40K 8th Edition Grey Knights (Huge Reveal!)

Have to admit, I stopped collecting Grey Knights a good long time ago. And by that I mean second edition. But I've always kept tabs on these Shiny Super Space Marines, mostly because I never grew out of my teenage Paladin Phase.


Paragon until the day I die.


But let's find out what they will be like in 8th Edition! Grab yourself a cup of tea first, this could take a while...

HQ

Kalador Draigo

We might as well start with the biggest ball of cheese. The weirdly referentially named Draigo was the most polarising character ever created in the Wardian era of Mary Sue development. Known for stabbing demon Primarchs in the heart, and possibly undergoing a Quantumn Leap style quest through the warp, his table top presence was no less feared.

He's been downgraded to merely really good in this edition. Huzzah!

His best two features are his re-rolled failed to hit buffs and his really good sword. The Titan sword allows him to hit at Str 8, and with a -4 Rend and 3 damage he will be slicing most vehicles up with ease, and will be deadly to characters.

At 5 wounds though... expect him to get hit back hard in return. With Invisibilty gone from the game, he can no longer rely on snap-shots. Even regular Marines have a chance at bringing him down now, and Rubricae will have a lot of fun forcing him to rely on his invulnerable save. A squad of Guardsmen may even be able to bring him down now, with some lucky rolls and an order or two!

Brother Captain Stern

Good old Stern. The Psychic counterpoint to Draigo's sword, Stern rocks the Psychic Locus buff. you'll be seeing this a lot, which doubles the range of Smite for nearby units. This gives most Grey Knight units a decent long range harassment tool, and turns Stern himself into a Holy Hand Grenade.

Stern also has the Zone of Banishment ability, which is an AoE attack on daemons. The Psychic Locus buff extends the reach of this, and maybe the extra AoE damage range as well.

He also caries a unique special rule giving Stern a re-roll at the cost of giving the opposing player a re-roll as well. Why he has this and not, say, a follower of a certain capricious god of fate is beyond me.

Castellan Crowe

Crowe is still up to the Purifier burning shenanigans, and we see the Purifying Flame rule for the first time. It turns Smite into a point blank d6 Mortal wound dealing version. Not really the Holy hand Grenade we saw with 7th Editions nova, or a Goku-esque Kamehameha, and more of a Naruto style Rasengan melee blast.

His weapon... is terrible as far as I can see, but his special weapons rule makes up for that. On a successful To-Wound roll he generates an extra attack. If you're lucky that's 10 attacks, but since he's only Str 4, you may want to cast Hammer Hand on him.

He's cheap, and his Flames can stack up to some nasty damage. If he dies in combat he can hit again, so strike first with this guy, and hope the enemy is foolish enough to counter attack. With no buffs, he's not a great leader. Treat him as a discount Draigo beat stick.

Troops

Terminators

Here's one of the reasons you take Grey Knights... Troops choice terminators. They're Terminators... with Pyschic powers and other bits of Grey Knight kit. The standard weapon is the Force Sword, which is not realy a bade option these days. d3 damage and a really good Rend make these excellent close quarter weapons, but their options are basically the same as any power weapon list.

Swords are as above, halberds are simply axes (see below), and the only unique weapon is the stave. +2 Strength and -1 AP make it the same as a Force Staff. Where this becomes good for Terminators is the extra ability... it adds +1 to Invulnerable saves.

Not as good as a Storm Shield, but you still keep the stupid firepower of a Rapid Fire 2 Stormbolter and you don't suffer the -1 To Hit of the Thunder Hammer. A neat little compromise, and gives the Knights that better Invulnerable save they've been coveting off the vanilla Marines.

Strike Team



Psychic Space Marines with better weapons. At 7 Power levels, the things these guys can do make them extremely affordable. They keep their Teleport Strike, and with the new Storm Bolters that puts them at a better level of firepower than Rubricae.

Other than that, there's not much more to say. Slightly more offensive than Terminators, but with slightly less defences. If you want to make them more like Rurbric marines, you can give them all Warding Staves for a 5+ Invulnerable save, which literally puts them as a more offensive mirror to the Rubricae.

For what you get on these guys, I would actually place them as better for their price than Rubric Marines. Teleporting in and dropping 4 shots each plus whatever specialist weapon they bring makes them more versatile than footslogging Rubrics.

In case you're wondering why I keep comparing them to Rubric Marines, it's because they one of the few factions to have psychic Troops choices. That makes them direct competition for the Thousand Sons for the play style.

Weapon Options

The rest of the units are variations of special/heavy weapon uses, so we realy need to look at weapons first.

Melee

Not much to talk about here, and you can see for yourself the interesting parts. The Daemon Hammer gets max damage rather than d3, and the grand hammer gets a minimum of 3 damage on each wound. Nasty stuff.

Ranged

Blurry leak is blurry, but you can just about make out the Psilencer. 6 shots with the standard Force d3 wounds is going to be a nightmare for dual wound models. Any Grey Knight army facing off against Primaris Marines will want to strongly consider these guns. It also makes it a relatively decent light tank killer. Even though the To-Wound roll will be 5+ or 6 in some cases, those that do wound hit quite hard.

The Psycannon looks respectable at Heavy 4, Strength 7 AP-1 and 2 damage. I can't really make out much more than that, but there doesn't look like anything above 24-inches range. That's not such a problem for the Knights, who can teleport in and drop some serious firepower 9-inches from the enemy.

To be honest, 24-inches is hardly short range either. The Knights are going to have a respectable battlefield presence and medium ranged threat. That makes them remarkably good at dominating the center of the field.

Elites

Purifiers

The elite of the power armoured Grey Knights, their claim to fame is Purifying Flame (busting out rhymes with absolutely no shame). At a little extra cost to the Strike Squad, this sledge hammer unit can deal d6 Mortal wounds per Psychic phase.

Is that worth it? Perhaps only for fluff reasons, if you enjoy the image of power armoured knights wreathed in warpflame. In the new edition, psychic phases happen before assault and everyone has the option to Fall Back away from combat. You're unlikely to find an enemy willing to stick around in combat long enough to get burned.

Two special weapons make this squad somewhat useful over the regular Strike Team... but if you want to load up on specials you should be looking at the Purgation squad.

There is a neat little synergy that makes these guys worth it. Buddy them up with a Captain who has Psychic Locus. This extends the range to 6-inches, which means you can start to create a sizeable bubble around the squad where no enemy unit wants to be. Area denial!

Paladin Squad

Bigger better terminators. Next.

Okay, a little more than that. 3 Wounds and attacks put this on the same spectrum as the Troops choices, muting potential shooting power with fewer guns per wounds. They also start off with just 3 models a unit for a price cheaper than the Troops terminators. You can then nearly double the Power level cost of this unit for two more models with special weapons.

Sort of useful, but another fluff choice more than anything.

Paladin Ancient

Choppy banner bearer. He is essentially the Paladin sergeant, but has a neat buff that adds 1 to leadership in the troops around him. He's probably the reason why the Paladin squad went down to three models, so you can use the standard bearer from that kit to make a quasi-character.

Ironically, since he gives an extra attack to models around him, he's better off working with the regular power armoured folk, to maximise the bonus.

Brotherhood Ancient

Exactly the same as above... but with less WS. And the same Power Level.

??

Probably makes more sense with the points values, but you can probably skip this knight for his Lawful Good counterpart.

Apothecary

The Grey Knight equivalent of the Space Marine doctor, this guy has a lot more utility with your 2-wounded troop Terminators. Park him next to a Paladin squad or Nemesis Dreadknight and feel the rage of your opponent.

Better than your vanilla apothecary thanks to Paladin stats, terminator armour, and mind bullets in the psychic phase.

Also comes in the Paladin kit I think, making that box the most point value for money ever.

Fast Attack

Only one thing to leak here, but presumably the Grey Knights retain their Storm Ravens.

Interceptor Squad

If you were wondering why the Primaris Marines had Inceptors rather than Interceptors for their jump pack troop name... these are why.

They're essentially the same as the Strike Squad, but can move 12-inches with their teleporters (those two sticks on their backpacks allowing them to move with the magic of 1950s sci-fi designs). They ignore terrain like models with Fly, but can't do the Fall Back shenanigans or engage planes in close combat like true Fly models.

They also have the ablity to re-Deep Strike in once per battlefield. We can see in this unit the future for Swooping Hawks and Warp Spiders, as they pull off the same tricks as those two aspect warrior shrines. Really good for the Grey Knights, who tend to be stuck foot slogging across the battlefield after teleporting in.

Heavy Support

Purgation Squad

Grey Knight Devastators. The Grey Knight weapons are quite good, making this a very nasty squad. And of course... teleporting in helps a lot.

Whilst they lack true anti-tank weapons, the damage done by "Force" weapons and the sheer volume of shots can help take down the big stuff.

Nemesis Dreadknight

Somewhat nerfed in this edition, if only because vehicles have turned into Toughness models and anti-tank weapons now work well on them too. At Tougness 6 it's about the same as a Rhino, and only slightly better than a Dark Eldar Raider. The big thing saving this guy is the 2+ armour save and 12 wounds.

It's mobility is fairly good, but decays with wounds. It's early firepower is excellent, if only through sheer weight of fire, and the fact it can cast Psychic powers is just icing on the cake.

Not particularly excellent but still good.

Well... at least until...

Sanctic Powers and Special Rules

Rites of Banishment is up first, and it's what mutes the army wide Smiting. Limiting the total mortal wounds to 1 is good, as is shortening the range. Comparing that to the Aspiring Sorcerer of the Rubric marines, the Thousand Sons have better range, and have the chance of dealing more damage. I'm happy with that!

Daemon Hunters is a specific rule, and if you've found yourself fighting a daemon army it means someone wants to play 40K on hard mode.

Nearly everyone has Teleport Strike, which is about as vanilla a non-standard deployment option as you're going to get. The issue with this is deciding what units to deploy first, as you must have half on the battlefield at deployment.

Grey Knights can have a bunch of marine vehicles, and hilariously they become psykers, but only able to Deny and use Smite. Jury's out if this is the regular smite or the Rites of Banishment version.

Sanctic Powers

• 1)  Purge Soul: A potentially more damaging Smite against low Leadership armies
• 2) Gate: OMG hax! They get to redeploy somewhere else on the battlefield. Fortunately vehicles don't get this, otherwise we'd have teleporting Land Raiders.
• 3) Hammerhand: Hit a little harder in combat.

There are no duds on that list, and I can see Gate being used to great strategic effect.

Final words

Really good army to have. You dominate the mid to close range, and have some funny deployment and complex mobility options. The canny commander will be the one who can somehow manage to keep the force together through multiple Gates, making sure the Emperor's Hammer doesn't scatter itself across the battlefield.

Compared to the Thousand Sons? Perhaps a little beter, but the Sons should have the edge on ranged Psychic powers. Can't wait to see what the Sons' psychic discipline is!

God that was long.

Until next time!

 

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