The Rise Of Power Armour

Like many of you, I've been pouring over the Codex rumors, looking at possible army builds and effective unit combinations. And what I can mainly see is that we're going to be seeing alot of armies with few-to-no Terminators in it.



This seems to differ from the presented view of Grey Knights we've always seen, but seems the most viable option. Don't get me wrong, its possible to have all terminator Grey Knight armies, but they have massively reduced model counts. Having 15-20 men in a 1750 point army, no matter how good they are, is a serious weakness against hordes or gunline armies. And with a lot of armies out there falling in to one of those categories (sometimes both) GK may struggle to win.

Enter the Bargin-Tastic Grey Knight in power armour. Vanilla Space Marines hit the book at 16pts a model. For 4 points more you can get a standard Grey Knight. And what does your 4 points buy you? A god damn power weapon, which normally cost +15 points for your Marine Sergeants. Not good enough for you? Let's throw in a storm bolter as well, so you can pump out those bolter shots at any ugly mother and then still charge him. What's that I hear you moan? "Power weapons may cost 15 points for a sergeant but at least they have 2 attacks", well let's make that storm bolter count as a pistol for combat then. BAM! One unit of 10 power armour wearing, power weapong wielding, massed shooting, 21 attacks basic, 31 attacks charing, for 200 points, the same as some vanilla Termies. Still not good enough for you people? WHAM! give the whole unit some PSYCHIC MOTHER FUDGING POWERS! so now they can either be S5 in combat, or stick down a S5 AP4 large blast template.

Now the designers thought about this. Basic GK come with nemesis force swords. All previous GK models have Nemesis force halberds. A halberd is an upgrade that will give you +1 initiative, but will set you back 5 point per model. That ups the price quite a bit, maybe that super amazing deal is starting to look more like a fairly amazing deal.

STEP UP THE PURIFIERS!

This is a unit I expect to see ALOT of in GK armies. Basic cost per marine goes up another 4 points to make a 24pt base. "We already got power weapons, storm bolters that give +1 attack and psychic powers in the last 4 points, whats left?" Well, this time 4 points will give you another +1 attack, +1 leadership AND a new psychic power. And not just any psychic power, you get "Cleansing Flame" a power which, before anyone attack in CC, wounds every enemy model in the combat (not just in B2B) on a 4+. I'm sorry Hordes, but by attacking me, you just lost nearly half your men, and I still get to strike first, with power weapons. Wow. And remember that +5pt halberd upgrade, it costs +2pts for purifiers...insane:

10 Purifiers
WS4 BS4 S4 T4 W1 I5 A3 Ld9 Sv3+
41 power weapon attacks on the charge
260 points. madness!

And, if that wasn't enough for you, you can equip incinerators for free... FREE!!! rumored S6 AP4 template ignore invulnerables ... that's better than a heavy flamer!

So, as most old GK players already have halberd wielding GKs, I expect to see alot of these. They are elites, but you can use Grand Master's ability to make them scoring, or take the Brother Champion Crowe special character to make them troops!

Now I'm not saying GK Terminators are bad (Heck, I expect to see alot of Mordrak and Ghost Terminators for 32pts per model!), I'm just saying that the deal you get for Power Armoured GKs is so good, it'll be difficult to justify taking terminators over them.