Do Grey Knights Deserve the Hate?

[Angelofblades]

It's not about what some random person arbitrarily decides an army "deserves", whatever that even means. It's about what's balanced.

So do explain what exactly is balanced about a Terminator with frag/krak grenades, access to stackable S modifier, with Free Initiative 6 and Nemesis Force weapons. All coming in at the exact same price cost as Thnuder hammer assault terminators. Heck regular shooting termies don't even come close to that destructive power

No need. Staves are already very expensive and very rare. Outside of CC and the HQ's, the best available save is a 5+. That balances it out just fine already.

Downgrade the invul save, downgrade the points cost. It goes hand in hand, but in terms of balancing, does a model with a 2+ Armor Save, really justify any need for a 2+ invul save? I highly doubt it

Lascannons are just as good (actually, probably better) at killing titans as killing guardsmen. Poor comparison. Without something like psycannons to allow them to open vehicles, GKs would be a pretty crappy army.

For as well versed as you are in the game Darklink, I'm pretty sure you are well aware of the case between Assault Cannon Vs Lascannon. IIRC (from memory) but I believe the Assault cannon beats the Lascannon every time in terms of killing armor. A psycannon only reinforces the math on this. Soo do psyflemen count for nothing in regards to allow them to open vehicles? Imho, psycannons should not be dishing the amount of disgusting damage they do against vehicles at range that they do now. Honestly, if someone gave me the choice between melta guns and psycannons, I would always choose psycannons, all the time. But the honest truth still is, Psycannons are OP. If GK want to pop armor, rely on a dread, combat or get some gaurdsmen to tote those melta guns. From the sounds of it, you obviously have not been on the receiving end of a psycannon spam while playing a non GK army.

Funny, that. You realize one of the GK's big weaknesses is dealing with AV14, which is exactly what meltaguns are for? They need to have at least a small chance against that sort of thing, since they don't have meltaguns.

But Psycannons don't give them a small chance, it gives them a HUGE chance to pop AV 14. Hence the reason why I suggested either downgrading the Psycannon to equal an assault cannon, ergo it can still touch AV 14, but not have the ease of poppping it.

Until your opponent brings psychic defense, or you Perils, or you have to spread out to claim objectives and your opponent is smart enough to take advantage of the fact that you've got so many points buried into one single squad...

Like 3 armies in the game have psychic defense man...Space Marines (and equivalents), Eldar, and Tyranids. Also, I can count the number of times I've perils w/ my armies that have psykers ( I play Eldar, BA and GK) on one hand. That still says nothing about de-stacking Hammerhand. You honestly only need S6 and rad grenades (oh look that's 1 IC attached to insert GK unit here) to start causing ID to base T4 models without having to activate FW. I said nothing about multi-casting it, if you were thinking that. Let GK multi-cast it, but prevent the stacking.

[bfmusashi]

So do explain what exactly is balanced about a Terminator with frag/krak grenades, access to stackable S modifier, with Free Initiative 6 and Nemesis Force weapons. All coming in at the exact same price cost as Thnuder hammer assault terminators. Heck regular shooting termies don't even come close to that destructive power

This sounds incredibly odd. If we're going on points shouldn't there be a comparison as to which units have which advantages? In this scenario the GK have storm bolters, I6, either +1S (S5) or Instant Death (at S4) on all close combat attacks, and a 5++. Assault terminators would have I1 attacks at S8 that stun and a 3++ save.
Hammerhand being stackable* does not matter in this instance.


*All time weirdest FAQ ruling. I don't remember anything in the codex even hinting at this.

[DarkLink]

Hammerhand is kind of ambiguous. It really just says you get +1 strength, which leaves open the possibility for stacking bonuses. So at least the ruling didn't actively contradict the codex.

So do explain what exactly is balanced about a Terminator with frag/krak grenades, access to stackable S modifier, with Free Initiative 6 and Nemesis Force weapons. All coming in at the exact same price cost as Thnuder hammer assault terminators. Heck regular shooting termies don't even come close to that destructive power

Well, for one thing THSS Terminators have a 3++, and are base strength 8. Lightning claw Terminators get reroll to wound. GK Terminators require attached HQs and psychic tests to be more than a basic power weapon, and can't get Storm Shields at all to improve their durability. A unit of GK Terminators brings upgrades that jack up the cost very quickly, and the supporting units are very, very different.

So if you remove rad/psykotroke grenades and appropriately price psyrifle Dreadnoughts, the unit instantly becomes much more reasonable.

To be honest, aside from THSS Terminators, Terminators in general are pretty mediocre. They're too expensive to actually be that good at anything, unless they have that 3++ and the hammers to smash most anything.

Downgrade the invul save, downgrade the points cost. It goes hand in hand, but in terms of balancing, does a model with a 2+ Armor Save, really justify any need for a 2+ invul save? I highly doubt it

Well, since any real assault unit ignores armor, the quality of a units armor save is secondary in assault to the quality of its invulnerable save. And since GKs lack good invulnerable saves elsewhere, I think my point stands.

For as well versed as you are in the game Darklink, I'm pretty sure you are well aware of the case between Assault Cannon Vs Lascannon. IIRC (from memory) but I believe the Assault cannon beats the Lascannon every time in terms of killing armor. A psycannon only reinforces the math on this. Soo do psyflemen count for nothing in regards to allow them to open vehicles? Imho, psycannons should not be dishing the amount of disgusting damage they do against vehicles at range that they do now. Honestly, if someone gave me the choice between melta guns and psycannons, I would always choose psycannons, all the time. But the honest truth still is, Psycannons are OP. If GK want to pop armor, rely on a dread, combat or get some gaurdsmen to tote those melta guns. From the sounds of it, you obviously have not been on the receiving end of a psycannon spam while playing a non GK army.

Psyrifle Dreads are really only good against light armor. And I did mention that psycannons were "slightly better than a lascannon" at killing AV14. They are.

Thing is, look at the old GK codex. Dreadnoughts, Land Raiders, CC and Stormtroopers were your only anti-tank. The old codex sucked. No codex can be competitive in 5th ed without the ability to open light vehicles easily. Plus, since everyone is obsessed with light vehicle spam, introducing a codex that specializes in opening light vehicles is good for the meta, assuming that people actually adjust instead of staying stuck in the old paradigm.

Anyways, we're not disagreeing as much as you think. I did mention that psycannons need to be more properly priced, to make Incinerators a more competitive option. And they need to make psilencers at least decent as well. But the basic idea of what psycannons currently do is appropriate.

But Psycannons don't give them a small chance, it gives them a HUGE chance to pop AV 14. Hence the reason why I suggested either downgrading the Psycannon to equal an assault cannon, ergo it can still touch AV 14, but not have the ease of poppping it.

Not that big of a chance. Something like 6% to a Lascannon's 4% to wreck a Land Raider assuming 4 shots and no cover, iirc. Something like that. I've done the math before. Slightly better than a lascannon, as I said earlier. Compared to a squad with a couple of meltaguns, it's kind of pathetic. The meltaguns have closer to a 40% chance of wrecking the Land Raider.

Like 3 armies in the game have psychic defense man...Space Marines (and equivalents), Eldar, and Tyranids. Also, I can count the number of times I've perils w/ my armies that have psykers ( I play Eldar, BA and GK) on one hand. That still says nothing about de-stacking Hammerhand. You honestly only need S6 and rad grenades (oh look that's 1 IC attached to insert GK unit here) to start causing ID to base T4 models without having to activate FW. I said nothing about multi-casting it, if you were thinking that. Let GK multi-cast it, but prevent the stacking.

Space Marines and variants make up the half the codices, and several other armies don't actually need it in this case. Tau or IG already die in droves if they get into assault with GKs, excluding blob squads. And since they're T3 anyways, a single Hammerhand makes you wound on a 2+ so stacking hammerhand doesn't matter very much.

And I did say rad grenades should be removed.

[scadugenga]

Adepticon 40k champion played GK. There were a plethora of GK in the top 20. Reecius placed 7th with Eldar. Tony Kopach (sp?) last year's champ placed I think 20th with his puppies.

Goatboy was pretty up there (26th?) with his Daemons army.M or maybe that was Darkwynn with his Templars. It's been a long con...

I could care less about whether or not they are deserving the hate. That's subjective at best.

They are still a huge percentage of the armies being played, however, which says a lot about the staying power of the book.

Edit: Results were actually after day 1. My bad. (Told you it was a long con...)

Edit part the second: GK made up 8 of the top 16 armies in the Championships, and also won 1st. There were 2 Puppies armies, 1 Eldar (Reecius, go figure )1 Daemon (Bill Kim--fantastically nice guy, and awesome painter.) 1 Ork, 1 Necron, 1 IG and 1 Dark Angel list.

[DarkLink]

They have the final results, but they don't show placings on pure battle score so it's hard to tell anything from that.

That is not at all true. He made a point about range and referenced a specific situation where that point is particularly relevant.

And his argument still contains a non sequitur. The fact that psycannons have longer range than meltaguns does not imply that psycannons are particularly good at dealing with heavy armor. You can defend against meltaguns by shooting them before they get to you, and it's true that you can't do that as easily with psycannons. That doesn't change the fact that it takes a lot of psycannons to reliably kill heavy armor. The premise of his argument is flawed.

The rest of his argument, which is what I spoke to, amounted to him saying that in his experience psycannons blew up heavy armor all the time. That is, in fact, by definition anecdotal. That is to say, a claim based on casual observation. Thus I retorted, as my experience has been somewhat different. With the evidence confused, we fall back on statistics which are in my favor.

It is not impossible by any means for GKs to deal with heavy armor. They're just much, much better at killing light vehicles.

It is easy to make an argument when one picks and chooses which counter-arguments to ignore and which to respond to, but it is adverse to the goals of an actual discussion and can be a serious indicator of bias.

See above. I simply did not fully lay out my point. Because, as I mentioned, I like being snarky sometimes, and while being snarky one must recall that brevity is the soul of wit.

By the way, a period should (almost) always go inside of a quotation mark. Consider it a helpful tip.

Actually, in that case the use of quotation marks was altogether inappropriate. Technically you don't paraphrase quotes within quotation marks. My sentence really should have been: "His argument amounted to psycannons blow up my stuff all the time."

Your point, however, is actually (almost) incorrect. Since the quotation marks only applied to a sentence fragment, the aforementioned paraphrased quote, the period goes outside the quotation marks. Had I simply stated the quote on its own, the period would go inside. Inside or outside is situational. Which you (almost) mentioned, but I digress.

'Insult' means many things, but a reasonable example of such is when one goes out of their way to criticize another grammar in the middle of a friendly debate.

I still think you're a little unclear on this. Had I said "hah, what sort of idiot would put a comma there", that would be insulting. If I say what I said and you get your panties in a bunch, then whatever dude. Most of us aren't here looking for a fight.

[Dyrnwyn]

Vs AV 14
Lascannon at BS4:
1 shot x .66 to hit x .33 to pen = 21% to damage
1 shot x .66 to hit x .16 to pen x .33 to damage = 3% to destroy in one shooting phase.

Meltagun at BS4
at 12"
1 shot x .66 to hit x .16 to pen = 42% to damage
1 shot x .66 to hit x .16 to pen x .16 to damage = 1% to destroy in one shooting phase
at 6"
1 shot x .66 to hit x .72 to pen = 47% to damage
1 shot x .66 to hit x .58 to pen x .5 to damage = 19% to destroy in one shooting phase

Psycannon at BS4:
Stationary or Relentless platform:
4 shots x .66 to hit x .16 to pen x 1.0 to rend = 42% to damage
4 shots x .66 to hit x .16 to pen x .66 to rend x .33 to damage = 9% to destroy in one shooting phase.
Moving Infantry:
2 shots x .66 to hit x .16 to pen x 1.0 to rend = 21% to damage
2 shots x .66 to hit x .16 to pen x .66 to rend x .33 to damage = 2% to destroy in one shooting phase


A Psycannon is three times more likely to destroy an AV 14 target than a Lascannon. It is also more effective against lighter vehicles than Lascannon. Literally the only point the Lascannon has in it's favor is the 24" of extra range. Meltaguns are only superior inside the 6" melta sweet spot - great if a raider just rushed 24" at you or you deep struck onto their position - the psycannon outperforms it if approaching or firing at an approaching vehicle over two-three turns.

[DrBored]

It's pretty clear to me that from a variety of perspectives, GK deserve the hate.

To some, it's the rules that are busted. I too agree that GK should not have gotten such high initiative, halberds or not, when Dark Eldar, an army that SURVIVES on high initiative, just came out. To be frank, it's not fair. All the other shenanigans aside, Dark Eldar and Eldar should always have a higher initiative in close combat (sans Wracks and Guardians, etc perhaps) regardless of whatever any Grey Knight is wielding. I don't care if he has a weapon that strikes into the future before you get there, DE and Eldar should strike first. It was the biggest insult that I got as a Dark Eldar player.

To others, it's the army as a whole. Even BigRed just posted his article about how he's worried he's worsened as a player because of his experiences with Grey Knights. One comment even had the gall to say 'So what if GK are easy to play for noobs and mediocre players? It takes a master to pick out the other options in the Codex and master them.' That's like saying 'it takes a master to win a fight with his hands tied behind his back'. You're right. But why would a master do that when he can win with the easy choices in the codex/his fists? I think we can all see that this is the case from the Adepticon results.

Yet others don't hate the game, but hate the system. I think it's fair to say that IG, Space Wolves, and now especially Grey Knights were all larger-than-normal jumps in Codex Creep, while Dark Eldar, Tyranids, and even Necron (and Blood Angels to a lesser extent) were... a ripple in an ocean (and in the case of Tyranids, some argue that they got even worse). It's almost painfully clear how biased GW is to their imperium, and how cautious they get with their xenos races. I worry for the upcoming Tau and Eldar, for their Codices to similarly flop while Dark Angels, Black Templar, and Chaos Marines surge forward at phenomenal rates. It's almost like the power armored armies are trying to one-up each other constantly! And it shows.

And finally, others simply hate the player. Darn you people for picking a stupid-easy army to play! Darn you for bringing the cheese to competitive games! Darn you for choosing the easy win over the challenge! My only wish for the future is that TO's pair up more GK players against each other rather than other armies so that they can whittle down the GK players that get to the end. Want to prove your mettle, prove that you deserve to get to the top tiers? Then beat the same spam net-list that you brought! Then we'll see who is the better general. I feel for the players that didn't bring GK and lost, not because their tactics were bad, but because the units in their Codices weren't as points-efficient or as broken as the GK easy-win. I also applaud the non-GK armies that made it to the top of Adepticon's list, especially Chaos Daemons. Nowadays it takes true skill and knowledge of the game, not only of the rules and your own Codex, but also of the opponents' in order to take a solid win. Unlike GK, Eldar, Chaos Daemons, Orks, and Tyranids require a little more in the general than from the Codex.

Bottom line, sorry GK players, but you deserve the hate. Pick a different army and we'll forgive you, even if it's within the same Codex. Use spammy, cheesy stuff for an easy-win army that plays itself, and you deserve the hate.

But don't worry. I'm sure that the next Space Marine Codex (be it Dark Angels, Black Templar, or Chaos Marines) will take the torch from you soon.

[mikethefish]

Then the new codex hit - all of a sudden, there was an explosion of Grey Knight players in my local store. We went from me, to 6+ players. A lot of new players turned up with Grey Knights. I don't like playing with the new codex - it feels like it lost a lot of the niche appeal of the old elite Daemonhunters, in favor of turning the army into overpowered badasses.

This is kind of the main disadvantage for me. I REALLY dislike how there are just a ton of GK armies being played around my local shops now. Grey Knights are supposed to be elite and rare, not the most common army played in gaming circles.

Now I totally get how the "rarity" of a certain army in the fluff shouldn't match the rarity of an army in the game club. If that WERE the case, then the vast majority of players would be playing Orks and IG. I totally get that... and yet the common sight of the Grey Knights just rubs me the wrong way somehow. Can't explain it.

I long for the day when GK armies are just a tad less common. Not rare necessarily, but not played more than anything else (or at least vanilla marines!)

[DarkLink]

I'd wait to know the percentage of players bring GKs to adepticon before declaring them op because of the results. Heck, I'd wait to actually see the top ten places from pure battlepoints. As far as I know, so far they've only released the best general and the overall placings.

Vs AV 14

Psycannon at BS4:
Stationary or Relentless platform:
4 shots x .66 to hit x .16 to pen x 1.0 to rend = 42% to damage
4 shots x .66 to hit x .16 to pen x .66 to rend x .33 to damage = 9% to destroy in one shooting phase.
Moving Infantry:
2 shots x .66 to hit x .16 to pen x 1.0 to rend = 21% to damage
2 shots x .66 to hit x .16 to pen x .66 to rend x .33 to damage = 2% to destroy in one shooting phase

I will point out that this isn't quite correct. Binomial probability actually gets really complex when you have multiple attempts in each trial. So your numbers will be a little off. The error shouldn't be very big, though.

More importantly, the result of .42 does not mean you have a 42% chance of doing damage. It means that, on average, you do .42 damage results. That is an important distinction. Expected outcome is very different from probability. In the case of single shot weapons like the lascannon the binomial formula just happens to simplify down, but with multiple shots there's a difference.

[Corvus-Master-of-The-4th]

As a Grey Knight player, I'd just be happy to not have Force Weapons (on all standard Infantry)... I mean, against Daemons, they make no real difference anyway. I'd also be happy to up the points of most men by 5 points as well as upgrading and downgrading some of the costs in the book.

But I must say, my Grey Knight army rarely ever wins, but that is because I often play against big hordes (of which 20 Terminators, a Grand Master and 3 non-Psyrifles isn't great against), or heavy plasma based lists... I also enjoy my games too, as they are often very close, with a lot of luck on the side of the dice. But I still agree that Grey Knights are over powered, it's just abit of a shame, especially with the horrible new fluff