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gendoikari87 wrote:
so how is everyone finding warglaives and helverins? so far my warglaives are good for dying, really good at it, as in they do their job of taking the hit for the big knights.

helverins on the other hand wreck face. Damage 3 might have been a bit much.

Helverins with a Perceptor for the buffs, Warlgaives supporting your other Questoris. Synergizes quite well that way.

SJ

How are you guys transporting multi-knight armies?

I have magnetised all my knights and transport them in their sub-assemblies. I then use a metal sheet surrounded by foam to stick the sub-assemblies to.

 raverrn wrote:
How are you guys transporting multi-knight armies?

A toolbox that's got at least 7" of vertical clearance. There's lots of cheap plastic toolboxes out there that can hold knights. Line the inside with kitchen drawer liners and put washers at the bottom of the knights and magnets at the bottom of the container to keep them relatively steady.

Remember though, guys. Admech can only repair a Knight for 1 wound a turn, not d3. Sure, you can heal 2 wounds using the 1cp double heal stratagem, but you have to consider how viable that is.

Where do you get 1 wound? They heal knights for d3 and spend 1 cp to heal another d3

IVIOOSE wrote:
Where do you get 1 wound? They heal knights for d3 and spend 1 cp to heal another d3

They only heal Questor Mechanicus for 1 wound. They heal <forgeworld> and Astra Militarum for d3.
It's in the Master of Machines ability.

There is an admech WLT that increases repairs by 1.

Wulfey wrote:
There is an admech WLT that increases repairs by 1.

I always forget about that WL trait! I guess it could work to regain 4 wound a turn on a Knight, but, it'll depend on the Knight aspect of the list and whether or not you need to CP regain WL trait.

I think house raven goes very well with Valiants. Its almost impossible not to find targets on your first turn if your Valiant can move + advance and then still fire off all its weapons. If you want even more, bring land strider for a further +2 on your advance roll.

Now, your Valiant moves 10+2+d6 on its first turn. It will bring you within range of his deployment zone on all your guns and your confrag gun flamer can now probably reach even further.

Also, if you do bring Valiant, you need to think about anti-tank. I actually made my list with both Castellan and Valiant in it because I think they complement each other. Castellan goes for the big hard targets while Valiant provides board control and goes after hordes and infantry.

If you are relying on Valiant plus other knights which are not castellan, then yes, I do think such an army would have a weakness against shooty lists. Any other knight other than a Castellan don't have enough fire power to take out long range threats. But on the flip side, a Castellan wouldn't do too well against hordes. Hence why I think they complement each other.

I put ion bulwark on my Castellan for a 4++ base save. Its the more obvious first target. This then ensures my Valiant lives to at least the second round where it will be able to bring all of its guns to bear.

Eldenfirefly wrote:
I think house raven goes very well with Valiants. Its almost impossible not to find targets on your first turn if your Valiant can move + advance and then still fire off all its weapons. If you want even more, bring land strider for a further +2 on your advance roll.

Flamer yes. Though still can be denied 1st turn shooting. Harpoon will never fire on turn 1 if enemy doesn't want though even with advance.

Now, your Valiant moves 10+2+d6 on its first turn. It will bring you within range of his deployment zone on all your guns and your confrag gun flamer can now probably reach even further.

Of course being in range for deployment zone is not enough. You think he will conveniently line up something(especially anything worth targeting for harpoon) within line? HAH! Especially as you often deploy your army before anything of importance from enemy will be deployed. Some backfield shooters and DS units and hey presto your army is deployed. Then he'll deploy where you won't reach him 1st turn with harpoon. Flamer bit harder but then again he doesn't have to deploy straight ahead so diagonically more doable.

Though it's still workable house for valiant. Lack of hawkshroud strategem is biggest loss. But better IMO than say hawkshroud combining both.

Well yeah. That's why my list has both Castellan and Valiant. So, turn 1, the Valiant clears some chaff, Castellan shoots the heavy support. Now he has to decide, target Castellan or target Valiant. If he ignores the Valiant, now turn 2 the Valiant will be able to go up close and really do a lot of damage!

I find it interesting that your opponent's focus on the Castellan, my experience (I run Castellan, Valiant, Crusader @ 1750)has been the exact opposite, focusing on the Valiant to the exclusion of everything else. I've Always put the ion bulwark on him

I’ve thought that the Valiant was a trap from the moment I saw it. I think the same about the Gallant. To function effectively, both these knights have to go forwards. You have no choice in the matter, other than having your hugely expensive model do nothing.

All sorts of horrible things can happen to you when you go near the enemy. People start rapid firing their plasma guns and pull out stuff like melta weapons. Then sometimes they charge in and smack you with thunder hammers, or bite bits off you.

The other problem is range. Your opponent can just stay away from a Valiant or Gallant, and/or tie them up with cheap screens. That also means turns in which your expensive model does nothing, meaning that your opponent has more stuff alive to carry on hurting you with. I've no idea what the Tau player in the game above was doing, leaving stuff like hammerheads (which are faster than a Valiant) in range to be harpooned.

It’s true that knights do more damage at close range too. Even a crusader does more if it can get its heavy flamer and its feet working. It’s great to be able to do that, but sometimes it’s better not to. Even a single turn spent hanging back and shooting the teeth out of your opponent’s army can make a huge difference to the damage you take.

I think the only way you could potentially do well with a Valiant is in a house Raven list, where it can zerg forward. That gets you past the problem with being out-ranged, but not the problem of being killed because you got too close.

Edited because I can't remember the names of knights!

Mandragola wrote:
The other problem is range. Your opponent can just stay away from a Valiant or Crusader, and/or tie them up with cheap screens. That also means turns in which your expensive model does nothing, meaning that your opponent has more stuff alive to carry on hurting you with. I've no idea what the Tau player in the game above was doing, leaving stuff like hammerheads (which are faster than a Valiant) in range to be harpooned.

Crusader? That thing posses 36" range. Unless you play on billiard table range beyond that isn't even useful. LOS alone should trim down most of the advantage over that and of course objectives means you can't just stay on furthest corner and shoot at will.

tneva82 wrote:

Mandragola wrote:
The other problem is range. Your opponent can just stay away from a Valiant or Crusader, and/or tie them up with cheap screens. That also means turns in which your expensive model does nothing, meaning that your opponent has more stuff alive to carry on hurting you with. I've no idea what the Tau player in the game above was doing, leaving stuff like hammerheads (which are faster than a Valiant) in range to be harpooned.

Crusader? That thing posses 36" range. Unless you play on billiard table range beyond that isn't even useful. LOS alone should trim down most of the advantage over that and of course objectives means you can't just stay on furthest corner and shoot at will.

My bad, I meant Gallant. A crusader obviously won't have any problems with range.

Any advice on dealing with boards? So far I can smash meq and vehicles to bits but don’t know what I can even do against hoards

gendoikari87 wrote:
Any advice on dealing with boards? So far I can smash meq and vehicles to bits but don’t know what I can even do against hoards

Feet and the glory in honour terryn stratagem to fight again. That’s like 36 stamps with a Gallant. That would do ok against hordes If you had a couple maybe? Advantage is if you play quite aggressive with your knights the stampy feet might be useful.

What about chainsweep?

Mandragola wrote:
I’ve thought that the Valiant was a trap from the moment I saw it. I think the same about the Gallant. To function effectively, both these knights have to go forwards. You have no choice in the matter, other than having your hugely expensive model do nothing.

All sorts of horrible things can happen to you when you go near the enemy. People start rapid firing their plasma guns and pull out stuff like melta weapons. Then sometimes they charge in and smack you with thunder hammers, or bite bits off you.

The other problem is range. Your opponent can just stay away from a Valiant or Gallant, and/or tie them up with cheap screens. That also means turns in which your expensive model does nothing, meaning that your opponent has more stuff alive to carry on hurting you with. I've no idea what the Tau player in the game above was doing, leaving stuff like hammerheads (which are faster than a Valiant) in range to be harpooned.

It’s true that knights do more damage at close range too. Even a crusader does more if it can get its heavy flamer and its feet working. It’s great to be able to do that, but sometimes it’s better not to. Even a single turn spent hanging back and shooting the teeth out of your opponent’s army can make a huge difference to the damage you take.

I think the only way you could potentially do well with a Valiant is in a house Raven list, where it can zerg forward. That gets you past the problem with being out-ranged, but not the problem of being killed because you got too close.

Edited because I can't remember the names of knights!

Knights are intended to move forward, you are paying points for melee capability including in Knights like the Crusader. If you are sitting back avoiding melee, you paid too much for your army.

SJ

Yup, knights are shooty/CC machines jacks of all trades

There#s difference between jack of all trades and being forced to move where opponent dictates or not do anything though

Loads of things are jacks of all trades. That doesn’t mean you should always charge them at everything you see. It means you have options, which you can use to get a tactical advantage over any given opponent.

I’m happy if my guys are killing more stuff than they are losing - at least in the early turns of a game before I need to grab objectives. I can achieve that by either killing the enemy fast, or by having my own guys stay alive for longer. It’s perfectly acceptable to reduce my own damage output if it reduces my opponent’s damage by even more, meaning that I win the fight in the end.

Some opponents will have more shooting than me, so I want to get into melee and stamp on them before they shoot me dead. But others will bring scary cc threats of their own and not that many guns. In that situation I’m better off shooting a bit to start with, not blindly charging into the teeth of my opponent’s army.

A Castellan or Crusader can do loads of damage at long range, and even more if they get close. A Valiant or Gallant does almost nothing at range, and huge amount up close. I still have the option of sending my crusader to stamp on things if I want – indeed it’s going to do at least as much damage as a Gallant if it’s firing all its guns and kicking things as well.

Chargeing is always best because it enhances your damage output.

Useing a crusader to finish an infantry squad is always going to be more effective than not chargeing because its an extra squad gone but the gallant is going to be more effective vs a tank or another knight.

Tactically protecting your crusader from CC units is important but many armies dont have them or can charge you anyway.

A pure knights list is not going to be able to stop a smash Cpt chargeing a knight

So is there any way of effectively dealing with Knights in general? If you're bringing a single Knight to supplement your army, it's almost always taking Ion Bulwark for the 4++ barring fringe cases which can get boosted to a 3++ for a single CP. If you're going up against an assault heavy army then you're taking Sanctuary which you can get up to a 4++ and against T8 24 wounds it's not going to be easy to take down. And even if you knock it down on the wound table if it's Questor Mechanicus it can just ignore all that for 1 CP. Ignoring it isn't the best idea either since that just lets it run roughshod on the rest of your army and tie up fire support. Aside from aiming a metric ton of lascannons at it and hope they fail their 3++ saves, or bringing in another Titanic unit and hoping you can shoot it off/get to fight first, I feel like there isn't any one great answer when Knights effectively have a good answer for everything.

U02dah4 wrote:
Chargeing is always best because it enhances your damage output.

Useing a crusader to finish an infantry squad is always going to be more effective than not chargeing because its an extra squad gone but the gallant is going to be more effective vs a tank or another knight.

Tactically protecting your crusader from CC units is important but many armies dont have them or can charge you anyway.

A pure knights list is not going to be able to stop a smash Cpt chargeing a knight

No. Enhancing your damage output is not always best, if by doing so you allow your opponent to increase their damage output by more than you do. Charging can get your knights killed, which isn’t a good thing. Finishing off an infantry squad isn’t worth it if it means the smash captain reaches you a turn earlier, and without putting himself in danger.

It’s true that not everyone has CC units that can threaten a knight, but CC isn’t the only problem with getting close to the enemy. You also have smites going off, scary short-ranged guns and the ability for your opponent to focus all of his killing power (shooting and/or cc) on a single target.

Imagine dawn of war deployment. At the end of your turn one you could have a couple of knights in the back left and right corners of your deployment zone. The knights will get shot at, but because they are far away there will be lots of guns that can only fire at one or other of the knights, preventing your opponent from focusing them down. Rapid fire guns will fire one shot and meltas won’t fire at all.

Alternatively you could have a Gallant somewhere in your opponent’s deployment zone. Now your opponent can hit it with almost all of their guns. The close range stuff will be at full effectiveness and a smash captain can charge it straight away, without even putting himself at risk of getting shot. So your opponent will do much more damage, and all to a single target. Any decent army should kill the Gallant, in exchange for whatever trash unit he left in its way.

You won’t always be able to stop a cc unit like a smash captain – but you sometimes will. And if you make him come at you then you get to live for another turn or two, during which you can shoot things dead. So instead of the smash captain getting to kill something on turn 1 he does nothing. Instead of your knight being dead at the start of turn 2, it shoots more things dead.

Hard hitting CC units are the best e.g. Smash CPT most knights don't get an invul in CC and a BA smash CPT can mostly take a single knight on its own. If they take Sanctuary they are not takeing Ion bulwalk.so your shooting is going to be more effective. A 4++ will still let a lot of hits through in CC.

A BA CPT 116pt strategemed up makes 12-16 Attacks
Hitting 3's rerolling 1's wounding 3's 3 damage
Avg
11Damage vs 4++
18 vs no inv

Mortal W spam is an obvious counter

Strategem Countering is also potentially viable depending on the list a pure knights list is very CP tight so a calidous can potential exhaust it quickly agents of vecht is also an answer

@ mendragola
Unless the knight is completely surrounded by infantry a smash CPT will walk through and even if it is it's pretty easy to punch a one man hole they are not stopping you.

As i said target selection killing an infantry squad with a crusader is always good - walking a knight into the middle of a maxed out CC squad is always bad. Is killing an infantry squad worth sacrificeing a knight absolutely not

But that about positioning and sane target selection it doesn't take away the general principle that maximiseing your damage output is advantageous

12-16? They're 4 attacks base, aren't they?
So that's 4+1d3 (for a Strat) and then fight again, for another 4 (and only maybe the d3-not sure if that applies again), for 5-14, average of 12.

12 attacks
28/3 hits
56/9 wounds
28/9 against a 4++, 140/27 against a 3+
For a total of (assuming 3 damage) 9.33 against a 4++, 15.56 against a 3+.

But you can get a 4 damage Thunderhammer or a Thunderhammer without a hit penalty, which does affect the math.

You can get another +1 by making them death company (another 1CP). The +1 damage is a warlord trait, so not always the best idea if you don't want to be throwing your warlord to his death. There is a relic hammer that ignores the -1 to hit though.

 DoomMouse wrote:
You can get another +1 by making them death company (another 1CP). The +1 damage is a warlord trait, so not always the best idea if you don't want to be throwing your warlord to his death. There is a relic hammer that ignores the -1 to hit though.

Ah, gotcha. Thanks.