New Grey Knights

[DarkLink]

The codex has leaked. GKs have been my main, and just shy of exclusive, army for many moons, so I'll go over everything in it (no, not posting pictures). I'm not exactly pleased, but at least I know how Tyranid players feel. If GW wanted to teach me a lesson in empathy...


Warlord Traits:
They're mediocre to bad.

1. Daemonslayer gives you Hatred: Daemons, and lets you cast Banishment (and only Banishment, no other powers) on a 2+. Draigo has this by default.

2. Hammer of Righteousness: Warlord and Unit gain Hammer of Wrath. Kinda cool, but GKs wreck face in assault normally in the cases where they actually want to be in assault, so it really doesn't matter much.
3. Unyeilding Anvil: Warlord and friendly units in 12” gain Stubborn. Who cares, they’re all ATSKNF anyways.
4. First to the Fray: Actually kinda cool. Warlord and unit reroll scatter and deepstrike T1. Neat, but you only rarely get it and the rest suck.
5. Perfect Timing: Warlord and unit get Counter Attack. Kinda cool, Not terrible, at least. But trust me, having Counter Attack constantly available via The Grand Strategy in the 5th ed codex, and it really isn’t anything special for GKs. Your Warlord is usually part of a unit that everyone runs away from in terror already, unless you take one of the non-combat HQs that you want to keep out of assault, Counter Attack or no.
6. Lore Master: You generate one more power from Santic Daemonology than normal. This denies you Psychic Focus, so unless you planned on rolling all on Santic anyways, not a very good deal, and since you already have most of the Santic powers scattered through your army already, WTF would you want to roll on Santic with your one shot at Divination or Telepathy? Sounds good, really isn’t.

Special rules: Nothing new here.

Armory:
Basically everything is either nerfed or more expensive. Swords lose the Invulnerable save bonus, Halberds are still decent but with +1 Str instead of +2I, but they now cost everyone points to upgrade which means they’ll rarely be worth taking. Staves are only good for getting Adamantium Will in a unit, otherwise they’re terrible. Since offensive psychic powers are pretty crappy against GKs already, probably not worth the points most of the time either. And Hammers are still great, same as before, but now everyone costs 10pts to upgrade to them, which is a huge hit to Terminators and Paladins (at least Terminators are cheaper, but getting the hammers you need into the units will erase most of that point discount, so meh).

Psybolt Ammo is gone. Which makes basically every single shooty GK unit overpriced storm bolters.

Psycannons are Salvo, so they’re utterly worthless on power armor guys now. Still good on Terminators, and the Heavy Psycannon is awesome with the option for Heavy 6 shots in addition to the Heavy 1 Large Blast, but between the loss of Psybolt Ammo and crappy Salvo Psycannons, power armor GKs are pretty crappy now.

Psilencers gained Force, but before anyone gets too excited remember that they’re still Str 4 with no AP, which means they won’t actually be putting any wounds on Riptides or Wraithknights, rendering Force utterly pointless. Still terrible.

Incinerators now have Soul Blaze, and they’re still a better Heavy Flamer, so that’s cool, but GKs are already good at killing stuff up close. They’re cheaper for most units now, too, so you might see some, say, Interceptors with them, but otherwise there’s nothing much to look at here. Terminators and Paladins will still take Psycannons, and power armor GKs will still mostly sit on the shelves.

Psyk-out Grenades can now be thrown as a small blast at Str 2, and cause a Perils if they hit, which is pretty sweet.

Brotherhood Banner: Still +1A, now reroll failed morale in 12”. Except I think only Paladins can take it now.

Relics:
Nothing game changing here. The armor one gets you FNP and IWND, which is pretty cool, but you can’t get it on Draigo so meh. You can make some kinda cool HQs, but nothing particularly awesome like the Shield Eternal Chapter Master on a Bike with a Thunderhammer that every single Space Marine player just happened to have in their collection.

Now for the units:
Lords of War:
DRAAIIIIIIGGGGGGGGOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!: Supreme Grand Master Lord Kalgor Draigo, Knight of Titan, is still a boss. Cheaper, now has AP2, makes Paladins Objective Secured. He lost the ability to generate powers (no more Precog for him), but has Gate of Infinity which is kinda cool (and if you’ve read Pandorax, this makes sense that he has it). He’s only Str/T 4 now, but Eternal Warrior and the Titansword(+3 Str Ap2) means that isn’t a big deal. He’s now Str 7 and has Hammerhand. The real problem is that he’s a Lord of War. I want to punch whoever was stupid enough to think up this idea. In order to take Draigo, you now have to pay for an HQ and Troops. Draigo’s main thing was taking Paladins, and Draigo and friends are already prohibitively expensive, which means that you basically can’t take them outside of like, Apocalypse. The circumstances in which you will be able to run Draigo are much more limited. BTW, everyone lost The Grand Strategy, which singlehandedly could account for the points decrease for Draigo on its own it was that awesome of a rule. So Draigo went from someone who was a great force multiplier for your army, to someone who is just really good at punching other people in the face. Not exactly a win, but I’ll take a Str 9 AP2 Draigo anyways.

But seriously, characters as Lords of War is just stupid. The lack of FOC swaps is just stupid. No one like Unbound, GW, quite trying to push the poorly conceived mess of FOC shenanigans on us. The only good thing to come of it was army-specific FOCs, which is admittedly pretty cool, but not at the cost of being trapped into taking crappy troops choices to meet minimum requirements and then losing to Objective Secured Wave Serpents or whatever.


HQ
Crowe/Brotherhood Champions:
BCs are 150pts now, gained a second wound, but lost a ton of stuff and weren’t exactly good to being with. Crowe is kinda good in that he gained IC (finally), but he got more expensive and is still only two wounds. BCs are worthless, Crowe’s a little better than he was but not great. Still gets Cleansing Flame, though, which is awesome.

Librarians:
These guys got a massive points drop. 110 base, 25 for ML3. Can’t get a 2++ in assault now, but this is a solid HQ choice. Cheap warp charges, and access to Divination and Telepathy. Probably going to be everyone’s default HQ now.

Brother Captains: Same stats, same points. No more broken grenades, but they still generate powers from Telepaty and Divination so that’s cool. Grand Masters are a 35pt upgrade, which is totally worth it. While you don’t get The Grand Strategy anymore, you get ML2 and 4 base attacks. And Psycannons are much cheaper on these guys. With the FNP armor, a Daemonhammer or Falchions, these guys are pretty beefy, though they’re still only 3W. Not too bad.

Techmarines: Way, too expensive for a single wound model. They were only good for grenade caddies in the previous codex, and with no more 2++ warding staves, rad, or psykotroke grenades, they lost their only raison d’etre.

Brother Captain Stern: Still overpriced, with worthless special abilities. But, hey, he got lightly cheaper. Yay?


Elite:
Purifiers: Psycannons suck on PAGK, so meh. They also went up in points to 25 a model. They did gain ML2, however, which is kinda cool, and they still get Cleansing Flame. And now their cc attacks all have Soul Blaze, which is… something? Could be worse, but now these guys are mostly just for driving forward and burninating all the daemons (and other things).

Paladins: The Hammer to Draigo’s Anvil, Paladins are still pretty beefy. Their upgrades are slightly cheaper, but they now have to pay for cc upgrades like Hammers, so it’s a wash. If you ran the Apothecary, which it massively worth it now at a mere 20pts, your unit will be cheaper, but a bare-bones unit of Paladins just got significantly more expensive. Combined with the fact that you’re now screwed over with a troops and HQ tax since Paladins and Draigo, well, aren’t, and I don’t see it easy making a list that can actually fit these guys in even though they’re still pretty awesome. One of the few good things in this codex, and GW totally cockblocked GK players with their stupid FOC shenanigans that no one actually allows. Le sigh.


Troops:
Terminators: Significantly cheaper. Now, the nerfs to NFWs negate a lot of that, but they’re still cheaper Terminators, and they don’t care about Salvo on Psycannons. Are they good? Well, how many people run cheap CSM Terminators, or SW Wolf Guard in Terminator armor? Yeah… so not bad, but getting a much, much, much needed point decrease doesn’t make them amazing, just better. You can get better results from these guys, but they’re not quite going to carry the codex for us.

Strike Squads: More expensive, and with the loss of Psybolt ammo and the Psycannon nerf there’s little reason to run these poor guys. They’re just overpriced Marines now. They were pretty solid, and now they’re worse in every meaningful way.

FA:
Storm Raven: Lost Psybolt Ammo. Lost Mindstrike Missiles, but at least it gets the Str 8 missiles instead, so meh. Pretty good, but significantly less so lacking Psybolt Ammo and considering that GKs are very, very point starved so it can be hard to fit something that won’t be on the table fighting for a few turns into a list.

Interceptors: The unit is slightly cheaper, down to 24 from 26 points per model, but you now have to pay the stupid sergeant tax, so it’s not a big decrease. Lacking psybolt ammo, and with crappy psycannons, the only thing these guys are good for is dropping Incinerators on people for lols, but Dreadknights do it just as well and aren’t overpriced Marines, so there’s not much going for Interceptors.


Heavy:
Dreadknights: Terribl… oh, wait, these guys are actually pretty sweet. They got massively cheaper, and the Heavy Psycannon now can get Heavy 6 shots. They lose the cool reroll-everything from the Sword (which is now, like, Master Crafted or something stupid), but these guys are pretty boss. Now, they’re still as expensive as a Riptide but only have 4 wounds and need to be close to fight, so they’re not actually anything crazy OP, but they’re actually good now.

Dreadnoughts: They got more expensive, and lost psybolt ammo, and don’t have Drop Pods. Why does GW hate Dreadnoughts so?

Purgation squads: They lost Astral Aim, and gained… Night Vision. And psycannons on PAGK are terrible thanks to Salvo. And even if you did want to spam Incinerators or something, at least take Purifiers instead. No one will ever take these.


Land Raiders and variants: They’re Land Raiders. They lost psybolt ammo, but Land Raiders are still pretty awesome right now. What more do you want from me?






Basically, almost everything in the codex got nerfed. It might have been justified in, like, 5th edition. Not in 6th, and certainly not in 7th. Eldar and Tau just shoot GKs off the board, and in 7th GKs struggle to keep up with malestorm missions because they're terrible balanced for elite armies. The codex seems like it's heavily reliant on a handful of workhorse units (HQs, Dreadknights, Land Raiders), and GW couldn't have done a better job at forcing GK players to use their crazy Unbound/FOC crap to make your list actually function as an army. Outside of maybe one or two builds, there isn't much a GK player can do within the standard FOC. The custom GK FOC helps a little, and is actually pretty cool, except it limits your heavy support slots (which means fewer Dreadknights, the new best unit in the codex) and you can't fit very much Objective Secured into your lists. Since everyone is now playing missions with a bajillion objectives, and GKs aren't going to be great at tabling people like Tau are, they likely won't be making much of a showing in tournaments.



But, hey, at least we're not Tyranids, amiright .

- - - Updated - - -

I might have missed something, and I left out a few minor things here or there, but this is basically the codex. So if you come around with an "but, like, what about Inquisitors man", I hate to break it to you, but you're out of luck.

[daboarder]

....Am I the only one not a fan of the direction the 7th ed books are going?

I mean who is the idiot that let the "less codex options" BS out of the closet, because the removal of all the FOC swaps is essentially just that (and no unbound while I am a fan, should not have to be the solution for a myriad of reasons)

I'm just not liking the design philosophy.....

[Caitsidhe]

Eh. No one mentioned the "rumored" rule about GK and Daemons getting buffs against each other. I take it that was false?

[Anggul]

Wow. I'm glad they removed the more silly wargear, but there was no reason to nerf the units themselves directly. Sounds crap. Commiserations from a Tyranid player.

[Varou Graou]

So, basically, it's a codex ripped off a third of its units...
With most of it nerfed as well as their gears...

Damm, why the two armies i own had to be Tyranids and GK :'(

With the last codices, Games Workshop releases feels more like a fortune wheel, with player hoping for a nice fun playable codex, more than a rule updated and freshened codex as it used to be in previous years...

(sorry for typos and else, am not english).

[Blood Shadow]

First what I love about GK and Inquisition is their unique and fluffy equipment and special forces war gear.....but it seems like it's being completely faded out

:'( Psy bolt ammo - why? it's not OP if it is then just adjust the points cost accordingly, it's just lazy to delete it

:'( Rad Grenades - I loved the unique aspect of GK grenades, hopefully they'll keep them in the =I= dex, it'd be horrible to lose them completely.

:'( Mind Strike missiles - whilst Str 8 AP2 isn't a bad boost the flavour is lost a little here, less bothered but still I feel everything is getting dose of vanilla, makes the reboxing of the vehicle kits even more bizarre.....

It could be as simple as wargear means you have less models in your army, if you can't model psybolts you might as well delete them so you can fit another Paladin in your army...

Did the guys at GW surf the internet for every Matt Ward rant and look to purge the game of his insidious touch? It does seem like they're going out of there way to remove all of the things he put in. After the nerf to Draigo's stats I'm actually really curious to see what's going to happen to the likes of Mephiston.....reduced to Str4 T4 Int4 and a 3+Sv?? Not that I've ever played with either, I just like the fact that they exist.

Without psy-bolts as allies is a PAGK ever worth taking? I'll be curious to see how they measure up vs say Ld 10 2+Sv SM honour guard with Relic blades or VV with powerweapons or Wolfguard with frost weapons? Not that I think GK will be bad, they probably wont (other than still needing SR to take on flyers and tanks - though even more so now) I just think they're being watered down.

:'( The Force Heavy Psilencer seems interesting at first, until you realise that you'll need all twelve shots to stand even the remotest chance of taking out a T4 character.....losing the wound on a 4+ is really disappointing.

I'm just hoping that there's something to get excited about in the dex

[Defenestratus]

Personally - I'm liking the fact that the units that I like got points drops - making the GK easier to ally into my existing BA force which is how I feel they should be used.

I know its not a popular opinion regarding the changes, but I'm probably going to finally put down some coin on a squad of GKT to put in my BA army.

[Slacker]

At least this release has no new "Oooh! Shiny!" (I happen to have a terminal case of this particular syndrome.) So, unlike with my Tyranids, I can just buy a book and be disappointed instead of a book and all the new kits and cards... and be disappointed.

--- edit ---
So at least my wallet feels a little sense relief?

[Caitsidhe]

The changes to GK are just another step in the direction Games Workshop wants us to take. They don't want people fielding single faction armies. They want everyone buying lots of stuff from different armies. If you look at the new GK through that prism, you will see that they are far better as small allied detachments for people who want to bolster their Warp Changes and have acess to Santic. Look at the price reduction in Librarians. Look at the favoring of Terminators. What you are going to see is lots of allied Detachmens or combined arms detachments that include 1-2 Librarians and some Terminators.

[Defenestratus]

The changes to GK are just another step in the direction Games Workshop wants us to take. They don't want people fielding single faction armies. They want everyone buying lots of stuff from different armies. If you look at the new GK through that prism, you will see that they are far better as small allied detachments for people who want to bolster their Warp Changes and have acess to Santic. Look at the price reduction in Librarians. Look at the favoring of Terminators. What you are going to see is lots of allied Detachmens or combined arms detachments that include 1-2 Librarians and some Terminators.

My thought exactly.

I wonder if the bit of fluff where GK's kill everyone who saw them is still in place.