Thursday, January 19, 2012

Grey Knights make Blood Angels less competitive?

Over on his Blog Blackmoor is pondering the superiority of Grey Knights over Space Wolves. The discussion is actually quite informative.
This, and a sentence in my previous article, cause me to hypothesize that Grey Knights may have unseated the Space Wolves for the title of "Best 40k codex".

This, however, is about how (in my opinion) the Grey Knights codex curbstomps the Blood Angels codex by nullifying nearly all of the advantages that the Blood Angels have.

First, let's outline the advantages of the Blood Angels codex.
  • The ability to get "Feel no Pain" (FNP) on most any infantry/bike unit, through the use of Sanguinary Priests.
  • The ability to get "Furious Charge" on most any model through the use of the Red Thirst or Sanguinary Priests.
  • The ability to re-roll reserve rolls and minimize Deep Strike deviations with "Descent of Angels"
  • Fast Vehicles

The Grey Knight codex has specific rules and unit types that make a mockery of most of the aforementioned abilities. I will outline them below.

  • FNP is mitigated in close combat by the fact that EVERY Grey Knight (except Crowe) has a power weapon. FNP is mitigated in shooting by the fact that the Grey Knight "Psyfleman" (a dreadnought equipped with two twin-linked autocannons and Psibolt ammo) fires S8 shots, that ignore FNP for every Blood Angel except Mephiston.
  • Furious Charge is mitigated by the fact that every Grey Knight can take a halberd and suddenly strike before any non-HQ furious charging Blood Angel. What is worse is that even if they strike simultaneously, the Power Weapon and +1 S from hammerhand are likely to keep the odds uneven... If that were not bad enough, Death Cult assassins destroy Marines (of any kind) on the charge.
  • Deep Striking is not a good mechanic in 40k to begin with. The "Warp Quake" power that comes stock on Strike and Interceptor squads, makes this ability laughably more useless.
  • Fast Vehicles are still something that the Blood Angels do fairly well, and the Grey Knights have no specific tricks to counter.
  • I just want to add that Mephiston dies like a little girl to Grey Knights. Sure, he will charge and likely kill a unit. The counter-charge puts him down to I1, where he will likely get beaten to death. (unless you can hood hammerhand/Force Weapon acitivation, in which case you will semi-likely get beaten to death)

So, I think I have made a strong case that Grey Knights specifically counter most of the special rules of Blood Angels, but lets look a bit deeper.

Blood Angels have two Troops Choices, Assault Squads and Tactical Squads. (But wait we have Scouts, Death Company, and Death Company Dreadnoughts!!!! Which all suck.) Grey Knights have either Terminators, Purifiers, Strike Squads, or Henchmen. I will not be covering Henchmen lists, they vary too much for me to analyze them without resorting to sweeping generalities. Here I think is the big issue.

Blood Angel Assault squads cannot out-assault Grey Knights. Blood Angel Tactical Squads cannot out-shoot Grey Knights.

Well. Shit.

So, in conclusion, Grey Knights have inherent abilities/rules/wargear that remove most of the Blood Angels' strengths. Basic Blood Angel Troops cannot stand up to Grey Knight Purifiers, Terminators, or Strike Squads. Therefore, balanced Blood Angels lists are at a severe disadvantage when facing a balanced (or any) Grey Knight list.

-Mike

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Blood Angels do have a couple advantages:
1. the ability to take a prolific amount of Melta weapons.
2. Larger variety of weapons than Grey Knights do. Having Lascannons and Plasma Guns can be key.
3. You can also put a greater amount of bodies on the table.

Overall, though, I agree that Grey Knights have a major advantage.

If you see these bad match-ups particularly against GK, which are immensely popular right now, why force making Blood Angels work?

Saint Omerville said...

Because I have 10000 points of Blood Angels...

Unknown said...

Right... I forgot you had THAT much <.<

Dameon Green said...

IMHO GK do suffer from one thing that both a SM and BA list can exploit...

Mobility..

I am not saying it promises an easy win, but in general a DofA BA list with heavy support backup or a Bike list does normally fair well.