Saturday the 29th of June saw me take my most recent trip out for a days play at KRAGS for a 1 day 40k tournament. My ability to join this event was on short notice and I have to say special thanks to Tristan, Gav and the rest of the team for allowing me to join so late in the piece. With only 24 hours’ notice the question was – what should I take? how could I not take this chance to run my Grey Knights…
I’m a long term player and have a (probably literally) metric tonne of options for armies to take. Rather than take my usual pointy ears I decided it was time to give table time to an older army in my collection.
My first Grey Knights army has a quite illustrious history. It won the Outpost6030 Skulls 40k event in 2004 and then won the Games Workshop GT event the same year. It had an article written around it by another gamer back in a prior edition – Way of the Water Warrior – as well.
With Eric in QLD winning a 70 player event with a pure grey knights army I decided this was as good an excuse as any to drag them back out and get some games.
The List
The list I made in 03/04 actually has come full circle now and works ok in 8th ed. Its built slightly differently but apart from me adding an Paladin Ancient and Driago (from my second Grey knights army) – it’s the same army as back then. The goal was 2 wins for the day from the 4 games.
Spear Head Detachment
Grand Master Draigo (Gate of Infinity and Vortex of Doom)
Land Raider
Land Raider
Land Raider Crusader with Multi Melta
Vanguard Detachment
Brother Captain Stern – Warlord (Unyielding Anvil) (Sanctuary)
Paladin Ancient (who gets the relic banner of Refining Flame) (Sanctuary)
10 Purifiers, 9 Halberds, 1 Incinerator (Hammer Hand)
10 Purifiers, 9 Halberds, 1 Incinerator (Hammer Hand)
3 Paladins, 2 Halberds, 1 Sword (Hammer Hand)
The Plan
A simple plan is this – SMITE. This army leverages the psychic power smite to deal damage at close range and uses the combo of Brother Captain Stern – Psychic Locus – to double the range of the D6 smites. With the purifiers combat squading each game and being within 6” of stern – that’s 4 casts of smite which do d6 damage at 6” range. This stacks with the banner for a 12” d6 smite and then vortex of doom is another ranged d3/d6 smite. You also have a couple of 1 damage smites at extended range for making sure you maximise the D6 attacks if needed.
On top of this wall of mortal wounds, you also have the banner giving +1 attack to units within 6” and every model (except the banner) does d3 wounds in combat to boot minimum and a surprising amount of bolter shots thanks to the Bolter update.
The Land Raiders keep the whole thing mobile and protected until you get in range for the smites and provide some ranged AT fire from the land raiders.
The Games
I want to start this by saying I went second every game and also rolled a 5 for every attempt to seize… what a weird result but there you go.
Game 1 saw me play Salamanders Space Marines. The game was a solid start for me with the midgame seeing me lose all 3 land raiders in rapid succession. Draigo made up for these losses in the late game taking out units, a Sicarian and reducing a land raider to a single wound while the enemy storm hawk was hit with lots of smite to take it down in the final turn. 16/4 win for me.
Game 2 was against Ad Mech. The player was on point with his stratagem use and burned through a bunch of CP but it cost me 2 land raiders in rapid succession. The midgame saw me get in range and get a vortex of doom off that while only dealing d3 wounds – decimated the core of the gunline and with multiple d6 purifying flame smites saw me clear a large section of the gunline before we ran out of time. It would have come down to the wire had we had more time but as the game finished – 15/5 win for me.
Game 3 saw me face the dreaded custodies… using arguably the best list in the game at present. Grand Master, vexilla of -1 to hit, 3 calladius tanks and 2 orions. I lost a land raider early again but fluked out a d6 vortex of doom to kill the vexilla warlord and deal catastrophic damage to the 3 tanks and master. It was about 20 mortals wounds in 1 cast and put me in contention – alongside around 8 mortal wounds on the orions that had flown over head. Sadly this wasn’t enough and the loss of the land raiders over turn 2 and 3 meant my infantry started to lose models rapidly to the Orions guns. This player ended up winning the event but our game was the only one he dropped points in. 3/17 loss.
Game 4 was an Ork list and I saw most of what was coming when I saw the list. I lost all 3 land raiders turn 1 to the Super Shocker and 2 more Shock attack guns alongside a unit of ‘Da Jump’ 15 tank busters which shot twice. My infantry fought valiantly and killed a lot of orks but it was too little too late and saw me suffer my worst loss of the day – 1/19.
I really enjoyed all 4 games and despite the results of the 3rd and 4th games I never felt like I couldn’t compete. It was certainly more difficult to win games with my Grey Knights than compared to some other armies I have run but I didn’t hit any of the 4 games thinking I couldn’t win. You might even see me with them in another event later in the year…