psycannon is a great gun. One terminator psycannon is almost exactly as likely to destroy a land raider as two twin-linked bs:4 lascannons. They're that good.

Also, units of individual paladins are pretty reasonable. It's amusing that a single paladin still puts out the same holocaust power as the unit of five or ten, and a scoring unit consisting of a single 55 point model is pretty reasonable.

[DarkLink]

Too bad you need 5 paladins min to get psycannons. Otherwise I'd take pairs, one to absorb wounds and one to carry a gun.

[Bean]

Yeah, that would be a good unit. Oh well. The five man unit is pretty good, and the one man unit is good filler. It's a sufficient set of options, even if not exactly what I'd prefer.