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Here's an idea I had for a freeblade/bounty hunter themed imperial knights army which is also vaguely competitive. I couldn't remember if the obsidian knight rules were for regular 40k so I'm just running it as a regular paladin.

Imperial Knights:
Gerantius the Forgotten Knight:500
Cerastus Knight Acheron: 415
Cerastus Knight Castigator:380
Imperial knight paladin:375
Assassin detachment:
Callidius Assassin 145.

".....also vaguely competitive"

Trust me, you're probably going to lose a lot of friends over this list. Not even necessarily because of how much punch it will have, just because more than one knight gets peoples backs up.

Well I don't think I'd ever use it in a casual game, but I thought it'd be cool to take it to NOVA or something. I feel that in a meta where Andamantium Lance abounds, wave serpent spam persists, and the tau shoot things the list will probably lose terribly.Still I don't think I'd play this list even in one of my local tourneys because like you said I'd probably lose alot of friends that way.
Any suggestions for the names of the free blades?

IMO a Vindicare assassin would be better for the long-range support.

I second the Vindicare recommendation. It's going to take you a turn to get up to support the Calidus anyway, and your stomps already scare the pants off of psychic deathstarts... the Vindicare is perfect to fit the theme of "removing" characters that annoy you... and you can just downgrade the Paladin to an Errant to fit it in (which I think you need a bit more AP2 shooting anyway, so that works).

Looks fun. I'd love to see someone who actually had the models to pull this off though haha

I thought callidius would be good for both ensuring I get the turn I want and taking out key enemies that could kill the knights with its phase sword. I considered the vindicare, but I finally decided that the knights already have enough long range firepower. Although causing D3 wounds with ignores cover and precision shot is pretty nasty.


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On second thought the vindicare would be a pretty useful high point model removal tool so I'll go with that. Plus its probably the coolest model they have.

It is ture that it's planning to take you any use wake up to aid the particular Calidus anyway, and your stomps previously scare the pants away from clairvoyant deathstarts.

 DoomShakaLaka wrote:
Here's an idea I had for a freeblade/bounty hunter themed imperial knights army which is also vaguely competitive. I couldn't remember if the obsidian knight rules were for regular 40k so I'm just running it as a regular paladin.

Imperial Knights:
Gerantius the Forgotten Knight:500
Cerastus Knight Acheron: 415
Cerastus Knight Castigator:380
Imperial knight paladin:375
Assassin detachment:
Callidius Assassin 145.

This list ended our friendship and I've never even met you

Over half of your opponents army won't be able to inflict damage, and what little can will be mostly killed by your Callidius...is this really fun to you, though? Do you think you will have fun with this? I understand the idea of having a robot army, but there are better ways. You will legit never lose a game. That will get very old, very fast, and you would have spent a ton of money on this army.

This list ended our friendship and I've never even met you

Uh, sorry about that I hadn't realized I was baking so much cheese in the oven.

But I guess is our friendship was ruined over a forum post it just wasn't meant to be

Over half of your opponents army won't be able to inflict damage, and what little can will be mostly killed by your Callidius

I honestly thought that at a tourney that people would be able to deal with it effectively, but then again I haven't play-tested it or anything so I wouldn't no how effective it was. The idea I had was for an all-comers bounty-hunter esque list which I might ( if I ever actually built it) bring to a highly competitive format. I even had an idea of a free-hand bounty hunter symbol from Star Wars on them instead of the imperial Aquilla.

what little can will be mostly killed by your Callidius

I'll admit I actually had that last part in mind as well as making reserve heavy lists suffer..... I'm a terrible person aren't I?

My Kasrkin Sniper/Vindicare counts-as would be perfect for your list. He has the little Star Wars bounty hunter logo painted on his shouldpad. Not sure how to link images from the gallery, but...

http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-37809-12959_Kasrkin%20Sniper.html

 Kriswall wrote:
My Kasrkin Sniper/Vindicare counts-as would be perfect for your list. He has the little Star Wars bounty hunter logo painted on his shouldpad. Not sure how to link images from the gallery, but...

http://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/images-37809-12959_Kasrkin%20Sniper.html

i like.

Wow, that is a superb model. I'm going to have to do something like that myself.

Over half of your opponents army won't be able to inflict damage, and what little can will be mostly killed by your Callidius

I honestly thought that at a tourney that people would be able to deal with it effectively, but then again I haven't play-tested it or anything so I wouldn't no how effective it was. The idea I had was for an all-comers bounty-hunter esque list which I might ( if I ever actually built it) bring to a highly competitive format. I even had an idea of a free-hand bounty hunter symbol from Star Wars on them instead of the imperial Aquilla.

I honestly think that you're heavily overestimating how much anti-tank people bring. I'm not saying your list is impossible for someone to beat, but it's borderline if a) no one knows you're playing this army well in advance, and so ditches every other aspect of their force, and/or b) they're not expected to use the same list to fight your army and then someone elses. Seriously.

A dedicated anti-tank army from any faction, using every anti-tank option open to it and that ignores every other aspect of the game will be able to stand against your list, but the game won't be that fun for anyone involved. Outside of that, a large number of armies won't have any chance

I have to say the Calidus brings far more to the table than the useless Vindicare. I mean a 150 point assassin that takes on average 13 rounds of shooting to down a bog standard 90 point Space Marine Captain. Ah but tank hunting I hear you say. Well 150 points for 1 S10 Ap2 shot makes the never seen Railhead tank from Tau look like a good deal and it is alot tougher to deal with. Seriously the Vindicare is useless never take him. Do the maths on him trying to kill ANYTHING and you'll see how terrible he is.

As for the list I quite like it. It's a rock papers scissors list but with no Adamantium Lance it is not going to worry top players. It will roll over its good match ups and all mediocre players but good players can beat it (with or without out fighting it dependent on their list) and it has some woeful match ups (though one of them is likely to go away in a few weeks in Cronair). In my area anyone taking Knights basically always takes the Lance so whilst the Forgeworld Knights look great on paper compared to the normal ones the Lance swings that. So be prepared for that.

It will certainly be a cool list and as my name is Geraint I have to applaud the use of Gerantius (all my Knights are painted in his scheme)

 FlingitNow wrote:
I have to say the Calidus brings far more to the table than the useless Vindicare. I mean a 150 point assassin that takes on average 13 rounds of shooting to down a bog standard 90 point Space Marine Captain. Ah but tank hunting I hear you say. Well 150 points for 1 S10 Ap2 shot makes the never seen Railhead tank from Tau look like a good deal and it is alot tougher to deal with. Seriously the Vindicare is useless never take him. Do the maths on him trying to kill ANYTHING and you'll see how terrible he is.

The value in the vindicare is killing things like meltaguns, lascannons, or command squad apothecaries from range and giving no save (except maybe fnp). I wouldn't ever use it to kill IC's as the results are just too bad.

EDIT: That being said, I still wouldn't take him.

This isn't even remotely competitive. What kind of environment are we talking about here? This seems like a casual fun list I would enjoy playing. I could finally bring some dreadnoughts, maybe a knight of my own. The callidus Assassin is going to get maybe one turn of shooting her neural shredder before she gets cut down by EVERYTHING that can't hurt your knights. I don't think any assassins help you here, I think that 145+ points is better spent on some cheap MSU units to hold objectives. They don't even have to be objective secured. Just cheap units that your opponent can't get LOS on unless they kill some of your knights.

I think the idea was to use Callidius to infiltrate 1" away from the target I wanted to kill ( which would be a threat to my knights) and either
a.have the enemy waste shots on it while my knights move up the board or
b. hold up said unit in cc to serve as a distraction for the knights as well

Plus re-roll to steal initiative and -3 to any enemy reserve rolls whats not to like?


The reason I don't like the idea of the lance is because I don't want three knights standing three inches away from each other.... that makes it WAY too easy to be surrounded, and you can't score. In my list each of the knights would run up as fast as possible guns ablazing and charging either turn 1 or 2 depending on deployment. Plus although knights aren't denial units the other scoring units have to be within 3" of the objective... which you can deny with the huge base.


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I'm not sure if the list is as good or as terrible as everyone is saying. I think its main strategy would be to kill all of the heavy weapons and ob sec troops first. Then sit on objectives while popping units

 Mulletdude wrote:

 FlingitNow wrote:
I have to say the Calidus brings far more to the table than the useless Vindicare. I mean a 150 point assassin that takes on average 13 rounds of shooting to down a bog standard 90 point Space Marine Captain. Ah but tank hunting I hear you say. Well 150 points for 1 S10 Ap2 shot makes the never seen Railhead tank from Tau look like a good deal and it is alot tougher to deal with. Seriously the Vindicare is useless never take him. Do the maths on him trying to kill ANYTHING and you'll see how terrible he is.

The value in the vindicare is killing things like meltaguns, lascannons, or command squad apothecaries from range and giving no save (except maybe fnp). I wouldn't ever use it to kill IC's as the results are just too bad.

EDIT: That being said, I still wouldn't take him.

150 points to snipe the odd meltagun is not a good spend for such a fragile unit.

The Vindicare is kind of sad now that I look at him compared to the other assassins. Being the most expensive assassin you'd think he would have the best damage output or at least something to make him worthwhile. Instead he is kinda OK at doing a few different things.
Ignoring invul saves is not that great unless the model has low enough toughness for you to actually wound it with the sniper.
S10 ap2 blast against vehicles is great... except I could get an av13,11,11 predator with three lascannons for 120 (30 pts cheaper and still not that great) and having one hellfire shot is not impressive either.

Honestly if he were going to be "good" his shots would do all of the above all at once.... but then he'd be too powerful and everyone would hate him.

Put this way:
The Callidius jumps in your face so you can't ignore her.
The Eversor wrecks in assualting/shooting.
The Culexus is hard to hit and kills psykers dead.
The Vindicare strips one hull point of a vehicle and/or kills your space marine sgt.