Goatboy’s 40k Rules Conundrum : Can Chaos Knights Summon?
Goatboy here again and looking at another wrinkle in the current Chaos Knight army. Can Chaos Knights summon daemons to the tabletop?
I know what you are thinking. While the Chaos Knight is a Chaos thing – it isn’t devoted to any god nor is it something inclined to say – bring forth daemons from the warp. But beyond the fluff etc. – based on rules alone, the Chaos Knight can get a chance to summon any type of daemon – being that a Chaos Knight is never marked.
Put on your rules-lawyer hat and follow me…
First, let’s look at the Daemonic Ritual rule.
Now look at the Chaos Knight Lance rules – you pick one of your Chaos Knights to gain the Character keyword. They already have the Chaos Keyword so with the gaining of the Character keyword (whether from the lance rules or gaining a Relic or Warlord Trait) this model becomes a Chaos Character and thus per Daemonic Ritual they gain the ability to summon some daemons to the table – if you paid the Points for them.
Would It Be Worthwhile?
Now, why would this be good? Well, for one thing, the Chaos Knights generally lack some bubble wrap for their army. Mix that with units that are fast enough to miss a turn of moving and are still usable with a weapon loadout to hurt the other side of the table. They can easily throw some dice, summon some Brimstone Horrors to the tabletop, and keep those pesky GSC from getting so close with their Abberants and evil touchy stuff. Heck, you could just summon to throw a ring of Brims around you so you can’t be Mind Control’d or taken over by those pesky Tzeentch guys. These are all things you can use during any kind of match or mission, so you could get bubble wrap – without having to lose a command point for an Auxiliary detachment or find points to throw in an HQ for a Patrol.
What Would You Summon?
Look at some of the Daemons you could use to help out — especially those on the lower range of things. Bubble wrap can be very useful as well as having a unit of daemons set up to hold that objective you don’t want to care so much about. How about some Flamers of Tzeentch that can drop in and auto hit a difficult unit. Or heck an Exalted Flamer as well. I think there is room to throw a ton of Nurglings in the way or heck even Beasts of Nurgle That is a lot of cheap wounds to dig through. I really wish they had more ways to get more dice to summon – but most likely it is something we might see “nerfed” if they feel it is too much.
I really can see a lot of Knights Armies set up to shoot with enough points to throw out a good set of Pinks – with points to allow for some splits and other nonsense. This lets them keep their wrap as they are chewed through. It also means they can always have a chance to throw down a unit near an objective and steal a game through deep strike deployment – like some objective a knight can’t get near due to being in a building or some other nonsense.
What Say You?
What are your thoughts? Do you think the Knights aligned with Chaos can summon daemons to the tabletop? Is this something that will eventually get taken away when the Knight FAQ comes out? Is this actually too powerful, or is this another tool for the Chaos Soup enthusiasts? Will we see some Chaos Knights in the top tables in the upcoming events that allow them? Are you just ready for a new Marine Codex called Codex: Primaris your Wallet!
~Let us know what you think of Knight Summoning