Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Renegade Knights (7E)

Why Play Renegade Knights

You have Imperial Knights, but fuck the Emperor, you're going Rogue!

Or, maybe you want a passable Superheavy for Chaos forces and don't want to go to Forgeworld to get one.

Or maybe you play a Xenos army (that's not Eldar) and want to use Imperial Knights without needing to worry about Come the Apocalypse bullshit.

Whatever your reason, you want a big stompy robot possibly bristling with guns.

Detachment

Forsworn Knight Detachment

Detachment of 1-3 Renegade Knights. If you take 3, you get Preferred Enemy (Imperial Knights), but they get PE(Renegade Knights).

This can never be your Primary Detachment, unlike Imperial Knights.

Wargear

Basics

• Ion Shield: You 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. Consider making a marker of sorts to nominate easily the facing.
  • According to the RAW, Ion shields work until the next shooting phase, when you have to reposition it. Therefore, if it's facing the correct direction, it will protect you from overwatch shots. Plan accordingly.
• Heavy Stubber: S4 AP6 Heavy 3. Likely a .50 cal in 21st Century terms (as Heavy Stubbers have been around since before the Dark Age of Tech), a low-power gun with the same strength as a bolter but not the same penetrating power, meant to wipe up anything you'd rather not waste your big guns on. Useful for shooting at a target you intend to charge at in the Assault phase while shooting your main gun at another unit. Every knight has the option to replace this with a meltagun, which is a good choice if you're seriously expecting to see a wall of AV.
• Meltagun: You know it and you love it. All Knights can replace their little pea shooter with this thing, but it works best on Knights that have to close with the enemy to use it (Read: melee Knights).

Arm Weapons

• Rapid Fire Battle Cannon: A two shot Leman Russ Battle Cannon, ever reliable and perfect for clearing big units of MEQ or worse, since that's two large blast markers that can cover a whole lot of dudes. Also since it's ordnance it means you get four chances of penetrating vehicle armour due to the Ordnance re-roll.
• Thermal Cannon: A shorter ranged, single shot pie plate that is S9 AP1 melta. So you use this for wrecking Terminators and Land Raiders. Against most other things you were probably better off with the Battle Cannon instead. Mathhammer confirms this, the battle cannon is statistically better against every target with the exception of AV14 in melta range and TEQS.
• Avenger Gatling Cannon: S6, AP3, Heavy 12, Rending - For absolutely ruining squads and/or light vehicles, especially if your opponent tends to space his units further apart to prevent them from suffering under blast markers. Can even be used as an AA weapon in a pinch due to its high rate of fire but you've got other weapons for that now. Due to rending and high rate of fire eats HP like popcorn, a built-in heavy flamer for mobs, and being best option against AV, even better than the thermal cannon against every possible target.

Arm Close Combat Weapons

• Reaper Chainsword: It's a Destroyer close combat weapon.
• Thunderstrike Gauntlet: Another Destroyer close combat weapon, except that it ALWAYS strikes at Initiative 1 due to the "Colossal" rule (same as the new Bloodthirster of Insensate Rage). The benefit of this is that if your punch kills a Monstrous Creature or a Vehicle, you can then THROW the dead model 12" away as an out-of-phase shooting attack that uses the large blast marker with no AP, but has the Strength equal to the model's Toughness or half of the front Armour Value of the vehicle. FUN. Even with the Colossal rule hindering your strike order, it's not like tanks are ever going to hit you back!

Carapace Weapons

• Ironstorm Missile Pod: A Whirlwind Launcher without the Ordnance rule so it's worse against vehicles. It's not fantastic compared to the other weapons that a Knight can get due to its low strength and poor AP. However it can be good for clearing up the remnants of squads that you couldn't wipe out with your main guns. But since Superheavy walkers don't need to fire all of their weapons at the same target what it can be good for is shooting a unit that tried to hide out of line of sight due to the Barrage rule. Also gives you more horde clearing potential, to help deal with the fact that an enemy horde will have way more units than you can shoot at in one turn and will outnumber you 30-1.
• Stormspear Rocket Pod: A Heavy 3 Krak Missile launcher, good for pounding away at squads causing ID on MEQ units or for knocking a few hull points off of tanks rather than wasting your main gun on an already weakened target. Also good for popping open light vehicles so you can blast the squad inside them to bits with your main gun.
• Twin Icarus Autocannons: Your only true anti-aircraft weapon. Not as good as a quad-gun but it's the best you can get right now. Then again, better to have something that does slightly more than chip the paintwork off Flyers than nothing. Take if you go up against Flyers on a regular basis, leave at home otherwise. Mount on a Battle Cannon Knight for a good "Jack of All Trades" type of Knight.

Unit Analysis

You ain't spoiled for choices here.

Renegade Knight

Your basic Renegade Knight starts relatively cheap, with just a Stubber and one of each melee weapon. Them you can upgrade either weapon to any of the guns. Slightly more expensive to upgrade the Sword than the Gauntlet, so if you're keeping one keep the sword (why wouldn't you anyway?).

This is slightly better than the Imperial Knight since you can do things like double RF Battle Cannons, or double Avengers, depending on your desires.

Note: you'll generally end up 10 points more than an equivalent Imperial Knight if you build the same as them.

Allies

Battle Brothers

• Chaos Space Marines: Pretty poor by themselves, but you can supplement your Walkers with Heldrakes and Be'lakor, or possibly run a Deathstar of Sorcs and Spa-those nameless beasts.

• Chaos Daemons Lots of choices here. Use the Daemons to buff the Knights with Psychic powers, and then Summon to flood the board. Or just create bodies and deathstars to keep away scary charging units.

• Knorne Daemonkin Somewhere between CSM and Daemons. Can get cheap dudes out, or can flood the board with Hounds to tie up things that you don't want your Knight fighting. Can also bring in a Bloodthirster for more sexy D action.

• Renegades and Heretics:Piles and piles of bodies. You don't need their artillery that much (look at your guns), but you'll want those nice cheap bodies to hold down the objectives.

Allies of Convenience

• Necrons: Really tough to kill. Excel in the midfield, so kit out your Knights to be long range (double Battle Cannons) or Melee (stock) and support the silver tide.

• Orks More bodies, can spam out some decent shooting with Lootaz or Tankbustaz. Can screen the Knights with lots of Boyz in Trukks or can support them with random shooting bits.==Allies==

Building your army

Buy 1-3 Knights, convert to be less "Imperial". Make sure you have another army to be your Primary. Done.