Dreadblades: Useful for Thousand Sons?

[Casual Heresy]

Afternoon all.

 

With the ability to add a Dreadblade to our forces without losing detachment benefits, is anyone planning to add a big stompy warmachine to their forces?

 

I'm tempted for more casual games, and as a modelling project. Thousand Sons are the only chaos force I own and I'm not planning another, so it would be a way to add tactical and modelling variety.

 

If anyone already has a knight they are planning to run with their army, show us some pics for inspiration!

 

[dice4thedicegod]

I’m considering an abominant.

 

I like max mortal wound output and thousand sons tend to run out of good witchfire spells before they run out of casts, so adding a knight with mw output in shooting and psychic phases is tempting. Plus it gives another big target and therefore makes magnus feel less lonely!

[Tichinde]

Wardogs are probably the more competitive option but hard to resist a psychic knight!

[dice4thedicegod]

Wardogs are probably the more competitive option but hard to resist a psychic knight!

Could always make a war dog a psyker with a favor!

[Xenith]

I like max mortal wound output and thousand sons tend to run out of good witchfire spells before they run out of casts, so adding a knight with mw output in shooting and psychic phases is tempting. Plus it gives another big target and therefore makes magnus feel less lonely!

 

I'd go the opposite - I think TS really lack in solid long range anti tank, or high Dam weaponry, so maybe the rampager or despoiler when I see the stats for the gun. TS are just very vulnerable against armies that can fnp away mortals, like Emperor's Chosen Custodes, I'd rather cover my bases. The Warp Storm discipline might have potential though. 

[Balthamal]

Tastiest option I've come across is taking a tyrant, giving it the Herpetrax fellbond, the favour of the dark master upgrade, and the WLT for counting as double wounds. 32 wound tyrant with effective transhuman and the ability to turn off rerolls for hit/wound/damage is very nasty. You can go even further and have the relic for a second bond and the fel bond that allows your favoured ability to trigger after killing a vehicle or a monster

Edited May 25, 2022 by Balthamal

[dice4thedicegod]

Tastiest option I've come across is taking a tyrant, giving it the Herpetrax fellbond, the favour of the dark master upgrade, and the WLT for counting as double wounds. 32 wound tyrant with effective transhuman and the ability to turn off rerolls for hit/wound/damage is very nasty. You can go even further and have the relic for a second bond and the fel bond that allows your favoured ability to trigger after killing a vehicle or a monster

But that would require chaos knights as the warlord/ main faction. It couldn’t be done as a dreadblade ally using agent of chaos as you can’t take relics and warlord traits then.

 

And dreadblades can’t take infamous hereditary (“herpetrax “) trait

Edited May 27, 2022 by dice4thedicegod

[Ahzek451]

Best you can do is a dreasblade trait and a mark. But honestly I'm veering toward grabbing a group of war dogs as obsec heavy hitters. One can use the mark to farm some CP if you choose a ranged option.

[Malakithe]

So what can the Knight take? It has to be a Dreadblade right? Can it take favors? What about the 'Chosen by the Gods' strat? Not sure what that strat really does

[dice4thedicegod]

So what can the Knight take? It has to be a Dreadblade right? Can it take favors? What about the 'Chosen by the Gods' strat? Not sure what that strat really does

You can get favors and stratagems. The problem with warlord trait and relic Strats is that they require a chaos knight warlord. I can’t recall if chosen of the gods has that requirement

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Fallen Hero (Chaos Knights Codex - CKC pg 55) is the rule that lets you take a super-heavy auxillary detachment without taking away your "entire army" special rules.  It specifies that the unit has to be a Dreadblade unit.  Although super-heavy auxillary detachment cannot normally get Detachment abilites, Chaos Knights ones can  (CKC pg 55).

 

Dreadblade units do not get a Traitorous Ambition (CKC pg. 55) or a Household Bond (CKC pp. 56 & 57). Not having a Household Bond, it is required to have a Fell Bond (CKC pg. 64).

 

For Stratagems, you just need a Chaos Knight detachment, so you get those (CKC pg. 66), and if your army is battleforged (which it should be) you can choose Favours of the Dark Gods (aka chaos marks, CKC p 70) for your knight models.

 

Chaos knights are normally not characters.  A Chaos Knight super-heavy auxillary detachment only gets a character in Combat Patrol (CKC pg. 55).  Only a character can be a walord, so if you don't have a character, it can't be a warlord and therefore can't take a warlord trait (CKC pg 74) or give it a relic (I don't see any Chaos Knights relics that can go to non characters).  The Tyrannical Court stratagem (CKC pg 68) does allow you take make another knight a character, but requires you to have a Chaos Knights warlord to do so - so can't generate a Chaos Knights character unless you already have one.  Now, if you are playing a combat patrol game, you can make your warlord a Chaos Knight and give it a Chaos knight warlord trait, and give it a relic (CKC pg. 76).  This is likely inferior to (and would prevent) taking a  warlord from the Thousand Suns codex, plus in Combat Patrol you aren't likely to have much more of an army than the Chaos Knight.

 

Oddly enough you may be able take Chaos Knights Secondary objectives (CKC pg 80), for although they require every unit in your army to be a Chaos Knight, the Dreadblade "Agents of Chaos" rule (CKC pg. 55) arguably lets you ignore that limitation.  IMHO, this is a rules interaction that was not intended and may be FAQed away.

 

It can use the Chaos Knights Crusade rules, as they only require a Chaos Knights detachment (CKC pg 82).

 

Hope that helps - the rules interactions in the Chaos Knights codex are more complicated than most.

Edited May 30, 2022 by Dr_Ruminahui