General Advice vs GK in a BIG game

Hi all,

Im having a large game (5395) against a friend, he will be playing GK, possibly with Black Templars as allies, depending on points.


In terms of the scenario, we have an 8ft table, and will be playing end to end, Probably with some sort of fortess in the middle as an objective.

I have basically brought every model I posses, and he is matchig the points.

My army effectively is a Dark Artisan, Grotesquerie (two units of 3 and 4 resopectivley, both with a tooled up archon and haemonc, and the smaller unit also with a succubus. both in raiders with all the gear.
A big unit of incubi, led by drazhar and an archon, 3 units of 5 wyches (to make up troop choices) two untis of Medusae in venoms
3 10 man kabbie squads with sybarite and sp cannon,
and 4 units of trueborn with blasters lances and a couple of splinter cannons. one of the units is in a raider, and two empty venoms.
I also have 10 scourge 15 bikes (units of 9 and 6) a lance ravager, 2 razorwing.
Fully appreciate its fantasy land being able to pick whatever you want without point restrictions!!!

Im after basic strategies for facing the GK,
i have only ever faced a basic GK list once , with the old dex, so really have no clue as to what they can do. my mate, has got a massive collection of all 4 of the armies he collects, so i can probably expect everything.

any and all ideas appreciated.

Paladins are supposedly ones to watch out for - as they're basically 2-wound terminators. Lance them, the S8 will mean you ignore their two wounds and instant kill them.

I'd also be tempted to say that if he brings a lot of combat stuff, spread out a bit, the last thing you want is for him to dodge from combat to combat without you being able to target him, so make it as difficult as possible to hide from our firepower.

Avoid their flamers like the plague.

Crucible of malediction will be nice (don't get confused by thinking wounds are specifically applied to psykers, but even so that strength of hit will do some damage - if you can take more than one even better.

Helm of spite will be essential, and highly amusing, and any leadership shenanigans you can pull (armour of misery, freakish spectacle) will force multiply any perils he's forced to take, and any morale checks too. ATSKNF is great to have, but it's still frustrating for them if you can force a fall back move that keeps them out of charge range.

Use movement to gang up on parts of his army, focus fire to eliminate targets and stay out of range of others.

Take a Culexus Assassin as an ally

Well GK really suffer as being a close range/medium range army. If the table is that big I would try the following. Start with as much on the board as possible and plink away at him from distance with venoms and dark lances etc (also disintegrators' are fantastic against GK). Force him to come to you, then web way portal in as many of your tough coven units and incubi etc into his backfield to force his attention. He will try and deal with all the stuff in the backfield which should allow you to move up and unleash splinter fire into him. In theory.

A few things to watch out for:

1: Dreadknights, don't let them live. Use you poison weapons to kill them, they are very nasty if they get into assault.

2: Force weapons. If you are running grots etc you must be careful because he will insta-kill stuff, so pick your battles.

3: Don't let them hit back. Pretty self explanatory really. But you may have to overwhelm each unit to make sure that they really cant cause too much damage back. Because if they do, they will take out a lot with their power weapons.

4: Transports. Your men will be ripped apart if they are footslogging. Flamers are abundant in GK lists and they are nasty. I would strongly recommend getting as many of your units into transports if you can.

5: Scourges, I would take blasters on them. Haywires could be useful on 1 squad of 5 to deal with the inevitable land raider but in general, he might not have that many vehicles, don't know, don't know your mate! But the blaster is more versatile!

Hope this offers some food for thought!

Grub wrote:

Well GK really suffer as being a close range/medium range army. If the table is that big I would try the following. Start with as much on the board as possible and plink away at him from distance with venoms and dark lances etc (also disintegrators' are fantastic against GK). Force him to come to you, then web way portal in as many of your tough coven units and incubi etc into his backfield to force his attention. He will try and deal with all the stuff in the backfield which should allow you to move up and unleash splinter fire into him. In theory.

Be on the lookout for the Nemesis Strike Force formation though, which allows him to Deep Strike from turn 1 and to either shoot and run or run and shoot. Teleporting a few units of terminators, some dreadknights etc and going to town on your army with psycannon, incinerators, stormbolters and even psilencers (Grots, Fiends etc beware!).

Ahh yes well remembered! That is really nasty if it gets in close to you! There isn't much you can do against that stuff other than try and manipulate your use of cover to force miss haps. If you get first turn you may want to boost to the middle for example then retreat when he comes down to capitalise on your mobiltiy. Also, if he brings interceptors and dreadknights with the teleporting shunt move it could equally be difficult. Target saturation may be your friend here!

If he does manage to get into your face with some big scaries, your best bet will be to sacrifice something he really wants to kill (Medusae/Scourges etc work well) by separating it from your force a bit, so that if(when) he goes for it, it leaves him stranded to return fire from everything else.

Do the grey knights still have psychic pilots? haven't seen there new book. In which case crucible might help to hit there vehicles. also might help for there dreads as well.

My main opponent is GK, right now and I've found that the Helm of Spite is really helpful, but not for what it actually does. The idea of getting PotW on any doubles forces your opponent to use less dice when casting, thus failing more often. So, my advice is to bring the HoS, CoM, Disintegrator cannons and Venoms. Try to utilize Night Sheilds and cover to reduce the number of Jinks that you have to take.

Use gun boat Kabalites on Dreadknights. Two gunboats should take one out.

Watch out for Cleansing flame spell. Space out your units.

Strength 6 flamers will ruin your day, try and take them out early.

Load up on blasters to wipe out the Paladin squad.

Remember that all models are armed with force weapons so be careful with your Talos and Grotesques.

Take some Mandrakes to infiltrate into that fortification.

Dont beleive he is using the formation, otherwise i fell it would be over quickly, have had a look at his list, and its sickening, 3 dreadknights, 3 dreadnaughts, 2 land raiders 4 rhinos a couple of razorbacks and a storm talon just for transports, there is a good 10-15 incinerators in there, and lots of force swords (obviously)
If i can get enough firepower on the naughts and dreadknights, i mihgt be able to keep away from him, as other than the autocannons, he hasnt got massive range.

i think hope might be the answer!!!

Autocannons are a thing, but I would focus on Dreadknights (with anti infantry) and Land Raiders followed by Rhinos (with anti vehicle) first. Once you remove those, you can run circles around him. Either he stays back to guard the Riflemen or he tries to engage with his other forces and leaves them to die. Incinerators aren't so good when they can't catch anything.

As someone above asked, I will post some of the pics i took of the games when i get to a computer.
basically we played end to end on a 6ft table, but we played quite short deployment zones as we didnt want the whole game decided by who got first turn, this was an error in hinsight as that is a lot of points to cram into a 12" deployment zone.
I won roll off and asked him to go first, basically, the distance between the armies meant he had very little in range and succeeded in killing two units of 5 wyches and an empty venom.
my first turn killed 2 of the 3 dreadknights and put a few hull points on here and there.
it was the next turnthat became difficult, there was quite a lot of terrain and his 10 tanks got log jammed, meaning that when my turn came around i just opened up on him.
although he managed to do some damage, my weight of fire, and the inadvertent gunline that got created by the terrain meant i could weaken any squad i wanted and then kill the rest off with charges.
highlights of the game were two of his terminator units were liquified, (rolled AP1 twice) and melted two complete units of them!!!
his paladins got munched by the huge incubi unit with archon, draz and haemonc in tow!!!
good game, but ironically it was decided by the roll off despite our efforts to stop that happening, giving him first turn allowed him to get into range of my guns, and he had no way out of it!!
will get some pics up later.

jk

I am inferring from your report that he didn't try to deep strike much, if anything. Is that correct?

I DS the dark artisan formation and a couple of venoms with medusae.
With the board as it was there wasn't a lot of need to!!
Managed to set up a pretty effective gun line whilst the grots and reavers zipped about tieing up dangerous units!

Overall I think I want to DS more but without being able top his tanks earlier the stuff I would have deep struck would have been less useful!!!

At least I think!

It was a crushing victory without resorting to some of the other tricks up out sleeves