Beating Grey Knights

[DarkLink]

I’ve heard, fairly frequently, that Grey Knights are broken/over the top/overpowered/some variation thereof. While they’re certainly a top tier codex, aside from rad/psykotroke grenades this is untrue. And while there are a number of extremely good options that really shouldn’t be as good as they are (Psyrifle Dreads, Death Cult Assassins, etc), there are just as many super point-efficient things in some of the other books that I could point out.

For qualifications, I play Grey Knights. I’ve played them, almost exclusively, since before they were cool. Or before they were uncool, depending on what side you’re on. Since 5th ed came out, I’ve gotten in maybe three or four games with various other armies, but everything else has been GKs. I’ve even found myself in the top 50 on rankings HQ by solid performances at a number of tournaments in California. For a while I was even the top ranked GK player, though I’m not any more. Moral of the story, I know the ins and outs of Grey Knights. Other armies, not so much, my biggest weakness as a player is making small mistakes against other armies because I have little experience facing them and it keeps me from being a truly top-tier player, but Grey Knights I know very well.

There are some pretty tough matchups out there when facing Grey Knights. I’ve personally never even come close to losing to Dark Eldar, for example. But in general, most armies have the tools to deal with Grey Knights. I've lost enough to 'nidz to just laugh to myself when people claim it's an unwinnable matchup. The trick is figuring out what the Grey Knight’s weaknesses are and exploiting them, and this is where I see people run into trouble.

See, the usual complaint about how GKs are overpowered is usually immediately followed by the comment “they have no weaknesses”. False. They have weaknesses. Thing is, the weaknesses are subtle ones that require a good understanding of the game to fully exploit. Crunching numbers on a calculator won’t reveal most of these weaknesses and misleads many less experienced players into thinking there are no weaknesses. This is an effort to elucidate these weaknesses and help struggling players.


Weakness #1 – Shooting
The most obvious weakness comes in spite of the GK’s notoriety for massed storm bolters, psycannons and strength 8 autocannons. Believe it or not, there’s actually a pretty big gap in GK’s shooting abilities.

The big one is the lack of high AP weapons. Aside from rending psycannons, absolutely none of the GK’s “optimal” firepower is better than AP 4. Unless you take some uncommon units/configurations, like a Dreadnought with a plasma cannon or a Godhammer Land Raider, the closest you can get to good AP shooting is henchmen with melta/plasma (which makes for a mediocre suicide unit considering how fragile they are and their poor BS3) or lots of Razorbacks with las/plas, and frankly Space Wolves and Blood Angels do that sort of Razorback spam better than Grey Knights do.

This actually matters in a couple of ways. For one, it makes dealing with enemy deathstars outside of assault very difficult. To kill, say, Deathwing Terminators, GKs have to focus their entire army of Storm Bolters onto the squad in an attempt to force wounds. Alternatively, GKs have to get their own deathstar into assault in an attempt to trump their opponent’s nasty units. It also makes dealing with certain other units very difficult. GKs struggle to kill units Tyrannofexes at range. And even with lots of psycannons, a Land Raider fielded by an aggressive player is almost certain to deliver its cargo. Battlewagon Orks can be a nightmare for some GK lists because those stupid Battlewagons are so absurd when your opponent is making every single KFF save.

The second part of this is range. Aside from Psyrifle Dreads, which find their way into almost every GK list for a reason, almost everything is 24”. Razorbacks are the only exception, but TL Heavy Bolters aren’t that intimidating even at str 6 to a lot of armies and I already mentioned that GKs don’t really do las/plas razorbacks that often. GKs have to mass their army in the center of the board and carefully focus fire while slowly maneuvering into position in order to effectively engage many enemy armies. It’s actually fairly limiting, and a skilled opponent can take advantage of this. Effectively deploying and maneuvering a GK army is actually very difficult to master when you get to higher levels of competition. Non-linear threats, like outflanking or deepstriking units, can be used to great effect to mess with a GK player not prepared to deal with them, especially if you can take out those Psyrifle Dreads.

Conversely, Grey Knights are very good at killing small, fragile units and/or low AV vehicles. Razorbacks and 5-man MSU squads get mowed down quite easily.

All of this means is that a lot of common builds play right into the GK’s shooting strengths and avoid their weaknesses. It’s not that most other lists out there can’t make competitive lists that play to the GK’s weaknesses, it’s just that ‘common knowledge’ about 40k meta makes people move away from that. Most codices have the means to face GKs, but many people don’t do an effective job of designing their particular lists to take advantage of this. Since GKs seem to be the most popular army now, you might want to keep this all in mind when writing your next list. Think outside the box a little, and try and find things that make shooting stuff that much more difficult for the GK player.


Weakness #2: Attrition
The next thing, also kinda obvious, is that Grey Knights cannot take attrition very well. It sounds stupid, like “duh, if you kill your opponent’s army then they can’t win”, but it needs to be emphasized.

GKs cannot stand up to any significant amount of attrition nearly as effectively as other armies. Nidz and Orks don’t care if you kill a couple squads, they’ve got more. Grey Knights don’t.

Most Grey Knights aren’t Fearless. Tank Shock them. A failed Morale test can easily win you the game. It’s happened to me several times. I have to take a test for some stupid reason, fail it, and suddenly the game become a huge uphill battle for me rather than my opponent.

Gang up on the weak. Try and separate a GK unit from the rest of the army and wipe it out. Don’t inflict casualties, destroy it. Force the GK player to spread his forces out, and once they’re spread too thin start rolling them up.

Alternatively, a smart GK player will recognize that he can’t spread out too much in some circumstances, so use that to your advantage. Force him to stick together, because it limits his sphere of influence and allows you to operate in the far corners of the board relatively unmolested. This is particularly true for Ork or ‘nidz players. Genestealers and Kommandos with a Warboss popping up out of nowhere can really mess with a GK player, and splinter his force just enough for your main army to smash his lines.



Weakness #3: Board Control
This ties in with the previous points. Grey Knights can only effectively control a small portion of the board at any given time. Because they don’t take attrition very well and thus have to concentrate their forces, have a relatively small footprint, and generally have a small range, the GK army can generally only be one place at once. Take advantage of this.

Outflank. Draw your opponent one direction with bait, and then go the other way. Present him with unsuspected threats from multiple directions, or threats that can pop out of nowhere like deep strikers and other reserves. It can be difficult for a GK army to effectively split itself to deal with multiple threat angles.
The GK’s greatest strength is perfectly true to their fluff. They are the ultimate hammer. They can smash their way through basically any other army in the game if you give them a straight fight. So don’t play to their strengths.



Weakness #4: Linear Thinking
In case you haven’t read them, Reece from Frontline Gaming is doing a series of articles on non-linear thinking in 40k that are very relevant to this point. This is actually more a weakness in the opposing player than in the GK list itself.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had an opponent do exactly what I wanted them to do, while they were thinking it was their only chance at victory. I’ll use an example.

Last year, ‘ard Boyz round 1, facing CSM. My opponent had a pair of Daemon Princes, a bunch of Chosen, Plague Marines and Berzerkers, and some mixed fire support units. I had a Grand Master, Coteaz, 10 Paladins, and about 40 GKSS/Interceptor/Purifiers, plus a few other toys.

I won’t go in depth because I don’t have any photos and don’t have a detailed recollection of the game, but here’s the relevant part: my opponent was convinced he had to kill my 10 Paladins. He lined up his entire army and attempted one massive assault, and I let him. Just marched my Paladins right up as bait. I did shoot his Daemon Princes and a few other things to death first, but he assaulted me with maybe 50 Berzerker/Plague Marines first. About 10-15 lived long enough to get attacks in, and only 2-3 were left standing after the first round of combat. I think I lost maybe one Paladin to a power fist.

My opponent had severely underestimated my Paladins. I didn’t even have an Apothecary or Stave, but the multiple Hammerhands, tons of high initiative attacks, Rad/Psykotroke/Blind Grenades, Sanctuary, there was so much going in my favor that my Paladins were basically unstoppable. He literally handed me his entire army on a silver platter.

So how could he have won?

Well, CSM are a pretty outdated codex and GKs are a very tough matchup for them. About all they can do is power armor spam with a handful of decent things like lash and obliterators, but against any new codex that can deal with that sort of thing it’s a big uphill battle. That’s more due to the CSM’s out-datedness than GK’s power, though.

But step one to victory is not playing right into my hand.

My opponent was stuck in the mindset that he had to destroy my army to win. Now, I don’t remember the scenario mission, and knowing ‘ard Boyz it could have been something stupid that stacked things even more in my favor, but in normal game missions he should have rearranged his priorities to “avoid Paladins”, not “hand my opponent my entire army”. We’ll look at the various standard missions for these purposes.

Killpoints: He’s going to have a tough time keeping stuff alive if I give him the chance to ram my Paladins down his throat. But Paladins are slow. So, reserve his army. My Paladins now have no targets to aim at. All I can do is march them towards his board edge and hope they can get stuff as it trickles in. But the unit is only so big, so as my opponent brings things on he can play keep away from the Paladins while engaging my other units in a much more fair fight. It’s still a big gamble due to an outdated codex due to a lack of reserve modifiers, but it allows him to negate over a third of my army and gives him a shot at grabbing a few kill points and playing keep away for the win.

Capture and Control:
Naturally, he’ll try and place his objective as far away from mine as possible. Then, my Paladins will be either marching towards his objective, or defending my own, depending on what he does. They’re too slow and too limited in range to do both. He can then refuse flank and make me make the difficult choice between the two. And depending on my choice, he can either send the bulk of his army to grab my objective, or stay put and defend his, while making liberal use of reserves and outflanking to give him the opportunity to claim/contest objectives late game. Again, clever deployment and play can negate a significant portion of my army so long as he keeps a sharp focus on what his objectives are.

Seize Ground:
This one’s trickier because the objectives are more clustered, but it has essentially the same strategy as Capture and Control. This is a very poor matchup here, and is basically like Capture and Control but tougher to win. This is where I advocate layered mission objectives like at the Bay Area Open, where he could let me take Seize Ground but try and contest/win Capture and Control and Victory Points as discussed earlier. If he’s good, though, he still has a shot of at least tying here, he just needs a bit more skill and luck in this mission.


So even an outdated, below average codex has a shot at victory in 2/3 of the standard missions against one of the most notorious lists in the game, and it all comes down to skilled deployment and a laser-like focus on the mission objectives. Yes, his outdated codex lack some of the tools all the newer books have to give him little advantages, like reserve modifiers. But so long as his reserve rolls don’t screw him, he had a decent shot at victory. With any of the newer books, he would have had all the tools necessary to effectively pull off strategies like these for an even better chance of victory. In the end, it comes down to player skill and the dice gods, and that’s all that anyone can ever ask for in this game.








Anyone have questions, or anything else to add?

[GrandReaper]

Gotta disagree on a few points.

Shooting: Psyflemen are one of the best anti-tank units in the game. Make them Venerable and they get even better. Expensive, but you weren't going the numbers route anyway. Furthermore, I doubt you've run the numbers on Psycannons vs. AV14 - they're better than Lascannons. They're amazing. And Tyrannofexes? Well, if you really have to shoot one (not sure why) the Rending wounds of a half dozen Psycannons will bring them down in only a couple rounds. Besides, Tyrannids are nearly an auto-win for a strong GK list.

Winning Missions: Well, you essentially can't lose on KPs. Ever. That's crazy. For Seize Ground you can easily hold enough ground with a Paladin mob to control/contest 2-3 objectives so the rest of your army tries to contest the rest. Capture and Control is impossible to lose. You send you Pallies onto your opponents objectives and try and hold your own with everything else. Hold one, contest one = win. Worst case scenario you camp the Pallies at home and can't lose your own objective.

Morale: This is the big one I agree on. Tank Shock can win games.

[DarkLink]

Your points contain too many "auto-wins" and "impossible to lose" statements.

Shooting: Psyflemen are one of the best anti-tank units in the game. Make them Venerable and they get even better. Expensive, but you weren't going the numbers route anyway.

Venerable upgrade isn't really worth it, but this is not disagreeing with anything that I said. In fact, I explicitly stated that Grey Knights are very good at killing lightly armored vehicles, and psyrifle dreads are part of the reason why.

But psyrifle Dreads are not good against very heavy armor, and they are not good against anything with a 3+ or better save. The commonality of light armor vehicles means that psyrifle Dreads are almost always facing their ideal targets, which is exactly what I said in the original post. Opponents are taking lists that play into Grey Knight hands, then wondering why they don't perform well.

Furthermore, I doubt you've run the numbers on Psycannons vs. AV14 - they're better than Lascannons. They're amazing.

I've run the numbers. Doesn't change the fact that it takes an entire army of psycannons to have decent odds of killing a Land Raider.

Lascannons suck against Land Raiders. Lascannons are not the standard to which anti-tank weapons are held. Meltaguns are, and meltaguns are far superior to lascannons at killing Land Raiders. Railguns are also a much better comparison regarding Land Raiders, and again, Railguns are far superior to psycannons at killing Land Raiders.

Note that I did not say that psycannons were bad, ever. They're not. But don't pretend they're really good at killing Land Raiders. A Land Raider with smoke launchers can cross the 24" range gap and deliver its cargo into combat. Doesn't mean that GKs can't possibly deal with it, but it is a weakness that can be exploited.

I'll add that I've played a number of LR players who were far too timid. The sat their Land Raiders and tried to shoot, giving me two or three turns to pour psycannon fire into their vehicles instead of blowing through and starting to hit stuff. Either back off and kill transports out of my range, or charge in and assault. Don't be indecisive. Incidentally, this is why Godhammer Land Raiders are much better than most people think, because they give you the option to sit back and shoot. Redeemers and Crusaders can't do that, really.

And Tyrannofexes? Well, if you really have to shoot one (not sure why) the Rending wounds of a half dozen Psycannons will bring them down in only a couple rounds.

It's not just Tyrannofexes, they were just the prime example of what GKs aren't very good at shooting to death. Psycannons won't have range, because there are too many more pressing targets filling the 24" gap, and psyrifle dreads cannot hurt Monstrous Creatures very effectively. Anything with T6 and a 3+ save or better is tough to deal with at range.

If you are shooting your entire army into a single unit in an attempt to rend it to death, the rest of your opponent's army is free to do whatever they want, which is precisely one of the things I pointed out. One difficult thing to shoot to death? No big deal. Two or three from multiple directions? Much more difficult.

Besides, Tyrannids are nearly an auto-win for a strong GK list.

You've never played a good player if you think that. I've only ever faced 'nidz when I end up against them at the upper tables in a tournament, and it is never an easy fight.

Winning Missions: Well, you essentially can't lose on KPs. Ever. That's crazy. For Seize Ground you can easily hold enough ground with a Paladin mob to control/contest 2-3 objectives so the rest of your army tries to contest the rest. Capture and Control is impossible to lose. You send you Pallies onto your opponents objectives and try and hold your own with everything else. Hold one, contest one = win. Worst case scenario you camp the Pallies at home and can't lose your own objective.

So, if it's impossible to lose on Killpoints and Capture and Control, and Seize Ground is easy to win, how come Driagowing doesn't win every single tournament they've ever been to? I've seen quite a few good Driagowing players go to a number of tournaments that I've been to, and guess what? One second place finish. Pretty good, yes, but certainly not unbeatable.

Trust me. You are wrong on this. Instead of thinking about what you need to do to win, you're thinking about how you're going to lose no matter what, which is the exact problem I'm alluding to with my example.

And also keep in mind that I was using a specific example. Grey Knights do not exclusively consist of Driagowing lists. Purifier spam and acolyte spam lists tend to be at a disadvantage in Killpoints.

[WYSIWYG]

To answer your question of why GKs don't sweep every tourney. Well its simply because a lot of noobs play them to make up for their crippling lack of skill, which says a lot about the codex when these total noobs finish in the top percentiles of your local GT. They're also so disgustingly good that most skilled players will refuse to play them because of their "win button" nature.

[bfmusashi]

That says far more about your local scene than the viability of the codex.

[DarkLink]

While they might be popular because of noobs jumping on the bandwagon, Goatboy, Blackmoor, ChristianA and a number of others are all extremely good players that have taken Grey Knights at various points and done very well with them. There are certainly a lot of very skilled, top tier players with Grey Knights, and they do win tournaments and place highly. But there are just as many people with other armies doing just as well.

I actually started a thread on this a couple weeks ago, if you haven't read it. Had some pretty good discussion there.





I think I should add that there's no "auto-win" strategy for almost anything in 40k, including my post here. All but the worst lists, played well, can perform well even against very good lists, and there are a lot of lists that don't look good but have hidden synergies and options that make them much better than they appear.

In the words of Scott Adams, "ideas are worthless. Execution is everything." Army lists and strategies are just ideas. Properly implementing them is everything.

[Sure]

Your most important point was that the GKs are really good against the meta-game into which the codex was introduced. 5th edition and the newer codices meant that tranports are "it". The GK codex is really good at cracking open these thinly armored cans and getting at the contents. The Psyflemen alone are amazing at light-vehicle destruction.
It gave the codex an illusion if near-invincibility...but really it just meant it's time to change your game. A lot of people have done well against Grey Knights with either going the heavy-armor route or dropping armor all together. These same lists often have extreme trouble with the Dark Eldar! ROCK. PAPER. SCISSOR.

[Wolfshade]

A nice post DarkLink, it is nice to see such discussions. I think the most interesting point is how it plays against the local meta, I think in this day and age the local meta is becoming more and more similiar as lists are posted on the internets and people copy and paste them away. For all how Grey Knihts are seen as over powered in my local gaming group we don't have a single Grey Knights player. Well, I played them when they were Deamon hunters but not since the new code. I also think the reason people play with the newest codex is a combination of having the shineiest toys and that people haven't figured out how to play against them yet.

[Psilence]

While I think the title of the post is apt (beating grey knights), the underlying message could and should be applied to every other army/game that a player approaches.

Examine your opponents strengths and weaknesses, understand yours, and then adapt your game play accordingly. Fight on your terms, not theirs.

Also, the points touching on 'current' meta and how certain armies interact with it are valid. If you've played the game for an extended period of time you'll understand that over the coarse of the updates (edition/codex/introduction of sites like bell) things and thinking change. A tactic that was gold for 2 years is suddenly worthless. Long story short, adapt or die.

[the jeske]

A tactic that was gold for 2 years is suddenly worthless. .

I dont know IG and SW run identical builds as they had when their dex got leaked . The tactics are only worthless when the dex itself is bad . When its wins are carried by both people lack of knowladge [new dex] and luck .

also the adapt part is true only when one means codex switching . there is no way to adapt if someone is playing dex with fewer number of builds . what is a tau suppose to do , what about demons or chaos . how about nids . nids were unable to adapt to codex that came out before them , that was something totaly new in 20 years of w40k . never before were new armies weaker/had bad match ups with dex that came out before them .


I also disagree on the part about GK being bad for razor builds . now if Razor builds are the best what one can play , if someone wants an sm shoty army is debatable , but GK ignore the one thing that is the bane of all razorbuilds . stun locking is impossible against them .