In this article I'll be telling the story of building a Grey Knights list. Not just a list, my list. People who visited the chatbox regularly lately probably noticed that I talked a lot about GK's. Some weeks during the times of the 'playtest dex' I was rambling about Crowe + Purifier lists mostly, but this changed quickly when the real codex came. After the real codex got revealed the great struggle began...
First the Dreadknight change, followed by the confirmation that Crowe indeed is no IC and last but not least the range of the Psycannon being shorter than expected (24" instead of 36") made me happy on the one hand, but it also meant I needed to start from scratch. One thing was obvious within 1 minute: the Psyfleman was going into the Heavy Slots instead of Dreadknights most likely. Of course I tried to combine it with simple Purifier squad setups in rhinos and inserting Crowe, giving you an army with pretty much 2 different units when not counting Crowe. Yay. Note: I'm not going to explain everything in detail as I don't want a super-long article, neither a multipart one, it's not that revolutionary what I'm presenting.
Looking at the Crowe list a sad feeling arrised in me. It was bland and my hate for Crowe grew more each minute and I decided I did not want him as my HQ choice. Why the hate? He's difficult to use in the bad way of the word. Not only that but his abilities are rather redundant as Purifiers themselves do most things what he can do pretty well too. And good luck pulling of the 'you're dead you big meanie' trick, I'm not seeing that happen often no matter how cute it sounds in theory. So what then? I decided to drop the Purifier idea for a moment, just pretending like they didn't exist. I'm glad I did this as very soon I noticed I actually wanted 'normal' Grey Knights. Why? Because a full 10 man squad with 2 Psycannons and Psybolt shoots pretty well. And I like that. I like the fact that the biggest part of my army exists out of troops which I actually enjoy using. No hiding the whole game in metal boxes for me. I decided I wanted at least 3 full squads in rhinos with a MC Hammer wielding justicar in each. (and of course 2 psycannons + psybolt)
Then what? Psyfleman of course, dropping Purifiers didn't change this. I figured I'd just include 3 first while keeping in mind I could free up 135 points when I couldn't finish the list properly. So I had a baseline of 30 GK's and 3 Psyfleman. I figured the HQ choice would be a problem as even a non-Termie HQ choice wouldn't be able to ride with a squad in a rhino, so I couldn't do an easy full-Mech list.
As soon as I noticed the Libby and all his powers I was sold on him. 2 awesome powers being able to cast during my oppenent his turn (Shrouding, Sanctuary) and 2 for my own turn (Might, Quicksilver). Grand Master is nice, but I don't like the randomness of the D3 and including both in my list wasn't an option. I basicly want to ensure that I'm not fucked against Gunline armies when going second. My way to solve this is simply making sure that everything in your army has cover and then casting shrouding for a 3++ which is good enough. (Dozers on your vehicles btw) The more as deploying 2nd has some advantages of course. Mike (who actually helped a lot regarding forming most of my ideas) suggested you could also achieve this with Scout moves. Enter the D3 problem. 2 Grand Masters isn't an option for me. So Libby it is. (Hood is nice too) Actually...I thought about adding Karamazov 2 times too but dropped the idea again. Then came Kirby his PsyCoteaz list...
And it didn't change anything for me. The title is hinting at
a similar list right? Yes, but not because of Kirby his list: Alex/Killswitch showed a list in which he tried to cram the Libby into a Chimera... But in a rather inneficient way as he didn't really want to do anything with Henchman themselves. (he dislikes them) And that made me think. I don't want the Libby + Henchman + Inquisitor in a single Chimera. Coteaz?! Coteaz! Of course. I figured I could fit in Coteaz, 2 Chimeras with dozers and have 140 points left. What's 140 points? Yes indeed, 2x 10 Henchman with 3 meltaguns. And so it all came together, it just fits:
Libby; 5 powers, 2 skulls 185
Coteaz 100
10 GKSS, 2x Cannon, Psybolt, MC hammer, Dozer-Rhino 300
10 GKSS, 2x Cannon, Psybolt, MC hammer, Dozer-Rhino 300
10 GKSS, 2x Cannon, Psybolt, MC hammer, Dozer-Rhino 300
10 Henchman; 3x melta, Dozer-Chimera 130
10 Henchman; 3x melta, Dozer-Chimera 130
Psyfleman 135
Psyfleman 135
Psyfleman 135
Total: 1850
But I play 1700 points right? Yeah, that's simply this list minus 1 Psyfleman and dropping the Mastercraftings on the Hammers probably. (dropping the Chim dozers + 1 skull is another option)
What I like about this list apart from the obvious stuff? That the Libby fits so well in it. Having Chimeras at your disposal to ride in is fucking great. It extents his range basicly so he's able to cover a bigger area with his powers. But there is more: Coteaz has also Sanctuary. Might the Libby needs to cast Shrouding twice because he fails or because it gets blocked then Coteaz can still try to cast Sanctuary as the Libby can't that turn. The Chimeras offer more hulls and new kind of weaponry to the list: Heavy flamers and multilasers; nice to have. Libby can now actually use Warp Rift more reliable when needed as he suddenly has ~21" range when wanted by hopping out. (you could fire it from the hatch too ofc) And in the end we also added 20 Geq bodies who also score and which carry meltas. The fact that they can potentiall own stuff in combat with Quicksilver and Might is kinda funny. Think Straken but different haha. Having Warpquake + Coteaz his "I shoot deepstrikers" rule + the re-roll on the steal dice + skulls + all the powers means that you're having quite some 'moves' at your disposal. I'm also having the idea that a list like this one tries very hard to make the life of Foot Armies miserable... and succeeds in that. But we'll see about that when I'm going to play with it. As for now I'm happy with it and I can't see any glaring weaknesses.
Well there you go, my list. Not necessarily better than Kirby his, just different maybe. I like having so many troops and the Libby. Kirby has more hulls and more High S guns in the end. I find it hard to judge how good this list will be, but I'm fairly confident it's pretty good of course.
Thoughts? Criticism?
