List Building 101 Part 1; Mobility

Hiya Guys,


After been stuck at home with the flu (and as proof its not 'man flu' theres 2 boxes of Grey Knight Terminators in front of me, and I've been unable to build them up (cue sad violin music)) I've had a really good read of the codex, and have come up with 5! list building articles for the Grey Knights:


In each of my lists, I try to include 4 elements, to hopefully make it competitive. In this series of articles, I plan to explain each one in detail, and then list units which can help you achieve that category, and in the final article, I will bring it all together, and give you a host of different army lists!


Mobility


This is all about the armies ability to move, relocate etc. With Grey Knights being an elite army (generally low model counts), it is important that you are able to get your forces to points on the battlefield when you need them there. Its also about the ability to re-locate around the field.


This is an important feature for a Grey Knights army because as I've already said, the low model count can make Grey Knights hard to play; you are essentially playing a surgical strike army. You need to be able to get in, do what you came to do, then get out (and take objectives (as you will need to in 2/3 games)). Its also about using your ability to deny your opponent his objectives; be it zooming in at the last minute to contest one of his objectives, or running away to avoid conceding a kill point.


With this in mind, lets look at some of the units/methods which will help us achieve this criteria for our list!


Grand Master

• Grand strategy lets you make D3 units scout; this'll let you quickly deploy to where you need to get to. However, it only lets the unit scout, not much else.
• Psychic Communion (which you can also use if you have an Inquisitor, however, I'm trying to stick to pure Grey Knights as far as possible, but I do plan to include an Inquisitor in my list!) will let you play the reserves game; having the ability to +/- 2 from reserves might not seem like it can help mobility if you are deepstriking your army. For example, you can essentially bring all of your Terminators in on Turn 2, yet leave your objective grabbing units (a strike squad for example) in reserve till turn 5 to grab your objective (this is also where scout comes in (bringing them in through the back) and the ability to make units troops i.e. interceptors (covered in the 'Staying Power' article))

Transports

• Any variety of the Grey Knights transports will be able to add mobility to your list. Rhinos and Razorbacks will be able to ferry your troops back and forth, will giving then a degree of protection. However, lightly armored transports (AV10/11) will go down easily and so need to be taken on mass; this is ok in normal smurf lists, but with the Grey Knights its not so easy to take mass transport options, which leads to out next point:
• Landraiders or Stormravens can also be used, especially the latter, for a fast way of getting in and out, while also able to deepstrike to make a timely arrival! But... once again, they suffer from the same problems which the Rhinos suffer from, in the state of the current meta, and the fact that you cannot take enough of them with viable cargo due to costs, I find that they can be ineffective for giving you full mobility.

Personal Teleporters

• The use of Personal Teleporters can be very good in giving your Grey Knights addition mobility; both Dreadknights and Interceptors can take them, however, for the purpose of this article, we'll focus on the interceptors.
• They can move as jump infantry so can fly around 12" as well as using a 30" move once per game. This unit is easily my favorite for purposes of movement, as it can come in 'late' (mention in the bit about psychic communion) fly around for a turn or two, staying out of enemy charge range, then use its 30" shunt move to claim/contest an objective!

So, in conclusion, what have we have established to help us choose units for mobility:

• Grand Masters/Inquisitors are good for allowing you control of reserves, helping to bring your forces in as one, but leave unwanted elements out till later to grab objectives. You can also make units scout with a GM, but that has limited use.
• Generally, transports can be useful for giving you mobility, but don't expect then to survive for long.
• Interceptors are excellent for giving you mobility, and ideally, you should have a unit of 10, make them scoring, combat squad them, then you have 2, fast, scoring units, capable of moving 30" to claim an objective.

There you have it! I've gone over most of the key points for Mobility, and will revisit them and giving you some unit breakdowns when I do the final article. Feel free to leave comments if you think I've left anything out!

Stay tuned for the next part of the series, shooting!

Until then...

Character Conversion Ideas

Hey,

My Grey Knight Terminator orders are on they way, and it got me thinking about how I could make the most out of the kits. One think which the current model range is lacking is generic character/HQ choices. However, the Terminator Box set (most of the GK HQ choices come with Terminator armor as standard) will give you the opportunity to model characters depending on how you assemble your army/models. So, the purpose of this post is to outline how I plan to convert the Terminators into characters. I don't really want to spend nearly £25 on a box just to make some characters, however, in my list I have a unit of 7 Paladins (7 is the magic number for these guys, but that's in a different post!), which leaves me with 3 spare Terminators to make characters out of; a Librarian (which you should have ideally in and 1500+ GK list), Grandmaster/Brother Captain (they both serve the same purpose for modelling) and for the final model, I either plan to use it as a Brotherhood Banner Bearer; I don't plan to use the banner in games of 1500 (just 1750+) but I will need the model for when it is going to be used.

Here are the pictures of the 3 Grey Knight Terminator sprue's, I've drawn coloured boxes around some of the parts used for the conversions mentioned above and some of the other interesting parts the kit comes with.

Librarian

Grand Master/Brother Captain

Other interesting parts

(1) 

(2)

(3)

Librarian

For the Librarian any set of legs will work, but what you really want to do is try and get some in a square pose (you want limited movement on the pose) the legs shown in sprue 2 would be ideal. Any torso front should be okay and all the backs are the same anyway, so they don't really matter. For the arms, I'd recommend equipping your Librarian with a Halberd (although the Nemesis Warding Stave will work too for 'counts as') and you want one of them which can be held in an upright manner (the one shown in the blue box). For the storm bolter again, any arm will do, although you want to position it downwards, and with the closed fist. The best pose for the Librarian in my opinion is one of a more static nature compared to the other Grey Knights, you I'm trying to create a pose where the Libby seems to be observing the situation - the difference in pose showing him different from his battle brothers. For the head, I'd prefer the helmeted version on mine, but the choice is yours. Now to make the Librarian stand out as a Librarian; firstly, add some of the books to him (shown in blue boxes on the sprue. I think the biggest way to show you Librarian is a Librarian will be through the paining. Normal Grey Knights have gold lettering all over their armor, for the Librarian, I want to paint it blue (but using the same techniques as you would use for the gold) to make it look like the extra psychic energy is doing something, it should make them stand out! They way I would paint it (this includes the gold):

1. Basecoat the area with a darker shade of what you want (Mordian Blue/Shining Gold)
2. Wash (Asurmen Blue/Gryphonne Sepia)
3. Drybrush in a lighter shade (Ice Blue/Burnished Gold then Mithril Silver)

Grand Master/Brother Captain

The conversion for the Grand Master (and all of his other variations) require much less conversion to differ them from their fellow battle brothers (however, feel free to add extra detail etc. to make a striking leader). What I would do is: add a blank shoulder-pad and have a go at a bit of freehand incongraphy (or just paint it slightly different if you not adept at the art of fine detail painting!),  add some of the purity seals, give him the Justicar loincloth, the hand holding the Daemon head and other striking details that you want. I think that all you need to do to make a Grand Master conversion is to make him stand out form the other Grey Knight Terminators (through it be through equipment, modelling, painting etc.). 

Other interesting parts

I've also highlighted some of the other interesting parts on the sprue which I already have plans for!

• First up is the lights for the apothecary (sprue 3), I have plans to use these (I'll have a few space sets) for objective markers. When I make little comm posts etc. they'll just add to the detail
• The Brotherhood Banner is next, again, I plan to either use this as an objective by itself, or use it on my large 60mm objective (I always do a large objective! You'll get to see that WIP in a later post)
• Finally, I saw, and liked the addition of a servo-skull to the sprue. Considering how vital they will be to any deep-striking army I plan to stick each one to a small base, as you them as the counters, instead of using them as decoration for my models

There you have it! I've gone over the key points for converting characters and how to make the most from your Grey Knight Terminator sprue's.

Stay tuned for WIPs shots of my Terminators when they arrive and other Tactics articles!

Until then...