I like the Imperial Knights. The idea of a whole army of gigantic robots just sort of resonates with me (fantasies of crushing my enemies beneath my feet may, or may not be the reason), but I have my reservations about actually playing them.

As far as I imagine it, a match against Knights can go two ways:
1. Your enemy didn't know you'd bring knights, and after your stomped his Anti-tank units, you'll continue to rampage through his army and he pretty much can only wait for the game to end.
2. Your enemy knew you'd bring knights and they dissolve under the massive amount of anti tank fire.
(2b. Your enemy knew you'd bring knights but his army hasn't really got a way to deal with them properly *cough*orks*cough*. Refer to 1.)
Both variants don't really seem like the definition of a fun match for me.

Has anyone played a match with knights allready? What was your experience?

Could you imagine rulechanges which would make it more interesting to fight against Knights (I could imagine a change to the walker CC rules could work, giving enemies a chance to hit the side or back AV).

I played against Imperial Knights last night. It was not fun in the least for me.

It would probably be more fun than playing against Riptides, Wraithknights and rerollable 2+ saves.

 tyrannosaurus wrote:
It would probably be more fun than playing against Riptides, Wraithknights and rerollable 2+ saves.

So it's more fun than something that's totally not fun? ok. lol.

Its the age old problem with super heavies, you either have to tools to deal with it easily and your opponent is going to have a bad game, or you don't have the tools to deal with it and it walks over you and you have a bad game.

Knights however are fairly squishy, just have lots of hull points, I've played against 1 and I had to dedicate my entire army at it to prevent it from getting into assault where it does real damage. If my opponent had 2 I wouldn't have been able to stop them. 3 and it would have been an easy win. 4 or 5 and it would have been a struggle for survival.




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 tyrannosaurus wrote:
It would probably be more fun than playing against Riptides, Wraithknights and rerollable 2+ saves.

Outside of tournaments I highly doubt anyone runs into problems with these on a regular basis, and even in tournaments there is only a handful of people using them. Besides that in the end its conduct of the player not the army.

My point was that I fail to see why Imperial Knights are receiving so much hate when some existing units seem to be relatively much more powerful than most others. Many seem to think it acceptable to refuse to play against a Knight Titan despite it being a legal unit choice for a regular 40k game. If that's the case then the same should be true for the more powerful options from the Eldar, Tau and Daemons codexes.

I don't think it's the same issue with the Riptides and Wraithknights.
What bothers me about IK is how they make all S6 and lower weaponry in your army completely useless. You're running an army that makes all standard weapons worthless and it's doubtful if they will fire a single shot all game.

I've still never heard an answer to the vehicle facing issue. The way the body is made it looks like the sides are actually incredibly small, meaning you'll be hitting front armor most the time and with a 4++ from that direction. Which would be 72 S7 shots to take down one.

I don't honestly understand the approach of "Just let your opponent know what you're bringing."
"You're bringing IK. Okay, I'll list tailor to beat that."
"Oh, you're list tailoring to beat IK, I'll bring an infantry heavy army instead.
"Oh, you're bringing infantry heavy? I'll bring IK instead."

The approach of letting your opponent know just switches the roles. Instead of the guy facing IK being unprepared, now it'll be the IK being unprepared for an army list that isn't TAC.

 Ravenous D wrote:
I've played against 1 and I had to dedicate my entire army at it to prevent it from getting into assault where it does real damage. If my opponent had 2 I wouldn't have been able to stop them. 3 and it would have been an easy win. 4 or 5 and it would have been a struggle for survival.

I played against 3. There was no real point in even playing the game (at least with a 2 foot separation between deployment zones).

 Savageconvoy wrote:
I don't think it's the same issue with the Riptides and Wraithknights.
What bothers me about IK is how they make all S6 and lower weaponry in your army completely useless. You're running an army that makes all standard weapons worthless and it's doubtful if they will fire a single shot all game.

Yeah, I've never said I don't like IK armies because they're overpowered, just that they're unbalanced and render everything that's not a high strength weapon useless. You bought flamers for some of your squads? Useless. Got a sniper squad? Useless. Bought power weapons and power axes? Useless.

The Riptide and Wraithknight armies, for one, will have other models in the army. They aren't scoring and will need some sort of infantry to go along with them and since they aren't troops, you can't make an army of purely Riptides and Wraithknights. Also, you CAN hurt a RT with S3 and a Wraithknight with S5 (vs the IK of S7 front and S6 rear).

 tyrannosaurus wrote:
My point was that I fail to see why Imperial Knights are receiving so much hate when some existing units seem to be relatively much more powerful than most others. Many seem to think it acceptable to refuse to play against a Knight Titan despite it being a legal unit choice for a regular 40k game. If that's the case then the same should be true for the more powerful options from the Eldar, Tau and Daemons codexes.

It is true though, in regular games you can refuse stuff. Not many people are willing to go against jet, cent, ovesa, or whatever star armies in a normal atmosphere, they feel it to be too much. Ive challenged someone to a game and said "nah you have 4 wave serpents". In a tournament though you have no choice, that's the organizers decision to let that stuff in, so you can accept the terms and build to expect it, or just not go as its probably just going to be a piss off.

I myself am a competitive gamer, so when I go to tournaments I build lists in mind to deal with serpent spam, riptides, wraithknights and jetstars, the game is so rock paper scissor that you pretty much have to concede that your army is going to suck against something, all comers lists are actively punished in this edition because of units that sit on the extremes of the rules.

Depends. If you have the means to take it down, then yes. Otherwise, eventually not.

We had a local tournament recently where someone was given the okay to bring the IG armored company. That was the worst game I've played in a while.
"Oh, so you have a majority of AV14 vehicles, a few chimera chasis and artillery hiding out of LOS. That's okay, I think my suits and Riptides should be fine for Anti-tank. Oh. Beast Hunter shells and battle cannons on everything. Nevermind. Nice trying to have a game."

The justification for that being okay was because the TO knew someone was bringing 6 vendettas and that would be a good counter to an all tank army. I'm starting to see it where people are look at something and if there is a hard counter available they give it the "balanced" stamp.

 Savageconvoy wrote:
We had a local tournament recently where someone was given the okay to bring the IG armored company. That was the worst game I've played in a while.
"Oh, so you have a majority of AV14 vehicles, a few chimera chasis and artillery hiding out of LOS. That's okay, I think my suits and Riptides should be fine for Anti-tank. Oh. Beast Hunter shells and battle cannons on everything. Nevermind. Nice trying to have a game."

The justification for that being okay was because the TO knew someone was bringing 6 vendettas and that would be a good counter to an all tank army. I'm starting to see it where people are look at something and if there is a hard counter available they give it the "balanced" stamp.

We allow the Armoured Company in our local tournaments. Once I battled such an army with my Eldar. As soon as my Seer Council was among the tanks, it made a mess out of them.

Given the ABG is all tanks rather than walkers, I think it's much easier for most TAC armies to deal with. That sweet juicy rear armour is much easier to target than a walker's rear armour. Though with Beast Hunter shells it would really put a dent in any MC's.

I guess it was more terrain set up than anything else that ruined that game. He was basically able to line up his tanks between buildings along the his corner, making deep striking behind him almost impossible. Beast Hunter and Battle cannons just killed anything I had that could deal with High armor within two turns.

Which is probably my biggest complaint. Lets say I was able to bring an all FMC and flyer list and they're all somehow scoring now too. It's easy to figure out what I'm going to target first, which is to take down all the AA weapons since they are few in number and little of the rest will be able to do much else. Reducing the majority of your troops to "hide on an objective, don't bother trying to shoot anything" really kills it for me.

It can be lots of fun. Depends on what kind of player are you.

If I was fielding 3 or 5 Knights, and I was kicking arse, I would be giving my opponent like 5+++ saves. The rules say no saves of any kind but the +++ saves can be allowed. It's a made up save. If they fail their save, they get to come back next turn or in Reserves.

If you don't want to give them Reserves, then give them a 3+++ or a 4+++ save if the 3+++ is to strong.

You are only playing for fun, so change the rules to make the game fun. Otherwise you are just TFG.

What does it make GW if their rules are inherently unfun to play by making a situation where you need to give out free super invuls or unlimited reserves?

TFGW?

Davor wrote:
You are only playing for fun, so change the rules to make the game fun. Otherwise you are just TFG.

Playing by the rules now makes you "TFG"?

It seems very hard to play a game of 40k without being TFG anymore. If you play a certain army, you are TFG, if you don't play a certain army you are TFG, if you like to win you are TFG, if you don't care about winning and don't play competitive lists you are TFG, if you play by the rules you are TFG, if you want to make up your own rules you are TFG, if you want to play a FW army you are TFG, if you don't want to play against a FW army you are TFG.

I think it's all getting a little bit silly now, lol.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Davor wrote:
You are only playing for fun, so change the rules to make the game fun. Otherwise you are just TFG.

Playing by the rules now makes you "TFG"?

It seems very hard to play a game of 40k without being TFG anymore. If you play a certain army, you are TFG, if you don't play a certain army you are TFG, if you like to win you are TFG, if you don't care about winning and don't play competitive lists you are TFG, if you play by the rules you are TFG, if you want to make up your own rules you are TFG, if you want to play a FW army you are TFG, if you don't want to play against a FW army you are TFG.

I think it's all getting a little bit silly now, lol.

By that, I mean, the OP wants to play for fun. A lot of people will know ahead of time, going up against a certain army, in this case 3 Knights, will not be fun. They will not care if they loose, but just taking minis off the table while not doing much damage in return is not fun. The reason I said you be TFG, is because he want to have fun. So why not change the rules, because we all know 40K is not a well written balanced rule set, and some armies are more powerful than other armies. So not changing the rules, but also claiming you want to have fun is IMHO TGF.

Nothing wrong with wanting to win. That is why we mostly play. Nothing wrong with picking any army you want. Thing to me is, claim one thing then do something else, is just hypocritical. That is what I should have said, would have saved me a lot of typing.

I killed five IK in four turns with a non competitive take on all comers list... Only one guy has them at my local game store, and he lost every game he played in last Sunday's tournament. He got rolled by Eldar, Daemons, and my fluffy Tau. We played a few games after the tournament for fun using the same lists and he lost to Nob bikers and Dark Eldar as well... Don't get the collective freak out.

I want to fight imperial knights with my black knight spam list. When it's night fight.

im about 20 games (combined with and against the knights) I really enjoy playing with them as well as against them

As a working professional, anytime I can get a game in is good fun time. I really don't care what you're bringing, as I'll play you anyways.
I always show up with 2 armies and several lists, and I'll keep playing, it doesn't matter if I'm getting blasted into paste or wiping the board with my opponent.
The bottom line is figure out what kind of player you are.

If you don't think something is fun, you shouldn't be doing it.

Its a giant walker. Poor players will struggle, players that actually like 40k and strategy will enjoy games against them.

 sfshilo wrote:
Its a giant walker. Poor players will struggle, players that actually like 40k and strategy and don't play 'nids will enjoy games against them.

Fixed that for you

Do nids not have flying monstrous creatures that can take them out? Or a high initiative, high strength creature that could beat them in melee? I am asking because I genuinely do not know. I know very little about the new nid book.

I don't have a problem against knights as a Lord of war, simply like escalation, but once you're facing 4-6 of them I feel like the mandatory troop selections are rendered moot. You're AT guys will just get focused down and killed, leaving the rest of your army open to just die. Fliers will work well against them, since they will have a hard time fighting them, but thats pretty limited.

A local player doesn't get why I won't play against it, not because I believe it's not a legal army or anything, just because I don't think I will have fun.

 sfshilo wrote:
Its a giant walker. Poor players will struggle, players that actually like 40k and strategy will enjoy games against them.

I like how you imply that being poor and enjoying strategy are mutually exclusive.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:

 sfshilo wrote:
Its a giant walker. Poor players will struggle, players that actually like 40k and strategy will enjoy games against them.

I like how you imply that being poor and enjoying strategy are mutually exclusive.

I think he means bad players, not players who don't have a lot of money. Could be wrong though.

Honestly it depends. Do I have a list that has counters to it so the game is even? Alright then let us do this. The big problem with it is that it is polarizing. It's kind of like Raider spam (except more effective) and Armoured Battlegroup (arguably more effective) not to mention air spam (which depending on the army is very effective). Basically, rock paper scissors in action. The biggest problem, and one that shares with basically all of the above, is they are all heavily rock paper scissors which invalidate most of the armaments that your army has. Along with that, not every army has an answer to every single thing. In the end, it is still an army of superheavies. If you informed my IG army or CSm army before playing so that I could actually bring some weapons to possibly kill you, I'd be up for it. If not, well there's not much use in a game where I have no chance of winning. My daemon army? Honestly I can't really think of any way to fight a Knight army. Doesn't help I don't care for nurgle at all, I don't want to go flying circus spam, and I don't want to bring a screamerstar. The problem lies in the fact that the only answers I have that I can think of are a flying slaanesh prince that gets biomancy and whips him at his weak points (requiring a decent amount of luck to get everything), suicide deepstriking pink horrors and hoping the random roll is decent, they don't scatter horridly, etc, or bringing hordes of screamers and trying to drown the foe with them hoping against all odds that I might armourbane them to death.

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:
I killed five IK in four turns with a non competitive take on all comers list... Only one guy has them at my local game store, and he lost every game he played in last Sunday's tournament. He got rolled by Eldar, Daemons, and my fluffy Tau. We played a few games after the tournament for fun using the same lists and he lost to Nob bikers and Dark Eldar as well... Don't get the collective freak out.

Could you elaborate on how your non-competitive Tau list took out 30 AV13 HP in four turns? I'm looking through the codex right now and I don't see much reliable S8+ volume of fire that isn't susceptible to the firepower output of 5 Knights. Also nothing really can stand up to in CC. Was the guy wasting the Thermal cannon shots on Kroot instead of Hammerheads?

Also is this guy a good player or not? He had 5 straight loses in a row, so it's just doesn't ease the tension of what 5 knights would do in the hands of someone who knew how to use them.

 Co'tor Shas wrote:

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:

 sfshilo wrote:
Its a giant walker. Poor players will struggle, players that actually like 40k and strategy will enjoy games against them.

I like how you imply that being poor and enjoying strategy are mutually exclusive.

I think he means bad players, not players who don't have a lot of money. Could be wrong though.

Still, having low skill and liking strategy is not mutually exclusive either.

 Savageconvoy wrote:

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:
I killed five IK in four turns with a non competitive take on all comers list... Only one guy has them at my local game store, and he lost every game he played in last Sunday's tournament. He got rolled by Eldar, Daemons, and my fluffy Tau. We played a few games after the tournament for fun using the same lists and he lost to Nob bikers and Dark Eldar as well... Don't get the collective freak out.

Could you elaborate on how your non-competitive Tau list took out 30 AV13 HP in four turns? I'm looking through the codex right now and I don't see much reliable S8+ volume of fire that isn't susceptible to the firepower output of 5 Knights. Also nothing really can stand up to in CC. Was the guy wasting the Thermal cannon shots on Kroot instead of Hammerheads?

Also is this guy a good player or not? He had 5 straight loses in a row, so it's just doesn't ease the tension of what 5 knights would do in the hands of someone who knew how to use them.

This was the list I used:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/581856.page

I fielded in a corner, Skyrayed one to death and took another down to 3 HP turn one. Turn two my outflanking commander's squad killed a one and my plasma squad deep struck in and killed the one that was wounded. Turn three I lost my fusion commander's squad, but he was still alive and took 2 hull points off one, my other commander killed it and my plasma squad did two HP of damage to the last one. Turn four my fusion Commander was assaulted, but took off two more hull points and my plasma squad was assaulted and wiped, but my Other commander's squad took off another HP, then my Skyrays rammed it for the win.

 Savageconvoy wrote:

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:
I killed five IK in four turns with a non competitive take on all comers list... Only one guy has them at my local game store, and he lost every game he played in last Sunday's tournament. He got rolled by Eldar, Daemons, and my fluffy Tau. We played a few games after the tournament for fun using the same lists and he lost to Nob bikers and Dark Eldar as well... Don't get the collective freak out.

Could you elaborate on how your non-competitive Tau list took out 30 AV13 HP in four turns? I'm looking through the codex right now and I don't see much reliable S8+ volume of fire that isn't susceptible to the firepower output of 5 Knights. Also nothing really can stand up to in CC. Was the guy wasting the Thermal cannon shots on Kroot instead of Hammerheads?

Also is this guy a good player or not? He had 5 straight loses in a row, so it's just doesn't ease the tension of what 5 knights would do in the hands of someone who knew how to use them.

Not to mention how he got managed 5 1850pt games in a day. Or how the Seneschal didn't seem to make a difference. Either that was a lie for the sake of commenting or they didn't play the game correctly. Because even drop poding Salamanders with Melta spaming would struggle against 5 knights after they hit the dirt.

Nice list.
Skyrayed one to death?
I'm sorry, but how? Av13 vs S8 means you're glancing on 5's pen on 6. 6 shots, assume BS5 for 5 hits, 5 hits gets 1.67 glance/pens, which half get saved for a total of 0.83. No bonus for AP, so to get an explosion you need a pen (0.278) followed by getting past the shield (0.14) and then a 6 on the pen chart (0.023). That's insanely lucky.
I'm hesitant to accept a Skyray taking 2HP off a Knight let alone killing one out right.

Plasma hitting on 2's still needs 6's to glance.
6 plasma rifles, 12 shots total. 12 shots, 10 hits, 1.67 glances assuming the shield isn't facing them. That still leaves that Knight with a HP left.

The three fusion suits seem up for the task, I'm wondering how they survived returning fire. Did the guy just forget he had a shield?

 Savageconvoy wrote:
Nice list.
Skyrayed one to death?
I'm sorry, but how? Av13 vs S8 means you're glancing on 5's pen on 6. 6 shots, assume BS5 for 5 hits, 5 hits gets 1.67 glance/pens, which half get saved for a total of 0.83. No bonus for AP, so to get an explosion you need a pen (0.278) followed by getting past the shield (0.14) and then a 6 on the pen chart (0.023). That's insanely lucky.
I'm hesitant to accept a Skyray taking 2HP off a Knight let alone killing one out right.

Plasma hitting on 2's still needs 6's to glance.
6 plasma rifles, 12 shots total. 12 shots, 10 hits, 1.67 glances assuming the shield isn't facing them. That still leaves that Knight with a HP left.

The three fusion suits seem up for the task, I'm wondering how they survived returning fire. Did the guy just forget he had a shield?

Sometimes I really wonder if people realize it is a dice game and sometimes what should statistically happen just doesn't... And it was 2000 point tourney that lasted 10 hours at 3 hours a round... Most games nearly got to turn 4, but IK make turns go quick considering they only have 5 models, or at least he did.

And remember a 6 to pen on them does 1+D3 HPs damage... I rolled quite a few 6's... Not saying I plan on beating his list every time I play it, but it is possible for non competitive lists to pull it off, just make sure the dice gods are with you.

 tyrannosaurus wrote:
It would probably be more fun than playing against Riptides, Wraithknights and rerollable 2+ saves.

My Shock Attack Gun got a double 6 on the SAG chart against the riptide I was playing against last night. Awesome to just be able to remove a vehicle like that of the board.

I thought for sure I'd scatter off the board but I rolled a 2-1 so it was basically a direct hit.

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:
Do nids not have flying monstrous creatures that can take them out? Or a high initiative, high strength creature that could beat them in melee? I am asking because I genuinely do not know. I know very little about the new nid book.

To answer all of your questions, no Nids do not have these things. We DO have FMC that can VS at S8 which is probably the BEST way to deal with them...but they are T5 W5 with a 4+ Save....so force a grounding check with stubbers and they get shredded like wet paper.

We do not have high initiative high strength creatures. Our high initiative creatures are mid range strength, our high strength creature, the carnifex, is slower than the Knight. The best option is to charge a Knight with 3 carnifex rocking crushing claws, they might kill the Knight but if they do manage to survive it will be one wounded carnifex on average that likely will die from the explosion. Now if there are THREE Knights you better hope that you can bring all 9 Carnifex to the table and HOPE they can all make it into melee with them.

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:

Sometimes I really wonder if people realize it is a dice game and sometimes what should statistically happen just doesn't.

Statistically speaking 2 Skyrays should remove 1.67 HP from a knight. You managed over 5 times that amount. Yes, there is luck, but just because you got really lucky doesn't mean that a noncompetitive Tau list like that has a statistically balanced chance of taking down 5 knights. Which seemed to be the point of your initial post. You didn't say "I got incredibly lucky with a non-competitive Tau list and took down 5 knights" you said you took down 5 knights with a non-competitive tau list, which is leaving out major context.

And remember a 6 to pen on them does 1+D3 HPs damage... I rolled quite a few 6's.

And remember he needed 4+ to ignore that. The dice game argument rolls both ways, excuse the pun. You rolled a lot of 6's. Like a lot by my math. Like double what you should have been rolling. I think you should get them checked out before you start praising the gods of luck.

Savageconvoy wrote:
I don't honestly understand the approach of "Just let your opponent know what you're bringing."

I think it's probably something along the lines of, high command has some idea whether their forces will be deployed against a planet with an ork infestation, or a planet defended by a knight household. As such, they equip your army appropriately.

The idea of going into any battle with no idea of what you're facing is somewhat ridiculous from any sort of fluff perspective.

To expound upon your examples...

"You're bringing IK. Okay, I'll list tailor to beat that."

Can be perceived as, "We're going into battle with several titans, so your small arms will be mostly useless. You should visit the quartermaster and refit your tanks with anti-titan guns".

Everything beyond this step has no basis in any sort of story. You tell your opponent what codex/codecii you will be playing, and they tell you the same. After that, neither of you have an advantage the other does not, and you avoid the kind of silly games that result from having no idea what your army might face.

Even considering that, it seems rather unfair to the IK player.
"I'm bringing IK, what are you bringing?"
"Now I'm bringing a lot of deep striking melta."

In a Rock/paper/scissor match up someone decides to take all Rock, so then the opposing side just minimizes their Rock and scissors and puts as many points into paper as possible. It's just a terrible idea. That's why I like TAC lists. No list tailoring.

I do think the system does need a dedicated sideboard in place. Quick swapping special weapons before games, but point values make this difficult right now.

 Savageconvoy wrote:
Even considering that, it seems rather unfair to the IK player.

And yet not allowing it seems incredibly unfair to the other player. Let me see, I'm bringing an army where all your weapons < S7 are absolutely useless, and then I demand that you make your list without knowing that, so I can play my 2000 points against your 600 points that might actually hurt me.

It's not like most armies out there can avoid taking things that will be useless in this matchup. If I'm playing space marines, I am required to dedicate a n absolute minimum of two troop choices that are 8/10 men unable to hurt the titan. Even if the marine player knows he is playing against knights, he's required to waste roughly 200 points on models that can't hurt it (and that's a bare minimum). His mandatory HQ is also unlikely to impact the game at all, short of possibly taking a meltabomb and hoping. And you say to this, poor IK player?

What army can actually maximize this knowledge and avoid taking any wasted points? Because the knights have no wasted points in any matchup. Their D weapons make a mockery of heavy-hitters, their stomps prevent tarpitting and address hordes, and their ranged weapon choices seem good against any opponent. Meanwhile, everyone facing them, even knowing they're coming, is probably down 25% points on mandatory things that can't hurt the knights.

 Redbeard wrote:
And you say to this, poor IK player?

Yeah. The IK player didn't make the terrible decision to release a hard counter unit as it's own independent army.

But I think I'm not explaining my point right. Yes there are some things that you can do to make it a better matched game. One of the things is giving the other player the ability to tailor his list, while the other really doesn't have that option. That's not really that fair, but because it's so imbalanced as it is then it gives the appearance of being fair. If I mention I'm bringing Tau then I could be running any number of practical lists. If I mention I'm running enclaves, even more so. If I mention I'm running IK, then you just have to wonder how many errants or paladins I'm going to bring.

But this was mentioned in another thread. The studio doesn't give a fart in the wind about balance. They want to release models and they want to release books. They can use the excuse that you'll just have to talk it out with your opponent and make up an arbitrary system of balances on your own... I mean forge a narrative.

On the subject of tailoring: I play ABG. I always warn my opponent to bring extra AT before the lists are drawn. In my local group. It is only proper sport. Now on a tournament i will bring the same list and give no quarter because my opponents will have their cheesiest thing available... Flying Circus, Riptides. No mercy there I' m afraid.
And IMO 1 knight is fair, any more than two is unfair without tailoring...

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:
Do nids not have flying monstrous creatures that can take them out? Or a high initiative, high strength creature that could beat them in melee? I am asking because I genuinely do not know. I know very little about the new nid book.

'nids have FMC's, not FMC's that can take them out. The Hive Crone can Vector Strike at S8, but because it moves 24" and then can only do a single 90 degree turn, it's only going to be able to strike the same Knight once or twice over the course of a game and there'll be turns where it can't VS anything. It does also have 4 haywire missiles, but once you mathhammer it all out, you realise that it would take several Crones to bring down a Knight and at 150pts each and taking a Fast Attack slot each (very few armies are going to rock up with 3 Crones unless they tailor to fight Knights) then you aren't really in good standing.

Walking MC's can have a crack, but most of them you are investing more points than the Knight is worth to bring one down, and given the Knight moves 12", they should be able to stay out of combat for a while.

Zoanthropes and Hive guard have a chance, but again statistically not great and they are 18" range and are prime targets for battle cannons (Zoans instant die to battle cannons, Hive Guard don't, but 2 battle cannons should be racking up enough hits in a round of shooting to kill a couple of them).

Tyranids can probably bring down 1 Knight using a typical competitive list, but unless you tailor the list I don't see them taking on an army of them and even if you do tailor it's still far from a sure thing.

If you took a Tyranid army of nothing but Termagaunts (to score), Carnies, Crones, Zoans, Hive Guard and Flyrants, it would probably be a more interesting game, but it wouldn't be a standard competitive list either.

FMC don't have the movement restrictions of flyers. It can do a 180 each turn and hit the Knight.

 Savageconvoy wrote:
FMC don't have the movement restrictions of flyers. It can do a 180 each turn and hit the Knight.

Nope, it can't. It can only do a single 90 degree turn before it swoops, then must move directly fowards between 12 and 24". It's the 2nd dot point of "Swooping" on pg 49.

If you choose to glide (move like a jump creature) instead of swooping, yep, you can turn... but now you don't get the protection of being in the air so can be blown apart easily or assaulted (given the IK has quite a long assault radius).

I stand corrected.

I'm thinking of maybe starting a knight army, I'd probably just leave the games as objective capturing instead of kill points to start with while everyone got a feel for it. Makes it more balanced probably since if things will struggle to kill them it wouldn't be an automatic loss for armies unable to deal with the armour.

That wouldn't really help though. Knights are all scoring and could easily claim objectives with their movement speed, base size, and their CC ability.

 Savageconvoy wrote:

 Redbeard wrote:
And you say to this, poor IK player?

Yeah. The IK player didn't make the terrible decision to release a hard counter unit as it's own independent army.

But the IK player chose to play an army that is dramatically unbalanced (not in terms of game balance, but in terms of army balance). The IK player who says to his opponent, "you should bring a TAC list" is a player who knows that his army is immune to many weapons in a TAC list, and consequently is looking for an easy, unfair game. The IK player knows this, whether or not it was his reason for choosing the army. Now, if he's a decent sport and is looking for a fun game, he offers his opponent the ability to take more weapons that actually have an impact on the game, and fewer that do not. If he's a WAAC player, he demands that his opponent take a lot of weapons that are useless against his list.

There are lots of variants on this. I've seen players look to face TAC lists with nothing but land raiders, knowing their opponent won't have enough anti-tank to handle it, and on the other end of the spectrum, extreme horde lists, knowing most TAC lists can't kill 200 models in a game. Does this lead to a fun game for either player? I can't imagine so.

But this was mentioned in another thread. The studio doesn't give a fart in the wind about balance.

I'm not sure I agree with this assessment. I'm fairly certain that they're not competent enough to balance their game. Certainly they give some lip-service to caring about it, as they do assign point costs to units. They're just really really bad at it.

Me and the wife ran some game and substituted some knights vs IG and it was hit and miss with a none tailored list. With a tailored list though the knight fell in short order unless they hunkered down in cover. All in all it was fun but then again we knew about the knights beforehand, if it was totally random in a FLGS I might be abit hesitant.

 Savageconvoy wrote:
We had a local tournament recently where someone was given the okay to bring the IG armored company. That was the worst game I've played in a while.
"Oh, so you have a majority of AV14 vehicles, a few chimera chasis and artillery hiding out of LOS. That's okay, I think my suits and Riptides should be fine for Anti-tank. Oh. Beast Hunter shells and battle cannons on everything. Nevermind. Nice trying to have a game."

The justification for that being okay was because the TO knew someone was bringing 6 vendettas and that would be a good counter to an all tank army. I'm starting to see it where people are look at something and if there is a hard counter available they give it the "balanced" stamp.

The AB list isn't all that bad. the Beast Hunter shells are very limited in availability (only available on HQ and Elite tanks taken as Vanquishers), and the list isn't going to bring any more battlecannons than what you could face from a Codex IG army. Concentrate on the few scoring units (remember those LR tanks in Troop slots don't get to score, and in Big Guns Never Tire they're not HS so don't score there either) and the list has to play for a draw, and if you get *anything* across the board, the tanks die (6" move max, no Overwatch, a squad with kraks/EMP/haywire/etc grenades will usually have few problems killing a 3HP rear AV10 tank).

If you're trying to sit across the board from it and win a pitched shooting battle, the AB will win because that's what it's best at doing. Don't do that.

With how easy tanks are to kill in 6E, Armored Battlegroup lists get eaten alive by most common tournament armies, certainly anything Biker oriented, Drop Pods, Eldar, or mobility/DS centric Tau, and usually anything with more than a couple FMC's will have an easy time against most AB lists. I've been on both sides playing with and against them, and once stuff crosses the board the AB collapses. If things get into melta and CC range, the AB will fold quickly, as it dies very quickly to these things, it's other tanks and hulks block LoS through each other (for non-squadroned vehicles), and it can't place templates touching its own vehicles, making it very difficult to land shots with battlecannons and the like.

Knights are a bit different, they are more mobile, can engage in CC quite well and don't have to worry about scoring units. That said, they don't have the same armor thickness or variety of weapons/capabilities and provide a smaller number of targets to concentrate on. A pure Knight army has no answer to a flight of Vendettas for example.

 Savageconvoy wrote:
Even considering that, it seems rather unfair to the IK player.
"I'm bringing IK, what are you bringing?"
"Now I'm bringing a lot of deep striking melta."

In a Rock/paper/scissor match up someone decides to take all Rock, so then the opposing side just minimizes their Rock and scissors and puts as many points into paper as possible. It's just a terrible idea. That's why I like TAC lists. No list tailoring.

I do think the system does need a dedicated sideboard in place. Quick swapping special weapons before games, but point values make this difficult right now.

I'm a fan of giving the opponent SOME knowledge, along the lines of "I'm bringing space marines with IG allies"


he doesn't need to know my space Marines are a bike army and my IG is a vendetta air cav unit, but he knows what COULD be on the battlefeild and could plan around it.

I also have no trouble with quick swaps to account for suprises like allowing someone to trade his tatical marine squads vetern sergent for flakk missiles in his missile launcher.

the problem with that is IKs are a 2 unit codex, if that.
that said I'm of the opinion IKs, LotD, Inq, sure they're all seperate codexes but they're really intended to be used as allies,

 Savageconvoy wrote:

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:

Sometimes I really wonder if people realize it is a dice game and sometimes what should statistically happen just doesn't.

Statistically speaking 2 Skyrays should remove 1.67 HP from a knight. You managed over 5 times that amount. Yes, there is luck, but just because you got really lucky doesn't mean that a noncompetitive Tau list like that has a statistically balanced chance of taking down 5 knights. Which seemed to be the point of your initial post. You didn't say "I got incredibly lucky with a non-competitive Tau list and took down 5 knights" you said you took down 5 knights with a non-competitive tau list, which is leaving out major context.

And remember a 6 to pen on them does 1+D3 HPs damage... I rolled quite a few 6's.

And remember he needed 4+ to ignore that. The dice game argument rolls both ways, excuse the pun. You rolled a lot of 6's. Like a lot by my math. Like double what you should have been rolling. I think you should get them checked out before you start praising the gods of luck.

Well considering I caught him without his shield up for one of the skyrays, and got side armor with one dealing two glances and two pens. Which by my calculations would make it statistically likely. And the plasma rifles and fusion caught him without his shield one turn each I doubt the results will be that hard to duplicate. Besides I learned a trick in that game, charge melee with Firewarriors. Eight Firewarriors with stubborn and Ld 10 thanks to my Ethereal that was standing behind them held up a knight for three turns in melee. And since anything that can't hurt something in melee can leave whenever they want. I see tar pitting becoming a serious issue for IK players.

Those Fire Warriors would be smashed into fish sticks after one or two rounds let alone the 6 you mention. Did he forget about Stomp attacks?

I didn't know there was a stomp attack... What does it do? And yes apparently he did... Though I can hardly fault him I forgot to use the over charge on my riptides the first two weeks I had them.

One of my favorite unit is quite expensive (point-wise), and not very powerful, especially in the current meta, at least where I play. But it is extremely flavorful for my armu, and with good rolls, if my opponent makes a mistake, it can do hilarious damage. It is a dominion squad with 4 flamethrowers, one combi-flamethrower, and it used to have even an extra simulacrum on top of it when the Act of Faith still worked with flamethrowers, before GW replaced stupid idiocy with another stupid idiocy.
This unit cannot damage a knight. Well, actually, that unit can only damage a Knight by throwing ONE krak grenade each turn, and only when not facing the front. That unit cannot even capture objectives either, while the knight can.
I have never played against an Imperial Knight army before, but I do not expect it to be fun at all.

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:
I didn't know there was a stomp attack... What does it do? And yes apparently he did... Though I can hardly fault him I forgot to use the over charge on my riptides the first two weeks I had them.

In close combat the knight stomps, place D3 blast markers within 3" of each other, the first marker has to be touching the knight's base, the rest can be anywhere within 3" of the previous one.

For each unit hit by a blast marker roll a D6 (and you roll each blast market separately), on a 1 nothing happens, 2-5 every model touched by the template takes a S6 AP4 hit, on a 6 every model under the blast marker is removed.

Combined with it's 3 strength D close combat attacks, it should be wiping out at least a handful of Fire Warriors each melee phase.

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:

Well considering I caught him without his shield up for one of the skyrays, and got side armor with one dealing two glances and two pens. Which by my calculations would make it statistically likely. And the plasma rifles and fusion caught him without his shield one turn each I doubt the results will be that hard to duplicate. Besides I learned a trick in that game, charge melee with Firewarriors. Eight Firewarriors with stubborn and Ld 10 thanks to my Ethereal that was standing behind them held up a knight for three turns in melee. And since anything that can't hurt something in melee can leave whenever they want. I see tar pitting becoming a serious issue for IK players.

You fielded in a corner yet managed to get a different facing with your skyrays? The only other two units capable of harming the knights were in reserves. I don't understand the geometry involved in this scenario.

Even unshielded for both skyrays. 12 shots, 10 hits, 1.67 glances and 1.67 pens, 0.28 chance to get an explosion. Total of 3.9 HP.
On side armor without a shield: 10 hits gets you 1.67 glances and 3.33 pens, 0.55 explosions. Total of one dead Knight after exhausting both skyrays into side/rear armor with no shield in place.
SO the statistically likely scenario is really if your opponent doesn't realize that you have no other anti-tank on the board and has trouble deciding which direction to face shields.

Plasma shooting into rear armor no shield, assuming BS5: 12 shots, 10 hits, 1.67 HP.
Wait. The fusion and plasma got no shield?! You had no other anti-tank on the board. How did he not face all shields towards fusion?

Wait. Your Skyray rammed the last knight? What did he spend 5 Knights worth of shooting on turn 1?
This confirms it for me. You were playing against someone who doesn't know what Melta weapons are. Or what Knights are for that matter.

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:

Well considering I caught him without his shield up for one of the skyrays, and got side armor with one dealing two glances and two pens. Which by my calculations would make it statistically likely. And the plasma rifles and fusion caught him without his shield one turn each I doubt the results will be that hard to duplicate. Besides I learned a trick in that game, charge melee with Firewarriors. Eight Firewarriors with stubborn and Ld 10 thanks to my Ethereal that was standing behind them held up a knight for three turns in melee. And since anything that can't hurt something in melee can leave whenever they want. I see tar pitting becoming a serious issue for IK players.

So 8 firewarriors survived 12 D weapon swings + 3x stomp attacks? Either insane luck or this never actually happened. Which is much more likely.

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:


And remember a 6 to pen on them does 1+D3 HPs damage... I rolled quite a few 6's... Not saying I plan on beating his list every time I play it, but it is possible for non competitive lists to pull it off, just make sure the dice gods are with you.

Actually, it's D3 HPs on an explodes result on the damage table.

 TedNugent wrote:

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:


And remember a 6 to pen on them does 1+D3 HPs damage... I rolled quite a few 6's... Not saying I plan on beating his list every time I play it, but it is possible for non competitive lists to pull it off, just make sure the dice gods are with you.

Actually, it's D3 HPs on an explodes result on the damage table.

It's D3 additional points, so effectively D3+1 all up.

So your skyray dumped its missiles and rammed one, then dumped its missiles and killed another.

Across 4 turns
the Plasma team constantly getting BS5 and no shield: 1 dead Knight and 1.67 off another.
The Skyrays: One dead knight total.
Missile team: Commander gets 5 S7, rest of squad has 8 S7.
13 shots, 10.83 hits, 1.8 glances and 1.8 pens, 0.3 chance to explode. 4.2 HP removed in a turn, over 4 turns is another knight dead with 1.8 HP off another. With Tank Hunter this pushes it to 6 HP per turn assuming BS5, range, side armor, and shields aren't in effect.
Fusion suits:
4 shots at BS5 gets 3.33 plus 1 from the commander for 4.33 hits. 3.15 pens, 1.57 explodes getting you one dead Knight per turn.
Under the absolute best case scenario with no return fire and no shields at all, we get about 10 dead knights. But this is all assuming you're always hitting side armor, always getting BS5, never taking a single wound (ID battle cannons), and never getting a single shield in your way.


Do you see how this scenario doesn't add up? You're getting an assumed BS5 across the board with no casualties and no shields taking place and your result is only slightly off that.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 TedNugent wrote:

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:


And remember a 6 to pen on them does 1+D3 HPs damage... I rolled quite a few 6's... Not saying I plan on beating his list every time I play it, but it is possible for non competitive lists to pull it off, just make sure the dice gods are with you.

Actually, it's D3 HPs on an explodes result on the damage table.

It's D3 additional points, so effectively D3+1 all up.

First of all, he said D3+1 additional HP on top of the 2 HP from penetration.

And what you said doesn't make sense because upon a pen you get 2HP and it's only upon a result of 6 on the damage table result that you get the additional D3, which would actually be 2+D3, not 1+D3.

Saying 1+D3 is just disingenuous and it confuses people on the rules. People know how many HPs are stripped on a glance and a pen. Except you, apparently.

 TedNugent wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 TedNugent wrote:

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:


And remember a 6 to pen on them does 1+D3 HPs damage... I rolled quite a few 6's... Not saying I plan on beating his list every time I play it, but it is possible for non competitive lists to pull it off, just make sure the dice gods are with you.

Actually, it's D3 HPs on an explodes result on the damage table.

It's D3 additional points, so effectively D3+1 all up.

First of all, he said D3+1 additional HP on top of the 2 HP from penetration.

And what you said doesn't make sense because upon a pen you get 2HP and it's only upon a result of 6 on the damage table result that you get the additional D3, which would actually be 2+D3, not 1+D3.

Saying 1+D3 is just disingenuous and it confuses people on the rules. People know how many HPs are stripped on a glance and a pen. Except you, apparently.

Huh? Firstly, he didn't say "additional HP", you quoted exactly what he said, no where was "additional" mentioned.

Also, penetrating hits cause 2 HP? Did I misread my rulebook? If so, me and my group have been playing it wrong

Rulebook, page 74: "If a penetrating hit was scored, the vehicle not only loses 1 Hull Point, but suffers additional damage."

"Additional damage" being results from the Vehicle Damage Table.

So when Oz said "on a 6 to pen" I'm pretty sure he/she meant on a roll of 6 on the Vehicle Damage Table. Hence a total of D3+1 hull points.

Where does this additional hull point for penetrating of which you speak come from?

Oh, never mind. I'm sorry, I don't know what I'm talking about.

 Savageconvoy wrote:

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:

Well considering I caught him without his shield up for one of the skyrays, and got side armor with one dealing two glances and two pens. Which by my calculations would make it statistically likely. And the plasma rifles and fusion caught him without his shield one turn each I doubt the results will be that hard to duplicate. Besides I learned a trick in that game, charge melee with Firewarriors. Eight Firewarriors with stubborn and Ld 10 thanks to my Ethereal that was standing behind them held up a knight for three turns in melee. And since anything that can't hurt something in melee can leave whenever they want. I see tar pitting becoming a serious issue for IK players.

You fielded in a corner yet managed to get a different facing with your skyrays? The only other two units capable of harming the knights were in reserves. I don't understand the geometry involved in this scenario.

Even unshielded for both skyrays. 12 shots, 10 hits, 1.67 glances and 1.67 pens, 0.28 chance to get an explosion. Total of 3.9 HP.
On side armor without a shield: 10 hits gets you 1.67 glances and 3.33 pens, 0.55 explosions. Total of one dead Knight after exhausting both skyrays into side/rear armor with no shield in place.
SO the statistically likely scenario is really if your opponent doesn't realize that you have no other anti-tank on the board and has trouble deciding which direction to face shields.

Plasma shooting into rear armor no shield, assuming BS5: 12 shots, 10 hits, 1.67 HP.
Wait. The fusion and plasma got no shield?! You had no other anti-tank on the board. How did he not face all shields towards fusion?

Wait. Your Skyray rammed the last knight? What did he spend 5 Knights worth of shooting on turn 1?
This confirms it for me. You were playing against someone who doesn't know what Melta weapons are. Or what Knights are for that matter.

Look man I am not going to give you a full battle report, I have other things to do, but you are forgetting my squad of missile pod suits with tank hunter. Although I now believe that I would not have won via wipe if he actually used his stomp attacks, I still feel confident I would have won as IK can not, last I heard, contest an objective. Even if they can I would have won one to zero at the very least. Just saying with skill, and a little luck they can be beat.

I refuse to fight a full IK army without prior knowledge because my armies as they are would stand zero chance of winning, so what would be the point of even playing.
My SOB army even if tailored, would still be at a huge disadvantage. Half my army would be ineffective. Again, not fun.

I play Blood Angels and had a lot of fun playing against a list of 6 Knights. We played a 2 on 1 game with myself and another playing Dark Angels. It was a 2250 pt game with each of the Angel players getting half of that. My pre-game guess was that we'd kill 2 Knights before getting tabled but by the end of the game we had killed 4 with another badly injured. We did discover that my DS melta assault squads were better than his ravenwing bikers against the Knights but we didn't feel it was as hopeless as it looked on paper. Keep in mind, I play Blood Angels and didn't feel like I was out of the game.

One thing I forgot to mention, We played the mission with 6 objectives of various value. We all agreed that playing a mission without objectives would be bad as the Knights could stick closer together, though that isn't always protection if a Knight explodes nearby. That D blast can take out more Knights with a chain reaction.

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:
Look man I am not going to give you a full battle report, I have other things to do, but you are forgetting my squad of missile pod suits with tank hunter. Although I now believe that I would not have won via wipe if he actually used his stomp attacks, I still feel confident I would have won as IK can not, last I heard, contest an objective. Even if they can I would have won one to zero at the very least. Just saying with skill, and a little luck they can be beat.

I'm fully convinced you would win too. Based on the fact that you're facing an opponent who is using a single unit and can't be bothered to remember the rules for it, makes incredibly poor mistakes on shield placement and facing, and lets himself get tarpit by a 12 man unit.
I did forget the missile squad at first, but I did the math later on, though I did forget to factor in tank hunter. Which is even more baffling to the case. Somehow that unit survived an entire round of double tapping battle cannon shots from an entire army of Knights. I can't honestly take this case seriously because it seems like this player did everything wrong based on your account.
My point isn't to argue though. It's to point out that your initial point of "they're okay because I beat them with a non-competitive Tau list" quickly starts to become more and more dubious with each fact revealed. Saying that an unprepared army against an IK and tabling them isn't good advice.

edit

How many points of Tyranids is that, roughly?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
How many points of Tyranids is that, roughly?

860 but that's with only 3 10 man gargoyle squads.

The question is whether these 860 points have a good chance of dealing with a Knight Titan army with five walkers in it.

So I played a few games at 1500 with four Knights yesterday and got owned by my friends who I gave a fair heads up.

My IG buddy brought 3 Vanquishers, 3 units of Stormtroopers with Meltas, a unit in a Valk and 2 units on foot behind an Aegis.

Another friends brought Blood Angels and took Dante with an Assault squad with Infernus Pistols. To Deepstrike behind me.

I won 2 out of 6 of my games. They were both lucky wins. And I suspect my opponents were taking pity on me at once stage.


One turn I lost three Knights (one was on 4 HPs , and two on full HP).

The army suffers from DW syndrome. Where you have so few models, you only need a few bad dice early on to screw the whole game for you.

I will continue to think of a good allied detachment for 3 Knights in 1500.

Deshkar wrote:
Someone was mentioning Tyranids.
Skyblight deals with Knights quite well actually and its definitely a strong competitive list. Mass FMCs ganging from multiple sides can quite easily take 1 IK reliably, 2 if lucky.

I also am taking Electroshock Grubs on my Flyrant.

You could charge one with 2 MCs to finish it off from two different directions (ensure kill and explosion dont kill both), pretty sure you'll kill it with smash.

You charge a Harpy in to lower the initiative as well .
Cast Paroxysm to reduce the chance of D weapon hitting as well.

The Skyblight is an "okay" counter to a Knight army, I still don't reckon it will do great against a whole army (maybe if it were 3 Crones instead of 2 Harpies and 1 Crone) and being a FOC breaking dataslate IMO it's not an awesome option. I think the majority of Tyranid players aren't going to buy 3 Crone/Harpy kits along with several boxes of gargoyles to play a such 1 dimensional dataslate list. The lack of manoeuvrability of Flying Monstrous Creatures also makes coordinating attacks tough (I really think FMC's should have been able to pivot freely, but limiting them to a single 90 degree turn each swoop makes it hard to coordinate any strikes after the first one) and as soon as you're not swooping (like, after killing one of the Knights), their lifespan is extremely short.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The question is whether these 860 points have a good chance of dealing with a Knight Titan army with five walkers in it.

More often then not the player will take 2 other flyrants, and they do strike first in combat against Knights in combat and will get the drop on them. So if they triple team each knight with all 3 tyrants they should be able to deal with the army easily. And just pray that when the knight explodes it doesn't take out the tyrants.

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:
I killed five IK in four turns with a non competitive take on all comers list... Only one guy has them at my local game store, and he lost every game he played in last Sunday's tournament. He got rolled by Eldar, Daemons, and my fluffy Tau. We played a few games after the tournament for fun using the same lists and he lost to Nob bikers and Dark Eldar as well... Don't get the collective freak out.

. B

How did you defeat a knight list using nob bikers? Those things have d weapons and i4??

I would not enjoy playing against ANY super heavies in a game that isn't Apocalypse, and will continue to choose not to do so outside of a specific game as part of a campaign.

I've played a couple of new people lately, and before each game I asked:

1. How many points? I don't care which army you play. Surprise me!

2. Super competitive? Take all comers? Fluffy?

3. No Escalation, super heavies or Stronghold Assault, please.

4. Are you fine with Forge World units?

Boom. Important gak out of the way, game on.

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:
Do nids not have flying monstrous creatures that can take them out? Or a high initiative, high strength creature that could beat them in melee? I am asking because I genuinely do not know. I know very little about the new nid book.

The best flying vehicle killer you can get is either a dual devourer flyrant or a hive crone vector striking stuff.

Neither is well suited for titan killing.

You could try to use HVC Harpies, but a single BS3 twinlinked S9 AP4 blast per 150+ model is garbage for vehicle killing.

Waarghboss79 wrote:

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:
I killed five IK in four turns with a non competitive take on all comers list... Only one guy has them at my local game store, and he lost every game he played in last Sunday's tournament. He got rolled by Eldar, Daemons, and my fluffy Tau. We played a few games after the tournament for fun using the same lists and he lost to Nob bikers and Dark Eldar as well... Don't get the collective freak out.

. B

How did you defeat a knight list using nob bikers? Those things have d weapons and i4??

I did not, my best friend did, he multi assaulted three of them with two Nob biker mobs, I know he killed two right there and the third blew up when the other two did. My buddy is still laughing about it. Only a few Nobs survived the explosions, but he did a good chunk of damage in one turn. I think his death roller killed one as well. The death roller works in the movement phase so they can avoid the shields with some finagling.

Their small numbers and the fact they only get three attacks that ignore saves is their downfall. And their shield doesn't work in melee either so it is a nice place to be. Remember that AP 2 weapons get +1 on the damage chart, and they hurt eachother when grouped up.

I feel like if you put your big choppas up front to take the D attacks and save your Klaws they fall fast in melee. Besides their ranged weapons can't instant death nob bikers, so they will get to melee most of the time.

Did this player also forget the stomp attacks?

 kronk wrote:
Did this player also forget the stomp attacks?

He didn't use them against me, don't know if he used them against the orks, but against nobs they only wound on 3+ and are saved on a 5++ 5+ so even if he did use them against the Nobs the same thing was likely to happen.

Stomp attacks wound nobz on a 2+

Well if they do anything at all. Or they just remove them.

I can't imagine facing a knight army is fun. It just seems ridiculous to take down that many hard-ass models. If they were like other vehicles with some way of destroying them with 2-3 shots (I'm thinking the explosion result) or didn't nuke the area it might be doable.

 Ravenous D wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The question is whether these 860 points have a good chance of dealing with a Knight Titan army with five walkers in it.

More often then not the player will take 2 other flyrants, and they do strike first in combat against Knights in combat and will get the drop on them. So if they triple team each knight with all 3 tyrants they should be able to deal with the army easily. And just pray that when the knight explodes it doesn't take out the tyrants.

The triple team trick will only work once, any Knight player is going to place their Knights within charge range of each other (not exactly hard given they move 12"), so after you triple team 1 Knight, 2 other Knights wander in and kill 2 of your now grounded Flyrants, if you're unlucky all 3 of them with the double tap battle cannons and the explosion of the 1 that you killed.

That's a lot of points worth of FMC's as well, each Flyrant being ~200pts, so the rest of your army is getting thin.

Charging FMC's in to a Knight is really only ever going to work on the first Knight, anything that stops your FMC from swooping is basically signing their own death warrant.

Even when you VS with the Crone, I doubt the Knight player is going to sit around doing nothing, those Heavy Stubbers are all going to be trained on the Crone and if it gets grounded, it's going to be dead.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Stomp attacks wound nobz on a 2+

Stomp attack was described earlier to me as a S6 AP4 Blast template two thirds of the time. S6 on T5 of a Nob biker bounds on a 3+. But that information is dependent on that guy giving me the correct info, for all I know he lied.

Not fun for the same reasons that its not fun to play against armored company lists (which is probably why GW never made them officially okay to use..)+1.

Some armies just do not have the a lot of AT options, and when your opponents army has options to kill all of your stuff, and your army has very few models which can attempt to hurt theirs the game is not fun.

Also playing against an army that may have only 1-2 different types of models, is pretty boring.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Stomp attacks wound nobz on a 2+

Stomp attack was described earlier to me as a S6 AP4 Blast template two thirds of the time. S6 on T5 of a Nob biker bounds on a 3+. But that information is dependent on that guy giving me the correct info, for all I know he lied.

on some number = no effect
on some other numbers = S6ap4 blast
on some number= you remove the models stomped from play.

I think playing against Knights would be fun in the same way it was fun to occasionally just line up every big model you own and try and take them down with the small ones.

That is, fun once or twice for a laugh, not so fun in the long run or in a standard game.

I think the army that would love to face a Knight army the most would be a Gauss heavy Necron Army. Probably with Imotek so you can call down the lightning on them too.

The close second would either be a Grav-Centurians heavy Marine army.

Everyone else would be hit or miss based on what you bring.

I almost think if you're facing a Knight Army you should get a roll on the Lords of War Warlord Traits table and possibly even be using those rules just because you're facing super heavies.

The only way I could cope against more than one is list tailoring with either of my two armies and my HH army would have to be a two force org list to pull it off with the models I have and even that would be concentrating fire on just them and ignoring the rest of the army. I dont have the models available to my DE currently to list tailor enough to beat more than one.

I cant figure out what GW was thinking besides money by making them anything but Lord of War choices. So no I do not think they are fun.

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Stomp attacks wound nobz on a 2+

Stomp attack was described earlier to me as a S6 AP4 Blast template two thirds of the time. S6 on T5 of a Nob biker bounds on a 3+. But that information is dependent on that guy giving me the correct info, for all I know he lied.

2-5 Stomp wounds on 3+ and you'd get an invulnerable save plus a FNP save

1 stomp result misses

6 stomp result removes everything under the template. With D3 templates this is the real concern, but this occurs at I1 step, which means you get to swing with the klaws if you make it that far. That's an average of 2 templates placed essentially wherever the Knight wants. With a 6+ per template and 2 templates, that means a ~30% that he can place a "remove all" 3" blast template at the I1 step.

Suffice to say that's a 70% chance you can survive the I1 step. If you destroy it, then you get the blast template. It's a real question, suffice to say it is possible that they could win with minimal casualties (depending on the explosion scatter), equally likely that they could all get wiped out in horrible carnage.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I think the army that would love to face a Knight army the most would be a Gauss heavy Necron Army. Probably with Imotek so you can call down the lightning on them too.

The close second would either be a Grav-Centurians heavy Marine army.

Everyone else would be hit or miss based on what you bring.

I almost think if you're facing a Knight Army you should get a roll on the Lords of War Warlord Traits table and possibly even be using those rules just because you're facing super heavies.

My friend ran his bug army in a Blue table report against 5 Knights and won. The stealers were getting a lot of rends and his Carnifexes were getting some good hammer of wrath rolls.

Relapse wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I think the army that would love to face a Knight army the most would be a Gauss heavy Necron Army. Probably with Imotek so you can call down the lightning on them too.

The close second would either be a Grav-Centurians heavy Marine army.

Everyone else would be hit or miss based on what you bring.

I almost think if you're facing a Knight Army you should get a roll on the Lords of War Warlord Traits table and possibly even be using those rules just because you're facing super heavies.

My friend ran his bug army in a Blue table report against 5 Knights and won. The stealers were getting a lot of rends and his Carnifexes were getting some good hammer of wrath rolls.

If you're managing to charge with 2+ Carnies then you have a chance, however if you're managing to charge with several Carnies I can't help but feel your opponent isn't doing his/her job right.

If you get lucky with stealers then that helps, but you have to get lucky. On average it takes 27 attacks to do 1 HP of damage with rending stealers, given stealers only have 2 attacks, cost 14pts each and die in droves to stomp attacks, I don't see how you're going to get far without a lot of luck.

It also wouldn't be a standard TAC competitive list with the hordes of stealers you need to dent a Knight.

Hordes of stealers..... so many juicy shooting targets

At the end of the day, if I wanted to play Adeptus Titanicus I would play Battletech because it's a better game of giant robots.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
At the end of the day, if I wanted to play Adeptus Titanicus I would play Battletech because it's a better game of giant robots.

Given how crappy Battletech is, that's quite an indictment.

At least both sides get to play with a lot of giant robots that have variable capabilities and tactics.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
At the end of the day, if I wanted to play Adeptus Titanicus I would play Battletech because it's a better game of giant robots.

That's another thing, IMO 40k should stick to what 40k is good at and make different rule sets for big games and small games if it wants to do that. 40k rules (not talking about army balance and all that jazz, just the core rules) are best for games of ~50 models per side, around 1000-2000pts. If they want to introduce big walkers and superheavies, IMO they should just make a set of rules that is more appropriate for it. D weapons are a poor attempt to fit things more powerful than S10 in to a standard 40k game, as are the superheavy rules are similarly a poor attempt to fit bigger vehicles in.

Likewise you often hear people say that if you only play smaller games, the 40k balance is a lot better... however if you want to play smaller games there are better rule options out there. IMO 40k should stick to what 40k does which is slightly-larger-than-skirmish-games or else just rewrite the rules to be more suited to big stuff.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Relapse wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I think the army that would love to face a Knight army the most would be a Gauss heavy Necron Army. Probably with Imotek so you can call down the lightning on them too.

The close second would either be a Grav-Centurians heavy Marine army.

Everyone else would be hit or miss based on what you bring.

I almost think if you're facing a Knight Army you should get a roll on the Lords of War Warlord Traits table and possibly even be using those rules just because you're facing super heavies.

My friend ran his bug army in a Blue table report against 5 Knights and won. The stealers were getting a lot of rends and his Carnifexes were getting some good hammer of wrath rolls.

If you're managing to charge with 2+ Carnies then you have a chance, however if you're managing to charge with several Carnies I can't help but feel your opponent isn't doing his/her job right.

If you get lucky with stealers then that helps, but you have to get lucky. On average it takes 27 attacks to do 1 HP of damage with rending stealers, given stealers only have 2 attacks, cost 14pts each and die in droves to stomp attacks, I don't see how you're going to get far without a lot of luck.

It also wouldn't be a standard TAC competitive list with the hordes of stealers you need to dent a Knight.

I actually think that one knight was rended to destruction by stealers and a couple others were sent well along the way, with Carnifexes finishing the job.

Seems IK armies suffer against mass flyers.

One IK army got housed by several vendettas and another could not kill the necron airforce.

Relapse wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Relapse wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
I think the army that would love to face a Knight army the most would be a Gauss heavy Necron Army. Probably with Imotek so you can call down the lightning on them too.

The close second would either be a Grav-Centurians heavy Marine army.

Everyone else would be hit or miss based on what you bring.

I almost think if you're facing a Knight Army you should get a roll on the Lords of War Warlord Traits table and possibly even be using those rules just because you're facing super heavies.

My friend ran his bug army in a Blue table report against 5 Knights and won. The stealers were getting a lot of rends and his Carnifexes were getting some good hammer of wrath rolls.

If you're managing to charge with 2+ Carnies then you have a chance, however if you're managing to charge with several Carnies I can't help but feel your opponent isn't doing his/her job right.

If you get lucky with stealers then that helps, but you have to get lucky. On average it takes 27 attacks to do 1 HP of damage with rending stealers, given stealers only have 2 attacks, cost 14pts each and die in droves to stomp attacks, I don't see how you're going to get far without a lot of luck.

It also wouldn't be a standard TAC competitive list with the hordes of stealers you need to dent a Knight.

I actually think that one knight was rended to destruction by stealers and a couple others were sent well along the way, with Carnifexes finishing the job.

So he either took a HUGE amount of stealers or was incredibly lucky

Watched TastyTaste play against several people at my birthday party the other day with his 3 knights and supporting force.

Everyone had a great time. He did, and all of his opponents enjoyed themselves.

So I think it really depends on your attitude.

 cvtuttle wrote:
Watched TastyTaste play against several people at my birthday party the other day with his 3 knights and supporting force.

Everyone had a great time. He did, and all of his opponents enjoyed themselves.

So I think it really depends on your attitude.

That's mostly because the frontline guys love their frankenhammer.

 Ravenous D wrote:

 cvtuttle wrote:
Watched TastyTaste play against several people at my birthday party the other day with his 3 knights and supporting force.

Everyone had a great time. He did, and all of his opponents enjoyed themselves.

So I think it really depends on your attitude.

That's mostly because the frontline guys love their frankenhammer.

This had nothing to do with Frontline gaming... so that makes no sense whatsoever.

Martel732 wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
At the end of the day, if I wanted to play Adeptus Titanicus I would play Battletech because it's a better game of giant robots.

Given how crappy Battletech is, that's quite an indictment.

At least Battletech has a real Warhammer. :p

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Stomp attacks wound nobz on a 2+

Stomp attack was described earlier to me as a S6 AP4 Blast template two thirds of the time. S6 on T5 of a Nob biker bounds on a 3+. But that information is dependent on that guy giving me the correct info, for all I know he lied.

I said 2+ because you were talking about Nobz, not Nob Bikers.

I personally assume that Nobz on foot are the default build, like in the codex, unless specified as riding bikes.

People aren't even playing Knights to their full potential, you can buff them with Librarians and do all kinds of crazyness.

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:

 BrotherHaraldus wrote:
Stomp attacks wound nobz on a 2+

Stomp attack was described earlier to me as a S6 AP4 Blast template two thirds of the time. S6 on T5 of a Nob biker bounds on a 3+. But that information is dependent on that guy giving me the correct info, for all I know he lied.

I said 2+ because you were talking about Nobz, not Nob Bikers.

I personally assume that Nobz on foot are the default build, like in the codex, unless specified as riding bikes.

I said this:

I did not, my best friend did, he multi assaulted three of them with two Nob biker mobs, I know he killed two right there and the third blew up when the other two did. My buddy is still laughing about it. Only a few Nobs survived the explosions, but he did a good chunk of damage in one turn. I think his death roller killed one as well. The death roller works in the movement phase so they can avoid the shields with some finagling.

Their small numbers and the fact they only get three attacks that ignore saves is their downfall. And their shield doesn't work in melee either so it is a nice place to be. Remember that AP 2 weapons get +1 on the damage chart, and they hurt eachother when grouped up.

I feel like if you put your big choppas up front to take the D attacks and save your Klaws they fall fast in melee. Besides their ranged weapons can't instant death nob bikers, so they will get to melee most of the time.

 OzTeG8ndPwRfl wrote:

He didn't use them against me, don't know if he used them against the orks, but against nobs they only wound on 3+ and are saved on a 5++ 5+ so even if he did use them against the Nobs the same thing was likely to happen.

And I responded to this.

I do not see the word 'bike' here.

Sorry if I come across as pedantic, but Stomp attacks do wound Nobz on 2+

I took a Knight with my IG in its first game against a returning player without much guilt, I took a fluffy light infantry IG list and my only other vehicle at about 1600 points was a Vendetta though to compensate.

My opponent was fielding Eldar and his list wasn't particularly optimised, but he'd managed to get it down to 3 HP at the end of turn 1 with shooting, it killed a whole bunch of Guardians and then died to his Avatar, since I was hitting on 5's, missing every attack, failing the HoW and he smashed the final 3 HP's off using the vehicle damage chart D3.

I actually ended up losing, with him killing more of my army than I killed of his in PtA. I think I'm going to be a tiny bit less merciless with my next list.

He actually enjoyed it and asked if I'd bring it again, its really not that difficult to kill so long as you can get an angle on the side armour and multiple angles. High WS MC's with a decent amount of attacks should be able to do a fair bit of damage to one.

It wouldn't be fun for me because I play Vanilla SM. Short of SG vets in a DP (which I don't use because it seems ridiculously cheesy and simple to do) I don't see how I could drop more than one.

At the same time, I've played a few strong Eldar and Necron lists lately and it seems almost impossible to win with my fluffy Space Marines, we just don't have enough good anti-tank shooting no matter how you slice it, so against a Eldar/Tau/Necron list it might give me some options playing some, but who knows.

The fact is, it isn't a balanced game at all these days, having been on the receiving end of an awesome optimized Eldar list a few weeks ago, I don't think they would struggle against a couple of Knights, and I don't think I would be able to kill one with two teams of gakky devastators and a speeder!

 mattyrm wrote:
It wouldn't be fun for me because I play Vanilla SM. Short of SG vets in a DP (which I don't use because it seems ridiculously cheesy and simple to do) I don't see how I could drop more than one.

At the same time, I've played a few strong Eldar and Necron lists lately and it seems almost impossible to win with my fluffy Space Marines, we just don't have enough good anti-tank shooting no matter how you slice it, so against a Eldar/Tau/Necron list it might give me some options playing some, but who knows.

The fact is, it isn't a balanced game at all these days, having been on the receiving end of an awesome optimized Eldar list a few weeks ago, I don't think they would struggle against a couple of Knights, and I don't think I would be able to kill one with two teams of gakky devastators and a speeder!

You can't really claim a game is unbalanced when you take a deliberately sub-optimal list, ignoring the easy solutions against optimised lists though, can you?

All you can really deduce is that by playing sub-par lists you get stomped by lists designed efficiently to win, and that's saying nothing about the player, for the record. That's pretty much to be expected, you know.

 Mr.Omega wrote:

 mattyrm wrote:
It wouldn't be fun for me because I play Vanilla SM. Short of SG vets in a DP (which I don't use because it seems ridiculously cheesy and simple to do) I don't see how I could drop more than one.

At the same time, I've played a few strong Eldar and Necron lists lately and it seems almost impossible to win with my fluffy Space Marines, we just don't have enough good anti-tank shooting no matter how you slice it, so against a Eldar/Tau/Necron list it might give me some options playing some, but who knows.

The fact is, it isn't a balanced game at all these days, having been on the receiving end of an awesome optimized Eldar list a few weeks ago, I don't think they would struggle against a couple of Knights, and I don't think I would be able to kill one with two teams of gakky devastators and a speeder!

You can't really claim a game is unbalanced when you take a deliberately sub-optimal list, ignoring the easy solutions against optimised lists though, can you?

All you can really deduce is that by playing sub-par lists you get stomped by lists designed efficiently to win, and that's saying nothing about the player, for the record. That's pretty much to be expected, you know.

Oh yeah fair enough, my friends play stronger lists than me anyway, but as I understand it, tournament professionals will say the same surely?

Tau and Eldar are top tier, vanialla Space Marines aren't, and modern 40k is definitely not balanced, I don't think that is open to debate is it?

 mattyrm wrote:

 Mr.Omega wrote:

 mattyrm wrote:
It wouldn't be fun for me because I play Vanilla SM. Short of SG vets in a DP (which I don't use because it seems ridiculously cheesy and simple to do) I don't see how I could drop more than one.

At the same time, I've played a few strong Eldar and Necron lists lately and it seems almost impossible to win with my fluffy Space Marines, we just don't have enough good anti-tank shooting no matter how you slice it, so against a Eldar/Tau/Necron list it might give me some options playing some, but who knows.

The fact is, it isn't a balanced game at all these days, having been on the receiving end of an awesome optimized Eldar list a few weeks ago, I don't think they would struggle against a couple of Knights, and I don't think I would be able to kill one with two teams of gakky devastators and a speeder!

You can't really claim a game is unbalanced when you take a deliberately sub-optimal list, ignoring the easy solutions against optimised lists though, can you?

All you can really deduce is that by playing sub-par lists you get stomped by lists designed efficiently to win, and that's saying nothing about the player, for the record. That's pretty much to be expected, you know.

Oh yeah fair enough, my friends play stronger lists than me anyway, but as I understand it, tournament professionals will say the same surely?

Tau and Eldar are top tier, vanialla Space Marines aren't, and modern 40k is definitely not balanced, I don't think that is open to debate is it?

Vanilla Space Marines certainly can be top-tier, just with greater difficulty than Eldar or Tau, which is more comparing the percentage of units that are actually competitive and/or potentially powerful with as little need of skill. Though as the trends have been showing, Tau as of late are having just as hard a time as Space Marines getting into the top positions.

Your statement may have some truth in it, but the reasons for which you stated it are fallacious. In my honest opinion, total balance in direct comparisons is impossible, but things like Orks sucking for being so old could be helped, though GW certainly are steam rolling through the line of Codexes needing to be updated. The meta changes, I expect Eldar will get trumped by something eventually, akin to how Space Wolves got trumped as the easier 'dex of 5th.

Out of interest, has anyone played IK vs IK? Would probably come down to the dice.

I like everything that affects the current meta, so bring it on.

I would much rather face three knights than an army whose main purpose is staying off table until turn 5 to get the objectives.

It is not list tailoring to have some AT in your lists. Just because GW screwed over all but a couple of vehicles does not mean you should not be prepared to facing AV13/14.

no

Honestly the more Battle Reports I read on it, the more it looks like they some how managed to pull a hat trick with making it pretty well balanced.

It's bad ass no doubt but it's not insane. They actually did a really good job surprisingly.

Also against certain armies it's a little OP, but then those armies (Orks pretty much) do actually have ways to deal with it and against certain armies it can get tabled pretty quickly ( Necrons).

Hollismason wrote:
Honestly the more Battle Reports I read on it, the more it looks like they some how managed to pull a hat trick with making it pretty well balanced.

It's bad ass no doubt but it's not insane. They actually did a really good job surprisingly.

Also against certain armies it's a little OP, but then those armies (Orks pretty much) do actually have ways to deal with it and against certain armies it can get tabled pretty quickly ( Necrons).

Ork, Nids and certian army builds, like most tac armies.
An IK as an alley, no problem.
An army of them? My lists simply can't deal with that.

Mr.Omega wrote:
You can't really claim a game is unbalanced when you take a deliberately sub-optimal list, ignoring the easy solutions against optimised lists though, can you?

Actually, that's the easiest time to claim that a game is unbalanced. If it were a balanced game, there wouldn't be blatantly sub-optimal lists.

Chaos Rule wrote:
Out of interest, has anyone played IK vs IK? Would probably come down to the dice.

The dice and who moved first (which is more dice, of course).

So just to reiterate what I'm hearing from people, basically bringing an all IK army is like bringing rock to a rock-paper-scissors battle with the one catch that you won't be able to change to paper or scissors. Thus, other people can bring Scissors or Paper and they can either get smoked or tear you apart and how you do in a tournament entirely depends on who you get paired with. Anything in between Rock-Paper-Scissors is like bringing Lizard and Spock into the equation. Thus the question is as follows: Is there any middle ground?

I'd say yes there is the middle ground of taking moderation into account when making lists so that you have a wide variety of troops and not just a bunch of OP Titan-Terminators on the battlefield but is there any other way other than limiting lists?

Here's an idea that I just thought of and by no means is this an end all, be all. But would it be fun, for a 2k point tournament to have players bring up to 3k worth of stuff and be able to swap out units depending on what you'd be facing? So even if you bring 2k of infantry and you're fighting a DE army with a bunch of venoms, you could have another 1k of armor to swap out and give yourself a fighting chance. Your scissor army has just become a Spock or Lizard army and might give you a better game than before. Anyone think this might be more fun?

I agree that it would make games and list building slightly easier to have components to do quick swaps between games. The problem is the way the points are set up, even between different guns and wargear would make this difficult.

For example; Broadsides, Hammerheads, Sniper drones, and Skyrays all occupy the same slot and are effectively specialized firepower to compliment the main force. This would be a great example of something that could be swapped out quickly if they were priced the same as each other. I think the idea is good and could work if there was a reworking or some very intensive list preparation.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Savageconvoy wrote:
I don't think it's the same issue with the Riptides and Wraithknights.
What bothers me about IK is how they make all S6 and lower weaponry in your army completely useless. You're running an army that makes all standard weapons worthless and it's doubtful if they will fire a single shot all game.

Yeah, I've never said I don't like IK armies because they're overpowered, just that they're unbalanced and render everything that's not a high strength weapon useless. You bought flamers for some of your squads? Useless. Got a sniper squad? Useless. Bought power weapons and power axes? Useless.

The Riptide and Wraithknight armies, for one, will have other models in the army. They aren't scoring and will need some sort of infantry to go along with them and since they aren't troops, you can't make an army of purely Riptides and Wraithknights. Also, you CAN hurt a RT with S3 and a Wraithknight with S5 (vs the IK of S7 front and S6 rear).

you can't have an army of pure riptides but I'm pretty sure you can get up to 5 without bringing the dataslate into it.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

Chaos Rule wrote:
Out of interest, has anyone played IK vs IK? Would probably come down to the dice.

The dice and who moved first (which is more dice, of course).

Would not the one who brought the most melta cannons win?

I've not been impresed at all with all knight armies. Everytime you lose a model that's a huge portion of your army gone.

 Toeko wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Savageconvoy wrote:
I don't think it's the same issue with the Riptides and Wraithknights.
What bothers me about IK is how they make all S6 and lower weaponry in your army completely useless. You're running an army that makes all standard weapons worthless and it's doubtful if they will fire a single shot all game.

Yeah, I've never said I don't like IK armies because they're overpowered, just that they're unbalanced and render everything that's not a high strength weapon useless. You bought flamers for some of your squads? Useless. Got a sniper squad? Useless. Bought power weapons and power axes? Useless.

The Riptide and Wraithknight armies, for one, will have other models in the army. They aren't scoring and will need some sort of infantry to go along with them and since they aren't troops, you can't make an army of purely Riptides and Wraithknights. Also, you CAN hurt a RT with S3 and a Wraithknight with S5 (vs the IK of S7 front and S6 rear).

you can't have an army of pure riptides but I'm pretty sure you can get up to 5 without bringing the dataslate into it.

Yeah, but you still need SOMETHING else (I don't have experience with Tau, but aren't all riptides non-scoring? And they're definitely not troops, so you can't have a battle that revolves ONLY around riptides). You can also hurt riptides with a much larger array of weapons.

Wraithknights are genuinely harder to kill and immune to anything less than S5 and will typically shrug off less than S7... but Wraithknights are a 240+pt Heavy Support selection. They don't score. If they get in combat with chaff, they only have 4 attacks with which to do anything (a unit of 10 gargoyles could hold up a Wraithknight for 3 or 4 phases, so put it out of action for a couple of turns). Wraithknight is a very different kettle of fish to IK's.

 tyrannosaurus wrote:
My point was that I fail to see why Imperial Knights are receiving so much hate when some existing units seem to be relatively much more powerful than most others.

All those other things get lots of hate. Why would hate for Imperial Knights confuse you?

Many seem to think it acceptable to refuse to play against a Knight Titan despite it being a legal unit choice for a regular 40k game.

The only rule to the game is that both parties should have fun. It's never unacceptable to refuse to play against an army you believe will compromise your ability to have fun. This is a multi-player game.

They're really not that big of a deal.

Hollismason wrote:
They're really not that big of a deal.

As long as you have the tools to deal with five of them, sure.

I normally add one or two with my imperial guard. They work very well for me with light armor and troops providing supports. I don't get why people think they are invincible. Mine get dropped by shooting all the time.

As far as IK armies go I have only seen one at a tournament a few weeks ago. He ran 4 or 5 Errent knights ( i forget @_@) with space marine scouts and Librarian. He chewed though an ork army but was crushed by a Chaos army with 3 Hell drakes and necron army. I find like most everything in 40k they have their strengths and weakness.

The problem with Knights is that they shift balance so heavily. They completely invalidate certain armies. How, for example, are Orks supposed to deal with it? Even the dreaded Lootas have trouble when they glance on 6s and have a 4++ to chew through.

Maybe the mekguns will change that though.

Superheavy Walkers can get locked in combat now, so drowning them in boys is perfectly doable, then just grab objectives.

 azreal13 wrote:
Superheavy Walkers can get locked in combat now, so drowning them in boys is perfectly doable, then just grab objectives.

Is that stomp still quite as devastating, or did they tone that down as well?

It's toned down in the same way as D Weapons, it can still hurt, but it isn't quite as strong as before.

Incredibly fun I imagine if you have Clowncar Daemons with invisibility or a solid Necron army. The only way to fight cheese is with more cheese.

But Knights aren't cheese.

Admittedly their power curve is lopsided, and if you're not prepared then they could be a real handful, but if you can't do the equivalent damage as needed to take out 6 Predators at 1500 points then your list probably needs work anyway.

I dont think it would be fun as you have very few models, but again I play gunline guard and thusly am used to having many models so much so i relish in having lots of dudes.

The Knights just suffer from not having a more developed codex. Imagine the best units of any army and then imagine if that and some variation of it were your only two unit choices. That's kinda what Imperial Knights are by not having more of an actual army behind them. If a player brings the max number of knights to a standard game it's not going to be fun. My experience is between 3-4 knights for an average sized game is fine, 4 if the other player likes playing hardball.

My Knights army I field 3 knights and SM allies I've converted to match my knight theme. Fair and fun games ensue; it's admittedly sub-optimal, but if you're playing for fun and not tge win it shouldn't matter.

In my opinion in a friendly game you should warn the opponent that you're bringing some armour. Don't say that it'll be an army of Knights, just that it's vehicle heavy. Not warning him would most likely result in swathes of his force being invalidated(although new scoring rules really can screw IK players over) while saying explicitly that you're bringing Knights might result in some unfun melta spam list that will be tailored just to deal with your small, not even remotely unkillable army.

Anyone who thinks that Knights are overpowered is a bad, bad player and while 7th ed made them slightly more survivable, they're still going to die to HP stripping and will lose against an army with many scoring units that will just outmaneuver and outscore them as the opponent bogs the walkers down and tarpits them while claiming all the objectives.

Knights' shooting ain't that great and they aren't -that- powerful in melee. Add AV13 and they're easy to counter with proper tactics. I wish people didn't get so biased based on mass Dakka hysteria. If they were so powerful, they'd be dominating all the tournaments by now.

I got some really good rolls and killed one in assault with a swarmlord. That's the only game I've played against one.

Ran into a knight on two separate 1000 games.

Though units and require to play around, but it was a dun challenge to deal with, and both times the knight fell to a combination of guns and tricky movement.

My tank company fights my buddy's knights all the time, and we have a blast.

10 Leman Russes maneuvering and firing to try to get an edge over 5 Imperial Knights is an impressive sight.

I had my flying Crons vs his Knight army they couldn't do anything I wrecked him. But I do put a haywire cryptek w/ each of my warr squads. They are just too good for 25 pts.

I think it is fun but I do really weird stuff in games cause I can't care less if I lose lol.

I used my wifes army vs my friends 4 knights with a lord... think is was the mini vulkan guy. Anyways I went nearly 200 hornagaunts and a tyrant..... I got 2 of them down but still lol.

7th did make the knights more survivable but with the new mission cards I think an army of 3-5 knights would struggle to complete objectives versus most other armies.

Lol, so far not much help with tactics, here's some helpful pointers for the noobs...

- Easy to outflank when drawing them in... Take one at a time, they are fast but it can be their undoing as the shield only protects one side, just let him think he's walking up to your face then hit it from multiple sides with AP1/2 weapons and give him the choice to protect his knight from one side only, melta chimeras, outflanking on speeding bikes, flyers with missiles, you name it, use it all on the one and hit it hard!...

- Use the trees, the bloody things are huge, but just hide your men on multi-level buildings and GtG against his shots, he cant charge you if he can't make base-to-base, that meaning if you deploy your men in terrain or structures that disallow his base to fit then your only being hit by his shooters, sit in a crammed invun skyshield and laugh at him cause he cant even declare to charge your men...

-Use flyers, self explanitory, watch your light flyers, his 2 heavy stubbers will snap shot + glance your rear on 6's...

- Lock them in combat, yeah D-weapons slaughter stuff, but his HOW and regular attacks can only be directed at 1 model at a time (so great poss 5 guys dead)... Sure its not a guaranteed safety measure as he will be able to stomp your other models, but stay a few turns in combat and he's chances of raping the rest of your army are diminished... Some fearless or stubborn units will be handy, or have re-enforcements handy to throw into the fray (great for nids with plenty of suicidal gaunts)... Also marines make great knight stoppers, as his stomp hits will generally cause AP4 hits so you'll be getting your 3+ saves anyway. Melta bombs and haywire grenades...

- D weapons, a Shadowsword will insta kill one of these monstrosities on a 6!...

- Ram it with a super heavy tank, seen it done, its funny cause the knight will have to take it first before it can strike back, just roll high!...

- Fight fire with fire, take one of your own, they make for interesting duels...

Take it or leave it, this is not guaranteed safety, but will make the 5 knight butt-rape hurt less...

Not bad advice, but you just necro'd a 2 month old thread