Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Questoris Knight Crusade (30k)
Why Play Questoris Knights
FW have decided in their infinite wisdom to make it viable to be able to field an entire detachment of Imperial Knights, and so we get this, an army where you can have Knights actually be part of a regular force organization chart. You can have specialist Fast Attack Knights, Elite Knights. Heavy Support Knights and HQ Knights.
Admittedly though your models will be immune to small-arms fire and any melee attacks of S6 or less. That is not an excuse to get complacent as each Knight lost will diminish your army considerably.
Rules to Remember
- Ion Shield - Your Knights get a 4++ save against shooting on a facing of their choice, chosen each turn.
- ALWAYS remember to position your Ion Shield for each knight at the start of your opponents shooting phase, don't wait for him to start rolling, otherwise he'll just assume it has the same position as the previous phase.
Questoris Knight Crusade Detachment
Nothing really special with this army, besides the whole KNIGHTS EVERYWHERE bit. Your FOC is kinda like normal, but you lose a Troops choice, a HS choice, and an FA choice. If you're truly desperate/filthy rich, you could make a legit Titan your Lord of War.
Warlord Traits
- Hell Rider - Warlord & Knights within 12" get +1 to Movement and to wound/armour penetration on turn 1 of a game.
- Glorious Renown - Friendly units within 12" may re-roll failed morale checks and enemies suffer -2 to Ld
- Favoured of Mars - One Knights weapon (singular) gains Master Crafted
- Lord of the Abyss - Warlord gets Monster Hunter and Adamantium Will
- Puissant Commander - +1 to Seize the Initiative and -1 to enemy reserve rolls
- Indomitable - It Will Not Die. Enjoy being the 30K equivalent of Gerantius.
Unit Analysis
Knight Paladin
Your basic Imperial Knight with a Rapid-Fire Battle-cannon, 2 Heavy Stubbers and a Reaper Chainsword. The Battle-cannon is the general purpose weapon that fires two large blast templates and is Ordnance, meaning it gets four chances at trying to penetrate vehicle armour with two successful hits. The cannon is also very good at wiping out large units of enemy soldiers. (I'm looking at you Orks & Guard)
While the Chainsword is entirely overkill against most things, you're better off with the stomp attacks unless you are fighting a superheavy, monstrous creature or high value enemy warriors such as Calgar or Abaddon. But you get both Stomp Attacks and chainsword anyway, so you're very likely to chew things up in melee, just be aware of what your opponent is bringing against you.
Knight Errant
Very similar to the Paladin, though with a Thermal Cannon which is S9 AP1 for chewing up Terminators & Land Raiders. For all other tasks look to the Paladin instead.
The shorter range means that it's going to be much closer to the center of the table where it will inevitably start taking your opponent's heavy weapons fire and is also more likely to get drawn into close combat. So it is a good option to make it the Warlord and give him more stamina against enemy heavy weapons and better odds in melee. Either that or use it as a flanking Knight and stalk up one side of your opponent's battle line.
Cerastus Knight Lancer
Faster and with a completely different load-out to the traditional types of Knight.
The Shock Lance has no blast, and is essentially a rapid fire plasma gun, so it is not as effective against vehicles at range and doesn't really give any benefit against vehicles in melee either over the Reaper Chainsword other than the +1 to Initiative. It can however in a pinch be used as an AA Gun (since Strength 7 will fry anything Armor 12 or less with ease, and fires enough shots to offset a distinct lack of Skyfire), but this is not recommended as it is the only ranged weapon the Knight Lancer has - consider it an emergency technique for if your opponent brings three Lascannon toting Stormtalons to the party or something.
Don't forget it's shooting attack has concussive. So it can hunt MC's and other bug things reliably.
What you want to do with this one is get it stuck in to squads of dudes and tear them apart. It is helped here by having an invulnerable save in melee which the other Knights don't get, more attacks and extra initiative on the charge.
More likely to be shot at by your opponent. Being bigger means it is more likely to present a target, but also being an expensive piece of Forgeworld kit means that it is also a more attractive target for your opponent.
http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Downloads/Product/PDF/L/lancer.pdf
Cerastus Knight Castigator
This guy has a 8 shot str7 bolt cannon which -much like the Fire Raptor's Avenger Bolter- makes a good job of killing MEQ out in the open or knocking hull points off of mid-AV vehicles, but it also makes for a better stand-in AA weapon than the Lancer's Shock Lance due to having more shots and being twin-linked.
His sword is also pretty nifty, if only S10, with deflagrate and sunder rather than a destroyer weapon. Though deflagrate + tempest attack means that it can theoretically kill every single model in base to base contact with itself, this works better for large units of weaker enemies where a Destroyer melee weapon might have been preferred against smaller, more resilient units. There is always Stomp attacks however.
This guy's real weakness, though, is that he only has the bolt cannon. You need to charge the thing you shoot at, and whatever he shoots at is going to be hurting a lot anyway, so you are going to have issues of overkill when you shoot up 8 Tactical Marines, and charge them just to kill the two leftover guys, not the next unit over.
As for making it a warlord to get a seneschal bonus? The Lancer might still be the better option, since the Castigator doesn't really need WS/BS 5 to make it any better, since Tempest attack hits automatically and its gun is already quite accurate.
http://www.forgeworld.co.uk//Downloads/Product/PDF/C/Castigator.pdf
Cerastus Knight Acheron
This thing is an absolute monster. It is equipped with a Hellstorm S7 AP 3 flamer that will wipe out anything that isn't in Terminator armor. Being a template, it ignores cover, meaning anything in power armor that comes near it might as well just be swept off the table. Since it's a Cerastus Knight, it has flank speed, allowing it to run 3d6". Between that and its 12" movement, you should have no problems getting into place to use the flamer to devastating effect.
Its chainfist of absolute death allows it to reroll 1's on the D table whenever you are hitting something with AV. Essentially, if you punch it, it dies, but that was already true for a D weapon. Also, it has a heavy bolter as a secondary weapon, not a heavy stubber, giving you a tiny bit more punch.
It's an effective horde manager and pairs well with the longer ranged knights, or with an Errant to kill off any Terminators that get close to it. The biggest drawback to this monster, other than having to buy it at forgeworld prices, is that it costs 40pts more than a paladin, and it can't hit anything more than 16" away. You pay a premium, and you are going to have to work to kill people every turn.
Because of it's close ranged nature, making the Acheron your Senschel is worth considering. It has to get in close to use it's weapons, and a 3+ Invulnerable will vastly improve it's chances of reaching the enemy. That said, the Acheron will lose it's Invulnerable in Melee, unlike the Lancer.
http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Downloads/Product/PDF/A/Acheron.pdf
Questoris Knight Magaera
One of the "standard" sized (compared to the Cerastus) Imperial Knights, armed with a host of funky new archaeotech gear:
First, his Ion Shield also reduces the strength of incoming shots and it also has equivalent to IWND (6+ instead of 5+), meaning it has a bit more survivability than your regular knight.
It also has a larger variety of ranged weapons than your regular knight too; it's main cannon is a Lightning Cannon, which is S7 so it can't insta-gib things like the Battle or Thermal Cannon can, but it does have shredding and rending, so it is more likely to wound things and is probably better for you against terminators than the Knight Paladin but worse than the Errant.
As for support weapons, it's got a Plasma Fusil from HH, allowing you some S6 AP3 salvo goodness for dropping MEQ, which does considerably better than the heavy stubber.
In the melee side, you can replace the chainsword with the Siege Claw, which arguably does exactly the same, since D melee weapons are D melee weapons. It only gives you bonuses against fortifications, which were screwed beforehand anyway. But the claw does come with an arm mounted weapon: it's got one of those Rad Cleanser weapons too, which is basically a fleshbane flamer, with the added bonus of dropping the toughness of multi-wound models by 1 if they have taken a wound (doesn't stack). 25 points for a rad cleanser? Definitely not.
As for everything else, it's more likely to go nuclear when it dies, but you don't want to stand next to a dead super-heavy anyway, so that's not a terrible thing. And it does have initiative 2, meaning it's gonna strike last against everything bar fists and hammers which tend not to come in huge numbers. Though the thing to look out for then is melta/haywire bombs, but since Haywire mostly comes with Eldar you were striking last anyway.
Finally, should you make it your warlord? I'd say yes. It can't stand back if needed like the Paladin or take on other SH/GC like the Lancer. It's a line-breaking Knight through and through. If it's not doing that then it's just a Zombie Knight wandering around being nigh-useless. A Castigator or Lancer would serve much better to not give your opponent a warlord point. WS upgrades is neither here nor there when the damage output is practically the same as the other knights(except the I2 will see it dead before it swings against another Knight), and the Ion Shield upgrade would make it hilarious from that direction, but might have been better used on a different knight if you have another exotic one as well.
Questoris Knight Styrix
Just a bit more expensive than the other Questoris, but with a Volkite Weapon. Unfortunately it's not a carronade, it's a Cherovile, 5 shot, strength 8, ap 3 gun. It also has a Graviton gun, so you can trap people wherever you want so you could set them up for the Volkite goodness.
Like the Magaera, it can replace its chainsword for a Siege claw with a Rad-Cleanser, which comes with all the risks implied above, since this is a mere template gun instead of something like Hellstorm or Torrent.
It can also go kaboom more likely, so keep a distance from it if you fear it going boom.
List Analysis
Each Knight can be selected for one of these force org slots, gaining special rules and additional costs based on the selection. Issue is that this is only available to this army and can't be used if you bring knights to other detachments.
HQ Ranks
- 0-1 Seneschal - +1 WS/BS and +1 to any Invuls. Like in 40K, you want these guys in the lead. He also gives WT re-rolls.
- 0-1 Lord Scion - +1 WS/BS. It's half the cost of the Seneschal for half the benefits. It's not a bad choice if you're strapped for options, but do aim for the one above moreso.
Elite Ranks
- Preceptor - While this guy's alive, other knights in reserve get +1 on their rolls. In addition, all knights within 6" get Interceptor and can Overwatch with anything they have, even though it usually can't happen. If you have any Hellfire weapons, they'll auto-score d6 hits.
- 0-1 Aucteller - You get to choose a sworn enemy: A Warlord, a LoW that doesn't fly, a Superheavy Walker or tank, or a GC. If your Actueller kills it, you win d3 Victory Points. If someone else kills it, you win nothing, and if the sworn enemy's still alive, your enemy gets 1 VP. If your enemy ever kills the Actueller, then the knight gets one last attack at initiative against the enemy before blowing up. Take the one guy you know can hold up in a fight if you know you're up against something titan-killy, or just take someone who can flatten the flimsy warlord quickly.
- Legendary Freeblade -
Troop Ranks
- Scion Martial - your basic Knight with ObjSec.
- Scion Aspirant - drops the WS, BS and Ion Shield invulnerable save by 1 at a saving of -35 smackeroos, and gain ObjSec. You can never have more of these guys than any other knights, so you can't plan on using it to cheese up one particular moster knight.
Fast Attack Ranks
- Scion Dolorous - Re-roll all failed charges and sweeping advances. Essentially, make this a melee specialist, because they need to charge at everything they see.
- Scion Uhlan - While free, you have to lose 1 FA to gain Scout and Hit & Run. They also lose the ability to reliably shoot at long distances, being forced to snap-shots at targets 24" away.
Heavy Support Ranks
- Scion Arbalester - You get Tank Hunter and if you don't move, you also get Skyfire. Fucking murder with the proper setup.
- Scion Implacable - Get +1 to all building damage and can re-roll stomps. It also gains a 5+ invul against melta bombs, but it can never sweep.