Question about Knight and casual play

[ValourousHeart]

Is it possible to play an Imperial Knight list casually without being "That Guy"?

 

I am building and painting a Voltron themed list with Knights, using 1 Valiant (Black Lion), 2 Questoris Class Knights (Blue and Yellow Lions), and 2 Armiger Class Knights (Red and Green Lions).

 

I haven't had the opportunity to play with all 5 Knights yet.

 

But the smaller games I've played have all ended the same way.

With my opponent curb stomped and demoralized... and worse yet, they hadn't dented my Knights.

And I feel like a dirtbag.

 

Do you have any suggestions for a way to play Knights that will give your opponent some sense that they have a chance?

Are the sudden death rules the way to go?

[Ciler]

Consider playing some of the more recent maelstrom missions, with the acceptable casualties rule. Even if you table out your opponent, he may score more points.

 

Another possibility could be to consider playing one of the narrative missions where the attacker have more PP than the defender.

 

In matched play, and especially if your opponent does not know that he'll be playing against a pure knight list and builds accordingly, it's never really going to be any fun otherwise.

[KhorneHunter57x]

Nowadays, I tend to only bring my Knights out in pre-arranged games, where my opponent knows well in advance what I'm bringing and can prepare accordingly.

[Closet Skeleton]

I'd advice you treat your knights as more of a modeling project, having opponents not enjoy playing an army can demoralize one in getting them painted.

 

Narrative missions where the non-knight player has an advantage are an idea I'll second.

 

You might also consider letting the other players borrow your knights and play against them with one of your other armies. That might soften up people's dislike of the army.

[hermanista]

Never had a problem from opponents when I play pure knights - the lack of CP holds them in check.

 

I can see why people would go "eurgh" when it's your standard catachan mortar brigade and auxiliary Raven Castellan.

 

I play with a Lancer Warlord though which raises more eyebrows than anything I've found

[Panzer]

The AdMech player in our group got a Knight and wanted to try it out for the first time yesterday. His opponent asked us for advice how to handle a Knight. He wanted to play with his SW but after thinking of a few things we had to conclude that a Knight could handle SM armies almost on his own in casual games. He ended up taking AM allies for a Banehammer.

He didn't manage to kill the Knight with the 8 Lascannon shots + main cannon (and the Dreadnoughts wounds all got saved by the 4++ thanks to relic+stratagem) but he managed to slow it down so it couldn't do much ... however it the rest of the AdMech list was free to do whatever it wanted so he lost the game still.

If it were a Crusader Knight instead it would've been even worse.

 

tl;dr

unfortunately I don't think Knights are recommended for casual games. They always require the opponent to write a list that can deal with such a potent unit in one way or another and then some factions still struggle with that task.

 

Pure Knight armies however are probably less of a problem since they'd have trouble scoring objectives and wouldn't be able to do so many Stratagem shenanigans. It would just be a very onesided game of getting shot at and trying to outscore the Knights till the game ends for the most part.

[Ciler]

Never had a problem from opponents when I play pure knights - the lack of CP holds them in check.

 

I can see why people would go "eurgh" when it's your standard catachan mortar brigade and auxiliary Raven Castellan.

 

I play with a Lancer Warlord though which raises more eyebrows than anything I've found

CP farming is actually rather easy with IKs. Don't 3 armigers each taken as an individual unit provide something like 3 or 6 CPs ?

[hermanista]

 

Never had a problem from opponents when I play pure knights - the lack of CP holds them in check.

 

I can see why people would go "eurgh" when it's your standard catachan mortar brigade and auxiliary Raven Castellan.

 

I play with a Lancer Warlord though which raises more eyebrows than anything I've found

CP farming is actually rather easy with IKs. Don't 3 armigers each taken as an individual unit provide something like 3 or 6 CPs ?

Nope, you get nothing.

 

3cp for 1 titanic knight in a SHD

6cp for 3 titanic knights

[hermanista]

Also, I don't think (don't have the dex on me atm to check) that a 3 Armiger SHD gets a household tradition either

[MajorNese]

I can see why people would go "eurgh" when it's your standard catachan mortar brigade and auxiliary Raven Castellan.

 

Also, I don't think (don't have the dex on me atm to check) that a 3 Armiger SHD gets a household tradition either

 Slightly off - taking a single knight/armiger choice as auxilia doesn't give you households or characters, but stratagems (which can be used to make a character with WL trait and relic) are allowed. So I do wonder how the tournament lists include just a raven castellan...

 

Knight codex, page 106:

 

ABILITIES

IMPERIAL KNIGHTS Detachments (excluding Super-heavy Auxiliary Detachments) gain the following abilities:

KNIGHT LANCES

[...]

HOUSEHOLD TRADITIONS

 

Stratagems only require any IK detachment, unlike other codices which exclude auxilia or superheavy auxilia detachments.

[hermanista]

The just play the aux raven Castellan without the tradition, give it ion bulwark/Cawls wrath and then use OOC

[MajorNese]

The just play the aux raven Castellan without the tradition, give it ion bulwark/Cawls wrath and then use OOC

After reading the exact definitions - okay, they don't gain the Household Tradition (advance without penalty) but they still get the keyword. Good to know...

[hermanista]

 

 

The just play the aux raven Castellan without the tradition, give it ion bulwark/Cawls wrath and then use OOC

After reading the exact definitions - okay, they don't gain the Household Tradition (advance without penalty) but they still get the keyword. Good to know...

Its not like a Castellan is going very far...

 

It might accidently tread on all those static mortar teams surrounding it

[Lord Raven 19]

Not sure but narrative missions in their favour may work

[Prot]

I've been thinking about this topic because it's something I've experienced on and off myself but for different reasons....

 

Let me just say I play in a competitive, to semi-Competitive environment. I love my AdMech but historically in 8th edition, including when the codex came out, I could not compete with the army.

 

We play 90% objective based games (largely modified Maelstom which in my opinion doesn't need to be modified anymore since CA2 fixed a lot). So I have that going against me. 

 

What I'm getting to here is I had to add Knights. Pretty nearly mandatory or it put me into a terrible, tight AdMech list that was quite boring. The Knights gave me the freedom to build different AdMech Complimentary lists, and the Knights largely gave me some aspect of table control. 

 

But I pulled out my old Knights, (House Raven) added the new (at the time) Dominus Castellan, and found 90% of my games my opponents couldn't win. I had some losses, but we are talking extreme competition here. Any 'normal' game and my opponents were burried in Volcano cannons, and Oathbreaker missile systems.

 

I sold off my Raven House as a result, but found myself shelving the AdMech for a while too (back to being noncompetitive). 

 

So your question very much rings with me, and what I came down to was... it was the Castelan. I've been reintroducing Knights, I don't use Cawl's Decimator anymore, and I will NOT use OathBreaker Missiles in these games anymore (I've annihilated lists by just removing aura characters, and even Guilliman can find himself in trouble with some lucky rolls.)

 

For example:

-AdMech plus just about any variety of Armiger Warglaive/Helverin = seems fine.

- AdMech plus Questoris Preceptor = easy to play against

- AdMech plus Questoris Crusader = easy to play against

- AdMech plus combo of 1 Questoris and a pair of any Armiger type = Fairly competitive, but quite acceptable in my group.

 

You'll notice there's no Castelan. I feel like the Valiant is good, but it's no Catelan. The top competitive tables at cut throat events are not using Valiants, but again when I use one, I won't use the Oathbreaker Strat.

 

So it's a very meta-dependent dilemma you have. In my meta I see Harlequin Ynnarii lists. They rip Knights to shreds.. with scary ease. I have to deal with multi Smash Captain Blood Angels. (Just played one last night). He takes a Knight down a turn, potentially 2 if we are talking Armigers. Astra Militarum can deal with it fairly well. Orks? Double shooting Lootas and Tank Bustas rip my stuff apart with scary efficiency considering their life challenges.

 

 

Take my scenario above, and imagine playing AdMech. Shooty bots, Vanguard, Cawl, some chicken walkers.. it's very static and quite dead when facing a lot of the above. But the Knights let me play my AdMech. Yet my opponents still get to rip my AdMech apart, and I get to have some fun playing my AdMech.

 

That's a piece of my meta. What is yours like?

[BolterZorro]

 

 

Take my scenario above, and imagine playing AdMech. Shooty bots, Vanguard, Cawl, some chicken walkers.. it's very static and quite dead when facing a lot of the above. But the Knights let me play my AdMech. Yet my opponents still get to rip my AdMech apart, and I get to have some fun playing my AdMech.

 

That's a piece of my meta. What is yours like?

Did you try the new vigilus stuff??

there is several good things going on: punchy kastelans, or even better kataphron stratagems and revive or both...

[Prot]

Yes I’ve tried the new Vigilus stuff.... just trying to stay on topic for the OP. :)

[brother_b]

What are these punchy kastellans you talk about?

[Charlo]

What are these punchy kastellans you talk about?

 Kastellans with the Fist/ Flamer option instead of triple Phosphor blasters.

 

To avoid derailing, you can read about the Vigilus detachments here.

[Vel'Cona]

 

That's a piece of my meta. What is yours like?

 

I for one am glad that the local meta is nothing like yours!  It sounds like a somewhat frustrating environment from my POV

[ValourousHeart]

Well, I played a game on Sunday with all 5 knights and stacked the mission as much as I could think of in favor of my opponent.

 

Played the running battle mission from Vigilus with the sandstorm battle zone, and lined up the sandstorm with the knight's deployment zone.

 

I played against 2 opponents, I even let them use a bunch of my RW models in addition to everything they brought, they set up about 250 power worth of units vs my 96 power knight list.

 

The mission said that the attacker (Knights) had to destroy over 1/3 of the defender to claim victory, otherwise the defender won.

 

It was fun, but the Knights managed to kill 7 wounds shy of that 1/3 mark by the end of turn 2. 

My dice were rolling hot that day.

But they were able to knock off a bunch of wounds from the Knights in the same time frame, and even managed to kill the Crusader, which had the 4++ warlord trait.

[Lysere]

Part of the issue is probably just no one in your meta has any of the weakness of knights. Mortal wounds, fast moving hard hitting melee, and screens that are durable enough to survive stomps and not infantry or swarms so they can trap a knight.

 

One way to balance would be maybe pull out the open war cards and give your opponent a random one from the ruse section that actually works for the mission being played.

 

Also lots and lots of terrain, ruins in particular so infantry can hide and out maneuver a knight by using the walls. I've played knights of some kind in basically every single list I've played since the codex dropped and have had no issues with games being too one sided. I never use the Castellan but then again that knight is actually pretty bad in my local meta. While I do agree the Castellan is really good for its cost, without being house Raven and running the strat it only really does well due to what everyone else throws at it.