When was the daemonhunters codex released

Each Nemesis is uniquely built to match the psychic field of its bearer, enhancing his hand-to-hand combat abilities far beyond those of an ordinary Marine. In addition, the Nemesis contains a compact bolter, cunningly built into the haft of the weapon. Purity seals are prominently displayed on his legs and thighs, signs that he is uncontaminated by the slightest taint of Chaos. Each suit is equipped with a psychic hood, similar to those on the Aegis suits worn by Librarian Marines.

Notably, the Knights are described as wearing Terminator Armour, grey in color, and covered with intricate embossing. Army List:. He was, however, also a Mastery Level 4 psyker.

White Dwarf pictures of the first Grey Knights Terminators:. As you can see from these Rogue Trader era pics from White Dwarf magazines, the color scheme appears to be a base of silver or grey with gold trim, and the familiar red, white, and black heraldry. The Second Edition of Warhammer 40, was published in late , and the boxed set consisted of the Rulebook, Wargear Book, and the Codex Imperialis background information , as well the Codex Army Lists pamphlet of the initial army lists available for immediate play.

A selection for the Grey Knights was introduced to 2nd edition with the publication of the Dark Millennium expansion boxed set the following year, in Dark Millennium provided expanded rules for the use of Psykers in 40k, including the introduction of what we might now call Psychic Disciplines.

In addition to the details on Inquisition psychic powers, Dark Millennium reintroduced the Grey Knights Terminator Squad back into the game, and these were the only Grey Knights available for use for the duration of this edition of the game. Legend has it that the Knights were created upon the direct orders of the Emperor to form a special Chapter of Space Marines dedicated solely to rooting out and destroying daemons in face to face combat.

Bio-engineering and psycho-surgery were lavished on the Grey Knights at their inception to make them the hardiest and most loyal Space Marines ever created. In addition to the considerable stoicism they share with their brother Space Marines, the Grey Knights are heavily psycho-conditioned against the horrors of daemonic incursions and the whispered seductions of Chaos.

Their lives are ones of self-denial and spartan purity, filled with rituals to strengthen the mind and the heart against the horrors they must face. To date these extraordinary measures have been effective; in 10, years of combat against the forces of darkness not one Grey Knight has faltered in battle or betrayed the Emperor in word or deed. Here the young aspirants are sent to undergo hundreds of trials of both body and spirit. Their bodies are hardened to withstand pain and fear and their minds are disciplined to fight against the foul machinations of Chaos.

The fortress monastery also contains a unique repository of knowledge about the warp and Chaos which has been painstakingly pieced together by the Ordo Malleus down the millennia in the Librarium Daemonica. This gloomy and forbidding place contains tens of thousands of tomes of arcane lore and diabolism, cracked with age and heavy with the psychic evil they have brought upon the universe.

The forces are typically organized in small teams that have trained and fought together for their entire lives. Thus they stand ready to respond instantly to the first reports of daemonic incursions anywhere in the Imperium. Grey Knights may be stationed in the farthest reaches of the galaxy for decades at a time. All Grey Knights hope to be returned to their adopted homeworld of Titan when they die. The Grey Knights are screened to exclude all but the strongest and most resilient packers. The strongest and purest of them are rigorously trained to combine their psychic abilities together into a gestalt power far greater than any of them could muster individually.

Once they have distinguished themselves in battle these Grey Knights may become part of the elite First Company. The Knights of the First Company fight in heavily ornamented and modified Terminator tactical dreadnought armour and are armed with the fearsome Nemesis force weapon. Squads of Grey Knight Terminators are the utter bane of daemons who enter the material universe and one of the few forces strong enough to face a Greater Daemon and banish it back to the warp.

Weapons and Armor:. Only one unit entry was provided, which was the Grey Knights Terminator Squad. The Index Astartes article provided the following version of updated and recycled background information.

Uniquely amongst the Space Marines of the Adeptus Astartes, the Grey Knights Chapter has no antecedents, having been created from specifically engineered gene-seed. Legion has it that the Emperor himself ordered the creation of this unique Chapter to form a force designed to fight the dread creatures of Chaos, through, of course, this is impossible to verify. Following the awesome scale of bloodshed during the Horus Heresy, the necessity for such a force was clear.

Designated Chapter , the Grey Knights are permanently attached to that most secretive of organizations, the Ordo Malleus. The Ordo Malleus is only ever spoken of in whispers and though its stated purpose is to keep watch on the Inquisition itself, its true purpose is far more sinister, the destruction of the daemonic. The men of the Grey Knights are no ordinary warriors. Plucked from the fiercest warrior cultures on a dozen different worlds, only the bravest and strongest youths are selected for the training.

Those few that survive the tests are then implanted with the gene-seed that will transform them into superhuman Space Marines. Now the aspirants are ready to begin their real training. The most advanced bio-engineering and psycho-surgery is utilized to condition the Grey Knights into warriors of great prowess. Their lives are filled with ritual, meditation, and self-denial, designed to strengthen the mind and steel the soul against the horrors of the daemonic.

These precautions are vital and, thus far, have proven to be effective, as not a single Grey Knight has faltered in battle or become a pawn of the Dark Powers. It is through unprotected psykers that daemonic creatures can gain entry to the material universe and it is for this reason that the Grey Knights are screened to exclude all but the most resilient psykers. The strongest and purest of the psykers are then trained until they reach a level of mastery that equals the powers of Librarians of the Adeptus Astartes.

Those who distinguish themselves in battle may be elevated to the honored position of the Grey Knights 1st Company and take to the field of battle in modified Tactical Dreadnought armour, more commonly known as Terminator armour, with bolt weaponry incorporated into the gauntlets.

The Librarians of the Grey Knights are taught to combine their abilities in a gestalt power that far exceeds anything they could achieve alone. They fight with the finest equipment and weapons the Imperium can manufacture, mighty sigil-encrusted swords and halberds. These warriors alone can stand before the might of a Greater Daemon with any hope of banishing it back to the Immaterium from whence it came.

The millennia the Grey Knights have spent in battle against the forces of darkness has furnished them with blasphemous knowledge, painstakingly pieced together by the Inquisitors of the Ordo Malleus. This damned collection of knowledge is gathered together on Titan in the Librarium Daemonica, a gloomy repository of ancient tomes, crumbling parchments and data crystals that groans under the weight of the psychic evil that dwells within its walls.

This is one of the most heavily guarded locations in the Imperium, and the threat of such knowledge falling into the wrong hands is taken very seriously by the Grey Knights.

The book contains the essential tenets of lore culled from the Librarium Daemonica by psychically monitored servitors. The threat of Chaos permeates the entire galaxy and while the Chapter maintains a fortress-monastery on Titan, much of its strength is scattered across the Imperium.

Guided by the finest Navigators of the Navis Nobilite and conveyed by the fastest ships produced by the Adeptus Mechanics, the Grey Knights stand ready to meet the foul minions of Chaos wherever they may strike. Typically, the warriors of these forces have trained together for their entire lives and the bonds of loyalty and honor that bind them are stronger than adamantium. Every Grey Knight is ready to lay down his life to ensure the safety of the Imperium and should that sacrifice be necessary, it is the fervent wish of all those who fall to be transported back to Titan and buried in the hallowed crypts beneath their fortress.

This article doesn't mention anything about the color scheme in the text, but did include a picture, which has the Grey Knights in the heretofore unseen Black or dark charcoal grey scheme. Other important points drawn from the picture is the depiction of a Nemesis force sword all previous Nemesis weapons had been described as the halberd , as well as the gauntlet-mounted storm bolters previously the bolt weapon had been incorporated into the Nemesis halberds themselves.

The Daemonhunters codex modernized the Grey Knights, and introduced a few of the units that we are familiar with today. Importantly, the codex is really an Ordo Malleus book and the Grey Knights are but one faction within that broader organization, exactly as the original army list in Slaves to Darkness was presented. Because the Ordo Malleus and the Grey Knights were getting their first full army codex, the existing body of background material was greatly expanded.

Much of the earlier work, particularly from the most recent version found in the Index Astartes article was reused, but there are some bits worth highlighting, below. Every Inquisitor has sworn potent oaths to defend the Imperium from its worst enemies, and those of the Ordo Malleus are concerned with destroying the physical manifestation of Chaos itself: the Daemon. Members of the Ordo have pledged their every waking hour to the discovery and scourging of the daemonic wherever it is to be found.

But there are times when the scale of a daemonic infestation is such that even the most formidable and righteous Inquisitors need to call upon aid to triumph. Only one force in the breadth of the galaxy has any chance of stemming such a daemonic infestation: the Grey Knights. Surpassing even their brother Space Marines in skill and ability, the level of expertise that each Grey Knight wields is such that they can exterminate a daemonic infestation that outnumbers them many times over.

Armed with psychically charged force weapons, storm bolsters and an unshakeable faith in the Emperor, there is little more daunting a foe for a Daemon to face. It is certain that without the constant protection of the warriors of the Ordo Malleus, the Imperium would have fallen many centuries ago. The fragile Imperium had only just survived the galactic civil war of the Horus Heresy, and was still very much at the mercy of the powers of Chaos.

The Emperor understood that it would require a dedicated band of incorruptible warriors to protect it from the dread creatures of Chaos in the days to come, and so the creation of the Grey Knights was undertaken in great secrecy.

The Ordo Malleus was in its infancy at this time, the corruption of Horus lending new impetus to the creation of an order tasked with the hunting and elimination of the daemonic. The Grey Knights were permanently attached to the Ordo Malleus, becoming the hammer with which these servants of the Emperor would smite the forces of Chaos, and one of its Grand Masters is traditionally a member of the Inner Conclave of the Inquisition. Space Marine recruits are often drawn from feral worlds and the Grey Knights are no exception; its recruits are emergent psykers plucked from the most savage warrior cultures imaginable, where only the bravest and and strongest survive.

Recruits selected to join the Chapter are returned to Titan to begin the long and arduous process which weeds out those without the physical strength and immense mental fortitude to become a Grey Knight. Only the best of the potential recruits survive this selection procedure and are deemed worthy to begin the process of transformation for human to Space Marine. Much of the composition of the units was determined randomly, by rolling dice. A few elements of the setting Bolters , Lasguns , Frag Grenades , Terminator Armour can be seen in a set of earlier wargaming rules called Laserburn produced by the now defunct company Tabletop Games written by Bryan Ansell.

These rules were later expanded by both Ansell and Richard Halliwell both of whom ended up working for Games Workshop , although the rules were not a precursor to Rogue Trader. Soon the Games Workshop hobby magazine, White Dwarf , started making army lists and devising strategies for people to use in these Rogue Trader games. New models were released by Games Workshop for the line and the many people who had always enjoyed Warhammer Fantasy were now thrilled at the idea of Warhammer 40, as a tabletop wargame, which was essentially a dark science fiction or more properly a dark science fantasy setting with many of the same tropes and elements as its dark fantasy counterpart.

The 2nd Edition of Warhammer 40, was released in as part of Games Workshop's strategy to appeal to a younger fanbase and greatly expanded the number of factions and armies that could now be played.

The release of this edition was marked by the production of a boxed starter set containing Ork and Space Marine models with dice and a rules book. The animating idea behind this edition of the game was to provide more opportunities for players to participate in larger battles. Also special characters were introduced to replace the older concept of battlefield heroes the earlier edition only had three generic "heroic" profiles for each army: champion, minor and major hero. New rules were also provided for the use of psychic powers which were essentially the equivalent of the magical system deployed in Warhammer Fantasy.

True codexes as they later became known to fans of the game were still not available for these early editions, but the army lists and background information for Warhammer 40, printed in White Dwarf became far more deeply detailed. Later in the edition's publication run, beginning in , Games Workshop introduced the first codices for each of the playable faction's armies, though they were far smaller and contained a great deal less fictional background information what fans refer to as "fluff" than the codices of later editions.

The 2nd Edition was substantially more colourful and the new codices reflected this fact. More detailed information, such as background and organisation, was included, adding more depth and details to the Warhammer 40, universe.

The 3rd Edition of Warhammer 40, was released in and like the 2nd Edition, concentrated on streamlining the rules for larger battles. The rulebook was available alone, or as a boxed set with miniatures of Space Marines and the newly-introduced Dark Eldar. The 3rd Edition soon introduced codices for each of the major factions in the game, releasing revised editions of each of these codices between and The final Xenos book to release this year is the Genestealer Cults codex.

Similar to the release of the Grey Knights and Thousand Sons codexes earlier this year, the Genestealer Cults codex and Adeptus Custodes codex will both release alongside the upcoming Shadow Throne battlebox , featuring the two armies in a battle beneath Terra. Exciting times. A standalone version of the 9th edition Orks codex is now out in the wild. That means you can now grab the book even if you missed out on the Beast Snagga box earlier in the year.

The codex includes updated rules for all Ork factions, not just the squig-obsessed Beast Snaggas, and makes some hefty changes to the Waaaagh. Alien and proud: Our Warhammer 40k Xenos factions guide.

Both the 9th edition Grey Knights and Thousand Sons codexes will release alongside their upcoming double-army battlebox, Hexfire: Supernatural Warfare in the 41st Millennium. Announced in a Warhammer Community post on July 26, the box of 29 minis contains a small force for each faction, and two brand new character miniatures to lead them: Castellan Crowe for the daemon-hunting Grey Knights, and the new Infernal Master character model for the Egyptian-loving warp wizards.

As for content, we can expect the usual fancy new rules, updated points values, and powerful abilities, alongside some more tantalising features. The Adepta Sororitas 9th edition codex went up for pre-order on June 5, before releasing a week later on June You can grab yourself a copy from the GW webstore now. The codex includes full rules for all the new Sisters of Battle units, as well as updates for its existing range of models and wargear.

The whole book is designed to provide much wider strategic variety among Adepta Sororitas armies, which has been found wanting in recent years. Box set: Our guide to Warhammer 40k Combat Patrol boxes. Chief among their new units is High Abbess Morvenn Vahl. After its reveal in a May 16 Warhammer Community blog post , the 9th edition AdMech codex went up for pre-order on May 22, and was released on Saturday, May You can order it from the GW webstore now.

You can also nab custom AdMech-themed player aid datacards and dice alongside the codex.