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Post by thesanityassassin on Jan 20, 2015 9:57:37 GMT -5
With the Club Championship coming up I'm getting the feeling we might end up seeing an annoying number of the big stompy fellows, and it has caused me to realize I have absolutely no experience dealing with them. I've played against Knights exactly twice, the first time I dealt with the rest of the army while the Knight rampaged through my backfield units, the second time it got killed by Kyle's melta gun squad hurling themselves out of a flyer at it (not an option for most).
Anyway, with that said, I'm just looking for suggestions/solutions people have come up with in terms of fighting them/things that they've been worried about if they've used Knights themselves. I can come up with ideas for dealing with them that involve overhauling my whole list just to fight Knights, but I'm not really willing to do that thinking about the event as a whole, and I don't want to find myself getting stomped over by them game after game.
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Post by calitom on Jan 20, 2015 10:45:37 GMT -5
High volume of STR 6+ shooting usually gets the job done, and if that fails Combat attacks that can hurt them consistently like power fists / TH etc.
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Post by Jack Shrapnel on Jan 20, 2015 10:49:56 GMT -5
Unfortunately knights are a thing... I personally think it's a cool model that has no business in regular 40k. I realize that people spend and inordinate amount of money on these things and want to play with their legal codex, so as much as personally I'd love to say they're a lord of war choice only (ie: you can only field one), or that they are subject to the vehicle damage table like everyone else, but that's not how the rules work, I get it. We'll seee what kind of impact they have on the big tourney coming up of course. This is my own personal experience with them, where because of the choices I make in what armies I field I struggle with knights in general and especially if there's multiples. There are certain armies that do not struggle with knights of course, however in general I'd offer some of these ideas: At range: 1 - multiple angles of attack on one knight. Trying to get through a 4+ save on a 6 HP superheavy walker is rough enough, the fact that it's immune to the effects of the damage chart (especially with needing a 7 now to get an explodes result) means you have to make your penetrating hits count. Force the knight player to choose which facing is protected and you get at least one clear melta shot in. Drop melta can do this quite reliably, but remember, one melta shot cannot kill a knight, and even with melta you still need to roll a 5+ in order to get an explodes for the extra HP. 2 - grav as a source of HP damage. If only the damn things were subject to immobilization grav would be the actual answer, but you're actually just relying on glancing the thing to death. Centurions are the all stars here, especially with psychic support (hi prescience + gate of infinity!). The problem is if you drop one knight with the centurions, expect the second to promptly charge them and kill them in short order with S10 AP2 D attacks. Bikers have the more mobile option for sure, albeit less shots. Keep your distance if you can (good luck on a 12" a turn moving vechicle) and if you can hit and run out of combat, you might live. 3 - multiple sources of glances. multiple haywire attacks, glancing out with necrons, shooting massed S7 weaponry (or S6 rending) can possibly work. However you need 12 glances on average to take one out (24 for an admantium lance formation that gets to reroll invuls if they stay within 3" of one another). So those annihilation barges you've got? That's 144 shots to get through a rerollable knight's shield. Good luck with that. 4 - back arc shots. A flyrant's only chance to glance (see above), this can be a possible method of taking them out. Unfortunately heavy weaponry is often not so great in combat so you may find the knight just turns round and punks whatever shot at it. 5 - flyers. Get a stormraven, melta the crap out of it. Doom scythe also works here with their S10 beam (and if they're lancing it, you can likely grab multiple knights with this flyer! Knights cannot shoot up, so you're good. Everything on the ground is likely dead, but your flyer is safe  Close combat: no shield in combat - so this is always tempting to run in. D attacks and then a possible D explosion means whatever goes in may never leave, so be aware of this very real threat! 1 - Smash. Don't do this unless you have no other option. Like none. The MC you sent in to smash is likely just going to die when the knight swings his big D-sword. You're counting on one shot to get lucky and possibly take a few hull points off if you get an explode result (ie: roll a six). So this requires said MC to hit (50% odds most times) then another 50% chance to pen, and then has to roll a six to get an explodes result. Sucky odds. 2 - Naturally high strength attacks. ie: bring a wraithknight. Wraithknights can beat knights in combat, striking first with S10 attacks you can get hull points off reliably without smashing. Charging carnifex can also do this with multiple S9 hammer of wrath attacks (which mitigates the fact that they will subequently get punked by the attacks striking before them). True story - I did this once, and the resulting D explosion killed all the carnifex instantly, the other two knights then soloed my army. 3 - uber characters. Space marine captains with shield eternal and S8+ attacks, meltabomb suicide sergeants, destroyer lords with warscythes, skarbrand with his armor bane choppiness, chaos lords with fists of fury, tau etherals (just kidding!). There are those characters who kick ass and take names, will hit the knight on 3's and have a decent chance of killing the thing. However you also risk D explosion death, so just be aware of this. Have some ablative wounds with you as well, because alot of these high strength attacks strike last, and there is a big old D sword smacking you first - best have some dudes ready to take one for the team! Beating them with neither shooting NOR close combat: 1 - avoid them (can be done if you have a highly mobile army) they can't be everywhere at once. Play to the mission, snag the objectives and don't get drawn into a fight you can't win. 2 - kill everything else and ignore the knights (can't if it's a full five knight army - shudder) ---------------- side note from a tourney organizer perspective. I am sitting back and letting the rules play how they play at this time. (I'm not letting my personal opinions dictate a thing here) However, I will NOT have our great hobby tournaments devolve into an arms race. Knights are one of the things I'm watching carefully. MOST of the time we can rely on one another to have the common sense not to go overboard ultra-competitive netlisting. We do have normally a tourney once a year where anything goes (whether we call it ard boyz or something else) I HATE comp. (believe it or not) and would much rather people evolve as players tactically and to get to play with whatever models they think are cool. If this gets out of control though, expect me to take action. I'm going to be listening very carefully to people's perspectives on this as we're going forward. I have a vested interest in having these things run succesfully. I do NOT value the opinions of the ultra-competitive few over the enjoyment of the other 90% of our tournament attendees. side rant over |
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Post by thesanityassassin on Jan 20, 2015 12:38:43 GMT -5
Totally with you on that last part. I ran through a LOT of comp systems when I was running events here, and I hated them, but felt like it needed to happen at times to keep the community enjoyable.
I will say that this is the first year heading in to the club championship that has left me feeling really uneasy about what to take/what I will see. My army already sits on a pretty fine edge in terms of "netlisting" since the new Marine book powered White Scars up so badly, and I've made a point of taking some weaker units to balance it out over the last little while. This year I feel far more compelled to trade those out for more typical "power" units - IE: Flamer bikes become more Grav bikes, Land Speeders become more melta guns, Chapter Master joins the Iron Hands etc. Done up that way I feel much more capable of taking on what might be thrown at me from top lists, but also worry that my list will then become another one of "those" lists that suck for everyone else to play with.
Anyway, at the end of the day I trust the scenarios to balance things out, the TO to have the best interests of the community in mind, and the players to make the best of things on the table, but I am very interested to see how things turn out this year and where things go in the future.
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Post by voodoo on Jan 20, 2015 13:01:58 GMT -5
Is there a local ban in place for the Castigator? Regular Knights are fairly tough and deal out a good bit of damage, the Castigator is outright hateful. Granted, it can’t be taken as part of the Adamantine Lance (none of the FW knights can) but it doesn’t stop someone from bringing one in their regularly allowed codex knights army or knightly detachment. The Acheron isn’t as bad with his insane flamer weapon, but still not pretty as it’s a hellstorm S7 Ap3.
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Post by Jack Shrapnel on Jan 20, 2015 13:07:34 GMT -5
I think the forgeworld price tag has been enough of a deterrant thus far. I certainly wouldn't allow someone to say "oh this regular knight is actually a castigator" in a tourney, anymore than I'd let someone go "all these venomthropes are actually malanthropes instead".
But to answer your question, no there isn't any local ban on anything forgeworld that's 40k stamped beyond LOW's that aren't characters.
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Post by voodoo on Jan 20, 2015 13:12:02 GMT -5
*shudder* Ugh, that TL Castigator bolt cannon & tempest blade combo are the stuff of nightmares. lol
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Post by Hizack on Jan 21, 2015 14:20:13 GMT -5
Yeah.. I don't know. Loads of melta guns are good but again, this is a sticky situation with having a unit and not watching it all die to a str D explosion or taking a strength 7 or 8 hit or whatever the secondary one is outside of the D radius.
Almost as if you are forced to sacrifice the units best equipped for dealing with them. Unpleasant, and tedious.
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Post by thesanityassassin on Jan 21, 2015 14:52:38 GMT -5
And if there are 3-5 of them, unsustainable.
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Post by Jack Shrapnel on Jan 21, 2015 17:43:58 GMT -5
And if there are 3-5 of them, unsustainable. especially with rerolls to screw up your chances of getting a melta through |
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Post by calitom on Jan 21, 2015 23:41:03 GMT -5
I think melta is a bad answer to them, personally. Either kill them from a distance or in assault. Melta just hits that medium ground where you can't ensure you're able to handle it in combat if the melta fails- and if it does then you'll be in combat with it anyways.
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Post by Jack Shrapnel on Jan 22, 2015 6:56:59 GMT -5
melta - can't one shot a knight even if it gets a pen
needs to be from two angles at once to even have a chance at that.
scary option because you're close as Tom said, but sometimes the only option you have.
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Post by calitom on Jan 22, 2015 19:51:09 GMT -5
Also after thinking about it- it hasn't been said yet, but flyers are an amazing answer to knights. Considering most flyers have the option of hovering they are very good at contesting objectives knights are holding if you go second seeing as the knight can't hurt it otherwise.
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Post by Hizack on Jan 22, 2015 21:07:58 GMT -5
I will agree with that.
Especially with taking the multi-melta turret on the Storm Raven. Lets it get out of arc shots on a different facing against the Knight.
For me though depending on what I'm playing against I think a flyer mixed with Melta Vets is going to have to be a must to try and take the knight as quick as I can so that I can focus on other aspects of board control.
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Post by thesanityassassin on Jan 22, 2015 21:18:50 GMT -5
Your Vultures at least will be able to just focus on getting in the way, zooming in to an objective late, even without OS....They're not able to hurt the Knights at all, so not much else to do with them. Knights in an army is one thing, because at least your other units will find something to do. ALL Knights would just get so frustrating because some reasonably high percentage of your army will be able to do absolutely nothing to hurt them.
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