# How do you beat Grey Knights?



## JohnMcNichol (May 2, 2012)

....they seems to be invincible. I have BTs, one son plays Orks, another Necrons. And for the same point values, the othe son who plays GKs seems able to effortlessly kill us (shooting through blocking terrain is AWFUL!)

All ideas appreciated... 

Thanks


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## shaggy (Jul 9, 2009)

Best way I've found is pure volume of fire. Use whatever speed you have to get where your whole army can focus on one flank or another and hammer it into the dirt. The plus side is he will have to spend a turn or two repositioning the other flank. You don't have to kill it to nullify it. The idea is to pit 1500 points of your army against 750 of his (or whatever the totals are). It's not easy but it's the only way I beat them.


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## Arcane (Feb 17, 2009)

They are weak at long range, having relatively few 36"+ weapons vs other armies. Other than that each unit has it's weaknesses. For example, small regular Grey Knight squads can get bogged down by large blobs in CC, while Purifiers do not this have this problem.


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## Word Bearer 81007 (Aug 5, 2012)

the grey knight players in my area seem to play a very close combat oriented idea to it, So I just bring enough fire power to level the playing field with templates and ap 2 death, of course I'm also a traitor guard players. Ordnance is my friend, minus of course he grey knight stupid heavy support MC units. I hate those.


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## Magpie_Oz (Jan 16, 2012)

Numbers. 
To beat GK is all about numbers. 20 S4 shots are worth so much more than 2 S9 AP1.


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## Archaon18 (Feb 17, 2012)

Just bog them down, be it volumes of fire or bodies.


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## forteh (Jul 26, 2012)

Beaten grey knights twice in recent times (played them three times).

With csm I used lots of plasma/melta and terminators in assault, grey knights really struggle with a general lack of ap1/2 weaponry against a good quantity of terminators and dare I say even power armour. The tally of pestilence won the game eventually but I don't expect that to be a rule that survives past the new codex/faq.

With tyranids what turned the game was the swarmlord (with 2 guard) to chew through draigo and paladins with a trygon and lictor causing back field interference. My meatsheilds were pretty much gone in two turns due to lots of anti horde firepower, however the T6 swarmy was too much for him to handle in cc.

Grey knights are powerful but not excessively so, hard hitting against lots of light armour troops but anything in power armour or better is far more survivable. The power weapon nerf to ap3 means that they cant annihilate everything so easily in assault now. Remember they are only marines, chuck enough firepower at them and they will fail saves.


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## Antonius (Jan 10, 2012)

I might say out mech them with transports, abusing their low model counts. Beyond psyflemen and pyscannons, gk are not excellent at ranged anti vehicle, although not TOO shabby at it. However I'm talking from an ig perspective, where chimeras are less vulnerable to psycannons. Necrons have some beastly vehicles of their own, so taking on gk with them should be a case of high rate of fire preferrably tesla, with a topping of doomsday arks etc etc.With orks, I would say the old ork adage of shooting the fighty stuff and fighting the shooty stuff - use burnaz/shootaboyz/meganobz against purifiers, and let the rank and file slugga boys sink their teeth into strike, interceptor and purgation squads.


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## spanner94ezekiel (Jan 6, 2011)

And GK don't do AV14 very well. Hence why Leman Russ or Land Raider spam can mess with them. Provided you avoid the Dreadknights, and the Psyflemen don't get lucky, and he's not running Henchmen, then AV14 is hard for them to kill.


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## HOGGLORD (Jan 25, 2012)

In my field experience against GK (3 battles), I have learned that if they deep-strike soldiers, they will always mishap and die, with no more than 1 exception per game. The only viable method of destroying dreadknights is gun drones that have just disembarked from a devilfish and a single squad of 9 fire warriors is more than sufficient to bring down 10 grey knights on most occasions. The only real risks are vindicares who are brought down by crisis commanders firing missile pods continuously.

My field experience against grey knights isn't very statistical.


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## Loki1416 (Apr 20, 2010)

I've never lost GK's to deepstrike mishaps. With servo skulls it's even easier to make it so they hit the table but even without them, I've still never lost any. And no matter who I'm playing against/what army I'm playing against, I always have atleast 2 units DSing to the table.


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## ShinoRagnar (May 31, 2010)

In my experience nothing without an invu-save can withstand the might of 19 Missile Launchers on a Skyshield Landing pad. Grey Knights are expensive and die as easily as any marine. Shoot most of them down until you can handle what is left in CC. Easy peasy.


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## Archaon18 (Feb 17, 2012)

Loki1416 said:


> I've never lost GK's to deepstrike mishaps. With servo skulls it's even easier to make it so they hit the table but even without them, I've still never lost any. And no matter who I'm playing against/what army I'm playing against, I always have atleast 2 units DSing to the table.


 I saw, in the old edition, a guys 800+ GK terminator unit (In 1000pt) go off the table by 1-centillionth of an inch, with 12" scatter, then roll a 1. That was funny.
Shoot the *#$* out of them, unless you have lots of imvuns, or Terminator Armour!


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## Straken's_Fist (Aug 15, 2012)

I don't know if it's just that IG are good against GK, but i've never lost against them (been very close on a couple of occasions) in 4 games. 
Granted 2 of the 4 were against an inexperienced player...

What i've noticed though - at least with IG - is that if you can keep them at a distance and have plenty of lascannons, autocannons and plasma guns along with the odd Leman Russ Battletank/Demolisher they can't really do much because they don't really have any serious long range threat, let alone much that can deal with AV14. 
Also, saturation of cheap rapid fire weapons - such as lasguns - are excellent because at the end of the day 60 lasgun shots don't care about terminator armour or T4 when you are pinning so many wounds on them, they are going to roll a few 1's. 

So just cram as much long range firepower into your list as possible and form a gunline, with other units that can go down the flanks to counter any fast movers or deep strikers. Always go with maximum dakka when facing GK!


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## JAMOB (Dec 30, 2010)

there are 2 good ways to murder them all.
1) 2+ saves spam. Theyre weapons are pretty much all ap3 with new rules, so it kills them. This could mean TH/SS Termis (they can take away saves while keeping their own). In addition to this is good tanks (LR, Ravens etc). The one game I played GK, I had a LR and 5 standard termis. The termis killed three squads (one his own termis) and the LR soaked up pretty much all their fire and killed 2 dreads. The rest of my army (bar 1 tac marine that saved me the game objective and 2 random scouts), died. They killed. This pisses them off big time 
2) mobs. Ie shoota boyz, mass Ass. Cannons, many many devs, etc. You get the idea. Just lots of shots/attacks/etc. Get so many models that they cant possibly kill them all  And have fun watching him kill half your guys and then lose all of his to the other half. Its very satisfying. Ive seen it done, and its hilarious.

Either way its not particularly difficult, but really it depends on what the army consists of.


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## Spawner105 (Jul 27, 2012)

I beat my friends with nids i had alot of blast templates and quantity of attacks. I pretty much thinned out the standard GKs squads and just cleaned them up with carnifexs. I play orks aswell so with ork boyz and tyranid guants you just put a quantity of hits out he has gotta fail sometime.


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## Antonius (Jan 10, 2012)

Courtesy of the whole changes to GK Force weapons, feel free to whack out the shootynators - them PFs are as useful as the TH/SS against practically every weapon except daemonhammers/ Dreadknights (and you get to play mini GK with the storm bolters and asscans). What i like is the idea that in 5th, Paladins and GK Termies > SM terminators, but now SM terminators > GK Terminators (the boot is on the other foot). Force Halberds are less useful with the I6 not being so useful to beating down terminators.

However, making every wound count is easy in a GK army - not durable enough to take punishment (henchmen), or too expensive to allow for attrition.

Also, they lack all of the bells and whistles of vanilla SM armies (dakka preds, Vindicators, Thunderfire cannons, Landspeeders), so use this limited unit type in the army to best effect.


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## ntaw (Jul 20, 2012)

I'm playing GK more and more as my buddy has built up a good sized army of them in addition to his guard. Shots ruin him. It's weird to play almost defensively with BA, but against GK it has been working. I use my fast transports to zip around to catch linebreaker and objectives all the while shooting like a madman. Against that army bolters like mad work nicely, as it gets him rolling all those dice. That and throwing a Furioso into his terminator squads. Oh, you got a 2+ save...keep track of my blood talon wounds, would you?


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## MidnightSun (Feb 10, 2009)

Antonius said:


> but now SM terminators > GK Terminators (the boot is on the other foot). Force Halberds are less useful with the I6 not being so useful to beating down terminators.


I disagree. They have particularly strong shooting in Psybolt Ammunition and Psycannons, and are Scoring Units, as well as having Str 5 attacks at Initative so do not need to open themselves up to Warscythes/Unwieldy weapons. I6 still kills Monstrous Creatures quickly.

Best things to take down GK? Drag them into a war of attrition. No pure GK army has the manpower to maintain attrition, and no Henchman army has the survivability or/through numbers. Don't let them stay at their preferred 24" range. Get up into close combat (despite Force Weapons on every man, your basic GK is still only WS4 with one attack) or stay far back. Necrons may find this a little more difficult than other armies as their best range bracket is arguably 18", which is only one movement phase away from 24" for the GK.

Midnight


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## Alsojames (Oct 25, 2010)

For the armies I play:

*Guard*: Troops-wise, use either platoons for man-power or veterans for accuracy (use heavy weapons like H.Bolters or Autocannons for both), take Punishers (20 shots!) with H.Bolter sponsons to force a lot of saves, and if you've got the points, add a couple masters of ordnance to a command squad for heavy-duty firepower. If you're dealing with less terminators and more power-armor GKs, Stormtroopers are handy too.

*Marines*: Send in shooty-termies of your own or bring in Predators and Drednaughts with Heavy bolters, autocannons....whatever. Again, volume of shots.

*C. Eldar*: Dire Avengers, Dark Reapers and spam the multilasers. Yet again, Volume of shots.


My tactic against tough armies is to force them into a large amount of armor saves, increasing the chance of failure. The principle weakness of GKs is that their army is one of extremes, either large numbers and lots of shooting at the cost of firepower and toughness (henchmen) or tough and strong shooters at the cost of numbers (whatever else). 

Both of these can be dealt with easily with a large amount of dakka.


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## BozlyLittle (Jul 3, 2011)

Black templars aren't going to beat grey knights easily. Sadly I play black templars too and I haven't been able to make them all that deadly vs. anything with close combat. Black templars are a close combat army with painfully bad close combat sadly. The new codex will fix it hopefully. So 2 more years  

As far as beating grey knights the more the merrier. Take neophytes and run 20 man squads. Don't worry about las cannons melta's will do just fine. Make sure you have power fists and thunder hammers because they all will have I 5000 because they're grey knights, and other than that more = great! They don't have many more blast weapons than you do so that will be your saving grace.


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## Okysho (Oct 19, 2011)

How do Blood Angels factor into fighting grey knights? They've got about the same range (being SMs and all) but Angels are focused more on CC, as are the grey knights. More so since they have force weapons. Since ranged attack isn't a Blood Angel's forte, would close combat still be a better option?

I know a lot of opinions in this thread say "volume" does that count for CC as well? Spam assault marines with PFs or TH/SS termies? or would sitting back and picking them off work better?

(apologies for the redundancy)


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## MidnightSun (Feb 10, 2009)

Okysho said:


> #Angels are focused more on CC, as are the grey knights. More so since they have force weapons. Since ranged attack isn't a Blood Angel's forte, would close combat still be a better option?


I'm sorry but I really have to derail to correct this. Grey Knights are _not_ a close combat army. They are a mid-range shooting army. Grey Knights prefer to use their Storm Bolters over their Nemesis weaponry. Psycannons and Storm Bolters are what the army's based around. The Force Weapons are just on there because Grey Knights have always all had Force Weapons, it's one their defining features. Sure, it helps them hold their own against dudes, but any real close combat unit will sweep away a unit of Grey Knights, Force Weapons or no.

Midnight


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## Malisteen (Aug 15, 2012)

"How do you beat Grey Knights?"

Mostly? Mostly I just don't.


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