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Played in a 36 man tournament yesterday (ITC, 2000pts) and I think I only saw 4 Knights total. I had 1, and there was a dude with 3 in his list (he only played 1 game I believe then left). Other than that, I don't think I saw any others (could be wrong). certainly not the numbers that were seen last year and at the LVO. Is this the same in your area?

People are still using a ton in tgmge great lakes as far as i can tell.

they did nerf knights with the latest FAQ update. they're still good but the castellan is no longer auto-take good

Its all about the krast crusader now.

Yesterday I played a 28 person ITC and myself along with probably 6 other people had knights. Mine and one others was pure Knights. The rest were soup. Also, the Krast crusader is the bees knees it seems. That thing room out my Rampager and crippled Despoiler in one turn.

I'm not a tournament player, but Knights are only going to get more popular, not less now that Chaos has theirs too. Whether it stays more popular will depend on the subtle differences between their Soup's (Not necessarily just Cultists- Tzeenthcian Smite Spam, etc), Chapter/House Tactics, etc.

Yeah, I saw a lot less Knights than I was expecting at Heat 1 back in June as well. I suspect we'll see the numbers go up again now that Cahos Knights have their own codex as well.

I'd suspect imperials will not run as many since they're not auto include
Considering how crazy the Chaos Knight codex is, and how its the flavor of the month, i'd expect a sharp rise in knights.

Martel732 wrote:
Its all about the krast crusader now.

That's what I ran, did well with my Deathwatch.

It's a solid Castellan replacement.

I've seen knights in general decrease locally. The castellan is extinct.

Now with the Chaos dex out, I expect to see a small resurgence as people use them to problem solve in Chaos lists.

It was that you saw Castellans alone.

Now you seem to see plenty of Crusaders with a pair of Armigers.

Hard to say where this ends with the Chaos on the field now.

Knights have decreased in use slightly, but they are still found across many tables.

The Castellan is very much dead however. Looking at the ATC and ETC which are perfect environments for units like the Castella, it still isn't run.

Ironically, now that it's a sub par unit I intend to use mine even more lol

I expect to see a lot more Chaos Knights. Being able to make your knights T9 is amazingly good.

Knights are a high tier tournament army... not a top tier tournament army. If you want the best possible chance to win, you wouldn't bring Knights, so many comp players are just using them less. They have too many units that hard counter them for like half the points they cost. Khorne prince or Disco Lord gets too close? Instant dead Knight that cots 3x as much as the unit that killed it in a single combat phase. Same for Ork Warbosses, Smash Captains, Rocksaw Acolytes, Abberants with Stopsigns, etc. They have a lot of units that counter them, and counter them HARD.

I still play Knights because they're cool, but most of my ITC games involve me huddling my Knights in a corner, to avoid being charged, until I can move out with some certainty that I'm not gonna instantly lose a Knight.

And that's not counting armies that can shoot them off the board, like Guard, AdMech, or Tau. If you go second vs any of those armies, expect to just flat out lose the game.

This isn't to say Knights are bad, they're still certainly good against most things, and even in those matchups there are ways to win, but it often feels stacked against you.

This same trend happened when Knights first came out as an army back in... 6th or 7th edition? You saw a butt-ton of them, they kicked a lot of butt, they took names... and little by little they started to disappear. Rules changed, FAQ's came out, codex creep happened, and suddenly they weren't the top dog any more.

Knights are one of the most visibly obvious armies in 40k. You see them across the room because of their size. Their presence or absence can be felt because of how huge the models are. You'll notice them more than you'll notice a difference in the number of Chaos Marine lists or Eldar lists in a tournament. So, the trend of Imperial Knights changing in the meta will be more noticeable even to casual viewers, and people are very interested in them because there's a grand perception of Knights being either very OP or very UP.

Long story short, this is a trend that will repeat itself again and again as editions change. Each faction will rise to power, then fall, then rise again in a neverending flow of non-balance.

drbored wrote:
... and little by little they started to disappear. Rules changed, FAQ's came out, codex creep happened, and suddenly they weren't the top dog any more.
.

Don't forget people trying to set the next trend that a vs.-Knights-Tailored-List will lose to. Obviously this game is more complicated than Rock Paper Scissors - but to borrow it for an analogy - people switching to a Scissors list after Rock was popular for so long they think people are going to spam Paper.


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drbored wrote:
Each faction will rise to power, then fall, then rise again in a neverending flow of non-balance.

When I was playing SWG this was called the Flavor Of The Month effect as the game designers tried to balance their classes in PVP and each time created a new Flavor of the Month.

 Ishagu wrote:
Knights have decreased in use slightly, but they are still found across many tables.

The Castellan is very much dead however. Looking at the ATC and ETC which are perfect environments for units like the Castella, it still isn't run.

Ironically, now that it's a sub par unit I intend to use mine even more lol

there's something to be said for being able to field an army without having the guy across from you immediatly look at you like you're "That Guy"

Does it immediately make you "that guy" just got playing knights though?

 chimeara wrote:
Does it immediately make you "that guy" just got playing knights though?

In some people's eyes yes as they believe only TFG uses super heavies in 40k as it should be about the infantry squads.

Mono Knights are way less powerful than a number of other mono subfaction lists buy all the "cool kids" claim knights are OP, so the sheeple repeat it.

LOL. They are everywhere. ETC has an Imperial Knight player in every single team. Not a one dared compete without the big stompies.

Teams without Tau? 7 or so
Teams without Eldar? Still 4.
Teams without Knights? Zero

And 58 Crusaders across 36 lists.

Also zero Wraithknights in all of ETC. shows how well they are balanced against (even the nerfed) Imperial/Chaos counterparts ..

Please ignore Sunny's attempt to derail to Wraithknights.

Talking and reading threads, I don't know if Chaos is going to cause as big of bump in Knight usage and people think.

People seem to be universally saying the Chaos knights are bit corner case on using the top abilities.

And Invuln canceling knight is great, as long as your opponent has things that getting Invuln canceled is good against. The same with some of the other top one off combos.

Overall, most people seem to be saying they don't see a good tough cheap combat effective unit that is enough generalist to make it worth it on the table all the time.

YMMV.

Sunny Side Up wrote:
LOL. They are everywhere. ETC has an Imperial Knight player in every single team. Not a one dared compete without the big stompies.

*Shock* a format that is entirely built around extreme lists and picking match ups encourages each team to field a list that is mostly super heavies? Is it a surprise that the only army that is built around just running super heavies is popular as result?

I mean if you want to run hordes there are quite a few armies that are good at that. But yes if you want to run a list that is mostly super heavies then knights are best at that.

Breton wrote:

drbored wrote:
... and little by little they started to disappear. Rules changed, FAQ's came out, codex creep happened, and suddenly they weren't the top dog any more.
.

Don't forget people trying to set the next trend that a vs.-Knights-Tailored-List will lose to. Obviously this game is more complicated than Rock Paper Scissors - but to borrow it for an analogy - people switching to a Scissors list after Rock was popular for so long they think people are going to spam Paper.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

drbored wrote:
Each faction will rise to power, then fall, then rise again in a neverending flow of non-balance.

When I was playing SWG this was called the Flavor Of The Month effect as the game designers tried to balance their classes in PVP and each time created a new Flavor of the Month.

It wasn't really rock paper scissors. Wraithknights came out and made knights a liability.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Sunny Side Up wrote:
LOL. They are everywhere. ETC has an Imperial Knight player in every single team. Not a one dared compete without the big stompies.

Teams without Tau? 7 or so
Teams without Eldar? Still 4.
Teams without Knights? Zero

And 58 Crusaders across 36 lists.

Also zero Wraithknights in all of ETC. shows how well they are balanced against (even the nerfed) Imperial/Chaos counterparts ..

All this proves is that Knights are good in ETC. Which was not the question. Because in other formats they're much worse.

ERJAK wrote:


All this proves is that Knights are good in ETC. Which was not the question. Because in other formats they're much worse.

And?

If there would be zero Knights in ITC (there are still plenty), it would inversely only show they are bad in ITC. In other formats they are still very good.

The question was whether there is a decrease or not. And there doesnt seem to be.

In ETC they are the No. 1 most used army. No exaggeration. Literally the most frequently used and most popular army in the game. In many other formats, they are all the way up there. The most recent GW Heat finals in Warhammer World was again triple Knights (though they lost the final). And according to www.40kstats.com, filtering for June 2019 forward, Imperial Knight primary (using the "old" ITC idea of most-points detachment, thus not even counting the single Knight splashed in) they were also the most widely used army in ITC with 10.4% of the field. Second place went to Astra Militarum with 8.9%.

I havent seen a single data point even hinting at Imperial Knights (again, not even counting the single Knight allied in for Lulz) not being the most widely used army in the game at the moment and being grossly overrepresented across multiple formats (incl. ETC, ITC and GW-style Eternal War tournaments, which between them should cover a pretty sizeable chuck of 40K tournaments out there).