Warhammer 40K: Knights Face Some Big Challenges In 10th Edition
Will the various Imperial & Chaos Knight factions be able to hold on in 40K 10th Edition?
10th Edition is bringing a lot of changes to game. Some of the ones with greatest impact are on how you build an army. With mixing factions mostly gone, some armies that were used to brining allies are now on their own. These seems set to greatly impact how both Imperial and Chaos knights work in the game. These armies are some of the most divergent, and we’ve gotten previews of both. So lets take a look and see if they can cut it in 10th.
Controlling Objectives
Without a doubt one of the big challenges Knights will face in 10th is holding objectives. Based on the previews the Armiger/ War Dog classes will have an OC of 8, while the Questoris/Abhorrent have an OC 10. It’s not clear what the larger classes with have, but an OC of 12 would fit the pattern.
Now points are going to make a big difference here as they will determine how many knights you can take in a list. But assuming its somewhere close to current and you see a lot of lists with maybe 7 knights, that could be a real issue. This would give an entire army a combined OC of 70. That’s less than what you could see from a single Guard unit. Even managing to fit say 10 Knights in a list will leave you with less than 100 total OC. Meanwhile most infantry appear to be sitting at OC 2- so almost any unit will take an objective from a knight.
Yes, Knights can, and will have to, just kill or battleshock enemy units to grab objectives. That can work. But its also not really playing the mission or to objectives, if your plan is just kill all the other troops. We don’t know the full extent of knight rules, but it does seem like objectives will be a struggle for them. This was the case with pure Knight armies in the past as well, and only really fixed by mixing in some unit from other armies (remember the Loyal 32?). It seems we’ve come full circle.
Some Kill-y Guns
So, how about that “kill them all” plan? Can it work? well based on what we’ve seen the Knights are brining some real firepower to the table. Of course this isn’t anything super new, but the changed up datasheets do look nice. Knight weapons overall look really solid. The newly upgraded knight Battle Cannon (which is the same for both factions thought with different names) seems real solid. At half range, 36 inches for this baby, you are looking at 2d6+6 shots + blast. It’s got decent S and does a flat D3 damage. The low AP is a draw back, but it can cut through some troops for sure.
Meanwhile in an edition where melta has seen some big nerfs, the Thermal Cannon seems solid. With melta 6 it can put out some massive damage at close range. The Gatling Cannon while stuck with a lower S, is a real MEQ killer. If there is one thing that seems lacking its that the melee weapons seem a little less impressive. Rocking up with twin guns certainly seems the way to go.
Can They Take A Hit?
The flip side to knights having some impressive firepower is that they may not be able to survive much of it. Knights didn’t really get much harder to kill this edition from what we’ve seen. Sure their toughness got a boost, like most vehicles, but its not clear that will make a big difference. The weapons that were already wounding them on 6s weren’t affected at all. Meanwhile most of the big anti-tank weapons also got bumps.
If Canis Rex get a charge off against another Knight he’s got an above average shot at just killing them (thanks in part to re-rolls). Meanwhile a dual Thermal Lance knight also has a good chance at one shooting a rival. The heavy guns, and melee weapons, of plenty of other armies can also really beat them up. The armies are also really vulnerable to Oath of Moment, with it’s full re-rolls being kind of devastating to an army made up of a few high value targets.
The Rocky Road
Knights do bring some interesting rules to the table. There are a divergent type of army and can be fun. Their rules range from quite good – to kind of meh however. For instance I’m not sure how useful the Chaos Knights getting +1 to wound vs battle-shocked units will be, since it seems that most units that will suffer battle shock they are already wounding on 2s anyway.
Both Knight factions do bring some major offensive power with them. You’ve got a lot of big and powerful guns, and arms, and feet, etc.. running around with them. However the army could have major problems surviving return fire as they aren’t any harder to kill these days. In addition they are going to struggle with taking and holding objectives, bringing relatively few models and a low OC to the game. We will have to see if they have any more tricks up their sleeves or if this will really be an uphill fight for them.
Let us know how you think Knights will do in 10th, down in the comments!
