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Hey all just curious as to why there hasn't been more complaining about the imperial knight codex. When the IG codex first came out, you couldn't go anywhere on this forum without being bombarded with constant complaints about how OP it was. Heck there are still threads complaining about it running around. Now the most OP codex of the edition comes out annnnnddddd.... next to nothing? Is it because Knights are cool? More people on here play them? It just seems odd that forum known for complaining isn't complaining about something so strong. Should I just be patient and wait a couple months for the new codex hype to die down? My faith in reality is just being tested is all.

Because IG was already super freakin OP and then the codex didn't help what so ever. Imperial Knights are a niche army that can be easily counter-built, since you literally just need to bring anti-tank. Stop trying to fish for anger.

Did the big mean knights spank a salty donkey recently, or something?

Smells like an alt account to me. I love the smell of fanbois white-knighting in the morning.

Full disclosure: i play knights. I keep hearing the "just bring heavy weapons!" excuse, from people, but yet to see any army actually be successful against knights with that approach (aside from other knight lists). Examples include but are not limited to, triple max squads of obliterators lists, triple max squads of hiveguard lists, 9 dakkabots list, and triple plagueburst crawlers and bloat drone lists. All get crushed against a strong knight list. Maybe hordes can do it, since knights have a harder time killing a lot of stuff, but its still possible for them to do so. Dark elder might have had a shot, except helverins perfectly counter their vehicles. Eldar get crushed, as knights out fire-power and out durability them. If anyone has an actual list that has had success against knights I'd love to hear of it, because so far winning has been too easy with them.

Yeah I'm sure there are top tournement lists that give them a good beating, but they definitely seem like a gatekeeper army and a bit of a noob stomper / I win button.

There is a certain level of competitiveness that is achieved by simply taking 2000 points of knights and popping rotate ion shields each turn, and I think it probably beats a good 50% of players you'd find with random lists in pick up games.

Because people view IG like the "NPC" faction and get unbelievably salty if their bugs/supersoldiers/space communists get beaten by regular army dudes with rifles. People won't be happy until Guard are a free win again because we have been a free win for so long that anything else feels wrong to the majority of the community.

Salt donkey wrote:
Full disclosure: i play knights. I keep hearing the "just bring heavy weapons!" excuse, from people, but yet to see any army actually be successful against knights with that approach (aside from other knight lists). Examples include but are not limited to, triple max squads of obliterators lists, triple max squads of hiveguard lists, 9 dakkabots list, and triple plagueburst crawlers and bloat drone lists. All get crushed against a strong knight list. Maybe hordes can do it, since knights have a harder time killing a lot of stuff, but its still possible for them to do so. Dark elder might have had a shot, except helverins perfectly counter their vehicles. Eldar get crushed, as knights out fire-power and out durability them. If anyone has an actual list that has had success against knights I'd love to hear of it, because so far winning has been too easy with them.

I've found success with my Lord of Skulls backed up by Bloodletters of all things. 2+ to hit with a blob, 5+ to wound, give or take 50-60 attacks that potentially deal 2 instead of just 1 damage, and since it's a power sword against no invuln in melee, it CHEWS through their save. Also, i've found that Vindicators are SUPER cost effective against knights. I'm not saying bring 5 vindicators, but at 125 points base, they are very equipt to handle super heavy models, but not much else

w1zard wrote:
Because people view IG like the "NPC" faction and get unbelievably salty if their bugs/supersoldiers/space communists get beaten by regular army dudes with rifles. People won't be happy until Guard are a free win again because we have been a free win for so long that anything else feels wrong to the majority of the community.

Nah. I remember Leaf Blower changing the meta for Guard and the game, IG have been top tier for ages.

And if people are seeing Knight Hate threads, they aren’t looking. There are quite a few “Are Knights friendly?” threads to not see the hate oozing in some of the posts.

I for one welcome our new Mecha overlords!

SJ

Thanks guys I think you all have done a good job answering my question. The clear quote that stands out to me is "Because IG was already super freakin OP and then the codex didn't help what so ever." Because people had already experienced IG being super good before the codex was released they just expected the worst when the codex was actually dropped and offered pretty much offered exclusive improvements. Knights weren't op before this codex, so people haven't gotten already gotten sick of being crushed by them. That and it appears many on here do indeed play knights. Guess I'll just have to wait a little while for the complaint threads to rise in mass then. Thanks again for the replies!

w1zard wrote:
Because people view IG like the "NPC" faction and get unbelievably salty if their bugs/supersoldiers/space communists get beaten by regular army dudes with rifles. People won't be happy until Guard are a free win again because we have been a free win for so long that anything else feels wrong to the majority of the community.

This is 100% true. The second a guardsman kills anything it the “no guardsman can kill x” syndrome.its why the custod with guard mixed in always gets classified under guard hate. People don’t mentally mind the image of the finest soldiers in the galaxy killing their beloved x.... but the second a las gun takes them out it’s an issue

I think it might have more to do with the way guard feels when it's OP. You either get blown off of the board while they just stand there, they drop in and plasma you, or you have to chew through 200 dudes mobbing you.

Salt donkey wrote:
Hey all just curious as to why there hasn't been more complaining about the imperial knight codex. When the IG codex first came out, you couldn't go anywhere on this forum without being bombarded with constant complaints about how OP it was. Heck there are still threads complaining about it running around. Now the most OP codex of the edition comes out annnnnddddd.... next to nothing? Is it because Knights are cool? More people on here play them? It just seems odd that forum known for complaining isn't complaining about something so strong. Should I just be patient and wait a couple months for the new codex hype to die down? My faith in reality is just being tested is all.

Or the IG codex was more OP when it was released...You think knights are OP? Dark eldar can wipe floor with them as I was painfully taught yesterday. They are few in numbers making playing objectives hard. Cheap chaff is something they don't have really good solution. Hell even orks have nice tool to piss off knights in form of 30 grots creating 60" wide "you shall not pass" line. Knights have no point efficient way to get rid of those...Yes killing ain't problem but that is investing ridiculous amount of points and in turn limited game that means they will struggle to kill all orks. They would struggle anyway but prevent all those knights charging to stomp hordes and they will struggle more.

CP wise they struggle as well.

They are more likely to be seen as part of imperial soup rather than army of their own.


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jcd386 wrote:
Yeah I'm sure there are top tournement lists that give them a good beating, but they definitely seem like a gatekeeper army and a bit of a noob stomper / I win button.

There is a certain level of competitiveness that is achieved by simply taking 2000 points of knights and popping rotate ion shields each turn, and I think it probably beats a good 50% of players you'd find with random lists in pick up games.

You realize that ion shield protects only one knight a turn? And you aren't forced to shoot at that? Key to deal with that ion shield. Start with your least important weapon against which strategem is useful. On extreme example for example lascannon rather than volcano cannon. Fire at knight. If it uses rotate ion shield? Then you will switch all the rest of anti-tank against OTHER knight. You might have "wasted" lascannon by putting few wounds to target you don't then concentrate more this turn(but it could be saved by inv save, not neccessarily even with rotate ion shield, and damage is still left for future turn) but then everything else goes to other knight which doesn't benefit from rotate ion shields.

Either he pops it and you do above or he waits for you to commit giving you plenty of firepower to shoot without bumbed invulnerable save.

Worst you can do is start with volcano cannon right away. If you do then you deserve to lose the game due to playing it horribly bad. Nobody deserves to win a game if they make such an attrocious tactical mistakes. I don't expect to win with any of my armies if I do and if I do win it is then either OP list or dice luck being so skewed it's pathetic. Either way won't feel like a win.

I understand the concept, yes. But I'm also not sure it's quite that simple in every situation. Sometimes I'd imagine you really need to kill a particular knight. Let's say they have one knight charging you, and 3 holding back some. Do you just ignore the one in front of you if it has a 4++ and rotates? I think it's possible as the knight player to make your opponent make hard choices, though not impossible ones by any means.

My only point is that in general there aren't any bad units in the knight codex, and that your average fluffy game store pick up game type army is unlikely to have the tools to take care of 4+ knights.

You just beat them on objectives. You don't need to kill them. Their shooting is actually awful for their cost.

jcd386 wrote:
I understand the concept, yes. But I'm also not sure it's quite that simple in every situation. Sometimes I'd imagine you really need to kill a particular knight. Let's say they have one knight charging you, and 3 holding back some. Do you just ignore the one in front of you if it has a 4++ and rotates? I think it's possible as the knight player to make your opponent make hard choices, though not impossible ones by any means.

My only point is that in general there aren't any bad units in the knight codex, and that your average fluffy game store pick up game type army is unlikely to have the tools to take care of 4+ knights.

You can then wrap the charging knight with some chaff and have it delay that way. Remember knight cannot move over your infantry except falling back so have some screens and knight will find itself unable to charge what it wants.

Also why you think you NEED to kill all knights? Remember these things called "objectives"? If games ends up by wipeouting that's bad as well.

And maybe they don't have bad units but that just means internal balance is for a change decent(though paladin and errant are pretty bad actually). But as you can win against them that's good. What? You want codex where you have good AND bad units? People then just spam good units and ignore bad ones and external balance isn't helped. "Hey that codex has bad units! It's not broken!". Well umm...No. Broken comes from the leading edge of codex which then is spammed. IG CP battery isn't any less powerful because IG codex has banewolf in it.

Martel732 wrote:
You just beat them on objectives. You don't need to kill them. Their shooting is actually awful for their cost.

Yeah, I’m not seeing how Knight Castellans and Armiger Helverins have awful shooting for their cost.

Because they cost 700 godamn points? And a shadowsword makes them look like ork dreads?

Martel732 wrote:
Because they cost 700 godamn points? And a shadowsword makes them look like ork dreads?

Neither of those things are true.

So what is the truth, then? I personally think the dominus class are junk, but maybe I'm not seeing something.

Martel732 wrote:
Because they cost 700 godamn points? And a shadowsword makes them look like ork dreads?

Your world is about to be shook when you see those Autocannon Armigers. Remember how Predators with an Autocannon had one of our better weapons?

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Because they cost 700 godamn points? And a shadowsword makes them look like ork dreads?

Your world is about to be shook when you see those Autocannon Armigers. Remember how Predators with an Autocannon had one of our better weapons?

Yeah, I've already got them in lists. feth predators.

Martel732 wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
Because they cost 700 godamn points? And a shadowsword makes them look like ork dreads?

Your world is about to be shook when you see those Autocannon Armigers. Remember how Predators with an Autocannon had one of our better weapons?

Yeah, I've already got them in lists. feth predators.

The only thing not making Predators obsolete is getting rerolls. Fun part is Armigers dont even need them!

Predators were obsolete when the codex dropped.

Martel732 wrote:
Predators were obsolete when the codex dropped.

I'd argue they were more obsolete when Rule Of Three got implemented and actually started to be enforced as heaven forbid you get Killshot off more than once every few games.

Martel732 wrote:
So what is the truth, then? I personally think the dominus class are junk, but maybe I'm not seeing something.

1. Castellans are ~600 points, not 700.
2. Every Castellan is taking Ion Bulwark and Cawl's Wrath. This is what every Castellan will run in competitive play, just like you're always taking Tallarn or Catachan on a Shadowsword.
3. A lone Shadowsword isn't killing a Castellan. The Castellan 3++ means that only in an average round of shooting you'll end up with 1 unsaved wound from the volcano cannon, leaving you way short of killing a Castellan even if you also take a full set of lascannon sponsons.
4. The Castellan, though, will in an average round of shooting destroy an unshrouded Shadowsword or put a shrouded one on its final bracket.
5. If the Shadowsword somehow kills a Castellan, the Castellan can just use a 2CP stratagem to stand back up at the end of the enemy shooting phase on a 4+.
6. Oh, and there's another 1CP stratagem for a Castellan to fire as if it weren't bracketed.

You really want to be taking 3 Shadowswords in a Supreme Command detachment if you want to reliably one round a Castellan. And even then, they can just stand back up and unless you've got a charger that can deal d3 wounds, that Knight is going to get a turn.

I was thinking more vs the field, not head to head.

Martel732 wrote:
I was thinking more vs the field, not head to head.

A model that does 29 wounds on average against a Shadowsword does just fine against the field.

I'm still skeptical vs Xenos. 600 pts is a lot for something with only 28 wounds.

I see knights at best as a gate keeper army. They have some really bad matchups like dark eldar and Altioc. They are not fun for beer and pretzel games nor are interesting to watch in a video batrep. GW wrote an excellent codex for them though and that’s really what matters. As soon as IG CP farm gets the hit from the nerf bat they I don’t think they will be so amazing any more.