Starting Imperial Knights, and looking for advice

[BloodyB]

Howdilidoodles to you all, I come seeking advice on starting my own Knight army. For some background, I play BA and IG, and recently picked up a pair of warglaives for pennies, and am now thinking of expanding my force of oversized deathdealers.

 

I quite like the armigers, and would like to know if a list built around them, lead by a Preceptor, is viable, as well as asking if using them as allies is better than running solo Knights. While I'm here, I would also like to ask about general strategies more experienced Barons and High Kings have come upon and would be willing to share with a Noble only just having undertaken the Ritual of Becoming, such as myself.

[Cleon]

So I'll admit this is mostly Theoryhammer as I've not played much recently (and haven't given my knights a run out at all), but I'd say the following.

 

Given your two options for allies I'd say Knights would work better allied in to your Guard than your Angels, at present (Blood Angels lose some of their bonuses taking allies the guard don't and BA are very CP hungry), however if you are looking at adding an Ally to a mostly knight force, BA are a better problem solver for 'There are objectived I need to advance on, but knights can't get to', though IG are better for providing 'hang back home objective' squatters.

 

I can't really comment on if a mostly armiger force is viable, but if it is I'd expect it to be heavy on helverins with fewer warglaves as those autocannon are nasty.

[Focslain]

*cracks knuckles* Ok, this I know. I field the exact force your looking at.

 

Allies wise Cleon is correct. Guard would be better as they don’t really lose anything from the support. BA would lose some of their abilities (Doctrines for one). I’m more of just going solo knights personally. So with that in mind….

 

So an armigar heavy force can work. In fact I suggest it as it gets more models on the field. Your basically looking at a 3:1 ratio of armigars to questoris knight. While helverins are good, the warglaive is still nasty in it’s own right, especially in melee. Having a preceptor will help as well as another knight with the Helm Dominatus relic.

 

A good starting force would be a Preceptor, two warglaives and two helverins. If you swap a helverin for a warglaive you’ll have the points for a carapace weapon. Or you can go full armigar and drop five warglaives and two helverins and have some board control options. Something knights tend to have issues with. Generally you’ll have the warglaives on the front lines and the helverins giving covering fire while capping objectives.

 

As a note for helverins, while they don’t have a good melee attack, they can fire their autocannons while engaged. This was a buff for vehicles in general, a massive bonus for the helverin.

 

Another option for armigar heavy force is the FW moriax, I tend to like the claw/lightning lock option. The claw comes with a rad-cleanser which is a flamer that wounds everything except vehicles on 2+ and is D3, so you can fry those new squighog boys nicely. The lightning lock is a tesla weapon (6’s on to-hit roll score 2 additional hits), so a decent anti-horde option. The claw gets +2D against vehicles so a decent anti-armour as well. It used to be able to one shot a dreadnaught, not so much anymore.

 

Moriax have a few more options:
Conversion beamer - nice artillery piece, does more damage the farther away you are.
Graviton pulsar - good against MEQ as it becomes D3 against Sv of 3+ or better.
Volkite - Slightly weaker than a helverin autocannon, but a flat 5 shots gives you a better rate of fire. Plus it can inflict MW.

 

Stratagems
Basics:
Rotate Ion Shield is your main stay strat, just make sure you know when to use it. If you give your warlord Ion Bulwark that will free it up to be used on others. Other good ones are Full Tilt if your going aggressive (allows charge after advance), Machine Resurgance allows you to fight at top bracket for a turn, so good for wounded knights. Benevolence gives us a save against MWs so it’s harder to smite us to death.

 

For Armigar heavy forces Bonded Oathman is nice as it allows all close by armigars to heroic intervention, the moriax has this ability built in as well.

 

Helverins: Thin Their Ranks and Skyreaper Protocol are your main ones.Thin Their Ranks changes the autocannon from 2d3 shots to 6 if targeting a unit of 6 or more while Skyreaper allows you to re-roll to-hits against units with the Fly keyword.

 

Wargliaves: Pack Tactics and Pack Hunter will be worth it if you run multiple warglaives. Hunter allows re-roll of charges against a unit that was successfully charged by another warglaive and Tactics adds +1A per additional warglaive involved in said combat.

 

WL Traits and Relics

If you're going heavy armigar you won’t have many slots for these. There are several decent options for both so it depends on your playstyle.

I tend to be defensive in my selection so my personal favorites are:

Trait Ion Bulwark - +1 SV to ion shield
Trait Calculated Targeting - ranged attacks to-hit rolls of 4+ allows succeed
Relic Mark of the Omnimessiah - Heals 1W on a d6 roll of 6 heals d3 wounds
Relic Sanctuary - 5+ Inv vs melee

 

House and Allegiance
First your either aligned with either Imperialis or Mechanicus.
I suggest Mechanicus cause you heal 1W in the command phase, making them more durable. Imperialis is just +1” to advance and charge and doesn’t stack.

 

Houses are your chapter/regiments of the knights. There are a few so once again your playstyle will dictate this. There also is the option to build a custom house in the book Psychic Awakening Engine War which also has some options for armigar heavy forces. This includes the ability to allow armigars to either shoot or charge after falling back.

These are just some basics I can offer. If you tell me your primary opponents I can give you a few strategies against those forces.

[BloodyB]

I'll have to look at getting a moirax, just having a bit more flexibility on the field seems handy. I wish the Questor Imperialis option was a little more impressive, I will probably be allying with either of my armies, and both give me plenty of mobility as it is.

 

From my perspective, having played against Knights quite a bit, I always thought the Helverin was a bit wet, is this not correct? Admittedly, I generally had few problems catching them with my assault squads, and melta bomb strat did the rest. Are they really that good? I prioritised getting warglaives because they were more effective when I fought them, I still intend to use Warglaives, but I might readjust the numbers of Armiger variants.

 

I have picked up Engine War, and the fall back and shoot tactic was immediately attractive, and I'm stuck between extra melee hits on 6s, or better AP within 12", since most of my planned army was going to be pretty short ranged. Though now that I think about it, how useful is extra AP for Knight shooting? They have a lot of AP 2 or 3 weapons, only the stubbers and autocannons really get a tonne of use, and frankly I want them a little further away from most things. Do I need to be cautious with shooter Knights, or can I afford the risk of closing in for extra killiness?

 

I might build a nice Inquisitor to gather CP for my Knights. Are they CP guzzlers, or can I be frugal with the strats? I couod even use my Chapter master and a couple of cheap squads to get some CP together if I need to, I know it's pricey in game, but Tac squads or Intercessors are good at locking down objectives, even without extra AP. Probably not worth it, but I might try it once or twice just for the experience. I tend to be liberal with my CP, and so like to have plans to recover a bit of them, are these worth looking at?

[Focslain]

BloodyB, on 24 Sept 2021 - 2:27 PM, said:

I'll have to look at getting a moirax, just having a bit more flexibility on the field seems handy. I wish the Questor Imperialis option was a little more impressive, I will probably be allying with either of my armies, and both give me plenty of mobility as it is

From my perspective, having played against Knights quite a bit, I always thought the Helverin was a bit wet, is this not correct? Admittedly, I generally had few problems catching them with my assault squads, and melta bomb strat did the rest. Are they really that good? I prioritised getting warglaives because they were more effective when I fought them, I still intend to use Warglaives, but I might readjust the numbers of Armiger variants.

 

 

Well your applying the proper tool to the problem. Your hitting a unit that is not built for melee with a strong melee unit. Helverins can handle themselves in melee if tagged by an average unit (like most basic troop choices) where their high toughness and decent save can hold off the assault and then just give the assaulting unit both barrels (literally) in the following shooting phase. Generally if your going for an assault build for knights then you want warglaives. Helverins just provide decent anti-horde and back-line support.

 

 

I have picked up Engine War, and the fall back and shoot tactic was immediately attractive, and I'm stuck between extra melee hits on 6s, or better AP within 12", since most of my planned army was going to be pretty short ranged. Though now that I think about it, how useful is extra AP for Knight shooting? They have a lot of AP 2 or 3 weapons, only the stubbers and autocannons really get a tonne of use, and frankly I want them a little further away from most things. Do I need to be cautious with shooter Knights, or can I afford the risk of closing in for extra killiness?

 

 

The armigars you need to be a little cautious of, but if you use a big shooting knight (a Castellan or Crusader) then not really. The bigger knights stomp is pretty good (12A S8, -2AP d3 dmg) and they can shoot and charge after falling back, so generally you want to be doing damage in as many phases as possible. Just don’t go after a melee heavy unit. Shoot those and assault shooty units. Pretty much the same tactic for any army. For the other tactic if your going heavy warglaive I’d do the extra hits. Bonus AP on a melta weapon is kind of lost.

 

 

I might build a nice Inquisitor to gather CP for my Knights. Are they CP guzzlers, or can I be frugal with the strats? I couod even use my Chapter master and a couple of cheap squads to get some CP together if I need to, I know it's pricey in game, but Tac squads or Intercessors are good at locking down objectives, even without extra AP. Probably not worth it, but I might try it once or twice just for the experience. I tend to be liberal with my CP, and so like to have plans to recover a bit of them, are these worth looking at?

 

 

Knights can be CP guzzlers, especially the CC ones as your rushing into the enemy line as fast as possible. Or if you do a few bigger knights as the pre-game will eat CP adding in the extra traits and relics. Luckily with how the edition is we have the CP to do this now. Plus your going to be using Rotate Ion or Command Re-rolls just about every turn so you’ll burn CP at a decent rate. Remember that you can only recover 1 CP per round so I be a little meh about it. There is another trait you can take called Cunning Commander, it gives you a CP and a free command re-roll on that knight specifically. So basically you're getting 2 CP.

 

Also in CP just remember to use the Knights as the main and ally in a force cause a SHD with a medium knight cost 6 CP if it doesn’t have your warlord. Plus I’m not sure the CP recovery is worth the CP it will cost to add the allied units in.

 

The main defense for knights is target priority, make sure to take out units that can hurt you easily, like your assault squad, first then rampage over the field.

 

Personally I advocate for mono-knight lists just cause in my experience they’ve performed better on their own then allied with something else. But that is just me.

[BloodyB]

I'd like to thank you guys for the advice you've given me, and say that I had some good fun playing Knights recently using borrowed models. I enjoyed it a lot and both this thread and my experience has given me a lot to think about over the coming months regarding this army. I definitely will be playing Knights in the near future, and am looking forward to my first game with my own army. Thanks again for all the advice.