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no

Honestly the more Battle Reports I read on it, the more it looks like they some how managed to pull a hat trick with making it pretty well balanced.

It's bad ass no doubt but it's not insane. They actually did a really good job surprisingly.

Also against certain armies it's a little OP, but then those armies (Orks pretty much) do actually have ways to deal with it and against certain armies it can get tabled pretty quickly ( Necrons).

Hollismason wrote:
Honestly the more Battle Reports I read on it, the more it looks like they some how managed to pull a hat trick with making it pretty well balanced.

It's bad ass no doubt but it's not insane. They actually did a really good job surprisingly.

Also against certain armies it's a little OP, but then those armies (Orks pretty much) do actually have ways to deal with it and against certain armies it can get tabled pretty quickly ( Necrons).

Ork, Nids and certian army builds, like most tac armies.
An IK as an alley, no problem.
An army of them? My lists simply can't deal with that.

Mr.Omega wrote:
You can't really claim a game is unbalanced when you take a deliberately sub-optimal list, ignoring the easy solutions against optimised lists though, can you?

Actually, that's the easiest time to claim that a game is unbalanced. If it were a balanced game, there wouldn't be blatantly sub-optimal lists.

Chaos Rule wrote:
Out of interest, has anyone played IK vs IK? Would probably come down to the dice.

The dice and who moved first (which is more dice, of course).

So just to reiterate what I'm hearing from people, basically bringing an all IK army is like bringing rock to a rock-paper-scissors battle with the one catch that you won't be able to change to paper or scissors. Thus, other people can bring Scissors or Paper and they can either get smoked or tear you apart and how you do in a tournament entirely depends on who you get paired with. Anything in between Rock-Paper-Scissors is like bringing Lizard and Spock into the equation. Thus the question is as follows: Is there any middle ground?

I'd say yes there is the middle ground of taking moderation into account when making lists so that you have a wide variety of troops and not just a bunch of OP Titan-Terminators on the battlefield but is there any other way other than limiting lists?

Here's an idea that I just thought of and by no means is this an end all, be all. But would it be fun, for a 2k point tournament to have players bring up to 3k worth of stuff and be able to swap out units depending on what you'd be facing? So even if you bring 2k of infantry and you're fighting a DE army with a bunch of venoms, you could have another 1k of armor to swap out and give yourself a fighting chance. Your scissor army has just become a Spock or Lizard army and might give you a better game than before. Anyone think this might be more fun?

I agree that it would make games and list building slightly easier to have components to do quick swaps between games. The problem is the way the points are set up, even between different guns and wargear would make this difficult.

For example; Broadsides, Hammerheads, Sniper drones, and Skyrays all occupy the same slot and are effectively specialized firepower to compliment the main force. This would be a great example of something that could be swapped out quickly if they were priced the same as each other. I think the idea is good and could work if there was a reworking or some very intensive list preparation.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Savageconvoy wrote:
I don't think it's the same issue with the Riptides and Wraithknights.
What bothers me about IK is how they make all S6 and lower weaponry in your army completely useless. You're running an army that makes all standard weapons worthless and it's doubtful if they will fire a single shot all game.

Yeah, I've never said I don't like IK armies because they're overpowered, just that they're unbalanced and render everything that's not a high strength weapon useless. You bought flamers for some of your squads? Useless. Got a sniper squad? Useless. Bought power weapons and power axes? Useless.

The Riptide and Wraithknight armies, for one, will have other models in the army. They aren't scoring and will need some sort of infantry to go along with them and since they aren't troops, you can't make an army of purely Riptides and Wraithknights. Also, you CAN hurt a RT with S3 and a Wraithknight with S5 (vs the IK of S7 front and S6 rear).

you can't have an army of pure riptides but I'm pretty sure you can get up to 5 without bringing the dataslate into it.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

Chaos Rule wrote:
Out of interest, has anyone played IK vs IK? Would probably come down to the dice.

The dice and who moved first (which is more dice, of course).

Would not the one who brought the most melta cannons win?

I've not been impresed at all with all knight armies. Everytime you lose a model that's a huge portion of your army gone.

 Toeko wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Savageconvoy wrote:
I don't think it's the same issue with the Riptides and Wraithknights.
What bothers me about IK is how they make all S6 and lower weaponry in your army completely useless. You're running an army that makes all standard weapons worthless and it's doubtful if they will fire a single shot all game.

Yeah, I've never said I don't like IK armies because they're overpowered, just that they're unbalanced and render everything that's not a high strength weapon useless. You bought flamers for some of your squads? Useless. Got a sniper squad? Useless. Bought power weapons and power axes? Useless.

The Riptide and Wraithknight armies, for one, will have other models in the army. They aren't scoring and will need some sort of infantry to go along with them and since they aren't troops, you can't make an army of purely Riptides and Wraithknights. Also, you CAN hurt a RT with S3 and a Wraithknight with S5 (vs the IK of S7 front and S6 rear).

you can't have an army of pure riptides but I'm pretty sure you can get up to 5 without bringing the dataslate into it.

Yeah, but you still need SOMETHING else (I don't have experience with Tau, but aren't all riptides non-scoring? And they're definitely not troops, so you can't have a battle that revolves ONLY around riptides). You can also hurt riptides with a much larger array of weapons.

Wraithknights are genuinely harder to kill and immune to anything less than S5 and will typically shrug off less than S7... but Wraithknights are a 240+pt Heavy Support selection. They don't score. If they get in combat with chaff, they only have 4 attacks with which to do anything (a unit of 10 gargoyles could hold up a Wraithknight for 3 or 4 phases, so put it out of action for a couple of turns). Wraithknight is a very different kettle of fish to IK's.

 tyrannosaurus wrote:
My point was that I fail to see why Imperial Knights are receiving so much hate when some existing units seem to be relatively much more powerful than most others.

All those other things get lots of hate. Why would hate for Imperial Knights confuse you?

Many seem to think it acceptable to refuse to play against a Knight Titan despite it being a legal unit choice for a regular 40k game.

The only rule to the game is that both parties should have fun. It's never unacceptable to refuse to play against an army you believe will compromise your ability to have fun. This is a multi-player game.

They're really not that big of a deal.

Hollismason wrote:
They're really not that big of a deal.

As long as you have the tools to deal with five of them, sure.

I normally add one or two with my imperial guard. They work very well for me with light armor and troops providing supports. I don't get why people think they are invincible. Mine get dropped by shooting all the time.

As far as IK armies go I have only seen one at a tournament a few weeks ago. He ran 4 or 5 Errent knights ( i forget @_@) with space marine scouts and Librarian. He chewed though an ork army but was crushed by a Chaos army with 3 Hell drakes and necron army. I find like most everything in 40k they have their strengths and weakness.

The problem with Knights is that they shift balance so heavily. They completely invalidate certain armies. How, for example, are Orks supposed to deal with it? Even the dreaded Lootas have trouble when they glance on 6s and have a 4++ to chew through.

Maybe the mekguns will change that though.

Superheavy Walkers can get locked in combat now, so drowning them in boys is perfectly doable, then just grab objectives.

 azreal13 wrote:
Superheavy Walkers can get locked in combat now, so drowning them in boys is perfectly doable, then just grab objectives.

Is that stomp still quite as devastating, or did they tone that down as well?

It's toned down in the same way as D Weapons, it can still hurt, but it isn't quite as strong as before.

Incredibly fun I imagine if you have Clowncar Daemons with invisibility or a solid Necron army. The only way to fight cheese is with more cheese.

But Knights aren't cheese.

Admittedly their power curve is lopsided, and if you're not prepared then they could be a real handful, but if you can't do the equivalent damage as needed to take out 6 Predators at 1500 points then your list probably needs work anyway.

I dont think it would be fun as you have very few models, but again I play gunline guard and thusly am used to having many models so much so i relish in having lots of dudes.

The Knights just suffer from not having a more developed codex. Imagine the best units of any army and then imagine if that and some variation of it were your only two unit choices. That's kinda what Imperial Knights are by not having more of an actual army behind them. If a player brings the max number of knights to a standard game it's not going to be fun. My experience is between 3-4 knights for an average sized game is fine, 4 if the other player likes playing hardball.

My Knights army I field 3 knights and SM allies I've converted to match my knight theme. Fair and fun games ensue; it's admittedly sub-optimal, but if you're playing for fun and not tge win it shouldn't matter.

In my opinion in a friendly game you should warn the opponent that you're bringing some armour. Don't say that it'll be an army of Knights, just that it's vehicle heavy. Not warning him would most likely result in swathes of his force being invalidated(although new scoring rules really can screw IK players over) while saying explicitly that you're bringing Knights might result in some unfun melta spam list that will be tailored just to deal with your small, not even remotely unkillable army.

Anyone who thinks that Knights are overpowered is a bad, bad player and while 7th ed made them slightly more survivable, they're still going to die to HP stripping and will lose against an army with many scoring units that will just outmaneuver and outscore them as the opponent bogs the walkers down and tarpits them while claiming all the objectives.

Knights' shooting ain't that great and they aren't -that- powerful in melee. Add AV13 and they're easy to counter with proper tactics. I wish people didn't get so biased based on mass Dakka hysteria. If they were so powerful, they'd be dominating all the tournaments by now.

I got some really good rolls and killed one in assault with a swarmlord. That's the only game I've played against one.

Ran into a knight on two separate 1000 games.

Though units and require to play around, but it was a dun challenge to deal with, and both times the knight fell to a combination of guns and tricky movement.

My tank company fights my buddy's knights all the time, and we have a blast.

10 Leman Russes maneuvering and firing to try to get an edge over 5 Imperial Knights is an impressive sight.

I had my flying Crons vs his Knight army they couldn't do anything I wrecked him. But I do put a haywire cryptek w/ each of my warr squads. They are just too good for 25 pts.

I think it is fun but I do really weird stuff in games cause I can't care less if I lose lol.

I used my wifes army vs my friends 4 knights with a lord... think is was the mini vulkan guy. Anyways I went nearly 200 hornagaunts and a tyrant..... I got 2 of them down but still lol.

7th did make the knights more survivable but with the new mission cards I think an army of 3-5 knights would struggle to complete objectives versus most other armies.