Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Okay, safe to assume that it's okay to talk about tactics for these new guys.


So, 370-375 Isn't that much compared to some stuff and it is the only non escalation superheavy walker to take to the field. I'm thinking it goes good with a bike army, as it moves 12" along with everything else, and can draw some fire away from the bikes. Maybe it's prudent to run vindicators or something along side to add more AV 13 to the fight?

Also, would this help against MC's?


Note, we only know the WD rules so far and there may be more in the future.

I like the idea of running them with bikers; it will be a fire magnet and hopefully the 4++ will help with a lot of the shooting headed its way. As far as value for points, I'm not sure yet, it lacks the mobility of the Riptide while being a bit more durable and a lot nastier in CC. If you did run vindicators, I'd have to recommend BA vindis for their sweet fast vehicle status.

Don't think you can do that if you run WS main as knights take up the allies slot. But maybe the knight can cover for the vindicators as they move 12" up the field.

Maybe take Guard primary, Inquisition retinue, and one knight, have an Inquisitor or Coteaz cast prescience on it? Are the knights worth presciencing?

The servo skulls might help with scatter on the big guns.

Ah so true, I was thinking the Knights would ally like Inquisition and not take up the actual ally slot for some reason.... hmm...

Well, for the variants I see myself going paladin mostly, as that main cannon looks like it would hurt almost anything.

I did think of one fun strategy. Field a whole army of them and run straight for the enemy. Laugh with maniacal glee as the enemy blows up your Knights, only to discover that, upon doing so, a 15" blast template scatters around, killing swathes of their own army.

For that very reason, you probably don't want one of them near the bulk of your own army.

I ordered one today as soon as I found out any army can take one as an ally. Gonna make as disgusting a nurgle knight as I can come up with.

My only question is "Can it Anti-Air?"

If it's got an option for skyfire somewhere, I think I'd bring one and drop the ADL/Mortis Contemptor Dread I've got for my Dark Angels.

Having actually run a Paladin in game last night, here are a few findings:

- it's fast. I used it with a Drop Pod/Deathwing list, and the Knight had caught up with the first wave within 2 turns. I do think you should be trying to get them into combat, as a) if they do blow up there's more chance of damaging enemy units and b) it's just killy, between HOW, 4 S: D attacks and Stomp attacks, it can rack up quite the kill count.

- You can target pretty much anything shooting-wise thanks to the height and huge range of the gun, and in CC you can potentially line up 3 options for a charge, giving you a lot of freedom in who to massacre. Given free reign, this thing should be racking up a unit a turn at least, I think.

- With the 4++ and 6HP, it's very survivable. In 4 turns, mine lost 1HP against a necron list that at one point spent a whole turn shooting everything at it. Just make sure you can position it so that the 4++ faces the biggest threat, and if need be (ie you are flanked) get the AV13 facing towards the next largest threat.

- I found it slotted nicely into a 1500 point list, I didn't feel like I was lacking models anywhere else because of the cost. 2 tactical squads and 2 DW termie squads with the knight works pretty well.

i think my orks will have a hard time with this guy...

Orks may well have it rough, your only options are either to hope a PK-armed model lives long enough to hit it a couple of times or to get some Deffkoptas with missiles past the Ion Shield.

That said, I imagine most players would let you bring a Stompa if they bought a Knight, so it'd balance out there.

i think the deffkoptas or stompa are a must then. this thing can shoot every ork to grottpieces from a distance, and in cc, the d weapon will just kill my warbosses like flies. The dakkajet wil just glance it with 6's, and so on..

i'm thinking of fielding a special knight busting squad (if i know i play against them) with deffkoptas with rokkits, maybe buzzsaw and the FW boss to back em up and hope they survive long enough

If I were Knight-hunting as Orks, I'd bring maybe 2 squads of 3-4 Deffkoptas with rockets (wouldn't bother with the Buzzsaw, he'll take them apart in CC before they swing), and hope to get them outflanking from different sides, as the Ion shield can only cover one facing. With the Koptas being T5, none of the Knight's ranged weapons will ID them, and you'll still get jink saves against both, so there's little chance of the squad being killed before they can do much.

As for the Warboss in CC, make sure you put 4 boyz between him and the Knight. That way, they will die to the D-weapon attacks and the Warboss can then rock up and swing. With S10 he's penning on 4s and the Ion Shield doesn't work in CC, and every 'explodes' results does D3 HP, so he should make a mess of it if nothing else. You will lose a lot of Boys in the process, and probably the Warboss, but if you're positioning carefully then he should at least last long enough to swing.

i'm curious how this will work out in a real game.

but maybe with the new ork codex in pipeline, the orks will get some sort of new 'mini stompa' or 'uge dread that can take care of this kind of enemies

 Paradigm wrote:
Having actually run a Paladin in game last night, here are a few findings:

- it's fast. I used it with a Drop Pod/Deathwing list, and the Knight had caught up with the first wave within 2 turns. I do think you should be trying to get them into combat, as a) if they do blow up there's more chance of damaging enemy units and b) it's just killy, between HOW, 4 S: D attacks and Stomp attacks, it can rack up quite the kill count.

- You can target pretty much anything shooting-wise thanks to the height and huge range of the gun, and in CC you can potentially line up 3 options for a charge, giving you a lot of freedom in who to massacre. Given free reign, this thing should be racking up a unit a turn at least, I think.

- With the 4++ and 6HP, it's very survivable. In 4 turns, mine lost 1HP against a necron list that at one point spent a whole turn shooting everything at it. Just make sure you can position it so that the 4++ faces the biggest threat, and if need be (ie you are flanked) get the AV13 facing towards the next largest threat.

- I found it slotted nicely into a 1500 point list, I didn't feel like I was lacking models anywhere else because of the cost. 2 tactical squads and 2 DW termie squads with the knight works pretty well.

This makes me hopeful

Do I remember correctly that the knight has d3 stomp attacks as a walker?

Pretty sure it's D3 Stomps at the Knight's S10.

To add to my earlier comments,having finished the game this morning:

- I can see the Knight working very well as an area-denial tool, as whatever it touches WILL disappear. Armies without mobility to redeploy fast will struggle a lot against it, as they will get hit unless they can clear the area. With the 12" move and 2d6 Charge, it's got a great threat range. It's also always worth going for stupid charges with it; it has very little to fear from overwatch, after all.

- This could be a very nice counter to fortification-based army, for the above reasons. Just make a beeline for any building and the Knight will take it down.

How was the Knight's battle cannon? did it wreck anything?

I think the RFBC accounted for over 30 necron warriors, so nothing massive but he was getting lucky with RP rolls. In terms of what it would have killed without RP, I'd say it was closer to 50.

 Paradigm wrote:
Pretty sure it's D3 Stomps at the Knight's S10.

To add to my earlier comments,having finished the game this morning:

- I can see the Knight working very well as an area-denial tool, as whatever it touches WILL disappear. Armies without mobility to redeploy fast will struggle a lot against it, as they will get hit unless they can clear the area. With the 12" move and 2d6 Charge, it's got a great threat range. It's also always worth going for stupid charges with it; it has very little to fear from overwatch, after all.

- This could be a very nice counter to fortification-based army, for the above reasons. Just make a beeline for any building and the Knight will take it down.

Isn't it D3 stomps and then roll on the table? 1 = nothing, 2-5 = S6 AP4, 6 remove that model (for infantry)

Or is it a special rule without the apocalypse rules for it.

Stomp is in Escalation and Apoc rulebooks.

Well, what can kill this model are ranged D weapons. Beware of a Revenant Titan. Two hits from its D weapon and with only 6 HPs this small Titan is gone; one hit may also suffice.

some idiots at my gw are saying that it is Escalation only until they get a codex, only based on the fact it has the behemoth and D weapon rules which are in escalation. Despite me saying so that they arn't and only allies.

Not important but it rustled my jimmies. is it true?

Escelation isn't an optional thing, its part of the rules of the standard game, so that doesn't matter.


On to the topic, there are two ways to run Knights, as an add on for an existing army or as an army of their own. In the former you want to ram that single knight (or maybe two if you have them as allies) down your opponents throat and make him deal with it while the rest of your army tries its best to carry out its mission.

In the latter, it seems to me that the BattleCannon knights should hang back and manouvre for clear shots while the thermal cannon knights go in for the kill.

sand.zzz wrote:
I ordered one today as soon as I found out any army can take one as an ally. Gonna make as disgusting a nurgle knight as I can come up with.

And this news came from? I was under the impression it was Imperial Allie only...

Paradigm - You say only 30 warriors with the RFBC, but thats 390 points dude.
Made its points back killing basic troops.
Not only that, but in objective games that alone would have won you a game.

From what i can see though, they have no way to target a flyer, right?

Oh yeah, complete brainfart there, I must have miscounted the cost. I suppose the basic troops didn't register as that expensive, but I did kill them in droves.

And yeah, it would've won an objective game. We were playing a custom scenario, with a bunch of extra special rules, the most significant being that all necron infantry units wiped out returned to play the next turn, so I basically tabled him twice and the Knight did most of the heavy lifting. On top of this, I handicapped myself 100 points as we both had no idea how the super-heavy would affect things, and I didn't at any point feel outgunned. I won't say the Knight is OP, but it's certainly good.

No way to hit fliers, though, so that makes them particularly weak to the likes of Vendettas and Stormravens that can shelter troops for late-game airdrops and also attack it with no fear of counter-attack. Of course, you have the rest of the army's AA, but the Knight itself is powerless against fliers.

A couple of observations after a game with the melta version:

-Keep enemy units to one facing to maximise use of the shielding, otherwise utilise cover to protect your side armour against fast units. Seems obvious but the fact that the shield works differently to a normal vehicle means that you need to play slightly differently.

-Six HP is very durable. Thing is though, you pay alot of points for it. If you aren't loosing a few HP, or at least soaking firepower, then you aren't getting value for your points..

-Yes this guy is fast, but fast skimmers and jetbikes will still run rings around it. So will flyers. Again, plan ahead and protect your side/rear.

-The firepower is strong, but not overwhelming. Don't rely on these guys to do all the heavy lifting by themselves. Especially considering that neither of the variants is able to negate enemy cover, despite strong strength and AP values.

-Knights absolutely dominate other vehicles in assault, and low-model count enemies too. But this is a double edged sword, because once again you're paying large points for this ability yet in order to utilise is you're placing your large investment in the position for which it is potentially the most simple for an opponent to destroy. Meaning, meltaguns, haywire weapons, powerfists ect are all thing you need to be cognizant of when maneuvering close to the enemy. Plan ahead and avoid these things. If necessary force them to come to you and use your supporting units to deal with them.

tl;dl - Knights are strong but need to be used with a degree of caution to ensure they survive, but also with a degree of aggression to make your points investment does more than simply stand around looking cool.

Also, don't forget your heavy stubbers There's your AA. Lel.

http://natfka.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/imperial-knight-rules-clarification.html

Holy cow they count as scoring, and that link takes a direct quote from GW's digital edition Facebook page.

via Jes Bickham (who is the editor of White Dwarf) on GW Digital Facebook
Some clarification on the rules we presented in White Dwarf today for some folks here: the Imperial Knights don't occupy any force organisation slots, they are not Lords of War, they are an army unto themselves. Something we forgot to say is that all Imperial Knights are scoring units, and if you're playing 3-6 as a primary detachment, pick one as your Warlord.

Scoring eh? Could actually make an ABG a viable force, giving them solid scoring and counter assault units.