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Made in us
Chaplain with Hate to Spare





Sioux Falls, SD

Am I missing something? AV 13 front armor and 12 side and back isn't that hard to breach. Their save is only against shooting and they only get it on one facing. Most of their shooting isn't fantastic. Besides the assault Cannon, their shooting lacks the number of shots to be all that effective. They have Str D CC, but they give up their shield to do it. And all those hull points are meaningless when they can still suffer an explodes to lose a boatload of HP off a single shot.

Meanwhile, most Gargantuan creaturea come with a 2+ or 3+ Armor save. They frequently have access to an Invulnerable save, and come with FNP 5+ base. There are very few mechanics that let you strip multiple wounds off, and even then, they can probably ignore a good number of them. Their Invulnerable don't go away in CC. Their shooting can include Str D. Also, the two GW GCs (don't get me started on the brokenness of the Tau'nar) clock in at fewer points than any Knight save the Gallant.

I guess what I am asking is, why is the Imperial Knight considered broken? It isn't even in the same categort of power as a Wraithknight or Stormsurge.
   
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 casvalremdeikun wrote:
Am I missing something? AV 13 front armor and 12 side and back isn't that hard to breach. Their save is only against shooting and they only get it on one facing. Most of their shooting isn't fantastic. Besides the assault Cannon, their shooting lacks the number of shots to be all that effective. They have Str D CC, but they give up their shield to do it. And all those hull points are meaningless when they can still suffer an explodes to lose a boatload of HP off a single shot.

Meanwhile, most Gargantuan creaturea come with a 2+ or 3+ Armor save. They frequently have access to an Invulnerable save, and come with FNP 5+ base. There are very few mechanics that let you strip multiple wounds off, and even then, they can probably ignore a good number of them. Their Invulnerable don't go away in CC. Their shooting can include Str D. Also, the two GW GCs (don't get me started on the brokenness of the Tau'nar) clock in at fewer points than any Knight save the Gallant.

I guess what I am asking is, why is the Imperial Knight considered broken? It isn't even in the same categort of power as a Wraithknight or Stormsurge.


I think in "general" people don't like the Knight because they can't just spam generic medium strength guns, they need anti vehicle/higher strength.

With that said, people who bring entire armies of Knights/Households etc, it can be very hard for an all comers list in general.

You are right though, GC and FGC gak all over Knights in surviveability.
   
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Chaplain with Hate to Spare





Sioux Falls, SD

You don't even need a Anti-vehicle to take down a Knight. Scatter Lasers and Assault Cannons can lay a Knight low quite easily, but still have the shots to be effective against Infantry. But due to Armor Saves and FNP, neither of those things are taking a GC down any time soon.

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Nasty Nob




Crescent City Fl..

I'd say GMC's are tougher based on my own experience.
One Knight wasn't all that bad vs my Space wolves, TWC + thunderlord took care of the "wounded knight" easily enough.
Fighting 5 to 7 of them wasn't very fun for me. I still don't own one but would like to get two or three of them for larger games.
The way I see it what could make them broken is close combat. by which I mean the number of shots doesn't really matter. The Knight moves up and can shoot all it's weapons at several targets so long at it's stubbered something it wants to charge then it's all good. Especiallt now with the faq "Melta bomb/grenade nerf".
And stomps being clarified vs Invisible.
But I don't play near as much as a lot of other people so mileage may very.
Super heavy walkers and CMC's are 3rd edition mechanics stuck into 7th edition which can be quite the advantage.

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 casvalremdeikun wrote:
You don't even need a Anti-vehicle to take down a Knight. Scatter Lasers and Assault Cannons can lay a Knight low quite easily, but still have the shots to be effective against Infantry. But due to Armor Saves and FNP, neither of those things are taking a GC down any time soon.


"Quite easily" is rather deceptive. A single scatter laser at BS4 against an AV12 facing peels 0.44 of a hull point. In real-game terms, roughly a 50/50 shot of doing 1HP worth of damage. So you need twelve scatter lasers' (not twelve shots, twelve of the weapons) worth of shooting to drop it in a turn (assuming no cover or ion shield). This can also equate to a squad of three scatbikes shooting for four turns or two squads of three for two turns (and taking no casualties in the process).

The assault cannon is a bit more reliable given the rending value, it can shoot at the front armor as easily as the side - but it's also a more expensive weapon, shorter ranged, and harder to spam (outside of a double demi-company).

Wouldn't say either of these can "easily" drop a Knight, but they are viable options.

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I don’t think a single IK is broken. If you take one in a TAC it makes for a solid centerpiece unit. It’s not easy to crack open, but not impossible. And it costs a reasonable amount of points for what it does.

The potential to spam them bugs me though. You end up with a very rock/paper/scissors game. Do you have enough AV to deal with multiple knights? Especially when what AV you do have is going to be at the top of the target priority queue.

They are also indicative of the general scale creep away from the infantry skirmish game that 40k was historically, into what used to be walled off in apocalypse games. They are not alone in this, but are part of it.

   
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It's a skew problem. One Knight isn't an issue, but you can't play a TAC list against a full-Knights-Codex army.

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It's not the generic knights it's the formations and the other versions of it if I remember right.

   
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It's the same reason why MC are better than Walkers/Vehicles at the moment. you can't easily 1 shot a MC (only weapons with the ID rule can do it), but Vehicles can be blown up somewhat easily.

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The Paladin & Errant are Sort Of Fine if taken individually or even in pairs, but after the third you start to see why they're problem; Each knight can reliably dent, or even destroy 2 targets every turn. As a highly mobile superheavy it means generally they can pick their targets, and flatten high priorities, or easy kill points as the game requires.

Consequently for MSU armies the problem is being simultaneously engaged on multiple fronts, while the deathtars have he obvious stomping and D problem. Knights are pretty much TAC on their own, but they layer over each other in effectiveness once you get past the 6th simultaneous target, which is generally the third knight or the second Crusader.

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Drop pod in with multi melta, Melta gun, combie melta, Your gonna have a bad time.

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 Backspacehacker wrote:
Drop pod in with multi melta, Melta gun, combie melta, Your gonna have a bad time.

Really? Three shots?

So you hit with two. Let's say they both pen. One gets blocked by the shield. The best result you can hope for is 4 HP (not enough to kill) and that will only happen 1/9 of the time. Most likely (2/3) you're getting a single HP.

Even if all three hit, pen, no save - the average result is 5 HPs. Not enough.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/08/29 13:14:45


 
   
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Nasty Nob




Crescent City Fl..

How many Assault cannons should it take o kill a knight? I've inflicted quite a few hull points on a knight with 3 tornado land speeders More than my opponent was expecting from them.
I've killed Land raiders with those speeders before in 5th edition.

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Its a nice model with decent stats. Stomping needs to be considered as well.

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Krazed Killa Kan






A few problems I have with Knights (GMCs + SHW in general).
1. They are generally too good against all targets and lack inherent weaknesses. I am a person who likes units to have strengths and weaknesses while jack of all trades are versatile but not at all optimal at any one task. A lot of Knight loadouts are well equipped to take on a multitude of target types and are defensive against a great deal of threats. It doesn't make them auto win but they outclass a lot of things in the game which ruins unit diversity (a major issue with 40k in general).
2. Stomp is a gak mechanic. Stomp murders blobs and it can obliterate units out of existence on a 6. In general I don't like Apoc mechanics in standard 40k.
3. It can fire its weapons at different targets and opt to charge any one of them. While vehicles like Land Raiders, Leman Russ Tanks, Hammerheads, and Battlewagons have to fire all their weapons (PotMS being the exception) at the same target and those vehicles often have very haphazard weapon loadouts. Superheavies can pick and choose what each weapon fires at so those guns are firing at fairly optimal targets. Again it makes standard vehicles more irrelevant.
4. Ignores the vehicle damage table (except for the modified explosion result). Again standard combat vehicles get the shaft while super heavies get preferential treatment.
5. Not every codex has effective tools to deal with an AV13 SHW that has a directional invuln save. Because its good at so many things its hard for a lot of armies to take them down in a cost effective manner.

I am not saying they are OP auto win units by any means (in the grand scheme of things even an army of them isn't OP) but its what they do to the game that I strongly dislike. An army of Knights is a royal PITA to deal with because so many weapons have zero effect on them which makes a large portion of the non Knight player's army useless so they turn into speed bumps, tarpits, and objective campers.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/08/29 13:26:41


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My philosophy for taking down knights is multiple sources, multiple angles.

Drop pod melta in a key factor in that. But if the shield is pointing towards the back/side, it’s not protecting vs. the lascannons in my backfield, or the TML speeders shooting from the other side, etc.

No one unit can get the job done. We don’t have anything that hits that hard, and the 4++ makes it impossible to down it with just one source of firepower.

Knights are one of the main reason I’ve upped the AV firepower in my TAC lists. I should have enough to deal with one of them, but it’s going to take most everything I have.

   
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First off, standard caveats on "X unit is not that powerful" threads:
#1 - There's always a counter. This is 40k after all, so saying "well just take this" doesn't mean jack. There's a saying in Magic; "dies to removal". This was a standard go-to response from many players to mean that certain cards can't be broken, because they could be answered. However, this isn't necessarily true, because not all removal was equally powerful, and wasn't always available, and if it had a big enough effect already in the game anyways, it could throw the game wildly off, even if it died.
#2 - Meta matters. What's powerful in your neck of the woods isn't necessarily what's powerful in my neck of the woods. In some places, having a list that's "not that powerful" means running a Decurion, and that person will be saying the truth as others are running things even stronger than that. Meanwhile, somewhere else, running a Decurion means you have an insurmountable advantage and you wreck face against everyone.


That said, I find Knights to have such a host of benefits that merely looking at their base stats doesn't cover why they're so strong. First off, they can move 12 inches per turn, shoot everything, and charge. This allows them to be very fast, and in a game like 40k, speed is critical. It's half of what makes Scatbikes so strong. On the surface, Scatbikes are just Space Marines in terms of how easily they die, and their Leadership is lower to boot, and they handle close combat worse too... but they're crazy fast, and even on planet Bowling Ball that will matter. Secondly, they can fire all their weapons at different targets, allowing them to maximize their weapon usage to a greater extent than most other armies can. There's a reason you often pay points for Split Fire, and that's because it's better to shoot anti-infantry stuff at infantry, and anti-tank stuff at tanks, rather than firing both at the same infantry or tanks. Thirdly, there's Stomp, which means that any Super Heavy walker is equipped with a free D-weapon, and this is effective against everything from small infantry to monstrous creatures. That's pretty incredible.

So, you've got something that can take on just about anything, with the speed to match, and is immune to lots of attacks. This means that, unless you have good counters, this just wrecks face. Now, do counters exist? Of course (see caveats above). But if this unit skews the game into a single question of "can you answer this?", well, I don't find that to be a particularly enjoyable game. I find most lists can handle one Knight-Paladin/Errant, but some of the others, or multiple Knights, is just... ugh.

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 casvalremdeikun wrote:
Am I missing something? AV 13 front armor and 12 side and back isn't that hard to breach. Their save is only against shooting and they only get it on one facing. Most of their shooting isn't fantastic. Besides the assault Cannon, their shooting lacks the number of shots to be all that effective. They have Str D CC, but they give up their shield to do it. And all those hull points are meaningless when they can still suffer an explodes to lose a boatload of HP off a single shot.

Meanwhile, most Gargantuan creaturea come with a 2+ or 3+ Armor save. They frequently have access to an Invulnerable save, and come with FNP 5+ base. There are very few mechanics that let you strip multiple wounds off, and even then, they can probably ignore a good number of them. Their Invulnerable don't go away in CC. Their shooting can include Str D. Also, the two GW GCs (don't get me started on the brokenness of the Tau'nar) clock in at fewer points than any Knight save the Gallant.

I guess what I am asking is, why is the Imperial Knight considered broken? It isn't even in the same categort of power as a Wraithknight or Stormsurge.
One Knight is not a huge issue. It's when you're facing an entire army of Knights that they become an issue, they can just overwhelm any ability to deal with them at that point. This is why many if not most events have house rules about fielding all Knight armies.
   
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 warhead01 wrote:
How many Assault cannons should it take o kill a knight? I've inflicted quite a few hull points on a knight with 3 tornado land speeders More than my opponent was expecting from them.
I've killed Land raiders with those speeders before in 5th edition.


Math says 27 BS4 assault cannons will one-round a Knight from the front, 13.5 from the side.

In 5th there were no hull points and you could get an Explodes! off of any pen (and Rending gave +AP against vehicles), it doesn't work so well anymore.

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To bust a knight reliably, grav cents / grav devs are going to be needed, preferably with an attached libby to cast prescience.

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Imperial Knights have never been consider overpowered, in fact they have been consider appropriately costed since they were introduced. However, a vocal fraction of the player base complain quite a bit about how boring they are to play against, or how you have to tailor to table them in one turn, or how their list just does not include the army options needed to counter armor for some odd reason. Yet every army currently in the game either can counter armor or are intended to ally anyway.

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 Scott-S6 wrote:
 Backspacehacker wrote:
Drop pod in with multi melta, Melta gun, combie melta, Your gonna have a bad time.

Really? Three shots?

So you hit with two. Let's say they both pen. One gets blocked by the shield. The best result you can hope for is 4 HP (not enough to kill) and that will only happen 1/9 of the time. Most likely (2/3) you're getting a single HP.

Even if all three hit, pen, no save - the average result is 5 HPs. Not enough.


Well you dont drop infront of the shield you silly bean!

Even if you dont blow it up, lets say we only hit with 2 and they are both pens. I only need to roll 3+ and i cripple the thing permanently 2 weapon destroyed? Ok, cool he just lost one of his main weapons. better yet, i only need to roll 4+ and boom!

Alternatively i could drop in with all grav weapons, and immobilize it.

I dont need to kill it, i just need to cripple the thing

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Crescent City Fl..

To bust a knight reliably, grav cents / grav devs are going to be needed, preferably with an attached libby to cast prescience.


And that's the part I don't like at all. It's more difficult for armies with out those potions that creates the "extra strength" of the knight.
My balance would be one of a few things, maybe Knights go up in points costs. But I'd rather my Stompas came down a few hundred points... (I know it'll never happen and why should it haha.)

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 warhead01 wrote:
To bust a knight reliably, grav cents / grav devs are going to be needed, preferably with an attached libby to cast prescience.


And that's the part I don't like at all. It's more difficult for armies with out those potions that creates the "extra strength" of the knight.
My balance would be one of a few things, maybe Knights go up in points costs. But I'd rather my Stompas came down a few hundred points... (I know it'll never happen and why should it haha.)


Honestly all this talk about knights being OP is nothing compaired to wraith knights being OP. Even toe to toe the wraith knight wins most of the time.

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 Backspacehacker wrote:
 Scott-S6 wrote:
 Backspacehacker wrote:
Drop pod in with multi melta, Melta gun, combie melta, Your gonna have a bad time.

Really? Three shots?

So you hit with two. Let's say they both pen. One gets blocked by the shield. The best result you can hope for is 4 HP (not enough to kill) and that will only happen 1/9 of the time. Most likely (2/3) you're getting a single HP.

Even if all three hit, pen, no save - the average result is 5 HPs. Not enough.


Well you dont drop infront of the shield you silly bean!

Even if you dont blow it up, lets say we only hit with 2 and they are both pens. I only need to roll 3+ and i cripple the thing permanently 2 weapon destroyed? Ok, cool he just lost one of his main weapons. better yet, i only need to roll 4+ and boom!

Alternatively i could drop in with all grav weapons, and immobilize it.

I dont need to kill it, i just need to cripple the thing


Super Heavy Walkers ignore all vehicle damage results except explode which does extra hull points instead.

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 Vankraken wrote:
 Backspacehacker wrote:
 Scott-S6 wrote:
 Backspacehacker wrote:
Drop pod in with multi melta, Melta gun, combie melta, Your gonna have a bad time.

Really? Three shots?

So you hit with two. Let's say they both pen. One gets blocked by the shield. The best result you can hope for is 4 HP (not enough to kill) and that will only happen 1/9 of the time. Most likely (2/3) you're getting a single HP.

Even if all three hit, pen, no save - the average result is 5 HPs. Not enough.


Well you dont drop infront of the shield you silly bean!

Even if you dont blow it up, lets say we only hit with 2 and they are both pens. I only need to roll 3+ and i cripple the thing permanently 2 weapon destroyed? Ok, cool he just lost one of his main weapons. better yet, i only need to roll 4+ and boom!

Alternatively i could drop in with all grav weapons, and immobilize it.

I dont need to kill it, i just need to cripple the thing


Super Heavy Walkers ignore all vehicle damage results except explode which does extra hull points instead.


Well even still, only need to rull a 5+ to get explode, which with melta, its not that bad. The even nastyer combo is grav cannon, grav gun, and multi grav and just unleash hell on it.

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Unless you have a GMC or tons of anti tank, they're pretty tough. Also, the main OP point, which GMC have, is the Stomp! Just lost about 750 points in a game to a 1 HP left Knight who got 3 Stomps.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Backspacehacker wrote:


Well even still, only need to rull a 5+ to get explode, which with melta, its not that bad. The even nastyer combo is grav cannon, grav gun, and multi grav and just unleash hell on it.


Super Heavies ignore explode, it only does D3+3 Hull Points instead. He will also most likely get his 4+ invuln against it (depending on which arc you shoot him from)

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/08/29 15:01:23


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 jreilly89 wrote:
Unless you have a GMC or tons of anti tank, they're pretty tough. Also, the main OP point, which GMC have, is the Stomp! Just lost about 750 points in a game to a 1 HP left Knight who got 3 Stomps.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Backspacehacker wrote:


Well even still, only need to rull a 5+ to get explode, which with melta, its not that bad. The even nastyer combo is grav cannon, grav gun, and multi grav and just unleash hell on it.


Super Heavies ignore explode, it only does D3+3 Hull Points instead. He will also most likely get his 4+ invuln against it (depending on which arc you shoot him from)


Dropping in a hope rear lol

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I prefer to just gun it down from 2 different angles and/or drown it in artillery-barrages.....
Also: I have a Knight Paladin too.

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Krazed Killa Kan





Denver, Colorado

I could certainly not consider knights to be broken, and I'm not sure who would. Even all knight armies aren't unbeatable.

That being said, I think you are underestimating knights by quite a bit. Killing knights with scatter lasers or assault cannons is going to be well-nigh impossible - SLs, for example, can't even hurt them from the front, and ACs are still going to struggle.

And their stomps should not be discounted - it can be very useful. And while their apoc mega blast death explosion should be dangerous on paper, I've personally never see it do much. Once tankbustas shot a knight to death and it fell on the truck they had just gotten out of, that's about the most damage the explosion has ever done.

At any rate, I don't find knights to be broken, nor terribad - I think they're decent all around units for the points.

But you do have a point in that GCs are generally more dangerous and durable, I'd say.

Let me put it this way: It's easier for me to kill a knight than a single dreadknight, much less a stormsurge.

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