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Btw, Knights are a class of Titan. Since they first appeared in 1990, they have always been referred to as Knight-class Titans, the smallest of the Titan classes used by the Imperium. So, referring to Imperial Knights as Titans is correct. And while not all superheavy walkers are "Titans", there are very few examples of any that aren't in the current game (the FW Ork Mega-Dred being the only one I can think of, atm).

Some gargantuan creatures are referred to as Bio-Titans, when they fill the same role as Imperial Titans. Calling a Carnifex a "Titan" is just being facetious.

SJ

*** you cannot tarpit a knight ****

If you cannot harm a vehicle, you may not assault it as per the rules. It has front AV13, and is a walker, so unless you are strength 7, have armourbane, haywire melee attacks, or strengthy 4 or more with rending, you may not assault a knight, and cannot tarpit it.

That in mind, the models that do have that criteria are generally not considered "cheap" so are not usually considered units for tarpitting.

lets go over many of the options:

Troops

Considering knights are 375 points each or so, genestealers by that logic are cheap. You can get 20 genestealers with adrenal glands [2 squads of 10] and its still less than the cost of 1 knight. Normally I would not recommend taking adrenal glands, but if you are fighting solely knights the option to get an assault off and be +1 strength on your charge round means 10 stealers with 30 str 5 attacks, which is a lot better than 10 stealers with 30 str 4 attacks against av 13. 30 attacks will see 20 hits, you might get ~ 3-4 rends. At strength 4 1/3rd of those rends will glance, which is 1 glance on average. Not too hot. At strength 5 1/3rd of your rends will glance and another 1/3rd will pen, so maybe 1 glance 1 pen. This is okay. Obviously not great, but okay. If you could charge a knight with all 20 you would probably average 2 glances and 2 pens, if you roll lucky on the 2 pens you -might- kill a knight in 1 charge round. With infiltrate you can be very close to the knights at the start of the game, they might charge you, and will probably shoot at you.

Fast Attack

Crones. Crones get haywire missiles, and vector strike. I would take crones for the missiles, I would fire 2 missiles a turn and ignore vector strikes until out of missiles. 3 crones costs a little less than 1.5 knights but 6 haywire missiles a turn is pretty much close to killing 1 knight a turn if you fire from a facing that does not have a shield up and they are out of cover. Vector striking is strength 8, but you average 3 strikes, if you get the rear armor each one has a 50/50 shot of doing something, if you get side or front you have a 33% shot of doing something. I would go for the vector strike over the tentaclid only if you can get the rear armor on the vector strike.

Shrikes, you could take shrikes with rending claws, they do have a chance to hurt a knight, and get many attacks on the charge. The problem is they are relatively expensive for this speed, and a D weapon will mess them up, they will survive better against stomp attacks, but you will lose 1-2 a turn from the D melee weapon. That said shrikes with Adrenal glands, scy tals and rending claws come in at a cost where you can get about 10 of them for the cost of 1 knight. The issue here is at toughness of 4 the knights RFBC is going to instakill you if it hits you. In melee these are slightly worse for their cost than genestealers as for the same cost you get 50 strength 5 rending attacks on the charge from 10. Once in melee however the Stomp attacks are only str6 ap 4 so you wont get saves, but it wont be killing a 3 wound model off the bat, the D weapon from the knight however will.

Harpy- if you take a heavy venom cannon you could hurt a knight, for maybe 1 hp a turn, not worth it.

Spore mine clusters- If you take a brood of 6 of these, they will cause a strength 9 hit from deepstriking. I would rather take crones, but if your list is filled up elsewhere in points these things cost almost nothing for a 1 off hit at str 9.

Elites

Venomthropes- not because they hurt knights, but because they give cover making the rest of your models which -can- hurt knights live longer.

Haruspex- such an interesting model, but rather useless all around. It has a tongue attack that could -maybe- glance rear knight armor, but considering the range it wont happen in a game. it does have crushing claws but at only 3 attacks its not that impressive for the cost. 1 hit from a d weapon will instakill you, and will happen before this model gets a chance to hit, do not bother.

Lictors- can hurt a knight, they do have rending. On the charge you get 5 attacks, for the cost you can get about 7 lictors to a knight which nets about 35 attacks. The attacks are at strength 6 so any of your attacks that rend will glance or pen, which means on average you will see 2 glances or pens from 7 lictors charging a knight in 1 round. There are worse options, but this is not that great.

Zoanthropes- You can get 7 zoanthropes for the cost of 1 knight. They have warplance, which is sweet. At BS 4 you will average 4-5 hits on a knight from 7 zoanthropes, if it has its ion shield in your direction it will save half of those, and you will go on to glance/pen most likely with all the shots. At toughness 4 a knights RFBC will instakill you if you fail your save. A knight could probably kill 2 zoanthropes a turn of firing because of this. better yet zoanthropse are ML2 so you get another psychic power, you want to get paroxysm if you are lucky. -d3 BS and WS to 1 knight is a big deal, as knights are expensive and reprsent you neutering 1/4th to 1/5th of your opponents army with 1 power.

Hiveguard- Knights are a reason to once again take hiveguard. The impaler cannon will ignore cover saves, you don't need line of sight and is strength 8. You can get 7 Hive guard for the cost of 1 knight. Hiveguard did take a BS hit so if you had 7 hiveguard total and they all fired at a knight your looking at 3-4 hits. From the front armor thats 1-2 glances, and it will save 1 one of those from its ion shield or cover. Not so great...but still ranged and possible to hurt. However hiveguard have this thing called a shock cannon...factoring in the hiveguards BS, the size of the blast, and the size of a knights base, if you put the template directly onto the knight the chance of missing is pretty low. If you roll an arrow you still have a 20/36 chance to hit from scattering. Which means you will probably hit with 2/3rds of the shockcannons with hawyire. You can get about 6 of these guys for the cost of 1 knight and have some points to spare. so thats 4 glances a turn before shields/cover at medium range. Another thing to consider is you are Toughness 6, although the RFBC can ignore your armor save, it will not instakill you. If you have cover or a venomthrope you will get a save, and not die to 1 hit.

Heavy-

Carnifex. The ranged options that can hurt a knights front/side armor are bioplasma (12" range) and heavy venom cannons. Given the info above with the shockcannon the venom cannon has the same chance to hit, but is str9 so it has a lower chance of an effect than hiveguard. Meaning if you are using your carnifexes solely for shooting knights you are wasting points.

You can get 3 carnifex with crushing claws/scy talons for about 1.1knights. Carnifex have special hammer of wrath rules that mean if you charge a knight you will get a bunch of free high strength hits before the knight can attack. When the knight goes to attack it will instakill 1-2 of your carnifex. The crushing claws is because the knight will strike before you, so you might as well take them to get armorbane since your striking last anyways, make those strikes count.

You could take heavy venom cannons as well, and get a glance or two on the way on or at least be threatening from range as well. I think either way is good. Just try and setup your charges on hurt knights with carnifex if you can. Really the charge is more important for your carnifex than any other unit that will charge a knight due to the bonus hammer of wrath hits at high strength, you have to be very mindful of this when setting up the charge and make sure you have some low quality unit infront of your carnifex to protect them from being charged first [gants].

Exocrine- 6 shots to glance the front of a knight who may have cover/ion shields is not a good plan.

Tyrranofex-
Expensive, but you can get the rupture cannon. This is your best ranged weapon against knights, as it has lots of range, and is strength 10. With 2 shots you will average 1 hit, the knight will probably have cover or ion shields. With a 2+ save you can ignore RFBC, but the thermal lance or whatever will hurt you, slowly. You will purchase electroshock grubs, you will move forward into assault range if you can, you will not assault. If you get assaulted you will overwatch with a rupture cannon and d3 auto hitting haywire attacks from the electrogrubs. You don't want to get assaulted, but if its going to happen have a chance to hurt the knight pretty bad in the process. With luck your overwatch will kill a knight at 2-3 HPs.

HQ

Deathleaper- can hurt knights thanks to rending, cant be targetted by template shooting weapons due to his special rules. Will get instagibbed by a D-melee weapon, not worth it.

Hive tyrant- Take wings, the mobility will help. Do not bother with twin linked brain leech worms, you will only be able to at best glance rear armor of a knight. Yes with wings you can get to the rear armor, but two twin linked brain leach worms will shoot 12 times, and get on average 11 hits, will average 1-2 glances before cover / ion shield. Not very good. Look at tyrranofex above, you take electroshock grubs. They ignore cover, they auto hit, they probably cause 1 glance, an unlikely pen or unlikely no effect, this is better odds than firing 2 sets of twin linked devourers with brain leech worms at the same target. You are ML2, maybe you will get warplance or paroxysm. I would not bother with close combat upgrades. your Initiative is already high enough to strike first, so lash whip is out, you cant ID them so bone swords are out, rending, your going to be smashing anyways and if you rolled a 6 to rend with a smash attack its already penning so not worth it.
-- Tyrant guard- Maybe worth taking, rending claws gives them a chance to hurt knights, they can take crushing claws which will hurt knights, a brood of 3 of them with 2x crushing claws/rending claws and 1xscytalons rending claws comes in at about .6 knights. You are not required to keep your tyrant attached to them, or even to start attached to them. Reasoning for the 1 model without crushing claws is you will get to strike at I4 along with the knight with that one, and the knight on average will instagib 1 model with its D weapon, so you remove that model that stikes simultaneously in that case and the 2 with crushing claws can still strike. So on a round of assault on average all the models get a chance to hit regardless of dying, on average.

Swarmlord- Swarmlord gets special mention because he is a force multiplier. In of himself if he charged an unhurt knight you are looking at a dead swarmlord. That's not what your swarmlord does, your swarmlord is a cold pimp daddy leading a herd of hungry alien beasts. He gets ML3, he gets 3 shots at psychic powers you want, onslaught, warplance, paroxysm. Paroxysm is the power you want. You make a small felt pimp hat for him, and if he gets this power versus knights you put it on your swarmlord. Reducing a knights BS/Ws by d3 each is a big deal. at ML 3 you could potentially do this to 3 knights a turn. 3 knights is 1110 points of your opponents army. Additionally you get to give one of your units within 18" furious charge (+1 strength on charge is nice) or preferred enemy. Thats rerolls of 1's to hit and shooting. Even more additionally you get to increase your chance for reseves to come in if you have any.


I think the MVPS here are, in order with the slots they take:

HQ- Swarmlord
Elites- Zoanthrope/ shockcannon hiveguard [tie]
Troops- Genestealers
Fast- Crone
Heavy- Carnifex

despite that list I think its very important to get 2-3 venomthropes, just to give cover to as many of your units as you can. It increases saves, and if the knights charge you I am not sure they can ignore the charging through cover rules [check that out].

blaktoof wrote:
Fast Attack

Crones. Crones get haywire missiles, and vector strike. I would take crones for the missiles, I would fire 2 missiles a turn and ignore vector strikes until out of missiles. 3 crones costs a little less than 1.5 knights but 6 haywire missiles a turn is pretty much close to killing 1 knight a turn if you fire from a facing that does not have a shield up and they are out of cover. Vector striking is strength 8, but you average 3 strikes, if you get the rear armor each one has a 50/50 shot of doing something, if you get side or front you have a 33% shot of doing something. I would go for the vector strike over the tentaclid only if you can get the rear armor on the vector strike.

Vector strikes are resolved against side armour, so Crones will always glance on a 4 or pen on 5/6. You get between 2 and 4 automatic hits each with a 50% chance of inflicting a hull point (33% of which is a pen). Missiles are 1-2 shots with 41% chance to inflict at least 1 HP. They're also subject to the directional invuln save, while vector strikes probably aren't (subject to FAQ).
You should always vector strike if you have the chance to, as even 1 hit has a better chance of causing damage than 1 missile, and you get a minimum of 2 vector hits.

blaktoof wrote:

Spore mine clusters- If you take a brood of 6 of these, they will cause a strength 9 hit from deepstriking. I would rather take crones, but if your list is filled up elsewhere in points these things cost almost nothing for a 1 off hit at str 9.

This is probably a worthwhile option if you don't own any Crones, especially against Knight-heavy forces who will struggle to deal with lots of small units. Spores are cheap, and as they activate in close combat they're not subject to the directional invuln. Spread them around your deployment zone to cut off avenues of attack, or use them as bubble-wrap for key units.

blaktoof wrote:

Zoanthropes- You can get 7 zoanthropes for the cost of 1 knight. They have warplance, which is sweet. At BS 4 you will average 4-5 hits on a knight from 7 zoanthropes, if it has its ion shield in your direction it will save half of those, and you will go on to glance/pen most likely with all the shots. At toughness 4 a knights RFBC will instakill you if you fail your save. A knight could probably kill 2 zoanthropes a turn of firing because of this. better yet zoanthropse are ML2 so you get another psychic power, you want to get paroxysm if you are lucky. -d3 BS and WS to 1 knight is a big deal, as knights are expensive and reprsent you neutering 1/4th to 1/5th of your opponents army with 1 power.

Hiveguard- Knights are a reason to once again take hiveguard. The impaler cannon will ignore cover saves, you don't need line of sight and is strength 8. You can get 7 Hive guard for the cost of 1 knight. Hiveguard did take a BS hit so if you had 7 hiveguard total and they all fired at a knight your looking at 3-4 hits. From the front armor thats 1-2 glances, and it will save 1 one of those from its ion shield or cover. Not so great...but still ranged and possible to hurt. However hiveguard have this thing called a shock cannon...factoring in the hiveguards BS, the size of the blast, and the size of a knights base, if you put the template directly onto the knight the chance of missing is pretty low. If you roll an arrow you still have a 20/36 chance to hit from scattering. Which means you will probably hit with 2/3rds of the shockcannons with hawyire. You can get about 6 of these guys for the cost of 1 knight and have some points to spare. so thats 4 glances a turn before shields/cover at medium range. Another thing to consider is you are Toughness 6, although the RFBC can ignore your armor save, it will not instakill you. If you have cover or a venomthrope you will get a save, and not die to 1 hit.

Zoanthropes are pretty much a lost cause shooting-wise, as they have no way to get reliably within firing range, and even if they did any smart Knight player will just throw the shield in their direction. As you say, they're better off throwing around other powers such as Paroxysm, Onslaught or Catalyst.

Hive Guard are an oddity... yeah the Shockcannon is really, really good at killing Knights. However they only have an 18" range and don't come with the Impaler's ignore-line-of-sight ability. This means shock Hive Guard must be within charge range, are much easier to keep out of range, and will probably only ever get one shot. This weapon option will work well alongside Onslaught to try and get that crucial extra bit of range, but I think generally you'll be relying more on your opponent making mistakes to get the most out of these.

Here's some random math:

Assuming Shock Cannons need to scatter more than 4" to miss, the odds of them inflicting at least 1 HP damage is 48%. That means assuming 3 are all in LoS/range, (and ignoring cover/invuln saves) they will average 1.45 HP damage against all facings.
A single Impaler Cannon will average 0.5 HP against side/rear armour, or 0.33 against the front. They have better range, ignore LoS and cover saves, meaning their main weakness is the shield. A full unit of 3 will average 1.5 HP against side/rear, or 0.99 HP against the front.

With this in mind, I'm more inclined to go with the Impaler Cannons. They're cheaper, more flexible, both in terms of getting a good firing position and keeping the Hive Guard alive. Their performance is arguably better against side/rear facings and with them being assault weapons it won't be too hard to move away from the front arc.

blaktoof wrote:

Heavy-

Carnifex. The ranged options that can hurt a knights front/side armor are bioplasma (12" range) and heavy venom cannons. Given the info above with the shockcannon the venom cannon has the same chance to hit, but is str9 so it has a lower chance of an effect than hiveguard. Meaning if you are using your carnifexes solely for shooting knights you are wasting points.

You can get 3 carnifex with crushing claws/scy talons for about 1.1knights. Carnifex have special hammer of wrath rules that mean if you charge a knight you will get a bunch of free high strength hits before the knight can attack. When the knight goes to attack it will instakill 1-2 of your carnifex. The crushing claws is because the knight will strike before you, so you might as well take them to get armorbane since your striking last anyways, make those strikes count.

You could take heavy venom cannons as well, and get a glance or two on the way on or at least be threatening from range as well. I think either way is good. Just try and setup your charges on hurt knights with carnifex if you can. Really the charge is more important for your carnifex than any other unit that will charge a knight due to the bonus hammer of wrath hits at high strength, you have to be very mindful of this when setting up the charge and make sure you have some low quality unit infront of your carnifex to protect them from being charged first [gants].

Two points regarding melee fexes:
1) You will never, ever get to make the charge with them unless your opponent lets you. Picking a 300+ point unit based on the other guy making a mistake seems... odd to me.
2) Even if it wins, anything in melee with a Knight is almost certain to die thanks to the super-heavy explosion giving a free Destroyer hit on them. Since you'll probably lose 1-2 Fexes just from striking second, you'll need to bring 3 for any melee. This means you're trading a 450+ point unit to kill one worth less, with little chance of it surviving.

For comparison, thanks to sheer volume of dice a full unit of devourer-fexes at the same points will average 4.32HP damage against Knight side/rear armour. Just sayin'.

blaktoof wrote:

Exocrine- 6 shots to glance the front of a knight who may have cover/ion shields is not a good plan.

Tyrranofex-
Expensive, but you can get the rupture cannon. This is your best ranged weapon against knights, as it has lots of range, and is strength 10. With 2 shots you will average 1 hit, the knight will probably have cover or ion shields. With a 2+ save you can ignore RFBC, but the thermal lance or whatever will hurt you, slowly. You will purchase electroshock grubs, you will move forward into assault range if you can, you will not assault. If you get assaulted you will overwatch with a rupture cannon and d3 auto hitting haywire attacks from the electrogrubs. You don't want to get assaulted, but if its going to happen have a chance to hurt the knight pretty bad in the process. With luck your overwatch will kill a knight at 2-3 HPs.

So far as Exocrines go, I think you can do well by running at least 2 (preferably 3), keeping them spread out and focusing down one Knight at a time. As a bonus, they're a strong unit for uses other than just Knight-killing.

I really don't follow your logic with T-fexes. You admit a Rupture Cannon is unlikely to do anything, then claim it's the best ranged option. Wha? A single Rupture Cannon averages 0.33HP damage against front armour with the invuln (0.5HP on the side/rear). For comparison, an Exocrine's weapon also averages 0.33HP against the front, 0.66HP against side/rear and is cheaper.
And I don't know how you expect a T-fex with 6" movement to stay within template weapon range of a unit with a 12" move - AND not get assaulted. That's a strategy that basically relies on your opponent hurting themself. Sure, you can bait a charge and probably suicide the T-fex to inflict 1-2 HP damage from Overwatch, but that seems like a waste of a 200+ points model. It's an even bigger waste if your opponent never charges it and never lets it in template range at all.

blaktoof wrote:
Hive tyrant- Take wings, the mobility will help. Do not bother with twin linked brain leech worms, you will only be able to at best glance rear armor of a knight. Yes with wings you can get to the rear armor, but two twin linked brain leach worms will shoot 12 times, and get on average 11 hits, will average 1-2 glances before cover / ion shield. Not very good. Look at tyrranofex above, you take electroshock grubs. They ignore cover, they auto hit, they probably cause 1 glance, an unlikely pen or unlikely no effect, this is better odds than firing 2 sets of twin linked devourers with brain leech worms at the same target. You are ML2, maybe you will get warplance or paroxysm. I would not bother with close combat upgrades. your Initiative is already high enough to strike first, so lash whip is out, you cant ID them so bone swords are out, rending, your going to be smashing anyways and if you rolled a 6 to rend with a smash attack its already penning so not worth it.

Getting 1-2 glances from Devourers is pretty good considering the Flyrant is very maneuverable, and can hit side/rear armour with ease. If nothing else you can use this threat to force him to direct his shield toward the Flyrant, allowing Hive Guard or an Exocrine to shoot from another direction. To me this seems by far the best approach for negating that pesky invuln.
Electroshock Grubs are also a decent option for only 10pts.

blaktoof wrote:
Swarmlord- ....Reducing a knights BS/Ws by d3 each is a big deal. at ML 3 you could potentially do this to 3 knights a turn.

Psychic powers don't work that way. A unit can only cast a given power once per turn, so the Swarmlord would have to use his other 2 warp charge on something else. He's also not fast enough to use Warp Lance reliably, only Flyrants can really. On the bright side, even without Paroxysm a Knight will only ever hit the Swarmlord on 5+ in melee, making his chainsword rather less effective.
I'd argue the Swarmlord's abilities don't really justify his incredibly high cost. He's pretty unlikely to do much more than trade himself to take out a damaged Knight. Stick to Flyrants instead.

blaktoof wrote:
despite that list I think its very important to get 2-3 venomthropes, just to give cover to as many of your units as you can. It increases saves, and if the knights charge you I am not sure they can ignore the charging through cover rules [check that out].

Venomthropes don't work like that regarding charges. They grant cover save bonuses, but don't affect difficult terrain checks.

A couple of other points regarding psychics are worth mentioning...

Nids can use Onslaught to re-position units into another firing arc after a Knight picks his shield direction, which can make a big difference. The trick here will be to move the unit to cover 2 facings in the movement phase, then shuffle over after you know the shield direction.

Grab as many Paroxysms as you can get - Knights at WS/BS 1 are much less effective.

The overwhelming truth here is that Nids can't realistically counter multiple Knights without tailoring their list to a fair extent (plus some luck in rolling psychic abilities). You're going to need multiple units from the following list to take them down in a reasonable time without reverting to suicidal charges:
Flyrants
Crones
Exocrines
Hive Guard

jeffersonian000 wrote:Btw, Knights are a class of Titan.

In the same way Dreadknights, Dreadnoughts, and Terminator armour are classes of Titan.

jeffersonian000 wrote:they have always been referred to as Knight-class Titans

With the slight exception of anywhere on the GW website, White Dwarf or any official GW publication. Citation needed.

So what I'm gathering is that Flying Circus is the only viable build in a meta with Knights, correct?

The Knights strength lies in its ability to get into Melee. Simply limit its movement by parking 30 gaunts in front of it blocking its path to where it needs to go.

Fragile wrote:
The Knights strength lies in its ability to get into Melee. Simply limit its movement by parking 30 gaunts in front of it blocking its path to where it needs to go.

Iirc it can just thunderblitz through them with a care in the world or just blast them with the RFBC (which it will most likely be doing anyways since they will be trying to wipe out all your scoring

I do know one person doing a full knight army ( provided they come in) at some point I'll put my nids out there but his current "plan" is 4 knights and a redoubt with magos spirit and some other upgrades I think.. in a 1750. (I'll have to of course confirm those points as Im not sure)

I'll likely be using ADL for the 2+ covers... do need to figure out how to get my hands on the redoubt so its not beating the stuff out of my flyants. Figure I'll have to go crones and put some missiles into it before it starts putting stuff on the ground.

So far as Exocrines go, I think you can do well by running at least 2 (preferably 3), keeping them spread out and focusing down one Knight at a time. As a bonus, they're a strong unit for uses other than just Knight-killing.

I really don't follow your logic with T-fexes. You admit a Rupture Cannon is unlikely to do anything, then claim it's the best ranged option. Wha? A single Rupture Cannon averages 0.33HP damage against front armour with the invuln (0.5HP on the side/rear). For comparison, an Exocrine's weapon also averages 0.33HP against the front, 0.66HP against side/rear and is cheaper.
And I don't know how you expect a T-fex with 6" movement to stay within template weapon range of a unit with a 12" move - AND not get assaulted. That's a strategy that basically relies on your opponent hurting themself. Sure, you can bait a charge and probably suicide the T-fex to inflict 1-2 HP damage from Overwatch, but that seems like a waste of a 200+ points model. It's an even bigger waste if your opponent never charges it and never lets it in template range at all.

I appreciate your feedback, and most of it is well thought out.

A single shot from a rupture cannon is unlikely to do anything (.5hp average from 1 shot), however it is still the best ranged option, especially outside of winged tyrants. While a single rupture cannon averages .33 hp on the front, and a single exocrine averages .33hp on the front the thing that math does not take into account is the exocrine will only glance at best, and the bounds for its average is capped at a lower ceiling than that of the rupture cannon. A large component of the rupture cannon shot is a penetrating hit, which has a chance to remove more than 1 hull point, something the exocrine cannot achieve through shooting at the front. Additionally the rupture cannon has twice the range of the exocrine. And finally the Tyrranofex can be given elctroshock grubs as well as the rupture cannon. Yes it will be difficult and unlikely that the tyrannofex will get in range to use the template, might be possible with onslaught. The point of the template is simply, the knights guns are for killing infantry, they will need to close to assault to kill your MCs, Having the threat of electroshock grubs will potentially deter how your opponent closes on you, and that if they do go for you they have to risk taking a d3 haywire hits, which could cripple or kill a already wounded knight. That is something the exocrine does not bring to the table.

I do agree exocrines are strong at things other than just knights, but this post is about going against an all knight army.

You are absolutely correct in your statement about recasting paroxysm, my mistake. ML3 still has a better chance to get paroxysm than ML 2, but questionable about the cost difference.

Carnifexes -For comparison, thanks to sheer volume of dice a full unit of devourer-fexes at the same points will average 4.32HP damage against Knight side/rear armour. Just sayin'.

Knights are on round bases, their side rear armor facings won't always be easy to reach, so while you can average 4.3HP on side armor, if they do not shields or cover from that facing(2.1HP with shields), you are doing it from 18" and will be dead, or close to it next turn if the knight was at full HP and charges you. This unit of carnifex cost more than 3 with crushing claws, I agree with you the crushing claws carnifexes arent the best thing to take, as even if you live the D blast has a good chance to then kill them afterwards[not guaranteed but still good]. I think you are more likely to get the charge off with a unit of assault carnifexes on a tabletop game then with shooty fexes. The difference is the crushing claws carnifexes cost less than dakkafexes. And the only way either are going to kill an unhurt knight is if they end up in assault, the dakkafexes will shoot+assault, and the CC fexes will just assault. Or the knight will assault.

dakkafex shooting+assault = dead knight and dead dakkafexes [if you can get read side armor, if front its just dead dakkafexes]

cc fex assault= deadknight and dead cc fexes

Dakkafex shooting + knight assault = maybe dead knight and dead dakkafexes

Cc fexes standing there and knight assault= Hurt knight, unlikely knight kill, fexes dead.

tbh I dont think carnifex are the best answer to knights, just showing what they have as options.

In a vacuum of theorycraft dakkafexes will never hurt the knight, because if you look at just the fexes versus just the knight the knight will never let the unit get to the side rear armor, and the dakkafexes cannot hurt the front armor facing. When you factor in other units giving onslaught or distracting for positiioning there is unfortunately another knight that begins to come into the picture.

You touch on mobility and speed of units versus the knights, given the short range of twin link devs with brainleech on carnifex, and the movement of carnifex I dont see it being viable, you cannot even glance the front armor. On a winged tyrant, yes its viable to try and glance sides/read, but not on carnifex.

Your assessment with Crones is really good, for all of mine I was considering the Knights having side armor 13 as well as their Front armor, I was given bad info from my mate who was telling me about them. Shoulda checked first. Also for some reason I thought "seeking" gave them rerolls versus all vehicles, but that is not the case, so yes vector strike always.

I am certain we agree that Tyrants / Crones / Paroxysm are key against all knight armies

 A GumyBear wrote:

Fragile wrote:
The Knights strength lies in its ability to get into Melee. Simply limit its movement by parking 30 gaunts in front of it blocking its path to where it needs to go.

Iirc it can just thunderblitz through them with a care in the world or just blast them with the RFBC (which it will most likely be doing anyways since they will be trying to wipe out all your scoring

Walkers can't Thunderblitz. Same as a Dreadnought can't tank shock.

The Superheavy walker rules sate which of the Superheavy vehicle rules they use. Thunderblitz isn't one of them.

Murrdox wrote:
Against anything else you'd want to get into Assault with a Monstrous Creature. But since from what I've seen the Knights have "D" weapons for melee (I'm still not sure how GW expects normal armies to deal with D weapons in non-escalation games) you don't want your Hive Tyrants to get smashed.

So your next alternative is:

Crones (haywire missiles and vector strikes)
Flying Hive Tyrants (electroshock grub Haywire template)
Hive Guard (armed with Haywire weapon)
Tyrannofex (long range S9)

Other than that, just spam Heavy Venom Cannons. Carnifexes and Warriors especially can spam them pretty well.

the problem is that GW doesn't care about anything other than money. they don't care if the game is balanced. Example 1. eldar have 1 titan option in escalation that they share with DE. Imperial guard have something like 6 superhvy tanks to pick from? looks at the data slates for December just another money grab.

The tourny's I play in locally don't allow half the crap GW has released in the last 4 months. No escalation, no stronghold, no data slates, and they probably won't allow the new titan army.

2 flyrants with heavy venom cannon. Give your warlord rending claws.

3 crones

3 squads of warriors with venom cannon

2 squads of 2 zoans.


1500 points anti-knight army list.


He cant hit the flyers unless he wastes a knight to attempt to ground them with his 3 shot heavy stubber and you have 5 of them.

The zoans get their invuns againgst shooting and he probably will shoot at em, being afraid of lances.

the warriors can hide in cover and advance, not much threat at range. However with the rending claws and lash whip a decent threat in melee.

Nothing in the army is useless, so he has major target issues. His blasts are very ineffecient againgst such small ground units and obviously cant even hit the flyers.

 grendel083 wrote:

 A GumyBear wrote:

Fragile wrote:
The Knights strength lies in its ability to get into Melee. Simply limit its movement by parking 30 gaunts in front of it blocking its path to where it needs to go.

Iirc it can just thunderblitz through them with a care in the world or just blast them with the RFBC (which it will most likely be doing anyways since they will be trying to wipe out all your scoring

Walkers can't Thunderblitz. Same as a Dreadnought can't tank shock.

The Superheavy walker rules sate which of the Superheavy vehicle rules they use. Thunderblitz isn't one of them.

That will get changed quickly i'd reckon.. Anything that big, with that much mass, is going to walk strait through any unit that couldn't hurt it (ie: not capable of the charge).

ncshooter426 wrote:
That will get changed quickly i'd reckon.. Anything that big, with that much mass, is going to walk strait through any unit that couldn't hurt it (ie: not capable of the charge).

No it won't, why would it?
They get Stomp instead.
Tank shock has always been a thing for.... Well tanks.

What about 1 tyrant with a reaper/AG/TS and ymgarl factor flying around smashing titans?

It will fail to kill the Knight then be killed by the Strength D chainsword.

Those people saying that carnifex are the way to go.....I'm sorry what's your initiative? 2? Multiple carnifex could be pasted before you even get to attack. You'd be relying n those HoW hits.

As other have said, block the board up with spaced out swarms. You might not be able to charge them, but you can still get in the way and block them from your important units.

Whilst you're doing this, use zoans to try and do some damage. If worst comes to the worst you could always try and charge your tyrants in. You will strike first, it on 3's, penetrate on 4's (re-rollable due to being an MC, and they have no 4++ save in cc).

If they don't kill it then they will probably die to str D attacks. But outside of escalation I'd say thats the best you've got.

Charging both of my Hive Tyrants into a Knight will probably take it out, but will also mean both of them probably lose at least half of their wounds to the explosion and are now gliding, plus a smart opponent will put their Knight in terrain, changing that probable win into a probably loss.

Eihnlazer wrote:
2 flyrants with heavy venom cannon. Give your warlord rending claws.

3 crones

3 squads of warriors with venom cannon

2 squads of 2 zoans.


1500 points anti-knight army list.


He cant hit the flyers unless he wastes a knight to attempt to ground them with his 3 shot heavy stubber and you have 5 of them.

The zoans get their invuns againgst shooting and he probably will shoot at em, being afraid of lances.

the warriors can hide in cover and advance, not much threat at range. However with the rending claws and lash whip a decent threat in melee.

Nothing in the army is useless, so he has major target issues. His blasts are very ineffecient againgst such small ground units and obviously cant even hit the flyers.

Let me counter your army with a 1500pt knight army:

4 Paladins (Exactly 1500pts)

So lets see how your (very good actully) anti-knight list works out.

Each knight has 2 heavy stubbers with 3 shots each. Statisticly that is one hit per knight. As a SH they get to shoot all thier weapons at diffrent targets. So Stubbers to force grounding test and the cannon to ID against the crones.

If The stubber fails to drop a flyer then the cannon targets one of your other units. Probably the zoans first. One failed save kills one, but at leastthey have the invuln. For the warriors if they get hit they just die.

Funny thing is the knights actully have more scoring units then your list. So each knight moves to an objective. Takes pot shots trying to ground flyers to either BC or assault. No flyers on the ground then shoot at whatever unit they have LoS on.

And pray you don't get Purge.

Pretty sure we're about to get a new Data-Slate that appears to include a Crone and some Gargoyles. I'm just going to assume for now that it's 10+ Gargoyles and a Crone as that's what pictured. So this would be my list.

Flyrant - HVC, ST - 220
Flyrant - HVC, ST - 220

Termagants x10 - 40
Termagants x10 - 40

Crone - 155
Crone - 155
Crone - 155

Skyblight Swarm - 215
Skyblight Swarm - 215
Skyblight Swarm - 215
Skyblight Swarm - 215

1850 Total.

Which equates to 2 Flyrants, 7 Crones, 40 Gargoyles (Use these for denial or just hide them), and 2 squads of Gants to just kill themselves or something.

At 1850 points it's 5 Knights vs your 9 FMCs. 5 Knights will on average get 5 hits per turn which is 5 Grounding Test. You will fail just under 2 of these each turn on average. Your Crones on the first 2 turns should pump out 14 shots, 7 hits, 6 Glances. A Knight is going to save 3 of those, so after 2 turns if you have not lost a Crone you will have killed whole 1 Knight! Whoaaaaa. After that your just Vector Striking till the cows come home.

So even with the most tailored anti Knight list the Tyranids still struggle hard. A Harridan would be worth a look in though.

Oh this also is assuming a best case scenario in that the Skyblight Swarm only forces you to take one squad of Gargoyles.

As others have pointed out the D weapon is not so terrifying, simply because it depends on a dice roll. The 6 is the one you have to watch out for. A 2-5 has some risk associated still as well.

I wish to point out that at 1500 points I run 7 Monstrous Creatures.

Flyrant - Twin Devourers
Footrant - Twin Devourers, HVC
Tyrant Guard

Venomthrope
Venomthrope

30 Termagants
Tervigon

2 Carnifexes - 2x Twin Devourers
2 Carnifexes - 2x Twin Devourers

It's just going with old tried and tested 'nid tactics. They struggle against MCs at ranged so you have a good chance of getting the monsters across the table relatively unscathed. And when you do you have to survive the D weapon - as has been pointed out before you have a decent chance of getting out unscathed. Then you just mass spam smashes on them.

Decent chance of getting out unscathed? Let's analyse that:

A charging Knight has 4 attacks at WS 4, which is probably 2 or 3 hits, lets go with 2 to be conservative. then you roll on the D weapon chart, and your MC loses 2d3+2 wounds, which is at least 4, killing a Hive Tyrant or a Carnifex, and an average of 6, which will kill any Monstrous Creature we have.

ncshooter426 wrote:
That will get changed quickly i'd reckon.. Anything that big, with that much mass, is going to walk strait through any unit that couldn't hurt it (ie: not capable of the charge).

The Apoc / Escalation rules only came out last year. I doubt we'll see anything but new units / scenarios for a long while.

blaktoof wrote:

I appreciate your feedback, and most of it is well thought out.

A single shot from a rupture cannon...

...I do agree exocrines are strong at things other than just knights, but this post is about going against an all knight army.

Don't forget that if a Exocrine does pen against side/rear armour has a better chance of causing extra damage thanks to AP2.

I'm trying to keep this list somewhat flexible - sometimes it will be used against other opponents that just Knights, and sometimes there will be other units mixed in with the Knights. In those scenarios I'd absolutely pick Exocrines over Rupture Cannons every time. I really don't rate the Rupture Cannon as a good option... if it had a decent AP value or there was an easy way to twin-link it I'd use them. But Assault 2 BS3 and AP4 is really poor on a 200+ pt unit.

Carnifexes ...

Cc fexes standing there and knight assault= Hurt knight, unlikely knight kill, fexes dead.

tbh I dont think carnifex are the best answer to knights, just showing what they have as options.

In a vacuum of theorycraft dakkafexes will never hurt the knight, because if you look at just the fexes versus just the knight the knight will never let the unit get to the side rear armor, and the dakkafexes cannot hurt the front armor facing. When you factor in other units giving onslaught or distracting for positiioning there is unfortunately another knight that begins to come into the picture.

Again, this comes more out of list flexibility. Dakkafexes are a solid option against many units, which can potentially do well against Knights as a bonus. I also really hate the idea of a 300-500pt suicide unit, which is what melee Fexes effectively are. I agree that Carnifexes in general aren't a great choice if you're tailoring a list against Knights, but in a more flexible setting I'd pick the shooting over the melee option any day. Dakkafexes are also much easier to keep alive with the use of Venomthropes, Catalyst and bubblewrap units like gaunts.

Examining things in a vacuum is unfair, as that will never happen. Units should be used in coordination, and often the threat of something is worse than the actuality. The potential of Dakkafexes to inflict 4+ HP damage can encourage your opponent to position the Knight or it's shield in a certain direction, exposing other arcs to other units such as Hive Guard or Exocrines. The Fexes then don't even have to shoot the Knight, they've already accomplished something by simply being there.

 Gloomfang wrote:

Each knight has 2 heavy stubbers with 3 shots each. Statisticly that is one hit per knight. As a SH they get to shoot all thier weapons at diffrent targets. So Stubbers to force grounding test and the cannon to ID against the crones.

If The stubber fails to drop a flyer then the cannon targets one of your other units.

It's worth pointing out here that all weapons on a unit fire at the same time. This means that even if a Knight can ground something, it can't then use it's main weapon on that same target, it has to shoot something else. Statistically you're going to see 2-3 Knights fire before grounding anything, so it's unlikely more than 1-2 will get to fire a main weapon on that target. I'd be more worried about the hit from the grounding test itself than any Knight weapons.

Does anyone know what the fire arc of the heavy stubber is? This could be pretty easy to avoid simply by vector-striking the Knight as normal, forcing it to turn around to ground any Crones.

 grendel083 wrote:

ncshooter426 wrote:
That will get changed quickly i'd reckon.. Anything that big, with that much mass, is going to walk strait through any unit that couldn't hurt it (ie: not capable of the charge).

No it won't, why would it?
They get Stomp instead.
Tank shock has always been a thing for.... Well tanks.

The rules for stomp apply to the end of the CC phase do they not?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 xttz wrote:

ncshooter426 wrote:
That will get changed quickly i'd reckon.. Anything that big, with that much mass, is going to walk strait through any unit that couldn't hurt it (ie: not capable of the charge).

The Apoc / Escalation rules only came out last year. I doubt we'll see anything but new units / scenarios for a long while.

[

Knight was explicitly designed for standard games by folk who have no info/no interest in escalation or apoc rules. They're not applicable, even with the D weapons bs.

 PrinceRaven wrote:
Decent chance of getting out unscathed? Let's analyse that:

A charging Knight has 4 attacks at WS 4, which is probably 2 or 3 hits, lets go with 2 to be conservative. then you roll on the D weapon chart, and your MC loses 2d3+2 wounds, which is at least 4, killing a Hive Tyrant or a Carnifex, and an average of 6, which will kill any Monstrous Creature we have.

If your saying that that Knight is charging don't forget the S10 HoW attack that it gets too. Pretty sure that you can Stomp them too, but I don't have my book in front of me. So combine all those attacks and your looking at 2 dead carnifexes per round.

What about the scythed and barbed hierodule?

 xttz wrote:

 Gloomfang wrote:

Each knight has 2 heavy stubbers with 3 shots each. Statisticly that is one hit per knight. As a SH they get to shoot all thier weapons at diffrent targets. So Stubbers to force grounding test and the cannon to ID against the crones.

If The stubber fails to drop a flyer then the cannon targets one of your other units.

It's worth pointing out here that all weapons on a unit fire at the same time. This means that even if a Knight can ground something, it can't then use it's main weapon on that same target, it has to shoot something else. Statistically you're going to see 2-3 Knights fire before grounding anything, so it's unlikely more than 1-2 will get to fire a main weapon on that target. I'd be more worried about the hit from the grounding test itself than any Knight weapons.

Does anyone know what the fire arc of the heavy stubber is? This could be pretty easy to avoid simply by vector-striking the Knight as normal, forcing it to turn around to ground any Crones.

I know you have to pick your targets ahead of time. I was talking more about cycling through the 4 knights then cycling the shooting on one Knight.

I would honestly be more scared of getting assaulted once your grounded then the BC when it comes to the crones. A S10 HoW will ID 50% of the time. A crone on the ground = dead crone.

The Knight is a walker and the Axial mounted stubber on the right arm has the normal firing arc. The one on the left side is on a ball turret so I would say that just has the 180 degree front arc to fire. It is a walker so it can pivot to fire though.

Personally if I was fielding Knights I would have dropped a Knight and taken a bunch of IG and a Hydra (or 3) or something like a vengeance weapon battery or firestorm redoubt (If I had troops to put in it). The 4 Knight build is extremely vulnerable to flyers and it is the MOST vulnerable configuration that Nids can face. It is the best case, not the worst case.

The knight stomp comes in at Initiative 1 step, it gets d3 of them. You roll a d6:
1- nothing
2-5 = blast s6 ap 4 hit
6= blast remove your model hit.

Its worth noting that each additional stomp has to be placed 3" away from the first stomp, so a solo model against the knight at this point, depending on their base size, might only get stomped once even if the knight gets 2-3 stomp attacks.

So a charging knight will get 1 HoW attack, 4 D attacks, and then d3 stomp attacks.

Conisdering the stomp attacks are done at initiative 1, means that all your stuff has probably piled in so if you trying to tarpit a knight, its stomps are probably hitting 3+ models each of standard base sized things. Meaning its hard to keep them tarpitted.

Knight was explicitly designed for standard games by folk who have no info/no interest in escalation or apoc rules. They're not applicable, even with the D weapons bs.

Unless you are part of that group of people who designed the knight this is a far stretch to state. Especially considering 1 escalation rules are part of the core of 40k, 2 rules for the knights special rules come out of the escalation book.

Don't forget that if a Exocrine does pen against side/rear armour has a better chance of causing extra damage thanks to AP2.

That is a good point.

Its worth noting that each additional stomp has to be placed 3" away from the first stomp, so a solo model against the knight at this point, depending on their base size, might only get stomped once even if the knight gets 2-3 stomp attacks.

You are misreading the Stomp entry. The following stomps do not have to be 3" away. The entry states that the following stomps must be at least partially within 3" of the previous stomp. This is further clarifyed with the following statement declaring "This allows you to 'Stomp forward' into the enemy."

If there was one particular model you wanted to snipe with stomp attacks, and you got the full 3 stomps, there is nothing preventing you from using all 3 stomps on that one model to try and get the 6 result.

ncshooter426 wrote:Knight was explicitly designed for standard games by folk who have no info/no interest in escalation or apoc rules. They're not applicable, even with the D weapons bs.

If it was explicitly for standard games it would have been a walker or MC. Instead they made it a super-heavy walker, which requires rules currently only found in Escalation or Apoc.

Of course if the "7th edition" rumours turn out to be true, you may be right. But for now you need Escalation or Apoc to use Knights.

hellpato wrote:What about the scythed and barbed hierodule?

Bad bad bad.

The Scythed Hierodule is pretty likely to die before it gets to attack the Knight, and even if it wins that's another Destroyer hit. Awesome value for 150% the cost of a Knight.

The Barbed one fares slightly better, but suffers similar issues to the Rupture Cannon thanks to BS3 and not having a decent AP value. Plus you know for sure any directional shields will be pointed towards it, and it'll be the first target for melee. It's by no means the worst idea, but you'll have to work hard to keep it alive and it's pretty overcosted for what it does.

 kir44n wrote:

Its worth noting that each additional stomp has to be placed 3" away from the first stomp, so a solo model against the knight at this point, depending on their base size, might only get stomped once even if the knight gets 2-3 stomp attacks.

You are misreading the Stomp entry. The following stomps do not have to be 3" away. The entry states that the following stomps must be at least partially within 3" of the previous stomp. This is further clarifyed with the following statement declaring "This allows you to 'Stomp forward' into the enemy."

If there was one particular model you wanted to snipe with stomp attacks, and you got the full 3 stomps, there is nothing preventing you from using all 3 stomps on that one model to try and get the 6 result.

I should drink more coffee