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https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/05/19/warhammer-40000-faction-focus-imperial-knights/

My first thought is that the super-heavy detachment is a terrible idea. Similar to the riptide wing, this rewards players for spamming out a few powerful models, whether knights, wraithknights or stormsurges (or whatever is the strongest super heavy in eighth). This is possibly the single worst thing I've seen in eighth rumours so far. I sincerely hope the power levels of the super heavies are well balanced, as this could be very bad if not :( I don't want a return to the riptide-wing situation we had before!

Yeah, I am a bit disappointed that that detachment exists. I feel like they must be putting a lot of weight on the Command Points to balance the different detachments.

Yeah, Knights, as an army, was one of the biggest mistakes GW made, that really belongs in Apocalypse and tears the scale away from what the core of the game should really be, the common infantry.

Hopefully they'll be balanced enough that they wont be an issue. Wont hold my breath though.

The Knight profile does reinforce my initial impression that the Leman Russ however did not get treated terribly nicely in the resiliency department, at least relative to a Knight. Under 7E the Russ had half the HP and no shield, but at least had better armor (Toughness), now the former remains true but the latter does not.

I can definitely see where you are coming from, and hope for similar. I don't feel too worried about it however, with each knight coming in at power 23 a pop (Points as of yet unconfirmed if they have changed) the most I'd expect someone to be able to play alongside that would be the patrol detachment or a very barebones battalion detachment whilst you could chalk in with a brigade detachment. We can't know for sure until wider release. Also, I doubt we'll see Riptide-wing level hurt again as there are no special rules with formations, only the command points.

We knew a super heavy FoC was coming though, when they said that anyone could use any of the FoC, and that knights were going to be playable. Imperial Knights vs wraith knights will be sixes I imagine, because knights won't have a crap initiative and be subject to the interior vehicle rules. I'm a bit more curious how five baneblades will play, or how much silliness you can squeeze out of a 5 obelisk/tesseract vault list.

I agree - they will be hard to balance for the reasons they stated in the article - either you can answer that many super heavies or you can't.

Lasguns/bolters potentially hurting them doesn't really make too much of a difference to be honest. With 24 wounds it's like trying to kill TWO riptides with lasguns in 7th - never going to happen in any normal game.

Just for interest - it's now 24 BS4 lascannons to destroy a knight (with average rolling)

Knights won't like grey knigts.

Knights won't like terminators ethier.

as for las cannons, it's actually a little better than you said, but that is probably due to rounding.
2/3 * 2/3 * 2/3 * 3.5 = 1.04 average damage per shot, so yeah 23 las cannon shots to down a knight.

Meltas are also kind of crap against them:
2/3 * 1/2 * 2/3 * 3.5 = 0.77 average damage per shot

Battle cannons on the other hand (the weapon that ruined the leman russ according to several people on the board)
3.5 * 2/3 * 1/2 * 2/3 * 2 = 1.6 damage per hit, so 15 shots

Strange I thought the battle cannon sucked...

For the super heavy detachment, knights aren't really my main concern, as they'll have playtested armies of them. I'm a bit more worried by armies of wraithknights, stormsurges, baneblade varients - just insert whichever winds up being just a little bit undercosted. Could create some very binary games if they're not careul...

Power Level 23, eh? Interesting. Not quite triple the power of a Rubric Marine Squad. Color me interested in seeing the Power Levels of other units to get a frame of reference!

I'm not too concerned with a Super-Heavy Detachment. Now that anything can hurt anything, it won't be near as bad to face off against these big killers. Really, I am just hoping that I can field my Guard or Space Marine army with a Knight in it, and not have to field three Knights in an army just to unlock them in a Detachment.

I picked up on several things that piqued my interest:

- Once it starts getting damaged, it is going to be much less effective in battle. Makes me interested in the damage tables for other big scary models.

- OH! Lookie lookie! The Thermal Cannon "gets D6 shots vs units with 5 or more models" - will we get a rule like that for other formerly blast and large blast weapons? Maybe the Leman Russ would get something like that as well.

- Stomps are different. Good! They were, in my experience, either all or nothing, and never fun to use for either player. Making them just another melee attack makes so much more sense, and can be differentiated between different units now. Makes it feel more like the old Stop/Thunderstomp attacks from Warhammer Fantasy, where it was tied into the Strength of the attacker.

- Trygons get "multiple D6 damage melee attacks". That's nice and scary right there! Makes it sound like Trygons are here to hunt other big things over enemy hordes.

Overall, I'm excited. I really, REALLY hope that I can field just one or two Knights though. I'm not really concerned that Super-Heavies will be as dangerous as they were before, but I would like to field one as an Ally to my Marines or Guard.


OOH! What if Knights get Households to have their own "Chapter Tactics"? That would be neat!

The problem with Knights used to be skew. You brought a full Knights list and an all-comers list never had enough anti-armour to do something about them.

But given that pulse rifles are wounding Knights on a 5+ now? The skew problem is basically gone and you can actually fight them.

(So: the Knights army is kind of dumb, but less dumb than it is in 7th.)

Great, I'm so glad that armies that exist only to pose binary "did you bring *This* much anti-tank?" win/lose list-building questions stayed in the game. That was my favorite part of 7th edition.

I'm so happy that GW expects players to not realize that they'll need to fire 648 boltgun shots at one of these to take it down, and so their "everything can hurt everything!" spiel is nothing short of disingenuous. Your entire army's combined anti-infantry firepower for several games put together will not be enough to take down one IK, let alone its four buddies.

Allowing armies of nothing but Imperial Knights was probably the single biggest mistake Games Workshop has done in balancing 40k.

And yeah, I'm counting all those other mistakes they made. All of them.

Up until today I didn't see anything about 8th edition that made me think it would be unplayable in a tournament without houseruling. And now I got a taste of it.

Yeah, I think a lot of people aren't seeing the bigger picture here. Sure they are strong, but now that anything can potentially hurt them, and they get worse over time, and there are weapons that deal multiple wounds, and there are Mortal Wounds... well you get the picture. They're probably more tough now to things that could actually hurt them before, but they're WAY less tough to things that couldn't.

Plus they get worse as the fight goes on! Bringing a Knight down to 25% health means it only hits on 5's and moves 6 inches. That's pretty terrible, meaning that you don't have to go through the full 24 wounds to realistically deal with it.

So will they be scary? Sure. But now anyone can deal with them, rather than just hope to avoid them all game (which couldn't happen because they always moved 12 inches and never got worse). Heck, if they move now their guns hit on 4+! Unless they chose not to spoil that their guns don't suffer the move and shoot penalty.

Anyways... don't get you space undies in a knot.

GW isn't saying anything will kill anything. They are saying anything CAN kill anything. They even point out that yes a grot blaster can hurt a knight but they don't recommend trying.

Any chance a khorne lord of skull is sick of costing 888? lol

Bit strange they are only LD9. Surely a guy piloting a giant mech is going to be slightly less susceptible to fear or morale or legging it than anyone else.
I would have thought they'd max them out at 10.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Yeah, Knights, as an army, was one of the biggest mistakes GW made, that really belongs in Apocalypse and tears the scale away from what the core of the game should really be, the common infantry.

Hopefully they'll be balanced enough that they wont be an issue. Wont hold my breath though.

The Knight profile does reinforce my initial impression that the Leman Russ however did not get treated terribly nicely in the resiliency department, at least relative to a Knight. Under 7E the Russ had half the HP and no shield, but at least had better armor (Toughness), now the former remains true but the latter does not.

Knights should never had had inferior armor to the Russ, imo. The AV 12 sides were a disaster in 7th. Russes had front armor similar to a some titans. Too much defense, not enough offense.

 Ratius wrote:
Bit strange they are only LD9. Surely a guy piloting a giant mech is going to be slightly less susceptible to fear or morale or legging it than anyone else.
I would have thought they'd max them out at 10.

With Space Marines being LD 7 now, it works for me. I would imagine that it is only there in the case of some psychic attack that Wounds against Leadership or something. What with the way you take Morale checks at the end of phases now, I don't see a Knight taking a Morale check after melee in normal cases.

LD needed to be lower across the board. I don't mind 10 (and
higher )being the major characters only.

And people don't underestimate the difference between wounds on a6+ and can't wound at all (let alone a 5+). Sure knights are tough, but in general their toughness against small to medium firepower has taken quite a beating.
Losing the gargantuan special rules is a big deal as well, they have vehicle damage chart now.

 Grimgold wrote:
Knights won't like terminators ethier.

as for las cannons, it's actually a little better than you said, but that is probably due to rounding.
2/3 * 2/3 * 2/3 * 3.5 = 1.04 average damage per shot, so yeah 23 las cannon shots to down a knight.

Meltas are also kind of crap against them:
2/3 * 1/2 * 2/3 * 3.5 = 0.77 average damage per shot

Battle cannons on the other hand (the weapon that ruined the leman russ according to several people on the board)
3.5 * 2/3 * 1/2 * 2/3 * 2 = 1.6 damage per hit, so 15 shots

Strange I thought the battle cannon sucked...

So it would take 4 Leman Russ' (BC + LC) just over 2 turns to take down a knight? And that is without the vanquisher upgrade which is likely to have something like d6 damage (which would reduce it to 3 vanquishers in under two turns). So far better than now.

Definitely a lot of interesting tidbits that other factions can pick up from this.

D3 blasts are a thing, which by extension means that varying blast "sizes" are still a thing.

Blasts scaling against high-model units is also a thing, potentially good news for the LRBT if it turns out it can do the same thing and they just forgot to mention it.

Between this and the Tau preview, it looks like any sufficiently large unit will pretty much be able to withdraw from combat while shooting. Though we haven't gotten "sufficiently large" pinned down.

Since the superheavy detachment is universal, theoretically a Guard player could just toss three or four Baneblades or Baneblade variants on the table. Though that might not necessarily be a good idea.

mynamelegend wrote:
...Up until today I didn't see anything about 8th edition that made me think it would be unplayable in a tournament without houseruling...

What, "Yes, you may deploy plasma guns within rapid-fire range of whatever you want and get shots off before the other guy has a chance to do anything at all" wasn't enough of a hint?

I'm so looking forward to taking 3 WKs in 8th. Probably not in casual/narrative games, but for competitive/matched play, it is on.
It's also interesting to see the Reaper chainsword (formally str D) just does a straight 6 damgage.
I wonder if this will be similar for the WK's melee sword (also formally str D) and for Distort weapons.

-

What I think will be really interesting is how the Rending special rule will work in 8th, considering everything runs on S/T now.

Mortal wounds on a 6?

 ross-128 wrote:
What I think will be really interesting is how the Rending special rule will work in 8th, considering everything runs on S/T now.

Mortal wounds on a 6?

This is what Daemonettes get instead of rending:

which are resolved at AP-4 when you roll a 6+ to wound!

 DoomMouse wrote:
I agree - they will be hard to balance for the reasons they stated in the article - either you can answer that many super heavies or you can't.

Lasguns/bolters potentially hurting them doesn't really make too much of a difference to be honest. With 24 wounds it's like trying to kill TWO riptides with lasguns in 7th - never going to happen in any normal game.

Just for interest - it's now 24 BS4 lascannons to destroy a knight (with average rolling)

but if you read between the lines on knight article you read Trygon makes multiple d6 attacks so i m sure IK will find their own nemesis, in 7th send a trygon against a D chain sword armed IK was a gamble a single 6 and bye bye trygon, now that wil be impossible, so i will wait see the costs.Then now you should consider a single marine with a power axe wounds it at 5 and -2 rend so is not so impossible hurt also with infantry in cac.

 mrhappyface wrote:

 ross-128 wrote:
What I think will be really interesting is how the Rending special rule will work in 8th, considering everything runs on S/T now.

Mortal wounds on a 6?

This is what Daemonettes get instead of rending:

which are resolved at AP-4 when you roll a 6+ to wound!

And the Rubric Soul Reaper had Rending, but is now AP -3 (instead of -2 like the other "AP3" weapons we've seen so far). in its case it just got an additional -1AP than would be normal
So it appears that "Rending" will be resolved differently for different models/weapons.

If the original question was about the Gatling weapon the Knights have, I would say it will just be AP -3 as well. No additional rule is necessary (which is great)

-

 AnomanderRake wrote:

mynamelegend wrote:
...Up until today I didn't see anything about 8th edition that made me think it would be unplayable in a tournament without houseruling...

What, "Yes, you may deploy plasma guns within rapid-fire range of whatever you want and get shots off before the other guy has a chance to do anything at all" wasn't enough of a hint?

Because that totally hasn't been a thing since the birth ofthe drop pod....

I expect knights to go down like chumps to dedicated CC units. Depending on how hard it turns out to be to take out vehicles at range, I suspect that dedicated anti-vehicle/MC units will find a place. A unit full of power/chainfists is going take out a knight in no time at all, never mind other vehicles. Especially if said units get to fire combi-meltas or so first.
Chewing through 24 wounds with invulnerable save is going to take a while at range I think.

DaPino wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:

mynamelegend wrote:
...Up until today I didn't see anything about 8th edition that made me think it would be unplayable in a tournament without houseruling...

What, "Yes, you may deploy plasma guns within rapid-fire range of whatever you want and get shots off before the other guy has a chance to do anything at all" wasn't enough of a hint?

Because that totally hasn't been a thing since the birth ofthe drop pod....

...Yeah, point. Mishaps and Reserves rolls existed before, but drop pods already pretty much ignored them; the only thing that's really changed is that there's no longer a chance that you won't be in rapid-fire range.

(Half-your-army-on-the-table sort of cancels out half-your-pods-on-turn-one, the turn-one alpha strike is about the same size.)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Roknar wrote:
I expect knights to go down like chumps to dedicated CC units. Depending on how hard it turns out to be to take out vehicles at range, I suspect that dedicated anti-vehicle/MC units will find a place. A unit full of power/chainfists is going take out a knight in no time at all, never mind other vehicles. Especially if said units get to fire combi-meltas or so first.
Chewing through 24 wounds with invulnerable save is going to take a while at range I think.

Godd***it. Now I have to actually build some of those melta-fists my Deathwatch Terminators never took in 7th.