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Deathwing Knights


Crazy Jay

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So I picked up a Deathwing set and the dark vengence expansion for Christmas and I'm wondering how most people field their DW Knights. I put the stand alone set together as the knights but haven't touched the others yet. So the question is, do you typically run them as just 5 man squad, 10 man squad, with or without termy Hq, Landraider or deep strike.

 

The list I plan on debuting them as of right now will be 7 man squad with Int Chap, term armor and mace of redemption in a LRC.

 

I can post the rest of the 1850 army if requested but I'm more curious about the unit itself. Cheers and thanks.

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So I picked up a Deathwing set and the dark vengence expansion for Christmas and I'm wondering how most people field their DW Knights. I put the stand alone set together as the knights but haven't touched the others yet. So the question is, do you typically run them as just 5 man squad, 10 man squad, with or without termy Hq, Landraider or deep strike.

 

The list I plan on debuting them as of right now will be 7 man squad with Int Chap, term armor and mace of redemption in a LRC.

 

I can post the rest of the 1850 army if requested but I'm more curious about the unit itself. Cheers and thanks.

 

Speaking as an outsider: damn scary unit that is certain worth the points you put into them.

Ahh the ol' DWK debate.  For a good while after the codex came out I used them pretty exclusively.  I've run them anywhere from 5-10.

 

Your plan of running them is probably the best setup for them.  Int Chap+DWK+LRC while expensive, is better than just deep striking them in.  If you're running the int chap though, I'd suggest maybe hold off on terminator armor for 2 reasons.  He trades in his pistol and grenades for that 2+.  So you're losing an attack and your ability to charge through terrain in subsequent rounds (I've never gotten BACK in a landraider to assault).  Out of a Landraider, you're getting 5 Hatred attacks of S7 AP3 goodness (who knows, maybe you get the Furious Charge Warlord Trait) instead of 4 at Initiative 5.

 

As for how to use them, because Knights are such an odd unit, you want them to do their job as soon as possible and get onto the next task.  When I say odd, I mean that they fall in a weird slot between our Vanilla Cousins assault variants.  They lack the AP and volume of attacks of their LC brothers, and they only have the punch of a TH/SS terminator for one turn, in which case it's mostly overkill anyway, while S10 sounds awesome, the AP2 at initiative is what you really bring them for.

 

I don't consider them monster hunters (they can only kill one of them really and most armies that field MCs have multiples).  Quite comically, the bane of their existence is an AV13 walker.  They can't hurt it, nor can they fail their checks and fall back.  You also don't want them tarpitting themselves against blobs that aren't worth it.  They are good at munching up hordes of gants and boyz, but send them against tactical marines (not CSM) and you'll quickly see why they start to struggle.

 

Deep striking is risky because you HAVE to put them close to something else they spend 2 or 3 turns trying to get somewhere, and god forbid there's any difficult terrain you may as well just remove them off the board yourself.  So now you're talking about either giving them Belial to surgically bring them in, or bringing along a RWAS to help out.  In any case they'll end up soaking fire that you don't want.

 

Rule of thumb with DWK:  The first time they are in combat, you want them at full strength.  Always.  After their initial first round of combat, whether they destroy the unit or just cause them to flee, feel free to march them over to an objective or stand there as a bullet catcher.  But before that you are wasting points on a unit that's doing nothing for you.

I like to DS six of them near my opponent's most threatening unit because, they can weather A LOT fire, and many times my opponent will commit units to destroying the knights that could otherwise wreck havoc on my other units.  

 

I'll have to try going all out with them in a Land Raider via your plan Jay.  Sounds like it'd be a blast to see 7 Hammer of Wrath attacks followed by an army of beat sticks with rerolls.

DW Knights are always a personal choice I wouldn't take anything but

 

Some meta changes have helped us as well the introduction of super heavies into smaller point games also the strikes at initiative is invaluable and I don't generally need to turn the maces on say against Orks they'd be deployed on the field to make sure I got the charge bonus.

 

At the end of the day there a very very scary unit for MC's to come up against and will attract a hail of fire I think the FNP Banner is the way with a combined Raven Death Knight list all elites but the bang for buck on impact to any sort of combat is staggering used with the Grenade Launchers  

I always run 5-7 with an I-C with a Mace of Redemption in a Crusader. Kills most things, dead - short of Space Marines - in one round of combat. The higher WS, toughness and hatred in the first round works wonders. They are also great at winning slugfests as they are brutally survivable. The trick is knowing when to smite - whether all those attacks will slaughter their 2+ armour save unit, or not. Or whether you should save it for the bigger monstrous creature/heavy tanks.

 

But that is all about responding to the game itself.

Wouldn't is be better to direct the LR right the unit that needs smiting and use it right away? After the first combat they become slow and will draw plenty of fire. With every dead model before Smite you will be losing value and chances are that, against a fast list like Eldar, they will only see one combat to begin with.

Wouldn't is be better to direct the LR right the unit that needs smiting and use it right away? After the first combat they become slow and will draw plenty of fire. With every dead model before Smite you will be losing value and chances are that, against a fast list like Eldar, they will only see one combat to begin with.

 

 

The misleading part about smite is that we think it's really necessary, but most of the time the S6 is already good enough to wound most models.  In some cases the S10 helps ID those T5 models but the AP2 is really why you want them.

 

Off the top of my head here are some smite-worthy targets:

 

Daemons:

All of the MCs who don't fly away from you

 

Chaos:

Walkers

Daemon Princes/Typhus etc

 

Tau:

Riptides

 

Tyranids:

All of the MCs who don't fly away from you

 

Eldar:

Avatar

Any Wraith

 

Dark Eldar:

Talos/Cronos

 

Orks:

Nobz on foot or bikes

 

(Edit) Necrons:

Destroyer Lords

Overlords

Wraiths

Lychguard

Praetorians

Spyder

Stalker

 

AM:

Bullgryn/Ogryn

 

Space Marines (any faction):

HQs on bikes

Mephiston and jerks like him who roll Iron Arm

 

Then there are all the walkers/vehicles at AV12 who you need to smite if you have any hope of a penetrating hit.  So by and large, there aren't a whole lot of nasties that you couldn't just use TH/SS on.  In most cases MOST of these things are far more mobile than you are also since they either fly, jump, are on bikes, or in a transport themselves.  True monstrous creatures like Tyranids are often too vast in number for Knights to even be a solution since after you kill one there will most likely be 5 others on the table to contend with.

 

An AV13 walker is the bane of our existence.  You just have to forfeit rolling anything and skip right to your opponents rolls.

 

If you ask me the Knights should be +4 AP2 ALL the time at initiative.  It separates and creates greater incentive for a player to play DA Assault Terminators like that.  With their cost and the volume of fire in this current edition I wouldn't consider that overpowered at all.

I run 10 at my opponent and their army ends up shrinking towards the other table edge laugh.png

Land Raider or no, they're worth every point they take. They're tough to kill and get an entire round to kill anything they want. Chaos marine players particularly hate them.

I run 10 at my opponent and their army ends up shrinking towards the other table edge laugh.png

Land Raider or no, they're worth every point they take. They're tough to kill and get an entire round to kill anything they want. Chaos marine players particularly hate them.

But only if they buy the 'Veterans of the Lord War' upgrade ;)

...

I'll go back to my kennel :D

DO something unorthodox

 

Take them as a compliment in pure ravenwing army with dakka banner

 

A unit of 5-8 depending on how many you can afford. Now, designate secretly the most scary enemy unit and the ones that you actually want your knights to destroy, deep strike them turn one, and joint them with Sammael

 

He now becomes riddiculous T6 and they gain hit and run!

Now your opponents will freak out, he will focus all his firepower to get rid of as many of them as he can (a turn of breather for entire rest of your army)

He should fail to wipe them out, now he will have to charge them (or whats left of them) to try and kill the rest which he also should fail to be able to. Then you hit&run 3d6 and start munching through his more vulnerable units.

Nice tactic, hadn't thought of that.  Only issue I see is that yeah Sammael is now T6, but shooting their majority toughness is still T5.  Would you position sammael in front or back then?  I can see it possible to have him keep his T6 in a challenge, but it would be pretty hard.  I like this idea a lot Im just trying to sort out some of the technicalities on how you would make this really work

you'd need more than 5 to pull that off, at least 7, probably more like 8-10 for max survivability. Would be pretty epic, though, and lack of scatter as well would be nice. Would you bring them down turn 1 or 2? I am leaning to turn 2 to get them closer to the enemy than the 12" scout move...

The skilled rider extends to the knights does that effect the charge penalty of -2 for difficult? it shouldn't for Sam but  is it one of those passed onto the squad or is it a coherency thing

 

I've done this a number of times by the way Sam goes out front in scout move then drop them in 6" 1st turn and switch squads you can fire with Sams plasma or run whichever you want if you take him as warlord you get an extra D6 not great but it could come in

 

No one wants the Knights marauding round so their instantly focused on 

So I won my game and destroyed the heretics. My DWKs ended up facing a Keep of Secrets Deamon Prince or some such thing. It was a nasty fight that went on a couple rounds and I even had some deamonette things join in. I lost my Int Chap and 2 knights but I took the monster down.

 

I ended up dropping another deamon Prince with a black mace on turn one with my LRC and MC Dreadnaught. I also took out two hellbrutes on turn 1 with 10 man tac marines in drop pods DSing behind him to hit rear armor. Over all it was an amazing match. If anyone is overly interested I can post full army lists (to the best of my recollection)

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