So are tournaments going to allow these since they have their own codex? I'd really like to play some with one.

Totally depends on the tournament.

Yeah I was chatting with a GW rep at the local GW store and he was saying "they would have to", yet I spoke with another guywho runs a FLGS and he said he wasnt going to allow them.

Soooo yeah. Totally depends on the tournament..

Kal-El wrote:
So are tournaments going to allow these since they have their own codex? I'd really like to play some with one.

Every Tournament Organizer is juggling what to allow right now. Whether it's Escalation, Stronghold Assault, Forge World rules, Formations, Data Sheets, the umpteen data slates that came out during Christmas, Lords of War, and painted/unpainted.

Talk to the guys that run your local tournaments, man.

My local area is pretty expansive, about a 4-8 hour bubble around where I live. I feel like that if more and more tournaments allow them in, then more will catch on and start allowing them. Fortifications was kinda like this iirc...so think it's possible the knights will too? Right now I'm just looking for an overall outlook from people...not my bubble.

1 store is allowing the. In one tournament, but not another currently because it was a previous rule no supers.

 Rezyn wrote:
Yeah I was chatting with a GW rep at the local GW store and he was saying "they would have to", yet I spoke with another guywho runs a FLGS and he said he wasnt going to allow them.

This seems to be the new GW mantra- just put all of the expansions into the main rules, then they have no choice! You have to buy our big kits! *Cackle*

It's like someone at GW thought they came up with the secret reason why everyone doesn't gravitate towards Apocalypse-size games. It's not a cost or preference issue, we just haven't been told what to do yet.

As much as I hate D weapons in regular 40k the knight titan is not overpowered with it. I think the unit is right for what it is and honestly will shake the game up quite a bit.

 Rezyn wrote:
Yeah I was chatting with a GW rep at the local GW store and he was saying "they would have to", yet I spoke with another guywho runs a FLGS and he said he wasnt going to allow them.

Soooo yeah. Totally depends on the tournament..

If GW sponsored a tournament on the terms that it had to include Knight Titans, then it would include Knight Titans. Otherwise it would be up to the organiser.

I'm heading to a tournament in Virginia at the end of the month that's allowing them. Lots of other events are allowing them in as well since they're a Codex. Eh, I suppose I don't have as much of a problem with them as I used to, but they're still pretty good.

 Matt1785 wrote:
I'm heading to a tournament in Virginia at the end of the month that's allowing them. Lots of other events are allowing them in as well since they're a Codex. Eh, I suppose I don't have as much of a problem with them as I used to, but they're still pretty good.

This is good news IMO.

I'm going to play in a doubles tournament this weekend (1000pts per player, 2 players per team) and the knights are allowed because the organizers feel that they are on par with riptides in terms of power and difficulty to kill.

Guarder22 wrote:
I'm going to play in a doubles tournament this weekend (1000pts per player, 2 players per team) and the knights are allowed because the organizers feel that they are on par with riptides in terms of power and difficulty to kill.

Right on! I hope they are right.

Guarder22 wrote:
I'm going to play in a doubles tournament this weekend (1000pts per player, 2 players per team) and the knights are allowed because the organizers feel that they are on par with riptides in terms of power and difficulty to kill.

Which I feel is a better argument against Riptides than for Knights.

At least Riptides can be dealt with in close combat...

So can knights

You just have to expect a huge smoking crater afterwards

I personally would be very interested to see how a full knight army did at a tournament, but I personally think that they won't be accepted in that form for awhile.

I suspect people will be more likely to ally in psychic support and some anti-air than run full Knights.

 Ascalam wrote:
So can knights

Provided you can (A) hurt it, (B) strike before it or survive 3 Strength D attacks, (C) deal with 6 hull points at AV 13, and (D) catch it.

Riptides are slower, have even worse CC ability than a Haruspex, and are susceptible to tarpits, poison and instant death.

I play DE

Lances and Haywire hurt it,

3 S D attacks on a single unit are of limited use when multiple units are attacking it, and they swing simultaneously..,

Haywire and Lances work well on AV 13

DE can catch it


Haven't tried it with Orks yet. Will let you know.

Downed one with Nurgle daemons, but haven't played against them enough to say for certain.

I was talking about close combat...

Ok, so take out the word Lances

Everything else holds true in my statement.

Can Dark Eldar even hurt AV 13 in combat?

I can't think of a reason not to allow a new codex into a 40k tourney. Frankly I'd rather see 6th ed Eldar kept out if we're just picking things we think are OP and don't want to deal with.

Apparently someone has been lucky enough to have never experienced Haywire grenades

In short, yes they can. Wyches with haywire grenades are one of the best tank-hunting units in the codex.

Frankly though, DE don't need to CC a knight. They can just flank and gank it at range

I've fought four battles with my DE vs Knights so far, and on every occasion the knight or knights (there was one battle with two) have died without doing that impressive an amount if damage.

One even went down hard to a Talos, after being tarpitted by several units of Wyches, Granted the ensing exposion took out the wyches and the Talos, but it won me the game

 Lobukia wrote:
I can't think of a reason not to allow a new codex into a 40k tourney. Frankly I'd rather see 6th ed Eldar kept out if we're just picking things we think are OP and don't want to deal with.

I said just as much about an upcoming team tournament behind held locally. Apparently the tourney organizer is partial to his Eldar. They don't have to include them, but I don't have to give them my money to attend either. Probably just rent a table at the LGS to play on while they play "safe" 40k.

 Ascalam wrote:
Apparently someone has been lucky enough to have never experienced Haywire grenades

Someone uses a Codex that doesn't contain vehicles.

Of all the things I worry about when it comes to Dark Eldar, their abilities in close combat don't rank very high up on the list.

Fair enough then

Didn't notice your Nid rank

I prefer to not get my DE close enough to get beaten up, given the chance...

They are pretty mean against vehicles though

I'd like to stomp around in 3 of them.

Nothing forces a tourhament to use any codex, if they dont want to include it.

It is however a MUCH tougher proposition to ban a *codex* than it is to ban "super heavy vehicles" or the like - as once you start banning a codex as you dont like it, then youre going to have people saying "why not Tau? why not Eldar?" - it starts to seem a much more arbitrary distinction.

They are a 40k codex, and thus any decent tournament going forward should use them. If they dont (and I dont have a knight army) then I will be less inclided to intend, as it suggests they may have other changes to the game I also dont like.

If someone says ok to D weapons , then the tournament is already something that people wouldn't like.

D weapon close attack aint as scary as ranged attack D weapons, ive played against a full knigth titan army before and i will still use the same tactic, deffrollah battlewagons with boarding planks(powerklaw) good thing about em being walkers they cant do death and glory and remember! The blast scatters!

Having fought a 1500-2000 list of Imperial Knights, it actually feels far easier then facing a pure Eldar or Tau myself, the lack of high powered shots that care not for cover, or the ones that ignore cover fully means I don't have to yank as many off the board.

 phatonic wrote:
D weapon close attack aint as scary as ranged attack D weapons, ive played against a full knigth titan army before and i will still use the same tactic, deffrollah battlewagons with boarding planks(powerklaw) good thing about em being walkers they cant do death and glory and remember! The blast scatters!

d weapons a d weapon. If I say no to one then I say no to all.

My local is pretty much done with the current stuff. Were running what we call classic 40k. Meaning no allies, no data slates, no lords of war and no super-heavies/ d weapons. Your codex against mine and thats it. We doo leave the fortifications for sume games but mostly just use them as terrain.

I really hate the "Well its a Codex, so we should allow it!" Line of thought. We as a community have fallen pretty far when we accept a book with one unit in it on equal terms to real armies. Because that is what this thing is a book with one unit. It could easily have been a data slate, or White Dwarf update, or in escalation. But GW puts the word codex on it and we are all accepting that it is the same as other codices (its not, nor is the Inquisition codex)

Breng77 wrote:
I really hate the "Well its a Codex, so we should allow it!" Line of thought. We as a community have fallen pretty far when we accept a book with one unit in it on equal terms to real armies. Because that is what this thing is a book with one unit. It could easily have been a data slate, or White Dwarf update, or in escalation. But GW puts the word codex on it and we are all accepting that it is the same as other codices (its not, nor is the Inquisition codex)

Its their term, so they can define it how they like

It is as much a real codex as Tau, Eldar, Chaos Marines etc. Your opinion on this statement of fact is not relevant here

Nothing states that tournaments can disallow them. However ther fact that they are considerably weaker as an army than Tau / Tau. Taudar or even those two 'dexes plain really means that taking the arbitrary (I dont like D is arbitary, as is "one unit is not a codex") decision to ban them really highlights that you should ban those two other codexes as well. Especially as Knights are a reasonable counter to both, when played as a full army, and CONSIDERABLY easier to deal with than those two dexes for other armies.

Codex so must be allowed is arbitrary as well. Their decision to call it a codex is arbitrary. As for easy of dealing with, that depends on what you play I would argue that for some armies Tau and Eldar are easier to deal with than 5 Knights would be. For my army Tau/Eldar/Taudar etc.are considerably easier to deal with than 5 Knights would be.

I'm also not arguing that they should definitely not be included. Just that "They're a codex so lets include them" is a bad argument.

As for tournaments banning them...nothing states anything about tournaments in general a tournament could ban everything except the ork codex if it wanted to do so.

Furthermore, Codex Tau, and Codex Eldar are full armies, and have been part of the game for years. So saying banning this new book containing one unit would be on par with banning Existing books is a totaly falsehood. I.e. if the book was Data Slate Imperial Knights and contained the same info would it be a fair comparison to Tau/Eldar? To me the Knight is far more akin to Say Belakor or FW units, than to a true codex.

I just fear for the game when we all blindly go "Well its a codex, same as all the rest." I'm waiting for the day of Codex:Attack bikes. 2 units Heavy Bolter Attack Bikes and Multi-melta attack bikes.

I've played about 10 games in total with knights at 1500 points and the army isnt as super powerful as people seem to think. Its like every other new dex that comes out, scary on paper till you play some games with it. I've only stomped 1 person with the list and that was due to his poor list construction.

As a stand alone army I dont think they are that tough, I think they shine when adding in a knight as an ally

I suspect knights will be like FW rules, most events wont allow them but over time more and more will

1500 points limits them a lot, higher points make a difference. And they are not unbeatable, but they are a terrible match-up for a number of armies.

Breng77 wrote:
1500 points limits them a lot, higher points make a difference. And they are not unbeatable, but they are a terrible match-up for a number of armies.

..Just like Triptides and Wave Serpents, whats the issue again?

Even at higher point games (2k) I still havent dominated with them and most games have been a good enjoyable challenge. I've found that any balanced all comers army list has a decent amount of anti tank and can generally hold there own against them. They are a solid list and in the right hands can be a very tough army but I've never really felt like my opponent doesnt stand a chance.

Now in few games at 2k that I've used knights as allies, I feel like thats when they play there best. I've found that 1-2 knights joining an army is much more destructive then 4-6 knights on there own but YMMV

theres also the debate on how knights are treated in combat, my local group treats walkers in combat as infantry so they can be bogged down by a large group in combat. I suspect people that treat the knights as vehicles in combat will have far different results

I don't fear the game because of a one-unit Codex. I do fear for the game when the vocal minority cries, "the sky is falling!", and anyone actually pays them attention. It's a Codex, with an army, special rules, FoC, allies matrix, available in hardcopy, just like most (but not all) codexes currently in the game (poor Sisters and their Digi-Dex). Saying, "I don 't like the new unit/army/codex, its different, challenges my comfort zone, and therefore most be banned because I refuse to step outside of my comfort zone" really does not mean GW or Tournament Organizes should ban one specific new Codex.

Yes, we as players are free to make our own decisions on how we as a collective hobby wish to play this game. The first decision we all made was to play by GW rules, with GW models, in a social evironment. Knights are GW models using GW rules.

Personally, I like the new Imperial Knights, and have been wanting to play them in 40k since 1990, when I first started playing them in Epic. 24 years later, GW has produced not only a model, not just a sample set of rules, but a legal Codex for 40k scale Imperial Knights complete with their own background, history, and hooks for getting them on the table.

If you don't like them, then don't play them. Just keep in mind that the rest of us don't have to play your army either. And when you are standing across the the table from a army of Knights at a tournament, you can either man-up or pack-up, because Knights are here to stay. I'd recommend putting some energy into understanding the new kid on the block rather than wasting energy b!tching about how much it puts you out of your comfort zone.

SJ

Well mostly I think it narrows some armies to Mono-builds because they are a hard counter and I think that is bad for the game. If they become a mainstay I'll play and see how it goes. But if as I fear they are a super hard counter to my codex. That will probably be my last Straw as a GW player. Hard counter armies are bad for the game. Now other people are free to like them. But as a TO I lean on the NO superheavy side of things. It has little to do with comfort zone and more to do with enjoyment on my part. I like how my army functions, and it does ok, but knights flat out hard counter it (especially when used as allies.) because my only answers to anti tank are close combat and not cheap at that.

I just don't like the idea of an entire army of AV13 vehicles, with very small side sections from what I can see. It basically just reduces all standard weaponry to uselessness.

I know that a good list will have anti-tank. I get that. But if I bring an infantry heavy list, now I have them reduced to solely objective camping since they don't have the firepower to even glance a Knight. It also really narrows down what my opponent is going to shoot at, since my troops can wait to be finished off after he fires into everything that can glance aV13.

From a competitive tournament stand point, I think depending on the army list, an infantry heavy list would have problems in general, not just against knights

as for the army building entirely av13, they arent really the only army that can do that. Several other armies have the ability to spam a large amount of av 13 and av 14 hulls

Only time will tell how well knights do on the competitive scene, I dont think they will do as well as a lot of people are thinking, I've found in my games with them they can cause some problems in casual settings, when I bring them to play in casual games I'll generally let my oppenet know ahead of time so he isnt caught off guard, and if its just a general pick up game i'll have a spare army with me just in case someone doesnt want to play against them. I love playing games with an army of big stompy robots but in casual games i'm more interested in both players having fun


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'll also be interested to see what reasons are given for the tournaments that dont allow them, right now most TOs ive seen generally dont allow the brand new codexs to be used anyways but once the "grace" period is over they will have to make the decision

They are the only army that can field an entire army of AV 13 Walkers. Which is a big deal in close combat (a Predator gets murdered by lots of things in CC, a walker does not). They are also the only army that is entirely made of Superheavies. Essentially killing them in CC is a huge risk because of the D, and Stomp and their explosion.

But more I see them being a gun line armies counter assault element against assault armies.

It's not that I'm against spamming high armor, it's the idea that there is high armor and nothing else. FW for example are rendered completely useless. Even with EMP grenades they're hitting against a walker's weapon skill instead of against a standard vehicle. A 5 point cultist up to a 30 point thousand son marine have the exact same role against an all vehicle list. Try and hide out of LOS on an objective.

But I want to stress, I am not against the knights. I think they look fine and there plenty of ways to deal with them. I don't like it from a rules perspective to ever render the standard troop useless against an entire army.

 wowsmash wrote:

 phatonic wrote:
D weapon close attack aint as scary as ranged attack D weapons, ive played against a full knigth titan army before and i will still use the same tactic, deffrollah battlewagons with boarding planks(powerklaw) good thing about em being walkers they cant do death and glory and remember! The blast scatters!

d weapons a d weapon. If I say no to one then I say no to all.

My local is pretty much done with the current stuff. Were running what we call classic 40k. Meaning no allies, no data slates, no lords of war and no super-heavies/ d weapons. Your codex against mine and thats it. We doo leave the fortifications for sume games but mostly just use them as terrain.

For the most part I like that, but the spanner in the works is IK ARE a codex. A codex with bugger all rules, but one which can be used to create an (extremely limited) army.

It doesn't need Escalation or Apoc, it's a self contained codex.

Breng77 wrote:
Codex so must be allowed is arbitrary as well. Their decision to call it a codex is arbitrary. As for easy of dealing with, that depends on what you play I would argue that for some armies Tau and Eldar are easier to deal with than 5 Knights would be. For my army Tau/Eldar/Taudar etc.are considerably easier to deal with than 5 Knights would be.

No, it isn't arbitrary - the rule has a good foundation: play the armies GW considers to be a full army. GW definitely considers them a full army

You also have no idea why they decided to call it a codex. I know why, from a good friend, but even without that the reason is not arbitrary, it has a solid foundation and one that is fairly obvious.

It's to stop people claiming there is a "core" 40k game. There isn't. There is 40k, and 40k. Of course as they REPEATEDLY tell you, you can do with this game as you wish, but don't pretend you are somehow playing "pure" 40k.

This reminds me a lot of the old prejudice against SCs. Irrational.

Breng - I'm also not arguing that they should definitely not be included. Just that "They're a codex so lets include them" is a bad argument.
No, it is a consistent one. Name a tournament that has outright banned a codex, even in 7th ed daemon days, which was FAR more imbalanced than anything 40k has seen. Off hand I cannot think of one.

Breng - As for tournaments banning them...nothing states anything about tournaments in general a tournament could ban everything except the ork codex if it wanted to do so.

Yes, and? I already stated this. They can ban pink armies if they want, as well. I was saying that saying "we like all codexes, except this codex because ...one unit" is a bad reason to ban a codex, and is bad for the game, and is a suggestion that an odd fear of SH is likely to cause other issues in the game.

Breng - Furthermore, Codex Tau, and Codex Eldar are full armies, and have been part of the game for years.
So when tau appeared in third you supported them not being included? Or would that be your inconsistency showing through? When is an army allowed to be played - 1 year after release? Where is your arbitrary line in the sand to be drawn?

Breng- So saying banning this new book containing one unit would be on par with banning Existing books is a totaly falsehood. I.e. if the book was Data Slate Imperial Knights and contained the same info would it be a fair comparison to Tau/Eldar? To me the Knight is far more akin to Say Belakor or FW units, than to a true codex.

Your opinion is irrelevant. It is, factually, a codex. I also proved it isn't a falsehood, so retract that statement, as you are wrong.

Breng - I just fear for the game when we all blindly go "Well its a codex, same as all the rest." I'm waiting for the day of Codex:Attack bikes. 2 units Heavy Bolter Attack Bikes and Multi-melta attack bikes.

Then You fear some very odd things,

Also - outright ban superheavies? Ooh, that malcador or macharius Vulcan are really scary...not. Another arbitrary line in the sand.

Yeah I fear Gw $50 money grab books that have no reason to be a codex other than so,e attempt at saying you just include this thing we put the word codex on it...so even though it is a substandard product in the face of every other army (as it is a unit not an army), and they could have put more effort into it. If they called it a codex to stop people from saying there is a core 40k that is still an arbitrary reason. I.e. They did it because they could not because it is on even footing as far as breadth and depth with any previous codex (except inquisition which is also a sorry excuse for a codex) and it does not follow the rules as most other codices. I mean even if they wanted to stick to a one model codex...why not actually you know provide different stats and upgrades for hq knights? Different knights with different stats in different FOC slots? More weapon options etc. It is a lazyily produced codex. As such I as a to would have no issue banning it and leaving every other book just out of principle of not appreciating obvious money grabs.

I also never claim "pure 40k" I just think the game works better played in certain ways, no reason you need to agree, but lately I feel Gw has put out a lot of lazy money grab product and see no reason to support one just because it is labeled codex.

The easy way out is to allow all codexes and only core rules. That way, units with a D weapon can't be used.

Why is that? the d rules are in the knights codex.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The easy way out is to allow all codexes and only core rules. That way, units with a D weapon can't be used.

By that logic nobody can actually use any codex special rule except USR's, and weapons in the main rulebook.


Also Core 40k is indeed, all the stuff out there for codex and supplements and such.

You might want to read over pages 108 & 109 again if you think anything apart from codices are "core 40k".

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 wowsmash wrote:

 phatonic wrote:
D weapon close attack aint as scary as ranged attack D weapons, ive played against a full knigth titan army before and i will still use the same tactic, deffrollah battlewagons with boarding planks(powerklaw) good thing about em being walkers they cant do death and glory and remember! The blast scatters!

d weapons a d weapon. If I say no to one then I say no to all.

My local is pretty much done with the current stuff. Were running what we call classic 40k. Meaning no allies, no data slates, no lords of war and no super-heavies/ d weapons. Your codex against mine and thats it. We doo leave the fortifications for sume games but mostly just use them as terrain.

For the most part I like that, but the spanner in the works is IK ARE a codex. A codex with bugger all rules, but one which can be used to create an (extremely limited) army.

It doesn't need Escalation or Apoc, it's a self contained codex.

true but thats covered under our no super heavy/ d weapons rule. Thus the codex isn't usable in our local meta. We post it so everyone knows the rules.

 Accolade wrote:

 Rezyn wrote:
Yeah I was chatting with a GW rep at the local GW store and he was saying "they would have to", yet I spoke with another guywho runs a FLGS and he said he wasnt going to allow them.

This seems to be the new GW mantra- just put all of the expansions into the main rules, then they have no choice! You have to buy our big kits! *Cackle*

It's like someone at GW thought they came up with the secret reason why everyone doesn't gravitate towards Apocalypse-size games. It's not a cost or preference issue, we just haven't been told what to do yet.

I hope they do roll all those rules into the one book. It would be cost effective for us and finally put to rest that we can use all the units available to us all the time.

Let the tears commence.

 Rezyn wrote:
Yeah I was chatting with a GW rep at the local GW store and he was saying "they would have to", .....

There is no 'have to' when it comes to tournaments. Not since GW stopped sponsoring them, anyway.

A TO is fully within his rights to disallow anything and everything he chooses.

I find it strange that people say Knights shouldn't exist as a codex, that the rules should have been sold in white dwarf.

If you don't want to spend money on the codex for the rules, that's fine as they were in white dwarf! Despite the availability of the white dwarf rules plenty of people at my local store have purchased the codex. I don't think you can argue against paying customers.

A lot of people on this forum seem to forget there is more to a codex than just rules and this content is obviously a selling point for many people.

My opinions on why the book was released as a codex? Firstly, GW had a huge amount of material they put together for this release, more than they would include in a dataslate (indeed more than they would include in a codex seeing as they've released a companion book and novel). Secondly, I feel GW perceives a portion of the players putting 'codex'on a pedestal. GW wanted to let us know this army is a 'proper' 40k army for day to day use, not some dataslate or expansion to be easily dismissed by 'core' gamers.

Sadly I haven't got a game in against any knights (neither primary nor ally) so I can't comment on their impact on the wider game.

If a knight player in the Nottingham/East Midlands is willing to organise a game or two with me some time I'd really appreciate it. After all the slagging off they get on the net I'd like to see if I can reduce these upstarts into a heap of molten slag!

Breng77 wrote:
Why is that? the d rules are in the knights codex.

I didn't know that.

Just ban that codex then and have done with it, if you don't want Knights in your tournament.

Its wierd that people are happy for the really cheesy broken units like Waves Serpents, Seer Counil, Riptides etc carry on but not Knights - or is that because people who win tournaments use the broken units...............

 Mr Morden wrote:
Its wierd that people are happy for the really cheesy broken units like Waves Serpents, Seer Counil, Riptides etc carry on but not Knights - or is that because people who win tournaments use the broken units...............

Actually I think you'll find the people who don't want to see Knights in tournaments are also the people who aren't happy with Serpent spam are also the people who aren't happy about both internal and cross codex imbalance.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Its wierd that people are happy for the really cheesy broken units like Waves Serpents, Seer Counil, Riptides etc carry on but not Knights - or is that because people who win tournaments use the broken units...............

Actually I think you'll find the people who don't want to see Knights in tournaments are also the people who aren't happy with Serpent spam are also the people who aren't happy about both internal and cross codex imbalance.

100% spot on for me. Rather than put out a knights codex that adds more broken units to an already broken game I'd prefer to see them actually fix the broken things in the game.

If you don't want to spend money on the codex for the rules, that's fine as they were in white dwarf! Despite the availability of the white dwarf rules plenty of people at my local store have purchased the codex. I don't think you can argue against paying customers.

The entirety of the rules is not in a white dwarf.

A lot of people on this forum seem to forget there is more to a codex than just rules and this content is obviously a selling point for many people.

Codices exist primarily as a source for rules they have put out plenty of other fluff books to cover what they put in codex knights as far as fluff goes. Furthermore like I said to me (and this is my opinion) 1 unit does not an army make. They could have made a codex: knights, and actually put effort into the rules, and balanced the rules appropriately but they did not. They released a book filled with rules with the express purpose of pushing an extremely strong model, and multiples of that model (if it was a unit edition to an army people might buy one, now people will buy 3+ to run it as an army, furthermore because it was not added to specific armies more people will buy it) They are a company and allowed to make money, I just wish they put a little more thought into how they went about it.

Meh, when I don't play heavily house-ruled or home-brewed games (mostly on vassal) I've largely just resigned to GW going on a pantsless rampage throughout the wargaming community and decided to adapt.

Breng77 wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Its wierd that people are happy for the really cheesy broken units like Waves Serpents, Seer Counil, Riptides etc carry on but not Knights - or is that because people who win tournaments use the broken units...............

Actually I think you'll find the people who don't want to see Knights in tournaments are also the people who aren't happy with Serpent spam are also the people who aren't happy about both internal and cross codex imbalance.

100% spot on for me. Rather than put out a knights codex that adds more broken units to an already broken game I'd prefer to see them actually fix the broken things in the game.

If you don't want to spend money on the codex for the rules, that's fine as they were in white dwarf! Despite the availability of the white dwarf rules plenty of people at my local store have purchased the codex. I don't think you can argue against paying customers.

The entirety of the rules is not in a white dwarf.

A lot of people on this forum seem to forget there is more to a codex than just rules and this content is obviously a selling point for many people.

Codices exist primarily as a source for rules they have put out plenty of other fluff books to cover what they put in codex knights as far as fluff goes. Furthermore like I said to me (and this is my opinion) 1 unit does not an army make. They could have made a codex: knights, and actually put effort into the rules, and balanced the rules appropriately but they did not. They released a book filled with rules with the express purpose of pushing an extremely strong model, and multiples of that model (if it was a unit edition to an army people might buy one, now people will buy 3+ to run it as an army, furthermore because it was not added to specific armies more people will buy it) They are a company and allowed to make money, I just wish they put a little more thought into how they went about it.

All that is true.

Customers have the right to refuse to buy and play with toys they don't like.

As for people who don't like Wave Serpents and so on, there used to be a lot of tournaments that had "Composition" rules intended to help balance out the more abusive units. They were never perfect but they were a step in the right direction for trying to make the game a bit more even.

Ironically it was the 'Ard Boys tournament, created by GW, that was one of the key movers in doing down Comp. (As well as promoting grey armies.)

 Kilkrazy wrote:

Breng77 wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
Its wierd that people are happy for the really cheesy broken units like Waves Serpents, Seer Counil, Riptides etc carry on but not Knights - or is that because people who win tournaments use the broken units...............

Actually I think you'll find the people who don't want to see Knights in tournaments are also the people who aren't happy with Serpent spam are also the people who aren't happy about both internal and cross codex imbalance.

100% spot on for me. Rather than put out a knights codex that adds more broken units to an already broken game I'd prefer to see them actually fix the broken things in the game.

If you don't want to spend money on the codex for the rules, that's fine as they were in white dwarf! Despite the availability of the white dwarf rules plenty of people at my local store have purchased the codex. I don't think you can argue against paying customers.

The entirety of the rules is not in a white dwarf.

A lot of people on this forum seem to forget there is more to a codex than just rules and this content is obviously a selling point for many people.

Codices exist primarily as a source for rules they have put out plenty of other fluff books to cover what they put in codex knights as far as fluff goes. Furthermore like I said to me (and this is my opinion) 1 unit does not an army make. They could have made a codex: knights, and actually put effort into the rules, and balanced the rules appropriately but they did not. They released a book filled with rules with the express purpose of pushing an extremely strong model, and multiples of that model (if it was a unit edition to an army people might buy one, now people will buy 3+ to run it as an army, furthermore because it was not added to specific armies more people will buy it) They are a company and allowed to make money, I just wish they put a little more thought into how they went about it.

All that is true.

Customers have the right to refuse to buy and play with toys they don't like.

As for people who don't like Wave Serpents and so on, there used to be a lot of tournaments that had "Composition" rules intended to help balance out the more abusive units. They were never perfect but they were a step in the right direction for trying to make the game a bit more even.

Ironically it was the 'Ard Boys tournament, created by GW, that was one of the key movers in doing down Comp. (As well as promoting grey armies.)

The problem with the Comp Tournaments is that they never actually worked nor actually seemed to come close to stepping in the right direction.

First off most of them would dance around the issue of whats strong, and thus they would create blanket bans or other comp things, like no amount of X or Y, despite it hurting several other armies.

Second, as part of the first they would add their own rulings to things that weren't bad to begin with, such as people penalizing Sisters of Battle for taking more then one exorcist (Yes there's a comp like this), that makes it seem worse.

Third: The cherrypicking is so bad at times that some comps seem like they were specifically made because they got beat by X and thus that's penalized worse then complete meta changers.

Fourth: As part of third some are just blanket bans for things the owners don't like, Imperial Knights is no worse then Triptides or Serpent spam and yet when you hear "IK will always win against X!" without actual testing, despite the fact that once again Triptides and Serpent spam shut down some armies entirely worse then that and it's like...

Well I would argue that Imperial Knights are a harder counter to many things than Riptides or serpents. But I also think that there are current things that should get erratas for balance as well (Riptides are actually not among them, but some shenanigans that you can pull with them are, riptides in the absence of Marker lights/Buff commander are really not that powerful).

I wouldn't, considering that Triptides and Serpents defined the current meta harder then anything else, the IK are harder as a result because of those two due to the fact you've got to design around them, making it harder to gain a proper TAC list. Generally it's why melta far went out of use as you needed something with multiple shots (To deal with skimmer) and AP2 (to deal with triptides)

You really don't need AP2 to deal with Riptides (if they are not joined by other models). Further I would argue that deathstars define the current meta more than Serpents and Riptides.

Essentially I feel that more units have answers to serpents and riptides (I can assault a serpent and kill it comfortably, this is also frequently true with riptides.)

Essentially what I think people miss with knights is people look at 5 as their own army. I don't think that is the larger issue. The issue is Gunlines taking them to counter assault units, because most assault units (that are good otherwise) cannot deal with a Knight, and get beat down by it badly. What people need to look at are Tau Gunlines + Knights, Serpent Spam + Knights, IG artilery + knights. Knights are essentially the Deathknell of assault armies IMO because most things cannot successfully assault them

Most things cannot successfully assault Taudar et al now. Why would they bother taking a points inefficient knight when they can take better stuff from BB Allies?

I dont think people are "missing" anything with knights.

If you ban IK, then you should also ban Tau and Eldar. Both are as "broken" [actually much more so because of their ally capability] as IK. If youre going down the househammer route, go all the way

A return to comp? Only if people writing comp were any good at game design. Hint: theyre not, it just results in not actually impacting the lists you want to discourage, or creates a new imbalance. Fixing 40k is a hard problem, and weekend amateur games designers are not competent enough to do it, in my opinion

I assault tau dar successfully all the time with a variety of things...more or less all of which are hard countered by Knights.

As for game design I find it laughable that you think fixing 40k (reasonably well) is super hard, it is not that hard. Also asking for people doing it to be good at game design when we don't ask the same from the company making the game. (Hint: GW it worse at game design then many people in the hobby)

Also if I wanted to Ban comp (I really don't as I don't think it is super constructive, but changing rules is harder), I could easily ban one or 2 units from each codex, and effectively ban knights without banning Tau or Eldar.

Not saying it is a great list but here is all it would take to ban knights in a ban comp environment

Players may not take
Warlocks on jetbikes
Wave Serpents
Riptides
Broadsides
Knight Paladin
Knight Errant
Fateweaver
Screamers
.
.
.
etc

So I banned 2 units from each codex. It just so happens that that account for the entire knight codex.

I'm not saying the above it good, I would rather re-write rules to fix the game if I was going to go super far into comp, and it is not hard to do so and introduce a lot of balance into the game.

I think restricted/banlists are a much more effective system than comp.

Well they are better/more effective. Then blanket comp because they are targeted. But targeted rules changes that still allow people to bring their toys are the best of both worlds.

Personally I would like to see them banned as I don't think they belong in 40k (outside of Apocalypse). However it's a slippery slope as they are a full "codex" and banning them could open the floodgates to "no Riptides" or "No Eldar" and the like, which ironically is why I believe that GW had ulterior motives in releasing the Knights as a way to get more and more people to be okay with superheavies in normal, non-Apoc games and thus ease into allowing Escalation in normal games as well.

which is what I hope does not happen. D weapons don't lead to fun games.

Breng77 wrote:
Well they are better/more effective. Then blanket comp because they are targeted. But targeted rules changes that still allow people to bring their toys are the best of both worlds.

I completely disagree, the whole point is that you don't want them to bring their "toys" because of how overpowered they are and how it isn't any fun to play against them. A player who is destroyed by a Taudar list in a comped event isn't going to have any more fun than a player destroyed by Taudar in an event without comp just because said Taudar player is getting a low comp score. Comp is the worst of both worlds.

My point is that if you change the rules so they don't get destroyed by that player it is the best of both worlds. They can still take those toys but they are not quite so uber powerful.

For instance if you take change:

Tau

- markerlights to -1 Cover save per light, and don't work during overwatch.

-A Tau commander can only activate one Signature system per turn.

- ICs cannot Join Riptides (unless the riptide is also an IC)

And for Eldar

- Fortune = 4+ feel no pain
- Serpent Shield is 1 use only (you have a shield and if you fire it it is spent)


Essentially the issue with bans is where do you stop? And at some level you begin to tell players that they cannot play at your event.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Fourth: As part of third some are just blanket bans for things the owners don't like, Imperial Knights is no worse then Triptides or Serpent spam and yet when you hear "IK will always win against X!" without actual testing, despite the fact that once again Triptides and Serpent spam shut down some armies entirely worse then that and it's like...

IMO the thing about IK isn't just that they are powerful (against many armies, they aren't), it's that you can hardly call them an army and certainly not a balanced army. If you take an IK army, every model in the opponent's army that isn't S7 or higher is relegated to "stand there looking stupid" duty. It doesn't make for good games IMO which is why I'd be happy enough to see them banned from tournaments.

At the end of the day, IMO at least, GW have made a really crappy ruleset from the perspective of tournaments. It's horrible, unbalanced, army-level rock-paper-scissors (opposed to unit-level rock-paper-scissors), they've made it so the rock-paper-scissors thing is too broad to make good TAC lists (rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock-plastic-dog-cat-bee-wasp-dragonfly-fred flintstone), they've introduced supplements that are horribly unbalanced (you can't say Escalation is balanced with a straight face), the codices aren't even balanced internally let alone cross-codex, an allies system that really isn't balanced, I'm sure someone could think up lots more.

So, the choices are play terrible tournaments with the rules GW gives us, give up on 40k as a tournament game, or try and modify the rules to make them more appropriate for tournament play. Given there's not really any game to replace 40k and I think just using the rules as given isn't a great option, we are left with modifying the rules to make the game better.

Banning the IK codex is, IMO, not an "arbitrary" line. It's a codex that is not a full army (I'm sorry but 1 model repeated 6 times does not an army make), it's a codex that renders most the enemy models useless (which might be entertaining the first 1 or 2 times you face it, but after that is just going to make for crappy games), it's the only codex that has a super-heavy and D weapon in it (which while I don't think the Knights themselves are terribly unbalanced, I do think the super-heavy and D weapon rules suck) and again I'm sure there's lots of other non-arbitrary reasons.

Breng77 wrote:
which is what I hope does not happen. D weapons don't lead to fun games.

nor do mutiple Riptides and Wave Serpent spam - why are they not being banned?

D weapons are much worse generally speaking than either of the above. And if you read above I'm for modifying those units. I don't get the riptide hate though without buffing units they are not all that scarey.

Banning the IK codex is, IMO, not an "arbitrary" line. It's a codex that is not a full army (I'm sorry but 1 model repeated 6 times does not an army make), it's a codex that renders most the enemy models useless (which might be entertaining the first 1 or 2 times you face it, but after that is just going to make for crappy games), it's the only codex that has a super-heavy and D weapon in it (which while I don't think the Knights themselves are terribly unbalanced, I do think the super-heavy and D weapon rules suck) and again I'm sure there's lots of other non-arbitrary reason

How many actual different units are used with Cheese Serpent lists - its not very many? How much fun are they and Seer Council's to play against? Multiple riptides - joy.

@Breng 77 - Thats good - if all problem units are looked at - the issue here seems to be that mny people feel that Codex entries are sacred - except of course when they don't.

I just had an insight. Was the IK codex a burnt out gw designer satirising the tournament unit spam mentality?

GW des: hmm, no matter how much work we put into a codex the players only seem to take the best couple of options and fill any cracks in their list with allies. I may as well embrace this as I can't avoid it.

Theres nothing wrong with making an army up of just the models you like.

Unless its cheesy.

 Mr Morden wrote:

Banning the IK codex is, IMO, not an "arbitrary" line. It's a codex that is not a full army (I'm sorry but 1 model repeated 6 times does not an army make), it's a codex that renders most the enemy models useless (which might be entertaining the first 1 or 2 times you face it, but after that is just going to make for crappy games), it's the only codex that has a super-heavy and D weapon in it (which while I don't think the Knights themselves are terribly unbalanced, I do think the super-heavy and D weapon rules suck) and again I'm sure there's lots of other non-arbitrary reason

How many actual different units are used with Cheese Serpent lists - its not very many?

More than 1

Have any of you been reading the threads on how to kill Imperial Knights? Every army in the game has an answer to the "Knight Problem", some easier than others. Every Knight player that wants to succeed is poring over those threads to work out counters to the net's anti-Knight wisdom.

Do you know what the conclusion is? Knights are hard to win with, easy to counter for a smart opponent, and is a meta charger due to requiring a different counter than we are use to. Its almost like the sky isn't falling, Chicken Little.

Its a new unit, a new paradigm in the game, and GW put their "legal for 40k play" stamp on it with the release of the Codex: Imperial Knights. They are here to stay.

As to TOs, it will behoove them all to move to a mission format of tournament play, where the missions reward skill and force players to make hard choices rather than point-n-click their net-lists. And have more LoS blocking terrain. Way more.

SJ

I'm having issue finding these threads care to link them? All I see are tactics and I really don't see how a well constructed army with knights will be hard to win with. But maybe that is just me. I also disagree that "Every army has an anser to the "knight problem" " What is Daemons answer? Get into CC and hope it doesn't kill you?

Yes actually and Daemons can do that quite well.

With What? Really interested in what Daemons have that can reliably kill knights and not just die in the process.

I think a lot of minor tournies will try allowing it, and seeing what happens before passing judgement. Lots of tournies allowed Escalation and Stronghold... then stopped allowing it. and I mean a LOT of them tried this. it was a "thing".

I think Imperial Knights are a Codex so I unfortunately don't foresee a lot of tournies being able to really say no to it. I mean... It's a CODEX. While I personally do not understand why they crossed over that threshold, it's a done deal now. So....

Breng77 wrote:
With What? Really interested in what Daemons have that can reliably kill knights and not just die in the process.

Skarbrand, the Bloodthirster with the Eternal Blade. Lord of Change with Prescience. Large units of Plaguebearers. Any Daemon Prince if they've lost a few HPs already.

You might also be surprised that the catastrophic blast doesn't always hit the Knights killers with its D part.

But essentially you need to risk almost losing as many points to the knight as it costs, and if you fail to kill first round you likely die....if it stands in terrain you likely die.

Take skarbrand he is 6 attacks base with armor bane, so 9 attacks on the charge.

Is 8 hits, needing a 6 to glance on 2D6, so that averages about 1 glance and 5 Pens. So he does fine. But is generally terrible and how did he get into combat, in the first place? and if he charges through terrain he gets hit twice with a SD weapon and most likely is dead before he swings. He is also a subpar choice against every other army.

Bloodthirster needs to smash to do good damage, so 3 attack + charge + D3 is an average of 6 attacks = 4 hits = 2 pens, and maybe a glance...so unless you roll high on the damage dice you die. And again no grenades.

Lord of Change has pretty much the same issue, but is at least a decent HQ choice.

20 plauge bearers (which how do they get the charge?), you lose 2 on average before you swing. so 36 attacks on the charge 18 hits= 3 glances...then stomp likely kills 4 more...then you take instability.

DP are the same as above.

Sure if you can damage them before combat it helps...but daemons struggle with that quite a bit.

Throw in the possibility that the D blast could kill you and it is a lot of risk and that might kill one knight.

Essentially I see Daemons reduced to 1 build FMC...and you fly around avoiding the fight as much as you can.

I'm also not aware of any reliable way nids can take down a Knight in anything resembling a TAC army and even with a dedicated anti-Knight army the odds aren't great.

More or less their best chance is the same as Daemons Spam FMCs, and stay in the air, but at least Nids can vector strike at S8.

Id be interested to know how many people that feel so strongly about knights (either for or against) have actually played with the army or against the army?

I've not made my mind up on them yet. I am just generally opposed to the idea of a one unit codex, and Superheavies in non-apoc 40k.

No one seems wiling to buy them not knowing which way the wind will blow. i have been invited to guinea pig against the force but haven't managed to get it done yet. Going to very soon though so i can form a more educated opinion.

I've played the in 10+ games and havent found them to be the gaming breaking army of doom the internet wants you to believe

In my most recent game I was actually tabled on the first turn by a space marine player, granted he had some hot dice and my dice were ice cold, but was still funny as hell

 ironicsilence wrote:
I've played the in 10+ games and havent found them to be the gaming breaking army of doom the internet wants you to believe

In my most recent game I was actually tabled on the first turn by a space marine player, granted he had some hot dice and my dice were ice cold, but was still funny as hell

What army did you use to beat them? Personally I think Knights are going to be a cake walk for many armies and a thorn in the side of several others. I'm not sure if I can be bothered wasting an afternoon getting tabled to prove that 'nids don't have any great counters to them, lol.

What I don't like about Knights isn't the thought that they are some uber force. In fact I think most people aren't saying that, even the people that don't like them.

My problems with them are:

That some armies simply don't have the anti-tank to deal with them.

That we already have too much rock-paper-scissors in the game to the point where a TAC is just trying to do too many things already. This leads to further imbalance if your TAC list comes up against an army that doesn't ignores 1 or 2 of the rock-paper-scissors aspects.

That an army of Knights means anything below S7 is completely useless unless it's scoring and even if it is scoring it's still near-useless. This is just bad game design. My TAC guard list includes squads that don't have plasma/melta guns, I might as well not even put the damned things on the table, and the squads that do, I might as well just put down that one dude instead of his whole squad.

If we're going towards armies where you can have an entire army of Knights, basically all that's happened is we've now got a skirmish game, albeit with larger more expensive figures and bigger numbers for stats.

The thought that Knights would dominate any and all armies was never a consideration.

I've beat knight armies with my eldar, guard, necrons, and blood angels. There a challenging army to both play with and against but i've never once felt like i was going to lose before the game started, like wise I've never really felt like I was going to auto win playing as them. Yeah they have a lot of HPs and a void shield but at the end of the day it still only takes 1 lascannon to make one go boom and when your army only has 4 or so models losing 1 hurts

It takes that 1 lascannon several shots though, lol. If you're really lucky, 2 (less than 1% chance by my calcs).

But yeah, the armies you listed are all armies that I never expected to have great problems with a Knight army. They're all armies that have plenty of high strength and low AP or can rack up a ton of glancing hits. Especially if you know you're going to be facing a Knight army and take extra melta.

I also had a super close game using purifier greyknights but made some tactical mistakes. I still think bringing in an allied knight or two is far scarier then an entire army of them

 ironicsilence wrote:
I also had a super close game using purifier greyknights but made some tactical mistakes. I still think bringing in an allied knight or two is far scarier then an entire army of them

I agree, 2 or 3 Knights backed by a Space Marine or IG contingent is worse, don't most tournies ban allies as well? lol

 ironicsilence wrote:
I've played the in 10+ games and havent found them to be the gaming breaking army of doom the internet wants you to believe

In my most recent game I was actually tabled on the first turn by a space marine player, granted he had some hot dice and my dice were ice cold, but was still funny as hell

Well shoot, scramble the terrain up and go again!

 Jancoran wrote:

 ironicsilence wrote:
I've played the in 10+ games and havent found them to be the gaming breaking army of doom the internet wants you to believe

In my most recent game I was actually tabled on the first turn by a space marine player, granted he had some hot dice and my dice were ice cold, but was still funny as hell

Well shoot, scramble the terrain up and go again!

yeah we did, the 2nd game was a little more balanced as it seemed he blew all his good rules in the first game, but watching him go down the line with lascannons and roll pens and boooooms one after another was rather enjoyable

Indeed. Indeed.

Well I am going to give it a shot and see what's what against it. I am taking my "every day Joe" lunch pail list of Chaos Space Marine Night Lords and gonna' see if there's any point in the exercize at all.

I figure if I can at least compete with it using that list 2-3 times, then I'll be satisfied. But if I cannot and just feel utterly overwhelmed, then I may just have to oppose the snot out of its use in normal 40K.

I am honestly hoping to see proof that its a perfectly reasonable enemy that can beat me if I screw up and gets beat when it should. We all know when we're watching dice screw us vs. the unit itself. I'll be looking for some kind of hope for it. I really HATE the idea of telling someone "no I won't play your totally legal codex" even more than I hate the thought of someone saying "I refuse to play your Tau". I hate that. But I mean, whats the point of lining up with a codex you will never beat? I want to get beat by Generals, not codex's and thus far Ive seen no codex that doesn't allow me to do just that. But I am deeply mistrustful of this one. So far.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

What I don't like about Knights isn't the thought that they are some uber force. In fact I think most people aren't saying that, even the people that don't like them.

My problems with them are:

That some armies simply don't have the anti-tank to deal with them.

I have to ask, then... what do these armies do against armor-heavy IG or SM lists? Get run over by tanks? What works vs things on tracks is generally effective against IK. Lascannons, krak, melta... or whatever your chosen faction calls their equivalents.

That we already have too much rock-paper-scissors in the game to the point where a TAC is just trying to do too many things already. This leads to further imbalance if your TAC list comes up against an army that doesn't ignores 1 or 2 of the rock-paper-scissors aspects.

That's kind of the risk behind a TAC list... you're a jack of all trades, but a master of none, and should expect to have to work at being as good as a "specialist" build in any given area. A TAC list is going to have to work hard to be as good as a dedicated assault army at assault, and it's going to have to work to be as good as a dedicated anti-armor army. It's got a lot of eggs in a lot of baskets, but the downside to the TAC list is that, often, you've only got 1 or 2 units dedicated to a particular thing (in this case anti-armor), that when you run into a specialized list (like armor-heavy builds), you simply don't have enough of the *right* eggs to handle it.

That an army of Knights means anything below S7 is completely useless unless it's scoring and even if it is scoring it's still near-useless. This is just bad game design. My TAC guard list includes squads that don't have plasma/melta guns, I might as well not even put the damned things on the table, and the squads that do, I might as well just put down that one dude instead of his whole squad.

That's true of several armies, though, not just Knights. A lot of those MC/FMC-heavy builds, or any armor-heavy builds, can also be problematic if you have a bunch of low-S troops who are foot-slogging i and also lack anti-armor weapons.

If we're going towards armies where you can have an entire army of Knights, basically all that's happened is we've now got a skirmish game, albeit with larger more expensive figures and bigger numbers for stats.

The thought that Knights would dominate any and all armies was never a consideration.

Don't think we're heading for a game of entirely Knights vs Knights-equivalents... on the one hand, while an individual Knight might be hard to kill, there are some builds that pop them fairly easily... and losing 1 Knight out of your 4 is losing a quarter of your army to what might be a single unit in a single turn, where the person not fielding Knights might have *plenty* more anti-armor dakka where that came from. There's been a lot of comments in the past week or so about people liking the Knights, but learning that dedicated anti-armor units, take them out fairly easily. And, really, just about every army can have some dedicated anti-armor.

yes ranged D weapons are the worst addition to 40k. So stupid....

sand.zzz wrote:
yes ranged D weapons are the worst addition to 40k. So stupid....

cool story bro, knights dont have any ranged "D" weapons

Still a d weapon

 PrinceRaven wrote:
I suspect people will be more likely to ally in psychic support and some anti-air than run full Knights.

 Ascalam wrote:
So can knights

Provided you can (A) hurt it, (B) strike before it or survive 3 Strength D attacks, (C) deal with 6 hull points at AV 13, and (D) catch it.

Riptides are slower, have even worse CC ability than a Haruspex, and are susceptible to tarpits, poison and instant death.

Don't forget its gets stomp too, which is basically another crap ton of hits that can potentially remove models regardless of wounds or saves.

1 or 2 knights is fine. The army of them with the one with the 3++ is what I find concerning. I played against 1 today and it wasn't so bad. If there was 4 more I would have lost the game without a doubt. Them moving 12" and blowing up with a strength D massive template is a terrifying thing to deal with, 4 or 5 of them is blaaaah.

 ironicsilence wrote:

sand.zzz wrote:
yes ranged D weapons are the worst addition to 40k. So stupid....

cool story bro, knights dont have any ranged "D" weapons

I wasn't talking about knights. I was replying to an earlier post talking about ranged D weapons. Guess I shouldve quoted it. Sweet meme though, so funny/clever.

A lot of worry for a unit the can be taken out with 2 melta guns rolling 4+.

Can't think of any MC that would be taken out like that.

I can think of plenty.

What MC has only two wounds?
remember 1 melta shot can take off 4 hull points

None, but it statistacally takes 4 melta pens to wreck an Imperial Knight, 8 if you include the 4+ invulnerable save.

There's a lot of MCs that can be taken down by 8 melta wounds.

Steel Angel wrote:
remember 1 melta shot can take off 4 hull points

Can... but statistically, probably won't...

That may or may not be true ,but it CAN happen in two. It Can Not happen to a MC in two.

Two of any str 8 weapon can take down a IK with luck. that can not happen at all with a MC and when a player can have 2 or more MC for every IK. I rather face the Knights.


statistically your odds are better.

Well, if you have enough Meltaguns Knights are probably easier to deal with.

 Psienesis wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

What I don't like about Knights isn't the thought that they are some uber force. In fact I think most people aren't saying that, even the people that don't like them.

My problems with them are:

That some armies simply don't have the anti-tank to deal with them.

I have to ask, then... what do these armies do against armor-heavy IG or SM lists? Get run over by tanks? What works vs things on tracks is generally effective against IK. Lascannons, krak, melta... or whatever your chosen faction calls their equivalents.

Most tracked vehicles can be dealt with in close combat because you hit their rear armour and they don't stomp/D weapon attack you. The Land Raider is all round 14 and harder to take down, but since it doesn't fight back it's still killable with MC's or FMC's. Most other walkers can be brought down in CC as well.

That we already have too much rock-paper-scissors in the game to the point where a TAC is just trying to do too many things already. This leads to further imbalance if your TAC list comes up against an army that doesn't ignores 1 or 2 of the rock-paper-scissors aspects.

That's kind of the risk behind a TAC list... you're a jack of all trades, but a master of none, and should expect to have to work at being as good as a "specialist" build in any given area. A TAC list is going to have to work hard to be as good as a dedicated assault army at assault, and it's going to have to work to be as good as a dedicated anti-armor army. It's got a lot of eggs in a lot of baskets, but the downside to the TAC list is that, often, you've only got 1 or 2 units dedicated to a particular thing (in this case anti-armor), that when you run into a specialized list (like armor-heavy builds), you simply don't have enough of the *right* eggs to handle it.

What you describe is exactly the problem in tournament games. You don't get to list tailor, so you have to do a TAC list. There are already too many facets to the rock-paper-scissors in 40k.

That an army of Knights means anything below S7 is completely useless unless it's scoring and even if it is scoring it's still near-useless. This is just bad game design. My TAC guard list includes squads that don't have plasma/melta guns, I might as well not even put the damned things on the table, and the squads that do, I might as well just put down that one dude instead of his whole squad.

That's true of several armies, though, not just Knights. A lot of those MC/FMC-heavy builds, or any armor-heavy builds, can also be problematic if you have a bunch of low-S troops who are foot-slogging i and also lack anti-armor weapons.

As far as I'm aware, there's no armies that genuinely render low S troops useless. You always have to take troops, and those troops are the things that are scoring and what can be killed by other troops. The 'nids can take a Tervigon as troops, but for each one need 30 termagaunts. And T6 MC's can still be hurt by a S3 lasgun, a 3+ save T6 MC on average will take a wound every 18 lasgun hits.

Steel Angel wrote:
That may or may not be true ,but it CAN happen in two. It Can Not happen to a MC in two.

Two of any str 8 weapon can take down a IK with luck. that can not happen at all with a MC and when a player can have 2 or more MC for every IK. I rather face the Knights.


statistically your odds are better.

But mcs "can get taken out by 1 force weapon hit, one d cannon shot, one bale sword hit, jaws, 2 d weapon hits, one stomp.....

So the point is moot.

Most mcs can get taken down by 6 bolter wounds or less...knight cannot.....




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Odds are better for knights of you tailor to face them...worse if you don't.

In the Knights codex can you take Knights as troops?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
In the Knights codex can you take Knights as troops?

Troops that can't be hurt by less than S7, that was my point, not that they have no troops selection, but that they have nothing that can be hurt by less than S7. Unless I'm forgetting something, all other armies need something in the troops choice that is scoring and can be killed by things less than S7.

All the Knights are scoring if you take them as a Primary detachment.

They have a modified force organisation, with a minimum of 3 and a max of 6. They are not troops, they just score.

Breng - actually fixing the game, as in making it actually balanced, is a hard problem. I know it is a hard problem, because every hard comp I have seen simply results in another imbalanced army / unit / etc becoming top dog. Every. Single. Time. And this is from people who are very knowledgeable about the tournament scene and what is "broken". Dont say it isnt "hard" unless you have given it a go [disclaimer - I have friends within the GW studio team, and in other games companies. They would fall over themselves laughing when they hear how easy you think it is to balance a game with as many interactions as 40k, or even a 2D game such as Dreadball. You really, really, really do not come across as having much knowledge of this field - this is said with respect. On the surface it appears easy. It isnt.)

My point is that if you are banning IK for "balance", then ban taudar alliances, ban farsight enclave allying with tau, ban more than 2 waveserpents, etc. Or start modifying rules - and by necessity points costs - and come up with entirely new codexes. Good luck with that, from either a sanity perspective OR from getting people to attend.

Oh, and S6 weapons are not useless. They have a rear arc you know.

IK armies are laughably easy to beat for a ton of armies out there, playing to the mission helps - you realise they are nto denial units, yes? THink about that for a second, or two.

Steel Angel wrote:
That may or may not be true ,but it CAN happen in two. It Can Not happen to a MC in two.

Two of any str 8 weapon can take down a IK with luck. that can not happen at all with a MC and when a player can have 2 or more MC for every IK. I rather face the Knights.


statistically your odds are better.

Yes, 2 Krak missiles can kill a Knight.... the chance of it happening is 0.004%, 1 in every 26,244 attempts, lol.

nosferatu1001 wrote:
They have a modified force organisation, with a minimum of 3 and a max of 6. They are not troops, they just score.

Breng - actually fixing the game, as in making it actually balanced, is a hard problem. I know it is a hard problem, because every hard comp I have seen simply results in another imbalanced army / unit / etc becoming top dog. Every. Single. Time. And this is from people who are very knowledgeable about the tournament scene and what is "broken". Dont say it isnt "hard" unless you have given it a go [disclaimer - I have friends within the GW studio team, and in other games companies. They would fall over themselves laughing when they hear how easy you think it is to balance a game with as many interactions as 40k, or even a 2D game such as Dreadball. You really, really, really do not come across as having much knowledge of this field - this is said with respect. On the surface it appears easy. It isnt.)

My point is that if you are banning IK for "balance", then ban taudar alliances, ban farsight enclave allying with tau, ban more than 2 waveserpents, etc. Or start modifying rules - and by necessity points costs - and come up with entirely new codexes. Good luck with that, from either a sanity perspective OR from getting people to attend.

Oh, and S6 weapons are not useless. They have a rear arc you know.

IK armies are laughably easy to beat for a ton of armies out there, playing to the mission helps - you realise they are nto denial units, yes? THink about that for a second, or two.

IT is easy to do a much better job that GW does...I'm not even arguing for perfect balance....but fixing obviously broken interactions when they come up in beta testing is not difficult. I never said perfect balance was easy but given how other companies can manage some semblance of it it is far easier than the crap the GW team puts out which is laughably unbalanced. It is called erratas (those things GW rarely uses) and play testing. You need to be willing to acknowledge when you screw up and fix it (something GW rarely does). I'm not saying I could invent a game from scratch, and make everything completely balanced without extensive testing. I'm saying that putting out a game to be tested and using feed back to fix broken parts of it is in fact easy. You don't do it through hard comp either,. you errata rules to make things better. Take the Burning Chariot of Tzeentch, a unit which cannot move and fire...and as such is completely worthless....tell me that is not easy to fix. Give exalted flamer Relentless. Done. Unit now functions as intended. Grimoir giving 2++ re-roll cap the improvement at 3++ for the grim...fixed. Like I said not hard. Will there always be tweaks to be made. Yes, will there always be a bit of imbalance, sure. Is what GW has put out even a halfhearted attempt at it. NO.

Like I said I cannot do these things because as you point out ...buy in is a problem. But GW could easily do them...in 5 min by reading forums...looking at event results, and issuing errata...Point is they DO NOT CARE. SO is balance easy...no it is not. But it is way easier than GW makes it seem.

As for Denial units you do realize they can deny most objectives just by standing on them right, because unless you assault them (which is contentious with many units) you have a hard time coming within 3" of an objective due to their base size.

if you are banning IK for "balance", then ban taudar alliances, ban farsight enclave allying with tau, ban more than 2 waveserpents, etc

This, 1000 times this.............

Breng - nothing you have said suggests you do actually understand the complexity in even removing the outliers in this game, and the cumulative effects these changes have. Can I ask what your experience in games design is? 3 years? 10? More? Have you tried to design any complex interaction system before? Or are you peddling the same crap that everyone does when they rail at GW?

As I pointed out, and you ignored: "fixing" the game is hard. Very hard. Every single hard comp [which includes, by definition, points and rules changes] ever tried simply resulted in another "broken" list being dominant. Every one. - because, and I will repeat here as you still dont understand it, fixing this game is NOT an easy problem.

You assume they do not playtest. I, from a very close source and authoritative source (which you are not, by definition, as you are not studio), know they do. What they DONT do is the play testing you *want* them to do, as they have stated the aim of the game is *not* to fulfil your specific expectations.

Assault turn 5. If theyre standing there their pretty impressive (yes, sarcasm) single gun isnt doing much.

IK are handily beaten by a lot of codexes but make sme extreme builds - screamer / seer council, as a basic example - less viable. They cant get away from 5 knights.

Also note I am NOT defending GW in this - I do think they could do a lot more, adopting a key word system would help. However they repeatedly state that this is a pick up game for playing with friends. IT isnt a tournament game - it never has been.

It is a horrible pick-up game...it is only good if friends are either tailoring lists, or changing rules.

As for easy, easy is relative. Like I said it is easy to be less broken then things are right now....That is not perfect. Things will still be powerful....but less so.

And sure they playtest in house which is always a bad idea because they know how they intended things to work.

I did not say it was a small problem or that one guy could do it. I said it was a relatively easy problem for a company like GW to do. They just don't.

I personally have no game design experience which is why I said I could not by myself create a balanced game from the ground up without aid. That is not really relevant to the fact that GW with however much experience is terrible at balance and I could with a few tweaks improve overall game balance pretty easily. You may disagree, and new powerful armies may still arise which is why something like this needs to be a living process. Which again is not easy....but not impossibly difficult either.

And sure they playtest in house which is always a bad idea because they know how they intended things to work.

I'm pretty sure this isn't true due in fault that they can't apparently FAQ things to make them work and instead make it so you can use the model (Chariot)

Or they make it so incredibly weak (Soul Blaze)

Or generally just some poor decisions overall.

The chariot is the whole point...if you read the WD battle report with it, it looks like the move and shoot with it. Because that is how it is supposed to work....but that is not how the rules actually work.

Same goes for giving units like Be'lakor redundant special rules (lgnores Dangerous terrain, when he comes with Move Through Cover, or allowing a GK Brotherhood Champion to take Digital weapons, when he already re-rolls failed wounds.)

SO they play games in house to try things out, but don't know how their own rules actually function....they play RAI because they know what they meant to have happen when they wrote it, which is not how they wrote it.