Warhammer 40K: The New Grey Knight Rules Are Great – For Another Army
Grey Knights have some interesting new rules for 40K 10th Edition, but are they right for this army?
Warhammer 40,000 10th Edition is rapidly approaching. Someday soon it will arrive in all its glory. In the lead up to that GW has been showing off the new faction rules for the frankly massive number of armies now in the game. Some of the armies have big changes, and big challenges to face. GW recently showed off the new army rules for Grey Knights, and while they seem good, they are also an odd choice for the army. Lets take a look.
Teleport Masters
The new army rule for Grey Knights is Teleport Assault. This rule effectively lets you remove units from the table at the end of the enemies turn and then deep trike then on your next turn. You can do this each turn and normally you will be able to do this to three units. The main restriction here is that the units can’t be engaged with enemy units. This can happen every turn for a total effect of 15 potential free deep strikes. It’s not clear if ALL Grey Knight units, such as Land Raiders have this rule, but most almost certainly do.
To go along with this the core detachment rule is Teleport Shunt. This lets units with Deep Strike, which appears to be most of the army now, get an auto 6″ advance and count as flying now. Together these rules let the Grey Knights become super mobile and zip around the table.
It Doesn’t Feel Like This Army
I dunno about you, but to me this rule just doesn’t feel right. It’s a good rule and is quite potent. However, Grey Knights have never really been a flighty, hit-and-run army to me. Most Grey Knight rules tended to use to focus around survival, like the Shrouding, or killing Daemons. In more recent books its been an odd mix with lots of psychic powers and really kill-y stuff. Now sure, they had Gate of Infinity which let them teleport a unit around. But outside of open play in some editions, you could only do that with one unit a turn.
Grey Knights have always had some teleport rules. They’ve also normally had a handful of units that were extra good at it. But it was always a small part of what the army could do. It wasn’t the key defining aspect of the army. However these new rules bring teleporting to the forefront. Interestingly it’s not even Gate of Infinity here. It’s not a physic power. The archaic, all psyker, anti-daemon army is now… a super high-tech mobility/ hit-and-run army? It just feels like a sudden shift in theme.
These Rules Would Be Great For… Someone (caw, caw)
While I don’t think these are fitting rules for Grey Knights, I do really like the idea, theme, and implementation behind them. I think you could build a super interesting hit-and-run, raider army. Getting to just bop around the table is really powerful. In effect your army can never be out of position. You neve have to spend turns redeploying units. You can hit-and-run and hit again or lure the enemy out of position with ease. Sound like anyone you know?
Raven Guard, Harlequins or even Dark Eldar would seem to be really good matches for a rules theme like this. Striking and fading across the table. Or some new super tricky army. I really like the idea behind these rules and they are powerful, but overall it just feels like there were better faction matches for this kind of rule than the boys from Titan.
Let us know what you think about these new rules, down in the comments!
