New Old Guy?

[rgr_maddog]

After decades of pure Space Wolves I am thinking of expanding into a second army, Knights of course. I would like some advice from you veterans. If I do this, I need to keep it cheap (Knights aren't known for that and I have new Wolves coming out in a month or two), so looking at the Renegade box set. Looks like I could build a Knight Warden, Crusader, Errant, or Paladin, and a second Knight with some limitations. I know they had a kit like this before, hoping to hear if it's possible to make a Crusader and a Paladin? Or two Paladins? I think I should stop there, but I do need three to play with stratagems, so I was thinking of picking up one of the new big guys. However, if investing that much more cash, I'm tempted to pass on the big guy and pick up a second box set. It's just a little bit more money to have more fielding options while keeping points cheap(er) for the detachment. My grand vision is to see three shooty Knights overwatering a Space Wolves advance. Is that even possible at around 2000 points? Are there better units/ways to go about it? Thanks for any info!

[Tyriks]

Crusader and Paladin or two paladins are options. You have one kit that makes a Paladin or Errant, and one that can make any Knight option. I HIGHLY recommend magnetizing them because that's a lot of money down the drain if the loadouts you pick don't work out or get changed. Knights are very easy to magnetize compared to everything else I've done. Especially the carapace weapons.

[Vel'Cona]

Good advice from Tyriks.  I'll add that Renegade is easily the best price you'll get for "new" Knights at a retailer.

 

As for actually playing, you'll obviously need "big" Knights (Questoris and Dominus-class) to make up the Super-Heavy Detachment (as you mentioned above) if you want CP, but keep in mind that an allied Battalion will get you more CP.  Since you already have SW it'd be an easy matter to build out a well-rounded Battalion to farm up the CP you need to feed your Knights.  This also frees you up to take as many or as few Knights as you want, and you'll also be able to access Armigers if you're getting the CP elsewhere.

[rgr_maddog]

I keep looking into this and changing my mind. 2 more ideas for you sages to consider. First, running with Vel'Cona's point that I can use my Wolves for CP, would it be a more points efficient to run a Castleton with a couple Armigers to work toward the original vision of Space Wolf assaults being overwatched with Knight firepower? Would loosing stratagems/relics be worth the efficency? Secondly, what if I turned the original vision on its head? 3 Gallants charging forward being overwatched by Longfangs, Razorbacks, and/or Preditors sounds interesting. Oh, and don't worry Tyriks, I plan to magnetize everything I can.

[Stray]

You won't lose Strats / Relics / traditions as long as your Castellan and Armigers are in their Lance together (there are ways around this even when they're not). The only thing you'd lose is the SHD CP.

 

So you can have your cake and eat it too :)

 

...go with Chocolate cake... or Carrot cake. Either works for me ;)

[Karhedron]

I am not completely sold on the Castellan. The Plasma Decimator looks cool but suffers all the same problems as the RFBC on the Questoris knights in that it has a random number of shots. Some days it will rock, others it will whiff. Another annoying thing is that it only does 1 damage per hit whereas the RFBC does D3. IMHO the Castellan is only worth taking if you get the Cawl-pattern plasma Relic. This boosts the damage to 2D (or 3D when you overcharge). That then means you cannot take other relics that may take your fancy.

 

The Volcano Lance also has the same problem in having a random number of shots. You can mitigate this by taking the Knight as House Raven as their stratagem allows you to reroll all 1s in the shooting phase (even those for the number of shots you get). This makes it a bit more reliable.

 

If you want a shooty Knight, I would be tempted to lean more in favour of the Crusader.

 

As for Wolves, I might actually be tempted to go with a cheap Gallant and use it as a massive distraction Carnifex. A Terryn Galant with Landstrider trait and the "Full Tilt" stratagem has an average Turn 1 charge range of 29.5". If it gets in (and it really should) then you will be getting the equivalent of 15 Battlecannon shots that hit on a 2+ or 5 attacks with the Reaper or Thunderstrike Gauntlet. Take the Paragon Gauntlet instead and those S16 attacks will be hitting on 2s and you can use the awesome "Death Grip" stratagem to crush even someone like Mortarion.

 

All this comes to about 350 points. Add a couple of Helverins for a cheap Lance and some decent firepower and you have still only spent ~700 points. Plenty to get some wolves for ObjSec and few tasty HQs like Njal to provide some psychic defenses or some TWC to mop up any survivors.

[Karhedron]

Just looked again and a Castellan is actually cheaper in points than a fully-tooled Crusader. 

 

That could swing the balance if you are looking for a fire-support Knight. One important thing to note is that important "Rotate Ion Shield" stratagem costs only 1 CP on a Questoris Knight but 3CPs on a Dominus. That can make a big difference to survivability unless you have lots of CPs kicking around.

[sneakybamsen]

Fully tooled crusader, with RFBC and stormspear (and heavy stubber) is 530 points. With missiles on top, a castellan is more than that, though not a lot. Even if you replace the stubber with a melta (crusader becomes 543), the castellan is still around the same. Thing is, are the missiles really THAT good? to me they seem to be brilliant with the 2 CP strat, but how long will you have CP's for that? And you can only fire 6 missiles over 6 turns, if the game will even be that long. My point is, you'd most likely want at least one of the "autocannon" mounts on the castellan, and that takes the cost to more than 560.

 

The castellan with the relic plasma does have it's uses, but it won't be cheaper than a kitted crusader, and the crusader is faster and cheaper in CP, as relics aren't needed as badly.

[Vel'Cona]

I like both, but I feel that the Crusader is obviously the more practical choice and combines the best elements of the other two "best" Questoris-class, the Errant and the Warden.  It's also better in melee than the Castellan, in addition to the mobility boost.

 

The Castellan's guns are always going to be a contentious topic due to the random number of shots, and with very few ways to adjust the random shots issue we're falling back on the overall package.  The shoulder-mounted guns add a bit of punch to the proceedings, but the meltagun turrets are rather useless if you're actually trying to use the Castellan as a stand-off support Knight.  It's a massive shame GW didn't give us the option to swap the meltas for stubbers/multilasers/heavy bolters but that's just how it is.

[Karhedron]

Yes, I feel that the Dominus class is confused (in spite of all that firepower). The Castellan has too many short-ranged guns (68 points worth of melta that you will struggle to use in a stand-and-shoot role). Conversely the Valiant lacks any close combat weapons to back up its short-ranged arsenal and it is only WS4+ for those titanic feet.

 

The Dominus classes look awesome but both seem to be hampered by odd loadouts or restrictions.

[Tyriks]

I don't think the melta will struggle to find targets so much as people are saying. My Crusader gets stuff charging it or deep striking nearby to shoot it every game. They might not have targets every turn but I'll be very surprised if they turn out as useless as people make it sound.

[Vel'Cona]

I don't think the melta will struggle to find targets so much as people are saying. My Crusader gets stuff charging it or deep striking nearby to shoot it every game. They might not have targets every turn but I'll be very surprised if they turn out as useless as people make it sound.

 

Good point!  I suppose then it's just the matter of not being able to flex any of the firepower beyond the shoulder guns.  It feels like the Dominus-class is a very restrictive setup given how many different ways we can utilize the Questoris-class.

[Tyriks]

I'm definitely hoping for more options in the future and that they sell it as an upgrade sprue!

[rgr_maddog]

Well, now I still have no idea what I want to do; crap, probably have even more ideas of stuff I want to try! Pulled the trigger and ordered a Renegade box to get started. Thanks all!