Last time, I had my butt kicked by my own faction. It was also the last match of the 1000 points round of our escalation league. Which means, it's time to move up to 1,500 points. So naturally, I should spend most of this post talking about what I ended up picking and my thought process behind it right?

Wrong.

You see, the first game of our 1,500 point rounds was on the same day that the new Codex for Imperial Knights dropped. I only have one Imperial Knight, but I love it. In fact, earlier this year I just finished repainting the Knight after not being satisfied with the first paint job I did on it. So I decided that since the Codex came out the same day as the move to 1,500 points, I would keep the same army and just add the Imperial Knight to it.

That gives us the following army:

Warlord: Grand Master in Nemesis Dreadknight

Brotherhood Librarian

2x Nemesis Dreadknight

Strike Squad

Brotherhood Terminator Squad

Imperial Knight Crusader

Round 9: Grey Knights vs. Necrons (again)

(Note: Ignore all the painters tape on the map in the pictures. It's for separating the mat for 2 games when playing at the smaller Combat Patrol size)

Necrons again. Given how both in the last game and the last Necron game I played I got duped by teleportation, I was not taking any chances this time. I made sure to deploy my armies out in a way that covered me against first round teleportations. We had a weird battle set up where we deployed at an angle as opposed to the normal rectangular deployment zones. So I kept the Imperial Knight at the rear to cover the back half of the battlefield. With all the large weaponry on the Knight, I'd be able to still attack other units while protecting that rear area.

Trying to remember all my lessons so far, I had my Warlord up front and center, ready to charge enemy forces. The other Dreadknights filled in holes to the left and south of my units. The strike squad I dropped on the objective marker that was in my deployment zone while the librarian was towards the right side of deployment.

What about the Terminators? You probably don't see them in the picture above, that's because I didn't deploy them yet. In the smaller battlefields, I found that keeping units to teleport in later on Round 2 didn't really work. It was too easy for my opponents to restrict where the units could teleport in from. With the map increasing by almost double in size, this meant that I had better options to drop in units. With the small movement range of the Terminators, keeping them in reserve meant I could deploy them effectively. Plus, any units they killed after teleporting in would give me points to my secondary objective.

Da Da Da Dum Da Dum……CHARGE!

It begins. I get the Warlord as close as I can and gate of infinity to teleport in the second Dreadknight to put some pressure on the center area ASAP. I don't make my charges but the weapons on the Dreadknight make sure to weed out the set of warriors on the left side of the ruins above. There was a character around that group as well, so I managed to score some points taking them out too.

However, the beginning of my destruction takes hold and I notice that he had LOTS of units. Enough that he is able to get units to half the objectives (6) on the board. Meanwhile, I had only taken the one center objective in addition to the one in my deployment zone that I started with. This means that he was scoring 12 points in Round 2 as opposed to my mere 4 points. Ruh Roh….

Here comes the Knight(s)

By Round 2, I knew I need to pivot to getting more on objective markers. So I teleport in the Terminators on the far objective to my left. There were no Necrons nearby, so it would be easy for them to keep it occupied. Meanwhile, I had 3 Dreadknights and an Imperial Knight to work on killing things. Well, actually I had 2 Dreadknights now. Apparently, those scarab things that Necrons have can explode? Yeah, well one exploded in my Warlock's face, dealing some good damage on it. Combined with some robo-scorpion things that popped up, they managed to knock out my Warlord real quick.

I really hated those scorpion things. It was super hard to kill them, even in melee with my Dreadknights. Of course, some of that was due to the fact that I was using Dreadknights with Nemesis Greathammers. They are cheaper than swords, but it means I only hit on a 4+ instead of a 3+. So 50% of the time, I was missing. The good news is that they are strength 12, so most of the time if they manage to hit, I'm more than likely going to wound. This is something that I kept in mind for my next game.

What holey underwear and my army have in common? Little Coverage.

After 2 Dreadknights died, I realized that I was running out of units to be able to get to objective points. I had let him get way too many points on Rounds 1 & 2, so things were close. The Terminators were taking too long to move off their point to get towards enemy units to shoot. The Imperial Knight was running low on health and there was STILL at least one of those scorpion things left. On the right side of the picture, you'll see a set of ruins with a balcony. The Necrons had a group of snipers that were perched here taking the point and taking pot shots at my strike squad.

This needed to stop.

Activate teleportation shunt on the remaining dreadknight! Got him out of combat with the stupid scorpion thing and dropped it right behind those ruins. Equipped with a flamer, it wrecked shop. Between the flamer and a good Smite psychic power, it was able to quickly disperse with that squad. Speaking of low health, the Imperial Knight was smoking big time at this point. Yet, instead of moving it I kept him right where he was at. I managed to get lucky on the explosion roll and take out a couple of other units along with it.

At this point, we are at the end of Round 3 and the store is closing. We added up the points….and I ended up winning! (4-5 record now overall)

By. ONE. Point.

What did I learn?

1. Imperial Knights are fun, but Grey Knights don't exactly have a lot of units on the board to begin with. I really needed to have more coverage given the larger board size.

2. Looking back in hindsight, I should have parked the Imperial Knight at the farthest objective marker and just had him bombard the battlefield from there. That would have allowed the other units to work on getting the other objectives in those early Rounds.

3. I absolutely HATE those dumb scorpion things. They look cool…but they are a pain in the ass.

Normally, I'd be stuck with this list for the remainder of the month, but I asked for a mulligan from the person running the league and they let it slide. So now it's back to the drawing board to come up with a new list. Maybe I should test it out prior to the next league match.

Have you ever picked a unit just because you *really*really* wanted to run it, even though it's not perfect for your army? Let me know in the comments, or on Twitter/Facebook.