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One of my favorite aspects of 40k has alway been Imperial Knights... I scratch built and converted them since before they had models. The new codex and rules however are quite limited. Over at The Independent Characters podcast website they've been running their hobby progress challenge; the established theme however is a "Zone Mortalis" force... That's quite problematic for my towering behemoths. It however got me thinking... On one hand the Knights allied with the Mechanicum are often part of Explorator missions to dangerous worlds in search of relics and ancient technologies... And yet in fiction the majority of those types of places require Magos to go underground, on to hulks, into ancient complexes, etc... All of which are too confined for a Knight. So they are either sitting out quite a bit or in my mind tap into their ancient repositories of technology and get themselves into the fight.

In this case I drew from the old Rogue Trader era fluff where Imperial Guard and the spacefaring Rogue Trader had access to Dreadnought; it's mentioned that the original Imperial Dreadnought came with a variety of control system options with one extreme being very basic like sentinels and the other more involved like the present day dreadnought. In the middle was the option for a mind link interface unit control system... So I'm thinking if those two groups besides Marines can have them and the potential for Imperial Knights to be able to pilot these older styles of dreadnoughts.

With that fluff in mind I 3d modeled and had this printed:



It "counts as" a contemptor dreadnought and is compatible with its arms. I wasn't a fan with FW's chainfist so I made my own.


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This is my Magos Explorator, that counts as a Master of the Forge:


These are my Chronautomata... My own little invention... The notion is that they are a Magos' experiment in harnessing the warp's time and space bending properties to store an emergency response team of automata and their controller indefinitely in the warp so as to have them at his disposal at a moments notice. They count as Legion of the Damned.


These are my Men-at-arms, since no Knight would head off with out his personal detail of trusted men; count as Scouts:

Wow! Scale shots, please? That model really is reminiscent of the original RT-era dreads.

And any plans to sell them or make them available?

The mechanicum and household troops look good as well, but wow.. that Dread.. I can't get past it.

Well I'm glad the inspiration and influences comes through. Sorry, no plans to sell it.

I'll try and get some more shots up later. Scale wise it's on a 60mm base and is the same size as a Contemptor dreadnought, which is much larger than RT era one. The digital model started at a scale more similar to the RT era dreadnought, I scaled up my model since the fluff says the older RT dread could be piloted and I wanted it to look like a person could fit relatively comfortably.

Oooh, great stuff! This certainly gives the Imperial Knights that Bretonnia in space vibe, which seems to have been there back in the old Epic days!

As many would agree the imperial Knights codex was lacking... I've started with these units for zone mortalis and really wanted to capture the feudal feel for this army. I felt the Contemptor's rules had the right feel for mini-knights so this part of the army is really a count as marine army. I plan on doing a mini-warden as a mortis pattern contemptor and then I'm considering some robo horse mounted men at arms as bikers.

Great stuff! Very characterful and fitting with the theme.

Cool, love the look. Would have really liked to see a more realistic knights codex with genuine troop choices, but i have a feeling it will grow in time. Glad to see some discussion around zone mortalis forces, although I'm not sure we will see much more scenery released sadly it seems to have died a bit of a death on FW recently.

Knockagh wrote:
Cool, love the look. Would have really liked to see a more realistic knights codex with genuine troop choices, but i have a feeling it will grow in time. Glad to see some discussion around zone mortalis forces, although I'm not sure we will see much more scenery released sadly it seems to have died a bit of a death on FW recently.

Zone Mortalis has its cult following. FW has given it some attention in the most recent Horus Heresy books with some extra boarding action material. The main problem is that it's a variant of 40k that requires a special board that costs as much as some armies just to play it. Personally I'd love to see FW do a book like Aeronotica just to expand it... The problem is they need to develop it more and have more models to sell to justify it. Right now they have the tough sell game tiles, two little add-ons, and boarding marines. Everything else is incidental. The style of game play is fun, fast, and requires more tactical decision making. I also like it because in a way it justifies through the game's style why some units exist that you might never use otherwise.

Successfully expanding Zone Mortalis requires they create more units like boarding marines, specialized to the setting. Many fans want more terrain but when you look at the game tiles there aren't that many more patterns that guarantees walls meeting up; that really limits FWs options towards doing more scenario specific terrain like complete rooms or add-ons like a med-center or command center. That however takes an already specialized product and makes an even more specialized one. FW needs to lower the barrier to entry to play ZM. I wish they'd do one of those mouse pad material game-mats with their flooring texture printed and then just sell free standing walls. Unit wise, they could push the sale of some like their cadian hostel environment bits by making some imperial navy crew and rules; eldar who used to be space pirates would really benefit from a unit that doesn't just die... Some variant of ork seem an easy sell. Every necron tomb is a zone mortalis... As is every tyranid hive; great way for FW to do Genestealer cults or some Genestealer variants as a Space Hulk nod. Etc.

I think a "complete" Knight codex should have in the least had the other classic Knights... Just going off epic we would have had some 6 other varieties of knights. I don't think a standard FOC would have made much sense for knights so that was one thing I was happy with. If they expand the codex it'll be interesting to see what they do. My opinion is simply one where there is a core slot of common knights... This would be the Errant, Paladin, and anything invented that is as appropriately common, and then simply for each one of those Knights you take you get a "Support Knight" slot and a "Auxilliary" slot. Support Knight slots would allow for crusader/castellan, lancers, and the alike while "Auxilliaries" would be things like different men-at-arms, a few light vehicle, and Mechanicum support. Besides that you'd have an HQ option to simply stick a Seneschal into a core knight or take a Baron.

Besides the late epic era Baron, Lancer, Crusader, and Castellan Knights, I wanted to see a couple units based off the fluff of the Warden knights and their appearance from when Knights were first introduced as a way of filling some niches left open in the modern game. The old Warden fluff described them as older Knight patterns piloted by seasoned veterans who were generally getting losing their physical edge but still able to use their experience. The medieval notion of "Wardens" were they were the nobles that protected the border lands... so in that vein I thought Wardens Knight should have been support knights for protecting against flyers and out-flanking units. I pictured two units coming out of the original Wardens one based off the miniature with two big Gatling guns and missile launcher and the other based on the one that appears to have a demolisher cannon and two autocannon sponsons. The first one would have skyfire and interceptor under the old rules or generally rules for dealing with flyers. The other would have some way to get some free shots against non-flyer units deploying after the initial deployment. I even had a good name for which ever didn't retain the name Warden. Margrave in medieval times were the Warden nobles not just with borderlands but provided the castles and bastions by which their nation would organize, slow enemy advances, and form and gather the army around to oppose invasion.

As far as "Auxiliaries" go I wanted to see some sort of Mechanicum envoy as a battlefield presence. I wanted to see men-at-arms in the vein of what I converted but also something like mech-horse cavalry. I thought a light transport of sorts would have been nice, something in the vein of the Land Speeder storm, one part transport one part rescue the noble. I also thought some sort of lighter walker squire; I imagined something of a cross of the original Lancers which were less substantially armed and the Dreadknight. Something that helped connect the heredity of the Dreadknight to knight technology but not necessarily considered fully a knight. I thought Dragoon was a good name.

All wishful thinking. It's my thread and "I do what I want."

Your 'squires' sound dangerously like a centurion! Agree on the rest of your wish list though!

Knockagh wrote:
Your 'squires' sound dangerously like a centurion! Agree on the rest of your wish list though!

If you're talking about the Dragoons, they'd be more like a fast moving dreadnought in terms of game play. Basing them off the original lancer models they're faster and scoutier, but closer to Dreadknight size.