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So I keep hearing that they are not selling the new dominus knights as a combo kit but instead as separate kits, which boggles my mind for something as simple as a weapon swap.

Now I have to make decision. Which Knight do I buy? I currently have 3 knights, one is set as a Paladin/Errant (the original knight kit) and the other 2 can switch around between the different types (yay magnets!) and 2 Armiger Warglaives.

Knight Valiant- He seems to be my go to for the moment, he has a nice hefty flamer that does a great deal of damage and looks like it can easily wreck light vehicles as well as horde infantry, which every knight army has issues with clearing out, plus those nasty -3 to hit eldar shenanigans. Plus the Thundercoil Harpoon will pretty much kill anything you shoot at with a min 11 damage, plus you're also in range of those 4 melta guns you are being forced to buy.

Knight Castellan- The long ranged option, The volcano lance is nice and basically makes him a more durable shadowsword, the plasma decimator is much more "meh" to me. Its a lot of guns but you are missing out on your quad melta and the shots are fairly limited.

As for the 3 hard points I think 2 siegebreaker cannons and a missile are the way to go, since those cannons seem to be a good all rounder. Character sniping sounds fun but you only have so many command points to play with.

I think the dominus class is going to be a massive bullet sponge no matter what, and as a Terryn player im going to want to be charging all day. Valiant really seems like the best option so far.

What do you guys think?

Castellan hands down. Cerastus knights are far better for moving up the board, the Castellan's fire power is far better and you get access to mini shadow sword cannon, D6 means you are better sitting it at the edge of your board and it will do more damage than the Harpoon without moving down the board getting in range of meltas and charges ect. The harpoon is amazing but, 4 attacks on a 4+ isn't that good.

 Delvarus Centurion wrote:
Castellan hands down. Cerastus knights are far better for moving up the board, the Castellan's fire power is far better and you get access to mini shadow sword cannon, D6 means you are better sitting it at the edge of your board and it will do more damage than the Harpoon without moving down the board getting in range of meltas and charges ect. The harpoon is amazing but, 4 attacks on a 4+ isn't that good.

Correct, they aren't doing much in CC, but dont forget there is not much preventing the knight from walking out of CC and shooting again. My thought continues to be that the Dominus will always be a massive target so you might as well get as much bang for your buck out of it, especially since you are paying a 50pt premium on melta guns that will never be used on the Castellan. That Volcano lance is very very nice however, I will not fault you on that.

Neither, they are going to be over costed. Shadow sword, 200 points less, just as survivable, and can one shot a knight with ease.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Neither, they are going to be over costed. Shadow sword, 200 points less, just as survivable, and can one shot a knight with ease.

Reviews say the knights are all sub 600 points so their not 200 points more than a shadowsword, more like 100 not to mention that you have a 4+ invulnerable which can be made 3+.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Neither, they are going to be over costed. Shadow sword, 200 points less, just as survivable, and can one shot a knight with ease.

As usual your grasp of how effective units are is lacking.

A shadow sword has a 10% chance of doing 24 wounds (regular knight) and 5.2% chance of doing 28 (dominus).

Hardly "with ease".

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Neither, they are going to be over costed. Shadow sword, 200 points less, just as survivable, and can one shot a knight with ease.

As usual your grasp of how effective units are is lacking.

A shadow sword has a 10% chance of doing 24 wounds (regular knight) and 5.2% chance of doing 28 (dominus).

Hardly "with ease".

a knight that looses half its wounds is effectively dead at that point, gimped movement, gimped attacks, and gimped BS. You just payed 400+ points of guard shooting with marine weapons. RIP.

Not to mention, guess who is gonna power slide onto the board turn one to avoid getting alpha struck. Starts with shadow, ends with sword.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

a knight that looses half its wounds is effectively dead at that point, gimped movement, gimped attacks, and gimped BS. You just payed 400+ points of guard shooting with marine weapons. RIP.

With an average of 11.65 and a standard deviation of 8.74 it's more likely that you won't degrade a dominus with one shot than that you will. (see below for correct numbers with reroll to wound included)

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

a knight that looses half its wounds is effectively dead at that point, gimped movement, gimped attacks, and gimped BS. You just payed 400+ points of guard shooting with marine weapons. RIP.

With an average of 11.65 and a standard deviation of 8.74 it's more likely that you won't degrade a dominus with one shot than that you will. (55% chance of doing less than 12 wounds)

Well lets just assume statistical average for everything

Average shots for a Shadow sword: 6
Average hits: 3
Average wounds: 83% chance + rerolls since its going to be 2s on 2s. So really you can assume average is going to be all hits
3 saves on a 5++ average is 1 wound is going to be saved
And assuming average wounds, its going to be 14 wounds.

Thats if we assume EVERYTHING is average. That also not taking into account regimental doctrines which can get really memey if you take tempests scions.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Neither, they are going to be over costed. Shadow sword, 200 points less, just as survivable, and can one shot a knight with ease.

As usual your grasp of how effective units are is lacking.

A shadow sword has a 10% chance of doing 24 wounds (regular knight) and 5.2% chance of doing 28 (dominus).

Hardly "with ease".

a knight that looses half its wounds is effectively dead at that point, gimped movement, gimped attacks, and gimped BS. You just payed 400+ points of guard shooting with marine weapons. RIP.

Not to mention, guess who is gonna power slide onto the board turn one to avoid getting alpha struck. Starts with shadow, ends with sword.

You could say that about any vehicle, they all get gimped the more wounds they take.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

a knight that looses half its wounds is effectively dead at that point, gimped movement, gimped attacks, and gimped BS. You just payed 400+ points of guard shooting with marine weapons. RIP.

With an average of 11.65 and a standard deviation of 8.74 it's more likely that you won't degrade a dominus with one shot than that you will. (55% chance of doing less than 12 wounds)

Well lets just assume statistical average for everything

Average shots for a Shadow sword: 6
Average hits: 3
Average wounds: 83% chance + rerolls since its going to be 2s on 2s. So really you can assume average is going to be all hits
3 saves on a 5++ average is 1 wound is going to be saved
And assuming average wounds, its going to be 14 wounds.

Thats if we assume EVERYTHING is average. That also not taking into account regimental doctrines

If you're power-sliding on then you're tallarn.

But I did forgot the reroll against titanic.

You've still got a 42% chance of not degrading a regular knight and 52.9% chance of not degrading a dominus.

Average is 13.64 and the standard deviation is 9.27 making that average pretty unreliable which you can see with the big flat spot in the middle of the distribution.

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

a knight that looses half its wounds is effectively dead at that point, gimped movement, gimped attacks, and gimped BS. You just payed 400+ points of guard shooting with marine weapons. RIP.

With an average of 11.65 and a standard deviation of 8.74 it's more likely that you won't degrade a dominus with one shot than that you will. (55% chance of doing less than 12 wounds)

Well lets just assume statistical average for everything

Average shots for a Shadow sword: 6
Average hits: 3
Average wounds: 83% chance + rerolls since its going to be 2s on 2s. So really you can assume average is going to be all hits
3 saves on a 5++ average is 1 wound is going to be saved
And assuming average wounds, its going to be 14 wounds.

Thats if we assume EVERYTHING is average. That also not taking into account regimental doctrines

If you're power-sliding on then you're tallarn.

But I did forgot the reroll against titanic.

You've still got a 42% chance of not degrading a regular knight and 52.9% chance of not degrading a dominus.

Thats still a 58% chance to gimp a knight, and a 47.1% chance to gimp the big boy. For the price of a big boy and a regular knight, i can get a second shadow sword, im not even taking into account heavy bolters, and or laz cannons on top of them.

As i said in the other thread, i want knights to be good, but they are just way to pricey for what they bring to the table. If they were all 100 points cheaper, then yeah i could see them being pretty damn good.

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

a knight that looses half its wounds is effectively dead at that point, gimped movement, gimped attacks, and gimped BS. You just payed 400+ points of guard shooting with marine weapons. RIP.

With an average of 11.65 and a standard deviation of 8.74 it's more likely that you won't degrade a dominus with one shot than that you will. (55% chance of doing less than 12 wounds)

Well lets just assume statistical average for everything

Average shots for a Shadow sword: 6
Average hits: 3
Average wounds: 83% chance + rerolls since its going to be 2s on 2s. So really you can assume average is going to be all hits
3 saves on a 5++ average is 1 wound is going to be saved
And assuming average wounds, its going to be 14 wounds.

Thats if we assume EVERYTHING is average. That also not taking into account regimental doctrines

If you're power-sliding on then you're tallarn.

But I did forgot the reroll against titanic.

You've still got a 42% chance of not degrading a regular knight and 52.9% chance of not degrading a dominus.

Average is 13.64 and the standard deviation is 9.27 making that average pretty unreliable.

Now I gotta know, Valiant or Castellan?

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

a knight that looses half its wounds is effectively dead at that point, gimped movement, gimped attacks, and gimped BS. You just payed 400+ points of guard shooting with marine weapons. RIP.

With an average of 11.65 and a standard deviation of 8.74 it's more likely that you won't degrade a dominus with one shot than that you will. (55% chance of doing less than 12 wounds)

Well lets just assume statistical average for everything

Average shots for a Shadow sword: 6
Average hits: 3
Average wounds: 83% chance + rerolls since its going to be 2s on 2s. So really you can assume average is going to be all hits
3 saves on a 5++ average is 1 wound is going to be saved
And assuming average wounds, its going to be 14 wounds.

Thats if we assume EVERYTHING is average. That also not taking into account regimental doctrines which can get really memey if you take tempests scions.

Except it won't be a 5++ it will be a 4++ or 3++ at which halfs that avarage damage down to 7 so no degradation.

Ice_can wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

a knight that looses half its wounds is effectively dead at that point, gimped movement, gimped attacks, and gimped BS. You just payed 400+ points of guard shooting with marine weapons. RIP.

With an average of 11.65 and a standard deviation of 8.74 it's more likely that you won't degrade a dominus with one shot than that you will. (55% chance of doing less than 12 wounds)

Well lets just assume statistical average for everything

Average shots for a Shadow sword: 6
Average hits: 3
Average wounds: 83% chance + rerolls since its going to be 2s on 2s. So really you can assume average is going to be all hits
3 saves on a 5++ average is 1 wound is going to be saved
And assuming average wounds, its going to be 14 wounds.

Thats if we assume EVERYTHING is average. That also not taking into account regimental doctrines which can get really memey if you take tempests scions.

Except it won't be a 5++ it will be a 4++ or 3++ at which halfs that avarage damage down to 7 so no degradation.

And how many of your very limited Command points did that take?

Which ever one looks best? Most fun? Fits your fluff?

 Backspacehacker wrote:

Thats still a 58% chance to gimp a knight, and a 47.1% chance to gimp the big boy. For the price of a big boy and a regular knight, i can get a second shadow sword, im not even taking into account heavy bolters, and or laz cannons on top of them.

As i said in the other thread, i want knights to be good, but they are just way to pricey for what they bring to the table. If they were all 100 points cheaper, then yeah i could see them being pretty damn good.

Two shadowswords just to reliably degrade a dominus is a long way from "one shot with ease".

Meanwhile the Castellan is doing rather more damage to the Shadowsword which is going to be in it's bottom tier with one average shot without using the missiles or meltas.

 generalchaos34 wrote:

Now I gotta know, Valiant or Castellan?

What do you want to use it for?

Ice_can wrote:

Except it won't be a 5++ it will be a 4++ or 3++ at which halfs that avarage damage down to 7 so no degradation.

Just a 4++ drops the chance of degrading from a shadowsword shot to 31.5%

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

Thats still a 58% chance to gimp a knight, and a 47.1% chance to gimp the big boy. For the price of a big boy and a regular knight, i can get a second shadow sword, im not even taking into account heavy bolters, and or laz cannons on top of them.

As i said in the other thread, i want knights to be good, but they are just way to pricey for what they bring to the table. If they were all 100 points cheaper, then yeah i could see them being pretty damn good.

Two shadowswords just to reliably degrade a dominus is a long way from "one shot with ease".

Meanwhile the Castellan is doing rather more damage to the Shadowsword which is going to be in it's bottom tier with one average shot without using the missiles or meltas.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 generalchaos34 wrote:

Now I gotta know, Valiant or Castellan?

What do you want to use it for?

The volcano lance just has me worried because its a D6 weapon, thats a lot of points to just roll 1.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

The volcano lance just has me worried because its a D6 weapon, thats a lot of points to just roll 1.

FoB don't currently have an option for 3D3 damage (and working out the distribution by hand is really tedious) but you're looking at an average of 2.07 failed saves (88.6% of at least one, 61% of at least two, 35.7% of at least 3) each one doing 3D3 damage.

With the damage roll being more reliable that balances out. Shooting a shadowsword with it averages ~12 wounds pretty reliably.

Given that it's one of two main guns for not many more points that's pretty solid.

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

Thats still a 58% chance to gimp a knight, and a 47.1% chance to gimp the big boy. For the price of a big boy and a regular knight, i can get a second shadow sword, im not even taking into account heavy bolters, and or laz cannons on top of them.

As i said in the other thread, i want knights to be good, but they are just way to pricey for what they bring to the table. If they were all 100 points cheaper, then yeah i could see them being pretty damn good.

Two shadowswords just to reliably degrade a dominus is a long way from "one shot with ease".

Meanwhile the Castellan is doing rather more damage to the Shadowsword which is going to be in it's bottom tier with one average shot without using the missiles or meltas.

 generalchaos34 wrote:

Now I gotta know, Valiant or Castellan?

What do you want to use it for?

Ice_can wrote:

Except it won't be a 5++ it will be a 4++ or 3++ at which halfs that avarage damage down to 7 so no degradation.

Just a 4++ drops the chance of degrading from a shadowsword shot to 31.5%

Truthfully, I want a Dominus class Knight because they look amazing. I was hoping for a combo kit so I could use my magnetic skills, but that is not the case here. I am thinking that I will either play them stand alone with a knight army or with my Guard. With the guard I will always have plenty of ranged firepower, so the Valiant will be a good choice, especially with that flamer avoiding my problems with poor BS and things like Eldar. The castellan is also pretty cool, but it feels like its weapons are easily utilized by cheaper platforms, esp in a guard force,

 generalchaos34 wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

Thats still a 58% chance to gimp a knight, and a 47.1% chance to gimp the big boy. For the price of a big boy and a regular knight, i can get a second shadow sword, im not even taking into account heavy bolters, and or laz cannons on top of them.

As i said in the other thread, i want knights to be good, but they are just way to pricey for what they bring to the table. If they were all 100 points cheaper, then yeah i could see them being pretty damn good.

Two shadowswords just to reliably degrade a dominus is a long way from "one shot with ease".

Meanwhile the Castellan is doing rather more damage to the Shadowsword which is going to be in it's bottom tier with one average shot without using the missiles or meltas.

 generalchaos34 wrote:

Now I gotta know, Valiant or Castellan?

What do you want to use it for?

Ice_can wrote:

Except it won't be a 5++ it will be a 4++ or 3++ at which halfs that avarage damage down to 7 so no degradation.

Just a 4++ drops the chance of degrading from a shadowsword shot to 31.5%

Truthfully, I want a Dominus class Knight because they look amazing. I was hoping for a combo kit so I could use my magnetic skills, but that is not the case here. I am thinking that I will either play them stand alone with a knight army or with my Guard. With the guard I will always have plenty of ranged firepower, so the Valiant will be a good choice, especially with that flamer avoiding my problems with poor BS and things like Eldar. The castellan is also pretty cool, but it feels like its weapons are easily utilized by cheaper platforms, esp in a guard force,

Oh man yeah the dominus does look sexy as hell.

 generalchaos34 wrote:

Truthfully, I want a Dominus class Knight because they look amazing. I was hoping for a combo kit so I could use my magnetic skills, but that is not the case here. I am thinking that I will either play them stand alone with a knight army or with my Guard. With the guard I will always have plenty of ranged firepower, so the Valiant will be a good choice, especially with that flamer avoiding my problems with poor BS and things like Eldar. The castellan is also pretty cool, but it feels like its weapons are easily utilized by cheaper platforms, esp in a guard force,

I think that's a good summary - as an accompaniment to Guard then probably Valiant. For a knight army, I'm leaning towards Castellan.

My knight army currently has one of each of the standard knights plus scions and taurox primes as household infantry so I'm adding a Castellan, two shooty Armigers and a Preceptor (when they're available).

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 generalchaos34 wrote:

Truthfully, I want a Dominus class Knight because they look amazing. I was hoping for a combo kit so I could use my magnetic skills, but that is not the case here. I am thinking that I will either play them stand alone with a knight army or with my Guard. With the guard I will always have plenty of ranged firepower, so the Valiant will be a good choice, especially with that flamer avoiding my problems with poor BS and things like Eldar. The castellan is also pretty cool, but it feels like its weapons are easily utilized by cheaper platforms, esp in a guard force,

I think that's a good summary - as an accompaniment to Guard then probably Valiant. For a knight army, I'm leaning towards Castellan.

My knight army currently has one of each of the standard knights plus scions and taurox primes as household infantry so I'm adding a Castellan, two shooty Armigers and a Precepter (when they're available).

for some reason the scale of this picture make me think im looking at epic models.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

Ice_can wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 Scott-S6 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

a knight that looses half its wounds is effectively dead at that point, gimped movement, gimped attacks, and gimped BS. You just payed 400+ points of guard shooting with marine weapons. RIP.

With an average of 11.65 and a standard deviation of 8.74 it's more likely that you won't degrade a dominus with one shot than that you will. (55% chance of doing less than 12 wounds)

Well lets just assume statistical average for everything

Average shots for a Shadow sword: 6
Average hits: 3
Average wounds: 83% chance + rerolls since its going to be 2s on 2s. So really you can assume average is going to be all hits
3 saves on a 5++ average is 1 wound is going to be saved
And assuming average wounds, its going to be 14 wounds.

Thats if we assume EVERYTHING is average. That also not taking into account regimental doctrines which can get really memey if you take tempests scions.

Except it won't be a 5++ it will be a 4++ or 3++ at which halfs that avarage damage down to 7 so no degradation.

And how many of your very limited Command points did that take?

the 4++ costs 0 or 1 CP one way of doing it or 3 the other . The 3++ costs 3 or 4CP and who gives a monkeys about CP 180 points brings 5CP and regain and steal on a 5+

 Backspacehacker wrote:

for some reason the scale of this picture make me think im looking at epic models.

This one should give you the opposite impression (lots of texturizing so that the smooth surface doesn't break the impression of scale)

You guys have only seen 1/2 the strats yet?

A properly built castellan with the right house and strats completely blows a shadowsword away, and can even take on 2.

Proper castellan should be doing on average nearly 40 damage a turn to titantic units without the meltas.

I’m going to echo the Castellan sentiment. While the Valiant has a lot of tools to be excellent job up close, it needs to get there first. Spending around 600 points on a unit that doesn’t shoot its most powerful guns until at least turn 2 just doesn’t sound all that great. The Castellan’s threat range simply puts it above the Valiant. Plus while the base plasma gun is underwhelming, the relic version is quite strong. The overcharged version (2d6, S 9, AP -4 3 D) is actually better than 2d6 las cannons, as 3 D is comparable to D6 D (slightly less D on average in exchange for consistency ) and AP -4 vs AP -3. This plus the volcano lance gives the castellan quite a bit of hitting power , and making it your warlord with 4+ inv causes it to be quite durable as well.

The Castellan certainly looks like the easiest to use, but really it's only selling point is the volcano lance (there are easier ways of putting down lots of plasma shots), and unless you have a target rich environment it's going to be quite inefficient at shooting up msu marines with a titan killer gun.

The Valliant's primary weapons look alright, but of more interest to me is that by hiding at range the Castellan will deny itself 4 melta shots and 12 titanic feet attacks per turn (I assume Dominus pattern knights will also get these). I'm not convinced that the Castellan primary guns are superior by 16 str 8 attacks that the Valiant is more likely to make use of. Also, whatever pattern of Dominus is taken it will be a fire magnet - an auto hitting primary weapon will be somewhat of a safeguard against the guaranteed degrading stats, so for now I'm leaning towards the Valiant.

I would have said Valiant all the way, but I am liking this plasma relic thing way too much !

 godardc wrote:
I would have said Valiant all the way, but I am liking this plasma relic thing way too much !

Now I just found out there is also a conflagration flamer relic that lets you reroll wounds! Both sound pretty great now!