What's the beef with Grey Knights?

[vladsimpaler]

if you're letting that inquisitor stay within 12inches you're doing it wrong.

yeah my bad on the burst cannon, I still stand by the learn to play though. if a plasma siphon is wrecking your day, you're doing it wrong.

You must be a god at warhammer 40k, can you teach me how to play? Especially since burst cannons aren't pulse weapons. Maybe if I forget enough stuff about my army to ignore special rules that gimp me then I can be good like you

[lantzkev]

aww blad, you got beat to the "it's a plasma based weapon" it's also mounted on xv8s that have ZERO problem staying 13+ inches away... (you know the ones that can move 6inches, fire, then move an additional 6inches, just in case you forgot) A half way decent tau player will always keep their suits out of assault if they can help it...

Again, if you're having problems against grey knights as tau, because of plasma siphon, you're not doing it right.

You need to learn to keep models out of that 12inch bubble.

If they want to spend 10pts on one of those, or 20 on two, go for it, they just took something that is fairly worthless against my tau.

[Panzeh]

I think if you're up against GK with Tau, the syphon is one of your lesser concerns. It's more concerning that they have cheaper and generally better shooting than you and will win any CC with you, even if you charge with kroot.

[lantzkev]

I sorta agree with you panzeh, depends on what style grey knights that are being brought to bear against you. The point of all this is that the plasma siphon is so worthless for the most part, and even armies it should be good against *cough*Tau*cough* they aren't that good against because the models have to be within 12inches while firing for it to matter

Which if you're a god of 40k like me, you don't let happen except when it doesn't matter or the game is virtually already won

The people upset about plasma siphons are people that can't stay out of 12inches, or want to get within 12inches... which guess what, that shouldn't be the tau in that list.

[totgeboren]

I think the plasma siphon is a perfect example of why people don't like the GKs. It's like when Ward wrote the book, he though "Hmmm, plasma will be really useful against these dudes, I need to give them something to protect against that. And they have some problems with AV14, lets make the psycannons as good as a lascanon. Nah, make it like a Railgun! Hmmm, what else? PAGKs have few attacks, so they seem kinda balanced... lets make PAGKs with more attacks. Oh, now they cost alot, np, I'll just half the cost of their upgrades. So now they don't cost much more anyway!"

And so on. Badly written rules and badly written background makes for a bad gaming experience.

[vladsimpaler]

aww blad, you got beat to the "it's a plasma based weapon" it's also mounted on xv8s that have ZERO problem staying 13+ inches away... (you know the ones that can move 6inches, fire, then move an additional 6inches, just in case you forgot) A half way decent tau player will always keep their suits out of assault if they can help it...

Again, if you're having problems against grey knights as tau, because of plasma siphon, you're not doing it right.

You need to learn to keep models out of that 12inch bubble.

If they want to spend 10pts on one of those, or 20 on two, go for it, they just took something that is fairly worthless against my tau.

It's cool juntkev, I'm more making fun of you for the fact that you didn't know a fairly common thing about an army that you still profess to play. Don't let your jimmies get too rustled though.

[lantzkev]

lol vlad, b was next to V, easy mistake...

Yes, how easy it was to forget burst cannons also count as plasma... much easier to forget that than to forget it only applies to models within 12... I have zero problems against greyknights, any more than any other power armour army.

Are you defending that the plasma siphon is what makes them strong against tau?

That somehow tau players are forced to forget to use range and movement to their advantage against them?

It's actually easier against grey knights as tau than virtually any other space marine army

[hazmiter]

Imho, ulumethi siphon is useless.... Oh look, plama gun, plasma cannon........ And not a lot of plasma seen these days at my group...... Meltas all the way out the wazoo.......

[Panzeh]

I will say that if I had to pick somebody to fight against GK with, Tau would be a solid choice simply because the low model count makes the railguns seem a lot better, so long as the point level stays low(closer to 1500 than 2000). However, Tau has to also fight others like Space Wolves, and they really can't reliably beat other factions that can put out enough models with enough mobility to overwhelm their maxed out FOC railguns and crisis suits.

[Sami]

I still don't see why people consider the Plasma Siphon something broken in the GK codex. It doesn't protect allied models within a 12" bubble around the Inquisitor, but instead affects enemy models within 12" of the Inquisitor. So you can shoot at the Inquisitor him/herself with plasma weapons, and providing you are doing it from more than 12" away the Siphon will have no effect.

The biggest abomination of the Plasma Siphon is that there is no definition of a "plasma" weapon, and the FAQ had to drag in fluff text to make the rule work. So now you have to check the background description of every bloody weapon to see if it mentions the word "plasma" in relation to how it fires. Thankfully, nobody takes the things so it's not much of an issue in the big scheme of things.

[ehlijen]

Inquisitor with syphon joins nasty squad in a stormraven. Zoom forward. 12" bubble extending from the stormraven wings to neuter all pulse and plasma shooting in, wether it's at the stormraven or not. Any firewarrior squad with rifles caught by this basically cannot shoot that turn. Plasma rifles are forced to take one shot instead of JSJ-ing into 12" to rapid fire (which they often want to do vs terminators). To kill that inquisitor takes at least an AT unit to kill the raven (with its 4+ flat out save) and then more firing to get through the squad and the inquisitors wounds, and you can't count on any pulse rifles not already at least 13" away, meaning weight of fire might be difficult to come by.

The syphon is taken very little because GKs don't need the extra help vs Tau, even if they could expect to fight them reliably. But something that so blatantly hurts one army but barely any others is just not good game design.

[lantzkev]

lol you do realise said situation, is again easy for the tau? it is trivial easy to peel off that cover to 6 or nothing even... one rail gun hits and just needs a 2 or better to have a 50% chance of destroying it.

It just simply does not blatenly hurts tau like you're claiming, on paper it does, in practice, virtually little to never.

[Dylius]

I don't think it's the actual in-game effects that bug people, it's the principle. Sure it probably won't affect you, but it still mitigates one of the only weaknesses of the Grey Knights army: plasma. Similarly, if my Orks' Big Mek had a special piece of war-gear that made weapons that fire 3 or even 2 or more shots a turn BS 1, even if it's just within 12" range, it would be unfair because rapid firing weapons are one of the best counters to hoard armies.

Now you could argue that you should have kept away from it, but this isn't so easy if you have rapid firing weapons in the squad: for example, if the squad is 18" from the Mek/plasma syphon, it can take a single shot and be caught in the bubble next turn when the Mek/syphon moves 6" forward (and the keep doing this); or it can move away and not be able to fire at all as their rapid firing weapons are reduced to 12" range. Of course, certain units can bypass this if they are armed differently or have a special rule, but others will be caught out.

[Konovalev]

I seriously hope no one is whining about plasma siphon affecting pulse rifles. Fire warriors are trash enough as is, if you are using fire warrior volleys to try and kill things you need to sort your list out. Maybe take more vespid or an ethereal.

That's like whining about rad grenades lowering the toughness of your grot squad.

[Vaktathi]

I seriously hope no one is whining about plasma siphon affecting pulse rifles. Fire warriors are trash enough as is, if you are using fire warrior volleys to try and kill things you need to sort your list out. Maybe take more vespid or an ethereal.

That's like whining about rad grenades lowering the toughness of your grot squad.

Given that those S5 guns were a strong hallmark of the army as it was originally designed and intended to be used, yeah, it's an issue. They don't form the core of the killing power any more because the change in skimmer, LoS and some other rules, but the fact that massed S5 fire isn't something that should be cared about is a problem in and of itself.

[Bunnahabhain]

Given that those S5 guns were a strong hallmark of the army as it was originally designed and intended to be used, yeah, it's an issue. They don't form the core of the killing power any more because the change in skimmer, LoS and some other rules, but the fact that massed S5 fire isn't something that should be cared about is a problem in and of itself.

Massed S5 firepower is nasty, and is cared about.... so long as it comes with a 24" range assault 2 weapon, has a MEQ statline, a force weapon, and more special rules than you can shake a nemisis force stick at.....

[Grimtuff]

Massed S5 firepower is nasty, and is cared about.... so long as it comes with a 24" range assault 2 weapon, has a MEQ statline, a force weapon, and more special rules than you can shake a nemisis force stick at.....

ICWUDT!