Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

...Please?
With the proliferation of D-weapons due to the new Eldar codex, tournaments are looking at coming up with a universal modification to the Destroyer special rule. Two of the latest options I’ve seen are below:
ITC:
1=nothing
2-5=D2 wounds/hullpoints
6=2 wounds/hullpoints with no saves allowed, vehicles take a penetrating hit
NOVA:
D shots originating from greater than 12" away treat all "6" results as "5" results instead.
D weapons always inflict only D3 Wounds or Hull Points (even on a "6" result)

In the wake of the Escalation release, there were several calls for mods to D-weapons; now it appears that we have some that make them significantly less scary and game-altering. I’m not here to argue for full inclusion of all Lords of War in tournaments, I just want to make the case for allowing Imperial Knights to be fielded as an army.

1. Damage. With the mod to D-weapons, the effect of an Imperial Knight’s base attacks is greatly reduced. However, let us consider that a Knight has only 3 attacks base, at WS 4. This means that 5 knights put out 15 D-weapon CC attacks that will generally hit on 4’s, sometimes on 3’s, for 1850 pts. A single Knight, on the charge, hits twice on average for probably 3 wounds under ITC, unmodified in NOVA. You still get invul saves against the majority of attacks, and if you have enough wounds or bodies you can hit back. 3 squads of 5 wraithguard with D-cannons also puts out 15 D-weapons attacks, these will always hit on 3’s but cost less than one-third the price of the Knights. They also have a 12” range. No one is banning wraithguard; in fact these changes are made specifically so people can use wraithguard. Obviously there are significant differences in durability, but that is addressed in the next point.

2. Durability. Three-quarters of an Imperial knight is AV12. There are comparable vehicles in the game, including dedicated transports. A superheavy is basically a vehicle with eternal warrior, meaning that it cannot be one-shotted. 6 AV12 hullpoints, possibly a 4++ against shooting=2 jinking wave serpents with their serpent shield up. Now, I understand that people don’t like having units that are unable to hurt the enemy, but mech AM, Wave Serpent spam, or a Necron AV13 wall are similar situations. With Imperial knights, people take an unusual concern for a player who seemingly brings a fluffy battle company of space marines; concerns that are tossed aside when we’re talking about invisibility or FMC spam. Realistically, an army that would lose to Imperial Knights would also lose to gravstar, pentyrant, or any number of “top-tier” lists. Boltguns have a 1/36 chance of wounding a flyrant before saves, a 1/108 chance of wounding an invisible gravstar with 2+ armor saves. Are these units any more vulnerable to the “casual” player? I really don’t think so. And with a damage reduction to knights, they are unlikely to be able to kill all your units on objectives, giving those units otherwise unable to hurt the knights a purpose. Finally, with the advent of new formations in the IK codex, tournaments could simply ban Adamantium Lance since it is by far the best one and the only formation that gives a marked increase in durability.

3. Remove from play. While I am very open to changes to stomp (maybe a 6 becomes S10 AP1?), remember that there have always been “remove from play” weapons/abilities in the game, including Jaws of the World Wolf, Warp Rift, and Valeria’s box. These were never really considered game-breaking, and we have lived with D-weapons on psykers and LOW for a while now. Stomps only get bad if you have a save worse than 3+, and only on a 6 does it really hurt. Also, I’ve seen no one suggest nerfs for Thunderblitz, which has similar effects to Stomp. As stated above however, I’m open to mods for stomp to appease those who don't want to see their models just disapear.

An Imperial Knight is a 375+-50 pt unit that does its most exceptional damage in melee, now receiving a significant nerf to it’s CC abilities. And yet, tournaments want to ban them to spare the “mid-level” players so they can be tabled by FMC spam instead, or to “keep Apoc out of 40K”. Many of the formations that have appeared in codices recently (including green tide and the windrider host) are in fact Apoc formations, and can be found in the most recent GW Apocalypse book. A lot of players have also stated on these forums that they don’t have problems with Lords of War such as Baneblades or Malcador tanks, but mainly with Renevant and Reaver titans. I’m respectfully requesting that you consider Imperial Knights as being something in the former category.
As far as force org concerns go, the CAD and the select few other formations allow Lords of War, only allow one Lord of War choice. The force org chart itself will limit the number of “other” LOW, and if people don’t want to see a Reaver Titan we can just selectively ban the problematic ones; a list which in my opinion has shrunk quite a bit with the proposed modifications to destroyer weapons anyway.

I’m not a tournament organizer, or a big GT attendee. I’m just a player with an Imperial Knight army who wants to have a chance to play it. And I’m simply suggesting that especially with the changes to Destroyer brought about by Eldar, that they aren’t all that bad. Obviously I’m heavily biased, but I love my knights and want to give them more chances on the table.

As a minor TO and average player, I want to emphasize the distinction between concerns about the Adamantine Lance and concerns about Imperial Knights overall.

The formation I've always seen as a huge problem, as both a player myself seeing it at larger events and as TO worried about the dispiriting effect it would have on my community if it started showing up.

Imperial Knights themselves I think are much more manageable, even in bulk, assuming people are moderately accepting of this new era of "mini-Apoc" 40k---which players basically have to be or they've quit at this point. Even in our super casual environment we have a player fielding a Knight army for pickup and monthly tournament play, and although tough for some opposing armies (not all, by any means), there doesn't seem to be any consensus that it's a problem, something people feel like they can't fight. This is with unmodified D, for what it's worth.

If you're not a TO or big GT attendee, why does it matter what people here say? Nobody on dakka can tell your friends or local store to let you run something.

 RobPro wrote:
If you're not a TO or big GT attendee, why does it matter what people here say? Nobody on dakka can tell your friends or local store to let you run something.

Pretty much this.
Tournaments that ban all superrheavies I don't see knights becoming an exception.
Tournaments that don't ban them you will be fine. Knights are a relatively balanced superhwavy. No range str d, Melee str d has relatively low atks w basic ws and low int. it's point costed well and isn't much worse then normal heavy vehicles.
Tournaments like nova and bao will allow Knights. However you ate going to have issues with nova or similar tournaments which don't allow any superheavies since the people who play that event want to play a game more focused on infantry. Not every army even has decent superheavies even including forgeworod yet. So 40k is still in a transition phase where larger weapons of war are more commonplace.

I feel your post is disingenuous for a few reasons. One even though you mention stomp and the "few" attacks they get, it doesn't feel like just a few when you kill 9 or more orks a turn with a stomp chain. Another is you say most av is 12, but you can keep your back to a wall and still be as effective as 2 leman russ. And the side profiles are tiny and if your drop podding for side shots you need good luck. And no where did you mention their ability to completely negate the usefulness of small arms fire, so while you ask to be able to play, the other 60 prevent of units in the game that can't hurt them become invalid.

 Orock wrote:
I feel your post is disingenuous for a few reasons. One even though you mention stomp and the "few" attacks they get, it doesn't feel like just a few when you kill 9 or more orks a turn with a stomp chain. Another is you say most av is 12, but you can keep your back to a wall and still be as effective as 2 leman russ. And the side profiles are tiny and if your drop podding for side shots you need good luck. And no where did you mention their ability to completely negate the usefulness of small arms fire, so while you ask to be able to play, the other 60 prevent of units in the game that can't hurt them become invalid.

Show me on the doll where the bad knights touched you.

 Orock wrote:
I feel your post is disingenuous for a few reasons. One even though you mention stomp and the "few" attacks they get, it doesn't feel like just a few when you kill 9 or more orks a turn with a stomp chain. Another is you say most av is 12, but you can keep your back to a wall and still be as effective as 2 leman russ. And the side profiles are tiny and if your drop podding for side shots you need good luck. And no where did you mention their ability to completely negate the usefulness of small arms fire, so while you ask to be able to play, the other 60 prevent of units in the game that can't hurt them become invalid.

LOL, what?

I guess we need to ban Land Raiders, Leman Russ, Rhinos, and everything else that can't be touched by str 4 weapons.

 Loch wrote:

 Orock wrote:
I feel your post is disingenuous for a few reasons. One even though you mention stomp and the "few" attacks they get, it doesn't feel like just a few when you kill 9 or more orks a turn with a stomp chain. Another is you say most av is 12, but you can keep your back to a wall and still be as effective as 2 leman russ. And the side profiles are tiny and if your drop podding for side shots you need good luck. And no where did you mention their ability to completely negate the usefulness of small arms fire, so while you ask to be able to play, the other 60 prevent of units in the game that can't hurt them become invalid.

Show me on the doll where the bad knights touched you.

They didn't, because my area isn't stupid enough to allow adlance.

 Orock wrote:

 Loch wrote:

 Orock wrote:
I feel your post is disingenuous for a few reasons. One even though you mention stomp and the "few" attacks they get, it doesn't feel like just a few when you kill 9 or more orks a turn with a stomp chain. Another is you say most av is 12, but you can keep your back to a wall and still be as effective as 2 leman russ. And the side profiles are tiny and if your drop podding for side shots you need good luck. And no where did you mention their ability to completely negate the usefulness of small arms fire, so while you ask to be able to play, the other 60 prevent of units in the game that can't hurt them become invalid.

Show me on the doll where the bad knights touched you.

They didn't, because my area isn't stupid enough to allow adlance.

So anyplace that adopts a different tournament format/meta than you and your friends is now of an inferior intelligence? Good to know.

 OverwatchCNC wrote:

 Orock wrote:
I feel your post is disingenuous for a few reasons. One even though you mention stomp and the "few" attacks they get, it doesn't feel like just a few when you kill 9 or more orks a turn with a stomp chain. Another is you say most av is 12, but you can keep your back to a wall and still be as effective as 2 leman russ. And the side profiles are tiny and if your drop podding for side shots you need good luck. And no where did you mention their ability to completely negate the usefulness of small arms fire, so while you ask to be able to play, the other 60 prevent of units in the game that can't hurt them become invalid.

LOL, what?

I guess we need to ban Land Raiders, Leman Russ, Rhinos, and everything else that can't be touched by str 4 weapons.

.

Land raider spam won't win you games. They don't do enough damage solo to win games. But you know that. Nice straw man. And the others are easily killed back and don't fight back in meelee either. You know, balanced.

 Orock wrote:

 OverwatchCNC wrote:

 Orock wrote:
I feel your post is disingenuous for a few reasons. One even though you mention stomp and the "few" attacks they get, it doesn't feel like just a few when you kill 9 or more orks a turn with a stomp chain. Another is you say most av is 12, but you can keep your back to a wall and still be as effective as 2 leman russ. And the side profiles are tiny and if your drop podding for side shots you need good luck. And no where did you mention their ability to completely negate the usefulness of small arms fire, so while you ask to be able to play, the other 60 prevent of units in the game that can't hurt them become invalid.

LOL, what?

I guess we need to ban Land Raiders, Leman Russ, Rhinos, and everything else that can't be touched by str 4 weapons.

.

Land raider spam won't win you games. They don't do enough damage solo to win games. But you know that. Nice straw man. And the others are easily killed back and don't fight back in meelee either. You know, balanced.

I don't have any problem beating Knights. Neither do any of the players in our tournaments, AdLance has never been in a winning list in our area. Maybe because we play against them and know how to beat it.

Any place that allows adlance to invaladate so much in the game is certainly less fortunate. But you don't seem to care as long as you can play your knights. So players in your area are so unconcerned with their opponents enjoyment they feel entitled enough to bring heavy skew armies and damn anyone who doesn't want to play against it? Good to know.

 RobPro wrote:
If you're not a TO or big GT attendee, why does it matter what people here say? Nobody on dakka can tell your friends or local store to let you run something.

Because I do attend a fair amount of RTTs, and these are tournaments too. Furthermore, a lot of smaller TOs base their formats on bigger events (see http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/647721.page) and so the larger internet community does eventually find it's way back to local stores. And even if it doesn't affect me, there are other knight players out there.

 Orock wrote:
Any place that allows adlance to invaladate so much in the game is certainly less fortunate. But you don't seem to care as long as you can play your knights. So players in your area are so unconcerned with their opponents enjoyment they feel entitled enough to bring heavy skew armies and damn anyone who doesn't want to play against it? Good to know.

I don't play Knights.

Your opinion of my area and 40k in general is skewed not the armies played. Take a look at the Tournament wrap ups I post on Capture and Control or the Game Empire Pasadena Facebook page. You'll see that despite our allowing almost anything our scene is not only thriving and growing but has a diverse field of armies and winners.

Edit* Again, thank you for talking down to our players and area.

Maybe your area simply gave up on fun and non mono lists in order to stay up with the current meta. I bet you hear all the time " man I would sure love to run such and such, but they are so bad". Or were you not around before 6 th and its always just been cutthroat to you.

 Orock wrote:
Maybe your area simply gave up on fun and non mono lists in order to stay up with the current meta. I bet you hear all the time " man I would sure love to run such and such, but they are so bad". Or were you not around before 6 th and its always just been cutthroat to you.

Your assumptions are so terribly bad and your continued insistence that we all must suck, have a terrible time etc etc etc is quite ignorant to the fact not everyone shares your opinion and experience.

1. I often play a mono Salamanders list. Many people play mono lists, Orks, Space Marines, mono Chaos.
2. No matter the edition or format you'll hear "man I would sure love to run such and such, but they are so bad". What's your point exactly?
3. I've been playing since 3rd edition.

Our area still uses outdated tournament scores like presentation, sportsmanship, and army composition. The guys with grey legion eldar bike and wraith spam don't place high.

 Orock wrote:
Any place that allows adlance to invaladate so much in the game is certainly less fortunate. But you don't seem to care as long as you can play your knights. So players in your area are so unconcerned with their opponents enjoyment they feel entitled enough to bring heavy skew armies and damn anyone who doesn't want to play against it? Good to know.

So players in your area are so concerned with their own enjoyment they feel entitled enough to invalidate entire codexes outright and damn anyone who wants to play with it? Good to know.

Knights are just an extremely obvious rock in the ever-escalating arms race between paper and scissors. If you hate building a list that can deal with superheavies, then go back to 6th edition or bust out the Swiss Comp phonebook.

And for what it's worth, I don't hate playing vs Knights nearly as much as I hate playing vs Necrons these days. Real durability in modern 40k doesn't have hull points.

Mono as in the same cookie cutter netlists everyone runs not single army composition mono.

 Orock wrote:
Our area still uses outdated tournament scores like presentation, sportsmanship, and army composition. The guys with grey legion eldar bike and wraith spam don't place high.

Our area requires full paint and basing to qualify for the Best Overall prize. We also have Sportsmanship scoring that dates back to the old RTT era. What's your point?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Orock wrote:

Mono as in the same cookie cutter netlists everyone runs not single army composition mono.

Same point applies. In a field of 30 regular players the mono, cookie cutter, blah blah blah doesn't show up. The lists are varied, as I already stated.

Anyone who plays knights only, knows a few things. One is there will be lists you auto lose to, and lists that auto lose to you. And that no matter who you play, you have invalidated at least some of their army. They have the highest winning record in tournaments because if the severe skew. So adlance isn't allowed. And we have varying lists and armies who win. guard won a recent one, when is the last time you even saw them place top 10?

Outside tournaments people can play whatever they want. But the guy with 4 knights often does not get many takers. Same guy refuses games against the eldar, so I don't think he is playing for the love of the army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Loch show us on the doll where the TO told you it was only one LOW allowed from now on.

 Orock wrote:
Anyone who plays knights only, knows a few things. One is there will be lists you auto lose to, and lists that auto lose to you. And that no matter who you play, you have invalidated at least some of their army.

Only players who play poorly with knights, and only players who play poorly against knights, knows any such thing.

There have always been armies that "invalidate" large portions of an enemy army. People just need to realize that the environment has changed, and if you want to build a TAC list you must include weapons that can hurt multiple AV targets. If you have more fun artificially constraining your meta to not adapt to this change, then that's fine. But you should recognize that it is just a self-imposed constraint, and does not make you in any way superior to other gaming areas. In fact, I'd argue that it makes your gaming area tactically inferior, as you were unable to adapt to a changing battlefield.

 Orock wrote:
Anyone who plays knights only, knows a few things. One is there will be lists you auto lose to, and lists that auto lose to you. And that no matter who you play, you have invalidated at least some of their army. They have the highest winning record in tournaments because if the severe skew. So adlance isn't allowed. And we have varying lists and armies who win. guard won a recent one, when is the last time you even saw them place top 10?

Outside tournaments people can play whatever they want. But the guy with 4 knights often does not get many takers. Same guy refuses games against the eldar, so I don't think he is playing for the love of the army.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Loch show us on the doll where the TO told you it was only one LOW allowed from now on.

That doesn't even make sense. Most of that post doesn't but particularly the end.

I don't like the argument that because Knights can invalidate certain builds they shouldn't be accepted. As a Dark Eldar player who attends local tournaments, Last Codex Serpent Spam utterly invalidated my army. Seriously, it took 27 Dark Lance shots to kill a serpent while even while Jinking a Serpent could easily bring down any of my vehicles. But they weren't banned or comped because even if i couldn't beat Serpent Spam, i could play the mission and sometimes, on a good day, i would win/draw.

Having Knights in the meta will help with variety, a Knight army will lose to a Pentyrant army which will lose to a Grav army which will lose to an Eldar army. If the top tier lists are going to be Rock, Paper, Scissors anyway, why not at least make it ''Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock'' instead?

I honestly don't care what people bring to play, I play the game because I enjoy 40k. Wanna bring wraith spam? sure. Knights? Alright. Scatterbikes? Neato. I'll play you as much as you want and I will probably lose a few times but eventually I will learn the list and how to beat it. Then you do the same for my new list. Just the way of the game. Play to enjoy the universe/gameplay/fluff and if you don't then why play at all?

Blood Angel and Knight player.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
My friend that I play most often plays pretty tough Necrons and yeah that book is dead 'ard but you play it enough, study how your opponent plays and how the army works and you can beat it.

Knights do not invalidate anything. Yes, knights cannot be damaged by some units, but that does not invalidate that unit's use. Unless you are playing purely kill-points, any unit that cannot harm a knight can still impact the game-state and still directly contribute to a victory.

Have a 30 gaunt horde? Well, it won't hurt the knight, but it could tarpit the hell out of it for 2 turns while other elements score objectives.

Have a chimera with chumps? Well, it can force the knight to chase it, either wasting a limited amount of high value shooting at it or moving the knight away from other more important units. If the Knight player does not do either, then it can go score an objective.

Nothing is invalidated unless a codex specifically says "These models cannot appear on the table". Part of playing a game is learning how to leverage resources, especially resources that may seem ineffectual on a surface read of the situation. Knights may have a high win rate in some metas, but their overall Big Win rate of major GTs is pretty low if I am not mistaken. This suggests to me that many newer, less experienced players or players with only a cursory understanding of the system struggle to beat them because they rely on the power of their list rather than their own tactical acumen while excellent players can exploit the rather large weaknesses inherent to investing 1K points in three models.

It is of course up to each individually determined group to decide how they want to play this game, but when it comes to a major trend-setter like ITC or Nova, their decisions do have impacts on smaller metas that look to their rules for guidance. Any local group can declare whatever they want, but when a group with actual sway makes a decision, it does indeed have an impact far beyond the stretches of a forum.

Are those your Knights? They look fantastic! I'd love to give them some unmodified-D (nudge-nudge/wink-wink).

Not sure if I'm 'lucky' or not, but where I play, we play the game without so many restrictions. /shrug My concern with modifying the D-Chart is that it is going to be increasingly difficult to prepare for tournaments outside of my normal stomping grounds (<---pun intended); a 5 hour trip to Minnesota or a 7 hour trip to Iowa for a tournament comes along with the additional burden of trying to arrange practice games with players that are not particularly interested in Limp-D [copywright!]. And if I can't get practice games...I'm not going to want to spend time and money to travel all that way. I am a competitive person, being unprepared is distasteful.

So: Limp-D will make the 40K community smaller, discontiguous, and likely contentious. But if that's what it takes for people to let you put those marvelously well-painted models on the table and roll dice with them, so be it--play on!

First off no army unit is ever invalidated by Knights. Knights don't lose tournaments because they run into anti mech lists. They lose tournaments because they suck at scoring maelstrom and objective based games. By that vey nature every unit has a chance to win a game vs Knights. I routinely play with Gretchen as my main troop choice and every ork player will tell you those are the best unit to score maelstrom and objective points. They are practically worthless in assault and have some of the worst shooting in game and are invalidated by 90% of any army I face and yet they routinely score the most points. Saying Knights invalidate a large portion of your army is an outright lie. Seriously Knights are no worse then when I play my Astra militarum mech lists or armored company lists nearly every unit is a leman Russ or at worst a chimera chassis. Everything has an av12 to av14 front and side armour and most have av11 or av10 rear. This list invalidates most assault and most shooting units and it's been around since 3rd edition. There is nothing wrong with Knights because it's cost appropriate and a low model count army. This isn't a case of wraith Knights that cost 295 points for a t8, 3+, 5+ fnp 5++ invulnerable that blinds any enemy unit with 6in and reduces hire bs/ws to 1 that can put a toe into area terrain for a 4+ cover save or jump onto impassable terrain and is basically immune to most units. This is a large slow av13/12 vehicle with an invul save that shoots weapons that are no worse then most lenman russes for 2x the cost.

3 posts in a row that are collected and reasonable?

What is this?

I'm sorry, it's 5.

Don't jinx it, man.