Do Chaos Knights really need CP?

[Mushkilla]

Something I've been thinking about is how CP hungry are Chaos Knights?

 

At first I thought they were more CP hungry than Imperial Knights but now I'm not so sure. To the point where I'm questioning even running an allied battalion.

 

Imperial knights need CP to take a bunch of relics and warlord traits (they tend to want to spend 6CP here as their relics and traits add a lot of raw power/survivability). Then they need CP for rotate ion shields and machine spirit resurgent (likely to be 2CP a turn) add order of the companions if you are house raven and you have a real CP burning machine.

 

Chaos Knights on the other hand definitely have the potential to be CP hungry. But after a closer look I feel they don't need to be. Our warlord traits are a mixed bag, and outside of taking warp haunted hull against armies with psykers I don't see myself spending CP on tyrannical court let alone 3CP. The same goes for our relics, we have some great match up specific relics but I don't see myself taking more than 2 (1 for free and 1 for 1 CP) of them in any given match up. Looking at the regular stratagems I don't see myself using them often either, as most are situational. Rotate ion shield is definitely strong but only when your opponent can't target multiple knights with the same weapons or has most of his firepower concentrated on a single unit. That leaves Trail of Destruction which is great. But, Is it better than having more stuff?

 

Trail of Destruction increases your damage output by:

 

BS/WS 3 33%

BS/WS 4 50%

BS/WS 5 66%

 

It actually gets more effective as you start to degrade. Being the least effective at BS3.

 

The cheapest red corsairs battalion we can field is:

 

2x warpsmith 3x 5 chaos marines - 315pts

 

This gets you 8 more CP and 17 T4 bodies. Say we have 3 knight despoilers each with reaper and avenger in this list. What can you do with those 8 CP? Increase the firepower of a single knight by 33-66% for 4 turns. Or you could drop the red corsair battalion and upgrade the reaper chainsaws on those knights to avenger Gatling cannons for 207pts increasing the firepower all your knights by 100% for the rest of the game.

 

Now I know this is an oversimplified and extreme example. But it does help focus the question on whether running that CP battalion (that doesn't being any other value) is really worth it.

[Excessus]

Other than generating CP don't they fill roles that the knights can't themselves though? Bring some chainguns for the csm to deal with hordes, hellwright to repair damaged knights and a cheep&cheerful sorcerer to throw hex and stuff at the enemy? 

[Stray]

It helps a great deal that many of our best tools we can pay for either with wounds, or with CP before the game. Imperial Knights are slightly less fortunate in that regard, though they probably have the bigger toolbox in terms of traits, relics and strats.

 

We also have a silly amount of access to CP if we want it. 

 

Trail of Destruction is shockingly good as an alternative to the 'use top bracket' strat we lack too isn't it? It doesn't help with movement certainly, but a Knight at half wounds using Trail, actually generates more hits in shooting than a full health Knight... It's definitely a very key tool we have.

[Mushkilla]

Trail of Destruction is shockingly good as an alternative to the 'use top bracket' strat we lack too isn't it? It doesn't help with movement certainly, but a Knight at half wounds using Trail, actually generates more hits in shooting than a full health Knight... It's definitely a very key tool we have.

Yeah, I now try to be more disciplined with my use of it. I used it the early turns to try and push an early advantage and snowball, but in hindsight it probably leads to overkill, or overconfidence and spreading your fire too thin.

 

Looking at the numbers it's makes more sense to save it for the later turns or for those clutch moments where something has to die. In some ways if using it in the first few turns doesn't give you a clear advantage don't use it.

[Prot]

For my games the greatest return on CP has been the pre game stuff. Both houses have some great specific strats, However I think the single most important CP I have spent in every game is when a high damage shot is about to rock one of my Knights and a 50/50 reroll can have huge consequences. 

[Nemerax]

Trail of Destruction gets very interesting if the enemy gives you a minus to it.

Still I have to agree with the overall concept that we really do not need CP.

 

I had my 3k Chaos Knights going against the same amount Imperial Knights House Terryn. I went Infernal, he got first turn, I won on the second turn by destroying all of his Knights.

Two times Trail of Destruction on the Knight with Dual Rapidfire-Battle Cannons, made one stronger through Infernal both times.

What won the game? He did not manage to charge a lot and I just hit him with our Heirloom Weapons in CC.

Gauntlet of Ascension has ascended two of his Knights to our great chaos gods. I even got +2 on Titanic duel, but I already overkilled him on the normal attacks.

I burned through my 17 CP as good as I could, but by game end I was at 11 and there was nothing left to use on the table. We basically do not have a really game-breaking Stratagem we wanna use all the time or a big amount we could spam.

 

We got good ones, fluff ones, same for relics. From a CP perspective I say we do need a CP Battalion, but I will always go for one, because of the other benefits additional CSM troops have. Those sit on objectives while the Knights do their business and dealing with hordes is easy for Knights thanks to their feet.

 

A super-heavy does not suffer any penalties. I always move my Baneblade too at full speed to and ram it into something juicy. We can attack and fall back, if the enemy will not first.

Remember they are locked in combat with YOU! 

[Azekai]

A super-heavy does not suffer any penalties. I always move my Baneblade too at full speed to and ram it into something juicy. We can attack and fall back, if the enemy will not first.

Remember they are locked in combat with YOU! 

This is actually one of the problems I have with knights- there are no real trade-offs, no tough choices or tactical decisions other than in what order you want your foes pulped.

 

I do like that our knights are dangerous, but I wish there were more ways for an opponent to interact with them meaningfully.

[Nemerax]

Totally agree, but it is the state of rules.

 

I love the Titanic Duel Stratagem we have, because your opponent gets the benefit too, but to be fair, the knight starting is the one that rips the other one apart. The weapons on them are way too destructive against their own kind.

Only if they are damaged they really exchange blows.

[DuskRaider]

I mean, that's kind of the nature of fielding an entire army of super heavies. The trade off is they're always going to be outnumbered and thus horde armies can drag them down or high powered weaponry can topple them. There's always a paper to your rock and scissors to the paper.

[Stray]

I'd honestly like to see a return to shield facings on Knights. 

 

It was a fun fluffy rule that required thought on everyone's part. With the way invulns have worked in 8th, and how common they are, several weapons have become obsolete - Lascannon for example. It's too easy to waste that shooting because invulns nullify single shots too well. (It's also why we see Deldar Ravagers take dissie cannon now - volume of fire matters.

 

Facings were a pain to measure at times, but get past that mechanically and you enable people to be able to use techniques like out flanking etc to better worry a Knight. And, you allow the Knight player to use more strategic intelligence than simply popping 'Rotate Ion shield'.

 

Hell, maybe even let Knights stand in formation of two or more close together, and position Ion shields to cover 180 degrees as a pair, instead of just 90 solo.

 

Stuff like that, I feel, would open the game up a bit more, and possibly make Knights feel less overwhelming to some armies.

[Excessus]

With the way invulns have worked in 8th, and how common they are, several weapons have become obsolete - Lascannon for example.

 

Well, if you play against knights sure. I have a guard-playing friend that whines about how lascannons are too op for his russes.

[DuskRaider]

I mean... I'm a huge proponent of bringing back the old armour rules and doing away with wounds on tanks and walkers. Shield facing would go along with that quite a bit, and I like the idea of Knights combining shields, much like Warhounds in Titanicus.

[Excessus]

Nah, keep the toughness and just reintroduce facings with different toughness values.

[Nemerax]

 

 

Well, if you play against knights sure. I have a guard-playing friend that whines about how lascannons are too op for his russes.

 

 

 

The exact reason why my Russ and Baneblades stay at home this edition by now. I play nothing with an invulnerable save for that very reason.

 

Knights get the 4++ for 1 CP which is really cheap. If you can field three of the big ones you have enough CP to fuel them survive the heavy shots.

Small arms fire can hurt you a lot actually, because most vehicles only got a 3+ save, even if they were almost impenetrable in previous editions.

I calculated a few small arms through and the shenanigans you could do with them, turns out a lot of them are not minimal inferior to bigger guns, if you keep everything in mind. People are likely to reroll that 4++ save roll against a  lascannon, but there is not that much you can against 40 autogun shots that wounded you (Votlw + Cacophony).

[Mushkilla]

I don't want to go back to the old armour system knights were even more rock/paper/chainblade in 6-7th. Your highest strength attack is 7? Nothing can hurt me and it will take you forever to glance my knight to death. No thanks. At least now everything can hurt a knight which makes the game more interesting.

 

That being said I agree that 4++ is annoying for both the knight player and his opponent as it's very unpredictable. The same with d6 damage weapons. Who thought that a weapon with such high variance was a good idea? Let alone weapons with variable shots.

 

The problem with facing for rotate ion shield was that there were no markers on bases and the facing rules were designed for box snapped tanks. Making it pretty clunky, if all vehicles had bases, and facing markings then I could see variable toughness and armour save being good.

 

The reason knights have invulnerables is because GW I imagine wanted to make them more resilient to anti tank weapons without making them more resilient to small arms. Hence why we haven't seen 1+ armour saves etc (like fantasy).

 

What I would have preferred is something along the lines of. Knights don't get an invulnerable save. Regular ion shield reduces all damage by 1, rotate ion shield reduces all damage by 2 or half rounding (down or up) depending on play testing. That way the games become less swingy for both sides. No longer do you have a knight pass all its 4++ and come out unscathed conversely you don't have a knight fail 4-6 4++ and die to 5-6 lascannons with good damage rolls. It also makes the damage profile more relevant cause I knights existence becomes less binary, as it will take damage more consistently (rather than being at 24 wounds or 0 which seems to be the case these days).

[DuskRaider]

I find it odd you want to gimp Knights when they're not even the cheesiest flavor in 8th. Not even close.

[Stray]

I find it odd you want to gimp Knights when they're not even the cheesiest flavor in 8th. Not even close.

 

Broadly, I'd tend to agree. I think Knights are appropriately costed (for the most part), and we have significant weaknesses to help balance our significant strengths - or at least in a vacuum we do.

 

8th has been a good edition in many ways, but it does have some innate mechanical issues which help us and hinder others. Mostly, myself, I'm aware that a portion of the community tend to roll their eyes when they hear you run a Knight Household. In that respect, I'm in favour of changes that don't necessarily buff or nerf Knights, but make them more engaging to play as, and (perhaps more importantly), against?

 

The glaring issue with 8th has very much come out of the 'Allies' system. None of us need a run down of how that system can be exploited to break the internal balance of several codexes, and it's certainly proven true that Knights as a whole, benefit from allies more than most (perhaps more than anyone?)

 

There is certainly a strong sense of unfairness when you look at the options an Imperial player has, given the 'allies' system, to say a Tau or Necron player. It's very difficult to keep something of an entirely straight face when looking at 40K as a truly competitive title (an aspect of our community which has become increasingly popular each edition), when one player has perhaps ten codexes worth of content to create lists from, and another has just one...

 

When we consider the effect mechanics like CP have directly on a core force because of 'allies', the problems become yet more apparent.

 

I don't know what the answer is in all honesty, and playing 'Chaos', we're pretty well off in terms of options ourselves. But something likely will have to give in a 9th edition, or even before.

 

It'll be interesting to see how Knights come out of that.

[DuskRaider]

I know some other players hate Knight armies, but really I don't think I could care about their opinion any less than I do at this moment. I built my army for my enjoyment, not theirs. That's not to say I want to steamroll everyone I play against. I'm not a competitive player and the whole reason I started this army was to play against my son's and various friends'Knight armies. I can see how playing an all-Knight force could be frustrating for some (although at this point most armies have something similar to a Knight anyhow).

 

I think to solve the largest issues with Knights you need to fix soup lists. CP sharing is one of the biggest issues and soup lists give a player the chance to remedy and inherent weakness an army may have. Knights, for instance, are constantly outnumbered. But when you can throw them in a mixed army list consisting of Guard spam or Cultists, you take away that weakness... not to say those units are powerful, but they're numerous and cheap.

 

I like the idea of allies. I like the ability to field Death Guard with my House Makabius. It's fluffy and that's what I love. But it can be abused horribly. If losing that option for anything bar Apocalypse is what should happen, let it happen. Knights in general were given Armigers to ease the number disparity somewhat, although obviously not completely.

[Mushkilla]

I find it odd you want to gimp Knights when they're not even the cheesiest flavor in 8th. Not even close.

Ohh I'm not saying knights should be nerfed. But making them more consistent and less prone to swings in the dice would remove those soul crushing games of loosing a knight to lucky lascannons turn 1 or on the flip side firing your entire army into a knight to no effect.

 

But I agree the main problem is allies patching up our core weaknesses. Giving us a load of CP etc.

 

Part of the appeal of Knights is the conflicting duality of their strength and weaknesses:

 

-Are massive bullies in melee but struggle against specialised melee unit.

-Are devastating if they get the charge, but vulnerable to being charged (smash captains).

-Are fast but get slowed massively by having to manoeuvre around terrain.

-Have height and a great vantage point for line of sight but are constantly exposed.

-Are resilient but degrade as they take damage (losing speed is the big one here).

​-Have fantastic fire power but struggle with sequencing/fighting MSU/overkill due to low model count.

-Can take objectives but struggle to hold them.

-They can easilly concentrate force but are easy to play hide and seek around terrain with due to low model count.

 

etc...

 

Obviously, allies can remove most of these weaknesses.

 

I am torn though. I love summoning as I find it very thematic. It would be sad if changes to allies meant we lost that. I feel summoning a bunch of daemons is part of what makes chaos chaos. I guess summoning doesn't bring the same game breaking imbalances as allies (no CP no faction traits, no objective secure, no stratagems).

 

I doubt we will see the complete removal of allies, but I imagine their will be more restrictions.

[DuskRaider]

Well this isn't a malady affecting Knights alone, allies and CP batteries are a game-wide issue and it's abused by just about all factions (although mainly Imperial with Chaos coming in a distant second due to less selection). This is a feature of 8th Edition and it's one that led to the downfall of 7th, only upstaged by Formations (which GW was stupid enough to bring back).

 

CP sharing and batteries have to be eliminated. I love the idea of allies for narrative purposes. I'd love to someday field my Knight House surrounded by hordes of fragile and worthless (in the eyes of a Dark Magos) Dark Mechanicum equivalent of Skitarii or something. I hate the idea of people doing it to gain an unfair advantage, just like I hate the idea of Custodes in general or the Loyal 32.

 

Knights, both loyal and traitorous, don't need fixing. The game's mechanics do, and despite the obvious issues with it not only do I think GW will not remedy it, but they actively push for it... going so far as to have the Loyal 32 in a damn Battle Report in White Dwarf.

 

Knights need CP. They need it to counter armies with CP batteries and endless Strats and re-rolls.

[Mushkilla]

So going back to the topic of knights and CP (or preparing for the CP drought that may or may not ever happen). Here are some more thoughts.

 

Low CP Households

 

At first I thought iconoclast was the more CP efficient household with its one off vows. But after some more games I'm starting to think infernal households are the key to a low CP build. The infernal stratagems are very situational, and in that regard they are fantastic. They are the sort of stratagem that merely by existing cause your opponent problems as long as you have CP that COULD be spent on them. If you have 3CP then your infernal quest knight CAN get up again and score that objective (so your opponent has to plan accordingly), if you have 3CP you CAN combo daemonic possession and daemonic rift create a null zone of 12" around your army (so your opponent will keep his psykers 12" away from you as long as you sit on those CP). Finally Bind the Souls makes your opponent think twice about movement blocking your knights with chaff units, I don't see this getting used when your knight is low, but as long as you are at 13 or more wounds you can reliably get 4-5 wounds back and that can be really frustrating for your opponent.

 

What really makes the infernal household shine in a low CP list though is that they have 3 great stratagems built into each knight that cost wounds not CP.

 

Daemonic Hunger: A more reliable full tilt (it's like rolling a guaranteed 3 on your advance dice) that you don't have to build around and doesn't prevent you from shooting.

 

Daemonic Fortitude: A poor man's rotate ion shield against S8/9/16 weapons. Though you show your hand sooner (i.e your opponent knows you are T9 in his movement phase, unlike rotate ion shields so could leverage this knowledge to engage different targets).

 

-A T9 knight with (5++) will take 0.22 wounds per S8 hit. A T8 knight with a 4++ save (rotate ion shield) will take 0.25 wounds.

-A T9 knight with (5++) will take 0.33 wounds per S9 hit. A T8 knight with a 4++ save (rotate ion shield) will take 0.33 wounds.

 

But it also works in melee.

 

-A T9 knight will take 0.33 wounds per S8 hit. Compared to a T8 knight which takes 0.50.

-A T9 knight will take 0.50 wounds per S9 hit. Compared to a T8 knight which takes 0.66.

 

Daemonic Power: Similar to trail of destruction in the shooting phase. With Daemonic Power being more effective than trail of destruction the fewer ranged weapons the knight has (one being ideal).

 

A daemonic powered avenger see's an increase in damage of:

(against targets with 3 or more wounds)

50% against T3-5.

100% against T6.

125% against T7.

50% against T8+.

 

The difference being with these pacts is that they can affect multiple knights. But can't be stacked on a single knight the way stratagems can. Daemonic surges can't be countered by the Agents Of Vect/A plan a generation in the making/callidus. There's also the opportunity cost that you won't have the benefits of the iconoclast ambition or it's vows/relics.

 

But they do make CP less of an issue.

[Mushkilla]

So I had a game yesterday against genesteler cult where I got to try diabolic rift combined with Daemonic possession. It did 5 wound to a patriarch and made it too risky for it to cast its second power (from its familiar). However, despite the damage it didn't really do much, it didn't prevent the power that mattered going off, not really worth 3CP. I still think it might have value against low wound/damage psykers or psychic units, or against an army that wants to cast a lot of powers at you (it definitely works better against psykers who want to cast multiple powers as they will take more damage). In hindsight, I'd probably not use Daemonic possession on the first attempted power against 5-6 wound psykers as you have very little chance of killing it, instead save the CP and use the threat of it to prevent them casting anymore powers with that psyker. You also get a bit of a paradox, where if you try to deny the power you prevent the perils...

[Excessus]

It becomes one of those "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situations. :)

[Stray]

It becomes one of those "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situations.

 

Excellent execution of a 'Dad joke' Excessus. My congratulations :D

[Mushkilla]

Another trick I've found with CP.

 

I now make all my knights dread blades (including the war dogs). That way if I'm in a matchup where none of the dread blade traits are of value, I can pick pacts and damnation for a war dog. Meaning I can give him knower of profane secrets (+1CP) , Forsaken and Warp Fugue without any downside (I don't use stratagems on war dogs and twin auto cannon war dogs don't do much in combat so warp fugue isn't an issue). It's nothing revolutionary, but a free CP is sometimes more useful than the other traits (especially in a low CP list), but not normally worth having one of your despoilers risk getting crippled by a bad dread knight roll.