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See I don't get this argument. If GW was not able to judge if something was good or bad, then each edition eldar would not be one of the top armies, because probability would make it so that one day GW would give them bad rules.

When we say "Renegade Knights are basically broken", I'm assuming this the usual dakka hyperbole? I get that they're not as good as Imperial Knights due to the lack of traits, relics and stratagems, but my army would suck against an Imperial Knights list too. Are they competitive against other factions in casual matched play (i.e where your opponent's list hasn't been tailored to only take the most powerful combination of units in the game)?

Given that Knights get mainly taken as Auxilliary I would argue they are almost on par. They don't get the house rules in those instances and sure the stratagems aren't as good, they instead get a much better choice of weapon combos

Isn't the Mark of Chaos and Keywords (plus the weapons selection) the main differences with loyalist? Have anyone listed all the stratagems, psyonic power and combo available to Renegade Knight?
(Also, the double Avenger is overestimated in my opinion: it's useful but S6 is a real weakness for the gun profile - with S7 it would have been great)

Sometimes I think that stuff simply flyes under the radar... take the "no deepstrike within 12" of Vigilus. The exact same rule is on the Land Raider Proteus since Index days, but is discussed like something new...

Sumilidon wrote:
Given that Knights get mainly taken as Auxilliary I would argue they are almost on par. They don't get the house rules in those instances and sure the stratagems aren't as good, they instead get a much better choice of weapon combos

Have you ever seen a castellan in an imperial army, that is not fully loaded with relics or that isn't raven etc ? And am not using this as an argument to say your wrong. I just don't know if a single knight taken without the cawl gun+raven is actually a valid choice. Maybe castellans aren't "broken" at all, maybe it is just the extra rules they get makes them so good.

Karol wrote:
I just don't know if a single knight taken without the cawl gun+raven is actually a valid choice. Maybe castellans aren't "broken" at all, maybe it is just the extra rules they get makes them so good.

For castellans it's fairly single choice - Cawls wrath is basically a second plasma weapons worth of firepower for free and Raven doubles you up again. Both have clear paths to being fixed - by making Cawls wrath the generic profile (and increasing the cost accordingly) and by fixing the whole CP battery issue and re-costing the Raven stratagem against a more predictable pool of command points.

The smaller knights do show up in tournaments in a few different configurations though, both weapons and households. The castellan just stands out as the smashcaptain of the codex with the many ways you can make a more reasonable unit entirely unbalanced.

A.T. wrote:

Karol wrote:
I just don't know if a single knight taken without the cawl gun+raven is actually a valid choice. Maybe castellans aren't "broken" at all, maybe it is just the extra rules they get makes them so good.

For castellans it's fairly single choice - Cawls wrath is basically a second plasma weapons worth of firepower for free and Raven doubles you up again. Both have clear paths to being fixed - by making Cawls wrath the generic profile (and increasing the cost accordingly) and by fixing the whole CP battery issue and re-costing the Raven stratagem against a more predictable pool of command points.

The smaller knights do show up in tournaments in a few different configurations though, both weapons and households. The castellan just stands out as the smashcaptain of the codex with the many ways you can make a more reasonable unit entirely unbalanced.

Agree with all this, and with Karol's comment here.

The issue is not really that Renegades are weak. It's that the Imperial Codex has access to a handful of the best traits, relics, and CTs of any Codex AND they can all be stacked on the same model.

That's what needs fixing.

 Brother Castor wrote:
When we say "Renegade Knights are basically broken", I'm assuming this the usual dakka hyperbole? I get that they're not as good as Imperial Knights due to the lack of traits, relics and stratagems, but my army would suck against an Imperial Knights list too. Are they competitive against other factions in casual matched play (i.e where your opponent's list hasn't been tailored to only take the most powerful combination of units in the game)?

If you go by the 'tier list' that was published based on tournament results over the last year or so, then they do appear to be problematic, being one of the very lowest performers out there.
Make of that what you will, but I'm not aware of better evidence that isn't purely anecdotal.

StrayIight wrote:

 Brother Castor wrote:
When we say "Renegade Knights are basically broken", I'm assuming this the usual dakka hyperbole? I get that they're not as good as Imperial Knights due to the lack of traits, relics and stratagems, but my army would suck against an Imperial Knights list too. Are they competitive against other factions in casual matched play (i.e where your opponent's list hasn't been tailored to only take the most powerful combination of units in the game)?

If you go by the 'tier list' that was published based on tournament results over the last year or so, then they do appear to be problematic, being one of the very lowest performers out there.
Make of that what you will, but I'm not aware of better evidence that isn't purely anecdotal.

I still think this is apples and oranges. Renegade Knights are an Index force, it wasn't intended as a fully fledged faction at this stage.

A.T. wrote:

Karol wrote:
I just don't know if a single knight taken without the cawl gun+raven is actually a valid choice. Maybe castellans aren't "broken" at all, maybe it is just the extra rules they get makes them so good.

For castellans it's fairly single choice - Cawls wrath is basically a second plasma weapons worth of firepower for free and Raven doubles you up again. Both have clear paths to being fixed - by making Cawls wrath the generic profile (and increasing the cost accordingly) and by fixing the whole CP battery issue and re-costing the Raven stratagem against a more predictable pool of command points.

The smaller knights do show up in tournaments in a few different configurations though, both weapons and households. The castellan just stands out as the smashcaptain of the codex with the many ways you can make a more reasonable unit entirely unbalanced.

I think this is very true. The Castellan itself appears to be a reasonable unit. (Hell, field it in a Renegade list without the Imperial bells and whistles, and I think an argument can be made for it actually being a relatively poor choice). It's the combination of CP via soup, strats, relics & traits which are creating the unit we see being so prevalent on the tournament scene.

My belief is that the internal balance of the Knight Codex is actually not that bad. They are powerful units, but ones that come with significant drawbacks (no obsec, hugely vulnerable in melee, no psychic protection, cost, etc etc). They have powerful strats, but these are often expensive, and there is no easy way to generate large amounts of CP via the Knight Codex alone.

...As soon as you soup though? That internal balance may as well not exist.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Stux wrote:

StrayIight wrote:

 Brother Castor wrote:
When we say "Renegade Knights are basically broken", I'm assuming this the usual dakka hyperbole? I get that they're not as good as Imperial Knights due to the lack of traits, relics and stratagems, but my army would suck against an Imperial Knights list too. Are they competitive against other factions in casual matched play (i.e where your opponent's list hasn't been tailored to only take the most powerful combination of units in the game)?

If you go by the 'tier list' that was published based on tournament results over the last year or so, then they do appear to be problematic, being one of the very lowest performers out there.
Make of that what you will, but I'm not aware of better evidence that isn't purely anecdotal.

I still think this is apples and oranges. Renegade Knights are an Index force, it wasn't intended as a fully fledged faction at this stage.

Possibly. It's difficult to interpret 'intent', but I certainly can't (and wouldn't) argue against your stance. I'll only point out that, regardless of intent, they have been placed in a position where they can be run as a standalone faction, people are doing so, and that the data mentioned appears to be the best evidence we have, flawed as it may or may not be.

Giving chaos some sort of buff shouldn't be that hard. 2 stratagems per each god, one relic. Maybe an extra warlord table. Could fit on 2 pages of a WD article, if the pictures were not too big. 4 pages and the pictures can be huge.

This are my idea. Warrning I know little to nothing about chaos, so they maybe stupid.

1 Khorn one, something that makes it really dangerous in melee and some anti psyker stuff.

2 Tzeench gets to become a psyker and better inv

3 Nurgle regenarates and practicly does not degrade,

4 slanesh faster and -1 to hit, maybe some mechanic that lets it fight/shot/move more for doing wounds to itself or when it takes wounds. Maybe even a reverse degradation table, it gets more powerful the more it gets hurt.

Or we could leave the damn things alone and NOT create another monstrosity as they're already perfectly fine for their cost and take the Imperial equivalent, put it into a sack with some weights and drop it into the ocean when no one's looking?

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Or we could leave the damn things alone and NOT create another monstrosity as they're already perfectly fine for their cost and take the Imperial equivalent, put it into a sack with some weights and drop it into the ocean when no one's looking?

Yeah no, Fix the rules instead.

Stux, I feel like you're being the crab pulling its kin into the barrel. There isn't any non-negative goal that I can see where some players are made to play at a handicap by GW.

You say we should be grateful for getting an inferior ruleset instead of none at all. They DID give us nothing for weeks, it was public distress that got an index at all. And I did thank them for that much, I sent the FAQ team an email praising the one new stratagem because it is exactly what I needed it to be. But I also told them that holding out on sub-faction traits entirely was going to keep chaos players feeling like 2nd class citizens to the company. Which is why this thread exists. People are displeased with the product, and telling us to be happy with less when our peers get more is not doing anyone a favor.

There is no benefit to the community to tell players that they should have inferior game pieces. Saying an index is intentionally bad isn't helpful. Saying that some model out there is worse therefor we've got it good isn't helpful either. That worse off model should be fixed up too, not used as an excuse to lower the standard.

I'm not saying that renegade armigers need to reach the same level of OPness as a souped up castellan. I want to have a fairly level playing field, where two people can bring the same model and one doesn't have free abilities that make it strictly better than the other. Different abilities that maybe have different roles is fine, but giving loyalist many options and chaos literally none is rude (talking traits still, the WL and relic may be meh but at least there is one at all).

That means I'm ok with loyalists getting access to double avenger too, it's silly how it is now. (might need FW to make a sold separate agc to pull off)

So lets stop pulling eachother down, praising GW for causing unrest. Instead we can be happy for what is good and request that what isn't be brought up to a decent standard.

Obviously it would be great if everything was brought up to Codex standard. That's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is that it was a pretty cool move on GWs part to release FREE Chaos rules for the new units that Imperial Knights got.

 Stux wrote:
Obviously it would be great if everything was brought up to Codex standard. That's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is that it was a pretty cool move on GWs part to release FREE Chaos rules for the new units that Imperial Knights got.

It was, but it was also a reactive move based on a huge amount of public pressure (the official facebook page comments area was saturated with 'where is the support for Chaos' - just as a single example). I don't believe there was a plan in place initially, and lets face it, as great as it was to get *something*, that mini index represents perhaps an afternoons work at best.

Note that it has never been updated with support for the Preceptor which was later made available also. Not a huge deal, but indicative of the level of attention that things have been given beyond calming the masses.

I'd echo what was said above. No one is asking for the moon on a stick, but something approaching parity would be nice. In many ways it would be preferable to not permit something at all, rather than to provide no more than token support (though it doesn't generate nearly as much money - which is something Knights do exceptionally well for a GW product apparently).

Shas'O'Ceris wrote:
I'm not saying that renegade armigers need to reach the same level of OPness as a souped up castellan. I want to have a fairly level playing field, where two people can bring the same model and one doesn't have free abilities that make it strictly better than the other.

So either make the chaos knights as overpowered as the castellan, or nerf the castellan down to size. And option 1 is clearly a bad option.

A.T. wrote:

Shas'O'Ceris wrote:
I'm not saying that renegade armigers need to reach the same level of OPness as a souped up castellan. I want to have a fairly level playing field, where two people can bring the same model and one doesn't have free abilities that make it strictly better than the other.

So either make the chaos knights as overpowered as the castellan, or nerf the castellan down to size. And option 1 is clearly a bad option.

'Souped up Castellan'. I think you may have missed the key point. The Castellan isn't a problematic unit in and of itself - it becomes one when used as a sole focus for strats, relics and traits, while being fed CP via souped options (well outside of the internal balance of the Knight codex to boot). You won't see anyone complaining about the Renegade version - hell, you won't see anyone field it! Neither does any reasonable person want a Chaos unit that is as close to a competitive 'list crutch' as the combo'd version of the Imperial Castellan made possible via souped options. We aren't advocating that.

Shas wasn't implying anything like what you are stating. Rather the opposite in fact.

StrayIight wrote:

A.T. wrote:

Shas'O'Ceris wrote:
I'm not saying that renegade armigers need to reach the same level of OPness as a souped up castellan. I want to have a fairly level playing field, where two people can bring the same model and one doesn't have free abilities that make it strictly better than the other.

So either make the chaos knights as overpowered as the castellan, or nerf the castellan down to size. And option 1 is clearly a bad option.

'Souped up Castellan'. I think you may have missed the key point. The Castellan isn't a problematic unit in and of itself - it becomes one when used as a sole focus for strats, relics and traits, while being fed CP via souped options (well outside of the internal balance of the Knight codex to boot). You won't see anyone complaining about the Renegade version - hell, you won't see anyone field it! Neither does any reasonable person want a Chaos unit that is as close to a competitive 'list crutch' as the combo'd version of the Imperial Castellan made possible via souped options. We aren't advocating that.

Shas wasn't implying anything like what you are stating. Rather the opposite in fact.

Thank you straylight. I was saying that chaos doesn't need a WL trait that is an outlier in efficiency like ion bulwark and a relic as fantastic as Cawl's wrath together. What we need is to fill the empty slot of sub-faction trait. Additional strats WL and relics would be cool too, and I'd hope that one of them is defense based and less of a positive outlier than the above.

Myself, I'd take a relic if it gave a 6+++. We don't get a spare relic strat (that's fine by me I think giving auxiliaries WL traits and relics is a bad design choice) so I'd also enjoy a WL trait that does something mildly useful like reroll misses in overwatch. House trait I would love advance and charge, or 1 offense reroll each phase, or this model may treat 1 ranged weapon as if it were pistol 1 in the shooting phase if within 1" of an enemy unit.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
How valuable are the 15 warlord traits and 23 relics, really? I don't know Knights specifically since it's not an army I play much, but across the books I do play I find that between 70 and 90% of Warlord traits and Relics are pointless flavour choices that make no difference to anyone.

Hugely important, far more than in any other army, for several reasons.

First they effect a model which is almost 1/3rd your entire army, unlike other armies.
Second, the relics are straight upgrades to all the best parts of the knights. Ion shield, Avenger cannon, and fist. All amazing, and like point 1, they effect a huge portion of your army.
Third, the warlord traits are some of the best out of any book.

And one more point, the faction rules are arguably even more powerful than the relics/warlord traits. It's all around top tier stuff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Stux wrote:
Obviously it would be great if everything was brought up to Codex standard. That's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is that it was a pretty cool move on GWs part to release FREE Chaos rules for the new units that Imperial Knights got.

is it though? I'd rather pay $30 for real rules than nothing for useless rules that are a slap in the face with how bad they are.

Welp... we have the dual gatling knight which is incredible. The faction may be flavorless, but i enjoy them

Perhaps GW didnt want chaos to have access to a proper knight faction. That is literally the only reason not to provide more than what they did.

 Smirrors wrote:
Perhaps GW didnt want chaos to have access to a proper knight faction. That is literally the only reason not to provide more than what they did.

With respect, 'GW don't want you to have a proper Chaos Knight Faction' is literally the only reason? Not say, time, resources, fixed released schedules, pre-assigned focus...

If they didn't want Chaos Knights to be a thing, they wouldn't be available. If they didn't want them to be usable as a faction, there wouldn't be rules to do so - especially not rules that they then supplemented by public request.

Honestly, I suspect it's far more likely to have just been a case of them doing Knights, not really even thinking about the Renegade side of things at the time (or at least, not wanting to increase the size of their task), or putting it to one side for later. Later just often doesn't come when you have many other games and armies to cater for while working toward release windows that have been planned well ahead.

Renegade knights exist because GW wanted to package 2 in a box together to move a ton of plastic at a perceived discount. The renegade box set needed a reason to exist so they made one chaos and figured we better give it 40k rules to make sure players on both sides of imperium and chaos buy the boxes (also so there is a reason for them to be fighting). It would have been nice for GW to have included renegade knights as its own codex (and could still happen one day) but until that day its sadly less usable.

Honestly I have ideas of what a renegade and chaos knight book could/should look like. It would be neat to have chaos upgrade kits for imperial knights, Nurgle, khorne, tzeench and slanesh themed plus a few renegade only weapons options using xenos tech as upgrades or *gasp* actual tech innovation not found on an STC. (heresey i know). there is a lot of room for creativity ln GWs part there if they felt liek tackling it and I hope they do one day but I do not think it is high on the priority list.

Imperium Knights have 4 things that make them more powerful than Chaos knights.

1 Extra Warlord Trait for 1 CP.
2 Heirlooms worth taking.
3 Warlord Trait Ion Bulwork.
4 House Traits.

Fixing any 2 of these would change Chaos knights.

Also with Demonic Engines getting some love in the new vigilus book, they will be much better.

Karol wrote:
Giving chaos some sort of buff shouldn't be that hard. 2 stratagems per each god, one relic. Maybe an extra warlord table. Could fit on 2 pages of a WD article, if the pictures were not too big. 4 pages and the pictures can be huge.

This are my idea. Warrning I know little to nothing about chaos, so they maybe stupid.

1 Khorn one, something that makes it really dangerous in melee and some anti psyker stuff.

2 Tzeench gets to become a psyker and better inv

3 Nurgle regenarates and practicly does not degrade,

4 slanesh faster and -1 to hit, maybe some mechanic that lets it fight/shot/move more for doing wounds to itself or when it takes wounds. Maybe even a reverse degradation table, it gets more powerful the more it gets hurt.

This is similar to what Forgeworld rules did for the chaos Knights in 7th.

https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/resources/fw_site/fw_pdfs/Warhammer_40000/Chaos_Knight.pdf

Just enough difference for each of the various gods yet similar to the standard loyalist knights.

Danny slag wrote:

 Stux wrote:
Obviously it would be great if everything was brought up to Codex standard. That's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is that it was a pretty cool move on GWs part to release FREE Chaos rules for the new units that Imperial Knights got.

is it though? I'd rather pay $30 for real rules than nothing for useless rules that are a slap in the face with how bad they are.

I see you are still maintaining your usual ridiculous hyperbole, how fun.

You're neglecting the third option, no rules at all. That's what you'd have gotten without the Index. Maybe you don't agree, but at the time I remember a lot of people being very excited about the index.

 Stux wrote:

Danny slag wrote:

 Stux wrote:
Obviously it would be great if everything was brought up to Codex standard. That's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is that it was a pretty cool move on GWs part to release FREE Chaos rules for the new units that Imperial Knights got.

is it though? I'd rather pay $30 for real rules than nothing for useless rules that are a slap in the face with how bad they are.

I see you are still maintaining your usual ridiculous hyperbole, how fun.

C'mon man. Making passive aggressive statements because someone expressed a position counter to yours (albeit passionately, and with some embellishment), in place of reasoned discourse, doesn't add anything to the debate.

You both made a point, and both have some merit.

I think you're right, it WAS nice that a free Mini Index was released, and we're better off with it, than without it. But frankly, more could be done (for balance sake, SHOULD be done), and I'm unconvinced that it wasn't mostly a PR move due to a flood of comments asking about Chaos/Traitor Knights upon the release of the Imperial Codex.

We have the provided Index. But what now? Where are we left, and should we be happy with the current state of Renegade Knights? Additionally, how does it's existence, or the reason for it existing, go toward addressing the OP's challenge?

Apologies. My opinion of this user is tarnished due to a previous thread, but you're right. I shouldn't bring that here.

 Stux wrote:
Apologies. My opinion of this user is tarnished due to a previous thread, but you're right. I shouldn't bring that here.

No worries, no judgements. It happens

You really were making an important point, and it would be a shame to see it obscured by a side argument between you.