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https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2021/03/warhammer-40k-freeblade-lance-rules.html

Bols shared the pages

The Warlord trait, Echoes from the Past, initially seemed underwhelming. Faction traits aren't nearly as strong as Warlord traits. However, you actually gain the faction key word, so you can use their stratagems and relics. That could lead to some interesting builds. My mind immediately gravitated toward a Raven Castellan, but I'm not sure you can afford to lose Ion-Bulwark.

You probably need a collections of different units to spread out the most useful qualities and minimize the burdens. A couple Helverins would soak up the worst burdens (by picking two each). Then three Questoris Knights could be Legendary Knights; the first two take the remaining 4 qualities and the third taking any combination. Finally, you could pick two least detrimental burdens and double up on one.

Krast is my go-to House, and they have a solid relic, warlord trait, and strategem as well. Re-roll hits in combat with something like a Magera or Gallant is really strong. That being said going Hawkshroud for their friendly overwatch/heroic intervention or Terryn for a long-bomb charge unit wouldn't be bad at all either.

May be interesting since one of the Qualities is one of the few ways to have ObSec aside from the Banner of Macharius Triumphant.
I used them during 8th and usually the opponent underestimate them, preferring to focus on the more dangerous in term of damage.
Not sure it will work in 9th however

It's a nice buff for canis rex too although I'm not sure how his qualities and burdens work.

That's an interesting idea with Hawkshroud, and I wonder how their stratagem interacts with the Mysterious Guardian quality. Rules as written, you'd get 2d6" with a minimum 6", but GW will probably rule that you take one or the other. Wait, hang on, how did the rule interact with normal characters getting 3"? There's no FAQ on it.

Anyway, I guess it's worth considering which qualities or combinations are specifically valuable.

Sworn to Quest is the biggest one. Freeblade armies can have 3 ObSec Knights with the Banner of Macharius Triumphant.

Mysterious Guardian is interesting, but I'm not sure how it'd be best used. Maybe for Crusaders following behind some midfielders, and you could use Bonded Oathsmen to drag in some Armigers too. That'd make assaulting any Knights really intimidating. Maybe you hit a critical mass if two Knights have it, with some Warglaives, where assaulting any Knight brings the entire army over to stomp on you.

Legendary Hero is pretty good for Gallants, since you'll probably save a CP on re-rolling charge ranges at some point. I don't see a single re-roll useful besides.

Maybe you take Last of their Line to up your damage with blast weapons against hordes, but in the majority of match-ups this won't even trigger.

Peerless Warrior is potentially powerful, but it's too random. I don't know if you'd want to double up on this because you can't plan on it.

Indomitable is bland and weak, but maybe it's better than Peerless Warrior and Last of their Line simply because it's consistent. Combined with Mechanicus oath, it might be nifty for avoiding getting bracketed.

If I had to pick two to waste on Armigers, I'd probably give them Peerless Warrior and Indomitable. At least when Last of their Line works, it's consistent and useful. Taking one on a model with multiple blast templates, or on a Gallant, is a good pocket pick against hordes.

For burdens, I think the least detrimental is probably Impetuous Nature. If the model moves, it has to move closer to the enemy. That doesn't mean move directly towards them, or even at all. You're moving toward the objective where the enemy is going to be anyway. The only thing it stops you from doing is moving past them to the back line, and even then only if it triggers. Like-wise, Driven to Slaughter basically doesn't affect Gallants. Finally, Weary Machine Spirit isn't so bad on Mechanicus Knights, since you're likely to use Machine Spirit Resurgent anyway.

In summary, the burdens basically don't matter, and mostly you get ObSec as a faction trait. Echoes from the Past and Favoured Knight open up some very interesting combinations. I'd say this is a pretty enticing way to play Knights, and it's tempting me to expand my Knights a bit to play it (whenever game shops open up again).

 DarkHound wrote:
The Warlord trait, Echoes from the Past, initially seemed underwhelming. Faction traits aren't nearly as strong as Warlord traits. However, you actually gain the faction key word, so you can use their stratagems and relics. That could lead to some interesting builds. My mind immediately gravitated toward a Raven Castellan, but I'm not sure you can afford to lose Ion-Bulwark.

You probably need a collections of different units to spread out the most useful qualities and minimize the burdens. A couple Helverins would soak up the worst burdens (by picking two each). Then three Questoris Knights could be Legendary Knights; the first two take the remaining 4 qualities and the third taking any combination. Finally, you could pick two least detrimental burdens and double up on one.

That's a nice idea - it's also worth noting you can stack exiled in shame -1 to the roll indomitable +1ld and the knight lance character +1ld to pass the burden role on a 11 or less but 11 or less. But also note your lance can make one knight a character to make a armiger a lance character now that your warlord being an armiger isn't so much of a problem

I thought about combining Indomitable and Exiled in Shame, but the chance of failure is still 8%, or 1 in 12 turns, which is too high for me. You will hit it at least once in a tournament run, and the results can just be game losing. It's a bad afternoon waiting to happen.

By the way, if you make an Armiger your Warlord for the lance then you don't get the full refund. Having any Titanic units makes the detachment cost 6, and the Warlord must have Titanic to refund 6 or else it refunds 3. If you're getting rules-lawyery, you could try to argue that Heirlooms stratagem makes another Questoris a character and you nominate that one as your Warlord instead of your character Armiger. You can't do it with Exalted Court, though, because that specifies 'after choosing your Warlord'.

@darkhound

Legendary hero it's a reroll per battle round so if your going second a free reroll of the invul save is never a bad thing. Other than that a thermal cannon damage roll can be nice on occasion

Peerless warrior is strong on any half melee knights. If I think of my castigator 50%I'm 2" faster which is great for getting me into combat if not I'm becoming insane in melee or shooting which is even better

Indomitable big advantages is it reduces how likely you are to fail the burden role take this on a questoris lance character and its failing 3/36 roles 1/36 if you have the exiled in shame burden compared to 6/36 without. And having an extra wound is never a bad thing. Proportionality better on an armigers as at ld 8 it takes them from a 15/36 fail to a 10/36 fail

Mysterious guardians wants to be on a non character warglaive as these can't heroically intervene so you get more value out if it

Sworn to a quest is good

Last of their line is a dud in most matches

Burden wise the least dangerous is weary machine spirit because if your mechanicus its overulled by the machine spirit resurgent strategem.

Exiled in shame makes it less likely to go wrong but worse when it does great in an armidger because your not going to strat it anyway

Driven to slaughter first pick if you have a gallant not so great on anything else

Haunted by failing is surprisingly strong it takes your hits from 66.6% to 62 8% (because 2/3 of your rerolls still hit) assuming Bs3+

Impetuous nature is great on a helvarin whoops I had to charge everything and I didn't make it and I'm sat on an objective so I'm not moving

Obsessed with vengence you can manage with carefull positioning

Legendary Warrior is once per round? Holy Machinegod, I thought it was once per game like the Warlord traits normally are. That's truly insane and easily worth taking on anything that intends to charge.

I know you're going to fail the Burden roll roughly 1/3 of the time, which means if you've got 3 Knights then somebody is acting up every single round. My strategy is to minimize that cost to improve consistency.

I'll have to think on how I'd actually build a list, but it's hard to fit 3 Knights into 1500.

No that's not right your overestimateing

Assuming your 3 knights are lance character they have ld10 and therefore fail 6/36 or 16.6% of the time or 1 will be expected to fail every other round (this assumes none have indomitable or exiled in shame that lower this)

A non character armiger without exiled in shame or Indomitable is roughly a 3rd (15/36 or 42%) its why I advocate sticking exiled in shame on them as your unlikely to strategem them and it make them 10/36 fail or 27.7%.

Knights have Ld9 (being a character doesn't improve this), and only one can get Ld10 from Indomitable. You have to roll under, so that's a 27% chance to fail. It's closer to 1/4 than 1/3, but 1/3 lines up more cleanly and I hadn't double checked the math.

EDIT: I was mistaken, I'm sorry about that. I missed that line in the new text. Characters do in fact get +1Ld. I still think my strategy holds. Exiled in Shame is too dangerous for large Knights. Instead, in my example list, the burdens barely matter when they trigger.

Here's my attempt a Freeblade list. It's extremely complicated to write one since there are so many moving pieces to track.The list choices should be pretty straight forward. I don't think it's optimal by any means, but you do need to fit in at least one Armiger to get to double up on Sworn to Quest. I can imagine lists that go -8CP taking 3 Warlord Traits and 4 Relics, basically eschewing stratagems for consistent buffs. That would make for a very fun narrative army to play, if nothing else, with each Knight being extremely customized.

I had a little 1000pt tourney i was considering a knight list for so useing the new freeblade rules and assuming canis rex can be altered

Imperialis freeblade lance

Knight lance character Armiger Warglaive Warlord rrlucs Armour of sacred ion warlord trait ion bulwark qualities peerless warrior indomitable burden exiled in shame

Canis rex quality sworn to a quest legendery hero burden obsessed with vengence

2x Armiger (both qualities 2x Random) (burden 2x exiled in shame, 1 x driven to slaughter 1x haunted by failure)

1 x armiger qualities 2x random quality burden weary machine spirit impetuous nature

In your list, Canis needs to be the Warlord or you lose 3CP (non-titanic Warlords can only refund 3CP, and having a titanic unit costs 6). You can still make a Warglaive a character and give it your one free relic, but you can't use Exalted Court or Heirlooms on Armigers.

I don't think Freeblade Lance gives you very much at lower points. Qualities aren't very impactful on Armigers, and you only really benefit from the new rules when you're stacking repeated Qualities. I also think you're obligated to use Echoes of the Past and Favoured Knight to milk as much unique value as possible to overcome the downsides.

This is the leanest possible Freeblade Lance I could come up with. I dropped the Banner to get the Mechanicus Oath buff and free up a Relic spot. I can't quite fit another Sworn to Quest in, due to the order you assign Qualities; once you get a third Armiger, every Knight can have ObSec. The list becomes much stronger at 1750+. For this, I think you'd have to play-test to fine tune which Knight needs ObSec and the right Relic.Actually, given the challenge of making it as lean as possible, you could cut down to this for 1210 points and consider some allies. This is the smallest way to get 2 ObSec Knights. This would be crushing at a 1250pt tournament, since you cover your biggest weakness. At 1500, I could easily see an allied Guard or AdMech patrol with some artillery to cover the backfield.

I just realized a thing about ObSec: have GW broken the Qualities versus the Banner of Macharius?

I'm going by memory since I'm not at home, but isn't the Quality written as "This model have ObSec" and the Banner has "this model have ObSec and count as 10 models"?

The new rules said that you need a single ObSec model to use the rule, and then you can count the total model near the objective. Does it mean that the Banner specifications of "count as 10" is useless, or on the opposite side that is much stronger?
I don't remember if in 9th there is a specifications about how many model a Titanic unit counts for

1) it hasn't changed since 8th it was something that many people played wrong - check the wording in your 8th Ed codexs

2) if both players have obsec you count number of models.
Therefore counting as 10 is explicitly much better than just having obsec and counting as 1.

Particularly as with a large knight base you can obscure a large area of the objective.

So in practice a quality obsec knight overules units with more models that don't have obsec. But loses to 2 models one of which has obsec.

The counts as 10 one doesnt lose until the enemy has atleast 11 models in range of the objective 1 of which has obsec.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 DarkHound wrote:
In your list, Canis needs to be the Warlord or you lose 3CP (non-titanic Warlords can only refund 3CP, and having a titanic unit costs 6). You can still make a Warglaive a character and give it your one free relic, but you can't use Exalted Court or Heirlooms on Armigers.

I don't think Freeblade Lance gives you very much at lower points. Qualities aren't very impactful on Armigers, and you only really benefit from the new rules when you're stacking repeated Qualities. I also think you're obligated to use Echoes of the Past and Favoured Knight to milk as much unique value as possible to overcome the downsides.

This is the leanest possible Freeblade Lance I could come up with. I dropped the Banner to get the Mechanicus Oath buff and free up a Relic spot. I can't quite fit another Sworn to Quest in, due to the order you assign Qualities; once you get a third Armiger, every Knight can have ObSec. The list becomes much stronger at 1750+. For this, I think you'd have to play-test to fine tune which Knight needs ObSec and the right Relic.

Spoiler:

Imperial Knights Freeblade Lance Super Heavy Detachment, 1495pts; 8 CP

Knight Gallant 400
Mechanicus Freeblade
Q: Sworn to Quest
Legendary Hero
B: Driven to Slaughter
Warlord: Echoes of the Past: Krast
Relic: Sainted Ion
Favoured Knight: Paragon Gauntlet (-2 CP)

Knight Errant, 420
Mechanicus Freeblade
Q: Sworn to Quest
Legendary Hero
B: Haunted by Failure
Exalted: Cold Eradication (-1 CP)

Knight Preceptor, 405
Mechanicus Freeblade
Q: Mysterious Guardian
Peerless Warrior
B: Weary Machine Spirit
Heirloom: Helm Dominatus (-1 CP)

Armiger Warglaive 135
Mechanicus Freeblade
Q: Last of Their Line
B: Random

Armiger Warglaive 135
Mechanicus Freeblade
Q: Indomitable
B: Random

Actually, given the challenge of making it as lean as possible, you could cut down to this for 1210 points and consider some allies. This is the smallest way to get 2 ObSec Knights. This would be crushing at a 1250pt tournament, since you cover your biggest weakness. At 1500, I could easily see an allied Guard or AdMech patrol with some artillery to cover the backfield.

Spoiler:

Imperial Knights Freeblade Lance Super Heavy Detachment, 1210pts; 9 CP

Knight Gallant 400
Mechanicus Freeblade
Q: Sworn to Quest
Legendary Hero
B: Driven to Slaughter
Warlord: Echoes of the Past: Krast
Relic: Sainted Ion
Favoured Knight: Paragon Gauntlet (-2 CP)

Knight Preceptor, 405
Mechanicus Freeblade
Q: Sworn to Quest
Mysterious Guardian
B: Weary Machine Spirit
Heirloom: Helm Dominatus (-1 CP)

Armiger Warglaive 135
Mechanicus Freeblade
Q: Peerless Warrior
B: Random

Armiger Warglaive 135
Mechanicus Freeblade
Q: Last of Their Line
B: Random

Armiger Warglaive 135
Mechanicus Freeblade
Q: Indomitable
B: Random

Oh I recognise it costs 3 CP but with only 1 questoris and getting one cp a turn for rotate ion shields I don't need 6. Particularly as I'm not paying for relics or warlord traits. While making an armiger 2+4++ +1ld and capable of heroic intervention is a reasonable buff to it

I mean with 4 armigers how much CP do you need?

I'm not sure mechanically it is competative because knights themselves are not. If I'm running knights it's more for fun as a non serious tournament list. Also the event I'm thinking of is 1000pts so that's what I'm focused on. At the 2000 level I'm not taking knights to many eradicators.
.

U02dah4 wrote:
Oh I recognise it costs 3 CP but with only 1 questoris and getting one cp a turn for rotate ion shields I don't need 6. Particularly as I'm not paying for relics or warlord traits. While making an armiger 2+4++ +1ld and capable of heroic intervention is a reasonable buff to it

I mean with 4 armigers how much CP do you need?

I'm not sure mechanically it is competative because knights themselves are not. If I'm running knights it's more for fun as a non serious tournament list. Also the event I'm thinking of is 1000pts so that's what I'm focused on. At the 2000 level I'm not taking knights to many eradicators.

Don't take a defeatist attitude. Knights do have competitive lists and have done well at major tournaments. If you want to win, then you have to optimize and play intelligently.

Paying 3 CP to give Ion Bulwark to an Armiger is a losing trade before the game starts. When I run my 4 Warglaives, they use 3 or 4 CP on Pack Tactics and Pack Hunters and re-rolling charges. Think about it this way, instead of giving 1 Armiger +1 invul, you could give all your Armigers charge re-rolls and +2 attacks.

Besides Rotate Ion Shield, Canis will also need Capacitor Charge, and will probably use a command re-roll somewhere. You may also need to spend 2 CP on Full Tilt to tie up some guns on turn 1. You should expect to spend 4 or 5 CP on turn 1.

Again, at 1k pts, I don't think Freeblades are worth the draw-backs. I also don't think that Canis is going to be able to pick qualities. However, I think Knights are significantly more competitive at lower points because they're such a heavy skew list. You could run your same list and just use an Imperialis faction or custom house. You'd give your character Armiger the Banner of Macharius and make another Armiger a Freeblade with Sworn to Quest. You still get 2 ObSec units and eliminate your biggest weakness. Then you just leverage your overwhelming armor and focus on their anti-tank threads for a very easy tournament run.

So, I'm looking back at the House Raven + Metalica synergies to cement the purpose of combining the factions (and represent the unity of my homebrew). I plan to only bring one Knight, and I'm going back and forth with the new Warlord traits and Relics.

In particular, for Relics, I'm looking at the new battlecannon with flat 3 damage and the new thermal cannon with 2+d6 damage. For Warlord traits, I'm considering Cold Eradication against Ion Bulwark. House Raven also gets access to strats for blast weapons to roll 3d6 discard 1 shots, and the Paladin has a strat for flat 3 damage too. The trick is that you can get basically any of the effects from the relics and warlord traits through stratagems, so you have to figure the ones you'd use most should be permanent.

The way I'm leaning right now is Cold Eradication with the Raven battlecannon. The math on the battlecannon alone outpaces the thermal cannon against anything with an invul, and it's significantly better at against infantry. Compared to Ion Bulwark, I'd like to shoot every turn, but I'm not always going to need 4++. A Raven Knight also gets access to the Shroudpsalm Canticle to get cover and get 4+ against AP-2 guns.

With that loadout, a Paladin gets an average of 8.1 wounds against T7 3+/5++ (compared to 6.3 without Cold Eradication, and 4.2 without the relic either). Given that it does discrete 3 damage, that's an extremely reliable 6. The analogous Errant does 7.4 damage, then 8.8 at half range (18"). I've never actually run a Paladin (who has?), but I expect the board-clearing range will help keep it safe from meltaguns early on.

For reference, this is roughly what I'm looking at playing at 1500, depending on the new AdMech codex (whenever that decides to come out):

For me, it's a question of what the Knight adds to an AdMech force. My personal answer is staying power and a good solid front-line unit. AdMech have a -lot- of good long-range firepower, but their frontline units are either skirmishers like the cyber-horses or priests. Both are good at their roles but are not very good at holding ground. That's where a Knight can come in.

I don't really think that paying 450+ points for a knight to hide in the backfield sniping with its one rapid-fire battle cannon is worth it. I used to really look down on melee weapons on Knights generally, preferring the Crusader style for more firepower and stomps for close combat. But I'm starting to think that the Deathgrip strategem with a thunderstrike gauntlet would be really good against characters such as an Archon or a smash Canoness.

That's a fair point, but I'm thinking the opposite: what do AdMech bring to Knights? My goal with that patrol was to bring some board presence and utility that the Knights lack, rather than firepower. Again, it's not a tuned Patrol (I can actually fit in a Fusilave for 5 of the Vanguard by shuffling stuff around) since I'm waiting for the Omnissiah-forsaken codex to release.

What I'm struggling with is that I want to use one of the new Raven relics. So, options I have on the table:

Errant with D2+d6 relic gun and Cold Eradication. This is the premier anti-tank, with access to re-roll wounds strat, but doesn't benefit from other offensive strats and has middling to awful performance against infantry. That being said, its anti-tank effectiveness runs up hard against invul saves, especially compared to the Paladin.

Paladin with D3 damage gun and Cold Eradication. This thing does real damage against all-comers. While the most points expensive, it doesn't need to be fed CP offensively. That being said, each permanent benefit won't apply in some situations and can be replicated by a stratagem, so I can see an argument for swapping one or the other. Still, I think most armies will have something that D3 damage to.

Preceptor with Spirit of Kolossi (re-roll one hit or wound or damage per phase) and a non-Cold Eradication trait. The cheapest one points-wise, but by far the hungriest for CPs. It's the most versatile, and can be buffed right behind the Paladin in any situation at the cost of more CP.

The idea that I keep coming back to is CP hunger. The Paladin comes out on top against almost all targets without spending CP, which leaves room for more tricks. With regards to sniping, it's not that the Paladin is going to use its range to stay out of the fight, but that it can move toward the best melee target without sacrificing shooting at the best battlecannon target. The Errant and Preceptor have to approach their ranged targets and pick from nearby melee targets to try to maximize their efficiency.

Rules question for you knowledgeable folks!

If I make one of my knights a Freeblade, can I also change their allegiance? If I take House Krast, can I have a Questor Imperialis Freeblade that is able to take Imperialis specific warlord traits or relics?

Yup, however in that case your detachment loses its Questor Mechanicus oath bonus which regenerates 1 wound per turn. All the models have to have the same oath to get that bonus. So long as the rest of the models in the detachment are Krast, then a Freeblade doesn't prevent them from getting the Krast tradition.

As an aside, you can mix houses in a single detachment, you just lose the house tradition (but gain access to relics, traits, and stratagems).

Thanks! That was really well written.

I'm hoping that Knights get ObSec at some point and make the Banner of Macharius Triumphant unnecessary, but until I learn one way or the other its going to be a consideration.

Yeah, youcan actually give two models ObSec while retaining a house tradition. You need to take two Freeblades; you take one as Imperialis and give it the Banner, and you select the other to have Qualities and give it Sworn to Quest. Of course, then there aren't many other Knights remaining and you're pretty close to giving them all ObSec in a Freeblade Lance. If you really need a tradition on a particular Knight, you've got Echoes from the Past.

I think that Freeblades are the best way to run pure Knights at 1000+ points now. Personally, I'm leaning hard into the Raven+Metalica combo which seems really strong. AdMech canticles are going to be otherwise exclusive to pure AdMech, so they'll probably see a buff which then applies to Raven. It certainly feels like Book of Rust was a big injection of options for Knights.

Has that new expansion made much of an impact on how to run knights? Previously I never though freeblades were worth it.

Running a single Freeblade hasn't changed, it's extremely niche.

Now, if your entire army is Freeblades then you get a bunch of perks; particularly, you can pick two Qualities per Knight and game the process to get duplicate Qualities. So give all your Knights ObSec and Herioc Intervention at 6" and make your Knights unapproachable. If you need it, the Freeblade Lances get a nifty Warlord trait to still count as a Knight House to get their tradition, strats, and access to their relic. And hey, you can even pay 2CP to give a Knight a second relic, bringing you to potentially 4 in one army.

It's certainly an interesting army, and Knights recently posted a tournament win, so I expect some Freeblade Lance to post a tournament result in the next few weeks. Knights have the strongest match-up against Dark Eldar of any faction (only a 53% loss rate!).

The new AdMech codex is basically entirely revealed now, and it's got a big impact on Knights. I thought I'd break down some of interesting developments for those not keeping up with AdMech.

The AdMech's faction buffs became restricted to pure AdMech armies, except they can still pay for one Mechanicus Oath Superheavy Auxiliary detachment. It's a minor point for primarily Knight players, since it has no bearing on full Superheavy Detachments. As we already knew, the meat is with House Raven and Forgeworld Metalica: you can pay one CP per Knight unit to count as Adeptus Mechanicus and gain Canticles. So, minimum investment of 5 CP (2 for the Metalica patrol, 1 for each mandatory unit in a Lance). What do you get?

There are 6 canticles, and you pick one to apply at the start of each Battle Round (after knowing who goes first). In order of best to worst, they are:

Everyone has Light Cover.

Each shooting unit can re-roll one hit, one wound, and one damage roll.

Roll an extra D6 and discard one for each advance or charge.

Enemies have -1 to hit in melee.

5+++ against mortal wounds (and ignore modifiers on combat attrition tests).

+1S in melee.

They are extremely powerful on Knights and each CP spent on Canticles is worth 2 or 3 CP in re-rolls.

Of course, you're also paying for an AdMech patrol. This is where the other half of the buffs come in: Skitarii units (most infantry and vehicles) pick from 4 buffs at the start of each Battle Round. They each have a draw back, cannot be picked twice.

+1 save, -3" movement.

+3" movement, -1 save.

+1 BS, -1 WS.

+1 WS, -1 BS.

Those are pretty easy to remember, and it does mean your whole army can go +1 save on turn 1. Importantly, you do not need to pick one every turn. I think it'll be pretty common to only use +1 save and +1 BS.

Now what should you do with the AdMech patrol? Knights lack board presence and objective security, and these are both things AdMech can do really well. The key units to look at for board presence are Raiders, Sterylizors/Skystalkers, Infiltrators; they are extremely mobile and built for harassing. Vanguard and Rangers can be built as either 5 man ObSec missiles (15" move with Metalica's auto 6" advance strat and +3" move Docrtina), or as big 20 man ObSec blocks. You may also look into Ironstriders, which will continue to be AdMech's strongest shooting.

Here's an example of my 1500pt list:The idea is the Crusader, Vanguard, and Manipulus are a rock solid firebase together. The Manipulus buffs the Vanguard to ignore AP1 and 2, and can repair the Crusader D3 wounds per turn. The Raiders and Infiltrators both have a pre-game move to provide board control and the Dunecrawler sits at the home objective. Basically every unit can advance and shoot, pretty much everything shoots and fights in melee. Playing an AdMech list is all about timing those buffs to maximize your effectiveness.

There have been a few good showings by Imperial Knights players at tournaments recently. The lists are interesting, but I'm wondering if anyone knows what Secondaries people are taking to do well. I really struggle with these.

I had a test game for the new ObSec rules last night. I was running a Freeblade Lance:

Magaera with Helm Dominatus and Landstrider
Magaera with 2+ save and 'counts as Krast'

3x Warglaives with Melta and 6" Heroic Intervention
4x Lightning Lock Moirax

I'll spare you the laundry list of Qualities and Burdens, it basically puts most of the bad stuff on the Moirax who don't care if you charge worse or can't use stratagems on them.

I was playing against an infantry-heavy Custodes list. I'm not super up on their stuff but he had a lot of axes for Str 8 melee, a squadron of 3 bikers, and two banners to guide the teleporting terminators in. Normally that would be hard to deal with as they are all ObSec. However now that Armigers count as 5 and ObSec, the 3-man size of Custodes really started working against him.

I'll admit that this isn't a very good match up for the Custodes. I pretty much stomped him, tabling him on turn 5 to farm out the Grind them Down secondary. He didn't have the hitting power to stop me, I lost one Warglaive to a dreadnaught charge and that's it. The big learning point for me was the difference that being board control gave to the Knights. You pretty much have to kill them to take an objective now, and that's not always easy.

finished a 65 player tournament(wargames for warriors)and placed 6th (going 5-1) with a Metallica-Raven list. This was before the new rules.

GSC 59-28 win (went second)
DE 39-30 win (went second)
White scars 57-35 win (went second)
Raven Guard 48-93 loss (went first)
Deamons 65-63 win (went first)
Death Guard 55-35 win (went second)


I took engage in all fonts, and grind them down most of the games. Followed by psychic ritual when they didn't have any psykers, or raise the banners against the death guard.

Canticles are solid gold on Knights! The Metallica strats for auto advancing 6",expanding the radiation 6" and enriched rounds are the big money makers. Hats off to my opponents for being amazingly great men. I had a blast all weekend!