vs. Knights

LordSplata wrote:

The other great thing about the mandrakes is you could bring them down on turn 3, giving you a great chance at losing them fewest number of miniatures before end of game. Going second would even be a benefit in this instance as the enemy get the fewest possible number of shots at us

The problem with that is that at least half your army has to be on the table on turn 1, regardless of how many units have reserve rules, so you'll be splitting your forces and narrowing down the number of targets, which might make it easier for him to focus on what you do have on the table.

Kaos dudes can build a list of 80+ MW per turn. :-( I think Knight players will soon realize that purely Knight lists are not going to work as well as they did.

Yes, but a general Meta that disallows Knights is not the same as us having a way to deal with Knights.

Mortal Wounds seem the way to go with Knights, but we simply don't have the means to generate many of them.

As an aside, I think that it's pretty ridiculous that a superheavy detachment yields 3 CP. Frankly, if you're fielding 3 superheavies, I don't think that you need 3 CP on top of that as an extra boon.

That is pretty silly. Should be +1 like all the other detachments for the elites, heavy support, etc.

Not sure if it's been pointed out but Warpsmiths can't heal knights and Sorcs can't prescience knights. Warpsmiths only fix stuff from their own "Legion", and Sorcs only buff Heretic Astartes.

As to the more general problem of killing knights, as has been discussed already Mandrakes are a unit I've been wanting to play around with. It's too bad they can be ynarri, would love to try them out with some dragon serpents, and a farseer or 2 to doom things before baleblasting (and plenty of razorwings to screen and tie things up)

Bugs_N_Orks wrote:

Not sure if it's been pointed out but Warpsmiths can't heal knights and Sorcs can't prescience knights.  Warpsmiths only fix stuff from their own "Legion", and Sorcs only buff Heretic Astartes.

Well... that actually makes a HUGE difference.

Had a small game against dark angels and a knight (1500 points), it didn't go so well for me.

Here are the following problems I had:
1) I tried using a pain engine (not specifically against the knight but as a general tarpit) the knight killed it in CC like it was nothing.
2) Knight player had far less units so went first and took out my ravagers before I could do anything
3) Heat lances scourges are crap, don't buy them ever
4) First turn I fired everything at the knight after loosing my ravagers but didn't really have enough firepower at that point to realistically degrade it.
5) Underestimated the CC threat range of the knight and it ate up my grots with a counter charge (I had thrown them into a squad of devistators)
6) Mortal wounds from mandrakes do not make a large impact on a knight and should be spent elsewhere

Things I intend to try for next time:
1) burn command points on the re-rolling damage of 1-2 for lances (since this takes place after the save)
2) If I lose too much fire power, ignore the knight and kill other things
3) Keep cc units out of it's cc threat range whenever possible

I think that running more flyers is in general good advise right now to, it helps that knights can't assault them.

And WTF on the pain engines, they suck hard.

Well, I played a follow-up game (2000 pts) with the same player - this time he tweaked his list after I pointed out that his previous combo was not legal.

It consisted of:

- 3 Renegade Knights (2 w/ rapid fire battlecannon and missile pods, 1 w/ gatling and twin icarus
 autocannons)
- Typhus
- Great Unclean One


I brought:

- 2 archons (blaster, huskblade - in the unlikely event that the archon gets into cc with a knight, the
 huskblade is actually the best cc choice)
- 4 units of 5 warriors (w/ blaster) - packed into 2 raiders
- 2 units of 9 warriors (w/ blaster) - each in a raider and riding w/ an archon
- 1 unit of 5 trueborn (4 blasters) - in a venom
- 3 ravagers (2 with all DLs, 1 with all dissies)
- 1 razorwing jetfighter
- 1 unit of 5 mandrakes

The mission was Scouring, so there were 6 objectives on the table. Superior objective was on far left. Inferior objective was far right, with the other 4 scattered all about. He set up his 3 knights equidistant across his deployment zone, with Typhus/GUO in reserve. after setting up one raider and one ravager on the objective to the left, i deployed everything else to the far right.

He got first turn, but only destroyed one ravager, damaged another, damaged the razorwing, and destroyed one of my non-archon raiders. On my first turn, I focused all firepower on his knight on the right, and destroyed it. This prompted him to move his other knights to the right to try to fill the gap. Meanwhile, I claimed the objectives that he left behind on the left (dropped off a unit of 5 to hold the superior objective, flew over to another objective and dropped off another unit of 5).

He DS'd Typhus behind me in my deployment zone, who immediately summoned the GUO. I basically just ignored and avoided them for the entire game. I left a unit of warriors in their way to offer up token resistence/slow him down a bit. Meanwhile, I continued to focus fire on the next Knight.

I dropped the mandrakes onto an objective on turn 3, and destroyed the 2nd knight on turn 4, at which point my opponent conceded, as he simply didn't have enough models on the table to be able to claim enough objectives to win.

Glad this story had a happy end.