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Hey guys,

I have been watching quite a few battle reports, some casual and some competitive. However, Imperial knights were doing amazing on pretty much every single game.

I played myself versus a few knights armies. As a tyranid player et nurgle daemons, I have a few trick to spam mortal wounds, which seem to be my best answer...

Nevertheless, I'm having a hard time to bring them down...

1- So far, you get extra CPs for running 3 LOW Titanic ?
2- You always get the +1 on the roll to go first ( which is big in this edition, let's be honest.. )
3- You can easily take cheap bataillon for extra CPs and objective secured ( imperial soup / chaos soup )
4- Most recent GT had at least 1 knight per army in the top 5

I mean, I like imperial knight, it is a great model and it is a challenge to play against it but there is place for balance ?

Thanks for your replies !

Play the objective game and put some dudes up on the second floors of buildings and watch IKs cry.

The most broken thing I've can tell about knights is they punish the supposed "TAC" lists that are geared up for killing infantry more than vehicles. Knights break the meta, but I wouldn't call them broken yet. Give them a while to see how it all swings out.

Honestly knight lists no matter how many of the tricks they use just boil down to being skew lists that some people have trouble dealing with. I Agree wih clockwork that once the meta calms down and people wise up to bring the stuff they need to deal with knights. It’s like Galef once said:
“If you refuse to use rock, you’ll never beat scissors”
People know they have a pretty good chance of running into knights, but i feel like they still dont prepare for it. That’s only their fault

They are broken as long as they have access to infinite CP.

Fix the guard CP battery and they go from god tier to A-tier which is fine.

bananathug wrote:
They are broken as long as they have access to infinite CP.

Fix the guard CP battery and they go from god tier to A-tier which is fine.

Nailed it. Without an infinite CP stream they are fairly balanced. It's the 3++, 1 wound top tier, shield breaker missile spam that's over the top.

Knights benefit from CP usage, and therefore soup more than other factions. Their strategems are average to good, but each time you buff a knight you’re affecting 20-30% of your army. A relic+3 CP for a 3++ isn’t OP on a 200 pt HQ, on a 600 pt gun platform it is. Thanks to the SHD command point changes and the ability to soup, IK can utilize their best strategems almost every turn and punch above their weight in points. On top of that, they can fill their need for bodies and melee deterrence with imperial guard hordes and Blood Angel Captains thanks to Soup.
That said, I think the meta will adjust to deal with knights like ClockworkZion said. In the early days of 8th when flyer spam was king people were bringing enough firepower to “knock out 2 fire raptors a turn”; for a while there hasn’t been a credible vehicle threat so Knights just aren’t running into the kind of firepower required to kill them right now.

No they are just to random. Where they become "broken" is when you soup them with guard CP farm

I love knights as they bend the meta so much.

One of my best tricks is the people playing slow. A knight army that only has to play with their limited CP for 3-4 turns is going to beat you. I love that people don't realize that.

It was a horde meta before knights so tournament players will adjust as knights take position. It was such a system shock that led to the results.

On their own knights are hardly OP as they are so reliant on CP and are just punished in objective games. Their singular nature also let's opponents focus them down which horde armies igmore. However, what skews their power is that those weaknesses are completely negated by the 180pt guard battalion/CP battery. Which, in my opinion, is far more an inditment of guard than knights

Would probably be better balanced if the CP you got from detachments and abilities where only usable by the same codex army. So the CP guard detachments or abilities make only can be used for guard stratagems. The base 3 CP or whatever you get is linked to whatever army your warlord is with.

And once again we see problem isn't codexes on their own but soup. Soup results in soup up or you are screwed.

The extra CP from an infantry blob is an advantage, but IMO, that CP blob is nothing but a CP blob. You're effectively paying that 200 pts just for CP. Also, kill the HQ, and no more CP generation.

Those infantry will be the target of every single standard trooper and anti-infantry weapon you have. They'd be lucky if an infantry blob lasts 2 turns. There's really nothing else to shoot unless you want to try to wound knights on 6s.

Additionally - remember you can tie up knights in CC with non-infantry/swarms. They can only walk over infantry/swarm types. They're also very vulnerable to CC.

I feel that knights are a valid correction to two problems - over-abundance of infantry swarms, and weakness of CC.

SirWeeble wrote:
The extra CP from an infantry blob is an advantage, but IMO, that CP blob is nothing but a CP blob. You're effectively paying that 200 pts just for CP. Also, kill the HQ, and no more CP generation.

Those infantry will be the target of every single standard trooper and anti-infantry weapon you have. They'd be lucky if an infantry blob lasts 2 turns. There's really nothing else to shoot unless you want to try to wound knights on 6s.

Additionally - remember you can tie up knights in CC with non-infantry/swarms. They can only walk over infantry/swarm types. They're also very vulnerable to CC.

I feel that knights are a valid correction to two problems - over-abundance of infantry swarms, and weakness of CC.

To be fair, I would argue that the upgraded weapons, respawing, re-roll 1 strategems, and +1 invul are worth 180 points. And it’s not like spending a little more for say, 9 mortars and otherwise missing anti-horde firepower is a bad deal. And good luck targeting a company commander hiding behind 3-4 knights, or getting your 24-30” standard infantry weapons in range.

Knights are vulnerable in CC...sort of: if you can charge them and if you have something that can do meaningful damage, beccause otherwise they’re hitting back with 15 S8 AP-2 D3 attacks, potentially re-rolling hits. They have a guaranteed way to kill characters in CC, and can back out of combat unless you charge them with bikes, vehicles, or monsters...which sounds a lot more restrictive than “non-infantry”, right? And those units aren’t all that common.

I also don’t think knights are going to reduce the prevalence of infantry swarms, other than by more people playing knights. Knights without allies can’t kill hordes efficiently, and now everyone else will be trading their heavy flamers for lascannons which means more FRFSRF surviving each turn.

They're a solid army. They're just in a VERY good spot right now with all the infantry running around. I would say soon people will be bringing things to deal with Knights more often now that they're popular. if you don't adjust though, yea they'll BREAK you..

I play knights a lot, and the solution to them is normally tau. I don’t run farm imperial guard, but then I believe it does indeed become overpowered. Tau have a lot of +1 to wound shenanigans so the weapons wounding normally on 5’s become 4’s and then fire warriors start gaking on knights.

As a Necron player i cant field enough good anti tank to compete with them so... yes they are broken imho.

Biasn wrote:
As a Necron player i cant field enough good anti tank to compete with them so... yes they are broken imho.

How well does you codex do against armoured vehicles like russes etc?
I'd sat its more the necron dex is more in the doldrums of power beside the marine codex.

Biasn wrote:
As a Necron player i cant field enough good anti tank to compete with them so... yes they are broken imho.

Try lots of Scarabs, since they're not Infantry, and always wound on 5's, if you go Novokh, you can reroll failed hits when you charge.
If you have a Novokh Warlord within 6" any nat 6's generate extra attacks, which you can reroll, as above.
You can also sacrifice a base for 1d3 mortal wounds for 1CP.
Scarabs ftw!

 Blndmage wrote:

Biasn wrote:
As a Necron player i cant field enough good anti tank to compete with them so... yes they are broken imho.

Try lots of Scarabs, since they're not Infantry, and always wound on 5's, if you go Novokh, you can reroll failed hits when you charge.
If you have a Novokh Warlord within 6" any nat 6's generate extra attacks, which you can reroll, as above.
You can also sacrifice a base for 1d3 mortal wounds for 1CP.
Scarabs ftw!

IK now can walk away infantry and swarms. If scarabs are swarms, they can get away from CC.

SirWeeble wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:

Biasn wrote:
As a Necron player i cant field enough good anti tank to compete with them so... yes they are broken imho.

Try lots of Scarabs, since they're not Infantry, and always wound on 5's, if you go Novokh, you can reroll failed hits when you charge.
If you have a Novokh Warlord within 6" any nat 6's generate extra attacks, which you can reroll, as above.
You can also sacrifice a base for 1d3 mortal wounds for 1CP.
Scarabs ftw!

IK now can walk away infantry and swarms. If scarabs are swarms, they can get away from CC.

Didn't know that, haven't faced any knights yet.
Damm, well that makes things harder, but Scarabs are still cheap for what they can do, throwing lots of attacks and wounds should be valid, especially if you can keep the pressure with shooting.
Maybe Wraiths?

Yeah probably Wraiths. Because what aren't they good for tarpitting?

I'm not sure if knights are broken or not. But I will say, my personal preference is to not play against armies of them. It's Warhammer 40k for crying out loud. When you play against knights it's a totally different game. It's silly to play them in a regular game, in my opinion. But hey, they sell so they're mainstream now.

Knights are fine. Good, but nothing too nuts. A whole army is an armor skew, obviously, but I don't see how it's different than an IG parking lot. At least the knights will sometimes move around and actually engage in the game besides the shooting phase. I'd much rather play the knights than the parking lot (and either over the early flyer spam, but that's a different complaint).

If they soup in a CP battery, that just gives you a perfect target for your small arms (and if you don't have enough anti-tank, you really should have enough anti-dude to paste 32 guardsmen in short order) and eats up a wl and relic slot. Not that the rest of the game is going to be easy if you're packing predominantly anti-hoard, but it's not worse than an all lascannon army running into a green tide.

As for a lone knight in an imperial army, there are plenty of things that show up regularly in the imperial stew. Are BA broken because you see Captain Slam and his scout buddies, for example? That specific knight is just a fairly efficient, self contained (if CP-hungry) shooting platform. If they're spending 5+ CP a turn to fuel it, that's going to leave the rest of their army starved and correspondingly more vulnerable. If you can't deal with that knight (not knocking the 3++), just focus the rest down and aim to win around it.

People like super-heavies are broken.

People acting like skew-lists were never a thing.

People acting like TAC is viable in a meta where a list can go "all infantry", or "all vehicle/super-heavy".

People acting like the game isn't rock-paper-scissors with army lists at the moment.

They're super-heavies. They're a skew list, designed to win against lists who build TAC or anti-horde. It's just the nature of the game; Infantry. Armor, and Balanced/Gimmick. Lists win or lose by the matchup they're dealt; the models aren't unbalanced, the game is.

People acting like Warhammer 40k has every been balanced.

I think they're fine. I can weaken with butcher cannon fire then crush them in CC. The flamers (cannon) are the toughest thing to deal with for me.

Ice_can wrote:

How well does you codex do against armoured vehicles like russes etc?
I'd sat its more the necron dex is more in the doldrums of power beside the marine codex.

Probably both but most armoured vehicles wont get a good armour save against AT weapons, usually 6+ with AP-3.

 Blndmage wrote:


Didn't know that, haven't faced any knights yet.
Damm, well that makes things harder, but Scarabs are still cheap for what they can do, throwing lots of attacks and wounds should be valid, especially if you can keep the pressure with shooting.
Maybe Wraiths?

Yep. Wraiths will do.

I brought a knight to a 1000pt local tourney - thinking i could stomp the opponents wraiths despite their 3++. I won't make that mistake again, but even if i actively avoided them, i think they're faster. You can't retreat over them, and 12 s8 stomps still aren't enough to get rid of them. My opponent didn't even surround and lock me in and i was able to back up, shoot, charge - still couldn't deal with i think 5 or 6 of them.

That opponent had scarabs too - but didn't attack with any. Just grabbed objectives.

single codex aint the issue, soup is.
mono knights is not broken.

Ice_can wrote:

Biasn wrote:
As a Necron player i cant field enough good anti tank to compete with them so... yes they are broken imho.

How well does you codex do against armoured vehicles like russes etc?
I'd sat its more the necron dex is more in the doldrums of power beside the marine codex.

Doomsday Ark does great against russes, the problem is that all of our anti-tank relies heavily on high AP which the knight ignores with its invuln save.

Btw, the people suggesting wraiths seem to forget that all knights come with a high volume, high strength, zero AP melee attack in their Stomp, which is perfect for killing wraiths.

 Arachnofiend wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

Biasn wrote:
As a Necron player i cant field enough good anti tank to compete with them so... yes they are broken imho.

How well does you codex do against armoured vehicles like russes etc?
I'd sat its more the necron dex is more in the doldrums of power beside the marine codex.

Doomsday Ark does great against russes, the problem is that all of our anti-tank relies heavily on high AP which the knight ignores with its invuln save.

Btw, the people suggesting wraiths seem to forget that all knights come with a high volume, high strength, zero AP melee attack in their Stomp, which is perfect for killing wraiths.

Run the Nightbringer, hope you roll 6's to wound and use Entropic strike. ezpz /s

Necrons right now struggle against any form of armor. Unless of course they spam the Mortal Wounds Bonanza that is tesseract vaults and go first (Otherwise those vaults are dying turn 1)