Tactics Discussion: Knight Household Force

[Fajita Fan]

You’ve convinced me not to make a banner of Crusaders, instead the Crusader I’ve already built and sprayed will be one of my Freeblades in my small banner I use to fill out points. 

 

I wish I could get more Gatling guns to make Castigators, I might use the model I 3D printed for Gaslands models once my printer at work is doing better. 

[Fajita Fan]

As I was working on my command banner last night I gave thought to ranged Questoris banners and their role, I think we (and I’m looking at myself here) have missed a threat that we need to consider when building household lists.

 

Other Knights.

 

So I build a lot of titan lists at work in Excel when it slows down and plenty of them contain no knights but in battle reports I’ve seen knights are really commonly fielded. Now if I’m marching four Cerastus knights across a table to go play pin the tail on the Warlord one of the best ways to slow them down is sending out other knights to trap them or even whittle them down.

 

Combined fire from Gatlings or battlecannons might be a good way to get my most critical meleers past pickets trying block their Warlords and Reavers.

[Mandragola]

To be honest I think the opposite is the case. Taking out knights doesn’t require low-strength multi-shot guns. It requires very high strength guns. Remember that knights aren’t infantry to be gunned down in a hail of fire – they are large and heavily-armoured war machines protected by ion shields.

 

This is because ion shields are actually very good against low-strength guns. And you still need a 9+ to actually hurt knights. Bear in mind that knights have no side or rear arcs and you never get bonuses to hurt them, which is what lets you use these guns effectively on titans. 

 

Consider a banner firing gatling guns at an equal banner of 3. 24 shots. 12 hit with BS4+. 6 4+ saves are passed, so 6 go through. You need to roll a 6 with your strength of 3 to do damage, so that works out as a single point of structural damage on a knight. With battlecannons you have 6 shots, 3 hits, 1.5 failed saves and 0.66 damage.

 

Even on a Questoris knight you need a minimum of S7 to have any chance of a devastating hit. That’s also the point at which the ion shield save drops to a 5+.

 

A far better way to get rid of them is with things like plasma blastguns, volcano cannons (either kind) or melta cannons on reavers.

 

One of the reasons I don’t like equipping titans like reavers and warhounds with double Vulcan/gatling is that I think you’d find the load-out virtually useless against a knight army. If you had a pair of warhounds it’d be much better to give each of them a plasma gun and a bolter, rather than having one double-plasma and one double-bolter titan. The knight player can focus on the plasma titan and ignore the bolter one.

 

These guns are great for knocking down shields and for aiming into damaged locations to finish off a damaged titan. They aren’t for killing knights.

[Fajita Fan]

We’ll see, I might a few games in next month when my friends are around.

[Sherrypie]

For knight hunting, there might actually be a case to be made on Acherons that go for Coordinated Strikes. Say, a banner of three run up and CooStrike another banner with a Str 10 flamer. If you get say four hits (three models under), it actually does increase your expected damage while also allowing instant kills.

[Fajita Fan]

For knight hunting, there might actually be a case to be made on Acherons that go for Coordinated Strikes. Say, a banner of three run up and CooStrike another banner with a Str 10 flamer. If you get say four hits (three models under), it actually does increase your expected damage while also allowing instant kills.

This could be fun too, I feel like the chainfist/flamer is better than the sword/gatling in most cases. 

[Fajita Fan]

So I made a kinda dumb move as I looked over the Cerastus stats last night. I made a flamer for my command squad to go along with 3 lancers so I’d have a ranged attack totally forgetting about the shield attack. Four lancers doing a combined strike do 2 S10 attacks! By making a flamer in the squad I can’t issue them the combined strike order...

[Sherrypie]

Yes you can, that model just doesn't contribute? I don't see any reason in the rules text that would prevent a mixed Banner from using the Order, even if it does so with a reduced effect. So you can do a S9 CS with the three shields if you wish.

[1ncarnadine]

Mixed banners can't use the Order because the only mixed banners allowed in a Knights list are the Baronial Court and Freeblades. It's explicit in the rules for each that they can't use Coordinated Strikes.

So, no, he can't CS, but I would argue that it's not a huge loss anyway. They're BS4+ with only two shots, which is miserable, though they do get re-rolls of 1s... And they want to be w/in 2" to use their lances, but another problem with a Coordinated Strike is that it can't be used by Knights that are w/in 2" of a target.

[Fajita Fan]

And I’ll probably be charging anyway.

[Sherrypie]

Was the Court prevented from using it? Huh, must've slipped my mind.

[Fajita Fan]

Only if you take mixed weapons.

[Sherrypie]

Huh, so it is indeed. Damn Porphyrions should come out already, so I could field a Lance and get more intimately familiar with those rules :P

[DuskRaider]

I figured we would hear something about them by now...

[Fajita Fan]

Okay, theoryhammer time: instead of 3 lances of 3 banners at 2k why not two lances a bunch of freeblades to fill out points for even more activations? It’s not like they can’t take objectives or something. Is having more activations worth giving up the ability to issue orders?

 

Granted these are things I could playtest, I just wish my friends didn’t live at least an hour away and we didn’t have different schedules.

[noigrim]

At 2k I would go 4x3 questoris banners for a total of 36 knights

[Sherrypie]

To Fajita's theory question, I would probably try to have a pair of dedicated Lances doing one thing and a bunch of Freeblades granting activations. You need activations, preferably more of them than your opponent, or you cannot dodge out of the big guns' way with your important Banners. With any Lances in there, you probably cannot really out-activate them and casualties cannot be avoided, but at least it's an even contest in that regard. Those Lances ought to then work as the lynchpins of your strategy, whether it be a wide cheap tide or more concentrated Cerastus charge.

[Fajita Fan]

I have four activations at 2k before the Acastus knights come out but I’m planning more freeblades just because I enjoy making themed models.

[Kilofix]

Some questions:

 

1. Do I need at least 2 Lances to take a Seneschal? Or can I do so with just 1 Lance and a Maniple?

 

2. If I have a Legio Trait as well as a Household Trait and my opponent only has a Legio Trait - does my opponent get +2 Strategem points?

[Mandragola]

1. So far as anyone can tell, the rules seem to be that you can have lances or maniples, but not both. The knight household army list appears to be separate to the Titan legion one. They have separate stratagems and mission objectives too.

 

It has to be said, this is far from clear in the book, so this question gets asked all the time. It does say that a household force can have reinforcements, which according to the main book would mean individual titans and knight banners, not part of a maniple or lance. So you’re probably supposed to be allowed to bring some titans along with your knights.

 

In any case, a household army always gets a seneschal, even if it has only one lance. A titan army has no lances and therefore no seneshals.

 

I don’t think household traits give stratagem points at all. Check the faq for how legios give stratagem points. If both players have a legio then nobody gets bonus points.

[Kilofix]

That makes sense - thanks Mandragola.

 

Otherwise, if taking a Titan Maniple as the main force, there’s still no limit to how many Knight Household Support Banners can be used as reinforcements right? They just don’t get any High Scions nor Household Traits?

 

Most of my Knight banners seem to get shot off the table very quickly by Warlord Volcano Cannons, or Warhound Plasma Blast Guns - especially as such are high strength and also blast. Maybe I need to find a way to keep them completely out of sight better.

[Fajita Fan]

The Seneschal and knight traits are only part of the all-knight household list. The biggest downside I can see to the list is coherency rule that banners within a lance need to be within 6”, good luck using terrain to block LoS.