why the grey knights are a little over powered against DE

I went over to 3++ and saw yet another article on the grey knights LINK!

you can go read it but let me sum up the article for you. The article says grey knights and dark eldar are completely balanced and one should never landslide the other.

To this I say "have you ever played this match up? ever?"

I then started to write a reply to it and once I realised that it was waaaay too long I decided that I will put it up here so i can vent a little frustration on you guys instead.

Alright as a seasoned DE player I think I have to speak up on this one. I have been playtesting for the 2nd round of ard boyz here in the states and I have found 1 codex that I have to rely solely on luck to beat, and that's the grey knights. One unit in particular I cant take are psyfilemen ven dreads.
Even with night shields they have a 42" range to blast me out of the sky. There is no out ranging that. Even running on the opposite flank as the dread they will usually be in range on turn 2 and start making my tin foil ships go down in blazes of glory. If I run straight at them with wyches or beasts to tar pit them then the rest of their list stops me cold on their first turn of firing. Dread takes out the vehicle and the knights blast the survivors with storm bolters and psycannons. Not to mention the heavy psybolters on their razor back. So that's a whole squad of wyches gone from 1 turn of firing from a single strike squad. If its beasts its even better for them because they don't have to blow the raider first. The s8 autocannons take entire bases off and the strike squads can lay down enough fire to make the squad ineffective once it gets there.
Firing at these dreads is almost not worth the effort. First I have to hit them- 66% chance then I have to try and penetrate-33% chance (since the glancing is next to worthless because they ignore half the chart) then I have to try and either blow a weapon off or destroy it-50% of the rolls, then since they are frigging venerable I have to roll the dice again- another 50% chance on that.
I'm no math whiz but lets see what they have to do. Hit me 83% with a re roll for twin linked. Glance or penetrate me since I am open topped 83% I fail my flicker field save 66% then roll on the top half of the table 50%

Now I have no idea what that averages out to but let me tell you it seem a little one sided when your not the dreadnought. 
On top of that grey knight armies being a 24" range army says i should be out ranging them. Bullshit. I might be out of their range if I st on the back of the board and snipe at them with dark lances for the first turn.
But we all know that cover is everywhere in 40k and guess what they bring that with them too. Librarian bubbles, fortified cover with tech marines and the razorback wall that is always there means I am just not going to be effective at 48" at all. Then on their turn they stroll forward in the razorbacks, hop out and lay down enough fire to demech my entire army. Then I might as well scoop my entire army because it all over but the knights wiping off squad after squad until there is nothing left to fire at.
"Your not playing your army right."
"You just don't know how to fight the grey knights."
"Your dice must have rolled bad"
I have heard all these things when it comes to this argument. I have been playtesting solely against a grey knight army for the last 2 weeks (that's 6 games) and I can tell you I pulled a list off a forum, and I have no prayer of beating this nightmare army.

for all of you that don't believe me it goes like this
HQ crowe
6x5 purifiers in razorbacks with psychic ammo and a psycannon
3x dreadnoughts with twin auto cannons and psychic ammunition
3x venerable dreadnoughts with twin autocannons and psychic ammunition
With 200 some odd points left over
The guy I play test with has never played grey knights before, hes a guard player. All he has to do is point this list in my general direction and I cannot win the game.
Over all the games I have tried different tactics, army lists, deployment types and each time I am tabled by turn 4 (one time I even made it to the bottom of 4)
I just cant see a way that a dark eldar can beat this list. ever. We sat around and tried to come up with something and all we got was confused and a vague tactic using a webway portal wired with haywire grenades. (it was really late)


The tactics you describe in the article on how to effectively fight the grey knights have some merit, ill say that much, but the issue is that you are not going to be able to get all the units you need to counter the grey knights effectively and still have a viable army.
So we are going to try and keep them outside of their 24" threat range huh. So we need to do all of our fighting at about 40 inches. Because on their turn the transport can go 12" then they get the 2" disembark and then their gun reach out another 24". Oh wait that takes them out of our range too... No I guess that wont work. So we will keep them at 25" instead. Guess what they don't even have to get out now to blast us from the top hatch of a rhino or they can disembark and move the transport to block our next turn of firing at them and the dark eldar still get blasted out of the sky, and now we are 24" away from them on foot. That's going to end well...
Oh yeah there is the venoms that can fire 36 with their splinter cannons. But you said it yourself it takes at least 3 to take out a MEQ squad so we are dedicating three of our units to take out one of the enemies, not to mention the squad inside the venoms because lets face it your not getting out on this board its suicide, I hope you brought splinter cannons as well of your just not firing this turn.
The night shields are viable in the 2500 point category I will give you credit for recognising that removing 6" from 24" does indeed equal 18" so bravo.
That brings us to your final advantage of the dark eldar in this fight, pain tokens.
I just have to ask this before,.. where are the pain tokens coming from? did you take a haemonculus for every squad, that can get a little expensive. Or are you running a all wych army and happened to roll a 6 on the drug chart. (because if you are we are going to have to revisit the whole "outrangeing the enemy tactic") Alright lets assume you magically have a pain token on the unit, now as far as cover... I don't know the kinds of boards you play on over seas but the terrain in this part of the world is a little sparser than I think you realise. The entire preliminary round of ard boyz the only cover save I was able to claim was the flaming wrecks of my transports. Oh and getting cover saves from my other tanks isn't easy to get when the damned venerables just target the one in front and systematically blast
away at all the ablative armor.


I realise that I am getting a little (lot) long winded now but realise that this rant isn't to cause disrespect toward you or your blog that I read everyday, it is just me letting off some steam at the frustration i feel when I play against the knights. The fact that a general unskilled in the army, not knowing half the special rules, and only using the fortitude power because that was the only one he could remember can consistently table a veteran dark eldar general speaks volumes to me at the level of balance these two armies have to each other.

Like I said here I like kirby blog and dint want to dump this at the bottom of his page but Im getting a little tired of all the grey knight players I talk to acting like their codex isn't the most over powered thing out there. If you have 2 generals that know what they are doing and are not "distracted by the pretty" in their respective codexes, the grey knight wins 9 times out of 10.
Im going to the semifinals of ard boyz this week and I hope and pray that I wont come up against a grey knight opponent. But with them being the most numerous army to come out of the prelims I guess I will have to just sack up and go in all guns ablazing. Maybe I can hope for the best.