Destroying Imperial Knights Tactica

[MM3791]

Hi folks, I just wanted to write a quick breakdown of each army and how they can destroy Imperial Knights.. seriously no need to get scared 

Imperial Armies: Melta, melta ,melta
Chaos Marines: Melta, daemon engines
Daemons: Greater daemons have superior CC stats then Knights, you'll have to use superior speed to gang up and dogpile each knight, one at a time
Tyranids: T-Fex rupture cannon, hive guard cannons, zoanthropes, crone, dog piling monstrous creatures lol
Eldar: Bright lances, heavy wraith cannon, fire dragons
Dark Eldar: Dark Lances, Void lances, Wyches haywire
Tau: Fusion guns, Railguns
Necron: Guass
Orks: I'm not familiar with Orks, but their rumored to get a new codex very soon

Imperial Knights in my opinion make great support units, but a pure Knight army will suffer diminishing returns. Don't forgot that Imperial Knights can't in any way, shape, or form.. hurt Fliers!!! Blast weapons can't target fliers at all, so pure knight armies might be impossible to win with. Also flying monstrous creatures never have to land, they can just spam vector strike the Knights until they blow up! Rock, paper, scissors baby! Hope this was helpful 

[Pat.H]

Orks: Take the shok Attack gun tank from the dread mob list. Pray it shoots itself across the board and deff rollas it.

[bradpowers]

Brad:  Surround it with Drop Pods, laugh as it destroys 35 points per turn....

[robpro]

If you think gauss is a realistic tank killing option, maybe you should take another look at the current metagame.

[AstartesXXVI]

Why wouldn't it be, exactly?

People complain about hull points making vehicles weak, so I don't see how something being able to strip a lot of hull points in a single round wouldn't be great against this thing.

Comparatively, I'd use Scarabs, but that's just me.

[bradpowers]

Scarabs don't work on Superheavies...

[MM3791]

If you think gauss is a realistic tank killing option, maybe you should take another look at the current metagame.

Scarabs are fine at killing regular tanks, this tactica is for specifically killing Imperial Knights.. in which case 2 squads of cheap Necron warriors can easily blow up a Knight.

[robpro]

If you think gauss is a realistic tank killing option, maybe you should take another look at the current metagame.

Scarabs are fine at killing regular tanks, this tactica is for specifically killing Imperial Knights.. in which case 2 squads of cheap Necron warriors can easily blow up a Knight.

Uhh what?

[Chancetragedy]

Gotta side with rob here.  The math on warriors killing a knight is 12 glances-72 hits-108 shots... So 2 squads of 5 warriors will effectively kill a knight in 6 turns of shooting provided they aren't wiped out immediately.  Edit:This is based on being I the ion shield arc. Outside of the shield it's 6 glances-36 hits-54 shots so 2 turns of unabated shooting.

Haywire crypteks are probably a necrons best bet they take about 18 shots to down a knight.

[bradpowers]

I honestly believe that the emphasis on trying to destroy Knight is the wrong idea.  Frankly, they are tough, and for the points should be.  If you can still win the game without destroying it (which I believe is entirely reasonable), then the fact that it's on the table at end of game is irrelevant.  I have actively sought out batreps involving Knights, and have found that by and large, the armies that succeeded in winning against it were the ones that actively tarpitted, blocked, or moved around it.  Yes, with enough points thrown at it, you can absolutely destroy it, but I don't think it's worth it.  Also, I think that knights will undergo a surge in popularity for a while, with many people bringing 2 or 3, until they realize (just like folks with necron airforce, triple heldrakes, etc. did) that it's too many eggs in one gimmicky basket, and that it wins you SOME games, but not enough to be any good.

This is just like when flyers were added to the game, everybody sat down and focused their energy on killing fliers (some still do).  In my opinion, the best way to win against an army with fliers is to bring an all comers list and win like you always do.  I bring ZERO dedicated anti-air, and (with exceptions) just outright ignore fliers on the table. 

Bottom line, bring an all comers list, adapt to what your opponent brought.

[Chase]

I honestly believe that the emphasis on trying to destroy Knight is the wrong idea.  Frankly, they are tough, and for the points should be.  If you can still win the game without destroying it (which I believe is entirely reasonable), then the fact that it's on the table at end of game is irrelevant.  I have actively sought out batreps involving Knights, and have found that by and large, the armies that succeeded in winning against it were the ones that actively tarpitted, blocked, or moved around it.  Yes, with enough points thrown at it, you can absolutely destroy it, but I don't think it's worth it.  Also, I think that knights will undergo a surge in popularity for a while, with many people bringing 2 or 3, until they realize (just like folks with necron airforce, triple heldrakes, etc. did) that it's too many eggs in one gimmicky basket, and that it wins you SOME games, but not enough to be any good.

This is just like when flyers were added to the game, everybody sat down and focused their energy on killing fliers (some still do).  In my opinion, the best way to win against an army with fliers is to bring an all comers list and win like you always do.  I bring ZERO dedicated anti-air, and (with exceptions) just outright ignore fliers on the table. 

Bottom line, bring an all comers list, adapt to what your opponent brought.

This has my vote for best post on the forums in a long time.

[AstartesXXVI]

I forgot that scarabs don't work on super heavies, but it wouldn't be too terrible to tarpit with them, at least.

Regardless, Brad is right.

[robpro]

Scarabs can't charge the super heavy, and it would likely finish them off in a round with its attacks and stomp.

I do think its part of the meta like anything else, and people will surely adapt. Just don't tell me gauss shots will be the preferred necron method of dealing them. You'll likely see people bringing Nightscythes with 5 man warrior and 2 haywire guy squads, which aren't super interesting and have a good chance of not reaching their target if the knight player has allied in any interceptors. Some armies will really struggle with knights and will have to bring allies to deal with them (I expect we'll start seeing Belakor a lot more often).

I'm more of the mind that Escalation and Stronghold Assault should be part of the meta too, and we should allow those books if we're going to allow knights as something acceptable for "all the time" play.

[Goblin]

i can't speak for everyone, but i think a lot of us who want to see more escalation/stronghold assault stuff in normal games, are mostly looking to play things that are right around the 300-400 point range of the knight. for me personally, i'd like to be able to play my barbed heirodule (435), which with piles of s10 shooting, is pretty good at dealing with other superheavies, but not all that terrifying for its points to normal units (seriously, a barbed heirodule shooting at marines kills two in a round of shooting ). i can see why people would be worried by things like warhounds and revenants in 1850, but if you limited the size of super heavies (like max individual superheavy is 25% of the game's total points) you could see a lot of the more fair escalation units without bringing in some of the wacky ones that feel more at home in something like 3k.

on the actual topic of the thread: brad is mostly right. just bring an all comers list. if knights are part of the meta, it changes your all comers list in that you have to have a plan for dealing with them. whether that plan is to kill them or ignore them, you just have to do it with the tools your codex has. the only time something becomes an issue is if your codex can't win by ignoring it, and can't kill it without tanking all your other matchups.

[MM3791]

Yes Brad is right, tarpitting and objectives are very important and often overlooked. I should've been more specific about the guass, assuming there are 2 squads of 10 rapid firing.. but obviously the more the better.

The Knights come in 2 classes, the Errant and the Paladin. Both have AV12 on the rear and sides, same as a Chimera. The Ion shield can only defend 1 arc at a time, not the whole model at once.

The Paladin has longer range, but isn't very good against vehicles(unless it assaults).. but it can murder infantry with the double battle cannon.

The Errant has a lot shorter range and slower rate of fire, but it's thermal cannon will melt anything it hits.

So it's not just some other armies that may(or may not) need allies, but the Knights look like they need allies the most, especially to screen against fearless tarpitting units. I'm sure they'll make great allies with guard (cheap troops), which is probably why IG is the next codex.

Anyways the meta constantly changes, I just thought this was a good opportunity to really breakdown the strengths and weaknesses of the new Imperial Knight codex.