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I've never seen anybody play Imperial Kinights, are the tactically terrible due to too few models?

Think Rock, Paper, Scissors.

Did you bring a TAC army, not expecting to have to deal with 4 or 5 Knights? You lose. Did you bring a skewed list, capable of dishing out huge amounts of S 6+ firepower, preferably on a fast moving platform? You win! But your next opponent brings a swarm list? You lose.

This is what Knights have done to 40k, in my opinion. TAC lists are dead for most armies, as you can't bring enough melta to a game to deal with 5 Knights [1850 pts] and still have enough Infantry killing weapons [bodies!] to beat a horde list.

Knights are what Orks want to be. Run forwards at full tilt. Shoot your dakka on the way. Charge anything you can. Punch, chop, stomp. Repeat. Run, shoot, chop. Run, shoot, chop. If something kills you, hope to explode really big. Honestly, it's everything an Ork wishes he could be and more.

They can win by virtue of being "unkillable". They can win through board control, if your opponent doesn't have much in the way of Deepstrike / Outflanking. You can spread across the board and move forward in a wave, blasting and stomping everything as you go. You don't really want to be near a Knight with much, so you tend to get backed into a corner trying to shoot them before they crush you. They can also win by being a giant model that needs to be dealt with, while your speedy MSU clean up the leftovers / turbo boost to score objectives.

They're a viable army, but they tend to be beaten on the tournament scene as they're either fairly costed or overcosted, depending on what you compare them to, on the tournament scene. They're not much fun to play against, due to the R/P/S nature. The games are basically decided during list building. Either your opponent has enough guns to deal with their profile, or they don't. There's not much tactical interplay, just whether or not they can gun you down before you give them a stomping. A friend has 4 Knights, and I won't play against them without a proper warning, and if he gives me a proper warning, I build a list to whomp him, because otherwise I waste tons of points on S5 or less weapons, and have no real chance. Rock, Paper, Scissors... to a greater extent than any other army.

They're ok. Pretty good but not op.

Lols! Imperial Knights are easy to kill. An explode results of 6 causes them losing d3 hullpoints wich can be done with 1 meltagun. You can glance av12 from the sides and back with grav and scatbikes and gause. Even a dreadnaught swings at i4 and has 5 str8 ap2 attacks to their av13. Hell troops with haywire grenades can hurt IKs.

5 IKs is a huge handicap. All 5 can get tarpitted. Wraith Knights cost less and can win with i5 strD and have invul save in cqc.

Dreadnoughts have S10 in CC, unless they lack CCWs.

 JNAProductions wrote:
Dreadnoughts have S10 in CC, unless they lack CCWs.

Had a mind fart with power fists

Whats str when the dred has 2 guns? str6?

Check your Codex.

But yes.

Knights are a little weird. I have a bunch of them, but played my first non-Apoc. game with them last week.

They don't die easily. My opponent (Deathguard) spread his guys out and tried to play the objectives-grabbing game while simultaneously taking on 3 knights. HUGE mistake. It could very well have worked had he simply kept out of sight and played peek-a-boo, but he tried to rush me with a deathstar unit and a Great Unclean One. He knocked a couple hull points off two of them, and killed another. However, by then it was turn 5. And yes, I DID feel the hurt of loosing a knight.

I think one viable option is to out maneuver the knights, keeping one in between your whole army and the others. Use their own knights as cover. Then focus fire EVERYTHING you have into them. Loosing 25% of any army in one turn is tough to deal with.

I never seem to have much of a problem with them. Admittedly, I've never played against four at a time, and never three at a time in games of 2k or less, but even so:
They're not particularly durable. Grav isn't as good against them as it is against other targets (no free Immobilized results,) but Melta will knock its socks off, and simply getting a few good salvos against it from various sources will blow one up fairly easily. You do have to focus down on them pretty hard, but it's incredibly rewarding to do so.
Mathhammering it out, if you can get 4 Melta hits against 2 Facings (assuming one of those facings has the invuln), you've got about a 50/50 shot of blowing him to smithereens. If you're Space Wolves, and brought a full Wyrdstorm Brotherhood and a Drop Pod, you can reliably glance a Knight to death on his rear armor, even if that's where he puts his shield.
Nobody really thinks that a squadron of the Tri-las Predators is that good, but cast Prescience on them and you're averaging 4 Hull Points against front armor with an invuln.
3 Grav Centurions will only put 1.5 Hull Points against an armor facing with an invuln, but they will ALSO drop it to I1, making it less threatening in Close Combat for one turn if you have something decent to charge with.
The Devestator half of a Skyhammer will devestate - pun intended - assuming they have the popular loadout of "Grav on one, Melta on the other". 20 Grav Shots gets you 2 Hull Points, or 4 if he doesn't have a shield up, 4 Meltas will finish the job either way.
Speaking of charging: 5 Terminators, one if whom has a Chainfist, will lose 1.4 Terminators on the charge, the survivors will inflict 2.5 hull points. It's difficult to Mathhammer out if they survive the stomps, but he's got *about* a 2/6ths chance of killing you, less if the termies are spread out. Cataphractii Terminatora do better thanks to their improved invuln.


This is by no means an exhaustive list, and none of these are particularly rare or unheard of choices. Nothing I listed costs *more* than a Knight. I never play a 2k list without at least enough anti-tank firepower to kill a Knight in a single turn, and I rarely play a list that can't at least concievably kill two.
A Knight can be speedbumped by ten Tactical Marines pretty easily, which won't kill him, but WILL waste his shooting and assault for a turn. A Knight can be stopped cold if you have something blobby and fearless.

The trick is to just be agressive as hell. If you play defensive and reactive, their above-average firepower will hurt a lot, and if you stay back too far, they'll generally have easier placement on their Ion shields.

Chaos Knights, now...

Well, I think five IK's are too much. Such an army is too one-dimensional. Variety in an army is much better. I'd take three IK's in a household formation. In this case, the IK's have obj. secured.
For the rest of the points (about 650 in a 1850 pt list), I'd add Skitarii or Cult Mechanicus. This would make the army more fluffy and the opponent may have less to complain if his weapons are useless.

Thank you, you guys gave amazing answers. I feel like an ass, I posted this when I was drop dead tired and forgot I had done so. I just posted a nearly identical question just adding a bit about Cerastus knights. I have ton to think about now, thank you guys again.

You need a good supportive force for imperial knights, imo. I'm keen on using legion of the dead for deep striking ignores cover goodness.

Spore Mines and Mucolid Spore Clusters make great support units for Imperial Knights. I like to model mine as WWII air raid balloons.

SJ

It depends on what your army is. If you play SM, tau, eldar then IK are not a problem. But without grav, melta or D weapons spam 5 knights can really be annoying. Dark eldar and tyranids for example can't really compete. Orks struggle a lot too.

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
Spore Mines and Mucolid Spore Clusters make great support units for Imperial Knights. I like to model mine as WWII air raid balloons.

SJ

I'd love to see a picture of this!

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
Spore Mines and Mucolid Spore Clusters make great support units for Imperial Knights. I like to model mine as WWII air raid balloons.

SJ

You mean IK supported by Nids or Genestealer Cult?
This seems to be another dimension. Never thought about this.

Just because it's a radically different faction does not mean it can't be used to count as exactly what you need.

Another build I want to do, but have worked out how to be successful with, is Jump Infantry screens with Shields and Power Lances. I mean come on, that would be awesome!

SJ


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
Spore Mines and Mucolid Spore Clusters make great support units for Imperial Knights. I like to model mine as WWII air raid balloons.

SJ

I'd love to see a picture of this!

Plastic Easter Eggs with fins painted olive drab with red, white, and yellow rings on a wire coat hanger painted to be rope that trails to the ground. Super cheap, and the rules are free download from GW.

SJ