Imperial Knights...what the...

[Da Gargoyle]

I don't think they should be banned from tournaments. I agree with a comment on another post that perhaps LOW and D weapons should have been kept in apocalypse games. But they are here and we must adapt. I also suspect that you may see other codex get seriously powered options in the future. May be it will shorten game time which is always tight in a tournament.

[jeffersonian000]

I'm reading this thread here, thinking, "what army can't kill a vehicle?" Pretty sure all of them can. Then I thought, "who builds an army that can't kill a vehicle?", which lead to, "no one?"

People here need to ask themselves if they truly think other players do not build lists to kill vehicles. I can understand not building to handle Flyers, because there are still armies that can't without allying or forts. Aren't Land Raiders still considered garbage because their cost too much an die to fast? Pretty sure if you can kill a Land Raider, you can kill a Knight. Yes, WraithKnights are under costed by a 100 points, but they still die to generic anti-vehicle weapons like Lascannons and Melta. Is it just hating on the newness?

Imperial Knights are probably the most balance super heavies in the game, with a fair point cost, reasonable stats, and average weapons. The only weapon with Strength Stupid is the melee weapon, which cannot kill more than 4 models on a charge (barring a Gallant being all gallant). Seems to me like there's too much "change" going on for the vocal minority. I mean seriously, if can't kill a Knight each turn, you can't kill anything with a decent AV or high toughness. And that reflects more on you than it does the game.

SJ

[Erik Setzer]

Aren't Land Raiders still considered garbage because their cost too much an die to fast?

Land Raiders aren't considered "garbage" because they "die too fast." It's more that you're paying for all that survivability, and they can't split targets that much with their limited firepower.

A Knight, meanwhile, can move faster, has nastier weapons, can split fire if it has multiple weapons, and can assault models and do a lot more damage in assault.

[LCS]

Land Raiders aren't considered "garbage" because they "die too fast." It's more that you're paying for all that survivability, and they can't split targets that much with their limited firepower.

No, that's pretty much why they are considered bad. You pay for what used to be survivability, but they generally die really fast. And let's be honest, if you're army can't handle a LR then you were probably going to lose anyway. With the amount of D weapons, deep striking melta/lance, and high strength long rage firepower that most armies can bring, all on top of the change to hull points, LR don't do that well. They are rarely worth the huge point sink.

[daboarder]

its a bit of both really.

The original land raider has always been considered bad for all the reasons that you both described (even in 3rd they weren't particularly hard to kill)
the crusade then came along with the increased transport and a slueth of weapons that suited its roll and was popular, then they added machine spirit rule that has been tweaked over th years to give the loyalist las variant a bit of a leg up (there was even a chaos version of this rule but we all know chaos cant have nice things). Then the prometheus came out again with a good load out, but could also actually hurt things as opposed to the crusaders masses of S4 shooting in an edition where s4 wasnt all that (5th)

now we have the current landraider that isnt particularly survivable, or a good/ needed transport or particularly dangerous with its loadout.

[Cutter]

So, I hear a lot of talk about banning or restricting knights now that they are lords of war...so my question is are we really going to start banning entire factions?

Kinda. Let me tell you one story. We don't have a huge amount of gaming related conventions in our little corner of the UK, but the biggest is Q-Con, the annual gaming/anime/cat people show based out of Queen's University. It sure has changed over the 22 years, what started out as a hardcore RPG\Wargaming con has 'blossomed' into something more diverse. Have a look at the planned wargaming roster.

[url]http://www.q-con.org.uk/node/27[/url]

Yep, no 40k. Now I daresay there might be some pickup games over the weekend, but there is no competition. I gather that's because they couldn't find anyone willing to run it. Too much grief.

I know of at least one 5 knight army that made an appearance at previous events. I think it did well but went down like a lead balloon.

[Fueldrop]

I had my first encounter with a Wraith Knight on Wednesday. It took an absurd amount of firepower to bring down, but I managed to do it the moment my army hit the ground (I was running deep strike heavy, so the first 2 turns were it firing masses of plasma at a 60 point ranger squad and killing 1 of them).

While I haven't faced Knights yet I figure they'll be fairly similar, but with a double edged sword: They'll be easier to bring down because they're vehicles and I can drop some BS 5 Fire Dragons right next to one and watch it go bye bye while a squad of guided Falcons wail on a doomed Knight's rear armour, letting me have a reasonable shot at either killing or crippling 2 in a round. However, I suspect that a large block of them will be exceedingly difficult to deal with if your enemy keeps them where they can support each other.

Still, I haven't actually faced off against them yet and am pretty much guessing here. It'll be interesting to see how well my list can deal with surprise ImpKnights.

[Erik Setzer]

I had my first encounter with a Wraith Knight on Wednesday. It took an absurd amount of firepower to bring down, but I managed to do it the moment my army hit the ground (I was running deep strike heavy, so the first 2 turns were it firing masses of plasma at a 60 point ranger squad and killing 1 of them).

...

I can drop some BS 5 Fire Dragons right next to one and watch it go bye bye while a squad of guided Falcons wail on a doomed Knight's rear armour, letting me have a reasonable shot at either killing or crippling 2 in a round.

Hmm. You know, I think running Eldar yourself should kind of disqualify you from talking about how "easy" it is to take down a Wraithknight, or pretty much anything else. No offense, just feel like it's only proper to remind you that you're talking about the most potent army in the game right now.

[Fueldrop]

While this is true I am still using the same models as I was back in 5th edition, so no strength-D spam over here. Also, I wasn't claiming taking down Knights is easy, just that they're more vulnerable than GMCs to tricks like meltaspam.

A drop pod with combi-melta space marine veterans is equally a death sentence for anything unfortunate enough to be nearby, as are plenty of other tricks across the codexes.

If you play to your strengths and play your opponents then almost anything can be defeated. Fast armies should try and feint to split the superheavy away from support then pour everything onto it until it goes down, cutting and running when the rest of the enemy army starts to arrive. Elite armies should work to get their specialists to the target ASAP. Massed troops armies are in trouble against a pure knights force, but on the flip side most knights players will just ignore your troops while they go after the stuff that can hurt them. Use that to your advantage, either drawing them out of position chasing your heavies while you secure objectives or else use the fact that they're virtually ignoring your squads to get behind them. Throwing Krak grenades at their rear armour will either get their attention (allowing your heavy weapons to actually get a round of firing in) or be ignored, allowing you to keep doing it. (as I said I haven't played against Knights so just assuming they're rear armour 12 or below) you get enough squads of guardsmen throwing grenades and sheer numbers can eventually wear them down. Necrons can just glance them to death with gauss weapons.

If worst comes to worst, just remember that if they've spent all their points on big stuff then they're not going to be able to secure many objectives. Take down one or two of their heavies over the course of the game while your troops take cover and go to ground on an objective, and it doesn't matter how shiny their big mechs are: you've won.




For those that care about such things:
I was actually running a fairly mundane list, lots of guardians, 2 wave serpents, some rangers, farseer, various aspect warriors ect. My opponent was packing a maxed out wraith host. I only won because I outmaneuvered him handily and was able to bring my entire force against his army bit by bit, and even then it took virtually everything I had + guide + doom to take down that damn wraithknight before it could start killing. What did not help was that the wraith knight had a toe on some ruins (which it towered over) and so RAW it had a 4+ cover save. Combine that with FNP and the damn thing was monsterously tough. I'm horrified by the concept of one of those deep striking (I think it can as Jump GMC but am not certain) behind a weak point in the lines and just causing absolute havoc. I'm unlikely to ever pick one up as I run Uthwe and in any case I reckon the model looks dumb but it's undoubtedly nasty.

I just object to the idea that my thoughts are irrelevant simply because my army got updated recently. I'd have kicked that thing's *** with my 5th edition codex if I had to because my opponent fell for a feint that let me mess him up, not because my army was packed with broken ****.

[Charon]

I'm reading this thread here, thinking, "what army can't kill a vehicle?" Pretty sure all of them can. Then I thought, "who builds an army that can't kill a vehicle?", which lead to, "no one?"

People here need to ask themselves if they truly think other players do not build lists to kill vehicles. I can understand not building to handle Flyers, because there are still armies that can't without allying or forts. Aren't Land Raiders still considered garbage because their cost too much an die to fast? Pretty sure if you can kill a Land Raider, you can kill a Knight. Yes, WraithKnights are under costed by a 100 points, but they still die to generic anti-vehicle weapons like Lascannons and Melta. Is it just hating on the newness?

There quite a few rules that make superheavies quite different from a landraider.
I won't talk about the 4++ (which can become better) the Landraider will not have, nor the ability to assault, stomp, move 12" and still fire all weapons at BF, splitfire or anything of these "small benefits".
Basically it comes down to "if I penetrate a Landraider something will happen" either we see it trying to snapfire, losing a weapon or sit there on his spot for the rest of the game, In rare cases we will see it "poof" in a grat ball of fire.
The Knight? Not so much. Always moving, shooting, assaulting till the last hullpoint is gone.

And while nearly all armies are kitted out to deal with vehicles (multiples at that) there are only a few armies that can take on 5 Knight in all all-comers list. There are even some who cannot muster enough firepower even if prepered and last but no least I hear rumors of some players who do not own multiples of every unit and can't just look into their 50k points for more anti-tank.