The Bringers of Judgment - Dr. Ruminahui's knights

[Dr_Ruminahui]

And here is the last of the 4.

 

 

And here are all 4 together, each representing 1 of the 5 types of wardoges you can take (all types except the Stalker, which is essentially a Huntsman with more options but not for a  carapace meltagun).

 

 

Now that all 4 are done, I need to decide how to spruce up their bases.

 

And finally my next knight project:

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Here are some pictures of my abominant so far - finished the bottom half, so I would say I'm about 1/4 to 1/3 done.  The tabard is a place holder - I'll repaint it later if I come up with a better idea as how to paint it.

 

 

And here is a picture of its swappable butt - so I can field it either as a abominant (with tail) or a different type abhorent class (no tail) knight.

 

[killersquid]

Looking great!

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Thanks, @killersquid.  I was looking at your own chaos knights in the gallery - fantastic stuff.  For those who haven't seen them, here's a link: https://bolterandchainsword.com/gallery/album/17625-killersquids-chaos-knights/

 

Edited March 30, 2023 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Still plugging way at the knight  - almost done the top of the carapace, only things left are the bolts, the smokestacks and the shoulder pauldrons.

 

 

Here it is from the front.

 

 

Looking for some suggestions as to what colour to do the melted face mask - I'm currently leaning towards either pale flesh (which I will then try to make look like it is bleeding) or white.  Do you guys have a preference or a better suggestion?

Edited April 3, 2023 by Dr_Ruminahui

[RolandTHTG]

All your knights look great. 

 

What about a purple blending to the carapace pink on the most melted areas? 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Thanks for the suggestion, @RolandTHTG - ultimately that seemed too hard for me, so I went with I intended to look like a flayed face but ultimately ended up looking like... well, I'm not sure what, but it does look creatpy.  Here's the finished model, though the lighting isn't the best.

 

 

Here's a focus on his gun, which I am particularly happy with.

 

 

Anyway, I'll take a better full model photo when after I base him, and a group photo of all my knights when they are all based.

[sitnam]

Really love this Knight House. The faceplate and space marine trophies look great

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Thanks a lot, Sitnam - I'm pretty happy with how its coming together.

 

Not the best photos, but I've based 2 of my wardogs:

 

 

Working on the bases of my other 2 - they will be similar, but sandbags instead of or in addition to the barbed wire.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

My other 2 wardogs are based:

 

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

We now have both our index and the point costs (at page 11) for 10e - I go into my thoughts on the point cost in a fair bit of detail here.

 

As I've posted earlier in this thread, I got maybe 3 games in during 9e with the following list, and it did fairly well against my friends' orks and necrons (just listing the stuff that costs points, as the household choices, relics, warlord traits and which psychic powers I chose aren't really relevant for this current discussion.

• Despoiler (505 points) with battlecannon & stubber, gatling with darkflamer, carapace stubber and havoc launcher.
• Abominant (460 points) with its fixed loadout and the subjugator machine spirit mark favour of slannesh
• Rampager (420 points) with its fixed loadout and quicksilver throne favour of slannesh
• 2x Executioner wardogs (310 point for both) with their autocannons and stubbers
• 2x Stalker wardogs (300 points for both), one with talon and chaingun, other with melta and chainsword

Overall, not counting replacing the marks of slannesh with enhancements, this list is 260 points cheaper in 10e.  Biggest saving was on the Dispoiler, which dropped almost 100 points by having its weapons boiled into its point cost, but everything came down at least some (though some of the drop on the ravager and abominant is from the loss of their marks).

 

So... what to do with those 260 points?  Unfortunately, that's not enough to get 2 wardogs, no matter how I equip them.

 

While I only have 4 wardogs now (which are magnitized and I can use to field up to 2 of any of the variants), I think this is my long term goal:

• Despoiler - replace the gatling & darkflamer with a 2nd battlecannon & stubber - the battlecannons just look so good this edition - and the carapace havoc with the heavy missiles instead.
• Swap an Executioner for a Brigand.
• Swap the Stalker with melta and chainsword for a Huntsman with same loadout but a carapace melta instead of the stubber.
• Add a Karnivore.

This would let me field one of each different type of wardog, to let me get a feel for which I like best.  These changes would cost me another 180 points, bringing me to 1920, letting me take any 2 (but not 3, regardless of choices) enhancements.  To do this, I would need to buy, build and paint another wardog, though, so I would have to wait on this list.

 

One list I could try right now, as I have all the models is take out 2 of the wardogs and put in a Tyrant with volcano cannon and plasma, with 2x carapace missiles and 1x carapace cannons (485 points), which I do have painted.  That would leave me 45 points with which I could either take an Enhancement and/or upgrade the remaining wardogs to a more expensive types.

 

Let me know what you think. 

 

 

 

Edited June 16, 2023 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Dr_Ruminahui]

So, I was finishing up the bases on my big knights, then Call to Arms happened and postponed that.  Now that call to arms is over, I had the chance to return and get that done. 

 

While I was at it, I thought up some names to give my big knights.

 

So, first I did a dead body for the base of my abominant:

 

 

Then I did the same for the base of my rampager - not sold on my positioning of the bits, and seperating the bolter from the arm might have been a mistake.

 

 

Then the lot got names.  This is the first time I've done fancier letters for capitals and I think for the most part they turned out nicely.  For each, I tried to centre the wording on the focus of the model... with mixed results.

 

First up, my Tyrant "Lessons in Woe" - which I figured fit in with him being potentially nurgle marked (the "Woe" bit) and my more general theme of judgment and seeking perfection (the "Lessons" part). 

 

 

Next was my Abominant "Sublime Dictate", who is potentially Tzeench marked - the "Sublime" fits with Tzeench (sublimation being the transformation from solid directly into a gas) and "Dictate" being judgmenty.

 

 

Then, there is my potentially Khornate "The Hunger" - which doesn't really fit any theme other than the Khorne one, but fits the model well.

 

 

Finally, is my Slaaneshi themed "Dulce et Decorum Est" (latin for "It is sweet and proper"), which ticks a number of boxes in that it is a) latin b) austentatious sounding (very Slaanesh) c) from a poem with the phrase "ecstacy of fumbling" which is what made me think of the name in the first place and d) highly ironic, as the poem is about how ugly it is to die from being gassed (which also seems very 40K and Slaaneshi).

 

 

Finally, the whole gang together:

 

 

Someday, I will give the little knights emblems on their shoulders, but I haven't thought of what yet.

 

Oh, and the little ones are still unnamed, so if you have any suggestions, please let me know.

Edited October 14, 2023 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Brother Christopher]

I know that I repeat myself, but I am a huge fan of your knights. The paint scheme works really, really well. I think that when I finally get around to painting mine, I'll go with a purple...

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Thanks, @Brother Christopher, and I certainly don't mind the repetition, if and when such may occur. 

 

Myself, I am a big fan of purple generally, and I'm really happy at how I've been able to carry that particular purple (and those pinks) successfully over my 3 chaos armies (here are links to my chaos marines and demons if you haven't seen them).  I look forward to seeing yours in purple as well - your stuff is all excellent, and it will be interesting to seeing how you carry out similar-ish colour scheme in your own style.

Edited November 7, 2023 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Brother Christopher]

You're right and I feel that purples are underused in 40k's official paint schemes, especially of the power-armour flavour. I remember being disappointed by discovering that there weren't basically any purple loyalist chapters, apart from Hawk-something who were supposed to be lost/dead (at least that's what I remember, it probably was around 12 years ago).

 

To be frank, I can't stress enough how like your take on these walkers. No offence, but I've seen Knights that technically are painted 'better' than yours but somehow they don't resonate with me as much as your work. It must be a mix of your choice of colours, customisations and painting style/techniques (I'm loving the way you're highlighting these). I'm feeling a 4-5th edition vibe in your aesthetic and I mean this as a praise:  back then, official paintjobs on models used to look amazing but not as intimidating as some of the newer ones.

 

It's not an exaggeration to say that this thread inspired me to keep my loyalist Knight (that I've already posted on an online marketplace). I don't know when I'll get around to painting him but at least for now I know I want to give it a go.

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I agree about the lacking of purple in official 40K schemes - can't speak to the various knight houses as I'm not too familiar with them, but the only official 40K schemes I can think of that are purple are the Leviathan Tyranid scheme (the best looking nid scheme, IMHO), the original Dark Eldar scheme (though that was the darkest purple) and one of the rarer Ad Mech schemes.  Though, GW generally underuses purple as even in Fantasy Battles/Age of Sigmar there are only a few factions that use it.

 

Which brings us, funnily enough, on how my chaos armies came about - when I first started collecting the models, it was under the 3.5 edition codex as Night Lords, but it didn't go anywhere as I didn't enjoy the blue colour scheme (at the time my main army were sisters of battle in blue) and I didn't have the energy to do all the converting I had in mind to make the army work.  At the end of 7th when I was seeking to reboot the effort, I realized for it to work it had to be colours that I enjoyed painting, which is why I decided on purple.  I then looked at what official chaos forces were in purple and... it was either Soul Drinkers or the 30K colours for Emperor's Children.  Given that the Soul Drinkers are the dumbest marines I've ever encountered (they thought their Chapter Master getting spider legs was because the Emperor loved them), I made my force Emperor's Children who used the old colours.  I then went through a number of purples before settling on the one I use for them and my other chaos armies (its a 50/50 mix of genestealer purple and a fluorescent airbrush art paint).

 

I'm happy you like my painting style, which evolved during 3rd and 4th editions, so its not surprising that my style is evocative of that era. Highlighting, though, is a relatively newer technique for me, for although I had been using washes since I first started painting minis in my teens, I didn't really adopt it until I painted my first knight, (the now) Dulce et Decorum Est.  I do think knights lend them selves especially well to edge highlighting, both in that the technique looks best on large models with lots of larger spaces without many details, and that the larger scale of the models allows for wider highlights which helps keeping both line width and paint coverage consistent.  I'm also glad you like my kitbashing and minor conversions, which I do really feel help make the force feel like my own, more than just painting the models would.

 

As mentioned, I look forward to seeing your own purple knight when you begin work on it.  Though, rather than selling out to the corpse emperor, I recommend buying a chaos Abominant knight kit and kitbashing the two to have 2 chaos knights (that's what I did for my knights The Hunger and the Sublime Dictate, which are the two on the right of the group shot).  You could then start your own thread here and show off your progress.   

Edited November 8, 2023 by Dr_Ruminahui

[Dr_Ruminahui]

I got a game in just before the new years using the new grotmas detachment, the one that lets you use cultists and sacrifice them to give the knights dark pacts. 

 

I fielded a despoiler (2x battlecannon, stubber, havoc), a ravager and an abominant.  For my little guys, my friend let me field legends (as I don't have enought non-legends cultists), so I had 2x 10 man melee mobs, 2x 10 man firearms mobs with flamers and stubbers and 2x 10 man firearms mobs with flamers, stubbers and grenade launchers (I would have had grenade launchers in all my firearms mobs, but didn't manage to paint up the 2 extra I would have needed to do that).

 

Here's a (unfortunately blurry) photo of my force:

 

 

My friend played foot orks (green tide, I think) with 3x 20 ork mobs, 2 with warbosses and one with a wierd boy, a battle wagon, a truck with 10 burnas in it, 2x units with 3 coptas, 5 meganobs with a megamech and 5x lootas.  Here's a (also unfortunately blurry) photo of his army.

 

 

I got first turn, and was able to charge his meganobs with my ravager - if I had remembered to tank shock, I probably would have wiped them out - instead it turned into a 3 turn scrum with his battlewagon and 1 unit of coptas joining in.  I also advanced both my other knights - which was probably a mistake with the despoiler, and it got tagged by his other unit of coptas and then his unit of boys out of the battlewagon.  Still, it was able to shoot out of combat and still did a bunch of damage to his two other boys squads.

 

 

 

Above is a photo from about the middle of the game - you can see the despoiler and the ravager tied up in seperate melee combats, his boy squad in the middle having teleported to take away my stickied (thanks to my cultists) objective, my cultists advancing in the middle to take the center objective, and on the far side my abominant having wiped out the foot squad there with the help of the firepower from my despoiler and the cultists over there.  Incidentally, I do think fielding the legends cultists did give me an advantage, if only for the flamers, which killed a few orks... don't think their other guns did anything.

 

It was a fun game, but ultimately he didn't have enough to chip through the high toughness and many wounds of my knights, and didn't take any of them down.  Didn't help that my opponent had pretty poor dice rolling - or, when he did roll well to hit, he would roll crap to wound.  It doesn't help that orks don't have much in way of rerolls, and both orks and high T targets like my knights really punish bad dice luck.  Interestingly, this is the first game I've played where failed battleshock rolls actually had an effect - thanks to the -1 from my knights, my opponent failed pretty much every battleshock test he took, depriving him with stratagem use on some units that might have liked to use them, and letting me snag an objective on a turn where he would have otherwise had much more OC on it than I did.

 

I found the mechanics very fluffy and fun.  Personally, I think the reroll 1s to hit and wound is the stronger of the 2 cultist benefits (that and sticky objectives) - the "dark pacts" equivalent to get sustained hits was nice, but killing off your own models can hurt.  At the end of the game, where he was able to clear out my cultists, I really missed the rerolls more than the dark pacts... that said, given that he killed them in melee, for the most part, I don't think the self-inflicted casualties played too big of a part in them disappearing (it helped that I made all my dark pacts leadership tests).  Against a shootier enemy, you might not want to use dark pacts - though, against a very shooty unit, you might as well if your opponent is going to wipe the cultists out anyway.

Edited yesterday at 07:29 PM by Dr_Ruminahui

[Tallarn Commander]

Thanks for the batrep. The new Knight detachment looks really fun indeed.

[PeteySödes]

Nice report! Yea im itching for a game with the detachment and the "when to eat" question seems the one i want answered. Seems tricky to balance sacking them for buffs, using them as screens for stuff like the chattle strat, and legit holding obj. Did any of the strats for the detachment come into play for you?

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Thanks, @Tallarn Commander and @PeteySödes.  Hopefully my experience helped you determine when to eat your DAMNED models, Petey, though I imagine you'll need to get some of your own games in to determine what works best for your own army.

 

In terms of stratagems, here's my experience and thoughts on them:

 

Unrestrained Rage, the leave combat and still shoot and charge was huge for me - I used it both on the abominant and the despoiler, which in both cases let me (in addition to the benefits of the stratagem itself) move onto and take objectives I wouldn't have otherwise been able to get to (which is where the meaningful battleshock described above came in).  That said, otherwise wasn't too much in hurry to leave combat - even the Despoiler is relatively potent there, and both it and the Abominant are still pretty shooty even at -1, and even more so if there are some cultists nearby letting them reroll 1s (I haven't done the math, but I suspect rerolling 1s to hit and wounds effectively negates the -1).

 

Early in the game, I used Soul Hunger, the one that gains you D3 wounds if you kill models in melee (or D3+2 if the models were in a battleshocked unit) and found it... lackluster.   To be fair, though, I didn't get the battleshocked advantage.  Going forward I'll probably only use it if the destroyed models' unit is battleshocked, where the wounds might actually impact whether the knight survives the next round or if its clear I have nothing else to spend CP on.

 

Those are the only two I used - I might have used Preserve the idols, the one that lets you move a DAMNED unit when the enemy gets too close to your knight, in order to move up closer and possibly contest an objective, but my knight was in the way, so I didn't.  I think I would only ever use it in those circumstances - to potentially get an objective, but I could also doing it to better screen my knights.  That said, I don't really play with screening in mind... I would probably be a better player if I did.

 

The other ones, I think they are useful tools, just not ones I needed.  My list wasn't really configured to bring back units with Wretched Masses (2 CP for a 50 point unit isn't a great deal), though I could see it being useful in a tight game to potentially bring them out of reserves in the enemy's back field late game to snag an objective you might not be able to get to otherwise.  Worthless Chattel seems handy but is very niche - typically there will be plenty to shoot at without paying CP and potentially killing your models to shoot into melee, though it could be handy if your screen is holding back a unit you really don't want to reach your knights.  Avenge the Masters is also fine, but triggers on losing a knight, which I didn't... and buffs the combat power of my DAMNED units, which essentially don't have any.

 

So, while I can't really complain about its stratagems, as there are no outright duds and all of them seem serviceable at least some of the time, the only outright winner IMHO is Unrestrained Rage.  That said, if I were playing a shooty army (like my other friend's necrons) it would have been largely useless and I'm not sure what I would spend my CP on.  If I ever have that match up, I'll let you know here.