BIG-GUN DEATHBOTS! Knight World vs Eldar

As promised, this is a playtest battle report of the recently approved Knight World 2.2 force. The models are improvised and the list imperfect, but I think it may be the first battle report showing the Castellan's optional weapons used to full effect. The army champion, Dave, wanted to an example of their Blast attacks before 'messing with their BP option', so hopefully this will be helpful.
Please note that this was a VERY cobbled-together army made of models I had on hand, so this is more about testing the list than looking at pretty pictures of fancy Knights. In fact the models are so random it requires a helpful Key:


Left to Right

4 Castellans (Guardians)
4 Castellans (Guardians)
2 Marauder Bombers (Tau)
3 Errants (Dire Avengers, fancy hats)
3 Errants + Baron (Dire Avengers)
3 Errants (Dire Avengers)
Thunderbolts (Tie Advanced)
3 Howitzers + Transports
3 AA + Transports
6 Rough Riders



And here is the list itself. It was a first draft - the first thing I would cut are the bombers, which are totally unnecessary in the current list since there are better ways to throw Blasts around (cheap artillery and up to 8BP at longe-range from Castellans).

Incompertus, 2980 POINTS
Knight World (NetEA v2.2.1 *APPROVED*)
==================================================
KNIGHT HOUSEHOLD [500]
3 Knight Paladin, Baron

KNIGHT HOUSEHOLD [325]
3 Knight Paladin, Seneschal

KNIGHT HOUSEHOLD [325]
3 Knight Paladin, Seneschal

CUSTODIAN HOUSEHOLD [490]
4 Knight Castellan

CUSTODIAN HOUSEHOLD [490]
4 Knight Castellan

AA GUN BATTERY [125]
3 AA Guns, 3 Gun Transporters

HOWITZER BATTERY [175]
3 Howitzers, 3 Gun Transporters

ROUGH RIDER PLATOON [150]
6 Rough Riders

MARAUDER SQUADRON [250]
2 Marauder Bombers

THUNDERBOLT SQUADRON [150]
2 Thunderbolt Fighters

I don't claim this is a great list, but it certainly allows the army to do what I was aiming for: Have a good Activation count (10), decent AA (3 guns, 2 TB) and to use the Castellan's optional fire mode to do some REAL damage.
An update would drop the bombers for Seneschals (leaders) on the Castellans and probably more Knight Errants in those assault formations. As you might expect, it would be easy to make a better list for a second game.





Deployment

Seen from the Knight's side of the table, after objectives and garrisons but before any deployments. Roughriders and AA guns are down, with Eldar









Deployments. The Phantom titan in the centre is armed with double titan killing Pulsars. Nightspinners are filling in for Voidspinners.



Overhead view of the left side of the field.



The Baron deployed opposite the Eldar Blitz.



ROUND 1

Knights get initiative, and open fire with Howitzers, clipping 2 formations.





Eldar Voidspinner retaliates, putting 2 blastmarkers on Castellans (suppressing 1 of 4).







The same castellans seen from the other side.







The untouched Castellan formation activates and moves forwards slightly in order to fire 90cm into the enemy Deployment Zone.







The Eldar are pretty well dispersed, but seeing the chance to spread some blast markers around I have the Castellans fire their blast weapon instead of the 90cm Macro. With 4 in the formation and 2BP each, this means they fire a very impressive 3 blast templates. That's enough to hit the swords of vaul and clip a guardian and Phantom formation.







8 BP means 2 blast markers on each formation touched. The Guardians take 2 BM, the Phantom will have BM for at least the next 2 turns and the swords of vaul lose 2 falcons and are broken.







This large blast attack really took the wind out of my opponent's sails and he registered negative feedback to the option. I did offer to only use direct fire (yes, its a playtest but it is also his weekend lol) but he said to continue using the option of swapping to whatever is likely to be most damaging. So I did.

EDIT: As mentioned in the discussion at the end of the battle report, the hit calculation was done with the templates held above them carefully by hand, over 3 of the falcons. The photo on the other hand just has them placed on top at odd angles to look dramatic.
To meet the most recent FAQ, they should have actually covered 5 falcons (with 2 templates) before the 3rd template was allowed to stretch to another formation, or have targeted the Phantom to allow the 2nd and 3rd template to stretch to the two formations nearest to it. More about this can be read after the report.


Rough Riders charge Eldar Rangers, taking a BM from Overwatch but wiping them out.







An untouched Swords of Vaul formation sweeps forward, fires on the Castellans and then disappears.







One of the left flank castellans is destroyed.







The right flank Castellans activate. The Eldar player has placed three blast markers on them as a priority target, so they are reduced to firing 6 Barrage Points (2 blast templates), which is still enough to hit two formations.







The mighty Eldar Phantom lumbers forward and fires its terrific Titan Killing weapons at the left side castellans. This titan has double titan killing pulsars rather than the Powerfist shown on the model.







The Knight's shrug the hits off, their Knight-Shield stopping 3 TK hits with a roll of 4+ and reducing the Phantom to an expensive blast-marker placer for this turn.







With the left-flank AA now down, the Marauder Bombers scream in and hit the broken Swords of Vaul formation, wiping them out (removed before this photo). They also manage to place a BM on the Voidspinner and Shining Spear jetbikes.







Guardians place a BM on the Rough Riders.







Shining spears engage the Rough Riders. Even though only 2 get in range and none make the base contact they love so much, they manage to wipe them out due to having one less BM, the Autarch and Exarch inspiring bonuses and outnumbering.







The Roughees shall ride no more!







The left-flank paladins can't possibly make combat, but can move forward and open fire with their own shorter-ranged macro weapons.







Thunderbolts follow the bombers through the AA hole, hitting the Voidspinner and breaking it.







Rangers provide a buffer to pin the assault Errants in.







The Baron's paladin unit double forward and fire macro into shining spears, killing one. AA is placed on overwatch, and the turn ends.



End of Turn



The Knight force took very little damage in this turn, particularly due to the Knight Shields working almost as well as holofields against TK. Losses were 6 rough riders and a Castellan.

The Eldar lost a Swords of Vaul formation, Ranger formation, took damage on both Shining Spears and have a few broken units and formations carrying markers.







The Knights have moved foward into objective holding positions on both sides of the map, with the shining spears in the central canyon likely to be the spearhead of Eldar's attack.

Turn 2: Eldar take initiative!



The Phantom moves and opens fire from close range, firing his TK weapons and missile launchers.







Again the Knight Shields prove their value, with just one hit getting through and all Knights surviving.







Guardians follow the Phantom, initiating an assault that he can support.







The Knights weather this however with a couple of wounds but no units removed. Finally the Shining Spears who had cleaned their markers during the turn break launch their own assault as part of a triple retain. The Knight force was prepared for this though, and and open fire with the AA that was placed on overwatch at the end of the last turn, reducing the marker advantage.







The Errants rip some shining spears to shreds but finally some knights die, the Baron retreating. The Shining Spears are also broken in the process, reduced to just 4 in number.







The Baron evacuates the area to retain the BTS objective.







Marauder bombers scream in, hitting the broken Shining Spears in order to cause casualties, with their secondary objective being placing a marker on the Voidspinner near them.







Regaining initiative, the Eldar launch an assault on the left flank Castellans who still have BM from the last turn.




This shooting unit still has some impressive armour and decent skill in combat, but while they lose just 1 model they are broken thanks to the Eldar unit's built in combat bonuses.



As the surviving shining spears dash away, the left flank Errants assault and annihilate the Rangers who were set up as a screen; it's not an ideal target for this premier unit, but the position on the board meant removing an activation was the best contribution they could make this turn.



'Not all fights are meant to be fair, little Rangers!'



Castellans open fire, once again choosing to use Blast Weapons (6BP as one Castellan was suppressed).



An untouched Paladin formation assault the blast markered Guardians from an angle which doesn't allow Phantom support. They smash through, quickly winning, breaking and hacking down some of the formation.



End of Turn - The Eldar are clearly on the back-foot now, although the Phantom is well positioned to take/contest 2 objectives next turn.



The Knight's Baron is broken, and castellans on the blitz need to regroup. Shining spears and Guardians are in the open near the 3 paladins in the centre, praying to Khaine for initiative in the next part of the battle.



And speaking of Khaine, his avatar is summoned - ready to lead a massed assault on the Knights.

Start of Turn 3

Knights take initiative!
Seeing the opportunity to lay down blasts on 3 formations that have intermingled for an assault, the bombers are called in - only to fail, use a reroll and fail again.



Frankly this was not the best activation to start with - several on-board formations would have contributed by firing on the eldar assault units even if they'd failed to activate properly, but I suppose I'd got a little greedy for blast templates after a few good turns of them

The Eldar activate their Phantom! He moves forward into a supportive position, while also firing his massive titan killing weapons and missile launchers on the Errants.



Two knights lose a wound each, but their budget-holofields shrug off the worst of the damage again.



The Eldar try to launch a combined assault, spearheaded by the Avatar - only to have it fail to activate! the avatar instead fires on them with his Wailing doom.

Knight artillery rains down on the Guardians who are intermingled with shining spears, adding more blast markers to the mix and killing a jetbike.



Eldar break the Castellans, who are now just a token presence on tbe blitz



The right flank castellans advance and fire. The Eldar are now spread out or depleted, so since there's less to be gained by using blast templates they use their direct fire Macro weapon. The target is the Phantom (seen in photo after this one), scoring crossfire hits by drawing a line of fire through it to the Errants.



The Phantom accumulates 3 BM, but poor rolls and the double move required to set up the crossfire mean only 1 damage is taken.



Shining Spears rush forward, making it to the two broken formations near the Knight blitz



At this stage, most objectives are contested; The Knight blitz has both shining spears and an artillery formation next to it (the artillery is cunningly concealed on the edge of the terrain piece that features artillery scenery )



The right side objectives are firmly held by Knights, but this is not enough to score a point without the Blitz so the game goes on.



Shining Spears break and wound Castellans.



In return they are broken by a paladin assault.



One survives and flees.


Thunderbolts rush in and break the already marked Void Spinner guarding the Eldar Blitz.



Falcons rush forward to assist the Guardians in contesting objectives, and fire on the Errants (no wounds, 1 BM)



Marauders fail to come on again - I said they were unnecessary and would be the first thing dropped from this 3k army, but even so it would be nice if they made an appearance



The AA guns open fire on Shining Spears



Castellans break the Falcons, severely limiting the Eldar's options for controlling and contesting objectives.



Errants double move and take the Eldar Blitz.



The guardians are assaulted by the Errants who had taken 3 Blast Markers already - it will take more than good dice and the bonuses from outnumbering and less blast markers to swing it their way.



3 Knight Errants do 3 first strike attacks (killing 2 Guardians), six 4+ close combat attacks and 3 titan killing attacks (the reaosn this is possible is because these units are War Engines; they can pick and choose and basically get all the best CC and all the best FF attacks available to them as long as the formation they are fighting consists of more than one unit in range).
Almost inevitably the Guardians are wiped out, and the Errants take one of the objectives.



END OF TURN:

Knights hold the right flank objectives, the Eldar blitz.



The knights hold the centre and their own blitz, while the shining spear and falcons (far centre left) manage to regroup to prevent the 'They Shall Not Pass' point.



Game score:
3-0
Blitzkrieg, Defend The Flag, Take And Hold

I hope the battle report is useful, despite the use of all sorts of proxied models. Having said that, Dire Avengers with their fancy plumed-helmets make pretty good knight Errants!
I'll post some feedback in the army development thread later, including why I only took Errants and no Paladins and only took Castellans and no Custodians etc, although obviously there was some opponent feedback about the hot-swappable 8BP attack in the report already.
And of course, in case it isn't obvious the list is fun to play, with lots of big stompy robots wrecking their way up and down the field.

Reading through, caught this. Is that one formation of falcons you're firing on as the primary target?



If so, the extra templates have to be used to cover the other falcons before being placed on the phantom and guardians. See the third faq:

http://www.tp.net-armageddon.org/tourna ... /#barrages

In a nutshell, you can't spread the BP love like that until the entire primary target has been covered.

Still reading.

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Squats 2019-10-17

Also wanted to check here:



Are two Knights in contact with one infantry stand? If so, that can't happen as the knights are 2 DC and the INF is maxed out with '2 units in btb' with 1 knight.

Were the hits rolled and resolved separately? A CC hit from a knight can only be assigned to units in base contact with it, not all enemy units in base contact with every knight or all enemies in 15cm. Same goes for FF, only assigned to units within 15cm of it that it has a LoF to. Effectively you have a CC and FF pool for every WE in an assault.

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Squats 2019-10-17

Thanks for the time and the report. Not trying to to cut the report down with the questions, just looking for some clarification.

From the Eldar prospective, the knights had some good shield saves. I would have tried to space the formations out more to mitigate all the BP.

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The hit calculation was done with the templates held above them carefully by hand, over 3 of the falcons. The photo on the other hand just has them placed on top at odd angles to look dramatic.

(as per "Note that once the first template has been placed, the attacker may choose where to place the additional templates, as long as they are touching the first template, and no line of fire, placement or range restrictions apply (see below).)
-I clicked your link and some FAQ text appears and disappears very quickly, does it work for you? If so please paste the text here thanks.



As I recall (the game was 2 weeks ago) the photo was right after charge but before countercharge (and obviously before the opponent realised you unfortunately can't stop the WE using their FF by being in CC with them....). I had to look up what the attacks were in the pdf today, but it should be about right.

It does, you should be able to view it by single clicking the title with the superscript number next to it. If it still does that, which browser and version are you using?

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Squats 2019-10-17

Got it now**, thanks!

Do extra barrage templates have to be placed to get as many enemy units from the target formation under them as possible?
The rules are unclear here, but yes they do. This part, "and no line of fire, placement or range restrictions apply," is referring to "Each weapon contributing to the barrage must be within range and have a line of fire to at least one unit under the template," not "templates must be placed in such a way as to get as many enemy units from the target formation under them as possible."

Good to know. I don't think I've ever seen that 'The rules are unclear here, but yes they do...' part.

This makes the power of multiple blasts a bit more moderate. In this particular case, in order to get the same desired result (templates touching 3 formations), my estimate based on that photo is that it would have required the Phantom to be the primary target (because one template on it would already achieve coverage), and then the second and third would have been on the shining spears and the falcons instead of the falcons and guardians.

If it turned out only one or two formations would be covered by blasts with the FAQed targeting rules correctly applied I'd probably go with the option of 90cm macro attack.

Thanks for posting the clarification about the FAQ. Even after factoring that in, IMHO the option to choose to use a 90cm 8BP attack forces the opponent to deploy and manoeuvre in a manner to avoid massed blasts even if the Knight player never chooses to use it.
That's my opinion as the guy who fired it anyway, see what other playtesters say.



** I clicked the link, saw the FAQ text appear for a moment then disappear during the page's loading, then because the top of the page is the text 'Many artillery pieces, rocket launchers...' below the title I had to scroll up and click the small number 16 which is also black text and not underlined. Long story short, I could have visited the page 10 times and not realised that there was FAQ text there or how to get to it. Do you know who administers that page so I could suggest since it is not the usual place a user looks for links perhaps they could change it to blue underlined text and set the anchor link to be above instead of below that line (so that the title and link appear when the #barrages is used)?

Hi!

Awesome report!

Primarch

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Primarch


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Thanks for the report.

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Fantastic! Absolutely! Epic work and layout on it!
The snow scenery look really cool.

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It does, as it prevents the spreading of BMs like you're doing much more difficult. What mitigates it more though is spacing your formations so the opponent can't take advantage of it. With all the Eldar packed together like that at the start I would have tried to do the same thing.



That be me, the full site is in my sig. I probably should have just linked you to: http://www.tp.net-armageddon.org/faq/#barrages

I'll fool around with a few options and see what shakes out.

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