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I think Krast is always better in cc than hawkshroud. On any given bracket it’s better to get rerolls than count as one bracket better - so for example 5+ with rerolls is better than 4+. This applies most of all when undamaged of course!

The reason to go hawkshroud is for a valiant. You get the relic flamer and the stratagem to let it overwatch on behalf of friends. That’s one of two potentially non-awful ways to run a valiant. The other is with house raven, probably with landstrider, so itcluld run around and actually be in range of things.

Tough call. There is very little to choose between the 3 houses for the sort of Lance you have listed. Pick the one whose colour scheme you prefer?

Settled on Hawkshroud with the inclusion of Helverins. Too many degrading stat lines to rely on a 1x turn stratagem. Not looking forward to painting all that yellow.

Maybe I'll paint them some other color and call them a vassal house or something.

Painting your own colour scheme means you can swap your house traits from battle to battle if you want to try something different.

Well, it looks like around half of the field at the Nova invitational are running some variation of IG+BA+IK so it's going to give us some data about how to run those lists!

(FLG posted a bracket today, afaik the lists themselves aren't up yet)

Is anyone else a bit worried about Knight fatigue?

 grouchoben wrote:
Is anyone else a bit worried about Knight fatigue?

I do suspect that atleast the Castellen will see a points increase in the FAQ or CA, I think it's justified. However I am worried that they won't stop there as knights plus Allies covers a pure knights list massive weakness of no obsec and low model count.

The problem isn’t the Castellan itself, but the Castellan combined with the Raven stratagem. I don’t think the knight wants its cost raised - it’s fine for other houses (and arguably weak for imperial ones). The stratagem wants nerfing.

It's just that tournaments are seeing such a high number of knight soup lists. A friend told me about his latest big tournament where over 50% of the lists had at least one knight in it. That's more pronounced concentration than we've seen in 8th edition to date I reckon. It smacks of the dark days.

My fear is that they WON'T do something about it, because the kits are selling so well, and will let a knight meta solidify until spring 2019.

I agree, the issue isn't currently with Knights or the Castellan specifically, but, with how CP is right now. Most lists with a single Castellan revolve around dumping all the CP into the 1 Knight every turn and watching it take out it's targets, while then farming most of them back again.

Knights still die - Castellan or not. As we move forward i do expect more and more anti Knight units/weapons to appear in a lot of lists.

I also think the number of Knights in lists is simply because it is a simple "plug and play" that is very effective right now. Arguably one of the weaknesses of the standard Imperial Soup is good ranged anti-tank, a Knight helps with that whilst still giving you a Guard CP farm and a Blood Angels CP farm + smash captains.

I suppose, what could be done, is to make each Knight taken in a Super Heavy Auxilary detachment a Freeblade. But i doubt that'll happen either.

Hey guys... I'm going to a large tournament in a few weeks (SeigeWorld) with a Dark Eldar army. What are things that scares you about Dark Eldar?

Traditionally, I spam out disentigrators with a few dark lances... am I handicapping my self here against IK soup lists?

 whembly wrote:
Hey guys... I'm going to a large tournament in a few weeks (SeigeWorld) with a Dark Eldar army. What are things that scares you about Dark Eldar?

Traditionally, I spam out disentigrators with a few dark lances... am I handicapping my self here against IK soup lists?

Not really. Knights will tend to out-shoot ravagers anyway. The thing they fear in a DE army is 9 taloses with 4++ saves and fnp - especially if they have haywire blasters sprinkled around.

A good DE army is a serious threat to knights, but it’s not really viable to shoot them dead. Knights die a lot faster in cc.

 whembly wrote:
Hey guys... I'm going to a large tournament in a few weeks (SeigeWorld) with a Dark Eldar army. What are things that scares you about Dark Eldar?

Traditionally, I spam out disentigrators with a few dark lances... am I handicapping my self here against IK soup lists?

A Harlequins Skyweaver outrider. They’re a ridiculous beating.

I think Knights are doing well right now as they are powerful and people often do not take enough anti-tank to counter them as the meta has been tilted towards hordes for some time.

It's actually very hard to bring enough AT to deal with Knights while still remaining viable as a TAC list, as far as I can see.

 grouchoben wrote:
It's actually very hard to bring enough AT to deal with Knights while still remaining viable as a TAC list, as far as I can see.

This is where I think most people are making a mistake you don't need to kill knights to win just out score them which given they have no native obsec, and such a low model count they need to win the stand up fight to have a chance at winning game's.

If they can't they auto loose objective games every time.

Mandragola wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Hey guys... I'm going to a large tournament in a few weeks (SeigeWorld) with a Dark Eldar army. What are things that scares you about Dark Eldar?

Traditionally, I spam out disentigrators with a few dark lances... am I handicapping my self here against IK soup lists?

Not really. Knights will tend to out-shoot ravagers anyway. The thing they fear in a DE army is 9 taloses with 4++ saves and fnp - especially if they have haywire blasters sprinkled around.

A good DE army is a serious threat to knights, but it’s not really viable to shoot them dead. Knights die a lot faster in cc.

I'm bringing only 3 HWB Taloi (it's all I have)... and a squad of 4x HWB scourges. Other than that, it's your general 3 Ravager list with 2x Razorwing, 1x Reaper and 1x Voidraven bomber list.

Another question... what IK strategem is worth me using Agent of Vect? (I'm likely only going to get 2 uses, if at all).

@thread: thanks for the input!!!!

Ice_can wrote:

 grouchoben wrote:
It's actually very hard to bring enough AT to deal with Knights while still remaining viable as a TAC list, as far as I can see.

This is where I think most people are making a mistake you don't need to kill knights to win just out score them which given they have no native obsec, and such a low model count they need to win the stand up fight to have a chance at winning game's.

If they can't they auto loose objective games every time.

I agree, objectives are king, but most of the time you do indeed need enough AT to knock 3++ knights out of action, whilst dealing with 3 slamguiniuses, 15 scouts and 30-odd guardsmen, or the like. I mean, that's a typical list, or some approximation of it, that are rising to the top atm. Against pure knights you're on a shorter clock before you get wiped out, so it's a straight race to snaffle enough VPs to make your decimated army the eventual victors, but as you say you can win the obsec game. But against the common top-tier soup lists the task is more complicated, as you're facing decent obsec yourself and a fearsome CC counter punch from the caps, combined with an early VP haul from the scouts. I've yet to figure out a way to come close to dealin with this, but them I'm not a top table player.

Anyway, I'm not trying to rain on the parade or anything, just noticing, along with a lot of other peeople I suspect, the sheer number of knight lists atm.

 grouchoben wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

 grouchoben wrote:
It's actually very hard to bring enough AT to deal with Knights while still remaining viable as a TAC list, as far as I can see.

This is where I think most people are making a mistake you don't need to kill knights to win just out score them which given they have no native obsec, and such a low model count they need to win the stand up fight to have a chance at winning game's.

If they can't they auto loose objective games every time.

I agree, objectives are king, but most of the time you do indeed need enough AT to knock 3++ knights out of action, whilst dealing with 3 slamguiniuses, 15 scouts and 30-odd guardsmen, or the like. I mean, that's a typical list, or some approximation of it, that are rising to the top atm. Against pure knights you're on a shorter clock before you get wiped out, so it's a straight race to snaffle enough VPs to make your decimated army the eventual victors, but as you say you can win the obsec game. But against the common top-tier soup lists the task is more complicated, as you're facing decent obsec yourself and a fearsome CC counter punch from the caps, combined with an early VP haul from the scouts. I've yet to figure out a way to come close to dealin with this, but them I'm not a top table player.

Anyway, I'm not trying to rain on the parade or anything, just noticing, along with a lot of other peeople I suspect, the sheer number of knight lists atm.

Thats the unfortunate thing with the 8th edition ally system, no downside to best of everything from 3+ codex builds.
Now if that castellen didn't have knight strategums it would be a bit better balanced.

 whembly wrote:
[
Another question... what IK strategem is worth me using Agent of Vect? (I'm likely only going to get 2 uses, if at all).

Tough question. Rotate Ion Shields early game is a good candidate while you still have your full compliment of Dark Lances. Most Knight players will rotate early and often and a 3++ save early on will make it hard to burn down a Knight in a turn. Other stratagems are often house-dependent.

The other candidate is the the House Raven stratagem "Order Of Companions stratagem", particular if played on a very shooty Knight like the Castellan or Crusader. The ability to reroll all 1s during the shooting phase (hits, wounds, number of shots and number of wounds) makes a huge difference to the damage output of the Knight.

The Taranis strat that allows a dead Knight to resurrect with 1 wound on a 4+ at the end of the turn is another game-changer that can be worth preventing, particularly if it is followed by "Machine Spirit Resurgent" to allow it to fight as if at full effect.

 whembly wrote:

Mandragola wrote:

 whembly wrote:
Hey guys... I'm going to a large tournament in a few weeks (SeigeWorld) with a Dark Eldar army. What are things that scares you about Dark Eldar?

Traditionally, I spam out disentigrators with a few dark lances... am I handicapping my self here against IK soup lists?

Not really. Knights will tend to out-shoot ravagers anyway. The thing they fear in a DE army is 9 taloses with 4++ saves and fnp - especially if they have haywire blasters sprinkled around.

A good DE army is a serious threat to knights, but it’s not really viable to shoot them dead. Knights die a lot faster in cc.

I'm bringing only 3 HWB Taloi (it's all I have)... and a squad of 4x HWB scourges. Other than that, it's your general 3 Ravager list with 2x Razorwing, 1x Reaper and 1x Voidraven bomber list.

Another question... what IK strategem is worth me using Agent of Vect? (I'm likely only going to get 2 uses, if at all).

@thread: thanks for the input!!!!

If you are going up against multiple Knights and you don't kill 1 turn 1, then you could start to struggle. Talos are good, but a Knight can still kill them in combat and with Death Grip. That said, having several units of them becomes a pain.
Biggest issue for me in the last event i played, was deep striking Scourges. Dealing with 3 Ravagers,a couple of dark lances and a handful of blasters on top of 2 flyers turn 1 (admittedly with doom and jinx as well) hurt enough, but then, add in 2 squads of haywire scourges and it was a tough thing to deal with. It was a close game though, and i lost it on points.

Ice_can wrote:

 grouchoben wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

 grouchoben wrote:
It's actually very hard to bring enough AT to deal with Knights while still remaining viable as a TAC list, as far as I can see.

This is where I think most people are making a mistake you don't need to kill knights to win just out score them which given they have no native obsec, and such a low model count they need to win the stand up fight to have a chance at winning game's.

If they can't they auto loose objective games every time.

I agree, objectives are king, but most of the time you do indeed need enough AT to knock 3++ knights out of action, whilst dealing with 3 slamguiniuses, 15 scouts and 30-odd guardsmen, or the like. I mean, that's a typical list, or some approximation of it, that are rising to the top atm. Against pure knights you're on a shorter clock before you get wiped out, so it's a straight race to snaffle enough VPs to make your decimated army the eventual victors, but as you say you can win the obsec game. But against the common top-tier soup lists the task is more complicated, as you're facing decent obsec yourself and a fearsome CC counter punch from the caps, combined with an early VP haul from the scouts. I've yet to figure out a way to come close to dealin with this, but them I'm not a top table player.

Anyway, I'm not trying to rain on the parade or anything, just noticing, along with a lot of other peeople I suspect, the sheer number of knight lists atm.

Thats the unfortunate thing with the 8th edition ally system, no downside to best of everything from 3+ codex builds.
Now if that castellen didn't have knight strategums it would be a bit better balanced.

I was playing horde and could easily out play knights everygame outside a tourney however in a tourney time frame (and especially if theres clocks) its just too stressful. The balance problem isn't due to multiple codexs if tourneys drop points to 1500 and maintain timeframes knights wouldn't be such a problem

U02dah4 wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

 grouchoben wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

 grouchoben wrote:
It's actually very hard to bring enough AT to deal with Knights while still remaining viable as a TAC list, as far as I can see.

This is where I think most people are making a mistake you don't need to kill knights to win just out score them which given they have no native obsec, and such a low model count they need to win the stand up fight to have a chance at winning game's.

If they can't they auto loose objective games every time.

I agree, objectives are king, but most of the time you do indeed need enough AT to knock 3++ knights out of action, whilst dealing with 3 slamguiniuses, 15 scouts and 30-odd guardsmen, or the like. I mean, that's a typical list, or some approximation of it, that are rising to the top atm. Against pure knights you're on a shorter clock before you get wiped out, so it's a straight race to snaffle enough VPs to make your decimated army the eventual victors, but as you say you can win the obsec game. But against the common top-tier soup lists the task is more complicated, as you're facing decent obsec yourself and a fearsome CC counter punch from the caps, combined with an early VP haul from the scouts. I've yet to figure out a way to come close to dealin with this, but them I'm not a top table player.

Anyway, I'm not trying to rain on the parade or anything, just noticing, along with a lot of other peeople I suspect, the sheer number of knight lists atm.

Thats the unfortunate thing with the 8th edition ally system, no downside to best of everything from 3+ codex builds.
Now if that castellen didn't have knight strategums it would be a bit better balanced.

I was playing horde and could easily out play knights everygame outside a tourney however in a tourney time frame (and especially if theres clocks) its just too stressful. The balance problem isn't due to multiple codexs if tourneys drop points to 1500 and maintain timeframes knights wouldn't be such a problem

Are you talking a nothing but knights army or the soup armies, as Castellen with CP farm and Dawneagle Dbags cover most lists but both the knight and Slamquinius's are using as much CP per turn as their own armies without allies would have for a full game.
Pure knights arn't IMHO a top table army they are a good army but they get a lot better as part of soup.

Soup most of the time i dont think ive player vs a pure knights list more than once.

I ran AM/BM/IK at BAO. I like the list. It has so much CP and all kinds of abilities to deal damage. I ran RAVEN - Castellan + gallant + gallant. I found the gallants to be suboptimal and I am going to replace them with the following:

2x2 helverins and an Ogryn bodyguard

Resulting in:
RAVEN - 1x castellan, 2x2 helverin
BLANGELS - 2x slamCaptain, 3x scouts
VALHALLA - 2x commander, 3x guards, 1x ogryn bodyguard

I think the helverins have a more consistent performance against all lists. Gallants often have bad turns, or modest turns where they stomp a 60 point troop squad to bits. THey can have stupendous turns where they kill another knight in a single round of combat. But that is once a game. However, every turn a Helverin is alive it is doing good damage to something.

What's the verdict on the Styrix? Initially I wasn't crazy about it but looking back it seems pretty damn good. Ion Bulwark and Sanctuary are already baked into it, so you can choose whatever WL trait and heirloom you want, the Volkite Chieorovile is a solid anti-tank weapon, the twin rad-cleanser seems like a surprisingly good anti-charge deterrent and option vs elite infantry, good invulnerable saves, and the like. I think taking it as Krast and choosing the First Knight trait to reroll all 1's to hit and either Mark of the Omnissiah for extra tankiness or the Headsman's Mark for big game hunting seems like the way to go. Thoughts?

Wulfey wrote:
I ran AM/BM/IK at BAO. I like the list. It has so much CP and all kinds of abilities to deal damage. I ran RAVEN - Castellan + gallant + gallant. I found the gallants to be suboptimal and I am going to replace them with the following:

2x2 helverins and an Ogryn bodyguard

Resulting in:
RAVEN - 1x castellan, 2x2 helverin
BLANGELS - 2x slamCaptain, 3x scouts
VALHALLA - 2x commander, 3x guards, 1x ogryn bodyguard

I think the helverins have a more consistent performance against all lists. Gallants often have bad turns, or modest turns where they stomp a 60 point troop squad to bits. THey can have stupendous turns where they kill another knight in a single round of combat. But that is once a game. However, every turn a Helverin is alive it is doing good damage to something.

Interesting idea. At my last event I saw plenty of Knights with 3 Smash Captains and a Guard battalion. It does well, but I’m personally staying away from the token Captains.

As for the Helverins, I was personally considering dropping them entirely. In my last event they either pulled out clutch moves, or really struggled for the entire game. All in all, they certainly didn’t make their cost back in 4 of the 5 games.

 Karhedron wrote:

 whembly wrote:
[
Another question... what IK strategem is worth me using Agent of Vect? (I'm likely only going to get 2 uses, if at all).

Tough question. Rotate Ion Shields early game is a good candidate while you still have your full compliment of Dark Lances. Most Knight players will rotate early and often and a 3++ save early on will make it hard to burn down a Knight in a turn. Other stratagems are often house-dependent.

The other candidate is the the House Raven stratagem "Order Of Companions stratagem", particular if played on a very shooty Knight like the Castellan or Crusader. The ability to reroll all 1s during the shooting phase (hits, wounds, number of shots and number of wounds) makes a huge difference to the damage output of the Knight.

The Taranis strat that allows a dead Knight to resurrect with 1 wound on a 4+ at the end of the turn is another game-changer that can be worth preventing, particularly if it is followed by "Machine Spirit Resurgent" to allow it to fight as if at full effect.

I find the rotate not that useful. Usually maybe it helps a bit, maybe it don't but one knight takes some damage and then rest goes elsewhere. Maybe local meta is bit unusual in having AT in multiple sources so it's not big deal having one source face improved. As it is it could result in no damage anyway due to rolling 5 or 6 to inv save and then there's no point often shooting at that anyway but switch target. As such I have found myself NOT using that as much. I find myself struggling with CP's so maybe stopping 1 attack feels not that good.

If you are facing raven castellan then that strategem is IMO pretty much no brainer to negate. That is such a huge effectivity multiplier it's insane. Especially if you have ~4 wound character you would really hate as it also will help the shieldbreaker missile if he feels it worth it. Alongside busting like 2 DE vehicles a turn(or at least cripple them).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Kdash wrote:
As for the Helverins, I was personally considering dropping them entirely. In my last event they either pulled out clutch moves, or really struggled for the entire game. All in all, they certainly didn’t make their cost back in 4 of the 5 games.

Hmm. I have found them pretty good. Nice shooting, fast. Warglaive shooting has too few shots and too short range and I don't generally want small ones in combat. Some more points and another warden could be nice but then again no flankers etc to push deep strikers further from big knights.

Does anyone here own a forgeworld Styrix? Would the weapons be comparable size wise on a normal gw questoris Class?

So my reasoning being if I had a Magnetised knight and acquired just the Styrix guns could I magnetised them and got them to my normal gw knight easily enough?

Has anyone attempted such a thing?

 Ideasweasel wrote:
Does anyone here own a forgeworld Styrix? Would the weapons be comparable size wise on a normal gw questoris Class?

So my reasoning being if I had a Magnetised knight and acquired just the Styrix guns could I magnetised them and got them to my normal gw knight easily enough?

Has anyone attempted such a thing?

You could do that pretty easily, yes. The only slight issue is that the Styrix's gun has a cable that goes to the knight's back, but if you put a second magnet there it would be fine.

I haven't used Helverins but I took a couple of Warglaives to a GT heat. I found them to be a bit of a liability if I'm honest, and I think that Helverins would be at least as bad.

The problem is that against Horde armies they can be surrounded pretty easily. They can't escape or fight their way out. The horde unit can then hold an objective (or maybe even more than one, depending on the rules you're using and scenario) and there's very little that you can do about it. An army with a Castellan, some IG infantry, scouts and smash captains wouldn't contain anything that could help.

Helverins provide very efficient shooting, and are particularly good in a meta with quite a lot of things like Eldar paper planes. But the moment something gets into cc with one that's it.