The reasoning for that, is that a Knight battle formation is a minimum of 3 Knights. What a Knight army can do, is integrate two battle formations (3+ of one, 3 of another). That's the reason I rejected the idea of mixing Castellans and Crusaders. I don't want the Knights to be TOO flexible, and I do have an aversion to that level of customization micromanagement. It's one of the things I think lists have gotten away from in the last couple of years.


I can see it as difficult, but not impossible. But the same can be said for any high AV army. I've lost Knights against Marines on several occasions, but I've not seen Marines ever beat AMTL.

One of the keys to my losses with Knights has been once a formation is broken, it's a 4+ to rally if you're willing to give up the next turn, and a 5+ if you're not. With needing the SC (unless he's targetted) for activations, opponents have never found it difficult to neutralise a couple of formations.

Making sure that the most significant threats have BM's, especially where a combination assault looks likely (3+ activate, 4+ retain) is pretty crappy. And killing the SC is a priority if you can manage it.

The support formations, both peasant and Crustellans/Wardens tend to fold to assaults fairly easily.

Having said all that, the core Knights will likely be copping a modest nerf to supporting fire (hitting Lancers hardest), in the next incarnation, and I'll probably be adjusting the Indomitable to a base 4+ rather than an armour roll. I want them to be resistant to BM attrition, but it was never my intent to make them almost immune to it. But that all depends on people commenting, preferably from game experience. And reports, like the one carlos wrote on the previous page, are greatly helpful to making the list more suitable.

Morgan Vening

I support the Indomitable as just a single save change. OTOH, why don't crustellans also get Indomitable?

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... and about Marine armies beating Knight armies, how about World Eaters (as assaulty as marines go!) beating Knights in this report? viewtopic.php?f=84&t=19927

It seems impossible on paper but then you figure in pinpoint attacks, aircraft strafeing and superior SR and initiative and it all starts to look more doable.

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I'd be happy to give it a go, but that particular list you took against me seemed like a perfect anti-marine list.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

As you can imagine I didn't mean it (especially as I knew I'd be facing Guardsmen!)

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Oh certainly, but all those CC weapons & MWFF, I'd have a devil of a time working out how to fight it.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

Yeah, my version was kinda knight-spammish. Wardens and Crusaders/Castellans are very vulnerable to assaults though. Can't wait to see next version of this.

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Played 3k against Black Legion tonight. I was using the TOP SECRET v1.3 of the knightworld which has less assault stuff for most knights and makes paladins a bit weaker but cheaper. We both brought more or less lists optimised against what we expected to face.

I brought: 2*4 Lancers, 2*5 Paladins, 2*1 Warhounds (Vulcan, Plasma), 6 Errants/Lancers (3 of each), 2*3 Trebuchets, 2 T-bolts, 6 Squires, 3 Wardens. BTS was the 6 Knights. Why that and not the Castellans/Crusaders? Because the latter are relatively easy to kill by chaos termies. Teleport in w/ daemon prince, win SR roll, charge w/ a bucketload of MW attacks... etc. Castellans/Crusaders not having Indomitable doesn't help. I also consider the Baron essential because of the problems of running an assault army that's footslogging, w/ a base initiative of 2+ and a mediocre SR. But this opponent had used a spacecraft against me before and the risk of getting the Baron pin-pointed to death straightaway was too big. My choice of Warhounds might seem strange but they have several advantages compared to knights given their 1+ activation, fearless, speed and void shields which stops them from breaking too easily. Comparing 300 points of Warhounds w/ 2 plasmas w/ 300 points of errants which also have 4 MW attacks, you can see that the Errants are not THAT amazing really. Easy to supress (whereas hounds have to be broken completely), fail activations, move slower, every hit forces a save (instead of just taking a void shield) and so on. Yeah, they're better in CC assaults but you have to get there and you're not going to win the SR most times and will have to sit there like an idiot waiting to be sustained. The plasmas can't shoot the following turn, but then again how many times an agressively played Errant fm (only 30 cm range so has to be agressive) will get all its shots the 2nd turn anyhow?

He brought: 2 retinues (1 w/ lots of trimmings like SC and havocs), 2*1 Ferals, 1 Deathwheel, 2 Decimators in a single FM, 8 bikes, 5 termies+prince+obliterator.

He had to leave at the end of turn 2 w/ the knights marginally ahead. I had broken several of his fms but they all came back at the end of turn 2 even w/ me pressuring them to force the 4+ rally. The difference in initiatives and the sheer amount of fearless WE that Chaos can have is huge between the two armies. Also, the lack of MW weaponry in the knight list is tough against a lot of reinforced armour, so I concentrated on just breaking stuff and then crossing fingers it wouldn't come back as so much of it was fearless. I broke the termies, the wheel, 1 of the ferals in this way, but then all those reinforced armour saves meant I was just throwing knight cannon shots into a bottomless pit after that.

Overall the list felt all right. Lancers are a bit iffy in my opinion now. Sure, their firefight is deadly, but it's very hard to set things up for that to work. The 45 cm assault range is nice, but too big lancer fms are very expensive and very specialised. And spamming 3 strong fms means you enter most assaults down 2 because of outnumbering... and are also very easy to break (and then it's 4 or 5 to rally!). Errants are okay because of their MW attack outside assaults and by having a better MW firefight stat now, but again every BM supresses a shot. Compare and contrast to a warhound w/ twin plasmas which also moves faster. Oh, and Errants will only ever use their TK cc attack if the opponent lets them (especially now w/ the shorter countercharge range) so that's almost irrelevant. They can't teleport in, or come in on the thunderhawk, etc. Paladins feel about right. Once again an fm of more than 5 doesn't really work because they block each other's LoS. You will never use their CC MW attack anyway, and they compare okay w/ Defilers who are more vulnerable but are fearless (and have infiltrator WTF??) and can sit back and shoot whereas the paladins have to get stuck.

There were 2 assaults. Termies teleporting in and shredding 4 lancers who were a bit unsupported (as normal as they were going forward to be in FF position for turn 2). Then an ill-advised assault by a retinue on a warhound of mine who had the 6 errant/lancers in support position. Ill-advised indeed. It's somewhat telling I wasn't able to launch any assaults of my own with an assault army...

I need a few more 1.3 games to get a feel. It's a meat and potatoes list. It does what it does w/ no big tricks. It doesn't allow any big tricks or surprises and is a bit predictable but it's tough to kill. The knights need to work in tandem somehow to avoid teleporting/aircraft surprises which feels right.

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Recently we have had games against the Knights and I think Morgan may have been a little dismayed by opponents saying that they either had no interest, or they would prefer not to have to play against the Knights again. This is obviously a quandary for any list developer.

Knowing that I have a history of wanting the Knight list to represent something other than what it does now, Morgan (before he flew off to GenCon) threw the challenge to me and asked, "if you (I) was to change the Knight list, what would it look like"? His non-negotiables were as follows:

1. Have to be killed in 1 hit (no 2DC WE)
2. The 3 basic formations have to stay
3. Standard per capita cost should remain - this I think may actually be negotiable

So now that he is on a plane, and without taking a further look at the list and knowing what I thought the list should look like, I was hoping to get people's views on the below suggestions as a start. No doubt Morgan will look at all the below and answer what he needs to when he gets back, yet in the meantime, I thought it would be a good idea to collate the thoughts based on these immediate ideas:

1. Remove Indomitable (throw it away - burn it - can it)
2. Remove INF based AA units
3. Remove aircraft options (controversial I know)
4. Give all the knights ATSKNF
5. Price the Knight formations up by 25 points

What the above does (in my rose-tinted view I guess) is lower the activation count, give them a bit of protection from Assaults, BM deaths, Suppression etc. and give them the real weakness of air supports (obviously the Warden would become a necessity? - not a bad thing IMO).

So just on that basic outline opf the above, what are your thoughts?

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Frogbear is responsible for...
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Well, I'm playing the 1.3 list tonight so will let you know how that goes later. As for your comments:

1. No worries, although something needs to be done regarding the low numbers of knights overall and how easy that makes it to break them through BMs
2. There are none that I know of? Possibly you mean the ballista which is an LV. I wouldn't mind losing it.
3. As you said that forces the knights to have Wardens w/ ballistas which is the sort of list-writing which I don't like, ie forcing certain options. Warden fms are already a good choice as they are 250 pts for 3 void shields and 6 DC which is very, very good. Perhaps Knights would only have some sort of crappy fighter instead of the fancy thunderbolt? Another role that fighters have in knight lists is to hit hard to reach targets. Let's face it, every list out there has something to hit stuff on the other side of the table. Whether it's planetary bombardments, aircraft, teleporters, ground assault from aircraft, proper artillery, etc etc. Knights have their thunderbolts and that's it.
4 & 5. Worth more than 25 per fm in my view.

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Well, I agree with the ATSKNF bit, but as I recall that didn't go over well as a suggestion in the past. "It's a marine thang, you wouldn't understand."

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Let us playtest like the Greeks of old... You know the ones I mean

Morgan was open to ATSKNF, however there is always that.

Carlos: Some interesting feedback.

I think I will take a closer look at the list. I have only ever really been on the receiving end or spectator for this list. Hence why I thought I would throw the ideas up here

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Frogbear is responsible for...
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The feeling I get when I play knights, compared to my other armies Eldar and Tyranids, is that the knights are a very simple, straightforward list. They do what they do nicely, which is take punishment with their 4+ RA and Indomitable, and have a good 2nd and 3rd turns (1st is a bit crap due to lack of long range guns and impossibility of assaults). But they don't really have a plan B that they can execute, or the kind of specialized builds and specialized fms that can make them surprise the opponent. If I was playing Epic in solitaire mode and wanted to pick the AI army, I'd definitely pick knights as they're simple to use and simple to predict. Restricting their options and making them better at what they already do well is not the way forward. If anything increasing the differentiation between existing knights (both the DC1 and the DC2 ones) is the best.

As for ATSKNF it seems okay-ish but might make them overpowered. Some parts of it are okay for knights (like requiring 2 bms to be supressed or hacked for instance), whereas others aren't okay (counting half BMs in an assault since they are hard to put BMs on due to good save).

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***comments below were from using version 1.3 of this list which hasn't been completely released yet (and might never be)***
Played Cadians tonight and won 5-0. My opponent made a lot of mistakes though and I capitalised on them which is something the knights can do.
I brought:
5 paladins + baron - BTS
5 paladins
2*5 Errants
4 Lancers
2*3 Trebuchets
2*1 Warhounds (Plasma, Vulcan)
2 Tbolts
3 Wardens (2 battlecannons, 1 ballista)

I noticed there's some stuff I've never taken so far like the infantry (what role does it play w/out transports?) and seneschals which seem a waste of points -> what the army needs is more bodies so it won't break easy, all else is a bit of a distraction. It was a bit lopsided so Indomitable didn't come into play often. Broken stuff tended to remain broken though. I was lucky I knew I'd be facing Cadians so I could bring the Baron to help w/ the 2+ (almost always 3+) initiative. Cadians can't bring spacecraft so no pin-point attacks to wipe out the Baron 1st turn.
Trebuchets might be a bit too cheap in this list since they cover a glaring hole. I'd buy them at 150 pts but not at 175pts for what that's worth. Wardens are pretty inoffensive but for 250 pts hard as rocks. In all games they seem to do the same which is spend 3 turns laying BMs to prepare assaults and then claim 1 or 2 mid-table objectives.
Errants were cool but I still don't know why people get so worked up about facing them. Sure, they have MW4+ attacks but they move 25cm which is only okay, and their shots only have a range of 30cm which means you're usually doubling so hitting on 5+. And then of course the errants get in each other's way to get a clear shot since they're WE and are always more or less suppressed. Their TK attacks in cc are a huge red herring as w/ their mediocre SR and 5cm counter-charge they will very rarely use them.
Lancers now seem balanced as their great speed is counter-balanced by lack of firepower outside assaults. The new lance rule (every knight gets a 5+ 15cm FF attack with first strike if it's in an assault, but no support fire) works very well. Better than putting it as yet another EA in the statline.
Other thoughts:
- first turn I had a bunch of knights bunched up (big footprint) to avoid the doomsday cannon and the Ordinatus Cadia and my opponent doubled w/ 4 valkyries and dropped 8 BP on 3 different knight formations. Disrupt really works wonders against knights. None of my fms broke, but I lost 3 knights and were 1 or 2 bms in all of them away from breaking. I then laid firepower and assault w/ the paladins w/ the baron. Nobody in base contact but the first strike lances and supporting fire from nearby friends worked well.
- Air defence is so bad w/ knights most of the time that for all the game I was wondering when he'd throw his t-bolts on the trebuchets. 150 pts of t-bolts basically auto-break and completely destroy the trebuchets if they attack them. But my opponent kept failing their activation.
- It would be nice to have some BP on the list. Currently use standard warhounds but might start using them w/ inferno guns as lots of infantry in cover is very hard for the knights to deal with, and there's never enough trebuchets.
- No idea how this list would play out against air assault marines but will find out soon...

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Further thoughts on the Cadians? What was the list? Feel free to answer in the Cadian v1.3 thread if you wish, found in my sig.

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SG

Ghost's Paint Blog, where everything goes that isn't something else.