Grey Knights: What Went Wrong with the Codex Part 1

I keep reading about how these fantastic lists and such people come up with from the Grey Knights Codex, but very little touches on the matters of what did GW do wrong with the codex.

My first outing is to touch on the Assassins. Why does everyone want to take the Vindicare and the other three temples are treated like red headed step children? Simple. GW dropped the ball on them. When you look at the codex, GW put their love into the Grey Knights and not into the Inquisition. GW wanted to create a codex unlike the one prior that they had to pray someone would play, instead they created a monster of a book that everyone and their mother wants to play due to the insane rules they created.

So, we are going to look at each of the 4 temples and see their merits and failures:

All assassins have Move Through Cover, Fearless, Fleet, Lighting Reflexes and Synskin. Now everything so far at a glance is great until you get to Synskin, instead of a 4+ Feel No Pain you get a 6+. Meh....

On to the Temples...

Callidus: In this package you get Hit and Run, Stealth, The ability to deep strike without scatter (but can assult like before) but instead you inflict d6 STR 4, AP 2 hits. While this looks great and ignores most armor, what GW failed to add should have been ignore cover also. A unit in cover, even if you got say 4 wounds could pass at least 2 saves on average. Sure you take a loss of 30 points from 2 marines and you can still shoot the gun against their Leadership (which on average for most units is 8-10), thus wounding on a 4, 5 or 6 depending on the leadership. Granted you get a great AP 1 with the Neural Shredder and is a Template (thus wasting the great BS stat line our paying for). The C'Tan Phase sword is amazing able to ignore armor saves (power weapon) and any unsaved wounds causes instant death no matter what.

Culexus: This is a very co-dependent assassin, you have to have psykers in your list or at least hope the other player does to fuel your guy. Base line, you get a 12" shooting ability at STR 5, AP 1 with 2 shots and adding 1 per psyker within 12". This could be great with a Grey Knight list as you could pump up this guy to the point he could be a walking machine gun of of death. Still with short range, he runs into a challenge. Sure he has the Etherium, pass a leadership test to shoot at him. Ok, again most armies are between LD 8, 9 or 10. So, most armies are failing about 1/4 of the time to 1/3 of the time. Oh, the most important part...no infiltrate. So, you can't even setup in a critical spot or flank with him. They give him the nifty Psyk-out grenades but no power weapon or anything to inflict real damage or any option like the old codex to drain a psyker in close combat. One of their trademarks of their old fluff.

Eversor: Now here is a beast! Melta Bombs, Neruo Gauntlent (counts as a lighting claw), extra d6 instead of 1 bonus attack on a charge, Executioner Pistol that is 12". STR 4, AP 2 that wounds on a 2+ tossing in Furious Charge. Wow! A beast, either inflict a wound that can only be saved by an Inv save or fleet to a target attacking with a base of 5 attacks plus d6 (base 4, add 1 for extra weapon and d6 for Frenzon), this along with a lighting claw to reroll wounds and Furious Charge making him I8 and STR 5 on a charge isn't bad. Not like the old way that you would wound only on a 4+ and ignore armor saves. Still, he takes a loss of the old 12" charge and lacks Infiltrate. HELLO! So, no flanking, no setting up to get into possible charge range. You have to hoof it or hide and pray someone is dumb enough to come near you. Unlike the Culexus, you can be shot and killed fairly easy.

Vindicare: Back in the prior codex this guy was the #2 or usually the #3 out of 4 pick by players. Single shots on his gun limited his use. Now, he has unlimited ammo, shield-breaker now removes the Inv save along with keeping most of his other perks. Toss in the fact that he has Stealth and Infiltrate! Wait! GW added Infiltrate to him, BRILLIANT! Score one for GW....

But why neglect the Culexus and Eversor? Why the the Callidus the #1 pick of the codex of old get ganked badly? Serious....if you really didn't want the Inquisition in the book, then DON'T PUT IT IN! This is a serious craptastic job of shoving a bunch of crap at the end of the book either as filler or because someone wanted it in there to not hurt fan feelings. I for one love the Inquisition and wished they gave them the time of day to be an enjoyable playable option. There is some options but not like their should be.

So, let's recap:
#1 with a gun! Really, the Vindicare. Why would take anything else? Guy that can pop AV 14, check!, Guy that can remove Inv saves, check! Guy that can inflict 2 wounds at AP 1, check. Guy that can snipe any target they want to make wound saves, check please!
#2 would go to the Callidus
#3 Culexus take this spot only due to the forcing leadership tests  to be shot at, still, easy meat for a smart player to snap up some easy points or a simple kill point.
#4 Eversor a once respected and feared model is little more than an annoying threat now. Oh, yea, he's bad ass if you can get him there. BANG! Ok, next target.

My only question to Matt Ward is was your head up your ass when you wrote this section?