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Hi everyone.

I'll get right to it: is an army made up of only Imperial Knights a fun thing to play against? I find myself drawn towards the concept very strongly but I don't want to provide a negative experience for my gaming group. I've read that even though Knights are less problematic than in earlier editions it'll still be inherently unbalanced. We usually go with the same list for an entire gaming session against all comers but I'll gladly propose that we think up a way to let everyone get a chance to tailor against me if that's what'll be required for us to have good games.

So, what are your experiences with this? Can a Knight army add some spice to a group's makeup, or will it just end up frustrating everyone? Also, at what points do you think a Knight army becomes a good match for opponents? We're currently playing at 500 points and growing from there, and right now doesn't seem to be quite the time...

Thanks in advance!

It used to be because they were immune to 90% of the opponents army. Now everything wounds on a 6 they are not so hot, especially since you can end up with a situation where you're mathematically incapable of killing enough dudes to win.

500 points is basically one knight, so yeah, not a good points level. If you go 2000 points and fit 4 cheap knights or 3 DakkaKnights+Bubblewrap, then it's somewhat balanced.

I would say that all knights is not a fun things to play against, much like any skew list. IT is going to lead to a lot of one sided games. While better than in the past I think all knights is still not going to be fun for many people.

The problem with allowing tailoring is that it will make for bad games just in reverse.

I would advise knight + something else, especially if you are growing your army over time.

At 500 points a knight is likely devastating to your opponent and going to be quite boring. Personally I would say that knights should never make up more than half your army for the sake of fun. Even at 1k points I don't think even a single knight is terribly fun, but at least then it is part of a larger force.

I am at the point now where I won't even field against a Knight Army, in 3 games against them I have been tabled each time by turn 2 or 3. With my Eldar, turn one he shoots at my Dark reapers (the only squad that can do serious damage at range.......and with 12 inch movement he is in assaults on turn 2 and able to pull out and shoot if the combat doesn't favor him.......

Against my grey knights, he just runs away and obliterated anything that gets close..... neither of my armies can do 24 wounds to a Knight before the other 2 wipe out my heavy hitters




Yeah....not fun

It's fun to play against. They've also been buffed, so they're also apparently pretty fun to play.


Don't play under 2000 points, though.


My friend ran 2 with gatling guns, 2 with melta cannons, and ironstorm pods across the board yesterday, and it was quite close. I ran a bunch of combi-plasma wolf-guard and a Land Raider, and in the end destroyed one and left 2 at 2 wounds. I should have brought combi-meltas.



Knights are an odd army. Last edition, I never had a problem with them, because I play Imperial Guard and Sisters of Battle, and both are very good at blowing them up. There was one memorable battle where my Shadowsword destroyed one a turn by rolling almost straight 6's on the destroyer table, and another where I outflanked a couple of meltagun dominions to circumvent their ion-shielding. They've been buffed seriously this edition, which they probably needed, but they've also been made vulnerable to armies that didn't really have a chance against them before, like Orks.


I personally enjoy playing against the Imperial Knights. It's an army that puts up a stiff fight, and it's always exciting. I can, however, see it being pretty un-fun if your only AV options involve going into melee.

I usually take Knights that are just cool looking.

Absolutely it's fair game to bring 4 Knights. Bringing 3 with some bubble wrap is probably wiser.

If your opponent knows in advance that you're bringing 4 knights and they don't table you, they're bad and should feel bad.

Any take all comers list should have anti-vehicle. Yeah 4 units is tough but that's all they have. Kill one and you've shut down really 1/3 of their shooting, since the 4th knight is probably going to be a Gallant due to cost.

They will get the +1 to go first every time. Plan to go second, even though you will have like a 40% chance overall to go first. Knights still need line of sight for all of their non-carapace weapons.

A 5++ is totally unreliable, too.

And if anyone says you shouldn't bring a bunch of knights, would you make the same about Wraithknights? They're similarly costed, but the WK is more durable, and can receive the benefits of psychic powers, like Guide, and Fortune, from fast psykers on jetbikes.

Bring it, people can deal.

I run a 3 Baneblade company as a primary army, and they're comparable to knights in effectiveness (if not moreso).

Knights are awesome, fluffy, and fun, and are the perfect army to buy a "whatever you want" style army since their methods of fealty to the Imperium (or even Mechanicus) are as varied as the colours.

I won´t be afraid to play a game with one side consisting only of knights and would guess those results would be clear. Though i don´t know i which favor, it really depends on your opponents list.
You win big or you loose big, i guess.

Looking at their points i´m a little afraid to take one.

Regardless of the competitive power or factiony fluff involved, I can't think of ANY game where it is fun to play against someone using a completely linear strategy. It can be fun once, for the sake of novelty. It doesn't provide enough variety to create many unique game situations, and becomes boring incredibly fast. Also, not only is it not fun to play against, it is rarely fun to play AS for more than a few games either. Feel free to play what you like, but I don't think it is a good idea to have such similarity. There is little replay value when everything is exactly the same.

It might be fun if you had enough of the 30k Questoris list ported forward into 8th to have some variety in units/roles. It isn't that interesting when you're using just the plastic chassis with no variation except for weapons.

Regardless, I wouldn't recommend it at any points level below 2k/100PL and I would recommend checking with your group before buying any models to make sure they're prepared for the skew, rather than making them feel like they have to buy a whole bunch of new stuff to tailor to fight the Knights.

(One Knight is generally almost a non-issue; most people have enough anti-tank in a 2,000pt list to handle it. It's when you try and dump four or five onto the table that it becomes difficult to manage.)

Mugaaz wrote:
Regardless of the competitive power or factiony fluff involved, I can't think of ANY game where it is fun to play against someone using a completely linear strategy. It can be fun once, for the sake of novelty. It doesn't provide enough variety to create many unique game situations, and becomes boring incredibly fast. Also, not only is it not fun to play against, it is rarely fun to play AS for more than a few games either. Feel free to play what you like, but I don't think it is a good idea to have such similarity. There is little replay value when everything is exactly the same.

As someone who plays a superheavy tank regiment, this is absolutely not true. First of all, there are enough variations on Imperial superheavies (even just limited to tanks) that you can bring a different company to each game to see how they perform. Secondly, the size, terrain layout, and mission all have a different way to mix it up - moving from Cities of Death to a regular eternal war mission to a Stronghold Assault mission to a Maelstrom mission makes each players moves and even plans come out differently, even when playing the same armies against eachother time and again.

Mugaaz wrote:
Regardless of the competitive power or factiony fluff involved, I can't think of ANY game where it is fun to play against someone using a completely linear strategy. It can be fun once, for the sake of novelty. It doesn't provide enough variety to create many unique game situations, and becomes boring incredibly fast. Also, not only is it not fun to play against, it is rarely fun to play AS for more than a few games either. Feel free to play what you like, but I don't think it is a good idea to have such similarity. There is little replay value when everything is exactly the same.

I don't know about that. In 5th edition, I had a spawn rush army that did very well even though all movement was compulsory. It was enjoyable seeing where the spawn would go and how much firepower it took to take them down. It took about 10 games before I really got bored with it, opponents were starting to figure out all they needed was to bring lots of tanks.

Against an all-Knights list, I would be tempted to get creative myself. Load up on things like Fire Raptors, Berzerkers, Laspreds, Bloodthirsters and the like. I am sure there are a hundred variations for how to take them on.

While its entirly fluffy and looks pretty cool

playing with and against it its pretty fething boring.

Thanks a lot for your input, everyone. I've decided to go with an AdMech army and follow along in the gradual build up to the point where it becomes fitting to include the knights.

I've played against 4 knights and 3 knights + Magnus. Those lists can be scary, but I never felt I didn't have a chance. Won against the first list, lost narrowly to other due to some bad rolls on alpha strike and mistakes in positioning.

Armies with less than 20 models are not even armies IMHO, I don't play against those things. But I hate lords of war, superheavies, gargantuan beasts, etc... in my group we try to avoid those cheesy units.

They're not overpowered but tipycally you need to tailor them since many armies can't kill more than 1 knight in the entire game with a TAC list while being very vulnerable to knights' firepower. They'll start first and cripple your anti tank turn 1 unless you hide those units out of line of sight or you keep them in reserve, if you can. If the knights kill your anti tank the game is ended.

 DJ Illuminati wrote:
I am at the point now where I won't even field against a Knight Army, in 3 games against them I have been tabled each time by turn 2 or 3. With my Eldar, turn one he shoots at my Dark reapers (the only squad that can do serious damage at range.......and with 12 inch movement he is in assaults on turn 2 and able to pull out and shoot if the combat doesn't favor him.......

Against my grey knights, he just runs away and obliterated anything that gets close..... neither of my armies can do 24 wounds to a Knight before the other 2 wipe out my heavy hitters

Yeah....not fun

This is actually good news for an IK army.
But I would add some cheap AM units for fulfilling mission objectives.

 Blackie wrote:
Armies with less than 20 models are not even armies IMHO, I don't play against those things. But I hate lords of war, superheavies, gargantuan beasts, etc... in my group we try to avoid those cheesy units.

They're not overpowered but tipycally you need to tailor them since many armies can't kill more than 1 knight in the entire game with a TAC list while being very vulnerable to knights' firepower. They'll start first and cripple your anti tank turn 1 unless you hide those units out of line of sight or you keep them in reserve, if you can. If the knights kill your anti tank the game is ended.

If it takes you the whole game to kill one knight in this edition then there are LOTS of armies that you are going to struggle badly against.