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Cheapest way is captn Slamguinius.

Move over Slamguinius, Smashboss wants to chat.

A warboss on bike with the killer klaw, the brutal but kunning trait and a weirdboy with the fist of gork power. All things that are cheap as chips and fit in most lists as extra seasoning.

6 attacks that hit and wound a knight on 2s with rerolls on both, and a flat 4 damage. The knight gets his (or her, don't want to misgender) 6+ armor and that's all. That's a nice and healthy 24 wounds. And if the boss fluffs and gets stomped on you can pay the 2cp for another shot. (A foot boss can swing twice with a strat but needs some more effort to actually get him into combat 1st turn.) You can also make him goffs for exploding 6s or evil suns for dat extra speed! (works nicely with a unit of evil sunz stormboyz to eat overwatch.)

Best thing is, the bike boss is only 99 pts.

Finally an ork warboss can feel like one of the most devastating characters out there.

6 deepstriking shockcannon Hive Guard are pretty nice. 6D3 haywire shots that hit on 3’s, mortal wounds on 4’s and 6’s like harlequins, then they shoot again. Averages about 3 unsaved regular wounds, plus the 8-14 or so mortal wounds. Doesn’t take into account the trygon or raveners they pop in with, who can throw some more shots out.

Anyone have the math on 10 blightlords with putrescent and VOTLW and 2 flails?

Got lucky with twenty Wulfen in a 2000 point match. Two squads of five and one squad of ten, my opponent was either cocky or dumb enough to put his Knights on an objective that I’d put near board edges, fifteen Wulfen arrived on the second turn, lucked out on the 9’ double charge and eliminated two while only losing two Wulfen, my opponent turned wimp, called cheese and conceded.
Does three Knights backed by Guard really get to call cheese?

 Nurglitch wrote:
Would a unit of five Chaos Terminators with Combi-Meltas, with Prescience from a Sorcerer, a Chaos Lord in support, Veterans of the Long War, and Endless Cacophony do it?

Probably but you invest basically a Knights worth in suicide terminators.
You also need to cast prescience.
And you need to cripple it enough whilest it probably has a 3+

You could also do a cultist abadon bomb if your desperate.

40 cultists hitting on 4's with full rerolls should get you 60 hits, vets of the long war means wounding on 5's for 20 wounds, and 3+ save means he still fails about 6 to 7 wounds. Then endless canophy to fire again, it wont kill a knight but it will drop it a teir. Sometimes thats all you need.

Still think demons are the way to go if your chaos though.

Necrons can use Doomsday Arks with support to pretty great effect.

Trarch stalker for rerolling 1s, Methodical Destruction for +1 to hit. Any wounds it has left after that can be stripped off with Tesla Immortals pretty easily (also they don't care about your 3++).

Just about every army has methods for dealing with Knights, even the bad ones.

Pushing them off the table works wonders.

Basically, what I'm reading from this thread is "Nope".

Sounds like Slamginus if you can manage to get around his screens and deliver.

And Harlie Bikes w/Doom can do it for about equal points (which is really good).

Everything else listed just doesn't seem to compete with the solo Knight in a Soup army.

Not true, again even though we didnt go into the math bloodletters will crush a knight in cc. They don't come in until turn 2 or 3 when there is an opening (which means you spend your first turn or 2 making that hole) then drop 30 bloodletters and a herald or dp in. Bloodletters get 3d6 charge rerolling charge if failed due to khore loci (take them as a patrol if you can, its worth it for the loci) but assuming some die to overwatch/not all get in i normally get 15 into cc with the knight.

Thats 31 attacks hitting on 2's (rerolling 1's if there is a dp), or 25 hits. Wounding on 5's, 6's are 2 damage each, and if you take the crimson crown those 6's pop additional attacks, all at ap-3. Thats 9 dmg after saves. Then pop the attack again stratagem and pile in again. Should do another 9. 18 wounds is pretty effective, and i am again only assuming half of the 30 made it in.

Or a dp of khorne with skullreaver. That will end a knight quick as well.

Bharring wrote:
Basically, what I'm reading from this thread is "Nope".

Sounds like Slamginus if you can manage to get around his screens and deliver.

And Harlie Bikes w/Doom can do it for about equal points (which is really good).

Everything else listed just doesn't seem to compete with the solo Knight in a Soup army.

I mean, I guess my question here is "how much would you consider to be efficient enough to down a 600 point model using a 6CP on their defenses (1 for the WL trait 3 for Rotate Ion and 2 for the 5+++ vs mortals)?"

Seems like people accept the Harlequin+Doom combo to be efficient, which is 306+306+306+132 for the farseer, or 57% points return in a single round with no CP's spent (that's slight overkill with 3 max squads of harlie bikes but still about right)

For reference here, I've heard many people saying that Primaris marines aren't viable because efficient multi-damage weapons like dissie ravagers exist. Dissie ravagers see 50% points return against Primaris marines standing out of cover and not spending any cp or resources on any kind of defensive buffs.

What I would consider the best Tyranid solution, Hive Guard with shock cannons loaded into Tyrannocytes and rocking a double-shoot stratagem on one squad, appears to cost 236*3+100*3, 59.5% efficient BUT they don't average a full kill, only 21.3 wounds. Less efficient but IMO less chance-based as you're not reliant on getting a WC7 power off through a possible psychic deny, and tyranids do have a good option to impede a single shooter with The Horror.

The Smashcaptain/Smashboss solution is hyperefficient pointswise and if you can draw out the 4cp beforehand in shooting also a pretty good trade CP-wise, given the units usually dont even cost 1/3 of what the knight costs. The hard part is actually getting to combat through what's probably a gnarly screen.

My personal favored chaos solution, the Death Hex+Lascannons, requires me to spend 1cp on cabalistic focus on a terminator sorceror (who I give the +1 to cast trait on when facing a knight or other priority target who must not have an invuln). That gives me +4 to cast meaning death hex goes off over 90% of the time and my opponent has to deny at +4. With no invuln the knight dies to around 900 points of any decent meta anti-tank unit (I just used quadlas hellforged contemptors but you could also use plague crawlers, stratagem'd defiler whatever). So again, around a 1000-1100 point solution to a one-turn kill. Notably however this solution doesn't require my opponent to spend any CP, which is a downside.

Funnily enough given the title of the thread, you know what's bad at killing cawlstellans? Other cawlstellans. When stratted up, the cawlstellan gives a worse points return against itself than unbuffed space marines holding lascannons and firing into the 3++. Guess that's why people still include smashcaptains in those meta lists, huh?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
(also worth noting here, is the knight's own efficiency in offense. When spending 3cp on order of companions, against a relatively inefficient target (let's say quad-las predators) it kills just shy of 2 in a round of shooting, dealing 282 points of damage, or 47% efficient.

With my orks I prefer 10 tankbusta boyz in a truck. With dakka dakka dakka and the wreckers strategem you can put knights down quickly.

Yeah the only knight I am afraid of is the one with the ion bulkward wl trait and the sanctuary relic. 4++ in cc makes knights difficult to deal with for some armies. Again its why harlies are so good.

As for the needing 3 full squads and a farseer, i dont get your math. I am more than happy doing 16-17 wounds onto a 3++ knight with a single squad and farseers doom. Even if thats not enough charge the 6 harlies into cc with it. They get 3 attacks each, hitting on 3's, wounding on 6's (str 4 vs t8) rerolling still because of doom, at ap-1 and 2 damage flat. Thats another 14 hits, 4 wounds, 2 saved from armor, doing another 4 dmg.

I dont do that myself, my goal isnt to nuke the knight in 1 round of combat, my goal is to weaken it to the point where its not a serious threat. If you do kill it, cool. If its down to hitting on 5's, its not as serious a threat as it was.

I didn't think Knights got a inv save in CC, just ranged attacks.

Azuza001 wrote:
Yeah the only knight I am afraid of is the one with the ion bulkward wl trait and the sanctuary relic. 4++ in cc makes knights difficult to deal with for some armies. Again its why harlies are so good.

As for the needing 3 full squads and a farseer, i dont get your math. I am more than happy doing 16-17 wounds onto a 3++ knight with a single squad and farseers doom. Even if thats not enough charge the 6 harlies into cc with it. They get 3 attacks each, hitting on 3's, wounding on 6's (str 4 vs t8) rerolling still because of doom, at ap-1 and 2 damage flat. Thats another 14 hits, 4 wounds, 2 saved from armor, doing another 4 dmg.

I dont do that myself, my goal isnt to nuke the knight in 1 round of combat, my goal is to weaken it to the point where its not a serious threat. If you do kill it, cool. If its down to hitting on 5's, its not as serious a threat as it was.

My math assumes a few things:

1) An efficient knight kill is a one-round knight kill. Because all meta knights for the most part go House Raven for the order of companions they have access to the Machine Spirit Resurgent 1cp stratagem, which allows them to act as though they were not degraded. IMO if you can't one-round a knight it is more efficient to attack other units in the army unless literally no other targets are presented for your antitank.

2) I am assuming that the knight has a 3++ vs shooting, having used 1cp to gain the 4++ warlord trait, and 3CP to rotate ion shields to a 3++. I also assume against any attack that relies on mortal wounds, the knight will use the 2CP stratagem that gives the knight a 5+ save against mortal wounds for the phase. That's where I get to needing 3 squads of skyweavers with Doom to shoot the knight down in a turn.

The point I'm trying to make here overall is that given the resources the knight must spend to gain the durability it has, people are approaching these anti-knight counters with an unrealistic desire for how efficient they will be able to kill it, especially given that the whole premise of the thread is "what is a counter other than another knight" when you can easily point out that another knight is actually a relatively highly inefficient counter.

Getting above 50% points return in shooting is absurdly efficient, even when you use crazy examples like Dissie Ravagers scything down unprotected intercessors or that very same castellan knight using its offensive stratagem and smashing up units like Predators which are considered highly overcosted. Expecting that level of efficiency and throwing up your hands and yelling "my faction has no way to deal with this!" is ridiculous.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here's another example: Let's say you prepared for a knight meta by bringing Snakebite Tankbustas. How many trukks worth with Monster Hunters to bring down the big daddy castellan?

theoretically it would take 1470 points of tankbustas, bomb squigs and trukks to take it out with Monster Hunters up. Smasha guns are a lot better solution, requiring 1162 points, which gets up there with some of the other factions' best answers.

 Elfric wrote:
I didn't think Knights got a inv save in CC, just ranged attacks.

You are wrong. A knight can get 5++ against ranged attacks and against melee with sanctuary. RIS works in the shooting phase and fight phase.

 p5freak wrote:

 Elfric wrote:
I didn't think Knights got a inv save in CC, just ranged attacks.

You are wrong. A knight can get 5++ against ranged attacks and against melee with sanctuary. RIS works in the shooting phase and fight phase.

While true, the fact that a single model cannot have 2 relics and the strength of Cawl's Wrath and other relic options means in a competitive setting you will very rarely see Sanctuary in a single-knight list.

If there were an event that let players tailor their relics rather than select them in the game, I'd think you might occasionally see Sanctuary picked up in matchups where you know your opponent is relying on a smash character to down your knight. You might also see it on a Gallant over the Paragon Gauntlet. But damn is that a big opportunity cost to gain a 4++.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
In any kind of competitive tactical discussion it is not very useful to assume that a counter-strategy is going to be ineffective because of the existence of a possible theoretical build that is non-meta.

You might as well say that counters to knights won't work because knight players will just bring an allied Black Templars detachment to get the auto-deny on 4+ stratagem.

If you can keep them alive, Ryza Kataphron Destroyers.

How are plasmadrops? Plasma guns in some form overcharging after coming from reserves?

SW has some choises for deepstriking plasma. Deep strike terminators, drop pod or outflank stratagem. Plasma units are long fangs, primaris hellblasters or wolf guards.

Thoughts?

I wasn't saying that, i was saying the only build that bothers me is that one.

Meta wise i see why you want it nuked t1 now and not just dropped a teir or 2. I still dont think 3 squads of harlies are needed, 2 will do the job just fine unless your building in redundancy, which again i can understand that.

Eldar soup looks to be an easy contender for this then, harliquin skyweavers, farseer w/ doom, throw a hemlock in for jinx, finish with cabal of the black hand ravagers to get access to the agents of vect "nope" strat, that should be enough to kill anything and be an effective force vs almost anything that could come at it. Use remaining points to sprinkle in some troops for objective holding and making batallions as needed.

Othet thoughts though....

Tzaangor bombs can do a number to that knight as well then, its a chr which tzaangors love to pound on. Not sure of the math requirements on that one though.

the_scotsman wrote:

If there were an event that let players tailor their relics rather than select them in the game, I'd think you might occasionally see Sanctuary picked up in matchups where you know your opponent is relying on a smash character to down your knight. You might also see it on a Gallant over the Paragon Gauntlet. But damn is that a big opportunity cost to gain a 4++.
.

I think most tournaments following ITC rules allow you to select relics / traits on a per-matchup basis. My AM/IK list has a Knight Gallant as the only big knight (some helverins too) but yea, if I see you have 3 smashcaptains I'm definitely taking Sanctuary. If I have to blow 3 CP to fight twice (Terryn Stratagem) to finish your knight off so be it, I need that 4++ in melee.

"How are plasmadrops?"
Came up last page. A 10-man in rapidfire range does 4.44 wounds to a 3++ T8 Knight.

DA can use the strat to get that up to 6.67.

Some forms of reroll are possible, but that's not a great return for a suicide unit.

 Valentine009 wrote:
If you can keep them alive, Ryza Kataphron Destroyers.

except you wont any competant opponent not running a pure hoard will kill them if they don't then you've lucked out its not a strategy

U02dah4 wrote:

 Valentine009 wrote:
If you can keep them alive, Ryza Kataphron Destroyers.

except you wont any competant opponent not running a pure hoard will kill them if they don't then you've lucked out its not a strategy

I just looked those up since I've never seen them. Somewhat impressive firepower (though D6 shots is pretty random) but damn, 48 points per model for a T5, 3W model with a 4" save? Most Knight lists pack Armiger Helverins... those look almost purpose made to eat Kataphron destroyers alive. They're far too expensive to be a viable counter. Hell, even with their firepower, you'd need to score 42 hits with overcharged Kataphrons on a Castellan to kill it through it's 3++ shield. Given that they have BS4, and average 3.5 shots per model, and wound on a 4+, you would need 48 Kataphron Destroyers firing on a Castellan to kill it on average.... or 2304 points worth of them.

Your missing that we have 2 strats that can boost it to 2+bs we reroll1's to hit ryza then has strat that gives it +1 ro W and +1 damage or 8 to 1 shot it through a 3++

We can also give it a 5++

Of course one that happens and you know what they do whats your prime target

U02dah4 wrote:
Your missing that we have 2 strats that can boost it to 2+bs we reroll1's to hit ryza then has strat that gives it +1 ro W and +1 damage or 8 to 1 shot it through a 3++

We can also give it a 5++

Of course one that happens and you know what they do whats your prime target

Ah. That makes it significantly better. I was unfamiliar with them entirely.

Admech in general has a huge weakness vs. helvarins bc many of our best units are 6ws. it's why ive started bringing las Contemptors in my soup.

the_scotsman wrote:


My personal favored chaos solution, the Death Hex+Lascannons, requires me to spend 1cp on cabalistic focus on a terminator sorceror (who I give the +1 to cast trait on when facing a knight or other priority target who must not have an invuln). That gives me +4 to cast meaning death hex goes off over 90% of the time and my opponent has to deny at +4. With no invuln the knight dies to around 900 points of any decent meta anti-tank unit (I just used quadlas hellforged contemptors but you could also use plague crawlers, stratagem'd defiler whatever). So again, around a 1000-1100 point solution to a one-turn kill. Notably however this solution doesn't require my opponent to spend any CP, which is a downside.

Apologies, and I think this is a super stupid thing, but for whatever asinine reason hellforged contemptors don't have access to twin-lascannons. I've essentially sent a message to Forge World about it every few months, and nothing has changed. Given how terrible they are at both being consistent and also failing to proofread and edit after the fact, it could be intentional for all we know. Or not!

Unless of course they've amended the wargear list at some point to include lascannons and I never noticed it.

Wow, I did not know that plasma drop was so bad vs them.

From a theoretical perspective, if a rhino with combi melta wolf guards pops out near a knight, how many wounds do they do on a 10 man squad?

Also, consider non Castellan solo knight can be even more efficient. Say Imperium soup brings one solo Gallant. That thing can take warlord trait to give it 4++ and then take the relic that gives it a 2+ armour save.

It is essentially close to unkillable by small arms, and only need 1 cp to raise ion shields. In close combat, most things won't have -4 AP and so it will generally still have a 5+ save (even against power fists).

And its not even 400 points. There is no way you can bring 400 points worth of any kind of shooting and hope to kill it in one round.

Also, I tried Daemon Prince with skull reaver. A Gallant actually has a potentially longer reach because it can do full tilt to give it a 12 inch plus advance plus charge. Another point, even a Khorn Daemon Prince who gets in the charge needs to get lucky to kill the Gallant in one turn. Otherwise, when he hits back, good chance that Daemon prince will get stomped to death. And you can only have one skull reaver relic.

My DP with skull reaver only managed to do 12 hp. Good thing that Gallant was already down 12 hp, so 12 was all I needed. You guys can math it out, but I don't think the chances of a skull reaver wielding DP killing a knight on one turn is that high. Not unless you use fury of Khorne to strike again.

And if you can use fury of khorne to strike again, he can use 2cp to interrupt to kill you before that. And dropping a knight to even single digit HP tiers is irrelevant. Its part of imperial soup, he has tons of CP, so he just needs to pay 1 cp to bring it up to max tier again.

The most ironic thing is that after spending so much effort to kill a single Gallant that game, it blew up and killed its points worth in an epic explosion lol. (My DP was already 180 points and there were other stuff nearby.)