Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: Codex Chaos Knights – The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
Goatboy here with a review of Codex Chaos Knights – the good, the bad, and the ugly. Does the new codex have what it takes!?
I have painted 2 sets of Chaos Knights for myself (one sold to the Aether) and always loved playing the big monster stompy versions. It is an army I hold near and dear as a player that loves to play less than 12 models on the table top. Thankfully the new codex does look pretty good and while powerful it is not nearly as back breaking as some of the later books we have seen. This bodes well for those wanting to play the most vile of giant stompy robots. It means the army you start you get to play with for the rest of the season.
As usual I won’t go into each teensy thing in the codex. Instead I want to go into the good, the bad, and the ugly of the book. This gives you a thought on how I want to play this army as well as the things that might excite you the most. There is a lot of good in the book and I am excited to try a few things Especially since I just finished painting the new upgrades that come out with the box set this weekend.
The Good
This actually feels like a fully realized codex. This doesn’t feel like a quick photocopy of the Imperial Knight book with some weird rules that feel like you made them slightly chaotic to make them work. We have fully set up Dread Households, a better Dreadblade build, and even a way to fit a Knight or a Knight Unit (3 Wardogs) into any Chaos army and still leave their other rules working. These are all amazing things to have with a book and help breathe some life into some of the lagging Chaos options we how out there.
Dread Rules
The big new thing is the Dread rules where the Chaos Knights have this fear aura that radiates around them. There are few things that use it and with some interesting leadership stacking options you could do some fun stuff by breaking your opponents army. The Dread rules conicide with the whole shifting rules of the Harbingers of Dread rule they get if you only have Chaos Knights in your army. Each Round you can rotate thru them – like your Ion Shields used to do – and you get some neat abilities normally linking up with your dread aura. The two good ones out of that is removing Objective Secured and the Gheist Storm that makes it harder to shoot or attack the Chaos Knights.
New Units
The book also gives you 4 new units with the Knight Abominant, the War Dog Karnivore, War Dog Stalker, an War Dog Brigand. The Abominant is the Psychic Knight that obviously loves to look metal. It has some bird friends, crazy tentacled damage, and a big ole’ Volkite gun. It also ends up having access to some decent spells with the FNP for himself and maybe his friends being the best followed by a damage amplification spell. This guy is gonna show up in a lot of armies as he is even good with Mark of Khorne. He loses his psychic ability but gains a better WS and more attacks.
The new War Dogs all seem interesting with the close combat Karnivore being pretty neat with extra attacks, hitting on twos, and most likely a skull face if you build him that way. What is sad is he doesn’t get to have a Meltagun but he for sure seems interesting. The new Chaingun also looks alright but with Armor of Contempt showing up it might not nearly be as useful. It has a lot of attacks which could be neat if a ton of low wound armies are doing well.
Marks Are Good!
Beyond all of the units the best thing I found is the whole Marks actually doing stuff. Marks are how you can upgrade your Knights with devotions to a specific Chaos God. It doesn’t make them a daemon but it does give them a bonus and when they gain favour of the god they get an extra bonus. You gain favour by killing X wounds of models. This means if you kill 3 Marines you would gain 6 favour points. The wound breakdown is 5,10, and 15 so it isn’t hard to get. Your favour activates at the end of a phase which is pretty brilliant and easy to “book keep”. There is no way to lose it too so once you power up you are a full jerk for Khorne. My favorite ones are the Undivided marks that give you a 6+ or favour 5+ FNP and no rerolls vs the model. Each of the gods gets 3 and they are all useful. Each of them cost points based on the chassis they are attached too and it allows those units to use a specific Stratagem assigned to the God Mark.
Households, Strategems & Relics
The custom Dread Households are where it is at as there are few very powerful ones. Army wide Ramshackle rule for Infernal households is pretty dang sweet as it will be a terror. Especially for those armies relying on damage 2 lower strength output to chew thru armies. The Iconoclast one I like the most is the exploding 6’s option.It feels pretty dang sweet with a ton of close combat loaded War Dogs running around.
There are a lot of Stratagems and I feel like the army could be a bit hungry for them. A lot of surviving options rely on the strats as well as some fun – oops I auto explode things. Will see how hungry it gets especially with the rumored changes to the amount of CP you start with. The Relics feel good too with some extra powerful options to keep your stuff alive like a 2+ armor save as well as some decent weapons as needed. You got some things that make your casting better as well so you can truly set up a psychic monster if you want.
The Bad
The Tyrant still just feels a bit weird. There is a great strat that lets you create a 4+ bubble for your War Dogs which is a neat thing but I kinda wanted him to be like the central warlord. It needs to run the roost with some kind of better Dread option or something else neat.
Speaking of Dread it is a neat rule but I wonder if the powerful options were left too late in the game. One of the named Households lets you go back to a different dread power as well which could be really good to go back to being hit worse or just removing Objective secured again from the table top. I sorta wish the Dread bubble would keep growing as the army corrupts the landscape more.
I am very sad that Full Tilt is gone and the only advance and charge option is left for a Mark of Slaanesh powered up ability. There seems to be a lot of fun ways to get a runaway train type of Knight. Having that would have just been too sweet. A Rampager going something like 16+d6+1 inches and then charging would have made my cold dark heart happy.
Some Weak Units
The Desecrator still just doesn’t feel right with a low amount of shots. If the model had some kind of disperse effect like the Imperial Knight Perceptor it would have been a heck of a lot more interesting. 2 good shots is neat but the platform is so expensive to have it. The reroll 1’s to hit Aura for War Dogs is good. But it’s not good enough to justify taking one of these in your big knight slot. Versus say an Abominant or a Rampager.
The Infernal Knights also still feel a bit weaker than Iconoclast but there are some interesting options. They have one of the better Custom Household traits but their damage for abilities got hit. They now either get a 3″ add to move, ignore wound rolls of 1-3, or add +1 to wound roll for a weapon. I can see uses for each and I have the feeling the first army I try is Infernal. But I wish the old extra damage option was still there.
The Warlord traits are still kind of boring like the last book. I wanted a few more things or something like more Auras for your War Dogs. But we just got some extra boosts to your chosen leaders. Objective Secured is very good as well as the 2 that give you extra attacks. They just don’t feel as spicy as I would like. This is the same with the actual named Households and their extra traits. They are all ok just not nearly as exciting as the custom builds.
The Ugly
Titanic feet is it was is gone. It is now just a flat X attacks per your model profile. I am very sad but it is probably good it is gone. I will just have an ugly cry for my Tiny Feet ability.
The Verdict
Overall the book is great and I am excited to play it. From a matched play perspective the army will probably be a gate keeper list. It will allow players to quickly finish their games. I do think it will give Death Guard some nice options. 3 Nurgle War Dogs help them out as some marks do give you some fun stacks of -1 Str options. Plus it lets you convert some up to make some cool stuff to run around with your Blight Haulers and other Nurgle engines of death.
~Death to the False Emperor!
