Knight Armies in 9th?

[Scribe]

I've been drawn to the army many times, but when I was playing often, pure Knight forces were frowned upon.

 

Has that changed?

[Guest]

I don't think people drown on knight armies in 8th. I think they frowned on gimmicky knight lists like loyal 32+ knights. With more multi-damage attacks, mono-armies, and static CP, knights will be more balanced in 9th. A big thing is knights unable to hide behind most terrain while a heavy weapon team (devastators, hellblaster etc) can. This means the knights are going to be deal with guerrila-like warfare.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

A lot of people don’t like them in general.

[MegaVolt87]

A lot of people don’t like them in general.

Knights are also over represented as LOW as well. Legion super heavy tanks are a valid counter, yet they have all been pointed out of the game with increased costs past their initial introduction in the FW indexes. Either all LOW should be treated equitably or just absent from normal 40k entirely. Knights are a protected LOW and it shows and blows.

[BLACK BLΠFLY]

Is really hard to say how good knights will be this edition until their new codex drops .

[Scribe]

Yeah, I'm not concerned with how good they are, I'm not looking to meta game, far from it.

 

I'm looking for something that I and my opponent can have a fun game with.

 

Save the competitive for rules sets better crafted.

[MARK0SIAN]

I think (as has already been mentioned) Knights are only frowned upon when they’re used in a cheesy allied way. They can also be frowned upon in smaller points games as they will skew the match up quite a lot.

 

If you avoid both of those scenarios I don’t think anyone will reasonably frown upon you for bringing a knights list. Especially at the moment (and for the foreseeable future) when all the frowns are being very definitely directed at Space Marines :)

[Karhedron]

I think that pure Knights will be balanced in 9th by the focus on Objectives. Knights only have a small number of units in their army and can only try to hold so many Objectives. A canny opponent may be able to outplay them, even if they don't have enough anti-tank to kill them outright. With most tournaments still on hold and only hints about what new codices will bring in 9th, it will probably be a while before the meta settles down but my hunch is that Knights will not be overpowered.

[Captain Idaho]

There is an issue that you could beat a Knight army on points but just get wiped off the board every game. In a casual setting this isn't fun.

 

It's a matter of checking what your casual opponents expect out of a game as to whether you can establish together whether playing against Knights is fun.

[Scribe]

Yeah, I'm moving at end of week, will have to see how the new local plays.

 

:)

[Chaplain Killmer]

I didn't really follow the development of the knights lately. But aren't they vehicles and can fire in melee because of that? (sorry might be a noob if knights could already do that before). They could profit from blast rules too depending on the new weapon profiles.

[Jorin Helm-splitter]

The one thing I would suggest is trying to set up the games in advance. I think most of the frustration with knights in casual settings is due a player trying to face the knight list with their standard casual list. They just don't have enough firepower to feel like they can hit back, and trying to win on points while absorbing punishment isn't for everyone. With time to prepare though most players will have some more answers that they can bring.

[Scribe]

Yeah my typical opponents and I used to operate under that. We didnt bring anything too stupid, and if we did, we let people know ahead of time.

 

Games like this take way too much time/money investment to have lopsided and frustrating hours wasted.

[Focslain]

I didn't really follow the development of the knights lately. But aren't they vehicles and can fire in melee because of that? (sorry might be a noob if knights could already do that before). They could profit from blast rules too depending on the new weapon profiles.

 

A large portion of knight weapons are Blast, so can't be fired in melee. The ones that kind of win out are the helverin, warden and valiant as their main weapons aren't blast. Their big thing was the ability to fall back and shoot and assault that turn. While they can still do this (even armigars with the right trait), it's not as special anymore.

 

As for how they fair in 9th. Like it has been stated and it's still true, knights are a bit dis-balanced in low point games. 1500 pts seems to be the lowest without getting too much edge.

 

Also with the new terrain rules the mini-knights (armigars) are going to be better suited than the bigger ones since most of the rules don't hid the larger boyos.

 

The best way to avoid a sore game is to set up your knight battles ahead of time, this way they can tailor their list if they want to. This helped me a lot during 8th as this gave my opponent a chance to back down or request a different army to face if they really didn't want to go against the big mechs.

 

Just don't take offense if your opponent doesn't want to face them so have an alternate ready if possible.

[Clingy]

Currently they have a 29% win ratio apparently lol.

 

They still carry the stigma with some. They skew things I’d people aren’t prepared for them. They get rekt if your opponent has enough AT.

 

I’ve played about 8 games of 9th so far with them and I’m swapping to Admech for competitive games. Obscuring terrain is a nail in the coffin. For fun games though, you can’t beat sipping a beer and moving big stompy robots

Edited August 27, 2020 by Clingy