Codex: Grey Knights is releasing this weekend and if you missed our review of the book alongside the new Codex Supplement for Black Templars, you can find it here. As always, there are a host of things in each new book that are worth exploring the math on, so in this week’s Hammer of Math we’re focusing on those elements and diving into the statistics behind them.
Grand Master in Nemesis Dreadknight Weapons
The new Grand Master sprue gives us new weapon options for the unit, with a new gun – the Sublimator – on top of a Fragstorm Grenade Launcher, plus two new melee options, the Nemesis Flail and the Nemesis Mace. Let’s take a look at these:
- The Sublimator is more or less a pair of Multi-Meltas strapped together, giving you a 2-shot S9 AP-4 gun with Twin-Linked and Melta 4 instead of Melta 2. Hitting on 3+, this will average 3.5 damage into a Rhino per volley outside 9″, and 7.5 if you can close that gap. It’s also just giving you another anti-vehicle option to go with the Heavy psycannon and so it’ll end up on all of your Grand Masters.
- The Nemesis Flail is a bit of an anti-infantry option, sporting 10 attacks at S5, AP-2, 2 damage and hitting on 2+. If you’re going into marine-shaped targets, you can expect to kill about three of them (2.8) per activation with this. Against something like Bloodletters, you’ll probably kill 3-4.
- The Nemesis Mace on the other hand is better at killing more elite infantry, with 5 attacks, hitting on a 2+ at S6, AP-3, 3 damage and ANTI-CHARACTER 2+ and PRECISION, making it a very weird way to just pick out a key threat. Against regular marines this probably kills 2 per activation (2.3), and it’ll pick up 1-2 terminators just as easily.
None of these are better than the Nemesis Daemon Greathammer, which is just as good at killing marines, a little better at killing Terminators, and better into vehicles and big targets. But how does it fare into TITANIC Knights and Greater Daemons, both of which have the CHARACTER keyword? Well, that’s where it gets interesting.
Against these Titanic knights, the mace will average 8.7 damage per activation to the hammer’s 6.5, owing to the same AP but better WS and being able to wound on a 2+. Likewise, it’ll be slightly better against targets with a 4+ or 5+ invulnerable save in melee, as it’ll just get more wounds through on average before saves are made… but this is before re-rolls. The Nemesis Dreadknight has built-in re-rolls against MONSTER and VEHICLE targets, which helps both but gives the edge to the hammer, where the difference between their wound values and hit values becomes more marginal – 2s re-rolling give you a 97% probability vs. 89% for 3s re-rolling – and the ability to re-roll damage means that you’ll average 50% more damage (5.25) on the hammer if you adopt a policy of re-rolling results less than 4.
Of course, when the mace has to wound on a 5+ it looks downright horrible next to the hammer, and the fact that the hammer comes pretty close even against Character targets suggests you’ll be better off running the hammer. That said, it looks like a dumb kid’s mallet on the model so I’d suggest putting the mace on him and telling people it’s the hammer.
Purifier Effects
The stars of the Warpbane Task Force Detachment, Purifiers saw a significant change to their rules in the new book, with their Sanctity of Purpose ability changing from +1 to hit below Starting Strength and +1 to wound below half. On top of that, they added an additional AP to their Purifying Flame psychic attack, going to AP-2. .
+1 to wound is nice, but means very little when your gun already has [ANTI-INFANTRY 2+], unless you’re going after vehicles and bigger targets. Likewise, while the new ability lets them re-roll all wound rolls against a target on an objective, against infantry targets their ability to re-roll 1s to wound all the time is more than enough. Against regular marines you can expect to kill one model per every five Purifiers you shoot Purifying Flame with, and you can double that by adding Castellan Crowe, who gives the models an extra attack each, not to mention having his own 3-attack version of Purifying Flame (which goes up to 4 when he leads a unit).
Whereas before Castellan was a big buff to Purifiers, it’s now the other way around – their re-rolls to wound apply in melee as well, so Crowe will re-roll 1s to wound while leading a unit of Purifiers, or all wounds against a target on an objective. That’s great, given his Black Blade of Antwyr has [DEVASTATING WOUNDS] and [PRECISION]. On an average activation, Crowe will put out 2.5 damage from Devastating wounds when he can re-roll wound rolls.
Credit: Pendulin
Banishers Detachment Rule: Channelled Force
The Banishers Detachment rule, Channelled Force, lets your Grey Knights units take a Leadership test when they shoot or fight, and if they succeed at the test, they can pick either [SUSTAINED HITS 1] or [LETHAL HITS] to add to their Psychic weapon attacks for the phase. We’ve covered this before but generally these are mathematically the same at a 4+ to wound, while Lethal Hits is better once you need a 5+ to wound or better, and Sustained Hits is better for taking on smaller targets.
Paladins Punching Up
Finally it’s worth looking at Paladins, who lost durability in the form of their -1 to be wounded but gained significant damage output now that they get +1 damage in melee the turn they charge. This brings their Nemesis force Weapons up to an impressive 3-damage output, and coupled with S6 and AP-2, makes them more or less ideal Terminator killers. Five Paladins will kill five terminator targets on average unless they’re T7 Death Guard or -1 to be wounded like the Scarab Occult Terminators, and even then that’s before you factor in any re-rolls or buffs, or the attached character model.
Final Thoughts
The biggest consideration when you’re playing Grey Knights is making 9″ charges from units arriving via Deep Strike. In those cases it’s worth remembering that your odds of making such a charge with no modifiers is about 28%, and that’ll jump to just under 50% with a re-roll on the charge result. Those aren’t amazing odds, but if you’re setting up three or four in a given turn, you’re likely to make a few of them. That said, it’s never guaranteed, and so it’s worth planning around the idea that you might fail those charges.
In all, the Grey Knights don’t have to make a ton of difficult math decisions; their game will be less about probability and more about positioning using their teleport abilities.
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