Does shooting really trump melee in fifth? Or...

[althathir]

Long Fangs and Grey Hunters are better in close-combat than same-size unit of assault marines. Which is "not a push-over".

Blood Angel 5-man assault squads aren't very hard, unless combined with an apothecary. But then again Blood Angels are hardly Space Wolves in level of competitive success anyway.



I actually HAVE checked and the sad fact is that pure shooting armies like Imperial Guard, Tau and Necrons are not at the top. I currently have compiled statistics from ten most recent North American GT:s and if I take a sample of 100 most successfull armies (top ten from each ten GT) it looks like this:

1st place: Grey Knights - 18
2nd place: Space Wolves - 11
3rd place: Imperial Guard and Necrons - 9
4th place: Orks, Blood Angels and Dark Eldar - 8
5th place: Tyranids - 7

Notice that if all armies were equal the average score would be 10 for each. Imperial Guard, Necrons and Space Wolves are around the average. Grey Knights dominate. Orks, Blood Angels, Dark Eldar and Tyranids are struggling towards average. Everyone else is way below.

The shootiest armies in top places, Imperial Guard and Necrons, together count for 18 out of 100. Grey Knights and Space Wolves together count for 29 out of 100. Still Grey Knights and Space Wolves are NOT the shootiest armies point-for-point. Both IG and Necrons can field a lot more firepower with same points than the colored guys in power armour can. The thing that makes GKs and SW so damn dangerous is that they have enough shooting power to compete with the best while, at the same time, being assaulty enough to sweep the best shooting armies out of the table once their transports are popped.

1) Long fangs are not better in assault than assault marines, they do not have two CCWs they have to trade the bolt pistol for a heavy with the exception of the squad leader. Wolf guard can make it closer but its not very common to see them joined with a long fang pack. It really bothers me how common this statement is, cause its something that could affect standings.

2) Armies aren't equally represented, Imp Guard are expensive, time consuming, and bulky these tend to be factors that lower the number of people willing to play with them (It also seems like a lot of people got bored with that dex). Crons are affected because the whole range still isn't available. I think there were no Nid armies at adepticon at least in part because people didn't have to time to get the new tervigons built and painted (or rebase, and make theirs bigger in addition to all the points about IG) not suggesting they're good though. Dark Eldar are IMO under represented at least partially because they're unforgiving, and also because you don't know what to expect terrain wise from tournies and their codex is designed around having ample cover. My earlier point about TLoS really applies to them in a big way, their transports are just so fragile that even a 4+ cover save doesn't help too much but with aerial assault and open topped they would gain alot from the old area terrain rules.

3) Blood Angels have a lot of "traps" I think they're right up their with wolves & IG, but its easier to lose focus in that codex, and the jumper list is a lot of fun but has some horrible matchups which I think drags down their results.

[Dylius]

As a Daemon player, I agree wholeheartedly. Probably the worst thing for me is the "vehicle shuffle" Wherein the shooty transport moves 1" forward, then 1" back, giving it all the benefits of having moved while facing very little disadvantage.

I'd probably do the same if i saw a Thirster charging me though.

Actually, there's a rule against this: "Note: when assessing how far a vehicle has moved, only take into account the actual distance moved from its original position. Moving backwards and forwards or driving around in circles does not help!". It's on page 63 of the little rule book, in the "Vehicles and Assaults" section. No need to thank me!

[orlando davion]

I think people need to thnk carefully about chamges to transports.

A few comments on the lines of "the transport blows up and one or two teanportees die then the unit gets me next turm".

That may be true of space marines (termies in a land raider have little to fear) however I regularerly use Salamanders; Orks; Cadian Guard; Eldar; Tau; Necrons. The last four suffer a lot from exploding transports and orks can if unlucky.

Eldar melee units are typically T3 4+ save and can get really hurt (two thirds geta wound and half die).

Can we try and look at this without accidently focusing everthing through a marine centric prism?

I appriciate Guard plus various marines are top of the tree but there are other armies outt here.

[Freman Bloodglaive]

Rather than a "strength 4 hit" if your transport goes boom, go back to the "on a 4+ each model takes a wound, armour saves allowed." Eldar and Imperial Guard casualties drop by a quarter, Orcs and Marines remain the same. Keep the strength 3 damage outside the vehicle.

Forcing units to leave a penetrated vehicle (although without taking a hit unless the vehicle blows up) may at least slow down transport based armies while preventing the near complete invulnerability of transported troops to attack. I'm not sure we want to go back to the "if all entry points are covered then the unit inside is destroyed" though.

[MooseOnTheLoose]

Long Fangs and Grey Hunters are better in close-combat than same-size unit of assault marines. Which is "not a push-over".

Blood Angel 5-man assault squads aren't very hard, unless combined with an apothecary. But then again Blood Angels are hardly Space Wolves in level of competitive success anyway.



I actually HAVE checked and the sad fact is that pure shooting armies like Imperial Guard, Tau and Necrons are not at the top. I currently have compiled statistics from ten most recent North American GT:s and if I take a sample of 100 most successfull armies (top ten from each ten GT) it looks like this:

1st place: Grey Knights - 18
2nd place: Space Wolves - 11
3rd place: Imperial Guard and Necrons - 9
4th place: Orks, Blood Angels and Dark Eldar - 8
5th place: Tyranids - 7

Notice that if all armies were equal the average score would be 10 for each. Imperial Guard, Necrons and Space Wolves are around the average. Grey Knights dominate. Orks, Blood Angels, Dark Eldar and Tyranids are struggling towards average. Everyone else is way below.

The shootiest armies in top places, Imperial Guard and Necrons, together count for 18 out of 100. Grey Knights and Space Wolves together count for 29 out of 100. Still Grey Knights and Space Wolves are NOT the shootiest armies point-for-point. Both IG and Necrons can field a lot more firepower with same points than the colored guys in power armour can. The thing that makes GKs and SW so damn dangerous is that they have enough shooting power to compete with the best while, at the same time, being assaulty enough to sweep the best shooting armies out of the table once their transports are popped.

But your whole list of top tens fails to put and weight in tactics and the actual person using said army and randomness of dice rolls, then factoring in the field, eg if the field is 100 deep but 30 people are GK vs 1 Tau, probability of a higher success of GK is a given. So 10 is an ideal number which would statistically be impossible or 1 in a number so large I won't dare type it. So when you look at how many armies there are and 10 be the ideal. I would say a variance of +3 (+1 for dice randomness, and +1 for tactics and +1 how many armies fielded) Based off of that, I would say a fair comment would be in tournaments, CSM, Tau and Eldar (Lets not go what about DA or BT at this point) need brought up and GK are the only clear favourite.

However lets remember CSM, Tau and Eldar are rumoured up next. Two of which are very popular armies not even on your list of top 10s. Necron are quite new and still in a learning phase. Then next edition coming may just smooth these out more. 40k has been far more balanced then fantasy for quite sometime, and looking at what direction they have done with fantasy and how balanced it is becoming, 40k is looking to be just fine.

[Dazza612]

Yep 5th edition definitely favours shooting armies. It's the edition of mech, cheap transports and melta spam. Combat is important but once you have shot and weakened a unit.

Also Polaria your list does show shooting is important. Grey knights is the best medium range shooting army in the game, space wolves is a very good shooting army look at the long fang spam list (19 str 8 missiles a turn or str 4 blasts) and this is what's predominantly taken to tournies. Imperial guard is the best shooting army in the game, necrons is an ok shooting army, dark eldar is a very good shooting army and blood angels is a very shooting army (razor spam and preds) which is what's usually taken in tournies as well.

[Subexarch]

Rather than a "strength 4 hit" if your transport goes boom, go back to the "on a 4+ each model takes a wound, armour saves allowed." Eldar and Imperial Guard casualties drop by a quarter, Orcs and Marines remain the same. Keep the strength 3 damage outside the vehicle.

Even better yet, wounded on a 5+ with NO ARMOR SAVES ALLOWED. Being inside a giant can WITH an explosion is not a good thing. Plus, its even all the way across the board. (Let the guys ridding in the open topped transports tahe thier armor saves?)

Forcing units to leave a penetrated vehicle (although without taking a hit unless the vehicle blows up) may at least slow down transport based armies while preventing the near complete invulnerability of transported troops to attack.

This right here. This would go a LONG way to de-meching 40k. Not that I don't like mechanized lists, they are just are too dominant in 5th edition. If you want to play shooty and not get owned you have to play mechanized. I wan't to see IG and Tau gunlines again damn it!!

[hazmiter]

That's why IG have griffons, basilisks, hydra flak, and heavy weapon teams..... It's a gun line army....
Mechanised chaos is what I hate. I get mauled by them with my BA, but then again, I have sucky anti tank rolls.......

[Dazza612]

[QUOTE=hazmiter;6223198]That's why IG have griffons, basilisks, hydra flak, and heavy weapon teams..... It's a gun line army....
Mechanised chaos is what I hate. I get mauled by them with my BA, but then again, I have sucky anti tank rolls.......[/QUOTE

How do you lose to chaos? What's in your BA list, jumper list or mech list?

[hazmiter]

Jumper melta spam, 5 assault squads with meltas......
Honour guard, 2 infernus.....
I seem to roll ones to hit, or double ones, twos and botch the damage table w ranged, now days I do the compulsory shoot to try and assault squishy bits, if it doesn't work, I assault w furious charge and rip the tank apart tread by plate by hatch.

[Dazza612]

Have you gone assault honour guard (storm shields, power weapons, fists) or melta guns? Also do you run an all jumper list? I have played around with a number of things with a jumper list and have found dev squads with a baby sitting priest very good for the points. Also attack bikes with meltas are great they can keep up with your asm and if they keep within fnp bubble range are toughness 5, with 2 wounds and fnp, pretty hard to kill. If you want to pm me your list (rather than taking over this thread feel free). You shouldn't be losing to chaos with BA, the codex is only bettered by grey knights, guard and puppies.

[orkmiester]

I'd actually make the argument that it has more to do with true LoS than with shooty vehicles. Its really hard to hide things, and the benefits of terrain (cover) are counteracted by the disadvantages (moving slower). As good as a 4+ save is, its not nearly as good as old area terrain rules preventing them from getting fired at in the first place. I like to read battle reports from the tournies I can't afford to go to , and Nova was really interesting because a lot of players complained there was too much LoS blocking terrain (just read an interesting blog article about it), and lot of the more spamming netlists (razor spam, leafblower) didn't do very well.

In addition its easier to explain how to play a shooting army online, and thats where a lot of us go for advice. Take the Footdar list that made the top 16 at adepticon, that list isn't the sort of army that you can just read the list, what bad matchups to look out for, and be successful. Whereas with a long fang/razorspam wolf list, you really just need to know how to deploy, what to shoot at, and when to grab objectives.

I still think firing points need to be fixed, having units have to be disembarked to hold an objective, and having objectives count for points as their held instead of just the last turn would help out a ton.

i think you have partly hit the nail on the head, actually its one of those things that keeps getting pushed out of such discussions.

true los undoubtedly works, however it is a little when it comes to vehicles, in my mind it dosen't work 'properly'. The point beging that infantry get a flat 4+ when in cover, which is fine, yet for vehicles cover saves are non-existent most of the time. As was stated the old rules worked well enough, though it would have to be reworked so it works like infantry in cover...


to be frank if the folks at nova were complaning about how much cover there was then, that is their problem to deal with, you should never assume boards will be 'mech friendly' On the reverse the last tourney i went to, their boards had very little terrain compared to the boards at my club so we took advantage of it, until the dice screwed we over

Shooting does trump melee to an extent... up to the point where folks get into the 2d6 melta range than things tend to get rather messy. You also have to hope that in assault you don't wipe the enemy out because then he can't shoot said melee unit, its these situations where the 4th ed rule of consolidating into another coambat would help. If it meant that you could assault a transport, kill it then assault the contents then after that you cannot consolidate anymore, it wouldn't be so bad. Atm we can do a similar thing with shooting, blow the transport up then assault the contents, it was perfectly understandable why they removed it, but it would help to redress the balance somewhat.

SW are nasty due to the fact that the Grey hunters aren't slouches in CC, so you can take the risk of jumping out, blasting a unit then being comfortable in taking on the counter attack. GK on the other hand are odd, they don't neeed transports per-see, they do help survivability but at a cost of not being able to use all those stormbolter shots, i made that mistake last week and then i realised why my deepstriking stormraven list was effective. it maximised all those shots and created the situation for my opponents of 'bugger he's only got 2 vehicles what am i going to shoot at!?' that has happened and said players got thrashed


just my humble opinion

[hazmiter]

Hehehe its a tourney player LOL, she's pretty Damn good. Got 1 win outta 6 games with her so far.
Just takes time.
I do jumper, fnp, the devs didn't do much.
Need my vindicator up and running.

[Captain Idaho]

I actually HAVE checked and the sad fact is that pure shooting armies like Imperial Guard, Tau and Necrons are not at the top. I currently have compiled statistics from ten most recent North American GT:s and if I take a sample of 100 most successfull armies (top ten from each ten GT) it looks like this:

1st place: Grey Knights - 18
2nd place: Space Wolves - 11
3rd place: Imperial Guard and Necrons - 9
4th place: Orks, Blood Angels and Dark Eldar - 8
5th place: Tyranids - 7

Notice that if all armies were equal the average score would be 10 for each. Imperial Guard, Necrons and Space Wolves are around the average. Grey Knights dominate. Orks, Blood Angels, Dark Eldar and Tyranids are struggling towards average. Everyone else is way below.

The shootiest armies in top places, Imperial Guard and Necrons, together count for 18 out of 100. Grey Knights and Space Wolves together count for 29 out of 100. Still Grey Knights and Space Wolves are NOT the shootiest armies point-for-point. Both IG and Necrons can field a lot more firepower with same points than the colored guys in power armour can. The thing that makes GKs and SW so damn dangerous is that they have enough shooting power to compete with the best while, at the same time, being assaulty enough to sweep the best shooting armies out of the table once their transports are popped.

I don't doubt your information, but your interpretation of it is incorrect. You have looked at Grey Knights and Space Wolves (and to a lesser extent Blood Angels and Dark Eldar) and assumed they are assault based armies. Grey Knights and Space Wolves are two of the most common armies 40K has performing well in tournmanents consistently, but the actual builds of the top lists in tournaments are shooting based with only a very minor assault element or none at all.

I think what you've done is taken the stereotype of armies like Space Wolves and Grey Knights and assumed the vast majority of people in tournaments plays them like that. The successful players don't.

Space Wolves and Grey Knights players are slowly changing of course, since the "Meta" is pushing them towards less specialised shooting lists (i.e. not as much MSU Razorback) to a more balanced approach of decent assault combined with supporting fire and mobility.

As for whether Grey Hunters are considered good assault units; well compared to Assault Marines they might be but that's not saying much. Grey Hunters are a little over average in an assault in small numbers, which is how many people play them. Even 10 of them will get beaten badly by real assault units. (I've done this myself with my 5 Honour Guard chewing through 20 Grey Hunters and coming out with minor losses.

By the way, Imperial Guard lists do acheive well in tournaments, thank's to their ultra cheap Vendetta, Manticores and multitudes of vehicles.

Necrons it's too early to tell, though I would say they do better with assault and shooting elements evenly mixed in and are more of a combined arms, balanced army.

[Shadow Lord]

Well, it's 40K...so there should be alot of tanks and shooting to represent the fact that we're in a very far far future...on the other hand: melee still plays a large part in this game and it doesn't really suffer from shooting IF you play MEQ. The MEQ-spam with all the love the SM-chapters have gotten these lasts couple of years and the fact that 5th was more forgiving for vehicles makes for a rather dull environment to play in.
If you take tournies as a representative for the game, then it's pretty obvious that the best armies at the moment are those who have an edge over other armies in both compartments of the game:
* BA: good tanks, good shooting, good assault troops backed with FNP bubble
* SW: good tanks, very good shooting, very good assault/counter assault troops
* GK: have it all except for alot of tanksupport, but hey...who needs it when you have psydreads anyway...
* SM: same as BA but rely on expensive shield/TH units to make the difference in assault.

Now, good observers have noticed how all the armies I've mentioned are actually Marine armies...that's because they score so good in all niches of the game and are very forgiving when things don't exactly go as planned: they have a solid statline with a very good save. Only exception to this rule could be Eldar: fast skimmer tanks with loads of shooting and specialist CC-troops (Harlies, Banshees, Striking Scorps) but they lack the real survivabilty in CC that Marine armies have. They need to kill their target in 1 go or it's going to be an uphill battle from the second turn on. DE have the same strength and weakness: good CC and good shooting but they need to have 2 good first turns to have a shot at winning the game.

Conclusion: there isn't a real issue with melee if you play a SM-army, you might have a problem if you play a T3 army that doesn't have enough big guns to destroy your enemies transports and you'll hate it if you play an outdated army that doesn't have access to the necessary means to destroy transports or bring your CC-troops safely into the heart of enemy territory...

This is my humble opinion ofc and is by no means an attack/insult to anyone who plays a SM-army...

[Captain Idaho]

I kind of agree (though 40K is still dominated by shooting despite the top shooty lists having access to decent assaulters), though Space Marines are pretty fair to play against for non-power armoured armies. GW seens to have struggled how to balance the variant Marine Codex books with the rest of 40K without making their lists smaller and therefore sell less...

[Kaltenberg]

I don't doubt your information, but your interpretation of it is incorrect. You have looked at Grey Knights and Space Wolves (and to a lesser extent Blood Angels and Dark Eldar) and assumed they are assault based armies. Grey Knights and Space Wolves are two of the most common armies 40K has performing well in tournmanents consistently, but the actual builds of the top lists in tournaments are shooting based with only a very minor assault element or none at all.

I think what you've done is taken the stereotype of armies like Space Wolves and Grey Knights and assumed the vast majority of people in tournaments plays them like that. The successful players don't.

Space Wolves and Grey Knights players are slowly changing of course, since the "Meta" is pushing them towards less specialised shooting lists (i.e. not as much MSU Razorback) to a more balanced approach of decent assault combined with supporting fire and mobility.

As for whether Grey Hunters are considered good assault units; well compared to Assault Marines they might be but that's not saying much. Grey Hunters are a little over average in an assault in small numbers, which is how many people play them. Even 10 of them will get beaten badly by real assault units. (I've done this myself with my 5 Honour Guard chewing through 20 Grey Hunters and coming out with minor losses.

By the way, Imperial Guard lists do acheive well in tournaments, thank's to their ultra cheap Vendetta, Manticores and multitudes of vehicles.

Necrons it's too early to tell, though I would say they do better with assault and shooting elements evenly mixed in and are more of a combined arms, balanced army.

well said
Of all the mentioned armies

1st place: Grey Knights - 18
2nd place: Space Wolves - 11
3rd place: Imperial Guard and Necrons - 9
4th place: Orks, Blood Angels and Dark Eldar - 8
5th place: Tyranids - 7

I would only count Orks, nids and ofcouse necrons as CC armies. All the rest are most likely shooty armies with a strong mechanized build.
Undoubtly some of them have dedicated CC units. (GK have death cult assains, SW migth have thunderwolfslords, Ba migth have assault marines with FNP)
But they major strengh of those list will be thier mobility through vehicles and thier shooting.

Necrons: THey come today in 2 variants.
Wraithwalls and scrarab farms.
Both are good liste, and both are essentially based on chewing through your enemy in close combat.

So out of the original list of 100 "winners" maybe 24 list can be considered assault based. (Tyranids orks and Necrons.)

[Baaltor]

Rather than a "strength 4 hit" if your transport goes boom, go back to the "on a 4+ each model takes a wound, armour saves allowed." Eldar and Imperial Guard casualties drop by a quarter, Orcs and Marines remain the same. Keep the strength 3 damage outside the vehicle.

Even better yet, wounded on a 5+ with NO ARMOR SAVES ALLOWED. Being inside a giant can WITH an explosion is not a good thing. Plus, its even all the way across the board. (Let the guys ridding in the open topped transports tahe thier armor saves?)

Forcing units to leave a penetrated vehicle (although without taking a hit unless the vehicle blows up) may at least slow down transport based armies while preventing the near complete invulnerability of transported troops to attack.

This right here. This would go a LONG way to de-meching 40k. Not that I don't like mechanized lists, they are just are too dominant in 5th edition. If you want to play shooty and not get owned you have to play mechanized. I wan't to see IG and Tau gunlines again damn it!!

I disagree with the ignore armour thing. It'd be better if you got a wound on a 4+ and were automatically pinned. The problem as I see is marines just waltzing out of their transport (not looking at the explosion nonetheless :P) and blowing the brains out of whomever is nearby as if nothing had happened. It doesn't matter how tough they are, or how discplined they are, if they're physically trapped (the wounds aspect) they're taken out regardless of their toughness, if they fail their Ld., they're broken/recovering their allies from the wreckage/putting them out. No need to turn Terminator armour into overpriced skin again. The penetration having to disembark thing'd be great too.

Long Fangs and Grey Hunters are better in close-combat than same-size unit of assault marines. Which is "not a push-over".

Blood Angel 5-man assault squads aren't very hard, unless combined with an apothecary. But then again Blood Angels are hardly Space Wolves in level of competitive success anyway.



I actually HAVE checked and the sad fact is that pure shooting armies like Imperial Guard, Tau and Necrons are not at the top. I currently have compiled statistics from ten most recent North American GT:s and if I take a sample of 100 most successfull armies (top ten from each ten GT) it looks like this:

1st place: Grey Knights - 18
2nd place: Space Wolves - 11
3rd place: Imperial Guard and Necrons - 9
4th place: Orks, Blood Angels and Dark Eldar - 8
5th place: Tyranids - 7

Notice that if all armies were equal the average score would be 10 for each. Imperial Guard, Necrons and Space Wolves are around the average. Grey Knights dominate. Orks, Blood Angels, Dark Eldar and Tyranids are struggling towards average. Everyone else is way below.

The shootiest armies in top places, Imperial Guard and Necrons, together count for 18 out of 100. Grey Knights and Space Wolves together count for 29 out of 100. Still Grey Knights and Space Wolves are NOT the shootiest armies point-for-point. Both IG and Necrons can field a lot more firepower with same points than the colored guys in power armour can. The thing that makes GKs and SW so damn dangerous is that they have enough shooting power to compete with the best while, at the same time, being assaulty enough to sweep the best shooting armies out of the table once their transports are popped.

Agreed, SW and Grek Knights may be good at shooting, but it's the fact that they still kick teeth in melee that makes them above everything else.

As for whether Grey Hunters are considered good assault units; well compared to Assault Marines they might be but that's not saying much. Grey Hunters are a little over average in an assault in small numbers, which is how many people play them. Even 10 of them will get beaten badly by real assault units. (I've done this myself with my 5 Honour Guard chewing through 20 Grey Hunters and coming out with minor losses.

I strongly disagree. You're comparing apples to orange here: an assault marine unit is not a bad assault unit, it's great where it's power lies (choosing it's fights and against light infantry). An honour guard is specifically an anti-heavy infantry unit, where as the grey hunter's strength lies in anti light infantry. Compare the units to orks and see how well the honour guard does point for point vs. Grey Hunters.

Just because marines are far more common, it doesn't mean units not designed to kill marines automatical make them 'bad', just bad at killing marines.

I'm actually okay with Space Wolves as an army, it's GK that piss me off. Every unit carries the tools to deal with everything. Hordes? Shoot them to pieces. Meq? Tear them apart. MC? Forcinate them, all I need is one cut to suck your soul out through a crazy-straw. Tzeentch forbid their using purifiers, then melee becomes the answer for everything, and shooting's just gravy. What other army can beat hordes by just walking onto the field and letting them defeat themselves with your untouchable marines?

[Dazza612]

Captain Idaho not to underpin you cause your post was well written but I did state what you said about 5 posts earlier. If anything Polaria has supported the notion of shooting armies being more successful as all those armies bar orks are good shooting armies but they can also do assault. Even nids is actually better as a shooting army than an assault army.

[Dazza612]

I strongly disagree. You're comparing apples to orange here: an assault marine unit is not a bad assault unit, it's great where it's power lies (choosing it's fights and against light infantry). An honour guard is specifically an anti-heavy infantry unit, where as the grey hunter's strength lies in anti light infantry. Compare the units to orks and see how well the honour guard does point for point vs. Grey Hunters.

I think Captain Idaho was discussing basic asm and not an elite type unit like an honour guard which are supposed to be amazing. You'd compare honour guard to wolf guard not compare them to grey hunters.

I'm actually okay with Space Wolves as an army, it's GK that piss me off. Every unit carries the tools to deal with everything. Hordes? Shoot them to pieces. Meq? Tear them apart. MC? Forcinate them, all I need is one cut to suck your soul out through a crazy-straw. Tzeentch forbid their using purifiers, then melee becomes the answer for everything, and shooting's just gravy. What other army can beat hordes by just walking onto the field and letting them defeat themselves with your untouchable
marines?[/QUOTE]

Umm i do believe there's already a thread where a crazed mob with burning torches and pitchforks are forming over this codex. While you say space wolves aren't a problem for you have you fought the long fang spam army list or the vendetta, matincore, hydras all mech veteran and psykers list? If so you'd prob re-think your view on grey knights.