Emerging from the warp, haloed in soulfire, the ultra-mobile strike forces of the Grey Knights are ready to slam into 10th Edition. Daemons better watch out.
This review is just of the Index rules and datasheets themselves – so some takes are speculative until we have the Munitorum Field Manual to confirm whether the price is right.
Before we begin we’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a review copy of the Index.
Faction Rule – Teleport Assault
In 10th Edition Grey Knights are going hard on their identity as a rapid strike force – teleporting in, smiting Daemons/heretics/people who looked at them funny then vanishing once more. The Faction Rule Teleport Assault really emphasises this, making the army hyper-mobile and flexible on the table.
At the end of each of your opponent’s turns, you can select a number of units with this ability that are not in Engagement Range of the enemy, remove them from the battlefield, then set them up as reserves anywhere that’s more than 9” horizontally from the enemy in the Reinforcements step of your coming Movement Phase. How many units can use this depends on battle size, going from one in Combat Patrol to a mighty four in Onslaught, but the number you’ll be dealing with most of the time is three, as that’s the Strike Force quota.
Remember how in previous editions one of the ways you could lose as Grey Knights was to fail a Gate of Infinity at exactly the wrong time? Yeah you don’t have to worry about that any more. This kind of redeploy turns up in a reasonable number of places across the Indexes, but no one else can do it as broadly or as often as the Grey Knights, making them masters of mobile warfare.
Being able to move so many units each turn provides a huge variety of strategic options. If you want to put the opponent under the gun, shifting forward several Dreadknights, perhaps including a Grand Master with Inescapable Wrath for boosted charges, exerts massive pressure. Want to get a spotter into position so your Purgation Squad can no-scope something? This can probably give you an angle. Need to conduct a tactical retreat with a Character that’s found themselves without a dead Bodyguard? This has you covered. Even when you’re not using it, just the threat of this ability has a huge impact on the opponent – they have to try and fully screen their most valuable stuff all the time, not just until your third turn has been and gone.
It’s also fantastic for a game that’s gone a bit wrong and needs you to execute a full pivot in terms of where you’re fighting – moving three units is plausibly enough to leave some of your opponent’s best toys miles away from any victims, and can completely shift the balance of power at a key point. Finally, and more specifically to the new Leviathan Mission Pack, it makes Grey Knights one of the very best armies in the game at pulling off Gambits – redeploying three units going into your final turn can really help to maximise your shot at managing Orbital Strike Coordinates or Emergency Evacuation (both very much on-theme), and I’ll be interested to see, once our stats team gets their hands on 10th, whether we see Grey Knights scoring Gambits at an appreciably higher rate than other armies.
The one thing to be aware of with this rule is that it’s one of the Faction Rules that does not appear on every unit – non-Dreadknight Vehicles don’t get it, so either leave them at home, or make sure you’re using them in a way that doesn’t sabotage your plans.
Detachment Rules
Detachment Ability – Teleport Shunt
Leaning even further into the mobility/teleportation theme, the Grey Knights detachment rule upgrades all your units with the Deep Strike ability (again, everything except conventional vehicles), allowing them to automatically Advance 6” instead of rolling, and to FLY while doing so. Adding that on top of Teleport Assault makes the army even harder to pin down, and it’s obviously really good if you have anything with powerful Assault weaponry, or the ability to Advance and Charge. Let’s have a quick look and see if that turns up anywhere!
*flip flip*
OK so any unit can use the Death From The Warp stratagem to give their guns Assault and +1 to hit after Advancing (or arriving from Teleport Assault/Deep Strike), so if you need to line up some key shots this is great.
*flip flip flip*
Ah, it would appear that regular Nemesis Dreadknights have native Advance and Shoot/Charge thanks to the Empyric Reprisal ability.
Much.
To.
Consider.
Stratagems
In addition to Death From The Warp above, Grey Knights have five more stratagems, providing a good mix of mobility, defence and killing power. On the offence, when you really need to land a true killing blow you’ve got access to Radiant Strike, which for 2CP in the Fight Phase gives all Psychic Weapons the unit is wielding (which, spoilers, will be pretty much all of them) Devastating Wounds. Not cheap, but very, very nasty, particularly if you’ve got a powerful Leader rolling with the unit.
Credit: Pendulin
In terms of conventional defences, Grey Knights get Truesilver Armour, identical to Armour of Contempt for Space Marines, and reducing the AP of incoming attacks by 1 for a phase. Don’t sleep on this one – all Grey Knight Marines now have a native 2+ save, which means that against AP-1 attacks (of which there are a lot this Edition), this effectively doubles their durability, and being able to retain a 2+ against AP-2 stuff if they’re in cover is massive. This is great in all Marines but may be close to its best here, expect to slam this button a lot.
The remaining three Stratagems are all mobility tricks – Prognosticated Arrival being the most aggressive, letting you arrive anywhere >3” from the enemy at the cost of charging, great for objective play or shooting. The other two are even spicier. Haloed in Soulfire provides one of the most non-negotiable defensive tools out there – it costs you 2CP, but it lets you pick a unit arriving from Deep Strike or Teleport Assault and make them unshootable from outside 12”. If you really need to keep something safe on an objective, or your opponent has got a big Indirect Fire gunline back against their board edge, this can be game-winning.
Also a likely source of huge swings, and perhaps their coolest stratagem, is Mists of Deimos. For a mere 1CP, this lets you do one of two things when an enemy ends a move within 9” of one of your unengaged PSYKER units. The first option is for your models to make a Normal Move of up to 6”. This is very good – it lets you dodge shooting, block charges, shift the number of models on an objective, all sorts of stuff and super valuable. However, plenty of armies get access to something like that somewhere, and it’s the second option that makes this so unique – you can instead choose to pull the unit into Strategic Reserves. Doesn’t matter how fast the opponent is – they’re not catching them then, and this is incredible against opponents relying on melee threats in particular. If you’ve got a powerful shooting unit, you can even just reserve a CP to keep doing this every turn – arrive off a board edge, shoot, and then when they opponent tries to retaliate, flick back into the Warp to appear again the following turn. Incredible stuff, and another part of why Grey Knights will be a gigantic headache to plan against.
Enhancements
Like most factions Grey Knights get four Enhancements to choose from. The more pedestrian ones are First to the Fray and Domina Liber Daemonica, providing the ability to do a turn 1 Deep Strike (plus not counting towards the deep strike cap) and a melee boost (that gets better against Daemons) respectively. Both will see use – Turn 1 Deep Strike is (obviously) great, but don’t forget that when you’re going second you can effectively already do that with Teleport Assault, so it’s not as game-changing as it might be in other armies – it’ll depend on the cost. A melee boost is always welcome, but the new enhancement system means that unlike in 9th you can’t just stack lots of upgrades on the same model, so it’s capped in how nasty it can be.
The other two will get a lot more airtime, being Inescapable Wrath and Sigil of Exigence. The former is very simple, giving +1 to charge rolls, but is also extremely good in an army that’s going to be swinging for deep strike charges more than most, and unless it’s eye-wateringly expensive I’d be surprised if you ever left it on the shelf. Sigil of Exigence is a returning champion – one of the few Enhancements that’s a direct lift from 9th with minimal changes. Once per battle, when the bearer’s unit is targeted with a ranged attack, you can redeploy them anywhere that’s outside 9” of opposing units. The opponent does get to retarget their attacks if you’re no longer an eligible target, but who cares – your key unit has dodged a hail of fire, and they might not have good targets any more. This is still fantastic on a Dreadknight, but is even better in 10th Edition, because now that you can embed a Leader with this into other valuable units, there are far more places you might want to use it.
A good enhancement suite overall – none of these are bad, several are very good!
Datasheets
So before diving in to some highlights, there are some general things to cover with Grey Knights, as they share a lot of details across many units. These are:
- 2+ saves on Power Armour. Hell yeah.
- Nemesis Force Weapons, which are collapsed into a single profile, a PSYCHIC weapon that hits at S6, AP-2, D2, a tasty profile in 10th.
- Storm bolters. Pretty much everyone’s got them, they’re as you’d expect – S4 AP0 with two shots and Rapid Fire 2.
There’s also a set of special weapons that are re-used in lots of places, the psilencer, psycannon and incinerator. Expect the latter two to get the most play – the psilencer adds lots of S5 AP0 shots, but that’s not really something the army needs, whereas the S6 AP-1 Ignore Cover/Torrent Incinerator is spicy in the new Overwatch world and the psycannon provides higher strength D2 shots. Notably for the psycannon and psilencer, these just hit on a flat 3+ now and don’t have the Heavy tag, no more hitting on 4s on the move.
Anyway, let’s kick off with a summary of the coolest units in the Index, and some high level thoughts on how things are going to change, followed by a deeper drive on the contents.
Five Coolest Units
- Kaldor Draigo: Surprising we know. Still a weapon that walks like a man, now comes with a once-per-game +3” boost to a charge roll, making him the most reliable tool here for slamming a big Terminator or Paladin squad into the enemy.
- Brotherhood Champion: The Brotherhood Champion stands out for two reasons – he’s one of only two Characters that can join Strike or Purgation squads, and he brings a really good buff for the former – Fights First.
- Purgation Squads: A remixed version of the classic Astral Aim returns on these – they now have Indirect Fire as long as you’re targeting something that another Grey Knights Psyker can see. As well as being great with Psycannons, this has the unusual effect of making them pretty much the only thing out there that can shoot a Torrent/Ignore Cover weapon through a wall in the right situation – completely negating the Indirect penalty.
- Brotherhood Terminators: Hard as nails all-rounders, great built-in buffs and the favoured escorts for most of your best Characters – what’s not to love? Also has the knock-on effect of making Land Raiders very potent.
- Dreadknights: both flavours still whip. Shocking, we know. The regular Dreadknight is fast, the GMDK is ultra-deadly into big enemy targets.
The Biggest changes from 9th
- Mobility and Durability are Up: Grey Knights are hyper-mobile and extremely durable. They were already fast in 9th, but Teleport Assault and the stratagems push that to new heights, and army-wide 2+ saves and Terminators/Land Raiders being good now push durability up a lot.
- Ranged Reliability is Down: The price for the above. No longer being able to volley Smites into opponents means you can’t rely on Mortal Wound grind to get things done, and not having re-roll auras for Dreadknights weapons their shooting potential. You’ll need to hit melee to do the heavy lifting.
- Brotherhood Terminators rule now: There’s a very serious argument for just starting every list with a full brick and your buff Character of choice (probably Draigo), they’re an exceptional all-rounder unit. This does come a bit at the cost of Paladins, who are now more of a dedicated shooting role rather than being better all-rounders.
- Many Lists Will Have Fewer Characters: Obviously some of this will depend on points costs, but only being able to embed most Characters in Terminator squads puts a pretty hard cap on how many you’re going to bring, particularly as Grey Knights don’t seem to have any ways to double them up.
- Terminator Transports: Both the Stormraven and Land Raiders look like they could have serious play this time around, providing powerful shooting the army otherwise lacks and great Terminator delivery mechanisms. Technically this is less of a change for Grey Knights than other Marines, as Stormravens saw occasional success in 9th, but the draw is even bigger now.
Characters
Grey Knights have a very broad range of Characters to select from, particularly Terminator armoured ones. This is both a blessing and a curse – it gives you a tonne of different options to configure your Terminator squads, but none of these have Lieutenant-style abilities to let you double-up on Characters in a unit, so they tread on each other’s toes a bit. You likely do want to stick at least one Character in most units, but that probably still means you’re taking 2-3 of these a game, so they’re in hot competition with one another, and the points costs may end up being the deciding factor between them. Mercifully, this clutter has been reduced slightly by Apothecaries and Ancients being rolled into unit upgrades for Terminator squads, but there’s still a lot here.
Having rotated all these datasheets in my mind, I think the likely frontrunners for inclusion are Draigo, the regular Grand Master and Chaplains for normal Terminators, then the Brother-Captain and Brotherhood Librarian for Paladins, in approximately those orders. None of the other options are bad either, so could leap ahead if the price is right, but on pure capabilities these seem like the things that do the most to boost you.
Why is that? Draigo’s pretty obvious – as in the highlights above, he gives a once-per-game 6” charge from Deep Strike, which is very much what you want from your alpha melee unit, and is also a decent killing machine himself, throwing out S8 Ap-4 D3 attacks with the Titansword and having a nice D2 psychic shooting attack. He also provides a 4+ Feel No Pain against Mortal Wounds, making that unit tough to crack with Devastating Wounds, normally the bane of Terminators. He rocks, no surprises there. Regular Grand Masters also rock because they’re this army’s source of free stratagems – only once per battle in this case, but that can still be game changing, and he comes with the nice additional boost of allowing the unit to choose to ignore modifiers to any roll or characteristic (other than armour saves), again nice for a key anchor unit. Finally, the Chaplain is your choice for an all-out blender unit, giving a nice, clean +1 to wound in melee via Words of Power, debuffing enemy Battle-shock tests nearby, and sporting the best leadership in the Index at 5+. Because Grey Knights need to be dealing big damage in melee now, if the metagame ends up heavy on tanks with T12+ you might see this guy included to help handle it.
Over on Paladins, the new index slots these much more into a niche of “shooty terminators” rather than “better terminators” as they were previously. You can have three special shooty weapons in a unit of five of these, so the Sustained Hits 1 that the Brother-Captain provides to Psychic Weapons is really great here, especially as he can bring a special weapon one of his own and gets wound re-rolls on his own attacks with them. For a mid-field psycannon brick that can also more than hold its own in combat, this seems good. Alternatively if you want Mortal Wounds you could add a Brotherhood Librarian, who unleashes the terrifying Vortex of Doom every shooting phase, dealing 2d3 mortal wounds to a nearby target on a 2+, or 2d6 on a six (don’t ask what happens if you roll a 1. Probably fine. Don’t worry about it). He also has a Precision psychic attack, so creates a slightly different set of capabilities for the unit. I suspect the massive all-round output increase from the Captain gets the edge here, but the Librarian is plausibly the best candidate out of the Leaders here you might choose to roll the dice on having run around solo – one of them doing hit and runs with Teleport Assault and Mists of Deimos is going to be excruciatingly annoying to deal with (also applies to a shooty Paladin unit in general).
There are three power-armoured Characters to play with as well, Castellan Crowe, the Brotherhood Champion and the Techmarine. Crowe helps Purifiers to really shine by adding a shot to each models’ Purifying Flame psychic attack, making it a far more serious threat, and he adds some anti-character melee threat to boost with his Devastating Wounds Precision sword. The only thing to watch out for with him is that his sword is one of the very few non-Psychic melee weapons in the whole book, so don’t accidentally cheat with your buffs! The Brotherhood Champion also rocks, he has (and gives the unit) Fight First, which is worth its weight in gold in this edition, and is the only way to get Enhancements into a Strike or Purgation squad. If you want to use Sigil of Exigence on the latter, he’s your guy, and if you just want to create an extreme Heroic Intervention threat to stash in the mid-board with Strikes, that’s great too.
Finally, the Techmarine – who you may take. He can join Strike Squads, but also gets Lone Operative if near a Vehicle, and that’s probably where you want him, handing out boosts to hits and repairs. Land Raiders and Stormravens look pretty attractive now, so whether he sees play will mostly come down to price.
What’s that? You were expecting one more Character? Some sort of large gentleman? Ah yes, the Grand Master in Nemesis Dreadknight, who is still very much here. Unlike in previous editions there’s no actual statline difference between these and regular ones, with different abilities and the Character keyword (so Enhancement access) being the draw here. Instead of the Advance/Charge of regular Dreadknights, the GMDK gets two very strong abilities, Surge of Wrath and Heroism’s Favour. The former can be activated by one model with it in your army per battle round (so you’re probably only taking one of these) and grants full hit, wound and damage re-rolls against Vehicles and Monsters in the Fight Phase. That pretty much means that if you slam the hammer on this guy he’s going to blender whatever he touches – the hammer hits at a mighty S14 for d6+1 damage, but is held back on the regular flavour Dreadknight by WS4+. Full re-rolls cuts through that, and allows this to plausibly punk a Knight in a single round. Heroism’s Favour also makes him flexible – it means that whenever you use a Stratagem on him it always costs 1CP, even if the cost is higher. This is particularly great with Heroic Intervention, Counter Offensive and Haloed in Soulfire, the latter allowing this model to go off and challenge a flank without getting shot at by your opponent’s whole army. Once again, price is going to matter here, but one of these as your ultimate problem solver seems super plausible. Dreadknights of both flavours are also subtle beneficiaries of the way that toughness changes have been applied – their new T8 is still low for a vehicle, but many small arms weapons haven’t gone up in strength, so they no longer need to worry as much about chip damage.
Infantry
Grey Knights have four flavours of power armour, two types of Terminators and Servitors to bulk out their foot-slogging roster.
Three of the power armoured units are very similar, with a few quirks each. Strike Marines, Interceptors and Purifiers all run off the same core statline, with the standard T4 2W 2+ defences and a healthy three attacks in melee to get stuff done.
Strikes add objective-play capabilities on top of that – they’re OC 2 rather than OC 1, and if they hold an objective in your Command Phase it locks to you until the opponent holds it at the start or end of a turn. This is great with Teleport Assault, as once an objective is locked in they can zip off to wherever they’re needed. They also have the nice extra bonus of Scouts 6”, letting them get into position to make an aggressive play or nasty counterpunch right out of the gate. Definitely expect to see a few units of these in most lists, they do plenty and will presumably be the cheapest option.
Interceptors add speed, having a move of 12” and FLY thanks to their teleport packs, and also getting to make a 6” Normal Move after they shoot, at the cost of being able to charge. There aren’t any big storm bolter buffs in this index, so this isn’t that great from a killing power perspective, but the option to maneuver onto an objective or into position to use Heroic Intervention is great.
Last up for the regular trio are Purifiers, who are a bit more killy. These get to take a second special weapon per squad, and also each have a Purifying Flames psychic attack, a one shot anti-infantry weapon. It’s only D1 and AP-1, so is more chip damage than their previous incarnation, but it’s still an upside and the unit gets nastier as they take casualties, gaining +1 to hit once they’ve lost a model and +1 to wound below half strength. A full unit of these with Crowe seems like something to at least try out, as doubling the shots on the Flames makes them far more considerable, and you get the boosts for having lost models for longer.
Credit: Pendulin
The final power-armoured unit is the Purgation Squad, who can take four special weapons and have the spicy Astral Aim ability, letting them fire Indirect as long as another Psyker unit from your army can see the target (and if you can’t set that up with Teleport Assault what are you even doing). Both psycannons and incinerators look pretty exciting with that in mind – any decent flamer weapon gets loads better now overwatch is a thing, and a psycannon volley through a wall is going to cause appreciable problems for a lot of things.
Next up, Terminators, and good news for fans of these – the core Brotherhood Terminators now look very good. They gain the standard defensive uplift of all Terminators to T5 and a 4+ invulnerable save, and have the option to take an Ancient and Apothecary rolled into the unit. You want to do this 100% of the time – the Ancient gives them +1 OC, to a mighty three each, and the Apothecary can revive a model every Command Phase. They also have four attacks each rather than three, and the Hammerhand ability, giving them Lethal Hits on the charge. Just a great all-round brawler unit now, and excited to see these out and about.
Importantly, they’re now the choice if you want melee Terminators – Paladins are honestly less good at this, as they lack Hammerhand or the Apothecary option. What they are good for is shooting – you can take two special weapons base, they also get an Ancient who can take one, and if you add in a Brother-Captain with a psycannon you’re really cooking – that’s a lot of shots with Sustained Hits. They also get a durability boost compared to their brethren, a sort of semi-Transhuman that turns up in a lot of places, which gives attacks against them -1 to wound if the strength exceeds their toughness. It’s not as good as Transhuman classic (particularly against +1 to wound effects), but it’s still helpful, especially for a unit that’s going to want to line up shots.
Finally, Servitors, who show off some quirky mechanics. First up, these have a native OC of 0, so can’t hold objectives, so no more using them as cheap objective holders. However, they do have some potential utility – if a Techmarine joins a unit, they can also be assimilated into that unit, which in this context could provide some ablative wounds. Tragically, the place you’d really want to do this is on Purgation Squads, and unfortunately the Techmarine can’t join those, so these probably end up benched.
Vehicles
Last up, vehicles. The Grey Knights classic on this front is, of course, the Dreadknight, which we’ve sort of already looked at. These are likely going to be seen in numbers (unless the price is very high), as they’re extremely fast and dangerous thanks to being able to charge after a 6” auto-Advance, and also impossible to pin down thanks to fall back/shoot/charge. Weaponry wise, you’re pretty much always going to want the heavy psycannon as your first gun, as it’s gone to flat damage three and rocks, but may want to swap out all those gatling psilencers for incinerators on the second, as Torrent weapons (especially ones as spicy as this) are great in a nu-Overwatch world. For melee, sword, all the time – it’s the option that gives you more reliable big hits without the re-rolls the GMDK can get. It is worth noting that these are a bit less dangerous to large units up close – both the dreadfists and sword sweep are now only D1, so no more scything through enemy Marines.
Other vehicles are a range of Marine imports, most of which work as you’d expect. Venerable Dreadnoughts offer a very potent re-roll aura (1s for hits and wounds), but they’re fragile and just can’t keep up with this army (they don’t get Deep Strike) so probably stay on the shelf. Rhinos and Razorbacks are more appealing – the former now has Firing Deck 2 which is the perfect number for regular Grey Knight infantry, as they’ll generally have two special weapons to poke out per ten models. Transports for mobility are also just great, and don’t forget that if you only put Strike Marines in these then their Scout 6 will transfer to them, which is very good for early staging. Razorbacks, meanwhile, are great for Purgation Squads – they have the Fire Support ability, allowing them to select one target they hit for anything that disembarked from them this turn to get full wound re-rolls against, fantastic whether you need psycannons to waste something tanky or incinerators to melt hordes. Adding a twin lascannon or heavy bolter to the mix is also never a bad thing.
Next up, we have Lands Raider, three variants thereof. Honestly, this army probably just wants the Land Raider classic. Big anti-tank shots is what Grey Knights are slightly missing elsewhere, so four godhammer lascannon shots from a super-tough platform is perfect. Delivering Terminators via Assault Ramp is also fantastic, and if you’re on the Chaplain plan for boosting them up this is an ideal way to get them into the fray. The Redeemer and Crusader variants both seem fine too, and the Redeemer’s absurd strength on overwatch could prove a big draw, but this army doesn’t struggle to pile on the pain up close.
Finally, planes. Stormhawks and Stormtalons are kind of whatever – they’re just platforms for some guns, and not very tough ones at that, so will only really see use if the cost is extremely aggressive, and there aren’t really any other deciding factors. The Stormraven, on the other hand, is considerably more interesting – it’s got loads of guns and it’s very tough, hitting the key T10 breakpoint where only the serious anti-tank is wounding it on 3s, and melta is looking for 5s. It also has damage reduction, so is very resilient to mid-quality stuff, and it can deliver Terminators to battle (it’s great for dropping a shooty Paladin Squad in a key position). Having Hover means that it can choose to start on the table and play like a normal vehicle, and I would not be at all surprised to see this gunship do some serious work in 10th.
Wrap Up
Grey Knights look like a blast – they’re very mobile and flexible, and can combine that with some very crunchy Terminator units as central anchors. They’re also a great place to get out Stormravens or Land Raiders thanks to the power of their Terminators. The only thing I don’t love is the way their Character list ends up a bit cluttered – there’s loads of cool characters, but you’re only going to be able to use a few. I assume the thinking was that double stacking Characters into a Terminator squad would have been a bit much, and hey that’s probably not even wrong, but it does show one of the weaknesses of the way 10th is handling them. The army is also notably a bit short of anti-tank firepower, which depending on how the early metagame swings, could prove a challenge – and is another point in favour of bringing a big tank/plane of your own along.
Minor gripes aside though, this looks great, and should have a very unique and enjoyable playstyle.
