Paladins, Psycanons and you!

So I decided to build my Grey Knight army around Paladins. Why did I do that? It is not because I like buying Draigo to make them all troops. He is more of a 100 point Grandmaster upgrade to make Paladins troops, and he makes an already expensive unit even more expensive. It is not because I like 2-wound terminators...well that might be true. I am a long time Thousand Sons player from back-in-the-day when they had 2 wound terminators. These days though they have the same problem that non-storm shield terminators have and that is a crappy 5+ inv save. What made terminators survivable is that 3+ inv save, and that is the reason why Deathwing armies overnight went from a crappy bottom tier list to a very good list. Paladins can take some damage, but to the right weapons, they go down rapidly. Just for some examples, Dark Eldar with all of their Dark Lances, IG with a lot of Vendettas, Space Wolves with Grey Hunters with a lot of Melta weapons. Then your pricey, durable terminators go down like $5 hooker.

So why Paladins?

So far in my tournament games I have trouble with Psycannons. They have shut the range down on them so much, that I can’t sit back with them anymore and shoot. I liked the old rules where they can shoot 36” and had shrouding protecting them. Now they are 24” and not only that, but their rate of fire is severely diminished by movement. So when I went to play Strike Squads and Purifiers I was underwhelmed by their firepower. They have to move a lot to shoot, and then when they get there they need to stand still for a round to get their maximum rate of fire. To overcome this I started to play with Terminators. Here is the problem with them…they not only pay a premium for their Psycannons, but they only can only have one. It was nice to have them walking around and firing to full effect, but one Psycannon did not cut it. You need a pretty good volume of fire to take down a vehicle, and also to do some damage to anything with a decent armor save.

So what do you do?

The next step is Paladins. They can move and shoot like a terminator but unlike terminators they get 2 heavy weapons for each 5 models. So with 5 of them properly kitted out that is going to be 8 shots at strength 7 rending. That is a good amount of firepower in a reasonably durable container (but you sure do pay for it). 

Dividing up the goods

What I also like about them is their ability to combat squad when you take 10 of them. It gives you some options like:

10 Paladins w/4 Psycannons

2 Squads: 5 Paladins w/2 Psycannons each

2 Squads: One with 4 Psycannons and one with 5 Paladins set up for close assault!

So at the end of the month I have 2 tournaments and I will get to see how they do!