Tactics Discussion: Knight Household Force

[DuskRaider]

I don't think the Acastus will swing the power to Knights. If anything it may help them live a bit longer, but you still have little in the way of ranged anti-armour and considering they still have to move in a formation I still see it as an uphill battle.

[Zephaniah Adriyen]

Obligatory "not a Titanicus player".

 

If I built Titanicus Knights, I'd make two groups of them. First would be House Astor, a Questor Mechanicus household sworn to Forge World Ragnarus. Second would be the Traitors of Leviathan, ex-Astor Nurglite Knights lead by Lord Leviathan. All would be Questoris knights, because frankly, I'd like to have the option to one day actually build any Titanicus-scale Knights I build in 40k scale without shelling out all the money in the world for FW Knights.

[Perry]

I don't think the Acastus will swing the power to Knights. If anything it may help them live a bit longer, but you still have little in the way of ranged anti-armour and considering they still have to move in a formation I still see it as an uphill battle.

If rumours are true you could have a Lance of 3 single banner Acastus Knights for an easy bonus Strategum point. The guns seem pretty good on them as well, probably enough to worry the Titan player giving your lancers a chance to get further up the field.

[DuskRaider]

That could work if you take multiple Lances. You'd have to have another Lance of just Cerastus.

[Mandragola]

It doesn’t look like knights will dominate titans so far. The Acastus might be pretty badass, judging by squinting at the images of its datacard, but it’s still a knight. It can be take out relatively easily by a big gun - though it is a lot tougher than the others. You need a 17 to get a crit, which is only possible for bellicosas, melta cannons and warlord fists.

 

Acastus knights look pretty useful for killing other knights and lighter titans, but I think they’ll struggle to take on warlords. We’ll see when we get their full rules.

 

They’ll be pretty strong on first fire. 360 arcs and no reactors to overheat means they can zap away all game, if left unmolested.

 

To play against knights we’ll want every titans to have at least one gun or ccw with a good strength. They are seriously resilient against stuff like mega bolters and gatlings, so a titan only armed with those won’t be too much use.

[Fajita Fan]

Obligatory "not a Titanicus player".

 

If I built Titanicus Knights, I'd make two groups of them. First would be House Astor, a Questor Mechanicus household sworn to Forge World Ragnarus. Second would be the Traitors of Leviathan, ex-Astor Nurglite Knights lead by Lord Leviathan. All would be Questoris knights, because frankly, I'd like to have the option to one day actually build any Titanicus-scale Knights I build in 40k scale without shelling out all the money in the world for FW Knights.

1500pts of AT Questoris Knights is 18 models. That’s a lot of 40k Knights...

[Zephaniah Adriyen]

Who said I'd build all of them? Lord Leviathan and Princeps Astor are probably the only two who'll actually get built, but still.

[Fajita Fan]

The word “any” seemed that way to me. *shrug*

[Fajita Fan]

Veeeeerrry tempted to get two lances of a Household force done for when the new rifleman Knights come out...

[Sherrypie]

Mandragola, don't forget Coordinated Attacks from squadrons. Warhound plasma is still among the best answers too, even if it does require more than one engine to have a chance to instakill them from range.

[Mandragola]

Mandragola, don't forget Coordinated Attacks from squadrons. Warhound plasma is still among the best answers too, even if it does require more than one engine to have a chance to instakill them from range.

Oh yeah plasma is great vs knights. It's one of the best ways to get rid of them. I'm definitely not saying that warhounds are bad against them, only that particular load-outs might be. A double-vulcan or gatling warhound or reaver could really struggle, especially with lancers getting a 3+ save.

 

When shooting at knights you get a sort of double benefit from strength. You're more likely to hurt them and they're less likely to save. And you never get a bonus to damage vs knights, like you do with damaged locations on titans, so anything S6 or lower (not that there are any S6 weapons, weirdly) is going to be pretty ineffective.

 

Acastus knights are probably a good thing for the game, and certainly make the knight list more interesting. One thing they seem to have in common with other knights is that they're very reliant on orders, with a huge benefit from going on first fire. That gives knight players a tough decision on which orders they prioritise. I think it means you'll want some guys who don't need orders so much, such as manybe some freeblade paladins with missiles on the roof to strip shields, and group the guys who do need orders into lances. Solo Acastus knights might be a good way to get activations but they'll struggle to get their orders.

[noigrim]

Tried the knight lance today, quite effective with two banners killing a warlord in a single strike.

For strats the smoke barrage and plasma mines were ace,the interference not so much, should have taken a command bastion instead

[DuskRaider]

I hear Blind Barrage on Lancers is pretty good too.

[Fajita Fan]

I’m still listbiilding but is anyone finding it efficient to take much in the way of shooting until the new Acastus are released? Knights, especially Cerastus, seem so much better getting stuck in that I can’t really justify building around the combined fire rule. Why bother trying to strip shields when it’s best to have lancers run up and poke them in the dangly bits? Rule of cool makes me want to run a banner of battle cannons and a banner of gatlings to lay down cover fire but how points efficient is that when you have to advance with three banners at a time in coherency. It makes me want to simply rush forward and consider Knights more like Khorne Beserkers.

 

*edit: there’s a solution to this: simply stop list building until the Acastus are released and you see their points to work in dedicated shooting platforms which would allow you to waste less time with Knight conversions and get painting the hundreds of dollars of actual titans you have.

[Mandragola]

Ignoring knights and focusing on titans is certainly my current approach. I don't want to buy more knights now only to find that they aren't needed once the full list is released. Doubly so, now we hear that they'll come with the upgrade sprue in future.

 

I do think there's a case for shooting, and for coordinated fire. But coordinated fire is strictly only of use for knights with a single avenger gatling cannon, and possibly castigators if they are ever released. For any other gun it's not worth losing the shots just to get a bit more strength. For instance you wouldn't swap 3 S8 shots from thermal cannons for a single shot at S11, I don't think. Likewise 6 S5 shots from battle cannons are nearly always going to be better than 2 shots at S8.

 

What I might suggest would be a lance of 2x3 wardens led by two Castigators and another of 2x3 errants led by a banner of lancers. You want the Cerastus knights to be in charge of every lance because they have a better command value, so you can use that to give an order to the whole lance.

 

Then run the paladins as independent freeblade banners, possibly with missile pods on their roofs. Their job is to wander around without requiring orders, shooting shields off things. They also help get more activations, which is likely to be a problem for lances otherwise.

 

And finally, lances made of single Acastus knights for your fire support. To sit back and blast things on first fire orders.

 

The command bunker asset is a really good call actually. There could easily be several lances covered by its radius at least on turn one, helping you get off some crucial first stride orders. Failing your first one of those could end a game otherwise, I think.

 

All of that would probably come to far too many points. I haven't tried adding it up yet, and won't bother doing it properly until we get to see the acastus card properly. In fact I'd say that right now is the worst possible time to buy knights, just before we see an improved box and the release of the Acastus. Paint those titans instead!

[noigrim]

My knights go full cqc termal cannon and reaper

[Fajita Fan]

Ignoring knights and focusing on titans is certainly my current approach. I don't want to buy more knights now only to find that they aren't needed once the full list is released. Doubly so, now we hear that they'll come with the upgrade sprue in future.

 

I do think there's a case for shooting, and for coordinated fire. But coordinated fire is strictly only of use for knights with a single avenger gatling cannon, and possibly castigators if they are ever released. For any other gun it's not worth losing the shots just to get a bit more strength. For instance you wouldn't swap 3 S8 shots from thermal cannons for a single shot at S11, I don't think. Likewise 6 S5 shots from battle cannons are nearly always going to be better than 2 shots at S8.

 

What I might suggest would be a lance of 2x3 wardens led by two Castigators and another of 2x3 errants led by a banner of lancers. You want the Cerastus knights to be in charge of every lance because they have a better command value, so you can use that to give an order to the whole lance.

 

Then run the paladins as independent freeblade banners, possibly with missile pods on their roofs. Their job is to wander around without requiring orders, shooting shields off things. They also help get more activations, which is likely to be a problem for lances otherwise.

 

And finally, lances made of single Acastus knights for your fire support. To sit back and blast things on first fire orders.

 

The command bunker asset is a really good call actually. There could easily be several lances covered by its radius at least on turn one, helping you get off some crucial first stride orders. Failing your first one of those could end a game otherwise, I think.

 

All of that would probably come to far too many points. I haven't tried adding it up yet, and won't bother doing it properly until we get to see the acastus card properly. In fact I'd say that right now is the worst possible time to buy knights, just before we see an improved box and the release of the Acastus. Paint those titans instead!

I don’t know how to like a post on mobile.

[Fajita Fan]

Knight Crusader.

 

Discuss.

[Fajita Fan]

I *may* have bought two more boxes each of Cerastus and Questoris knights.

[Fajita Fan]

I like the idea of Cerastus knights leading Questoris banners for the extra command.

 

1995pts:

 

Lance One:

4 Cerastus Knights (Senechal's banner)

2 Lancers, 1 sword/gatling, 1 chainfist/flamer

Battle Standard

2 Cerastus Knights

Lances/shields

2 Cerastus Knights

Lances/shields

 

Lance Two:
3 Cerastus Knights

Lances/shields

3 Questoris Knights

Dual melee weapons

3 Questoris Knights

Thermal cannons/melee

 

Lance Three:

2 Cerastus Knights

Lances/shields

3 Questoris Knights

Thermal cannons/melee

3 Questoris Knights

Battlecannons/gatlings

 

4 Freeblade Questoris Knights

The Last Highlander of Caledonia (Gatling/melee)

The Shadow Thief (Dual melee)

The Iron Butterfly (Battlecannon/melee)

The Hibernian Lancer (Thermal cannon/melee)

 

 

 

So I'm sure this is suboptimal on several levels but then again my regular legio lists tend be suboptimal and more about coolness than combat efficiency.  

[Atia]

Knight Crusader.

 

Discuss.

Mostly depends - can you use coordinated strike one one weapon aswell as normal shooting on the other in the same round? 

[Fajita Fan]

I think both weapons have to be coordinated strikes if that banner is issued the order. It says you follow the normal attack sequence (steps 2-5) on page 33 but you make one attack roll instead of rolling each weapon’s shots. That means you choose the Gatling gun, make a coordinated attack roll at S6 then fire a coordinated attack roll with the battlecannons at S8. If you have the rocket pods that’s also 3 shots at S8.

 

It feels like once you declare a coordinated attack all of your attack rolls for the banner have to be coordinated.

[Zhiv]

I think both weapons have to be coordinated strikes if that banner is issued the order. It says you follow the normal attack sequence (steps 2-5) on page 33 but you make one attack roll instead of rolling each weapon’s shots. That means you choose the Gatling gun, make a coordinated attack roll at S6 then fire a coordinated attack roll with the battlecannons at S8. If you have the rocket pods that’s also 3 shots at S8.

 

It feels like once you declare a coordinated attack all of your attack rolls for the banner have to be coordinated.

 

Another example of sloppy writing in Molech - they didn't bother to think what explicitly happens if someone puts 2+ guns on a knight.  Especially as knight porphyron comes with two sets of guns...

[Mandragola]

Agreed on the sloppy writing. My reading of the rules is that you only get to use one gun, according to RAW.

 

As such, I don’t think crusaders are ever worth it. To be honest I mostly think they’d be a bad choice anyway even if they could coordinate two guns, as the best way for questoris knights to hurt things is in melee.

 

Another rubbish bit of the rules as written is that they don’t work for knights with two of the same gun. The sequence is that you pick a gun and multiply the number of shots by the number of knights – not the number of guns. So if you have 3 knights with a battlecannon you get the same number of shots as if you have 3 knights with two battlecannons each.

 

Now, it’s obvious what the rules ought to be, and probably no player is going to hold their opponent to the strict RAW… but you can’t really excuse bad writing just because everyone will know to work around it. It's not good enough to say that we can probably figure out what they meant, when often we can't.

[Sherrypie]

What exactly is sloppy in it, folks? You only ever use the characteristics of a singular gun and only one attack gets made. This doesn't care if it has two or ten guns on it. It's not sloppy, even if you don't like it or see it as that useful. The writing is clear.