Grey Knight help...

[James Q]

Right, so now I have finished my Imperial knight army, it's time for a new one...So I have picked up a Grey knight codex, a 5 man squad of termies and a 5 man strike squad and a stormraven but what next? I want a competative army but not mega cheesy as have the Knights for that! So who should i get for my HQ choice? wha to add next and hows best to play them?

[DarkLink]

Draigo is the best thing in the codex. Dreadknights are solid, you'll want as many as you can take. Librarians and Terminators are... mediocre. But you need troops and an HQ. Basically everything else is terrible, from a competitive perspective. You really do need allies to have a functional army.

If you want to go pure GKs, you can pretty much either max out Dreadknights (2 from the NSF, 3 from a CAD, just fits into 1850 with Librarians and Terminators), or go with 3 Dreadknights, plus large Terminators squads. There's really not a whole lot of variety, which is unfortunate because the previous codex had extremely good internal balance. You could randomly throw together just about any list and make it work with some minor tweaks. Now, everything's monobuild.

[Reldane]

As Darklink mentions: there are only a handful of units that are on worth taking.

Grey knights biggest weakness is the reliance on the Psycannon, don't get me wrong it is a strong gun, but it is the only upgraded gun the army really has. do not touch the Psylencer even with force it needs roughly 30 shots to bring down a T6 3+ save MC and it isn't any better into pretty much anything else. the Incinerator is situational usable, but suffers from having no impact until your units are in charge distance. so this leaves only the Psycannon to bring any ranged fire power and with its change to salvo 2/4 it is took a hefty hit on power armoured grey knights (half range if you move as well as half shots, and preventing you from charging after firing it).

Hq:

• the Librarian is the only unit to stand out, with the option to be higher mastery level than most psykers, but has mandatory terminator armour means taking a cheep hq isn't really an option. 7/10
• the techmarine is well a techmarine only for nearly twice as much, he gains Hammer hand, but as all your squads have it by default he can't get any use out of the power. 0/10
• the brotherhood champion is laughable, costing more than a chapter master without any of the durability upgrades, wound or attacks. 1/10
• the brother captain/grand master is expensive and again is limited in what upgrades he can take to increase survivability (on idea is to take an allied detachment that is only there to summon a unit of khorne daemons to activate the bone shard of Solor) but he able to freely generate his psykic powers so over all hes not terrible 5/10

Troops:

• Terminators are base cheaper than other (non chaos) terminators and come with a mastery level. they can get expensive with upgrades especially hammers but all in all a solid choice, although the amount of ap2 shooting you face can limit their effectiveness. 6/10
• Strike squad... okay they have a lot of upgrades over a standard marine, power weapons, storm bolters, ATSKNF and deep strike but at more than 50% increase over (over costed) chaos marines* and no increase in survivability they are fairly difficult to keep on the table. add the inability to take plasma or melta and the weakness of the Psycannon on power armoured marines and you are left with a fairly weak unit. 2/10

*chaos marines where used for comparison due to lack of chapter tactics

Fast attack

• interceptors are a reasonable amount more expensive than most assault marines but each come with power weapons. overall not terrible but with 1 attack base not going to mow down enemies. I'd recommend 1 hammer, 3 falchions and an incinerator. 4/10
• stormraven is one of the few units I haven't used, so I can't really comment on how to best use it.

Eiltes

• Purifiers mastery level 2 and 2 attacks base mark them as notable upgrades over strike squad with a few falchions and hammers can be a strong cc unit however lack and increases to movement to get them there. they can take more specail weapons than strike sqaud, but suffer for the same reason with psycannons. incinerators might be a better choice, but you have to give up a power weapon for it and it is only within charge range so I'd advise against it. you can combat squad them, having an assault unit and a(n even more expensive) devastator squad with 4 special weapons. over all not a bad unit but with limitations 5/10
• paladins, ever want more expensive but functionally the same terminators? no me neither. with the changes to wargear costs a paladin with a hammer costs the same as a choas lord and is often less survivable than a thunder hammer storm shield terminator. one can repalce his weapon with a banner to give everyone in the unit +1 attack usable on larger squads, but make sure the banner dies before the squad gets too small. 3/10
• dreadnaught, remember how broken the psyfilleman dreadnaught was reputed to be, well have no fear its long gone. instead have a standard old (base attack 2) dreadnaught with a mandatory mastery level upgrade and a near useless power 2/10

Heavy

• dreadknight. the one reason to play grey knights so far pretty much everything else has had a vanilla marine equivalent (usualy for less points or with more build options) the dreadknight is the grey knights one unique unit and its good. a very durable MC with plenty of fire power and good melee as with everything it can get pricy but it is certainly points well spent. near mandatory upgrades: personal teleporter, heavy psycannon and the nemesis force hammer. the hammer doesn't look like much of an upgrade till you realise it gives the dreadknight force weapon attacks. the only (and very minor) weakness is that each dreadknight you bring is going to need 3 power dice each turn to activate its pyskic powers (sancturay for a 4++ and/or force to destroy whatever its going after) 10/10
• purgation squad are 20 point devastators, without chapter tactics, or grav cannons, or well anything really (they do have night fighting though... wooo I guess). not worth taking even if they didn't compete for slots with the dreadknight 1/10
• land raider variants identical to the marine ones in every way but land raiders aren't very strong in the current meta. AV14 isn't as resilient as it was 3 or 4 editions ago with the inclusion of many ways to by pass it. if you want an assault transport for a unit of terminators or purifiers its okay but just taking another unit will likely serve you better 3/10