Feeling Grey: Let’s Talk About Grey Knights, and Figure Out What Went Wrong

Let’s just get the elephant out of the way: It’s the first article in a long time on Warphammer, and we’re talking about Grey Knights of all armies. This is a crime. I’m sure the Dark Gods will punish my dice soon.

Warphammer is focused on Chaos armies (and will always be), so I feel the need to establish a bit of credentials so people don’t dismiss this out of hand. If you’re skeptical, your skepticism is warranted. Grey Knights, are frustratingly, one of the armies I’m best with (at least when I’m playing regularly, which I haven’t been the last 2-3 months). I’ve podiumed GTs twice in 10th Edition with Grey Knights. Most recently, I took Grey Knights to an 8-person Teams event a few months ago and averaged an 18-2. I’m not going to say I’m some Grey Knight pro, but I feel well qualified to share competitive thoughts on the army.

If anyone disagrees, hey it’s only Warhammer. It’s really not that serious. You can think whatever you want to think. I won’t be mad.

But for those willing to accept the premise of Grey Knights being talked about on Warphammer, let’s have some fun and dive into some thoughts on a really cool army. Basically, here is my thesis on Grey Knights right now: Current Grey Knights got completely annihilated by the meta changing around them in maybe the roughest way we’ve ever seen.

Checking In on Grey Knights

Before we talk about why Grey Knights are where they are, let’s figure out where they are.

This isn’t talked about very often because they’re not a very popular army… but Grey Knights have quietly been in deep shit for a while now. There is a very real argument to be made that Grey Knights are the worst army* in the game.

* I’m not counting Imperial Agents, because the invention of that army is a complete scam pulled by GW to trick Imperium players into paying for another $60 codex and GW should be deeply embarrassed by how they have handled Imperial Agents.

Let’s take a look at the data (pulled from my amazing friends at Stat Check). Since the last slate, GW are:

• 2nd last by player count (slightly ahead of GSC)
• 3rd last by winrate (46%, just ahead of Aeldari and CSM)
  • For what it’s worth, CSM are actually pretty good. CSM players are unfortunately the Imperial Guard players of Chaos, so you’ll have to completely ignore their bad winrate
• Tied for last in GT wins (0, alongside CK and DG)
  • Death Guard are also pretty good, I’m surprised they have won 0 events

Ignoring the data for a second, subjectively I do think Grey Knights are the worst real army in the game to take if you’re trying to win an event and it’s not particularly close. Whatever other army you’re thinking of? I promise you I would rather take that to an event than GK if my only goal was to try to win.

The army just doesn’t have the sauce.

Not only that, but the codex has basically no variety. 70% of players are running Warpbane Task Force, the detachment that literally isn’t even the codex! This is truly insane. Necrons also heavily rely on their free Grotmas detachment but they have a ton more variety. Starshatter is the most played Necron detachment but it’s a plurality not a majority, with only 29% of Necron players running Starshatter.

My big issue with Warpbane is that it is powerful in a very straightforward, and honestly, boring way. I’ve taken Warpbane to 2 tournaments and have literally never used 3 of the 6 stratagems or 3 of the 4 enhancements. You’re railroaded into playing the most boring detachment to achieve a decent power level. Amazing work, GW.

Are Grey Knights Garbage?

This is not all doom-and-gloom. Do you guys and gals want the real hot take? I actually think Grey Knights are actually pretty damn good in a vacuum!

They actually have an abundance of riches, rules-wise:

• The army rule is genuinely excellent. It’s easily one of the best detachment rules in the game for both damage delivery and scoring. The fact that you don’t even have to come down next Movement Phase is wild.
• Sanctic Spearhead is actually an amazing vehicle detachment with so many juicy rules
  • Seriously, if you don’t play GK, you’ll be shocked at how good this ruleset is as a variation of one of those “vehicle detachments” that are in most codices
• They have a top tier detachment rule in Warpbane Task Force and pretty good ones in most of the others
• They have some truly elite stratagems, mostly spread across Warpbane and Banishers
• Purifiers are a genuine powerhouse datasheet
• GMNDKs and Interceptors and Razorbacks and Librarians and Stormravens are all very valuable
• Army-wide 2+ Saves are a very real benefit

Yes they tend to lack variety, but I don’t actually think it’s straightforward power they are necessarily lacking.

I’m sending mixed messages. On the one hand, I talk about how Grey Knights are abysmal. On the other hand, I talk about how strong I think their rules are. What’s going on? Well, it’s time to talk about the real nightmare for Grey Knights: The meta around them.

The Current Meta Is An Extinction Level Event for Grey Knights

Here is a key fact to note: Almost literally nothing changed for Grey Knights in the last update. They weren’t really buffed (tiny Interceptors tweak) but they weren’t nerfed. This isn’t a case of GW randomly nerfing a mid-tier army with points or rules changes for no reason, as we have sometimes seen.

So why have Grey Knights collapsed as a competitive army?

Grey Knights were the most destroyed by the meta* changing around them as I’ve ever seen happen to an army. Despite getting almost 0 changes, they dropped from one of the stronger armies in the game to the one of the worst. Warhammer is weird.

* I hate the word “meta” but you get what I mean. I’m talking about the relative strength and popularity of other armies around them.

Let me explain what I mean. In the last meta, two of the undisputed top armies were AdMech and Eldar. Let me tell you a fun fact about Grey Knights: Grey Knights kill Eldar and AdMech very, very, very well. Most importantly, they can deliver that firepower very reliably between the teleporting, on-board speed, and 6″ deepstrikes. They also don’t just stand in front of Eldar and AdMech to get punched, which was very important because those Fire Dragon and Ironstrider punches were outrageous.

Grey Knights had favored matchups into arguably the two strongest armies in the game, which is a great place to be for a competitive faction. Genestealer Cults were also very popular and guess what, a few units of Purifiers literally can solo an entire GSC army.

Basically, it can be summed up like this: If the common armies are “dies to bolters” or “dies to 6/2/2” shaped (like Eldar and AdMech), Grey Knights get to feast. When the common armies don’t die to those profiles, Grey Knights have a tough time.

This was very evident in not only Singles, but in Teams (my favorite way to play). With most 8-person team comps having Eldar and AdMech in there, a good Grey Knight player was an extremely valuable asset. In the last 8-person event I played, I faced 3 nearly identical uninteractive “Fire Dragons in a boat” Eldar lists and a very tuned SHC AdMech list with a grey pilot. I averaged an 18-2. I think I played well but frankly Grey Knights were just really, really good into both armies!

Now, AdMech are honestly still pretty good and Eldar have such a deep bag of bullshit to pull from that I’ll never underestimate them. But at the very least, we can all agree that they’ve both become a lot rarer, especially at high tables. They’re no longer the two armies you can judge an army’s viability by their matchups against them.

Let’s look at the current meta. Spoiler alert: This is a nightmare for Grey Knights.

Among the top 5 armies:

• Scintillating Legion (which I think is getting overrated, but I digress)
  • Matchup Rating: 1/10
  • They basically blow up 1.5 GMNDKs a turn in unavoidable ways. The best way to play this matchup is go all-in on turn 2 and hope you make some deepstrike charges and they spread out far from the Improbable Shield. Peak reliable gameplay right there.
• Necrons with a few C’tan
  • Matchup Rating: 7/10 if they’re building around a Warrior brick, otherwise 2/10. C’tan are completely immune to Grey Knights.
• Thousand Sons
  • Matchup Rating: 1/10 into Grand Coven, 6/10 into everything else but Grand Coven is the top dog now

The top of the meta is all unplayable for Grey Knights. Now unplayable is a pretty useless word and good players win “unplayable” matchups all the time, I’m just saying that you’re nearly drawing dead to win versus an equally skilled opponent.

Basically, it can be summed up with this graph of Grey Knights matchups. There are definitely some favored matchups, but the bad matchups are way more common than the good matchups.

The Improbable Shield/Nekrosor Ammentar/Psychic Dominion Issue

For the record: When I first saw an early preview copy of the rules for Scintillating Legion, I immediately called out that the Improbable Shield was going to a meta warping enhancement if Scintillating Legion ever got a buff and was a design disaster waiting to happen. For better or worse, that has come true. The Improbable Shield gives ever Tzeentch unit within 6″ of the bearer a 4+++ Feel No Pain versus psychic attacks and mortal wounds. Considering that almost literally all Grey Knights melee is psychic and all Dreadknight shooting is psychic, it basically means Scintillating Legion halves the damage of almost your entire army if you’re Grey Knights.

Let me break out some advanced analytics here at Warphammer: Getting your entire army’s damage cut in half is not good. I’ve crunched the number on this, trust me. Not to sound like a nerd but if you do 10 damage, on average you only do 5 damage after the 4+++ Feel No Pain. Or if you do 2 damage, you really do 1 damage. You get the idea.

This is an absolute joke.

The math on Grey Knights into C’tan is genuinely dire. 3 Dreadknights shooting a C’tan with the psycannon and melta (out of half range because that’s realistic out of deepstrike) does a total of 6 wounds. A brick of 10 Purifiers and Crowe do 3.6 wounds in melee. One C’tan basically solos an entire Grey Knights army. If I didn’t play Grey Knights, I would honestly say it’s pretty funny.

Oh and by the way, the Improbable Shield issue isn’t just limited to Scintillating Legion. Games Workshop, in their infinite game design wisdom, found it in their hearts to bless Necron players with Nekrosor Ammentar, a hideously undercosted character in almost every list that has an entire aura of 5+++ Feel-No-Pain versus Psychic/Mortal Wounds. While that doesn’t matter for C’tan because they already have a 5+++ Feel-No-Pain, it means the Necron units you would normally have a decent chance to kill like Doomsday Arks are also nearly impossible for you to solve. WHAT THE HELL? He’s already an amazing character and then GW just tacked on a rule that says “by the way, you get to incidentally hard counter Grey Knights”.

A more niche but still crucial interaction is that Grey Knights are hard-countered by Grand Coven. Their stratagem Psychic Dominion gives one of their units a 4+++ Feel-No-Pain versus Psychic and makes incoming attacks Hazardous. If they have Magnus, it’s completely over. They just spam Psychic Dominion on Magnus and let him blow up 2 units a turn until the Grey Knights run out of resources.

Can we cut this anti-Psyker bullshit out already? At least it makes some sense for Tzeentch Daemons and Thousand Sons to have some Psychic hard-counter stuff because they are depending on Psychic and are vulnerable to it in turn.

Every Feel-No-Pain versus Psychic should be reduced by 1. The Impossible Shield aura should be a 5+++ FNP and Nekrosor’s aura should be a 6+++ FNP. These should be cute little tech pieces for a Psychic heavy meta, not nearly auto-win hard counters.

The Banishers Issue

Banishers is a great ruleset. There is a lot to like here. There is just one huge issue:

WHY DOES THE LETHAL/SUSTAINED IN MELEE REQUIRE A LEADERSHIP CHECK TO WORK?

A roughly 1/3rd (or worse) chance for your detachment rule to completely not work is just wild. It’s an absolute joke. This is one of the most completely unnecessary feelsbad conditions for any rule to work in 10th. Not being able to count on getting your Banishers bonus on any single activation means the best laid plans of dice and titan can randomly fail. It’s already limited to melee only, so why not just… let Banishers choose between Lethal/Sustained instead of randomly scamming Banishers players?

The only other similar one I can think of is the Khorne Daemonkin detachment only requiring a 3+ roll to generate a Blood Tithe Point after a kill, and that detachment also fell off super hard once its one (admittedly busted) trick got nerfed.

Anyway, the Banishers suite of stratagems is honestly excellent and gives you more tech-y play than Warpbane to outskill opponents who are stat checking you. Banishers is a very strong detachment that is suffering very hard from the current meta, but could certainly be a top detachment if the armies at the top were different.

Banishers are a great example of how Grey Knights are not a bad army in a vacuum, they just don’t have the sauce in the current meta.

The Terminator/Paladin Issue

I’ve saved this for near the end, but this is a huge deal and something I want to talk about.

There is one datasheet I haven’t talked about that could save Grey Knights from this nightmare meta: Paladins. Paladins are an absolutely incredible datasheet. With 4 attacks hitting on a 2+ at 6/2/3 damage on the charge, they’re a powerful problem solver. In fact, if you do the math, Paladins should be the Grey Knights answer to things like C’tan. A unit of Paladins almost solos a C’tan on the charge with Lethal Hits from Banishers.

Well, you can’t even reliably count on those Lethal Hits from Banishers… but you get what I’m saying.

The big issue? Paladins are absolutely stuck in points jail. A full brick of Paladins is 450 points. That’s unconscionable for 3-wound Terminators. They have to be expensive because they’re amazing offensively, but come on! Bring them down to 380-400, and Grey Knights finally have a unit with enough damage to not get neutered by -1 Damage and enough attacks to not get scammed by invulns.

They still lack a delivery system outside of Rapid Ingress, but the Rapid Ingress -> Access to 2 stratagems to fly away in the opponents turn -> Rapid Ingress cycle is very powerful on them. Paladins are probably the biggest loser from Sigil being locked to the vehicle detachment and Warpbane’s 6″ deepstrike excluding Terminators, but they have enough delivery (especially in Banishers) to be a very real unit.

We just need some points cuts on Paladins or some restrictions on their delivery removed, because right when Grey Knights need them most, they’re unable to deliver.

Final Thoughts, And Some Positivity

If you’re doing anything besides trying to compete for the top tables of GTs, you want to know the truth? Grey Knights are completely fine! They’re good to great into most armies. It’s just a few specific matchups that you’re almost certainly going to have to go through to win events that are stopping most top players from running them.

Most players don’t have to concern themselves with the intricacies of matchups at top tables, and if you’re realistically not that player (which you’re probably not), then I hope you’re having fun with your Grey Knights. Grey Knights are the worst army in the game for winning events, but there is still plenty of juice if you’re just trying to have fun at the mid-tables.

Just make sure that if you run into a Necron or Thousand Sons player, you get them to buy you the alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverage of your choice before the game starts. You’re going to need it.

With our incursion into an Imperium army out of the way here at Warphammer, hope to get back to the Chaos content you know and love soon. Want to tell me I’m a traitor to the Dark Gods for playing Grey Knights, or you’re a Grey Knight player and want to tell me how wrong all my takes are? Come join the awesome Warphammer discord today! Link here: https://discord.gg/Z79bBX4a

As always, have fun, stay safe, and may the Dark Gods bless your rolls!