So I played my Grey Knights in a 1250 point RTT this weekend….

I am still experimenting with the Grey Knights codex and still trying out units and just having fun with it. Next week is the Slaughter in Space III in LA and then I will see what they can really do. Darn, that reminds me, I still have a lot of painting to do

For this RTT there was a special rule that you had to take 3 heavy support choices (which is really odd when you factor in that it was a 1250 point tournament).

This is what I took:

HQ

Xenos Inquisitor w/Conversion Beamer

Elite

2 Servitors w/Heavy Bolters

1 Servitor w/Plasma Cannon

5 Warriors

Vindicare Assassin

Troops

10 Terminators w/2 Psycannons, Hammers, Halberds, Swords

5 Grey Knight Strike Squad w/Psycannon

 Heavy Support

Dreadnaught w/2 TL auto cannons, Psybolt ammo

Dreadnaught w/1 TL auto cannon, Psybolt ammo

Dreadnaught w/TL Lascannon

This Tournament was the return of my 3 Amigos! All during 3^rd and 4^th edition I played with 3 dreadnaughts as my heavy support choices since they were the only way I could get some anti-tank in it and land raiders sucked. All three of them had names: The metal dread was called Rusty, my old Space Wolf Dread was called Old Blue (and whenever he killed something I would shout “You my boy blue” like in the movie Old School), and the last one was lefty because he was a forge world dread that did not have a right arm for a long time.  

Game #1 vs. Tyranids in Annihilation

He had 3 trygons a tervigon and other stuff. I split my terminator squad which might have been a mistake so I could shoot at more stuff, in hindsight it would have been better if I kept them together. It was a tight game with his dice being on fire and he was making cover saves like crazy. Turn 3 though I had one good round of shooting where my dreads took out a zoenthrope, a venomthrope and his hive guard.  My low point in this game was charging a trygon prime with 5 terminators. Going in I could not cast hammerhand to get the extra strength because I needed the psychic test for the force weapons so I was fighting it at strength 4 vs. toughness 6. I only had one halberd though and I did end up rolling a “6” to wound but then shadows of the warp made me blow my test and I could not force weapon him, and he took everyone out but my thunder hammer, which he killed on his turn. Where I did get lucky in the game was when he shot the crap out if my dreadnaughts and he could not roll over a 5 on the damage table, so he was just maiming them and not killing them. The game ended with me only having 2 dreads left alive and running for their lives. After the dust settled I ended up winning 8 kill points to 7. The funny thing is that I have horrible luck with tervigons and they do nothing but crap out a ton of gants whenever I play against them. This time though it played in my favor because it gave me a bunch of extra kill points.

Game #2 against Tyranids seize ground (4 objectives)

This game was a bit different because the board was a lot more open than the last game and I had good fields of fire. All you need to know about this game was that he had a Doom of Malen’tai in a spore pod. So I am decimating him though my mid-ranged firepower and chewing him up. Turn #2. I have my troops close together and pass my Warp Quake roll to keep the Doom away, but he does not come in. Turn #3 I fail my psychic test when I roll a 10 and so I do not get Warp Quake off, and the Doom lands right next to my troops and after he does his attack I am left with 2 thunder hammer terminators as my only troops. It does not help that the tervigon is cranking out a ton of gants. In 4 turns he craps out 52 gants (which is like playing with 260 extra points in a 1250 point game). I had a shot at tying the game at the end, but he got a good run roll and was able to contest my objective. But the Doom and the million gants sealed my fate.

Game #3 vs. Space Marines Command and Control table quarters

He had a mech list that was interesting. Since I had a loss I was going to have some fun. I kept my terminators together and I was going to deep strike them near his objective, and was going to keep my strike squad in reserve so they would not get shot and run off the board and walk on later to hold my objective.  

His shooting did not do much in turn #1 and then I unloaded into him crippling him. 3 dreads+conversion beamer+vindicare=2 dead razorbacks, a predator and stunned his vindicator. His shooting was then really feeble in the next turn and did not do much (In his defense he had a lot of las/plas razorbacks and he was rolling a lot of 1s and 2s to hit). I got my 10 terminators on and deep striked them near his objective and there was nothing he could do about them. They shot at the one threat that they had still on the board and 2 psycannons in the rear killed the vindicator. Then it was just a cleanup action.

What I learned

The Vindicare is not that good. Where it shines is a vehicle killer. Otherwise with people getting cover saves it just does not cut it.  Shooting at tyranids it was underwhelming, and it was ok vs. marines.

In the Demonhunters codex one of my favorite units was an Inquisitor with a psycannon and the gun servitors with a plasma cannon and 2 heavy bolters. I thought I would try to duplicate it and I did not like the results. The first thing is BS 4/3 is very different than the old BS5/4. Also the squad is missing the sages that would give you a re-roll and that made a big difference rolling the scatter on the plasma cannon. Also I was not impressed with the conversion beamer. It is hard to get over 42” away, and I was shooting at close objects to maximize the units fire-power. The new unit though is cheap as chips, but it eats one of your HQ choices. I think it could be improved by a space monkey, but he is still BS 3 too, and I do not know if his lascannon/multimelta compliments the anti-infantry role. 

Terminators are not all-that. Use power weapons on them and they drop like flies. Ironically a librarian really juices them up to be a good combat unit. I still hate that all of the terminators in the GK codex are not fearless. You have Paladins that will run when they lose combat which is very dangerous when you have a very expensive unit. If you are playing that many points on a small army they have to be reliable (see deathwing). That is why the best GK armies right now are Purifier Spam lists or the MSU armies that can lose units and not severely hamper their effectiveness.