Howdy ya'll! I did a writeup like this last week, and it seemed to help my fellow knights of Titan, so I wanted to share my experiences again this week. I played a total of 4 games this week, 3 of which were at an RTT (went 2 - 0 - 1, woohoo!).

First, here's the list:

• Draigo
• Voldus
• Librarian
• Librarian
• Librarian
• Terminators x5
• Terminators x5
• Terminators x5
• Terminators x5
• Terminators x5
• Strikes
• Strikes

A little on this list - I'm pretty sure this is the "meta" list for GK. It really leans into the best parts of everything GK, and is an absolute BLAST to play. I'll give a recap on individual unit performance in the section below, along with matchup commentary.

If you want to see my previous list and discoveries/commentary, please read here.

Here are the armies I faced off against this week:

• Death Guard
• Orks
• Blood Angels
• Custodes

Here are some of my thoughts on each of the GK units I fielded based on their performance in these matchups:

Librarian

I said this previously, but the Librarian is the most GOATED unit we have in our lineup. He's the only real response into tanky targets, and he puts in work. That said, I also had some swingy results, so as any good GK player should, you want a backup plan for when your mortals backfire. Two particular games had some huge mortal output - DG I was able to dump 19 mortals into in Plague Marine squad, and against Blood Angels I one-shot a Dreadnought with one Librarian. They're disgusting, but I also rolled lots and lots of 1s at the RTT, which was painful.

Terminators

I'm even more of a believer in these than I was before. They're durable, they have high OC (and retain OC on battleshock), and let me tell you... the Narthecium is borderline broken. Ironically enough, tournament regulars today at the RTT weren't complaining about the Librarians - they HATED the reviving terminators the most. It's incredibly good, and I am loving fielding 25 of the bastards. I don't miss the NDKs one bit. They were total deadweight! Each turn I averaged reviving 2-3 terminators, so I would revive anywhere between 300-500 points of terminators in a game. Busted.

Strike Squad

At least one of these is utterly necessary in competitive play. Spamming them gets you nothing, but having 1-2 to Prognosticate onto an objective for tactical secondaries is insanely good. Sticky also helps your army be more present across the the board, so I can't recommend them enough. Toss 1-2 into your lists.

Kaldor Draigo

Big D is in the latest iteration of my list, and lemme tell you, this dude f\cks*. I've only lost him in one of my games (we'll talk about how that happened - it was scuffed), and he punches up really well. I was hesitant to want to use him because lots of people CAN screen out a deep strike charge, but not everyone DOES screen it out. There are going to be options as the game goes on, so as long as he lives, he can Teleport Assault into something with reliability. I'm a new convert.

Grandmaster Voldus

This was a new pick for me, but I have to say, I really like running Voldus. He's not quite the same obvious power that Draigo is, but his incidental mortals and D3 hammer make a big difference in lots of matchups and fights. The -1 to hit works well too - the effect is understated, but it does make his unit last longer. Given the other options out there, you COULD replace him with a GM on foot instead for the same points, but for now, I like what Voldy has to offer.

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Alright let's talk about this week's matchups real quick. I've had the good fortune of playing 8 games of 10th edition, all of them into different factions, so I've learned a ton in a small amount of time. Here are some of the pivotal discoveries for each matchup and some of the key tech that influenced the games:

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Death Guard (Victory)

I have to confess, I feel bad about this one. Mists of Deimos is to Death Guard what putting a cookie jar on top of the fridge is to toddlers. They just can't reach us. I'm quickly learning that Mists is the most powerful ability in the GK index. Oh, Deathshroud approaching? Kbai, c u l8r. Just step a few inches back to make a charge basically impossible, then step back into them the next turn for an easy charge.

Since it was a more casual/narrative game I decided to try and take down Mortarion with Draigo - which is what you should do always. The anti-daemon 2 is super potent. Had I the CP, I would have used Radiant Strike to make it all mortals, but alas, I had to settle for bonking the dude over two combats. Draigo is a gigachad into Daemons, so that was enjoyable.

Other than that, it was a simple game of "be impossible to charge, go steal objectives" that made me really understand why DG are having a hard time.

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Orks (Draw)

Okay, so one important thing to get out of the way first: My opponent is one of the best Ork players out there. Top in the state, typically ends top 10 ITC each season. On top of that, he's an incredibly magnanimous guy and embodies the spirit of the hobby. All that said, he did make a goof, so I don't want that reflect on him poorly.

This was his second game of 10th, and he played [Devastating Wounds] such that any successful wound converted to mortals. He didn't say they had "Devastating Wounds", but just said that he had an enhancement that made wounds turn to mortals. I trust the guy, and in the interest of time I took it at face value. It wasn't until well after he scooped 5 Terminators AND Draigo all in one combat that we referenced the rules and found it - Devastating Wounds. To my opponent's credit, he felt awful about it, and offered to let me deep strike Draigo and his squad again. I declined because I strongly believe that medicating games into what they "should" be can really only create more bad feelings. We let it stand, and it was a fun and close game regardless.

With that said, I think we have a great game into Orks. Mists allows us to mitigate their approach in so many ways, wither it's to screen, clog an objective, or just get out of a bad situation. Our terminators perform incredibly well into Ork Boyz, and our 2 armor with Truesilver is truly challenging for them to cut through. Keep CP in your back pocket for Truesilver since it will keep you alive.

This list had tons of bodies. I'm not sure if that will be typical of Orks going forward, but it was a TON of dudes to chew through. Truesilver Armor makes choppas awful, so when you fight a green tide, keep that armor up.

There tend to be too many bodies for Prognosticated Arrival to come into play as much, so go more for repositioning with Mists and survival with Truesilver.

Oh, and if you see Mozrog in your opponent's list (you will in tournaments), do NOT underestimate his durability. It will take far more than you think to kill him!

One other combo that kept the game close was using Mists to pick up a full terminator squad, then using Rapid Ingress to bring them back down in the same turn. It essentially made them unchargeable for that turn, and set them up for an easy charge the next turn. If you run tactical missions, it's not uncommon to have the 2 CP required to run the combo. If a terminator in the squad is dead, you can revive one to make that counter charge the following turn even easier with a revive.

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Blood Angels (Victory)

This game was into a player who hadn't played since before 9th, so he had some rust to shake off. To his credit, he knew how to play pretty well despite the fact that I was only his second game of 10th.

He had some death company, a 10x desolation squad, a couple terminator squads with chaplains, a librarian dread, predador annihilator, regular dreadnought, and some intercessors. I don't know what people consider "meta" for BA, but I doubt it was this. I did nevertheless have some important takeaways:

Desolators are a load of horsecrap. It's a TON of shooting, so be sure that you keep Truesilver as an option into your Oath of Moment victim. It may save you. Voldus and his boys took Oath twice and managed to live through desolation shooting between the -1 and Truesilver.

This game also taught me the insane power of reviving terminators. We were basically pushing 6 man terminator squads at each other for a bit, and there was basically no chance of him winning by attrition. He could never wipe the squad, I kept regenerating them. In a termie slugfest, I'll win almost every time.

Death Company are still mega dangerous, so don't underestimate these. I managed to take half of the 10 man squad down down with a Counteroffensive strike with a terminator squad, but I still suffered HUGE casualties with the remainder.

The last thing I learned was the incredible value of using Mists on Draigo to whisk him away to show up somewhere else. He hadn't used One With the Warp yet, so when the Librarian Dread showed up in range to try and charge, I pulled Draigo away (his squad had been wiped), and then I struck him at a 6 man of BA terminators. He proceeded to 1v6 them over 3 turns and took no damage thanks to Truesilver against their AP2 weaponry. It was epic.

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Custodes (Victory)

I was real freakin' nervous into this matchup. Custodes were my personal boogeymen last edition, and I rarely won into them (I think that goes for most of us, if I had to guess!). Good news - we CAN beat them, and the matchup isn't dreadfully unfun to play against anymore!

First and foremost, DO NOT try to take Custodes head-on in a fight. You WILL die, and you WILL lose. They're tougher than you, have strategems that neuter your damage, and you just WON'T kill enough to make the commitment worth it. I sent 2 full terminator squads (1 with Voldus and the other a Libby) and failed to kill a 6 man guard squad with a Blade Champ. It was a brutal slugfest that ultimately did nothing more than tie them up.

One unique thing about this Custodes list was that they brought a Knight Castellan! I was favored by the Emperor with the new FLG Sisters terrain set, which has TONS of blocked walls, so I spent most of the game completely out of LOS if the Castellan. T2, I sent Draigo and his boys with Teleport Assault to hold him in his deployment zone. The unit took 3 fights to take it down, but I was able to steal primaries and block most of the shooting. Like I said, I'm a new Draigo convert. That by itself hamstrung primaries and won secondaries since the Custodes player needed units elsewhere to play.

The key to keeping Custodes at bay was sticky objectives Mists of Deimos. The map mission thing or whatever made EVERYONE have sticky objectives, but had that not been the case, the Strikes would have done the same thing. I stickied objectives, and then positioned so the Custodes had bad move choices to make.

For example, I had one Strike squad on a stickied objective. The Custodes player sent Trajann and his 6 remaining Custodes to take it. The distance was such that:

1. A normal move could not reach the objective.
2. An advance would prevent charging, so I would retain the point with the strikes on it.
3. A normal move could be used to then charge the Strikes, BUT if he ended in 9" of them, I would Mist away. He then would not hold the objective and not charge me.

This situation essentially forced him to HAVE to make a 9" charge to even have a shot at taking the objective, which are not odds you want your game to hinge on. He stayed out of 9" so I couldn't leave, and then failed the charge. It made matters worse for him for sure.

Prognosticated Arrival also nabbed me around 13 points in secondaries, so it's definitely worth being aware of.

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Final Thoughts

Grey Knights are fun. The more I dig into how they play on the table, I'm finding that they have deeply complex movement options that give them incredible flexibility. The more you practice them, the more impressively you can play them. They have a high skill ceiling with the minor ways you can push them to the next level, and that to me screams "Grey Knights".

I hope you other Knights of Titan are enjoying your games as well - please tell me about them!