Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K Hot Mess – Fixing Chaos Knights
Goatboy here. Chaos Knights are missing a lot of potent rules that the good guys have. So let’s brainstorm how to fix that.
You all know I love giant monsters of death and destruction. You make them all Chaos-y, and it is even better for me. So it’s with some sadness that while I love my Chaos Knights – the army just doesn’t feel like it works right now. First of all, the rules they have just don’t make sense. The whole emphasis on causing Battleshock doesn’t work. If you can’t force Battleshock tests outside the Command phase, it just sorta sucks. There isn’t anything you can do when half your rules just don’t work all the time.
How frustrating is it to force a check during their turn, but your opponent – who is in control of the turn – gets to decide when we are checking BattleShock for scoring. No matter what you do – the chance of being BattleShock just doesn’t matter. Heck, so many of Chaos Knight rules are dependent on your opponent failing the test and then you shooting the unit that fails it. But the army shoots so much already. Having a unit left in that state is something that either won’t happen or your opponent won’t let it happen. It’s just annoying.
So let’s think about fixing that.
Murderous Intent
Let’s just shift their rule to say that: any unit that takes damage from a Chaos Knight has to instantly take a Battleshock test. Any damage taken scares the crap up of the unit which would help activate other rules for the Chaos Knight to use. Then if things are too close they have modifiers to their Battleshock which would continue to add to the other rules for the army. Things like trying to charge in and getting spooked.
Auras of Spooky
So beyond just taking damage just getting near the evil knights scares the crap out of you. Once a unit is within the range of the spook they start to get scared and take out of phase Battleshock tests. Can you see a theme here? Have the range start to get bigger as the game gets on and the knights get spookier. I am not trying to remove the whole spooky side of things I just want it to work.
Bring Back Chaos Marks Baby!
We really need to bring back some kind of mark option again to the army. It would be a simple factor to create the same Chaos Mark based system that shows up for CSM – with some of the rules just locking down on the army. Heck, you could make it where certain marks activate if a unit fails its Battleshock test, and you can create some unique interactions this way.
Update Knight Auras
I love the idea of the War Dogs being the little jerks of the Chaos Knight army but the big knights need better auras to make the whole thing work. GW should want you to take big knights beyond some updates to Towering. They need to help their brother dawgs get into action faster. I would love to the the Rampager amp up their War Dogs into some advance and charge options. The Desecrator should do more than just let them reroll ones. Make the big knights special with things that match some of the Bondsman abilities but shift into the idea that they are leaders who lead with aura-amping action.
Bring Back House Types
We need Dark Mechanicus options again. We need Iconoclast awesome bits. We need the army to feel like either a Dark Knight comparison or the mechanical hell that is the Evil Dark Mechanicus. Things like taking wounds to cause actions or leading by some kind of twisted code of honor would let you play the dark-sided mirror of the Imperial Knights in a cool and fun way.
I love these giant monsters of mayhem and just want their rules to work better. A few small tweaks and Battleshock becomes an important rule beyond just watching CSM players roll it and take mortal wounds. We need it to work the way it feels like it is supposed too – instead of this halfway option we have now.
Death to the False Emperor!
