So...what are your theories as to what happened to our codex launch?

[chapter master 454]

Kind of curious. Imperial Knights were clearly meant to be out by now or at the very least follow on from chaos knights right after however, here we are...nary a peep about whats going on.

So, to help pass time what are your theories as to what has happened or does anyone have any possible rumours as to what happned.

 

And for a bonus:

Do we think the defender kit will also mean we get 3 new questoris variants in the codex? (Plasma gun only, Conversion beamer only and then the one they showed off).

[Lord_Ikka]

My guess is that the Emperor's Children leak spoiled some of GW's plans, they weren't meant to come out in spring but probably now or a little later. That might have been why they had a somewhat staggered release of their units rather than a big single one. 

 

I think the Defender will be just its own thing, like the Preceptor. I'll probably wind up getting one eventually, but unless their shield ability is something like "Increase the invulnerable save of IMPERIAL KNIGHT models within X inches", I don't see it as something that will be extremely useful. The guns look ok, but the plasma won't be as powerful as the Castellan's and the conversion beamer seems an odd choice for a Knight with the description of being out in front of it's fellows, guarding them (as conversion beamers are better from farther away, or at least get Sustained when shooting afar). 

 

I would have much rather had a different Armiger pattern for the Imperials, something good at taking down hordes armed with a weapon like the CK's chaincannons. 

[Naryn]

13 hours ago, chapter master 454 said:

 

And for a bonus:

Do we think the defender kit will also mean we get 3 new questoris variants in the codex? (Plasma gun only, Conversion beamer only and then the one they showed off).

Unfortunately I doubt it. There are a lot of things rules-wise they should do for us in terms of possible weapon loadouts that they haven't done--weapon mix & matching freely within each armor class (questoris, cerastus, dominus, acastus) would be an easy win for them and cost 0 sprue space, for example. I suspect the plas-only and c-beamer-only variants would be the same.

 

As for release, I suspect something went weird in the release order that booted us out of the queue. Maybe the EC release got pushed up like Lord_Ikka said, or maybe the big sprue Knight Defender parts come on had a mold issue that needed to be fiddled with. 

[NTaW]

I agree that it does feel sort of backward to get updated points without the book being released. GW's true reasons are known only to Tzeentch, but the EC release being moved up seems a reasonable hiccup in their timeline.

 

As redundant as is may seem most the time, I like having the weapon options broken out across a few different datasheets. It offers more variety in abilities which means ever so slightly more variation in list building. Having said that I doubt that the new Knight will be broken up into separate new entries. At best we could perhaps see one or both of its weapons show up in other datasheets, but I agree that it will likely be it's own thing like the Preceptor.

 

On 6/30/2025 at 6:27 AM, Lord_Ikka said:

I would have much rather had a different Armiger pattern for the Imperials, something good at taking down hordes armed with a weapon like the CK's chaincannons.

 

If GW tossed out an assault cannon (with pintle flamer of course) Armiger variant I would end up with a larger collection than planned 

[Indy Techwisp]

Thoughts about what happened with the book:

 

They've had to redo the print run for it for some reason.

Maybe the crate fell off the boat?

[Lord_Ikka]

7 hours ago, Indy Techwisp said:

They've had to redo the print run for it for some reason.

Unless the run was missing entire pages, GW has been perfectly fine with having typos and incorrect info in codices before, so unlikely.

7 hours ago, Indy Techwisp said:

Maybe the crate fell off the boat?

They've also been ok with having products delayed to certain regions before due to transport issues.

[Karhedron]

 

The roadmap strongly implied we would be coming out straight after Chaos Knights. This image is only about 3 months old so either there has been a change of plans or Warcomm made a mistake on the image (it would not be the first time).

 

The only thing I can think of that we have heard about is the HH3.0 leaking early. Whilst this might have changed their marketing approach I cannot see why this would have any effect on the release schedule.

 

One possibility is the 11th edition box set. We are expecting this to drop around this time next year which means production is probably in full swing and may have been for while. Apparently 10th edition had 500K boxes and I can easily see 11th edition having north of 600K. Maybe someone decided a few month ago that 11th edition needed an extra 100K boxes and Knights got bumped to make way for extra capacity. We know that the moulding machines at Lenton are running pretty much flat-out at the moment (to the extent that GW are looking at ways to increase capacity) so any change in quantities could potentially be enough to knock out production elsewhere.

[chapter master 454]

On 7/3/2025 at 7:04 AM, Lord_Ikka said:

Unless the run was missing entire pages, GW has been perfectly fine with having typos and incorrect info in codices before, so unlikely.

They've also been ok with having products delayed to certain regions before due to transport issues.

 

and further to that, they are ok with rather major oppsies. The imperial agent codex I have is upside down, the internal pages were put in upside down so clearly the factory that was making them (and was the source of their leak very likely) wasn't high quality nor controlled.

 

The question remains, clearly something went awry but my curiosity is focused on what could of caused such a major issue. Lost shipment could be one but I get the feeling they'd be transparent about if that had happened. The way they talk about it implies there was an issue with the codex, the new boxes for knights OR both. After all, what is the imperial knight battleforce launch boxset going to look like?

 

I don't think we've ever seen this kind of delay on an army before. I get that their timeline was compromised but Imperial Knights were confidently shown to be after/next to chaos knights. Heck, their new defender was previewed FIRST before the ruinator almost implying their confidence in release.

 

I suppose only time will tell, but GW won't ever admit to their issues...though if they do I'd consider that a surprise.