Another way to play Imperial Knights is here. Today we’re talking about an army which has never really gotten proper love and attention, until now!
Hello friends, I hope you’re not sick of me yet because I have yet another codex review for you.
Knights are unique in that they are an army of literally only Super Heavy slots. Which makes building armies with them a tad weird, but here’s the long and short of it.
Knight Detachments & Armigers
Super Heavy Auxilary Choice: If you take 1 Knight or Armiger as a Super Heavy Aux then you cannot make use of the Knight Lance rule to make him a character, nor do you get the benefit of traditions. However you still unlock stratagems, so the meat of their utility is still available.
Super Heavy Detachment With Armigers: If you take a Super heavy detachment with let’s say a Knight Warden, a Knight Valliant, and an Armiger Warglaive, that little guy will cost you 3cp. Any super heavy detachment of knights will unlock all your stratagems, give you access to the Knight Lance rule (so you can have Warlord traits and Relics), and give you access to traditions. However, the inclusion of any Armigers into the detachment will remove all the CP benefit you would have received.
Super Heavy Detachment With 3 Knights: This is literally as big as it gets! With this, you get all the special rules Knights have to offer and 3cp!
Hopefully, that clears up all the details about how to make Knights detachments for you!
And, now that all that’s covered we can go through some cool combos that Knights have!
Knight Synergies
Armigers- I’m not crazy about either Armiger, to be honest. If they either had a mechanism to fall back and shoot/charge or at least move and shoot heavy weapons without penalty I’d be all about them. The shooty one falls is very similar to a Leman Russ Tank Commander with battle cannon as far as points/damage output, which leaves them in the category of decent but not ground-breakingly good.
The Warglaive is nice as a midfield shooty/combat threat, however it might fill a role that Imperial armies just aren’t looking for as they fill a very similar role to shield captains at a similar price point, but with the detriment of being shootable and not having the fly keyword.
Knight Gallant- These guys are super easy to overlook with all the new fancy toys Knights have. However, I strongly recommend giving them the respect they deserve. A house Terryn Gallant can move 12 and run 2d6 pick the highest, then charge after the advance for just 1cp. In combat, it can unload 15 stomp attacks or 5 sword attacks depending on the target, and then, of course, fight twice.
Let’s not forget, that when he goes down he will be deep in the enemy lines, and for just 1cp he can explode on a 4! This is the definition of a kamikaze knight for just ~345 points!
The Heavy Hitter
Knight Castellan- They said to save the best for last, so that’s exactly what I did. This utter monstrosity is the true heart of the codex.
Let’s just take a second to go over what he shoots:
- 2d6 Plasma Cannon shots
- 2 Shieldbreaker missiles
- 4d3 Autocannon shots
- 4 Melta guns
- d6 Volcano Lance shots
Holy mushrooms that’s a ton of shots. But wait, there’s more! If you make this little guy House Raven for the stratagem to reroll all ones (including the number of shots for his weapons) you’re now averaging a ton of autocannon-equivalent shots and you make yourself fairly immune to whiffing that volcano lance or plasma stuff. Let’s not forget he’ll be hitting on 3’s rerolling 1’s and rerolling 1s to wounds. At that point, he’s basically a Knight being buffed by Guilliman.
Compliments to the Knight
What’s even better is when you make him the Warlord, you can give him the relic for a 2+ armor save and the WL trait for a 4++ inv, which of course you can buff to a 3++ as needed. And people thought Magnus and Morty were tough to kill…
It’s not all sunshine, rainbows, and puppies for Knights though. As I’m sure a lot of you may have realized, a lot of the cool tricks and combos I’m talking about require a ton of CP, and Knights don’t exactly lend themselves to spamming battalions.
That said, they live in the lovely world known as the Imperium, and therefore they have access to the humble infinite CP guard brigade. Competitively speaking, I think adding Knights to a more balanced force that can support them will see you with a lot more success than you would see with just taking your big toys out by themselves.
Beneficial Detachments
Here ’s a really quick sample list of an army that has lots of options and the ability to adequately support the Knight. It could probably use some tweaking and refinement, but you get the idea.
| Catachan Brigade | |
| Straken | 75 |
| Company Commander | 30 |
| Company Commander | 30 |
| Priest | 35 |
| Platoon Commander | 20 |
| Platoon Commander | 20 |
| 10 Infantry | 40 |
| 10 Infantry | 40 |
| 10 Infantry | 40 |
| 10 Infantry | 40 |
| 10 Infantry | 40 |
| 10 Infantry | 40 |
| Sentinel- Multi laser | 45 |
| Sentinel- Multi laser | 45 |
| Sentinel- Multi laser | 45 |
| 3 Basilisks | 324 |
| 3 Mortars | 33 |
| 3 Mortars | 33 |
| Blood Angels Battalion | |
| Captain- Thunder hammer, storm shield, jump pack | 129 |
| Captain- Thunder hammer, jump pack | 114 |
| 5 Scouts | 55 |
| 5 Scouts | 55 |
| 5 Scouts | 55 |
| Super Heavy Aux | |
| Knight Castellan | 604 |
Most hyper-competitive lists for the Imperium are running swarm armies. An army that is such a points sink may not do so well trying to farm CPs and a knight. So Guard seems like the best option here.
If you liked this article, and want to learn more about Knights, become a pro, and enjoy my weekly clinics on Imperial armies!
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