FORCE THEM! This is the Inquisition, after all, and you know what they say?

No one expects the Inquisition!

OK

Most know of my feelings towards Fearless formations - especially when a whole army can be made of them..

With talk of the Grey Knights only list, a few things come to mind:
- Fiction tells us that all Marines are fearless and know no fear
- All marines stand to the last man
- Each Marine Chapter is better than the rest - real fan boy stuff wouldn't you agree?

In Epic, all the above is represented by the skill ATSKNF

In my eyes, Grey Knights are Marines with some something extra - that control of the mind and it's defenses that help combat the raw elements of the chaos forces.

So instead of going down the Fearless route why not something different?

My Proposal: Grey Knights all have ATSKNF and a rule of 'Auto Rally' to replace Fearless.

IMO this represents Grey Knights more and brings back the ability to lose units due to enough BM when broken (although you have to get to the quick becuase, you guessed it, they 'auto rally').
They will also they have to move outside of the 15cm when broken - which brings back strategy to this part of the assault resolution.

Characters and Dreadnoughts would retain Fearless.

Thoughts?

I don't know if auto-rally would be more or less powerful than fearless. At least with fearless you can keep a formation broken.



Actually, I think an Inquisitor might rightly drop the SR for a pure Space Marine army of any type. Two Inquisition books I read have the Inquisitors highly involved in their decisions to the point where it screwed up their missions. So a SR4 or even an SR3 seems completely believable and consistent with fluff. It would also rid you of the variable SR.

IMO each list should bring something unique to the table, and that could include gun-cutters for the Xenos (coming from a guy who hasn't scratch-built one). If you don't like it, don't bring it. Zombo once brought up the fact that he doesn't like the Executor in the Dark Eldar list so he doesn't bring it. I don't like Warp Spiders (because they are too powerful) so when fielding Eldar I avoid them as often as I can. LordI, I believe you should keep the gun cutter on the list. It is a nice salute to the Eisenhorn books and doesn't drill down too far.

The glavian pilot idea I thought was clever but I see why you are getting rid of it. 'Tis a shame though (<---using my 1xTis per year allotment).

I am glad to see you lose the VTOL. My suggestion is that you still put together something for the alternative rules supplement that will somebody come out. It is a provocative idea but it doesn't belong in a list.

LordI, you and I have spoken in person about this but I'll post it here: I like the idea of each list having a different focus. While the Ordo Malleus / Gray Knights COULD potentially drop, the list should focus on other aspects. Let the Ordo Xenos have their drop focus.

Obsidian Tower Thingy: I mentioned that this thing was way too powerful as well. It drops in on somebody’s blitz objective and now your opponent has the equivalent of a titan sitting on their deployment zone and little chance of dislodging it. If you were going to do something like this, I’d perhaps allow it to garrison instead of drop. That would give your opponent a chance to have some say in its location on the board (via objective placement), could deploy in response to it, and wouldn’t have to worry about their backfield coming apart on turn 1.

If you wanted to represent the Grey Knights' ultra-elite role more prominently, you could make them Initiative 0+...

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Heh... more unique special rules? I'll give it some thought, but I've not had any issues with Fearless. Then again, I've chiefly been running a combined-arms list.


I agree... it was always only a SR boost for pure Grey Knight forces, as that's essentially a SM army.


Yeah. I personally was pretty happy with it - there's no reason characters shouldn't be added to aircraft and it did what I wanted without any kind of special rules. But the main thing was that I just took it every time and couldn't quite bring myself to take a gun-cutter without one, so might as well just make a note in the army list as an explanation for a fighter-bomber WE...


I think this is a very good idea.

So, just spitballing, Ordo Xenos could be heavy on the air-cav theme. So gun-cutters, aquila but limited ground pound options. Ordo Hereticus could be chiefly ground based - perhaps valkyries as an option for Inquisitors/Stormtroopers but no transport aircraft. Ordo Malleus would be intermediate.


Note that it can't drop until Turn 3 as it can only deploy from a Battleship which is Slow And Steady. This may not make things better - if I drop it on you Turn 1, you have three turns do deal with it, but it cuts down on options anyway.

It needs testing. It's sucked every time I've used it so I'm not convinced that a turn 3 drop would really work out that well - even if its the only thing dropping, you're still playing 2 turns of 2000 points against 3000 - nabbing their blitz isn't worth much if the rest of your army isn't there. The sensible thing would be to strafe or just avoid the enemy for the first two turns, but that puts the whole game on a turn 3 strike against dug-in enemy positions with total board domination. Definately needs testing. If necessary the drop fortress can be reduced in power, toughness/DC or have modified points but I'd like the test it as is.


That has knock-on problems... for example, it would allow me to retain the initiative with no risk of failure. They're already pretty much made of Awesomesauce as it is ... making them even better smacks of fanboism, doesn't it?

Not if they're appropriately points-costed.

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I'd say it's a lot less powerful that fearless, especially over a full army. Not how the chaos cult lists all go out of their way to avoid the posisbility of an all-fearless army; it's just not fun.

Yet all-Fearless armies like AMTL or TS do exist too. And I'm not thrilled with the level of compromise required to make the cult lists non-Fearless.

It is possible to make the Grey Knights not Fearless. Yet they're Fearless in 40K, and there's not much to suggest a reason for anything different.

They exist in an armylist with plenty of non-Fearless options and choosing only Fearless units limits you somewhat, so at least at the moment I don't think there's a balance issue. "Boringness" is another matter for pure Grey Knight lists but then again that can wait until the inception of a pure GK list.

Edit: I was checking out the GK rumours on Warseer... seems like someone claims to have seen concept renders of GKs on jetbikes... a good barrel of salt with that one but that could be interesting!

AMTL is a wildly different kettle of fish. Sure, it's all fearless but it's also radically different in many other ways. It really can't be compared.

With an all fearless grey knights army, I just don't see what the opponent can do to them. They're protected from shooting by decent armour saves and shrouding, and they're awesome in an engagement.

Even if you can balance an all fearless army, it just isn't fun to play against.

Honestly though, the problem is with the fearless rule itself, which has no downsides and is extremely powerful. I'd have rather fearless be more like indomitable (or whatever it's now called) in the first place; i.e. a save agaisnt hackdowns, not ignoring them entirely. That's pretty much what it does in 40k.

40K Fearless is not the same as Epic Fearless

I really wish people would look beyond 40K

At the end of the day, and all Fearless GK army will get little to no games. Simple as that.

Why? Because it is not fun to play against - speaking from experience.

Maybe so. Nevertheless, without playtest feedback, I'm not convinced it's a problem. As for "boring", there are plenty of non-fearless options in the list as it stands, and generally I've found that if a formation has gotten to the point where Fearless comes into play - i.e. when broken - it is usually so mauled that it makes no difference. A four-stand GK formation needs to be brought down to one stand to break it (because of TSKNF), after which point is isn't exactly much use and TSKNF would protect them from autodying from being shot at anyway. Things might change with a terminator formation decked out with Land Raiders, but I typically run teleporting or airborne lists. Still from experience, Fearless really doesn't often make that much difference, because TSKNF is really better, and a formation broken despite TSKNF is usually nonfunctional. Occasionally an assault will go sour when it can potentially make a difference - otherwise what's the point? - but typically GKs obliterate the enemy or die themselves in assault, again because of their small formation sizes.

In any event, I'm happy with GKs as they are now, pretty much. I'll have a in-depth revision when the new codex comes out and we can address the all-Fearless issue with an eye to making a pure-GK list with whatever silliness they put in, Grey Knights riding giant Knights or whatever...

That's fair enough. I am glad you are at least keeping an open mind to a possible change.

If GK end up riding GK however, I am afraid we are going to have an altogether different discussion - Fearless or not

Wh40k Fearless = Epic Indomitable plus unbreakable

Epic Fearless = Wh40k ATSKNF plus WH40k Combat Tactics

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That's why all space marines have Fearless in Epic and why Thousand Sons have ATSKNF in 40K, right?