What the Imperial Knight means for us

I've yet to face one myself, but in the battle reports I've seen the knight has been totally underwhelming - not bad as such, just not quite the invincible badass that some people seemed to think it would be. The sky can stay up for now methinks   

I've faced one myself with my Blood Angels and managed to get it in two turns (a glance on turn 1, 2 penetrating hits on turn 2 from a Storm Raven, one of which caused an Explodes result which managed to take the other 3 hull points). One seems fine, it's 3 or more that worry me.

It's a bit like the Armoured Battle Group guard list, which I've seen players whine when their prospective opponents don't want to play against it. It's because the vast majority of the game revolves around things with a toughness value, supported by things with an armour value. If you take an army composed solely of things with an armour value, then you've effectively negated in most cases 75% of your opponent's army; and can spend the first few turns easily picking off the few things your opponents have that are capable of hurting it.

My last 1750 list had 3 blasters, 3 raiders with dark lances, a ravager with 3 lances, a Razorwing with 2 lances, a heat lance, 2 haywire blasters, and 2 squads of 5 wyches with haywire grenades. And a Talos that could get it in combat. Whereas my archon, haemonculus, grotesques, 10 wracks, 10 warriors, 3 of my 5 scourges, 2 of my 5 jetbikes, and all 3 of my venoms are literally useless in this match-up as they can't do anything.

Recently I have been showing up at gamesnights with just a single knight and "allying in" to any army that wants to substitute 375 points for a knight (freeblade ftw). Despite the amount of moaning about them on the internet people are surprisingly keen to run them in their games.

They are not point and click. Yes you can charge them blindly at the enemy, but you will lose your knight within two turns if your opponent is remotely competent and hasn't substituted out all his AT to tailor to infantry heavy meta that is 6th edition. As panic pointed out split your forces and flank them, and you can bring them down fast, the shield alone increases their survivability by 100%, so bypassing it is invaluable, the difference between AV12-13 is also considerable in terms of damage reduction (though not as relevant to our dark lance weaponry as other armies).

That being said, even a single knight can be deadly if used and supported properly. They are a unit that relies on positioning and facing to be truly formidable. Counter intuitively, a knight player wants to go second (in my experience). Seeing your opponents deployment is a massive advantage with these things.

They are a wide unit, so their front arc is a lot bigger than their side arcs, meaning with a good rider at the helm flanking them can be challenging. In the few games I have had, I have almost always deployed them on a flank around 12" away from the side edge of the table and 12" in (depending on the opposing armies deployment). This lets you use the table edge to protect one of your sides, and as a result allows you to angle your armour facing making it very hard for your opponent to engage your side armour. To engage the flank that is covered by the table edge, your opponent will have to leave his units exposed to a counter assault by your knight.

I normally move the knight up diagonally pushing my opponents force into a corner (unless he wants to risk melee), once my knight is 24" or so into the board from my table edge I have effectively turned the game into hammer and anvil, making it even harder for the knight to be flanked, the whole time taking out my opponents anti armour with the knights rapid fire battle cannon. The result of most these battles has been the knight pushing the enemy army into a corner, whilst my allies forces engage them in the midfield.

Interestingly fielding a knight well is closer to playing battlefleet gothic than 40k: skirt around your opponent taking out key targets and building up the positional advantage before closing in for the kill.

That being said I feel that Dark Eldar are well equipped to deal with knights as unlike a lot of other armies we have not left all our "heavy" AT weapons at home this edition, as we have no auto cannon/plasma cannon equivalents. Even in venom heavy lists haywire wyches can not only tie knights up, but also take them out relatively well, it tends to take a knight at least 2 turns to kill a unit of five wyches (as their invul makes stomp a lot less effective, and the knight doesn't have the volume of attacks to take them out with his reaper).

Terrain can also be used to your advantage, as the knights only move a maximum of 6" in terrain, slowing them down greatly. Yes that little fence, might delay a knight considerably.

As for fighting all knight lists? I don't see them being any different, to serpent spam or any other fully mechanised army that is low on troops (minimum squads in serpents/razors). At least for us (as poison doesn't work against vehicles).

Hope that helps.

EDIT: I'll try and get some diagrams of these manoeuvres posted in this thread over the weekend, to illustrate them better.

I'm pretty sure that my DE can take down a Knight, but what worries me is this: In a 1500 point game, what are the other 1125 points doing? Can I handle a Knight *and* a Riptide *and* a whole bunch of Broadsides battlesuits? Or a Knight and two Heldrakes and two dozen autocannons? I can easily see a situation where trying to flank the Knight means getting into the 'kill zone' of any number of nasty things, and trying to take out the nasty things first means leaving the Knight alone to kill its way through your army.

I get it, it's a challenge, it can be done, and so on. I'm just getting a bit tired of the odds always being so heavily stacked against.

Here is what is wrong with IKs, dataslates and allies

-- IDK 1850 --

Imperial Knights Primary 1120
Knight Errant
Knight Paladin
Knight Paladin

Legion of the Damned Allied Detachment 180
5 Legion of the Damned, Plasmagun, Plasmacannon, Powerfist

Stormwing Dataslate 450
2x Stromrtalon, Skyhammer
Storm Raven, TL Assault Cannon, TL Multi-melta

Stronghold Dataslate 100
Void Shield Generator +2 Shields

So seriously ... what are you going to do with this list? We can talk about defending against a single Knight or a pair of Knights as alllies. But what happens when you support it with 3+ inv., ignore cover units that scatter very little, with incoming flyers and with three AV12 shields ad they all score?

Npw. i do not mind Knights as allies. i think that they can function without breaking the game and can actually be beneficial in balancing out deathstars. However, when they are primary and scoring and whe they are supported by dataslates we can run into some serious issues with IKs. I'm not sure i'm up to handling that.

I have to say, this has been an entertaining and informative read.

Just seen this pic on another forum.



I have no idea why they made the Lancer so massive!

EDIT - Someone has also done a new pic. It's showing that the Lancer is nearly the size of a Warhound!