Let’s Talk Grey Knights! The Librarian.

I’ve been promising to get the ball rolling with Grey Knights for a while here on the blog so let’s get that ball rolling…

My Grey Knights date back to third edition I think, can’t fully remember when now, but basically the Grey Knights back then where anything but “grey”. Black power armor with gold highlights was their “official” color and my first knights looked just like that.

Later on with the previous codex I added some assassins, inquisitors, and storm troopers, which leaves me with a wealth of models to play around with, everything but a storm raven and Drago model.

Where to begin?

Basically I’m seeing the Grey Knights break down into two main lists- a pure GK list with no henchmen which is going to be very small, very elite, and perhaps unplayable due to the volume of shots coming down the table, or henchman spam lists with a spear tip of Grey Knight purifiers to spam those psycannons. Psybolt upgrades on razorback and rifle dreads are going to be stock and standard. The sad part that I am afraid of is that the WAAC netlists really are that good to play so in a tournament where the goal is to win, why would you play anything else. Shame since they book with henchmen opens up so many fun army builds. I’ve got two “fun” lists which I’ll post up next- one as an inquisitor leading an all assassin/death cult army, and the other as an inquisitor who has gone radical and embraced daemonhosts and the dark powers to fight chaos- fight fire with fire. Kudos to GW for allowing you to do these things, but for the most part they won’t see the light of any gaming tables.

So are you going to go henchmen/GK speartip spam or pure Grey Knights? Same question as in the old codex but the power levels of both have been bumped up.

At the core of a GK list is the librarian. Expect every list to have one, and make sure there is on in your list. Grey Knights are the masters of psychic powers and the librarians will kill and bury any Space Wolf powers and further make a mockery of Eldar farseers. In many ways the librarian IS a farseer in that he buffs your entire army and select situations. Long time Eldar players will feel at home right away, marine players who are used to psychic powers just being another special shooting attack will have a learning curve.

What am I doing with the librarian? Defensively shrouding is the BOMB with the +1 cover save. If you are playing pure Grey Knights and are a defensive army you are going to want to sit back in cover and claim that 3+ cover save for your models- including vehicles and walkers. Now layer this a bit more and combine that with venerable dreads. Take three dreads, make them venerable, put them in cover and blast away.

First my opponent has to hit, then pen, then pass my 3+ cover save, THEN destroy me, with a venerable re-roll and if they shake/stun me I just fortitude that off and keep firing away. Can you start to see how an elite “small” model army can hold its own? Having a small model count is fine if your opponent can’t reliably kill them and it takes lucky rolls to do so.

What if you are playing offensive ‘knights? Storm raven rush?

Personally I have my doubts about the storm raven just based on its flight stand. For the points it is a steal, it’s both a transport and gunboat, and I actually like the model, however since it stands so tall getting cover saves at the start of the game is very hard. If your opponent is going first and you start on the table, those ravens might go down. Reserves or not is a different post.

But if you do go first move fast for the 4+ cover save and then shroud for the 3+ cover save. Most of the time (read reliably) you will be in assault range on turn two. Defensively if you have cover you can still shroud them.

 

Librarians are also important as part of the terminator blob. At the start of the game you are defensive with them, but mid to end you are going to want to push those termies mid field to help secure objectives. Since this is a libby article we will talk about regular termies vs. paladins another time.

Think about this.

Ten termies with a libby push to the center in cover and hit shrouding. Now you have a 2+/3+ save making them essentially thunder hammer/storm shield models. You do have halberds right? Now if anybody is crazy enough to assault you, you are dinking them first AND your librarian is going to cast for difficult AND dangerous terrain. Your terminator blob is just going to sit there and well kill stuff without you having to kill stuff.

That is just a taste of what the librarian is going to bring to your army, let’s look at the grand master next...