As you're doubtlessly aware, there's currently a lot of whining over perceived lack of specialization ('Waah! No S6! How am I gonna kill orks now!?'), powerlevels ('Oh, yeah!? You can do what? That's great, but lemme axe ya this. Are you a space wolf?'), and general crying and sobbing from the older generations.
Obviously, the sky's falling, and it's necessary we all take it very seriously, for the times are a-changing - but only for the most popular, unique, and 'expert' of all armies. Makes it twice as important!
Alternatively, point and laugh at the idiots.
Old demonhunters weren't merely old, but also very, very bad. It's true you could win with them, but you're then stuck with a terrible monobuild that all modern armies deliver hard smackdowns to.
Because Ward loves you, your old, pretend-good 'way of the water warrior'-style remains intact, but there are much, much better options now. You know, because some of us are tired of pretending.
"Why you gotta say that? Why you gotta attack my playstyle, man? It works fine at the local club!" It's not unique, competitive, or fun. It leads to guaranteed losses against anyone with even a shred of competence, because a tiny, tiny army, with tiny, tiny firepower, few tricks other than staying away, and limited ranged dakka, are all bad things
Also, very boring to play the exact same way every single game. In the trade, we call that 'the eldar way of war.'
Some things clearly had to go. Yes, pretties.To make way for the new, you have to cut out some of the old.
The mark of a good codex is doing things differently, while retaining all the things that made the old version work. In this case, there's not a lot of things that did work, but what you got back in 2003's still kept- either fully realized, or in spirit.
Here's a brief list...
Lost: army-wide S6 in combat.
Gained: force weapons for everybody. Psychic powers handed out like candy. Cheaper/more guns, transports.
Lost: 'true grit,' a skill that makes stombolters act as additional combat implements.
Gained: several units with 2+ base attacks. Lots of combat implements to pick from. Grenades.
Lost: Gav's hackjob distortion of 40,000 lore.
Gained: a codex with almost only viable units, great lore, and great characters. Even blingpieces have interesting read-ups.
Lost: army-wide fearless and gimpy 'demons always win over your anti-demon army'-rules.
Gained: 'And they shall know no fear,' combat squads, psychic powers for even basic squads. Special abilities for most units.
Lost: range 36 psycannon.
Gained: ways to manipulate the table. Handy tools for controlling the pace of the game. Reserve-manipulation. Units that move faster than six inches a turn.
These aren't the grey knights you've never played against, and barely heard of. These are modern, properly equipped, fairly costed grey knights. Your army's trademark move is the ability to get the right unit in at the right place, at the right time, with great reliability, and decisive accuracy.Deepstrike, character teleportation, jump packs, thirty inch
What you can't do is take everything, and then some.
Yes, the army's fairly costed, but units are still comparatively expensive. With some gear, even a small interceptor team's likely to break the cost of a default, vanilla plasmaback squad.
As hinted at above, grey knight standard kit now includes grenades and force weapons. This is very, very good for you, because it opens up strategies that aren't the ancient 'stand back and let them charge me'-staple.
Depending on your HQ's, the army's composition and options change.
Pimpdaddy Draigo combines all the best parts of grandmaster, pseudo-monster (Mephiston), classic big, damn hero, plus brings his army of pimps along, while Crowe gives you fearless veterans as troops, which opens up for more total firepower.If you absolutely don't want to run knights, or simply want cheap special weapons, Coteaz makes henchmen troops, and comes with a big basket of useful things for your amusement.
In total, five different troops are open to you, and most units (some exceptions apply) can be made scoring if you field a grandmaster.
That's just the tip.
Grey knights get jump infantry, monstrous creatures, horde infantry, elite infantry, transports, skimmers, templates, actual rate of fire, special rules that are special, rending...
In other words, it's a 5th edition codex. Should probably think of it as a reboot of the silver marines, and prepare to relearn the army from the ground up.
Despite what certain collectives of playa hatas are gonna claim, a proper 5th edition book is well worth the price of S6 and WS5.
Not like you ever actively used either in the first place.
