The first Grey Knight elite I’ll cover is chock full of badass! Well at least that is what we have been lead to believe. They are the best Terminator (well I still think the troop version is the best but….) in the game, forget everything else you have been told. Well what and who are they? They are the Paladins.
These are the super elite Terminators of the Grey Knights. They must partake and pass in eight quests to become one of these most awesome of awesome Terminators. They have to slay a herald of each Chaos pantheon, they have to slay the dragon of Angnor, they must cross the Bridge of Death, they have to cut down the mightiest tree in the forest with a herring, they must stand up to the vicious Chicken of Bristol, and…well you get it. They have to do a bunch of insanity to fight Chaos insanity as a Paladin.
Now they do have a regular Grey Knight Terminator stat-line, except for two things; WS and wounds. They have a WS 5, which is actually pretty good, hitting on 3+ is a big buff. They also have 2 wounds, which is big when added to 2+/5++ armor save and it can lead to all kinds of wound allocation silliness. They also have the rules, abilities and such that all Grey Knights come with, and all the same gear Grey Knight Terminators have. They come with one extra psy power, Holocaust. They also run in a squad size of 1 with the option to buy up to 9 more. They also cost 15 points more than their regular Terminator brethren.
Holocaust- is a shooting power. It has a 12” range, is S5, AP-, assault 1 and a large blast. A nice attack, but using it wastes Hammerhand. Also if you want S 5 shooting, just take psybolt ammo. Storm bolters don’t scatter have their two shots and double the range of Holocaust, but at a price; a price that is probably worth it, if you want a S5 shooting option in this squad.
Now they aren’t without their share of upgrades either. They have the usual Nemesis weapons: halberd/ demon hammer-free, falchions-+5 and one may have a warding staff -+20 points (for the same points as thier troop counterparts). They can have psy bolt ammo-+20, and one may lose their Nemesis weapon for a Brotherhood Banner-+25 points. Now 2 in 5 Paladins can lose their storm bolter for and incinerator- +5, psilencer-+10 or a psycannon-+20. Then any Paladin can master craft a weapon for +5 points. Hmmmm….a master crafted psycannon for 5 points is kind of a sick joke. Finally one member can be upgraded to an Apothecary (losing their storm bolter) for +75 points. Yup and he will give Feel No Pain to the squad.
Now these guys can get very expensive very quickly. The chance to have two master crafted psycannons ( or master craft any/all their weapons) is pretty cool but you need five Paladins and after that and guns this will run over 300 points. Heck even just a bare bones five man squad is almost That seems, to me, very pricey for 5 guys, even if they have two wounds each.
Speaking of that, they are two wounds and all but they are still toughness 4. Adding Feel No Pain to the squad can help, but at the cost of almost 2 ½ Paladins seems a bit much. It will help versus small arms wounds if you fail that delicious 2+ save, but it does nothing for the S 8+ and Ap2-1 crowd. So is the Apothecary worth it? I think no. I would rather have two extra bodies instead on one guy and Feel No Pain. However, I’m probably in the minority here.
Personally I don’t think I could field these guys. I don’t think they suck; I just don’t like the price. If I want Terminators I’ll just take the standard troop option for fewer points, more bodies and scoring. Sure Paladins can be made scoring, but that is with an equally expensive HQ. Does this mean that they aren’t full of badassery? Nope. I think they are certainly worth the extra 15 points over regular Terminators, just not for this guy.
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