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Tactics Discussion: Knight Household Force


Atia

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Has anyone had a whirl at an all Knights verses Knights battle yet? I know the options are a little limited at this stage, with only two Knight chassis released so far. But, I must confess that I'm itching to add more of the tiny tots to my collection.

 

I'm awfully tempted to try for an all-Knight campaign, possibly set before the Heresy, in a setting similar to Molech. Each player controls their own House, freely making and breaking alliances, trading resources, land, weapons and spare parts, and sallying forth in support of whatever claimant to the title of High King takes their fancy. Essentially the Wars of the Roses, but with giant robots. 

 

(Even George R. R. Martin didn't think of that!) :happy.:

I'm costing out a Knight Household now but I'm really disappointed with the armament restriction.  Having to arm every knight in a banner the same doesn't look as cool to me. 

 

Does the wording about banner composition mean we'll be seeing AT scale Acastus Knights?  I'm looking at a side by side shot here and I'm wondering how hard it would be to convert this from a regular knight chassis. 

P1210194.JPG

I'm costing out a Knight Household now but I'm really disappointed with the armament restriction.  Having to arm every knight in a banner the same doesn't look as cool to me. 

 

Does the wording about banner composition mean we'll be seeing AT scale Acastus Knights?  I'm looking at a side by side shot here and I'm wondering how hard it would be to convert this from a regular knight chassis. 

P1210194.JPG

Why does this pic looks wrong? Why is the Arcastus that small?

Yeah, that's a picture of the Porphyrion from when it was still in early development. It really grew up... 

 

 

Has anyone had a whirl at an all Knights verses Knights battle yet? I know the options are a little limited at this stage, with only two Knight chassis released so far. But, I must confess that I'm itching to add more of the tiny tots to my collection.

 

I'm awfully tempted to try for an all-Knight campaign, possibly set before the Heresy, in a setting similar to Molech. Each player controls their own House, freely making and breaking alliances, trading resources, land, weapons and spare parts, and sallying forth in support of whatever claimant to the title of High King takes their fancy. Essentially the Wars of the Roses, but with giant robots. 

 

(Even George R. R. Martin didn't think of that!) :happy.:

 

A game of Throne Mechanicums? :teehee:

Hmph, I guess they'll have to get their own kit.

 

1490pts:

 

First Lance:
4x Cerastus Knights

Lances/Shields

4x Cerastus Knights

Lances/Shields

3x Cerastus Knights

Chainfists/Flamers

 

Second Lance:
5x Questoris Knights

Battlecannons/Gatling guns

3x Questoris Knights

Dual Melee

3x Questoris Knights

Dual Melee

 

The restriction of every model in a banner being armed the same really sucks.

Yeah, that's a picture of the Porphyrion from when it was still in early development. It really grew up... 

 

 

Has anyone had a whirl at an all Knights verses Knights battle yet? I know the options are a little limited at this stage, with only two Knight chassis released so far. But, I must confess that I'm itching to add more of the tiny tots to my collection.

 

I'm awfully tempted to try for an all-Knight campaign, possibly set before the Heresy, in a setting similar to Molech. Each player controls their own House, freely making and breaking alliances, trading resources, land, weapons and spare parts, and sallying forth in support of whatever claimant to the title of High King takes their fancy. Essentially the Wars of the Roses, but with giant robots. 

 

(Even George R. R. Martin didn't think of that!) :happy.:

 

A game of Throne Mechanicums? :teehee:

 

 

 

I see what you did there! :biggrin.:

If I make an all-knight army then I think I’ll wait for more of them to come out. It doesn’t seem that much fun to make a list out of two unit entries and where the only viable approach is “run as fast as you can and hope for the best”.

 

Acastus knights are probably what will, or maybe won’t, make the list work. I’m interested to see whether it’s actually a good idea to take them or if trying to engage titans in a shoot-out is as bad an idea as it sounds. It would also be cool to have a resin conversion kit for the fancy admech questoris knights just for some variety.

 

I don’t really know what to do with my existing knights in the meantime. I’ve painted one as Mamaragon and I’m pretty happy with it, so I might paint a few more like that for now. I’ll focus on titans for now though.

Yeah... I'd also assume the Acastus may be held off until the variant(s) is released in 28mm scale. There's the Porphyrion that we all know and there's the Mechanicum variant as well which has what looks like massive Volkite (or are they Conversion Beamers?) weaponry. Whether Volkite hops over to Titanicus is obviously yet to be seen but that may hold the date of the Mechanicum Questoris Knights as well.

 

Edit: it does look to be some sort of gigantic Conversion Beamers while there are Volkite weaponry around the torso, so it would appear that rules would need to be established for both types. That IF the Asterius as it seems to be called makes the leap along with the Porphyrion.

Hmph, I guess they'll have to get their own kit.

 

1490pts:

 

First Lance:

4x Cerastus Knights

Lances/Shields

4x Cerastus Knights

Lances/Shields

3x Cerastus Knights

Chainfists/Flamers

 

Second Lance:

5x Questoris Knights

Battlecannons/Gatling guns

3x Questoris Knights

Dual Melee

3x Questoris Knights

Dual Melee

 

The restriction of every model in a banner being armed the same really sucks.

Update:

 

1490pts:

 

Lance 1:

3 Cerastus Knights

Lances

3 Cerastus Knights

Lances

3 Cerastus Knights

Chainfists/Flamers

 

Lance 2:

5 Questoris Knights

Battlecannons/Gatlings

5 Questoris Knights

Thermal cannons/chainswords

4 Questoris Knights

Dual Chainswords

 

 

By dropping a very expensive Cerastus Knight from each of the first two banners I can boost a 3 man banner of CC Questoris Knights to 4 models and the other 3 man banner to 5 thermal cannons for a little more boom.  Cerastus Knights are really expensive and I could just see a lucky Volcano cannon nuking them in one blast.

 

Should shooty Questoris Knights get the coordinated strike order in a titan battlegroup?

 

Hmph, I guess they'll have to get their own kit.

 

1490pts:

 

First Lance:

4x Cerastus Knights

Lances/Shields

4x Cerastus Knights

Lances/Shields

3x Cerastus Knights

Chainfists/Flamers

 

Second Lance:

5x Questoris Knights

Battlecannons/Gatling guns

3x Questoris Knights

Dual Melee

3x Questoris Knights

Dual Melee

 

The restriction of every model in a banner being armed the same really sucks.

Update:

 

1490pts:

 

Lance 1:

3 Cerastus Knights

Lances

3 Cerastus Knights

Lances

3 Cerastus Knights

Chainfists/Flamers

 

Lance 2:

5 Questoris Knights

Battlecannons/Gatlings

5 Questoris Knights

Thermal cannons/chainswords

4 Questoris Knights

Dual Chainswords

 

 

By dropping a very expensive Cerastus Knight from each of the first two banners I can boost a 3 man banner of CC Questoris Knights to 4 models and the other 3 man banner to 5 thermal cannons for a little more boom.  Cerastus Knights are really expensive and I could just see a lucky Volcano cannon nuking them in one blast.

 

Should shooty Questoris Knights get the coordinated strike order in a titan battlegroup?

 

 

The first thing that strikes me about this list is: two activations at 1500 points. Ouch. I think I'd definitely split the banners into their minimum sizes and maybe also take some freeblades. Or do you think it might be a good thing to have fewer activations so that your charges hit harder?

 

There's a possible case for big banners to play stratagems on. So you could do this for your Seneschal's banner. House Mamaragon has a great strat where a banner can't attack or be attacked for a turn, so I could see a case for using that on a unit of 6 lancers.

 

For the list itself I think it makes sense for all questoris knights to have a melee weapon and a gun. The bonus in cc from a second combat weapon seems pretty slight in my opinion. One extra swing is probably worse than a shot with an avenger at that point. And I really don't think there's much use for Crusaders that can't fight in melee at all - they'll never out-shoot titans and shouldn't try to. So I'd go for banners of paladins, errants and wardens, not gallants and crusaders.

 

Hope that's useful. I'm not sure if it's correct.

My thought is that when Knights are your only target I have a feeling that laserblasters, macro gatling cannons, and missile spam are going to cause a lot of casualties.  Titans absorb a lot of fire but Knights don't, the 6" coherency between banners means you won't be able to leapfrog terrain as easily to block LoS.  On most table layouts I've seen you'll almost always have targets out in the open.  The shooty units are larger to take advantage of the coordinated fire order, the thermal cannons may not need it but the battle cannons and gatlings do. 

 

I'd have to sit down and roll out the math but is it better to lose a few two man banners of Cerastus Knights or hope a three or four man banner can shield their way into melee?  Since Knights excel in CC and can't swap spit with titans is it almost better to go melee only?  Just thermal cannon/chainsword Questoris Knights and Cerastus lancers going straight at the enemy like the charge of the light brigade?

 

1495 Minimum Sized Units:

Lance 1:

3 Cerastus Knights

Lances

2 Cerastus Knights

Lances

2 Cerastus Knights

Lances

 

Lance 2:

2 Cerastus Knights

Lances

2 Cerastus Knights

Lances

2 Cerastus Knights

Lances

 

Lance 3:

3 Questoris Knights

Thermal cannons/Chainsword

3 Questoris Knights

Thermal cannons/Chainsword

3 Questoris Knights

Thermal cannons/Chainsword

You can also get 18 Questoris Knights with thermal cannons/chainswords with one melta gun for 1500pts and forgo the lancers.  18 knights is kinda a lot but I kinda want the 50 point battle standard too.

 

The messed up part is just because the household list is available I know I'm going to buy all these models at some point.  

 

1500pts:

 

Lance 1:

2 Cerastus Knights

Lances

Battle Standard

2 Cerastus Knights

Lances

2 Cerastus Knights

Chainfists/Flamers

 

Lance 2:

3 Questoris Knights

Thermal cannons/Chainsword

3 Questoris Knights

Thermal cannons/Chainsword

3 Questoris Knights

Thermal cannons/Chainsword

 

Lance 3:

3 Questoris Knights

Thermal cannons/Chainsword

3 Questoris Knights

Thermal cannons/Chainsword

3 Questoris Knights

Thermal cannons/Chainsword

I definitely wouldn't go for all thermal cannons - mainly because of the hassle of buying them all. And actually avenger gatling cannons are pretty good with the new order. 8 S6 shots from a 150 point banner is respectable firepower - probably better than 3 at S8 from the thermals. And 24 S3 shots against a damaged titan can do good work too.

 

The battlecannons are a bit of a problem though. Coordinating them gives you 2 shots at S8. I think they're probably better off just shooting normally for 6 shots at S5, which you can at least use to knock down shields. It's not a bad thing that they don't need orders - it means you could run them as freeblades to get more activations.

Question: Ruleswise, can we use lances of different Houses in a Household Force aslong as all banners within a lance are from the same? So for example, an army made up of 2 Lances of Devine, 1 Lance of Malinax and 2 banners of Freeblades? - of course rules are just a framework so I'll prolly end up doing exactly this anyways haha ^.^

Should be possible, just like one can run maniples of different Legios together. With Knights it's not going to matter too much, given they only gain house benefits in the form of scion traits and some specific stratagems (which ******* should've been in the book too, there was even obvious white space on the house pages for that purpose).

Yeah the House specific rules seem to apply to the Senechal of which you only have one in a household force. You won’t be getting much of a benefit there.

High Scions get them too, but still just one per Lance. Many of those traits do effect the whole Lance, though.

Well, now we have three Knight chassis! That gives as much variety to a Household as a Titan Legio currently enjoys. 

 

But I hope the Acastus doesn't display too much 'power creep' compared to the lesser Titans. I love the idea of all-Knight battles, but I do worry if we will see the little guys grow to dominate the game with sheer numbers. Hopefully, the relative inflexibility caused by their low number of activations will keep Knights from running rampant. 

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