Games Workshop - Warhammer 40,000 - Chaos Knights: Knight Abominant/Rampager/Desecrator

Product Information

The single big knight (usually a Desecrator) flanked by war dogs. This is the more mobile of the lists, with lots of mobility around the board edges and better at going wide on 6-objective maps. It also has the ability to take Abhor the Witch.

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Harbingers of Dread

This dog won’t hunt sadly. The Diamonas pattern can do some work in specific matchups, but it is outshined by other options. Thanks as always for reading, and you know, that almost wraps up the codex, and we can start looking ahead to the Forgeworld goodness out there. Remember: the SoCal Open is coming up fast, so be painting, be practicing, and be ready. Death Grip: Allows you to try and crush someone to death with a thunderstrike gauntlet. Would be fine if you ever wanted to bring one, but you don’t

The Teeth That Hunger: Relic reaper chainsword – AP-4 and you get +1A with it, but you roll a dice and take a MW on a 1 at the end of any Battle Round where it didn’t kill something. Would be great if you ever saw reaper chainswords.These traits are both outrageously good and a lot of the power of Chaos Knights is baked into them. Because of that, there’s far more pressure to build a full Superheavy detachment compared to Imperial Knights, where combinations of warlord traits and relics were the gateway to the most potent builds. Compounding this, Chaos has access to the hellish triple Lord Discordant Supreme Command detachment, which is basically just a better addition to most Chaos lists for ~500pts than a single Knight would be. Because of this, you overwhelmingly see Superheavy detachements of Chaos Knights rather than Superheavy Auxiliary, and thus see War Dogs on the board making up numbers proportionally more often than Armigers. Iconoclast Households N.B. The eagle-eyed among you will notice that some of the content of this guide is reproduced from our codex review. While we’ve updated our previous thoughts where relevant, plenty of what we said then is still true, and we’ve merged it in here. Competitive Rating Compounding this is the limited access Chaos has to “relevant” small Battalions. In Imperium, a Loyal 32 (2 Company Commanders, 3 Infantry squads) and a Graia Rusty 17 (Two Tech-priest Enginseers and 15 Skitarii) make a perfect complement to filling out the rest of your army with Knights – both Battalions add something to your list (highly mobile troops from the Guard, anti-psychic + Knight repair from Graia) and come in at a bargain price (345pts total for the combined barest bones versions). Chaos has cheap Battalions, but they aren’t nearly as helpful. You can certainly do a very cheap Daemon Battalion, but it doesn’t add that much to the Knights. The Spiky 17 (Red Corsairs Battalion) adding 8 CP is great, but it’s 315 points at its very cheapest (more if you want some actual relevant units), and 15 1-wound models with boltguns don’t do a lot for you strategically.

The Knight Desecrator is a truly imposing kit in every sense of the word – it towers over most other models on the tabletop and a choice of vicious faceplates and optional chains, pipes, spikes and horns allow you to customise your Knight, making it as malicious as you want. They can also be armed with a choice of either reaper chainsword or thunderstrike gauntlet with which to crush any foe that survives a barrage from its laser destructor. Warp-Haunted Hull – The Warlord can deny one power per psychic phase, and if it takes mortal wounds from a psychic power, roll a D6 for each wound; on a 5+ it doesn’t lose a wound. Tyranids take two nerfs, with Harpies and Biovores going up quite a bit (+60pts on the Harpy, +25pts on the Biovores). The Biovores aren’t super surprising to see a change on, though it’s a bit heavier proportionally than some similar stuff. Given the change to Harpies, this is probably aiming to ensure that spawned Spore Mines don’t end up a bit too good at double tapping on Deploy Teleport Homers and Behind Enemy Lines . You definitely still take at least one Biovore.

How to start collecting Chaos Knights

Just like Imperial Knights, Chaos Knights get a varying amount of CP from the Superheavy detachment depending on how many TITANIC units are in them. 3 War Dogs gives you 0, at least 1 TITANIC Knight gives 3CP and 3 TITANIC units gives you 6CP. Chaos Knights want to be in full detachments quite a bit more than Imperials do, so you’ll want to consider a detachment of two War Dogs and a larger Knight. Traitoris Ambitions (Faction Traits) Knower of Profane Secrets – Add 1 to this model’s Ld characteristic. At the start of the first battle round, if any models with this Pact are on the battlefield, gain 1 CP. Another good “generic” choice, especially as the extra Ld makes it even less likely you fluff the Damnation roll. The Imperial Knights codex will arrive separately before the Chaos Knights book. However, you can score the new models and the new Chaos Knights codex in the army box for a limited time! Chaos Knights Army Set Box The presence of an Abhorrent-class Knight is enough to spur on the various War Dogs that cluster around them. These auras are more flexible than the targeted bonuses used by Imperial Knights – but the new Bondsman abilities benefit both the Armiger target and the Questoris Knight using them, while a Chaos Knight is unaffected by its own aura. This fundamentally changes the dynamic between lord and squire, as the larger Chaos Knights have little concern for the benefit a War Dog can give them, instead of working in careful concert. War Dog ( War Dog Executioner • War Dog Stalker • War Dog Karnivore • War Dog Brigand • War Dog Huntsman)

I ( Wings ) do think that maybe a bit more nuance could have been applied here, as outside of Canis there’s been a very strict formula applied that doesn’t seem to take much account of individual capabilities. I think 60pts on Wardens and Crusaders was probably correct, but others could maybe have gone a tad lighter. It’s pretty clear some kind of balance pass was necessary after the first round of events and so it’s good to see Games Workshop taking this much-needed step. Whether it’s enough is going to be an interesting question, but we’re mostly of the mind that 10th is a pretty fun edition when you move away from some of the listbuilding extremes we’ve seen early on and anything that takes us closer to that environment is a plus. The technical specifications of the Knight Desecrator have not yet been obtained by the Holy Ordos of the Inquisition. Warlord traits are one of the best part of the Imperial Knights book, and one of the most disappointing here. Some of these are fine, but whereas Imperials are chomping at the bit to add them, these are just OK.Other than the Moirax, which we’ve already discussed, there’s only really one relevant option coming out of this. The Atropos and Magaera are both sufficiently “fine” that they’ll serve you well in less serious games, but the only option for a big Knight that has top table potential is the Castigator. Infernal Cerastus Knight Castigator Much like warlord traits, these are vastly less powerful than the Imperial ones, and are made more so by the fact that several plausibly good choices (the melee weapons) are never seen as no suitable Knights get competitive play. There are a few real gems here though The Good Ones Most games will see Chaos Knights players taking Ruthless Tyranny, then supplementing that with Grind Them Down and either a kill secondary or Storm of Darkness. For lists taking an Abominant, Psychic Interrogation and Warp Ritual are also options, though whether they’re a better use of your psychic phase than Winds of the Warp or doing mortal wounds will be a gametime decision, largely based on how readily your opponent can deny your attempts and how badly you need the ability to ignore damage. As we mentioned, Chaos Knights received fewer specific changes in Nephilim and were more affected by game-wide changes, though there have been several FAQs that adjusted things for the faction. A Fitting Challenge has you taking out specific targets chosen pre-game, with points for removing them from the table early and often. Because those targets have to be the ones with the highest points value, the value of this secondary is going to depend heavily on what those units are and, fittingly from a lore standpoint, this is going to be most valuable when going up against other knight armies or armies relying on big vehicles and monsters that can’t be protected easily. It’s a pretty average secondary on the whole – it’ll usually be worth 7-8 points – but not something you’re going to want to take very often.