Faction Focus: Grey Knights

And now we have our other psychic army.  In 9th, Grey Knights relied heavily on their psychic powers to make up for a lack of power and mobility in their datasheets.  Let's see how they'll play now without a psychic phase.

TELEPORT ASSAULT

So it seems like to start, GW is playing down the Psychic angel of the Grey Knights in favor of their ability to deploy seemingly to any battlefield "guided by their Prognosticators."  Tides are gone, now we have Teleport Assault.

Okay, wow!  I'm not sure they'll be missed!  You get to just pick up a unit or four and redeploy them each turn.  The timing is kind of weird.  You pick them up at the end of your opponents turn and then redeploy them in the Reinforcements step.  My guess is that they wanted you to make your decision before the Command phase and give your opponent a chance to respond.  Either way, this is incredibly powerful.

DEEP STRIKE

Like their Daemon opponents, it looks like units also come with a heavy sprinkling of Deep Strike.  With that, it looks like GW decided it was time to reveal the full text for the return of this Universal Special Rule.  It's basically exactly how we knew it would work.  We don't know what the Declare Battle Formations step is yet, but my guess will be this is now the part of setting up a game where you declare which of your units are in Reserve and which are riding transports.  I'm also guessing this is where you'll declare which Characters are Leading which units, though that could be when you make your roster.

I'm noting from the fact that you put the units in Reserve that I'm guessing Strategic Reserves are gone.  If it's returning, it'll probably be a Universal Stratagem that just places a unit in Reserve.

TELEPORT SHUNT

Oh wow!  I know from experience how powerful rules like this can be!  An automatic 6" advance is great, and they're adding Fly to boot!  If they've got a decent selection of Assault weapons and access to Advance and Charge this army could be lethal!

PURGATION SQUAD

Interesting choice for our first unit spotlight.  The first thing that jumps out at me is that 2+ Save.  Makes me wonder if Grey Knights will now be a base 2+ army.  Everything else is standard Marine fair.  All their weapons seem to have gained a point of Strength, but only one lost any AP.  Nemesis weapons have been consolidate and are using the Halberd profile.  Looks like the Knights of Titan will be hitting pretty hard.

Astral Aim is interesting.  It's a Psychic ability that lets you INDIRECT FIRE your weapons as long as one of your units has Line of Sight.  I think LINKED FIRE would have been cooler, but this still give you some flexibility, especially if you can offset the INDIRECT FIRE penalties.

GRAND MASTER IN NEMESIS DREADKNIGHT

We get "The Mighty Dreadknight" as our second reveal.  All baby carrier memes aside, these were a top tier Datasheet until last year when the final wave of power creep hit.  They've gained 2 points of Toughness, putting them into Monster territory.  Like many models that bracketed speed, they've taken an inch off their Movement, but that's not gonna matter for this army.  What is noteworthy is that they're hitting on 3s now.  

Looks like all psilencers have lost a point of AP, as has the psycannon.  But in exchange, the psycannon has gained two points of strength and a point of damage.  Though it should be noted that this all around puts it as less effective than it was in 9th, since it'll be hitting most previously T8 targets on 5s.  

Of much greater note is how much melee has been nerfed!  The dreadfists have been turned into standard marine close combat.  The great hammer has also not scaled in strength to match new Toughness, though its still going to wound everything but a Monolith on 3s.  And the greatsword hasn't scaled at all.  They've also all had their damage reduced.

Surge of Wrath certainly makes up for a lot of this though, granting rerolls on everything in Melee against Monsters and Vehicles.  That's hits, wounds, and damage.  That'll still make the Grand Master a potent force on the battlefield.  Interestingly, rather than getting the "free and duplicate Stratagem" rule we've seen on other major force commanders, Heroism's Favour only makes sure you never pay more than 1CP.

PURIFYING FLAME

We get a Psychic power for the first Weapon Spotlight.  It's a nice reliable Anti-Infantry weapon.  Nothing to write home about it's but definitely going to be useful for Purifiers.

Huh, no other weapon spotlight . . .

HALOED IN SOULFIRE AND RADIANT STRIKE

Okay, the Heroism's Favour ability had me a little worried about high cost Stratagems.  Still, this is awesome.  While you'll likely be striking in close to something, this will protect you from other enemy units away from your targets.  It's situational, but fantastic in the right circumstances.  I'm just not sure it's worth 2CP.

This is another one that has me scratching my head at the 2CP cost.  This is an awesome Stratagem though.  All your weapons seem to be PSYCHIC so this means the entire unit will get DEVASTATING WOUNDS.  This will bring back some of the Mortal Wound damage the army had.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This one is a bit of mixed bag.  They're tougher, with 2+ saves now and nice boost to the Dread Knight, but they don't hit as hard in melee.  I can see some Grey Knight players shuffling their feet on this.  But Warhammer is won in the Movement Phase, and Grey Knights are going to absolutely dominate it!  They're going to have the ability to play around nearly any army, including, to fluffy delight, Daemons.  But I won't fault any fan that wanted to see more psychic might on display.