Welcome back ladies and gents, I managed to get my hands on the Chaos Knights book then promptly went on vacation. That means the book has been out for a while and everyone and their grandmother has done a review and found all the cool combos and shit. I am likely to go over a bunch of the same, but I'll try to keep it interesting.
Let me start with my very first impression of the book, before I even unwrapped it...
This is a pretty damn small book and there are 2 main reasons for that. First is that all of the knights of the same chassis have been consolidated to a single data sheet. This simplifies things immensely as all of the weapon options are available and you only have to look at one data sheet. This also means that we can get all of the dual wielding gatling cannons we can choke down. The second is that there are only 2 household equivalents which also reduces the number of specific stratagems, warlord traits, and relics. So we don't have quite as much to choose from, but as you will see shortly, the options we do have are really quite strong. There is also a new chassis that gives us a Desecrator and a Rampager. The Desecrator gives nearby War Dogs unit re-roll hit rolls of 1 and it has a Laser Destructor which sounds a lot better than it is. Sure it's S14, AP-4, D6D and does D3 mortal wounds on wound rolls of 6, but it only has D3 shots. This means it has a lower average damage than every other weapon in almost every other circumstance but it has a relic version of the gun that brings it's damage up, but the Desecrator isn't really worth taking unless you were already planning on taking a bunch of War Dogs. The Rampager is a combat only knight that scores an additional hit on an unmodified hit roll of 6 but only when it's using its sword or fist. It also has a WS of 2+ and 5A much like a Despoiler with 2 melee weapons.
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| -The slaughter of millions of innocents |
Lets start with a rundown of the 2 Household Ambitions, the first of which is the Iconoclast. Knights of this House get an extra attack and improve their melee weapons AP by 1 when they charge, are charged, or performs a heroic intervention until the end of the turn. In addition, enemy units within 12" that fail a Morale Check lose an additional model. Now, this sounds pretty darn good, especially with titanic feet on a Rampager, 18A hitting on 2's and AP-3.
Knights of the Infernal Ambition get access to a chart, at the start of each movement phase they may suffer a mortal wound so they can roll on the chart or they can suffer D3 mortal wounds to choose the result on the chart. It's a D3 chart and the first ability gives the knight an addition 2" to it's move and adds 1 to advance and charge rolls. The second result adds 1 to the knights T making the big guys T9 and the War Dogs T8. Finally, and the "piece de resistance", the third result on the table allows you to add 1 to the S and D of one ranged weapon. 3D gatling cannons, S9 battle cannons, S8 and 3D conflagration cannons (which auto hit as well), all that sounds really good.
Next up we have the stratagems of which more than half are the same as the Imperial knights, such as Full Tilt, Rotate Ion Shields, Thunderstomp, etc. Trail of Destruction is still kicking around from the Index, allowing a Knight to re-roll ALL hit rolls when it is chosen to shoot, fight, or perform overwatch. There are also a couple of highly popular new stratagems such as the Vow of Dominance which you use once at the start of a game for 2CP, on an Iconoclast knight, which causes all the unmodified wound rolls of 1, 2, or 3 to automatically fail for the entire game. Think on that for a minute, of the things that knights fear the most like Morty, BA smash captains, Magnus, and other Knights. they can all go fuck themselves cause the best they can wound you on is 4+. The Infernal Knights have their own way of staying alive using Pact with the Dark Gods, which brings the model back to life with D3 wounds on a 4+, and Bind the Souls of the Defeated which restores a lost wound on a 4+ for each model the Knight kills in the fight phase, up to 6 wounds.
When I read, and re-read this next section I was certain that GW either made a mistake or they would shortly amend the Imperial Knight book to read the same way. It turns out that you can be both a Dreadblade and have a household ambition, not only that but negative abilities only take affect if you roll higher than your models Ld stat on 2D6, which you must roll for at the start of each of your turns. Also, you don't HAVE to generate abilities if you don't want to but if you do, you generate a series of positive and negative abilities from 2 lists, which is done before the game starts. You may choose a single good ability or you can roll for 2 good abilities, while you can choose 2 bad abilities or roll for 1. These abilities range from dealing mortal wounds when the knight charges and reducing weapons with AP-1 to AP0 to not being able to use stratagems on that knight and always fighting last in the fight phase even if it charged. While none of the good ones are game breaking on their own, some of them can be used to great effect in a couple combinations which I can elaborate on later. However, the bad ones can be quite crippling if you happen to fail the test at the wrong time.
With all the amazing abilities and stratagems, I really think it's the Artifacts of Tyranny that will ultimately make the difference between a good knight build and an incredible knight build. We have weapon upgrades for the chainsword and gauntlet, both of which are pretty good, a 4++ vs shooting and a 5++ all the time but here are a couple that have incredible potential. The Khornate Target is only one use per battle at the start of the fight phase, but for the rest of that phase a model hit with attack made by this knight cannot make invulnerable saves against those attacks. There are a handful of units that can completely stall a charging knight and all of them have a really good invulnerable save, Guilliman, Magnus, Ogryn. There is another sweet thing about this relic, it doesn't apply to a single enemy target, it effect is applied to the knights attacks so if you happen to move in against multiple units you get to ignore all of their saves. If you think that one is good, the Helm of Warp Sight allows the knight to ignore all hit modifiers, so those dirty Eldar units can go straight to hell, with the help of an Avenger Gatling cannon or 2. Death Guard Daemon Princes love the Suppurating Plate armour, well now your Knight can have it too. While the Putrid Carapace of Nurgle doesn't give you a 2+ save, it still bounces mortal wounds back to enemy on a 4+ each time you pass a save in the fight phase. This is good against units that can put out lots of attacks and have some way of getting a lot of successful wound rolls with low AP.
Finally we come to the warlord traits, none of which are terribly great on their own, but none of which are really terrible. Infernal Quest gives the knight "obsec." and it counts as 10 models, Knight Diabolus gives it an extra attack and Warp Haunted Hull allows it to Deny the Witch once and a 5+ vs mortal wounds suffered in the psychic phase.
Now to look at a couple combos, and there are a couple pretty extreme set ups that could surprise you in their sheer single-mindedness, if you aren't prepared for it. First up we got the Turn-One-Charge Knight. Take a combat knight, like a Rampager, with the Infernal Household Ambition, have it take the Daemonic Hunger which adds 2" to it's move and 1 to each of it's advance and charge rolls. Give it the Quicksilver Throne of Slaanesh relic which adds 1 to it's advance and charge rolls and allows it to attack first in every fight phase, then give it the Eager for the Kill Warlord trait which gives it another plus 1 to it's advance and charge rolls and gives it an extra attack if it's entirely within the enemy deployment zone. Finally, and you need a little luck with this one, you can make it a Dreadblade and give it the Daemonic Vigor which adds another 2" to it's movement. When it's all said and done you have a knight moving 16", advancing D6+3", and charging 2D6+3" for a range of 25" - 40". You will have to use the Full Tilt stratagem in order to be able to charge, so if you happen to get the Forsaken Damnation and fail that LD test then you could be in trouble, but for an average charge of 32" on a knight, that is damn scary.
The next big combo is centred around a combat knight again, this time form the Iconoclast Ambition. Give him the Teeth that Hunger and the Knight Diabolus warlord trait for a whopping 8 attacks on the charge or 21 stomps and 1 chainsword attack. Oh and you gave him the Vow of Carnage so every 10 models he kills he gets another attack.
For the last build I have in mind I'd like to take care of something that pure Knights lists have a little trouble with, psychic powers. There are only 2 things required and that is the Tzeentchian Pyrothrone relic, which turns your knight into a psyker who can smite and deny, and Warp Haunted Hull warlord trait, which gives your knight a second deny and a 5+FNP vs mortal wounds suffered in the psychic phase. Combine this with the Infernal stratagem Diabolic Rift which affects all enemy psykers within 12" of any Infernal knight on the table and causes them to Perils on any doubles, not just 6's and 1's.
There we have it, a nice quick review of the "new" Chaos Knights. I think there are a couple things is this book that are going to make some waves in the meta. Thanks for reading and leave a comment if you think I've overlooked anything.
Until next time, keep them dice rollin.
Once again this codex review could not be possible without Maxx Collectibles as my sponsor. He had his monthly painting day again, which is the 3rd Saturday of every month, and it drew a rather large crowd yet again. All you have to do is show up, you will be supplied with a mini, paint, brushes, and some coaching if your new. If your not new, show up with your models and feel free to just hang out with some of the up and coming gamers.
Don't forget to look for me and other Team Maxx Warhammer 40K players at the Middle of Nowhere GT in Shilo MB coming up Oct. 5th and 6th. It's a 5 game GT with a 50 player cap and 48 of them are signed up already. I'll be doing a post on my list and my lack of practice shortly, then of course a post tournament post on how I did.
