Question: Deep Strike or Drive?

In the fluff, which many people seem to think is holy writ, the Grey Knights are portrayed as the masters of Deep Strike.

Which means you see a lot of armies using Deep Strike as their main means of arriving on the battlefield.

Problem is this:

EVEN WITH the awesome power that is Psychic Communion (meaning you can technically get your all your units down on turn 2 with some good dice rolls) the Deep Strike abilities of the Grey Knights pale in comparison to the other Deep Strike marines available. Blood Angels.
Do Grey Knights get to scatter only D6"? ummm nope. Do they get to re-roll their reserves roll? Nope again!
Do they get to assault out of deep strike like Vanguard squads? NO!!!!

Honestly answer me this: would you give up psychic communion for those blood angels abilities. um yes!

Now the other option is the driving army (cause footslogging sucks)

At least now Grey Knights now get the lovely rhino, razorback, and every variant of land raider, oh and chimaera.

Now these vehicles have The Aegis (except the Chimaera) which means you get a psyker trying to machine curse or Living Lightning your ride he's looking at a -1 to his Ld for his psychic test (extended to -4 if you have a nice dreadnought near your tank)
They also get Fortitude, (except the Chimaera) which is bascially THE BEST PSYCHIC POWER EVER. For 5 points we get to ignore stunned and shaken results (after passing psychic tests).

Is it fluffier to have your army suddenly appear right next to your opponent and shoot his units up? absolutely. Is it suicide? Most definately.
Is it boring to have your Grey Knights hidden away in metal boxes advancing up the battlefield like a normal space marine army? Yup. Is it safer? Absolutely.


DISCUSS?

no i wouldnt want to give up on psychic communion, we have servo skulls wich also reduce the scatter distance by d6 making us also good at arriving where we want to.

Problem i've found with servo skulls is a canny opponent will always make sure to get his units within 6" of them on their first turn. Bye Bye Servo Skulls.

Also how durable is a unit of strike squad (10 man) with 2 psycannons? Not very since they're only Space Marines in power armour. And Terminators are really even less so because in the biggest crime ever perpetrated grey knights haven't heard of STORM SHIELDS!!

i agree with you about storm shields (i made a 8 GKT with SS+TH for nothing ! ) and fluffwise about DS... generally speaking
cause we've got a DS list very competitive with mordrak and his own ghosts (with a libbie in there of course) !
but as long has we couldn't charge the turn we DS, i will prefer the vehicle list (love the LRs )
Aubec

Actually, grey knights with a librarian are some of the toughest units in the game that can deep strike, tougher than even storm shield termies. Simply deep strike near/behind terrain, run in, and shroud. You now have a 3+ save on every guy. you want a 2+ save on every guy? go to ground. oh, you're going to do that with 2 wound paladins? well good luck killing 2 wound 2+ cover save models who are all wound allocated differently. and may or may not have feel no pain to back it up.

While i agree making EVER unit deep strike is often suicide, I do enjoy having 1-2 units deep strike, or doing a firebase with a deep striking group, about 50/50. The key is you can't plan to always deep strike, you just have to have it as an option. some armies you can't deep strike against, some it's really good, so you need to adjust on the fly.

if you DO make an army around it, using a Storm raven (if you have first turn) or Land raider to run a squad with a teleport homer up the field, and then deep striking perfectly on them is pretty baller. try this on for size

~255 Land raider
105 points 5 man purgitation squad with 4Incinerators.

you now have a ~360 point unit that PWNS anything clumped up (especially if it's a redeemer......) and is 14/14/14 with fortitude. You already have a GM and some terminators or strike squads SOMEWHERE in your list. you can now use psychic communion to delay the DS until you want them, and come in perfectly safe on top of that super mobile land raider. I've been experimenting with this and I LOVE it when i can spare the points (and HS slots, i've been taking some Ven Dreads to make scoring and be super tough and that frees up some HS, but it does eat away at one of our most awesome slots)

what happens when your AV14 land raider eats a tonne of dark lances or lascannons first turn and your purgation squad then has to face splinter cannons or mass bolters?

same question with your DSkers ... what happens when your DSing Big expensive unit eat the template of a vindicator ?
shit happens in 40k man !
some battles will happens smoothly, others will be like walking in hell... it's part of the fun
but all in all i think the LR list is safer than the DS list (except -maybe- for Mordrak and goons as i said before)
Aubec