First thoughts on Codex: Imperial Knights

[BluejayJunior]

If it wasn't how it is supposed to be played, GW likely would have clarified it by now. Especially in the Big FAQ.

But the fighting rules say you can only fight against units that you declared a charge against. It doesn't say you have to have succeeded on the charge against that unit, just declared. 

Based on the wording of the stratagem and the Fight Phase, I would say it likely occurs after the consolidation, because that is the end of that unit fighting. But it could also mean after it has resolved all its attack, but before consolidating. 

It probably shouldn't work on a target that you didn't declare a charge against. The general rule is that you can't attack a target you didn't charge and I don't see anything that overrules that in the stratagem. But the wording does make it a little unclear. 

[Tyriks]

I would read that as after consolidation and not able to target units you didn't charge (in a turn you charged). It's still an attack on a turn you charged, nothing says you can target anything otherwise not viable so I would use regular unit targeting rules.

 

With regards to consolidation, it does say "after fighting" which concludes with consolidation. If it said "after attacking" I would think it meant before consolidating. I wouldn't be surprised if they meant after attacking, because I think that makes more sense.

[MARK0SIAN]

A simple answer regarding charges can be found in the freeblade burdens. The burden that states he must declare a charge against every unit in 12 inches. This means that there will always (or 99% of the time) be a target that he can’t reach, because very often they will be 12 inches in completely opposite directions or blocked by other models and terrain.

 

I believe this burden couldn’t exist if the intention of the charge rule meant that a charge failed if it couldn’t reach every target declared in the charge. It would simply have been easier to say, this model can’t charge this turn.

[Lysere]

A simple answer regarding charges can be found in the freeblade burdens. The burden that states he must declare a charge against every unit in 12 inches. This means that there will always (or 99% of the time) be a target that he can’t reach, because very often they will be 12 inches in completely opposite directions or blocked by other models and terrain.

 

I believe this burden couldn’t exist if the intention of the charge rule meant that a charge failed if it couldn’t reach every target declared in the charge. It would simply have been easier to say, this model can’t charge this turn.

 

Missing the point, your comment has nothing to do with what I was talking about. The rule in question I'm talking about is the not being able attack something unless you charged it this turn. The issue is you can declare something a target even if you can't reach it right away and charge something else, kill the other target, consolidate into the other one, and if you could attack again attack it freely because you "charged" it even though you didn't reach it with your charge move.

 

RAW this is allowable because the rules don't clearly state what counts as having charged something when attempting to charge multiple units. GW has yet to FAQ this either way so it remains open to whatever your group wants and competitively this is mostly used in the sense of declaring the charge is good enough assuming you make it into combat with at least one of the targets.

[Stray]

GW tends to pay a certain amount of fealty to the competitive scene right now. It's annoying because they make up a tiny percentage of the community, but they're also the most visible and that = £££.

 

Unless it starts causing huge issues (and it's been a thing for a year now), it's not getting FAQ'd in all likelyhood. There are a lot of possible movement shenanigans possible in the assault phase and they've been widely embraced as 'clever tactics'. Learn them, learn the counters to them, because they're valid RAW, and it's highly likely they will remain part of this edition.

 

Our personal opinions on it simply do not matter on this occasion. 'tis what it is.

[Karhedron]

GW tends to pay a certain amount of fealty to the competitive scene right now. It's annoying because they make up a tiny percentage of the community, but they're also the most visible and that = £££.

To be fair, I think there is some value in this. Competitive players will tend to try and find all the broken combos, min-maxes etc. They will highlight anything that is seriously out of whack. If a unit seems to crop up in all lists, hello Mr Nerf Bat (Dark Reapers anyone?). Similarly, armies that seem to appear at GT's obviously need a little help. I don't think it is that tourney players are dictating the state of the game, rather if anyone is going to find unbalanced units, it is them.

[Stray]

 

GW tends to pay a certain amount of fealty to the competitive scene right now. It's annoying because they make up a tiny percentage of the community, but they're also the most visible and that = £££.

To be fair, I think there is some value in this. Competitive players will tend to try and find all the broken combos, min-maxes etc. They will highlight anything that is seriously out of whack. If a unit seems to crop up in all lists, hello Mr Nerf Bat (Dark Reapers anyone?). Similarly, armies that seem to appear at GT's obviously need a little help. I don't think it is that tourney players are dictating the state of the game, rather if anyone is going to find unbalanced units, it is them.

 

 

I'd agree with that. They make good play testers for the rest of us for sure, and it certainly makes business sense to give their concerns focus.

 

I do feel that on occasion we can suffer something of a knee-jerk reaction from GW across the community because a single individual turned up to a tournament with a bizillion Fire Raptors though. 

 

Part of the problem is still that 40K isn't really a competitive game at it's core. We all know it's not really a balanced affair by any stretch, and that's ok, because it's fun, and we have a good time regardless. 

It complicates things for all if you're not very careful about making adjustments to the whole community, because of an issue that mainly affects the competitive side of things... in a game that doesn't work all that well in a competitive environment. O.o

 

'Tis a tricky one. I hope what we'll see is lots of lessons learned about this aspect from 8th, so the foundation is a little more present in future editions?

[MARK0SIAN]

 

 

A simple answer regarding charges can be found in the freeblade burdens. The burden that states he must declare a charge against every unit in 12 inches. This means that there will always (or 99% of the time) be a target that he can’t reach, because very often they will be 12 inches in completely opposite directions or blocked by other models and terrain.

 

I believe this burden couldn’t exist if the intention of the charge rule meant that a charge failed if it couldn’t reach every target declared in the charge. It would simply have been easier to say, this model can’t charge this turn.

Missing the point, your comment has nothing to do with what I was talking about. The rule in question I'm talking about is the not being able attack something unless you charged it this turn. The issue is you can declare something a target even if you can't reach it right away and charge something else, kill the other target, consolidate into the other one, and if you could attack again attack it freely because you "charged" it even though you didn't reach it with your charge move.

 

RAW this is allowable because the rules don't clearly state what counts as having charged something when attempting to charge multiple units. GW has yet to FAQ this either way so it remains open to whatever your group wants and competitively this is mostly used in the sense of declaring the charge is good enough assuming you make it into combat with at least one of the targets.

No, my comment has nothing to do with what you were talking about because it wasn’t written in response to Whether you could attack the unit or not and if you read my comment I offer no opinion on that at all.

 

My comment was written in response to the discussion on whether a charge failed because it couldn’t reach every unit it was declared against. And I maintain that it doesn’t, so long as the unit can reach at least one of the units. As supporting for that I offer the burden of the freeblade that forces you to declare charges against units it knows you can’t reach.

 

As for the stratagem, RAW, it seems clear. A target within 1 inch of you. Nothing about charging etc. You can select any target that is within 1 inch regardless of whether you charged.

[Sea Reaper]

So....not trying to inflame tensions but I'm pretty new to 8th and confused by the Armiger rule. If I take a detachment and don't use 3 armiger in a super heavy slot...then the detachment doesn't add command points? And this also prevents the entire detachment from gaining Knight traits (like House Raven's advance shoot thing)? Is that correct or am I reading that wrong? Honest question, very new and detachment rules are still tricky for me.

[Lysere]

 

No, my comment has nothing to do with what you were talking about because it wasn’t written in response to Whether you could attack the unit or not and if you read my comment I offer no opinion on that at all.

 

My comment was written in response to the discussion on whether a charge failed because it couldn’t reach every unit it was declared against. And I maintain that it doesn’t, so long as the unit can reach at least one of the units. As supporting for that I offer the burden of the freeblade that forces you to declare charges against units it knows you can’t reach.

 

As for the stratagem, RAW, it seems clear. A target within 1 inch of you. Nothing about charging etc. You can select any target that is within 1 inch regardless of whether you charged.

 

 

That's never been in question, you don't fail to charge something because you failed the charge against something else, the rules are quite clear in regards to getting you into combat, but nowhere does it establish when you have actually "charged" something which is part of the discussion with the stratagem.

 

You can declare all the targets you want and only move into combat with one just fine, 100% clear in the rules. But have you still "charged" everything else?

 

That's what the discussion with charges was about.

[Focslain]

So....not trying to inflame tensions but I'm pretty new to 8th and confused by the Armiger rule. If I take a detachment and don't use 3 armiger in a super heavy slot...then the detachment doesn't add command points? And this also prevents the entire detachment from gaining Knight traits (like House Raven's advance shoot thing)? Is that correct or am I reading that wrong? Honest question, very new and detachment rules are still tricky for me.

 

Per the Knight Lance rule you don't gain CP for a SH detachment unless you have 3 Questoris/Dominus class knights in the detachment. However you do get the house traits as that only requires you to have a SH detachment. 

[brother_b]

GW tends to pay a certain amount of fealty to the competitive scene right now. It's annoying because they make up a tiny percentage of the community, but they're also the most visible and that = £££.

 

Our personal opinions on it simply do not matter on this occasion. 'tis what it is.

I agree with most of this and have posted as such. I don't believe the competitive scene brings in the most $£ at all. That scene is tiny compared to the majority of gamers worldwide.

 

I also disagree with the idea that competitive players make great game testers. Look at the "fix" for alpha strikes. It adversely affects assault based armies. First turn melee alpha did occur with some, chaos warp time and some alpha berserkers etc.but was nowhere as big of an issue with shooty armies.

 

Melee centric armies were adversely affected in my opinion. Now gun lines sit for a free turn of shooting, with no option to touch some non LOS targeting units.

 

Anyway my opinion. I think the competitive scene is merely the most visible aspect of the army given the cottage industry of blogs pod casts and YouTube channels.

 

6 flyrants wouldn't happen at the local store cause that player would have been ostracized.

 

Anyway I digress and others share an opposite opinion. The real solution is the unwritten contract between players in pick up games.

[Mechanicus Tech-Support]

"I also disagree with the idea that competitive players make great game testers. Look at the "fix" for alpha strikes..."

 

Was it the comp players that created the rule or GW based on results found at tournaments? 

[Sea Reaper]

Thank you, Focslain :)

[Vel'Cona]

Let's re-focus this thread on discussing the codex itself, not RAW/RAI of basic rules nor competitive metagaming in general.

 

So....not trying to inflame tensions but I'm pretty new to 8th and confused by the Armiger rule. If I take a detachment and don't use 3 armiger in a super heavy slot...then the detachment doesn't add command points? And this also prevents the entire detachment from gaining Knight traits (like House Raven's advance shoot thing)? Is that correct or am I reading that wrong? Honest question, very new and detachment rules are still tricky for me.

 

Focslain has the right of it, but it definitely takes some rules-gymnastics to make sense of it.  I feel like GW's IK FAQ will need to directly address this as even though it's written in the codex, I still feel that many players are getting confused given this is such a departure from the established Detachment rules.

[Karhedron]

So....not trying to inflame tensions but I'm pretty new to 8th and confused by the Armiger rule. If I take a detachment and don't use 3 armiger in a super heavy slot...then the detachment doesn't add command points? And this also prevents the entire detachment from gaining Knight traits (like House Raven's advance shoot thing)? Is that correct or am I reading that wrong? Honest question, very new and detachment rules are still tricky for me.

An auxiliary Detachment gets 0 CPs. The Knight(s) in that Detachment still have a house (which grants them access to that House's stratagems and Relics) but they do not gain access to the House Trait.

 

A Super-heavy Detachment of 3+ Knights will gain house traits (even if they are 3 Armigers).

 

A Super Heavy Detachment that contains 3+ Quetoris/Dominus Knights will also gain the +3CPs.

 

Hope that make everything clear.

[Sea Reaper]

Yes! That is much clearer now, thank you.

[General Strike]

I did send my FAQ suggestions to GW. The usual few, plus a couple of my own.

[Tyriks]

What's the address for it? I also am drafting an email but I always seem to lose the address.

[Mushkilla]

40kFAQ@gwplc.com

[General Strike]

Did anyone look at duncans knights on WHC? They are gorgeous, and also he has a knight lancer with a RFBC on it, which looks pretty cool.

[Charlo]

They're bloody amazing aren't they?

[General Strike]

I love it, big inspiration for my upcoming House Malinax, since the main colors are similar. It really makes me want to convert for coolness sake. What traitor legion should I run with Malinax? Make some cool out of time loyalists from the heresy teleporting around fighting anything.

 

Also, my local GW guy said that the preceptor will be a sprue and you can use your second knight from renegade with the sprue to build one....which seems entirely wrong, but figured I would throw it out just in case.

[Inquisitor Fox]

Is it just me, Or is there a legitimate argument for both a "Super-Heavy Detachment" and a "Super-Heavy Auxillary Detachment" both being a Super-Heavy Detachment for purposes of House traits? Similar to how a unit of Space Marine Devastators is a unit of Space Marines? The wording and lack of italics or further examples allows for a great deal of vagueness.

[Zamtro]

Is it just me, Or is there a legitimate argument for both a "Super-Heavy Detachment" and a "Super-Heavy Auxillary Detachment" both being a Super-Heavy Detachment for purposes of House traits? Similar to how a unit of Space Marine Devastators is a unit of Space Marines? The wording and lack of italics or further examples allows for a great deal of vagueness.

I suppose there isn't any italics, but considering there is a 'Super Heavy Detachment' and 'Super Heavy Auxiliary Detachment' and the word auxiliary isn't within the lance rules I would assume not. The AM codex is a good example, although that specifically says 'Not super heavy aux' and this one doesn't. 

 

You're 100% correct, it would be beneficial if the writers were consistent in their wording to avoid any possibility of confusion