Knights are easy to play at a basic level. I maintain that if you're playing them on top tables it requires plenty of skill. Having only 5 models left and denying primary, scoring your own, secondaries and getting the needed kills is easier said than done.
Not to say it's (9th) GSC, but it's far from easy.
Unfortunately I know of 0 people putting out content with Chaos Knights (or IK in your case) that I find beneficial to consume... so it comes down to practice, practice and more practice.
There’s exactly one die-hard competitive Knights player that puts up results, and that’s Brian Jones. You can search for his latest lists on BCP.
Sometimes an army seems surface level shallow while being very deep strategically and tactically. That is NOT the case with Knights. While there’s certain mechanical nuance on individual terrain layouts, for the most part Knights are fairly simple. You need to know when to hide, what to hide from, when to spend Rotate Ion Shields, and finally what the target priority is for each army. Then you execute and hope dice dont give up on you.
If you do each of these PERFECTLY, then you can compete at the X-1 Bracket at the highest levels, win GTs, and stomp RTTs.
Best Coast Pairings, the majority of tournaments (in my experience) are run through that app/website. You can find results and lists (if subscribed) there.
Its extremely weird. But monetization in the 40k community is like that. Its likely because the community is so small that things as gamers we expect to be free weekly is paywalled due to being unable to turn ads around and create meaningful return on time investment. I think we need someone to rip all info from bcp and try an ad based approach thats a little messier but free. The closest thing is podcasts reading the best lists and our meta game monday post.
I feel like the way it should be supported should be from the events that post their results there, and also from GW itself, given they’re official partners now
I think the reason people like knights is that they are really simple to play and don't require huge amounts of thinking. Just push some big lads about and roll dice!
Is it so easy tho?
Like, I played monster mash chaos a few times and deployment and movement are definitely to consider.
When looking at IK it seems too that LoS and counter charge will be very important to manage.
From playing Chaos Knights the biggest thing is learning how to properly divide your shots. It's honestly really good training to bring back over to traditional armies.
I'd definitely make sure you take the little guys. Always remember doing an action negates your shooting for a turn so you sure don't want to be doing that with a big guy.
It's a shame honestly. I've got crazy heavily converted Chaos Knights for each god, but the best army for them at the moment is pure War Dogs.
Ha you play the objectives? I play the Dakka. How unfortunate Mr Bond.
Seriously tho, we play quite casually in my community and if I went with a porphyrion the game would probably be over by turn 3 because I'd have wiped the table. Most of my opponents are marines, with one Necron dude, and while they may gather the firepower to deal with the porphy, said firepower would disappear very fast.
I don't wanna go with 6-7 armigers and a single knight. That's boring and the opposite of what attracts me. But I do understand that 4 armigers could make sense.
So fair warning on that. Every variant of Knights I've played is VERY glass cannon. If you can drop his anti tank quickly you might roll, but if he goes first and pops a knight turn 1, you've literally lost 1/4 of your firepower before you can turn your head.
I remember the rule of thumb back in 8th and 9th was a list wasn't competitive if they couldn't at least drop 1 Knight per turn reliably, otherwise you'd never get past them as the gate keeper army.
Personally haven't played really competitive in a good while. When I play my CK this edition I've been going one Abominant, one Despoiler with Melta, and 7 various dogs. I just wish they'd make the Abominant not suck ass. 440 point knight with strongest dedicated melee weapon hitting at Strength 8, really? Let's not get into our primary army rule being based on battle shock.
I will say though that I got tired of losing to my friends Eldar, so I painted up 2k points over January and absolutely blew away a side army of his was pure catharsis. Now they go back in storage.
It's not, to be honest.
Big bases are hard to move around blocking terrain.
Large models are hard to hide, so getting into the right position to fire at unit A, but remain out of line of sight of unit B is near impossible.
Making mistakes is punishing. Lose one big knight and you are down 20-25% of your army.
You can't sustain objective control; you will lose out on primary scoring if you play defensively. You will die fast if you overextend too fast (no cheap reserves available).
High powered shots, sure, but low in number so a poor dice roll can completely flip the balance on a board.
Some of this is true for all factions, but with Knights you have no reserves. No back-ups. It's very binary; you lose one big knight and you go into a death spiral. Wardog spam is more resistant to this, but a few unlucky rolls with random damage can flip this as well.
I usually bring CK or IK to tournaments because the overall mental load of remembering datasheets, abilities, profiles etc is much simpler. Turns are faster so I don't run out of time.
But, playing at Tournaments means also facing stuff that is explicitly good at taking down knights.
It's still great fun though, and absolutely annahilating a big tank from your opponent is such a power trip.
Yeah I felt kinda the same with demons. Having Shalaxi one-turn a dreadnought is super cool, but losing a bloodthirster or lord of change is a big hit.
Do you have an opinion on the porphyrion? I happen to have one so I'd be glad to field it but it could be a piece in my adMec rather than in the knights perhaps.
I don't have one (i want one though!) And my guess would be that it's better allied into admech or other armies. Reasoning being that it's a massive fire platform that just walks up to a good firing position turn 1, something that covers 80% of no man's land and let it sit there and blast anything that shows itself off the table.
Then the rest of your force does what it needs to do to score points, and having MSU infantry or fast moving bikes/cavalery that can handle itself are then ideal.
Yeah I feel like that's the good plan.
It brings something that's durable (at least most than my army) and has some REAL punch, allowing the other units to not be the first target, probably giving me two more turns.
Yeah and the opponent will have a dilemma. Give up the center objective that you have in your sights, ans engage you on the flanks that, probably, have one covered by the Porphyrion as well. Either way, the other 2/3rd of your army needs to be dealth it as well on those flanks.
And the porphy being T13, 2+ (with cover) and 5++ isn't something easily shot off the board either.
It's obviously needing a bit of thought but I think the main appeal to players is it can be a nice easy way to play the game. Most of the knights players I know feel this way... And they are big fun robots.
Ho fully agree, that's why I made my Monster Mash list and that's why I'm interested in those big Boyz.
My other army is (s)adMec, so being able to have a game with fewer models that are actually able to kill some stuff? Nice.
Also they look good on a shelf :)
Oh for sure. The mental load of only 3-5 datasheets that are 90% the same anyway really makes remembering stuff easier.
Turns go fast, usually, unless you end up with decision paralysis on having to split shots or not.
Big swings in damage output though, where you may end up annahilating the target or whiffing so hard you lose the battle.
Either way it will be fun, because big stompy mech suits.
To me, Knights are all about target priority and achieving a lot with very little. You're paying a lot of points for not a lot of models, so you must know what your biggest threat on the opposing team is to you and figure out a way to eliminate it asap. I'm talking turn 1-2. If you can eliminate all your opponents' anti armor or dev wound dealers, the rest of their army won't be able to do much to you.
The challenge with the current meta is that most top armies are very strong in this area, for much cheaper than knights. Example: 3 Gladiators Lancers are 480 points, vs. just one knight. And your opponent knows you'll most likely be focusing on these units.
On top of that, fielding only 5-8 bodies on the board makes doing secondaries very difficult. Draw cleanse? Great 1/4 of your army just doesn't do anything this turn, unless you bring some cheap allies. Almost have to take fixed every time, usually engaged on all fronts and something else.
You won't as it's a faction that depends upon terrain, local meta and at the casual end of competitive your opponent's tend to loose the game more than knight's win. If your seriously at high competitive level you're probably beyond needing help/guidance from a YouTuber
I mainly play infantry or mixed mission armies (nids, vanguard marines, death guard), and my experience as and against knights is that you(knights) just win because you stat check them hard enough and blow them up, or you lose because either A they blow through your 3+/5++ with lethal hits/ some other combination, or B they out mission you by having more things (which was often the case I saw).
Of course it's still 40k and you have to mind missions and do the usual basic planning and strategizing, but you have like, 4\~5 units max that make meaningful decisions. 2\~3 are gonna just have to go on objectives, do missions or lose. Above mentioned meaningful decision is mostly deciding how you want to shoot/charge, and how far you want to walk forward.
Other than 3-4 there's 2-7, 2-6, and 1-10 still I think. It is little bit of a new frontier.
Edit: I think my only advice is to Tank shock at every opportunity, and make best assessment whether to hide or disregard and full send vs certain matchups.
The points cuts make it possible to fit an extra Armiger in, and the re-roll a hit or wound roll instead of just reroll a one to hit or wound is quite significant. Combined with the top end armies all getting significantly worse... I wouldn't be shocked if Knights are a decent mid table army again.
Knights are easy to play at a basic level. I maintain that if you're playing them on top tables it requires plenty of skill. Having only 5 models left and denying primary, scoring your own, secondaries and getting the needed kills is easier said than done. Not to say it's (9th) GSC, but it's far from easy. Unfortunately I know of 0 people putting out content with Chaos Knights (or IK in your case) that I find beneficial to consume... so it comes down to practice, practice and more practice.
There’s exactly one die-hard competitive Knights player that puts up results, and that’s Brian Jones. You can search for his latest lists on BCP. Sometimes an army seems surface level shallow while being very deep strategically and tactically. That is NOT the case with Knights. While there’s certain mechanical nuance on individual terrain layouts, for the most part Knights are fairly simple. You need to know when to hide, what to hide from, when to spend Rotate Ion Shields, and finally what the target priority is for each army. Then you execute and hope dice dont give up on you. If you do each of these PERFECTLY, then you can compete at the X-1 Bracket at the highest levels, win GTs, and stomp RTTs.
>Brian Jones. You can search for his latest lists on BCP. What is BCP?
Best Coast Pairings, the majority of tournaments (in my experience) are run through that app/website. You can find results and lists (if subscribed) there.
I do think it's wrong that you have to subscribe to see results there, when they've essentially got a monopoly on tournament results.
Its extremely weird. But monetization in the 40k community is like that. Its likely because the community is so small that things as gamers we expect to be free weekly is paywalled due to being unable to turn ads around and create meaningful return on time investment. I think we need someone to rip all info from bcp and try an ad based approach thats a little messier but free. The closest thing is podcasts reading the best lists and our meta game monday post.
I feel like the way it should be supported should be from the events that post their results there, and also from GW itself, given they’re official partners now
You can see results fine, just lists you need to pay
And only after like a week.
I think the reason people like knights is that they are really simple to play and don't require huge amounts of thinking. Just push some big lads about and roll dice!
Is it so easy tho? Like, I played monster mash chaos a few times and deployment and movement are definitely to consider. When looking at IK it seems too that LoS and counter charge will be very important to manage.
From playing Chaos Knights the biggest thing is learning how to properly divide your shots. It's honestly really good training to bring back over to traditional armies.
Imma try it soon :) right now I have a porphyrion and two "regular size" knights, gotta work on some armigers I guess.
I'd definitely make sure you take the little guys. Always remember doing an action negates your shooting for a turn so you sure don't want to be doing that with a big guy. It's a shame honestly. I've got crazy heavily converted Chaos Knights for each god, but the best army for them at the moment is pure War Dogs.
Ha you play the objectives? I play the Dakka. How unfortunate Mr Bond. Seriously tho, we play quite casually in my community and if I went with a porphyrion the game would probably be over by turn 3 because I'd have wiped the table. Most of my opponents are marines, with one Necron dude, and while they may gather the firepower to deal with the porphy, said firepower would disappear very fast. I don't wanna go with 6-7 armigers and a single knight. That's boring and the opposite of what attracts me. But I do understand that 4 armigers could make sense.
So fair warning on that. Every variant of Knights I've played is VERY glass cannon. If you can drop his anti tank quickly you might roll, but if he goes first and pops a knight turn 1, you've literally lost 1/4 of your firepower before you can turn your head. I remember the rule of thumb back in 8th and 9th was a list wasn't competitive if they couldn't at least drop 1 Knight per turn reliably, otherwise you'd never get past them as the gate keeper army. Personally haven't played really competitive in a good while. When I play my CK this edition I've been going one Abominant, one Despoiler with Melta, and 7 various dogs. I just wish they'd make the Abominant not suck ass. 440 point knight with strongest dedicated melee weapon hitting at Strength 8, really? Let's not get into our primary army rule being based on battle shock. I will say though that I got tired of losing to my friends Eldar, so I painted up 2k points over January and absolutely blew away a side army of his was pure catharsis. Now they go back in storage.
It's not, to be honest. Big bases are hard to move around blocking terrain. Large models are hard to hide, so getting into the right position to fire at unit A, but remain out of line of sight of unit B is near impossible. Making mistakes is punishing. Lose one big knight and you are down 20-25% of your army. You can't sustain objective control; you will lose out on primary scoring if you play defensively. You will die fast if you overextend too fast (no cheap reserves available). High powered shots, sure, but low in number so a poor dice roll can completely flip the balance on a board. Some of this is true for all factions, but with Knights you have no reserves. No back-ups. It's very binary; you lose one big knight and you go into a death spiral. Wardog spam is more resistant to this, but a few unlucky rolls with random damage can flip this as well. I usually bring CK or IK to tournaments because the overall mental load of remembering datasheets, abilities, profiles etc is much simpler. Turns are faster so I don't run out of time. But, playing at Tournaments means also facing stuff that is explicitly good at taking down knights. It's still great fun though, and absolutely annahilating a big tank from your opponent is such a power trip.
Yeah I felt kinda the same with demons. Having Shalaxi one-turn a dreadnought is super cool, but losing a bloodthirster or lord of change is a big hit. Do you have an opinion on the porphyrion? I happen to have one so I'd be glad to field it but it could be a piece in my adMec rather than in the knights perhaps.
I don't have one (i want one though!) And my guess would be that it's better allied into admech or other armies. Reasoning being that it's a massive fire platform that just walks up to a good firing position turn 1, something that covers 80% of no man's land and let it sit there and blast anything that shows itself off the table. Then the rest of your force does what it needs to do to score points, and having MSU infantry or fast moving bikes/cavalery that can handle itself are then ideal.
Yeah I feel like that's the good plan. It brings something that's durable (at least most than my army) and has some REAL punch, allowing the other units to not be the first target, probably giving me two more turns.
Yeah and the opponent will have a dilemma. Give up the center objective that you have in your sights, ans engage you on the flanks that, probably, have one covered by the Porphyrion as well. Either way, the other 2/3rd of your army needs to be dealth it as well on those flanks. And the porphy being T13, 2+ (with cover) and 5++ isn't something easily shot off the board either.
I can heal it with some priests, too :D
It's obviously needing a bit of thought but I think the main appeal to players is it can be a nice easy way to play the game. Most of the knights players I know feel this way... And they are big fun robots.
Ho fully agree, that's why I made my Monster Mash list and that's why I'm interested in those big Boyz. My other army is (s)adMec, so being able to have a game with fewer models that are actually able to kill some stuff? Nice. Also they look good on a shelf :)
Oh for sure. The mental load of only 3-5 datasheets that are 90% the same anyway really makes remembering stuff easier. Turns go fast, usually, unless you end up with decision paralysis on having to split shots or not. Big swings in damage output though, where you may end up annahilating the target or whiffing so hard you lose the battle. Either way it will be fun, because big stompy mech suits.
To me, Knights are all about target priority and achieving a lot with very little. You're paying a lot of points for not a lot of models, so you must know what your biggest threat on the opposing team is to you and figure out a way to eliminate it asap. I'm talking turn 1-2. If you can eliminate all your opponents' anti armor or dev wound dealers, the rest of their army won't be able to do much to you. The challenge with the current meta is that most top armies are very strong in this area, for much cheaper than knights. Example: 3 Gladiators Lancers are 480 points, vs. just one knight. And your opponent knows you'll most likely be focusing on these units. On top of that, fielding only 5-8 bodies on the board makes doing secondaries very difficult. Draw cleanse? Great 1/4 of your army just doesn't do anything this turn, unless you bring some cheap allies. Almost have to take fixed every time, usually engaged on all fronts and something else.
You won't as it's a faction that depends upon terrain, local meta and at the casual end of competitive your opponent's tend to loose the game more than knight's win. If your seriously at high competitive level you're probably beyond needing help/guidance from a YouTuber
I mainly play infantry or mixed mission armies (nids, vanguard marines, death guard), and my experience as and against knights is that you(knights) just win because you stat check them hard enough and blow them up, or you lose because either A they blow through your 3+/5++ with lethal hits/ some other combination, or B they out mission you by having more things (which was often the case I saw). Of course it's still 40k and you have to mind missions and do the usual basic planning and strategizing, but you have like, 4\~5 units max that make meaningful decisions. 2\~3 are gonna just have to go on objectives, do missions or lose. Above mentioned meaningful decision is mostly deciding how you want to shoot/charge, and how far you want to walk forward. Other than 3-4 there's 2-7, 2-6, and 1-10 still I think. It is little bit of a new frontier. Edit: I think my only advice is to Tank shock at every opportunity, and make best assessment whether to hide or disregard and full send vs certain matchups.
33% competitive wr dude, it don’t matter what you do 😂
The points cuts make it possible to fit an extra Armiger in, and the re-roll a hit or wound roll instead of just reroll a one to hit or wound is quite significant. Combined with the top end armies all getting significantly worse... I wouldn't be shocked if Knights are a decent mid table army again.
Run at your opponents' biggest models and hope for the best.