Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: Getting the Most Out of Your Cerastus Knight Lancer
Goatboy here. It is a glorious Warhammer 40K day! Let’s go over the care and feeding of your new plastic Imperial or Chaos Cerastus Knight Lancer.
The new FW plastic Cerastus Knight Lancer is coming out this week and we got one early here at BoLS HQ. It was a pretty nice model kit and I will talk about it’s hobby aspects later this month when I showcase what I did with it. Overall it is a pretty neat new Knight model that adds a lot of flavor to both Chaos and Imperial versions for their armies.
Today I want to talk a bit about each version and why they might be useful to have in your army. We’ll start with the overall rules that both of them share and then dive into how each one would work in your own Good or Bad guy armies. With that, let’s talk about the overall good.
Cerastus Knight Lancer Brings the Pain
First of all – the Cerastus Knight Lancer is a big knight that is faster, tougher, and can hit pretty dang hard. It has more wounds than the normal Knight variants with extra speed – due to its longer and dainty legs. It also carries a shield that is begging for some kind of energy effects to be thrown in it that gives it the extra advantage of having a 4+ invulnerable save in both shooting duels and glorious combat fisticuffs.
It does shoot a wee bit. So while it isn’t going to be wrecking stuff with space lasers it isn’t a slouch to be ignored as it is dancing around the tabletop. The Cerastus Knight Lancer has a decent amount of attacks when it gets close that hit very hard. But the real kicker in this is that the model can utilize “tank shock” for free even if you’ve already used it this turn. This is huge as its giant spear hits at a whopping Strength 20 which brings you 22 dice to roll versus a target with every 5 or 6 become a Mortal wound (max 6). This is going to give you a chance to hit a lot of things if you come in angry and hot. It also hits on a 2+ with its sweep profile. This gives you a lot of damage potential when hitting those pesky shield walls of Custodes getting in your way.
Imperial Vs Chaos Cerastus Knight Lancers
From there, it really is dependent on what flavor of army you want to do. It feels like the Imperial Knight side might be a bit better – most likely due to the overall power of their Army list, army rules, and stratagems. The Chaos Knights side feels very hampered by having an alright rule but a lack of really an effective overall Army rule. Really the whole Battle Shock thing feels half-baked and I will be talking about it on Thursday in much more depth with thoughts on how to fix it.
Chaos Knights
Still, both can do neat things to their armies. The Chaos Knight Lancer pumps up War Dogs pretty well. So it fits in with the current “good” build of 6 Brigands and some friends. We’ll start with the Chaos side as it is a character so it can get Enhancements which makes it a bit better. From there, it has an extra ability to give War Dogs around it – within 6” – the change to all their weapons become Assault instead of what they were before. This lets those War Dogs move, advance, and fire which can be very powerful. I really wish it was the ability to advance and charge – but they left that rule for the Imperial Knight versions.
Imperial Knights
On the Imperial Knight side, they have the bondsman ability to grant Advance and Charge to those Armigers it targeted. This can be pretty powerful, as the Cerastus Knight Lancer gets Advance and Charge itself. On an potent Assault based model, it is pretty powerful. You can stack some other fun rules too like Reclaim the Realm that gives you an additional 1” to move, 1” to Advance, and then another 1” to charges. This gives you a basic 3” of more movement on an already fast model that also has FNP stacked on top of it.
The Imperial Knight side even has other fun stuff like Thunderstomp. This lets you can stack on top of Tank Shock to give your Knight 22, 5+ rolls to generate Mortal wounds and then another 10 attacks that have Devastating wounds on top of it. This could easily obliterate a squad of plastic dudesmen that you charge into and try to remove. It just becomes a crazy murder machine that charges across the table and gets ready to take all your cookies.
Overall the Cerastus Knight Lancer is a pretty neat kit. It is great to have a new Knight model for 40K that isn’t a pain-in-the-butt resin kit to build. It has a lot of posing options if you want, as well as locked in positions to make it easy to build. You also get alternative armor plates for either Imperial or Chaos. If you’ve built a few knights you should have no problems building this hunk of crazy plastic. I hope to have mine painted this coming weekend if I get time away from the kids for a bit.
Are you picking one up?
