Vs. Grey Knights v6.1

[yoritomo]

With a new tyranid codex come a new versus thread for Grey Knights. The purpose of this thread is to discuss how our new codex can deal with this army in general. This is not a place to post army lists for review. This is a place to discuss what units work against the Grey Knights, what units we should watch out for, tactics and army builds we expect to see when playing the Grey Knights, allies they usually take, and questions you might have before or after fighting a Grey Knight opponent.

Fair warning, the versus threads will stay on topic at all times. The moderating staff reserves the right to move or delete any post they deem off topic, incoherent, flat out wrong, or confusing to read (i.e. out of context due to previous posts being removed). This is a serious discussion geared towards people who want to play better against the Grey Knights, so let's act like it.

[saxif]

Hi folks,

Any tips on fighting Grey Knights? I have a 2k battle Friday. All I know is that they are marines with brotherhood of pykers who can all come in terminator armour.

I am expecting a very tough nut to crack from a competent list builder.

I have heard of some cheese tastic ability to nullify enemy psykers, what is it and how do I get round it?

I am currently planning to drown them in an endless swarm, with an artillery node and either Zoans or HG. I only have a Flyrant on the FMC front but have allot or access to allot of other stuff.

[WestRider]

They're not nearly as bad as they were back in 5th, but they're still a strong army. Their big punch against enemy Psykers is via the Mindstrike Missiles that their Storm Raven carries, which cause every Psyker Hit (not Wounded, just a Hit is sufficient) by them to suffer Perils of the Warp. They're a blast, tho, so they can't affect Swooping Flyrants.

Tarpitting is generally a good way to go. The main Unit to watch out for here is Purifiers, who have a power that lets them do hits to every enemy Model involved in the same Combat as them. Other than that, they generally have a fairly low number of Attacks, but basically every Model has a Force Weapon and they have a couple of ways to boost their strength and/or reduce your Toughness, so be careful with your MCs. My usual goal against them is to get an MC in base contact with just one Model and then swarm the rest with Gaunts/Gargs.

They can also kick out close to Fire Warrior levels of S5 firepower since they all have Storm Bolters, and can upgrade to S5 ammo for them pretty cheaply.

Their regular Terminators aren't that bad to deal with. They take twice as much shooting to kill as the Power-Armoured dudes, but they also cost twice as much, and only shoot as much as one PA dude, so I like it when I see them on the other side of the table.

Paladins, on the other hand, can be a real pain. With 2 Wounds each, they can pull some serious Wound Allocation shenanigans to keep their numbers up, and they generally come along with Draigo, who's one of the better Combat Characters in the game, and excellent at tanking fire. They get ridiculously expensive, tho, and, again, are relatively tarpittable.

[saxif]

Got it. I read 1d4 chans Grey Knight tactics write up, so have an idea of what I'll be facing. I am think that going CC with them will equal a good kicking, so will prolly roll something like ...

Flyrant - double dakka 230 ish

2 Carnifex - dakka 300

2 Mawloc 300

Artillery node 430

Endless swarm 600 ish

2 Zoans 100

2 Zoans 100

2 HG 110

I know that is over 2000 and I need to refine it allot but that is the general idea. I figure the Mawlocs might do enough to be worth while, still undecided, the double dakka Carni's and the Flyrant will be golden and the endless swarm will get in the way whilst the artillery node will prolly get blown apart because of the AP 2 exocrine and hopefully the Zoans and HG will earn their points back.

Wish I had more Deathgants!

[WestRider]

Not sure if Mawlocs are the way to go here. GK tend to be a pretty small Army, so scatters are unlikely to hit anything. On the other hand, they do provide the possibility of getting AP2 Wounds around a tanking Character. Not saying don't do it, just think about it.

[saxif]

So it went down and the Hive is nourished!

I had a think about what I read online and decided the best thing to do was fort up around 3 Exocrines and assume he would come to me, whilst having a winged tyrant and 3 small units of gargoyles harassing him and it worked. Tyranids won The Scourge 6-1.

i assume this is ok regarding being on topic as it is supposed to show what worked and why and against what.

Tyranids
Flyrant - double dakka
3 x 10 gargoyles

Artillery node with 4 tyranid warriors, a barbed strangler and no other upgrades

2 x exocrine

2 x dakkafex

4 x 10 gribbly termies with 50:50 fleshborers and devourers

2 x 2 zoanthropes
2 Venomthropes

Grey Knights
2 inquisitors in terminator armour

3 x 5 man squads of terminators

1 squad of purifiers (5 I think)

10 core marines
10 core marines
10 jump marines (teleporter type)

DeathKnight with beasty flamer

He won set up and kept initiative.

His first turn he put a wound on an exocrine, killed a few termies and mauled my gargoyles.

My first turn I moved my remaining gargoyles up and shot his marines with those in range (few) and my tyrant. I melted a few marines with Exocrines but he had already gotten scared and pulled out of their threat range, my biovores got lucky and killed a few terminators.

His second turn, he ground my Flyrant (str 9 ap2 is a little over the top) but didn't capitalise thankfully, so only 1 wound for face planting. He stubbornly refused to get first blood though and all gangs survived. We had a big bit of LOS blocking terrain so he moved into it and I had trouble getting the angle to shoot him initially, though it was open at one end.

My second turn I had some termies in with him, they killed a terminator. I flew my tyrant off the board, move my Exocrines a little for angles into the LOS blocking terrain and fired my carnies at his DeathKnight.

His third turn was about occupying the ruin and getting ready to charge out my side, melting more of my troops with DeathKnight and hurting my carnies a bit.

My third turn saw my Flyrant come on but not close enough to shoot anything. My Exocrines killed his DeathKnight and my dakkafex melted some marines, my other Exocrines melted some other marines in the building.

The game kept going on like that really, at the end he killed enough of my troops that I could only score one four point objective but I just managed to kill all of his troops so he didn't get any objectives but it was close. I lost both fexes and an exocrine, all my tyranid warriors, all my gargoyles and 3 out of 4 termie broods. He had 5 purifiers left iirc.

Forting up around the Exocrines worked a treat but only because he had nothing over 24 inch range and he got scared and didn't commit in his first or second turns. I was slightly luckier on the dice rolls and got better objectives.

It felt good being in a dominant position but given most tyranid weaponry is short range that wouldn't work vs most/any other army, except maybe Orks?

[WestRider]

Well done. That's definitely capitalizing on one of the Knights' big weaknesses, since they have very little to provide firepower over 24".

[kotuku]

So tomorrow I will be facing a 1500 pt list with Drago and 10 paladins, and I'm worried about A) having enough ways to kill his guys, and B) having my MCs get force-weaponed to death. What do you guys think would be a good reaction to this kind of list?


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[WestRider]

DraigoWing is pretty much the classic case of "Tarpit with Gaunts/Hormies/Gargs, and play to the Objectives". You need a lot of Gaunt-types, because they are going to be killing off 12-18/Turn, but that's something like a 1000 Point Unit right there, so if you can keep it jammed up for the Game with 500 Points worth of Gaunts, you've got a huge advantage in taking down the rest of his list.

If you actually want to try to kill them, Exocrines and Hive Guard are your friends. They do get Saves against the Hive Guard, but every one that gets through causes Instant Death, so it ends up being relatively efficient. Draigo is usually out front to tank with his Storm Shield and Eternal Warrior, so make sure you can hit them from two different directions. He can only cover one side.

It can be hard to pull off, but if you can get Gaunts or something on almost all of them, and then an MC in Base Contact with just one, you can do a lot of damage with relatively low risk. Fex Broods are the best, because you can have more than one all hitting through the same point, and they cause Instant Death on the Paladins without Smashing.

[kotuku]

This is great, thanks WestRider. I hadn't thought about the utility of hive guard here. Tarpitting them certainly makes sense as well, although I'm worried about having enough to make it happen (we are playing 2v2, and there will be 1500 pts of gaunt-smashing guard right next to him). I think that my strategy at this point might just be to avoid them as much as possible and take potshots as they cross the board. This is dependent on him not deep striking, of course. If they do, I think I can count on them knocking on the exocrine's doorstep to say hi.

[smkilla666]

Apr 2, 2014 3:42:44 GMT WestRider said:

DraigoWing is pretty much the classic case of "Tarpit with Gaunts/Hormies/Gargs, and play to the Objectives". You need a lot of Gaunt-types, because they are going to be killing off 12-18/Turn, but that's something like a 1000 Point Unit right there, so if you can keep it jammed up for the Game with 500 Points worth of Gaunts, you've got a huge advantage in taking down the rest of his list.

If you actually want to try to kill them, Exocrines and Hive Guard are your friends. They do get Saves against the Hive Guard, but every one that gets through causes Instant Death, so it ends up being relatively efficient. Draigo is usually out front to tank with his Storm Shield and Eternal Warrior, so make sure you can hit them from two different directions. He can only cover one side.

It can be hard to pull off, but if you can get Gaunts or something on almost all of them, and then an MC in Base Contact with just one, you can do a lot of damage with relatively low risk. Fex Broods are the best, because you can have more than one all hitting through the same point, and they cause Instant Death on the Paladins without Smashing.

Why only put him in base contact with one?? Is it so you can maximize gaunts in contact to fight? And I've been fighting gk lately and honestly I'd say fexes are the worst for melee. Theyl get killed by force weapons or insta death banner before they can even swing. Shadow in the warp has also been pretty useless against the force weapons but that may just be my luck. Really seems nerfed though compared to what it used to be.

[WestRider]

If the Fex is only BtB with one Paladin, and the rest of the Paladins are BtB with Gaunts, the Pallies are forced to direct their Attacks at the Gaunts, and only one is allowed to strike at the MC(s). It cuts way down on the odds of them getting a successful Wound in, and thus activating their Force Weapons.