Chaos Knights are on their way to 40k and GW just teased their first official rules for Iconcolast & Infernal Households!
Warhammer Community revealed a couple of rules for Chaos Knights in the form of Iconoclast and Infernal Household rules. These will essentially be in place of the Loyalist’s Freeblades/Household rules in 8th edition.
Iconoclast Households
Psychotic, sadistic killers, the Knights of the Iconoclast Households follow twisted codes of honour and chivalry. During the Horus Heresy, many traitor Knights were driven insane, unable to reconcile following their oaths to Horus and the Traitor Legions with the increasingly debased and awful acts of carnage they were compelled to participate in.
Iconoclast Knights will have the Conquerers Without Mercy rule allowing for an extra attack, an additional -1 AP, and making an extra model run away from failing morale all after they charge or perform a heroic intervention. You’ll definitely want to run the full melee-Knight with the Iconoclast rules set. He’ll be a killing machine even fiercer than the Loyalist Gallant.
Iconoclast Knight Stratagems
Vow of Dominance makes your Knight insanely tanky. Las Cannons, Leviathan Siege Claws, and even Reaper Chainswords will only be wounding on a 4+. It’s like having a pseudo invuln save.
Vow of Carnage just turns your Knight into an even more killy Knight as the game goes on. Generally speaking, Knights only stick around for a turn or two in the meta so this probably won’t be as good of an option as the Vow of Dominance.
We’re not sure why this is listed as a Stratagem, but directly around this on the main page, they mention a 4++ invuln relic. This must be it.
Infernal Households
Looking at the Infernal Households, these guys play a different role from the Iconoclasts.
The result of twisted experiments to subvert the Thrones Mechanicum, Knights of the Infernal Households are capable of drawing on dark and arcane power in battle. Dedicated to the Dark Mechanicum, these Knights have had their noble purpose subverted by arcane science, with their Fallen Nobles often fused in grisly fashion to their steeds. Now, each Knight of an Infernal Household teems with pathogenic scrapcode, specterphagic Daemons and other dark modifications.
This ability seems pretty powerful. You take a mortal wound and roll a D3 for a result or take D3 mortal wounds (which could be 1) to pick what you want. This will allow Knights to have even more fluid tactics outside the realm of Stratagems.
Which would you pick? #3 would be great for double gattlers.
Infernal Knight Stratagems
You can use this strat to basically stand back up after you’ve gone down and didn’t explode. You only get D3 wounds left but hey, you don’t want to just let go of a 400-500+ pt model like that. You can still possibly get a few stomp attacks in or a chance to explode.
Infernal Knights will be able to self-heal in combat which isn’t the first time we’ve seen Chaos do this. But with a max of 6 wounds allowed each turn, that’ll give some nice longevity to the walker.
And lastly, and stubbers that Knights have can be beefed up to S5. We will probably NEVER see this used but who knows. There could be some Heavy Stubber shenanigans lying in wait with a Chaos Armiger spam list.
The New Chaos Knight Model
It probably goes without saying that we love Spikey Bits, but these kits appear to be a bit more than just the standard Imperial kit with a few spikes added…
Coming from Slabednah on Twitter, we’ve got exclusive sprue pics.
The Chaos Knight appears to be three sprues just like the loyalist Errant kit counterpart. One thing of note is that there is no gatling cannon (dual or otherwise) as that is currently an option from the Renegade Knight Index.
Chaos Knight Weapon, Arms & Shoulders Not the lack of Battle, Thermal, and Gattling Cannons
Chaos Knight Legs Sprue
Chaos Torso & Feet Sprue
Overall, the Chaos Knight looks to have all of the same underlying structure aside from the legs. Of course, there are also a few extra Spikey Bits that really make it “Chaos”.
One of the key differences between the Loyalist and Traitor Knights is that the Loyalist’s left leg is pushed forward while the Chaos Knight has its right leg moved up. They also have different leg joints. The Imperial Knight is akin to a person’s knee while the Chaos Knights are closer to an Armiger, Chicken, Flamingo, whatever floats your boat.
Because we know some of you out there are going to be making some incredible conversions with these, we feel like you should exercise a bit of caution with the legs. It seems like they might have tricky glue-points for alternate armor plates because of the way the legs are modeled. While Chaos plates should fit fine to the Chaos legs, somebody might run into a few problems if they wanted to glue loyalist plates on there.
The loyalist ones use a wishbone shaped “Y” piece for the shins, and as you can see above below the thigh plates are completely different sizes and connectors.
The real kicker will be the knee/thigh plating for the Loyalist Knights. It looks like the Chaos Knights have a fixed knee guard on the thigh plate that hooks over the joint.
Meanwhile, the Imperial Knight has an entirely separate thigh and knee plate. We’re not saying it’s impossible. Just be careful it may not be plug and play.
With the first batch over previews under our belt, what do you think about the rules? Which Household will you be going with? Do you think these will carry marks of the Chaos gods? Let us know in the comments of our Facebook Hobby Group.
About the Author: Wesley Floyd
Wesley Floyd
Job Title: Staff Writer
Joined: 2018
Socials:@RealmbrushPainting
About Wesley Floyd: Wes has been in the Warhammer hobby since 2015 and joined the Spikey Bits writing team in 2018. He is known for his satirist takes on trending topics and imaginative yet amazingly affordable hobby solutions to painting Warhammer miniatures.
Imperial fanboy, tabletop fanatic, and the self-proclaimed King of Sprues. He knows for a fact that Mephiston red is the best-tasting paint and is the commission painting equivalent of a Wendy’s 4 for $4. If you like what he writes and want to contact him or have your tabletop minatures painted (to a mostly okayish standard), message him on Instagram.
