Grey Knights - any hints?

[Welsh Paul]

I'm facing a Grey Knights army (2,000 points) for the first time and have absolutely no idea what to expect having never played them before. Can anyone give me some general hints as to which units to look out for?

[dangerrod]

Do you have any ideas as to what his list is?

Ie - Purifier heavy, Paladin/Draigo Wing or Rozorback spam?

Danger Rod

[Welsh Paul]

None whatsoever. I don't know what any of those options are as I have never seen their codex.

I'll be fielding the following Death Korps of Krieg list which is also untested; a fairly heavy firepower list designed to take on a mixed army rather than concentrating on anti-tank, anti-infantry, anti-MEQ:

HQ
CCS (Officer of the Fleet)
CCS (Autocannon)

Elites
None

Troops
PCS (2 x Melta)
Infantry (Melta, Power Weapon)
Infantry (Power Weapon)
Infantry (Melta)
3 x Lascannon
3 x Twinlinked Heavy Stubber
5 x Engineers (Hades Breaching Drill, Demo Charge, Melta Bombs)
5 x Engineers (Hades Breaching Drill, Demo Charge)

Fast Attack
1 x Banewolf (in reserves)
2 x Cyclops Demolition Vehicle (in reserves)
2 x Cyclops Demolition Vehicle (in reserves)

Heavy Support
2 x Medusa Siege Guns
2 x Leman Russ MBT
2 x Leman Russ Thunderer

Fortifications
Imperial Bastion (Icarus Lascannon)


The plan is to keep the HQ unit on the battlements with the Icarus Lascannon with the OotF to disrupt and spread out any enemy reserve rolls while the long range heavy weapons let rip. All of the Fast Attack options are being held in reserve to act as counter-charge units against any potential assault or outflanking units.

I plan on merging a couple of the infantry units and maybe a heavy weapons team for survivability

What do you think?

[dangerrod]

Without seeing his list its hard to give you too much advice, as he may just take something totally different!

The main element of the GK army is too assault. To do this he's most likely going to take either deep striking terminators or Purifiers in Stormravens. These can be a real handful in CC and expect to lose combat...badly!

Here's a quick run thru of the main killy parts to most lists

Purifiers go down like regular marines, so lots of AP3 or rapid fire lasguns. If they get into CC they can do a Psychic attack (Cleansing Flame) in which every member of your unit takes an automatic wound on a 4+, with normal armour saves. I've seen this kill 10-15 Guardsmen in one hit!!

Terminators can be a problem, but we all know that! However Paladins are two wound terminators so you will need to instant kill them with S8 or above or risk being wiped from the board.

Draigo is a beast FULL STOP! try and drip feed him cheap squads and tie him down, he's also the only character in their codex with Eternal Warrior. He makes Palaldins troop choices as well. If he takes him expect a tough fight, and you will need to hit hard before he gets close.

Another favourite build is the Dreadnought with 2x Twin linked Autocannons, he may be able to field up to six of these!

Dreadknights are monstrous creatures with 2+ armour and 5+ invul saves. Deal with them before they use their smash attacks to rip thru your tanks. These can also deep strike. The good news is that they only have 4 wounds!

Also, all their CC weapons are force weapons, not that its going to matter too much because there AP3 anyway!

I think the key to taking them down is going to be overwehlming him with cheap troops, and lots of plasma! Expect to face only a small army and try not to get spread out too much. To be honest i think your going to need more plasma, nothing cuts through GK's like plasma!

I've never been a fan of the Bastion, for me there death traps for Guardsmen. The banewolf will be handy but expect to lose it after it gets close enough to fire. I would look to switching one or two tanks for either a Demolisher or an Executioner (or both!)

And maybe more troops, always more troops!

Hope that helps

Danger Rod

[Welsh Paul]

Thanks. Unfortuantely, the DKoK cannot spam out Plasma like the vanilla Guard codex can. Do I assume that most of them are Fearless, as seems to be a recurring theme in recent codices?

[Ponen19]

I've seen tournament level GK lists loose to Guard on turn 2, so GK are not impossible to beat, just exceptionally tough. The key is to prioritize targets and concentrate fire to overwhelm their save rolls, statisticaly they have to roll a 1 at some point. Another thing that helps, like Danger Rod said, is lots of high STR low AP weapons, the LRBT and Medusa (the vanilla dex missile platform) do this incredibly well. Not sure if thats an option for you but if it is, put those on the field.

They might not have Fearless, but they're Marines so they have "Know No Fear".

Good luck with this, GK are tough to beat, but not invincible.

[WestRider]

Lack of Fearlessness is actually one of the Grey Knights' few weaknesses. As far as I can see, the Special Character Draigo and any Unit he's Joined are the only things they can make Fearless.

I actually usually see them focused around Shooting, but even without Allies, they have one of the most versatile and hardest to predict Dexes in the Game. They can fill a 2K List with 20 Models, or manage well over 100.

They have an upgrade called Psybolt Ammo that can boost the strength of most of their guns by 1. So there's often a ton of S5 Stormbolter fire coming downrange, and those quad Autocannon Dreads are S8. They lack truly long-ranged firepower other than those Dreads, tho, and have pretty limited access to Melta, so they struggle with AV14.

For the most part, they die like Marines, tho, even if they can hit harder. Or like Guard if they're taking Coteaz (Another SC) and a bunch of Henchmen.

The main exception is Draigo and his Paladins, one of the nastiest DeathStar Units in the Game. One of their big tricks is putting Draigo himself out front, because with Eternal Warrior, a Storm Shield, and 4 Wounds, he can soak up an insane amount of firepower. If you find yourself going up against these guys, put your Thunderers on one Flank and your Medusae on the other, to make it as hard as possible for Draigo to be the closest model to both. A couple of S10 AP2 Pie Plates that can bypass Draigo will clear that Unit up pretty quickly.

[Welsh Paul]

Well, I'm playing in an hour or so, so I'll let you know how it went.