GK list building?

Ok folks, lets open this up to the world.  I am looking for some input on my Grey Knights list.  First of all, I decided to do my GKs after I painted that charity Standard Bearer.  He looked too nice not to do an army!  I had all the models from store credit loot from tournaments.  I won one, and got second at the next, and earned myself enough store credit to pick up quite a large army and then some.

Painting the charity model, then having it win a Crystal Brush at Templecon for Best Sci Fi model, sealed the deal.  I wanted to paint a truly competitive army that could compete for Best Painted.

What to build?  Well I consulted my friend Alex Fennel, who plays for the British ETC team, and we came up with a plan and some basic rules.

First:
I didn't want to jump the band wagon and flood the table with Psy Dreads and Assassins.  I have faced too many of these armies and they are no fun to play against, and can't be much fun to play. As if you really need advice when playing the double land raider assassin bomb and/or psy dreads and acolyte spam any way. I know I could paint this list up beautiful, and take it to a GT and blow people away, but that's not what I want.

  I'm not saying I would win any given GT, but I'm pretty sure I could take Neil Gilstrap's or Rob Baer's GK lists to my next GT and probably be in it to win it.  Rob throttled me at last year's Nova with his double land raider assassin army. He didn't even bother playing it in the actual Nova because it was broken. I don't remember what he had. Here is a list by Masta Shake that is an interesting variant. No dreads but check out the Vindicare! Cool. Bad ass list and I'm sure it is going to be awesome to behold because he is a true artist, but I want to play Grey Knights and this Grey Knight list has none.  (Techmarines and a librarian don't count.)  He is packing some serious fire power and should be near the top of the standings at the end of Bolscon.  My problem with this list is why do Grey Knights exist at all when the Inquisition can blow away most armies out there with lowly acolytes.  How much love could I put into doing this army? A bunch of assassin whores and chicken shit acolytes hiding in transports...

So my first rule, I want a mostly GK army. I'm not above playing some acolytes to take advantage of the cheap troops, but I want the bulk of my army to be Jawa Grey power armor.

Second:
Flexibility is a must.  I am building an army on the dawn of 6th edition, and I have to build an army that can compete both in the here and now, and six months from now when I land in Denver for Feast of Blades.  So again, I think that you can't go wrong with infantry.

Third:
It has to be an army I can get into.  I am creating a work of art, so I need some flavor.  A reason to care won't hurt.

So with those rules in mind, I came up with a mostly foot infantry GK list.  First of all, I wanted to have Terminators at the core of the army, keeping in line with the GK codex fluff.  I wanted to also use the Forgeworld Inquisitor Hector Rex model I won at a GT last year

HQ Librarian Terminator. Force Sword, Quicksilver, Shrouding

x10 Terminators. Psybolt ammo, 1 hammer, 1, banner, x2 psycannons, 1 sword and the rest Halbreds. (My Justicar had a sword before I made any decisions.)

Right here I had a decent base. Survivable and powerful. Also very pretty models and striking on the table.

My GK Terminator tester model WIP

If I can make the rest of my army look like this, I am confident I can compete for painting honors at any GT.

So what then from there?  Well I had about 9 boxes of GK infantry. I decided to go with a big troops base of GK strike squads.

Grey Knight Strike Squad x3.  10 Knights each, x2 psycans, x2 halbreds, 1 hammer, swords.

Now I have my army. 30 Grey Knights and 10 terminators.

What else? Well I like the Purifiers in the codex.  I also wanted more psycannons. So 10 Purifiers!

Purifiers. x10, x4 psycans, x1 hammer, rest Halbreds

That got my model count up to 51.  Nice.

Now I needed some color. I toyed around with adding a generic inquisitor and retinue, but after looking at the points, I simply could not justify not taking Coteaz. He is that awesome.  Plus a nicely painted nonmetallic gold Coteaz will make a nice focal point amongst all the Jawa Grey.

From there I was looking to finish off the focal point, so I decided to go with an Acolyte Warrior squad in Chimera.  Here is where I just don't know. I definitely want the color. I painted up a tester for a Kasrkin with Melta to make myself a little mini Melta Vet squad and mostly finished Coteaz.

So there you go. I have played a couple of test games, toying with Rhinos which just get obliterated and other stuff.  I just don't know where to go. Here is the list. I grabbed a couple of acolyte squads to give myself some Chimeras. And have points to give a few squads Psybolt Ammo. Hechmen are on their own, reserving hopefully until turn five then running into the fray and going to ground.  The purifiers and another squad hijack the rides.

LIbrarian Terminator with Sword, Qicksilver and Shrouding
Coteaz

Henchmen x3, Chimera
Henchmen x3, Chimera

Terminators x10, 2 psycan, 1 hammer, 1 sword, 6 halbreds
Knights x10, 2 psycan, 1 hammer, 2 halbred, 5 swords
Knights x10, 2 psycan, 1 hammer, 2 halbred, 5 swords
Knights x10, 2 psycan, 1 hammer, 2 halbred, 5 swords

Purifiers x10, 4 psycan, 1 hammer, 6 halbred

If some one can tell me how to upload a PDF of my Army Builder file to here, I will.

Right now I am sitting at around 1924 points.

So, do I break up my 10 man squads and go razor spam ala Nick Nanavati?

Alex told me about a guy he knows in the UK who has done well with a similar list to what I have come up with, but with Dreadknights. What do you guys think?

Looking forward to hearing some input from you guys who have been playing GKs.  Lets try to avoid theory hammer and go with what we know works!

Jawaballs

Jawa Grey: Grey Knight Terminator

Yes, it still needs some work. But here is a mostly finished terminator done in my new Jawa Grey style. I decided to jump to the actual models rather than paint the dread knight, since that particular model will never see a table.  Sadly, the picture does not do it justice. It is much nicer in person. I still need to clean up some of the mess from the washing of the browns and clean up some of the highlights, but I'm mostly happy with the finish!  Also, I am working on some light up LED bases!

So yes, Jawaballs is doing Grey Knights, but at least I am doing them in style. :)

Jawaballs

Grey Knight Blue Steel Grey Technique part two

Ok Folks, Time for an update on my Grey technique!  Here are some pictures of the model in progress. I decided to paint this half of him to a near state of completion before moving on with the tutorial.  Needless to say, this is challenging.  My model is ending up more blue than grey, which is not necessarily a bad thing.  

In these first two pictures I compare the Dreadknight to my terminator I first painted with this technique. Obviously, the terminator was smaller with easier to paint armor plates. The smaller they are, the less I have to feather/blend the greys.  That is, the less I have to drag out the blend.  On the big plates I found myself creating new light sources so as to have new areas of blended grey.  

In this closeup, you see the difference. The terminator legs pose a different challenge than the dread knight ones.  To create the grey I start with Codex, then go to Fortress, Astronomicon, then white along with a couple applications of Asurmen Blue.  

I tried to make the final white highlight as crisp and edged as possible. While I am not trying to recreate chrome with nonmetallic colors, I am using it as a reference, and when I looked at some bike handlebars for example, there were usually a bunch of dark shades, with one extreme line of white down the middle or on an edge.  

A big problem I am having here is that the original model was sprayed black, then hand painted with Adeptus Battlegrey. This one was sprayed with Uniform Grey from army painter instead.  The shade of grey is much lighter, and more easier over powered by the Asurman Blue wash.  The Battlegrey held up to the blue wash, keeping the darks more grey than blue.  However, I don't think the effect is bad on this. I kind of like the cold blue shade.  

Now that I have a decent idea of how I am going to paint this guy, I can proceed with the tutorial. Next time, Fortress Grey and how it interacts with the Codex grey.  As I paint the other side, I am going to push the relationship between the blue and the grey.  I think I will water down the blue a bit more and try to get a smoother blend with the greys.  Here's to learning!

Jawaballs

Jawa Grey Part One

Ok folks you asked for it!

WARNING: This is an advanced tutorial which requires practice.  Allow yourself the patience to learn it and perfect it!

Due to popular demand, I am doing a step by step tutorial for my Jawa Grey. This is the NonMetallic Metal style way that I painted my weapons on my Double Gank Mephiston/Sanguinor Assault Blood Angels army.  I used it to paint this model which won Best Sci-Fi model in the Crystal Brush competition sponsored by Cool Mini or Not at Templecon in Rhode Island last weekend.

First of all, this is NOT Non Metallic metal. This is based on the techniques used to achieve it.  I am not trying to recreate a chrome/silver metallic effect using greys and blues, directly. Sure the effect simulates metallic silver armor, but I am more interested in the shading and value of greys that I get than reproducing chrome.

Value is the lightness and darkness of color. It describes the transition from light to dark. A good area on the above picture that describes a nice value is the left breast part of the armor. There is a nice smooth transition from bright grey at the top, to dark cool grey at the bottom of the chest piece. This effect serves two purposes.

First, it looks great on the table. A big problem with some master painted models is that you spend 10 hours painting them, and the colors really are perfect when the model is 6 inches from your eyes, but when you put it on the table, it loses it's beauty.  This style of painting produces a model that looks great from 3 feet away. You can put it on the table, and observe it from standing distance, and the models will "Pop" on the table.

But also, and this is important when being judged for "Best Painted", the models have to stand up to close scrutiny.  This painting technique will look great from up close too.  The best of both worlds!

Ok enough intro. Let me get to painting.

For this model, I assembled and primed it with Army Painter Uniform Grey. Then I gave it a liberal wash with a 40/60 mix of water to Asurmen Blue. (I just used an almost half empty pot of AB wash and filled it with water.)  The ratio should be around 50/50.

Once the wash is dry, I get right to it with Codex Grey.  I start by edging the grey using the side of the brush on the edges of the armor. 

I use a TINY TINY amount of grey on the brush at any given time. This is a Reaper Kolinsky 10-0 fine detail brush.  I dip the brush into the codex grey, this particular grey is straight from the pot, no mixing.  Then I drag it down the edge of the armor, from top right of the image to lower left, with the side of the bristles resting against the edge.

Then I drag the brush towards the meat of the armor like this.  You can see how little paint is on the tip of the brush, that is very important.  Drag the bristles into the armor, then rub the brush up and down the edge. In this picture, the direction would be North East to South West.

Here is the result.  You can start to see the grey change in value, from light at the edges to darker as it wraps around the armor plate.

To improve the effect, do it several more times. Each time, drag the brush more into the meat of the armor, and allow it to "feather" out like so.  At this point, a nice circular motion works well. You will see the grey collecting at the edge and fading at the center. Allow it!

Here is the armor plate with the front part finished with Codex Grey.  In this style, I try to allow the edges of the armor to be light. This might not make perfect sense since you would think that light would be shining off the rounded part of the armor, but who cares about logic.

This is the first of 3 shades of grey you are going to paint, so don't worry about getting it perfect right now. You will also reapply the blue wash a few times.

And yes, I am aware that I failed to properly shave off the sprue flash point.  Sometimes they don't really show up until you start painting.  At some point I will shave it with a blade and touch it up.

That's it for now!  Much more to come.

Jawaballs

Whats next?

Ok guys, I have a long post about my last two GT experiences coming up soon. But in the meantime I wanted to give you something short and sweet!

I finished the first banner for Dropzone Games and am now working on their 2nd of 3 commissions. Ravenguard!

The guys at Dropzone Games sent me a sample image they wanted their banner based on.

I drew the image in pencil on the black banner and am now laying color. First is dark brown for the scroll and skull.

Then I used a series of greys to do the "Raven". At the top I laid in some masking

tape to help make straight lines for the Ravenguard Checker pattern.

Using yellow oxide I painted in the Halo. I am taking some liberties with the design.

The scroll was not in the design they sent me,  but I feel that it is not a 40k banner 

without the big bold letters!  Also I enlarged the halo. In the original image there is a 

white/silver background behind the raven with a series of cross designs. I am not a fan. I filled the space with 

the halo instead and will do a more subdued square outline in the background to tie in all the elements. Jawa knows best!

What else?  

Templecon!  I am doing a big writeup of the fantastic event, but I just wanted to share a little stuff with you for now.

I entered this Grey Knight I painted for the Templecon 40k Charity into

the Crystal Brush competition sponsored by Cool Mini or Not. 

Oh and that is a Jawa Forge resin base. :)

The grey knight went for 110.00 in the auction.

The accolades went to Jawaballs!  I won 1st place in the Sci-Fi category.

I also entered my Sanguinor that won Best Single Mini at Nova, but he failed to place. He was at least top three in Sci-Fi.  

Not sure what happened there as he is a better painted model by far. Perhaps the CMoN guys can shed some light!  It was too busy to ply them for feedback at the event.  Perhaps it had to do with the fact that I was using him in the tournament and did not enter him in the judging until the evening of Saturday, and took him out for a bit to display him with my army for Players Choice voting.  I think he just got missed... :(  

And yes, the elusive Players Choice.  I won my first by a VERY slim margin, 1 vote!  Hans from Team Bastard with his Dark Eldar was 2nd, and would have probably won had he finished his army and done a nice display.  I thank every one that voted for my army. It is much appreciated. :)

Not a bad send off for my current Blood Angels army. I painted it last summer with the intention of competing for painting honors through Templecon. It is NOT a GT competitive list.  But it is pretty!  It is now retired from GT service as I begin work on my next two armies.

Here are it's final results:

Nova Open: 1 of 5 finalists of over 250 entries for Best Army.  Winner of Best Single Mini, The Sanguinor

Battle For Salvation: Winner Best Painted Army, Finalist for Best Conversion: Mephiston and Best Painted single mini, The Sanguinor

Mechanicon: I had to leave early, but my friend Ted Nagle won Best Painted in my absence. I will let him make the call if I would have won. :)

The Conflict GT: Winner Best Painted Army

Templecon: Winner Player's Choice. (There was no Best Painted judging.) 

I'm proud to say the least, and thankful to all who voted/judged in my favor.

This only drives me to push even harder for the future.

And just because this army is retired from GT play, it does not mean you won't see it again. I may play it in various RTTs in the area, and I intend on entering it into Armies on Parade at Gamesday! That would involve a new display board, and a trip down to New York City to the GW store to enter it into the judging.

So on with the new!

The sad news that  the rumored Eldar codex release was just rumor really hurt. I was excited about my Eldar army, but cannot allow myself to invest so much time in a noncompetitive list again.  I need to give myself a chance to win the GTs I enter.  I am still going forward with my Eldar, but in the meantime, I have decided to actually finish the GK army I have sitting in boxes on the shelf.  I have over 60 knights, 20 terminators, 3 Dread Knights, 5 razorbacks, some Forgeworld stuff and other goodies just sitting around my mancave.

Painting that standard bearer really got my juices flowing for GKs, and now I am just looking for a primer that I can use to quickly do them.  Painting Adeptus Battle Grey by hand on each model was going to wear me thin.  I had to find a suitable spray in order to make the army a realistic idea.

As for my list, it is time for Jawa to put his own flavor of uber knights on the table and thump some skulls. No they won't be Blood Angels with jury rigged halbreds, or Space Wolves with counts as storm bolters.  They will be painted to my ever exceedingly high expectations, and yes, they will be cheezy.

The Walking Dead starts again this weekend!

Jawaballs

Templecon Charity Grey Knight

Here is the Grey Knight I painted for the charity drawing being held at Templecon this weekend!  This was the first time I tried to do the NMM grey look on a full model. Previously I used it to nice effect on the weapons of my current Blood Angels army. There is plenty of room for improvement, but I am fairly pleased with the result.

One thing I am not crazy about is the molded banner that comes with the box set.  It is not the easiest to paint and not the most dynamic of images.  I would much prefer to paint my own any day.  I was going to paint an apothecary to go with this model, but I tried a grey spray paint on it as a short cut, and it filled in all the details, ruining the model.

If any of you have suggestions for a grey spray, I'm all ears. I need one that is the same shade as Adeptus Battle Grey, which is the base I use for this model.

I intended to do a step by step with this guy, but after I started I realized I wanted to focus my attention on painting him rather than documenting a bunch of steps that I may or may not use next time.  I think I got the process down, so next time I will do a step by step for you guys.

Alrighty, time for me to wrap up here because I am leaving soon for a 2 hour drive to Warrick Rhode Island and Templecon!  I am bringing my Blood Angels, so of course have no hope of winning the tournament.  Sadly though there is no Best Painted category.  The TO decided to not do a Best Painted and instead do a Players Choice, because there is already a painting competition going on of the Crystal Brush variety.

What this means is that all bets are off. Players Choice rarely goes to the best painted army as per the usual rubrics, but instead to the "coolest" army and is usually impacted by the personality of the owner of the army. An average painted, but unique army or display can easily take PC. Which is fine with me!  I like that it puts the power in the hands of the players.

I'm not saying my army won't stand a chance to be the favorite of the players, but I understand that it is now old news. Most of the guys who will be there have seen it before, and the luster is gone.

The most important thing here is NEVER set your heart on winning something like Players Choice.  Hope for it, but don't count on it, and definitely don't be disappointed if you don't win it.

OK, I'm off. This will probably be my last GT until October when I hit none other than FEAST OF BLADES!  That's right, I am planning on flying out to Denver Colorado to hang out with Jim and Chandler and the rest of the guys from FoB, and the BOLS crew as well for some food, drink and 40k.  Good company, and good gaming. It can't be beat.

Jawaballs

Battle for Salvation Tournament Report: Jawaballs goes for the win?

So the Battle for Salvation RTT came this past weekend under fears of heavy rain and apocalyptic ruin.  The world didn't end, but the rain sure came! Oh, and 30 dudes clashed for glory and loot.

Thanks Bitz Box

In a previous post I talked about how the Grey Knights were going to change army lists.  I talked about how any non Grey Knights trying to play AV 11 and 12 were going to be in trouble.  So in preparation for what I would probably face if I went to the third game in a position to win, I dropped my razorbacks and played 4 land raiders.

My list:
Mephiston
My termy death squad with 4 claws and 1 hammer
Reclusiarch with melta pistol
Priest with PW
land raider crusader with mm and extra armor

3x assault sqauds with melta gun, god hammer land raider with MM and EA, one had a HK missile

So on with the games! Sorry I have no pics this time.  Forgot my cam.  I did get some video though.  I will try to put some of that up.

Game One:
KP /DOW vs Mech IG.

Interesting game in that to get full points you had to win Kill Points by 5.  (Earn 5 more KP than your opponent)  This was going to be a a tough one to max out on!

To his credit, my opponent was not playing the "net list".  He had a lot of chimeras with vets and melta/plasma, but instead of all the Vendettas he went with more heavy tanks.

The game was a shootout for two turns since he had no shortage of fire power.  But my Crusader and Mephiston hit his ranks on turn two thanks to a nice LoS blocking terrain piece in the center of the table.  Shortly after that most of his stuff was dead.  Mephiston went tank hunting and ate a psyker battle squad while the terminators had Vet Crunchies and claimed all their melta and plasma guns for the Blood Angels armory.  It was a good harvest. :)

I ended up scoring 12 points out of a possible 13. I did not want to be on the top table in game two so I did not take any of the objectives to score the third bonus point.

Game Two:

Table Quarters/Table Corner deployment (Have more victory points in the quarters at the end of the game to claim them.)

My 12 point plan left me with what appeared at first to be a lopsided matchup in my favor. Foot Templars.  (And it kept me away from Nick Nanavati playing... wait for it... Psy Cannon heavy GKs and Fritz's "Marine Killer" Nid list)  They both scored max points turn one because Nick predictably obliterated a mech list and Fritz gorged himself upon a generic marine list.  Oh and Nick nearly tabled Fritz.  All those psy cannons were to much for the bugs.  Nick's GKs would march to the final round with full points.

Back to my opponent.  Upon closer inspection I saw that his army was much more dangerous than I first thought.  All of his guns had Tank Hunter.  He had 4 or 5 five man crusader squads with Las Cannons and a couple in Rhinos with melta guns.  He had a couple 5 man terminator squads with dual missiles and a 10 man hammernator squad with the Emps Champ and a Chaplain with Retinue attached. About 16 models total.  He had a High Marshal attached to one of his shooty terminator squads.

To start the game he began with a discussion about the ruling concerning Righteous Zeal.  The spirit of the rule is that Templars charge forward in the face of enemy firepower. Taking losses only makes them madder and provokes them to either charge forward, or failing leadership, flee the field.  But of course poorly written 3rd edition rules allow for abuse of the rule.  I didn't quite understand what my opponent was saying at the start of the game in how he intended to use the rules.  So I accepted whatever he wanted.  He said it was supported by the INAT FAQ. (Which tends to lean towards Rules as Written over Rules as Intended as far as I know.) Any way.  I figured out what he meant the first time he used the exploit.

It seems that Black Templars can go to ground when they are taking fire for a 3+ cover save, and so long as the squad lost a member, use RZ to get back up. The models move a fraction of a hair and stay put since the rule does not specify how far they must move.  Then they are able to fire on their turn.  By the rule as written, it works.  No huge issue, but still rules abuse none the less.  More RZ shenanigans would happen later as my opponent would try to avoid getting assaulted by my terminators. Using his chaplain to give himself the power to direct his RZ move, normally they must RZ towards the nearest enemy unit or some such, he instead wanted to try to use it to get away from my terminators.  Again, nothing illegal, but definitely defies the spirit of the rule.

The funny part about this was that before the game my buddy Alex Fennel from the Cold Stone Mercs, a New England gaming club told me to "be nice".  I guess my opponent was a nooby?  Well if he was he certainly knew what he was doing.  Being mentored by one of the best players in the world (Alex) doesn't hurt either. :)  I planned to go easy so as not to the noob stomp like my poor buddy Jim the Stout Smurf got at The Colonial. (He left there pretty dejected after getting nearly tabled in all five games.) Any way, the first time he used RZ to go to ground then get back up and shoot had me taking off the gloves. Plus I would need to once I saw that this "noob" was not playing a noob army, and in fact one no doubt designed to slaughter people as created with the help of Alex.

He reserved his rhinos with melta crusaders inside.  I spread out my god hammers and ran my crusader right up the middle.  All of his stuff was in the left corner.  I moved up my crusader and hid it behind a nice big lumpy terrain piece that looked like a demented pound cake.  My god hammers opened up on his las cannon crusader squads, provoking the RZ go to ground trick.

By the way, I want to take nothing away from my opponent here.  To his credit, he used full disclosure to explain what he intended to do before the game began, and gave me the option of declining it.  Or at least dicing it off.  I respect what he did and do not fault him for using the tactic. He was a good sportsman and honest player.  Most guys would not tell you up front and wait until the situation occurred to "spring" it on you.   I did not agree with it, but had my chance to do something about it.  For that, I salute my opponent. Besides, the ambiguous rule did support what he wanted to do as does the INAT.

So I killed a terminator in his big squad with shooting, prepping them for the assault.  I could handle 5 to 8 of them, but that would be pushing it.  10 would be tough indeed.

On his turn he advanced them after I said I had no intentions of holding back. I was going to go up there and assault next turn. He wanted to meet the challenge.  His shooting caused a shaken to one of my god hammers. Poor rolling on his part.

So on my turn I went for the jugular.  I did not need to move my crusader much since he moved up his termies with his RZ move.  I got out and moved and prepared for assault.  But before doing so I needed to whittle down the odds a bit.  I managed to kill two more with shooting. And shot up some of his other boys as well.  He entertained the thought of zealing away from my assault range, but realized that no matter what he would not  escape. My guys were to close. He was committed, and so was I. Time to charge.

Mephiston led the way in, but was unable to get B2B with an IC so he took on the terminators.  My chaplain went after his Champion and my claws locked down his chaplain.  My priest with PW jumped into the fight too. I would need those PW hits.  Meph delivered 6 wounds on the charge.  Two or three would die.  My chaplain killed the Emps Champ on the charge with 4 wounds forcing two failed saves.  And my claws and priest would deliver about 10 more wounds to the hammers and 3 to the chaplain who was already wounded. All would die.  But his chaplain managed to take down 3 of my termies in his death throws.

My boys massacred back to the cover of the Land Raider.

On his turn he brought in his two rhinos on my right side and opened up on my god hammer holding that corner.  He immobilized that, and my crusader and put some wounds on Meph.  Immobilizing the crusader forced my hand.

On my turn I finished off a crusader squad with one of my god hammers after advancing it, and assaulted one of his melta squads on the right with my guys from inside the god hammer.  I needed to slow them down to hopefully reduce the melta shots by half coming at the god hammer and giving it time to take down this transports.  I did not hurt either of the transports, and lost combat with the squad... :(

I also found out something that I had been doing wrong for years.  At Mechanicon two years ago my opponent wanted to assault me. I had one guy out of terrain and the rest of the squad in. He asserted that so long as the first guy did not have to roll difficult terrain to get B2B, the rest of the squad did not have to and could move normally, essentially ignoring terrain.  The judges upheld this and I have been playing it this way since.  The situations where that occurs are rare so it did not come up often.  After consulting a couple people, and then checking the book, it was actually clearly written.  Yes if any member of the squad would have to enter terrain, I must roll.  You learn something new every day!

It had no effect on this game one way or another. It was just one of those interesting "Duh" moments.

From here the game came down to a scramble. How fast could I slaughter all his troops, and how long could he dodge me.  Meph would eventually die to terminator power fists, but I wiped out all the termies. The hero of the day was my priest leaving the Crusader after the rest of my termeis and chaplain died, and assaulting the last member of the squad that killed him... he killed the terminator then got back in the crusader to lend his victory points to claiming the quarter.  I dropped off the infantry in my left god hammer to claim the near left corner, and advanced it into his corner to claim that one. All he had left was a single crusader squad.  My right side god hammer turned around and started shooting at the two rhinos.  He finished off my third god hammer and the troops that were inside.  But my immobile crusader would take that quarter.

I destroyed one of his Rhinos and reduced a squad below half. Giving me the edge in all four quarters and that is how the game would end.  A blood bath!  As should be expected with Templars vs Blood Angels.  I got max points.  It was a fun game and a whole lot harder than I expected at the start.

That set me up for the showdown I expected. I was going to be playing against Nick and his AV11/12 psy cannon heavy GKs.

I don't know exactly what he had but it was something like:

Inquisitor Coteaz
3 squads of 3 henchmen in Chimeras with meltas.
3 squads of 5 Purifiers in Rhinos with 2x psi cans
3 squads of 5 strike GKs in HB Razors with master crafted hammers and max psi cannons.
3 Psyfleman dreads

Lots and lots of psycannon shots.

Based on the amount of punishment my land raiders took this game, I can say without a doubt that I would have been tabled had I played my razor list.

Objectives was the mission, and 12" deployment. He won the roll and surprisingly gave me the first turn.

My plan? Demech him and assault all of his knights at once.  Or at least as many as I could line up.

Turn One:
He clustered his guys, forming a line with his three dreads shoulder to shoulder on his deployment line, and the line extended by two razorbacks with their sides facing me. Every thing else was grabbing cover behind them. Seeing an opportunity to stall him in his deployment, I decided to go for his psy dreads.  I knocked the guns off one and immobilized the other two. I thought I had him boxed when I stunned both of the lead rhinos.  (The dice gods failed me big time in this game, rarely rolling over a 2 to damage vehicles.)  In hind sight, I should have focused all of my fire on stopping his transports. It turns out the damned Purifiers were the biggest threat in his army.  STR 7 rending is way better than STR 8 Auto Cannons vs Land Raiders. With all the shots going at his transports, getting no cover saves, I should have definitely killed at least three of them. Plus taking the guns off that one dread would come back to haunt me in the end, big time.

On his turn he moved up and popped smoke with some of his transports, creating a nice cover wall, and opened fire at me.  He lit me up with Psy cannon shots, shaking one of my hammers and immobilizing the other.

On my turn two I adjusted. I actually pulled back a bit, wishing to get a good chance at demeching him in the middle of the table and clustering him for a devastating assault.  I only killed one of his transports with all of my shots...  Crap.  On his turn two fire, he rended and destroyed my crusader, forcing my hand.  He moved up his razors again creating a wall. But he left a lane of assault to the demeched squad for Meph to get in.

Turn Three:
I had to explode two razorbacks that had already popped smoke the previous turn.  I had 4 twin linked las cannons, 2 multi meltas, a melta pistol, 6 heavy bolter shots  and a plasma pistol with which to do it.  I wrecked one, and failed to damage the other.  Epic fail. I needed to explode the transports and assault the guys inside. The GKs from the wreck of course disembarked on the other side of the wreck, out of my assault range.  I was forced to assault a single immobile razorback with my entire termy squad. I killed it and the GKs disembarked on the other side. Meph got in on three knights and wiped them out and massacred back over the wrecked razor.  Not good at all.

On his turn three, the game ended.  He assaulted my termies with his gunless dread.  Crap.  They were tied up the rest of the game. He assaulted Meph with 3 squads of knights.  I tried my best to make sure he made as many difficult/dangerous terrain tests as possible going through those recked razorbacks... but it would not save me.  He got in on me with two master crafted hammers, and dealt a wound.  Made his psy test and I failed to block with the hood.  Dead Meph.  Locked down termies. Game over.  I would make a battle out of it by taking out some of his other transports and assaulting Purifiers with my naked squads out of desperate measures, but we both knew it was over at the bottom of three.

Grey Knights victory, maximum point tournament win.

Sure, he needed an epic fail on my part to do it, but he did it.  :)

Some one posted on my recent article talking about GKs ending AV11.  He stated that an AV11 GK list won and space wolves and IG got 2nd and 3rd. (He was contending that my opinion was wrong or something.)  I think that his comment proved my point!  First of all, I referred to the fact that GKs would still be able to get away with their AV11 and 12 so the fact that they won using them does not matter. But more importantly, 2nd and 3rd might seem close on paper, but neither of them were close to Nicks result.  Getting Maximum points in this tournament was nigh impossible.  He did it with relative ease.  Claiming that those SW and IG armies disproved my article because they got 2nd and 3rd in this tournament is like bragging that Oprah and Jerry from SubWay got 2nd and 3rd in a three man 100 meter race vs Usain Bolt.  (Google him)

The results are irrelevant. They got there because they managed to avoid Nick.  And Nick was the only GK army tooled up as such.  I think there was one other but not optimized like Nick's, and not played by one of the bets GT players on the east coast.

Soon there will be a dozen in every GT.  I'm gonna go ahead and call it right now.

Nova Open Top 16: At least half will be GKs.  I am banking on 10.  You heard it here first!

So there you have it folks!  GKs are legit.  My list, designed to beat his, barely made a game of it. (Granted chance went the wrong way and if we played again it would have been different, but still.) Even Land Raiders need to fear them.  He destroyed two of them, and immobilized the others and I was getting cover saves off at least half of the shots due to terrain! The sheer volume of fire nearly tabled Fritz's big bug list that routinely spawns 120 Furious Charging, Poisoned gaunts and is designed to devour normal marine armies like Nick's. Fritz had high hopes for a surprising Nid win. I don't know but I think Nick tabled his first opponent.  

It was a day of complete and total GK domination with only one real GK army in the tournament. And frankly, I'm happy to see it. One thing for certain is that they will definitely shake up the power lists. Plus I have lots of Razorback Turret Assault Cannons, Terminator Psy Cannons and Dread Auto Cannons for both sides! Email me if you want some.

Guys will be forced to adjust to the GK reality or go home crying.  Lucky for me BA at least have a sort of answer.  Now I know what I am bringing to Nova!  Ridiculous looking "twice as tall as the tank" banner poles and overly done hand painting and all.

More to come...

Jawaballs

Dear Grey Knights, I hate you. Signed: AV11 Cosigned: Guys on foot.

Every new codex comes with it's share of apocalyptic posts about how each particular book would spell the end of the world.  Well, Tyranids were dead on arrival. Furious Charging Blood Angels with Feel No Pain and an insane Mephiston did not take away the top spot in the competitive codex rankings from IG.  Missile Spam and Jaws of the Wolf Lord are trying hard, but I still relent that IG remained hard fast.

The Grey Knight codex was preceded by none of those doom callers.  Sure there were rumblings about army wide force weapons and Optimus Prime walkers of craziness. But no one was screaming about how GKs were going to change the game as we knew it.

Well, I think it is officially time to start.

It is time to put your Rhinos and Razorbacks on the shelf.  The marine stalwarts made a huge comback with 5th edition, spurred on in part by fast Blood Angels vehicles and the turn five tactics that I wrote about a couple years ago that turned me into a tournament threat.  The AV11 transport enjoyed a brief window of elite efficiency. "Razorspam" became the new in thing.  In addition to the aforementioned reasons, this also happened because competitors were tooling up their armies to deal with AV13 and 14.  Land Raiders were running rampant!  You were seeing armies with 15+ melta guns.  Land Raiders disappeared and since it did not matter, you started seeing armies with 6 to 10 Razorbacks/rhinos.  "Let your melta gun blast my transport, I have half a dozen more, and once the marines are on the table it will only kill one marine!"

Guard one-uped this by fielding a flood of AV12.  Chimeras became the new unstoppable wave of armor that  to this day still strikes fear/revulsion in the hearts of most tournament players.  "Oh god... another IG chimera/vet/vendetta army."

We can kiss AV11 goodbye.  AV12 you are not far behind.  STR7 Assault Cannons, STR6 Heavy Bolters and STR8 Autocannons are indeed how DOOM will be spelled.

Grey Knights, with psyblt ammo, are going to very simply obliterate any mech spam army they encounter.  6 Dreads with two STR 8 auto cannons each...  Ummm that is 24 Twin Linked Missile shots divided up between six different targets.  Top that Wolves!  And lets forget assault cannons for a second.  The mundane Heavy Bolter takes a leap from annoying into dangerous!  Dark Eldar can begin cringing. Oh, and lets not forget the PsyCannon.  Even high armor vehicles will be scrambling for cover against them.

But none of us are stupid. We all can read the numbers and do the math.  The question is, how do we deal?

I pride myself on being ahead of the trends in tournament play.  I don't always win, but I am always in contention to win.  Over the last three years my army has had a complete make over every 3-6 months. Now, I am not talking about simply swapping Melta for Plasma on some of my Vet squads in Chimeras, playing a Manticore, or changing the wargear of my wolf riders to make sure I can get maximum benefit from wound alocation.  I am talking about a complete and total revamp of my army.  I earned my first Vegas ticket using 3 Furioso Dreads in drop pods.  I won Mechanicon using no characters, razorspam and predator tanks.  I was a bad and stupid mistake away from playing for it all at The Colonial using a Land Raider and Storm Raven with Mephiston!

What do I do? I take note of what trends I am seeing at the tournaments, and what net lists are spreading around, and I play lists to beat them.

Recently we have seen a huge increase in auto cannons.  Rifleman dreads, heavy weapon teams in Chimeras, you name it.  This was to combat the torrent of Rhinobacks zooming around.  What was given up? Melta.  At The Conflict I think I encountered 7 melta guns total!  A far cry from the dozens I was seeing per game eight months earlier.  Taking note of the trend, I invested points into my Land Raider Crusader.  Aside from the lucky las cannon shot once in a while, that thing is a work horse for me. It rarely dies.  Except to Tau and Melta Vets. (Once it has delivered it's contents).

One thing I can count on, 40k players are slow to change. Not because they are not smart, but because they invest so much time and money into building their army that they simply cannot create a new one every six months.

How do I intend to deal with Grey Knights?

First of all, Grey Knights are not going to change the game. They are going to change the lists that we play. For every rock, there is a piece of paper. The more adjustable codexs are going to remain at the top.  As we see more and more GKs appearing at tournaments, we are going to see less Space Wolves.  I don't think they have the tools to evolve.  Guard will need to dig beyond what made them initially strong.  Dark Eldar will be forced to pay the points to make sure they go first.

Blood Angels?  They may have it.  Certainly not in assault.  The one thing that has made BA shine is the Sanguinary Priest granting FNP and FC.  Well that won't matter squat assaulting a squad of GK terminators with Halbreds.  (They go at I6)  Goatboy wrote that GKs are not an assault army. Well, I disagree.  Five GK terminators with a Librarian might not be able to deliver the 20+ Power Weapon wounds on Initiative 5 that my Terminators can, but that does not matter when they can deal 10+ Force Weapon wounds at Initiative 6.

No they won't be able to overwhelm Orks on the charge... Who can?  But most of the elite assault squads in the current tournament meta are now outclassed, Charge or Charged, GKs have the ability to stand strong.  Not army wide though!  At least not while fielding more than 15 models.

Any way, my answer to the impending doom of the GK razor spam lists? (Yes, I know this article is about the end of AV11 and here I am saying that GKs will have razor spam.)  They will be the only ones able to pull it off and still very suspect to getting blasted themselves.  My answer is the Land Raider. Welcome back!  The Blood Angels can perhaps do it best because they can field them as dedicated transports at a huge discount.

So my friends, yes the Gks are going to blast your rhinos off the table.  Then they are going to obliterate your MSU squads in a hail of STR 6+ shots.  Expect it, and plan for it.  You won't face them every time, but odds are that over the summer GT season, and leading up to The Nova, we will see more and more.  And they will be making people cry.

It is time to dust off your Land raiders. Blast those GK razorbacks off the table from inside your God Hammers, and avoid the huge Paladin squads. There is no little need to deal with them at all.  Just kill the rest of the army.  What about IG with their 6 Chimeras full of melta vets and Vendettas? Don't worry about them. The GKs will thin their ranks.  Plus Las Cannons hurt them too. Wolves? Gone. Dark Eldar? Unless they take  the guy who gives them Steal the Initiative tricks, they are a 50/50 threat at best.  Lance Weapons still need a 5+ to be a real threat.

I will post my new list this weekend after I play it at The Battle for Salvation RTT.  I am hoping to face some GK. We shall see.

Jawaballs