Malys-Star: The Hard Counter to GK

Hi All,
Sorry as it's one of my first posts, but I decided to try out Lady Malys for the first time after hearing very good things about her.
I created a list of doom, which I dub the "Malys-Star."
Basically it has a unit of six Grotesques, two Haemonculi with Webway Portals and Malys.
The rest of the list is anti-Tank with a side of Wyches in case the Star gets locked down by Dreads.

I tried it versus a fairly nasty GK list, with Crowe, Coteaz, three units of Purifiers and three units of shooty Acolytes in Psyammo-HB Razorbacks. All backed up with Psyfilemen (Psyammo-TL-Autocannon Dreads).

I was worried until the first turn, in which the entire opposing army shot at the Malys-Star and I suffered only a single wound.
On his turn two, he tried to push me off, not realizing what Malys could do (I did warn him), and the first unit of assaulting Purifiers died horribly. At that point, he was pretty worried and started back-pedaling as my anti-tank starting coming out of the portals and it was all pretty downhill from there.

Malys negating Force Weapons is amazing for her cost, and with the Grotesques, it's pretty brutal. My opponent for sure didn't know what to do, and just tried to hide in his Rhinos, but it didn't work that well. I didn't even get Dreadlocked until the end of the game, as his Dreads were too far away. But in the end, it worked.

Has anyone else tried this bit of insanity or just me?

Thanks,
-Bella

Malys is easily one of my go-to HQ choices. I've run her in 2 death-star type units before.

The first time was in a local tournament. She was in a unit of 9 incubi. It was shortly after the GK book came out so I knew I would be facing off against them and I wanted to use precognisant to get some surprise deployment shenanigans on my opponents. First game of it was against a GK list of all Psyker henchmen in chimeras tossing out the S 10 AP 1 large blast. It was hilarious when my opponent tried throwing one on them, thinking it would kill them all easily then realizing that Malys ate it like nothing.

Second time was against an Eldar playing friend. He wanted to throw down 3k points so I decided to try out a death-star experiment. Since I knew he would be taking Eldrad, I threw in Malys to eat the debuffs and for precognisant again. 4 grotesques and a fully geared archon later, everything they touched become pulp. The unit ended the game with 7 pain tokens plus had quite a few vehicle kills it was DoW and my opponent went for flank denial away from them so I just shoved all of his stuff in a corner and through assault units at them).

I understand why people think that she is a sub-optimal HQ but honestly I don't see myself going to a tournament without her because of her precognisant ability and the being able to have a real anti-psyker piece in the army (since the arcane wargear sucks for that). Maybe my fear of psykers is a bit over the top since I used to play bugs who have pretty awesome psykers, but having her still makes all the psykers think twice.

On top of that she does what Lelith does for 45 points less. And she is an awesome character (as in, characetr character, not game character, although she is that too).

I would use her, but she doesn't fit in any of my lists, as she refuses to do drugs, and lists without sliscus don't exist.

She doesn't shut grey knights down too hard though. If they use quicksilver (on themselves), she cannot negate that, or hammerhand, and they still have power weapons. It is grey knights like that who give me all my trouble.

She was one of my favorites in the beginning too - she wasn't bad for her points. I thought of her as more of a tourney character as when I used her was in the Space Wolf era where people took rune priests with living lightning two or three times.

I never got to use her against the Blood Angels yet but I was led to believe that her power didn't affect certain things in the Blood Angels book that told me to find another angle. Perhaps you guys can comment on these allegations:

Her ability works as long as the target of the psychic power is focused on her and her squad. Things like hammerhand, force weapons and other buffs that are targeting the BA and not her are not affected by Malys's power. So from what I have read, she doesn't stop force weapons at all since the target of the psychic ability is the weapon not Malys or her group.

Sounds like a bunch of rulez lawyering excuses but have any of you heard of this?

Forceweapons definitely get affected by her crystal heart. The Knight is making a test to kill you.

she does stop force weapons (they just dont ID her squad) but stuff like Jaws and Blood Lance effect them, since as per FAQ they dont "target" anything. Hammerhand and Quicksilver work because it is the bearer and his squad, not Malys' unit.

Basically if it targets the squad she is in, it doesnt work. If it targets an area or the bearer, it works.

I don't have the lists of psychic abilities in front of me but I can tell you it definitely works on force weapons. It wouldn't work on hammerhand though. She and her unit are just immune to the psychic powers, so if it's a power that would affect them (such as force weapons) it just gets ignored. It would also ignore stuff like sanctuary and veil of tears since those are psychic abilities that directly affect the unit. If they try to rules lawyer force weapons with you just show in the BRB (pg 50) "The psyker may then take a Psychic test to use the weapon's power against any one opponent that suffered an unsaved wound by the weapon in that player turn." Pretty clearly says that it is a psychic power targeting a model, not a weapon. It's in the force weapons box.

And Shadow, which FAQ are you referring to? I haven't seen that in any of them, and RAW doesn't say they have to be targeted, just that she is "completely immune to the effects of psychic powers, as is any unit she joins."

Malys was the first DE model I got (ah good old times) and has never, ever failed at doing what my lists call for her to do. The redeployment is golden and the psychic immunity is nice too. GK players actually don't like playing me because 'Lady Malys is OP'.

Lady Malys is easily my favourite of the special characters for reasons pretty similar to what AIDS said. Not only is she pretty good in game but she's also a great character from the fluff standpoint.
Hell that's why she's in my list....that and the poisoned tongue have no other archon...

Her ability to negate psychic powers is a lot of fun, especially when a friend of mine's eldar attempted to doom her and her wyches only to realise they couldn't. Malys and the wyches would later go on to eat the foolish seer for this attempt.

While I agree this is a nice unit against Grey Knights, the Hammers will actually id the grotesques if hammerhanded due to St 10. This will generally lead to losing combat hard if they have multiple hammers or the 1 hammer gets lucky as each wound will actually be three so 2 dead 6 wounds is more than likely a lost combat.

Remember that with modifiers you multiply then add. So the hammer doubles the strength to 8, then add one for hammerhand. Of course, if they stack it twice, then yes, they are strength 10.

Also, the reason I don't use Malys is because she won't use drugs. My archon uses drugs. She isn't rude like malys. rude, rude, rude. Also malys is S3. That's annoying.

SLISCUS FOREVER!!

The New AIDS wrote:

Remember that with modifiers you multiply then add. So the hammer doubles the strength to 8, then add one for hammerhand. Of course, if they stack it twice, then yes, they are strength 10.

Unfortunately, Grey Knights weren't quite hard enough so Matt Ward decided that, unlike everyone else, their modifers applied before any other effects. So Nemesis Daemon Hammers are S10 with Hammerhand and we are Toughness 2, including for ID purposes, when effected by Rad grenades. Nice work Matt!

That man is a genius at writing balanced codices that have weaknesses in some areas. I'm glad the grey knights aren't capable in all areas and have a single area where they do not excel.

That said, fuggem, we're prettier. And we wear spandex. And our army isn't rampantly misogynist.

I used to think the Grey Knights were cool because they had such mental fortitude that none of them had ever fallen to chaos. Now they're just immune to chaos even when wielding daemon weapons and palling around with daemonhosts.

I like showing people Kaldor Draigo's background while saying that he is a player's original character. The usual response is along the lines of "is the player twelve?" or "this is why I hate fanfiction."

That and Matt Ward's design philosophy of "any upgrade costs 5 points, no matter what it is." Including ridiculous crap like Fortitude that should never have made it through playtesting.

I was thinking of running this as my Malys deathstar:

Urien
Lady Malys
4 Grots
- 1 abberation with scissorhand
- all have upgraded strength from urien
Raider with FF/NS/Trophies

Urien takes two wounds in combat auto save one and if he fails the other gains that wound back next turn.

I get that is highly priced (HIGHLY) but it would be fun and since i face Eldar a lot I won't get doomed thanks to the LADY! The tophy raider will "hopefully" follow them around as long as it lives with a dissie cannon...1 to avoid attention and 2nd hurt termies.