10th Edition Competitive Faction Focus: Imperial Knights

With the release of 10th edition now firmly behind us and more than a month of competitive games in the books it’s time to start taking a deeper look at each of the game’s factions. In this series we’ll talk about each faction, what they have to offer, how they play, and talk about a few list concepts to consider.

You can find all the Faction Focuses that we’ve published here.

Today, we’re taking a look at the chivalric houses of the Imperial Knights. They took some early point nerfs, but are still performing pretty strongly, so what’s making them so potent? Let’s find out!

Why Should You Play This Faction?

Do you want to just kill stuff and do you appreciate giant robots? If the answer is yes to both of these, Imperial Knights are probably one of your best options. Imperial Knights are an incredibly high-threat force, with some of the best damage-dealers in the game, and are pretty durable when the opponent tries to swing back at them. The latter is even more true than in previous editions, as the change in toughness scaling moving Armigers to T10 has taken a substantial chunk of weapons that used to wound them on 5s to needing 6s, meaning that if you get your target priority right, some foes can run out of tools to fight you.

Imperial Knights are also a great army for people starting out in competitive play, because they’re pretty forgiving. That isn’t to say there’s no skill to playing them, as learning how to manage your limited number of models effectively in tougher matchups is vital to success, but you’re going to be going into many of your games as the side that would win a straight shootout/brawl, which is always helpful. By ensuring that you have the tools to participate in every game you play, Knights also give you more opportunities to learn from things that go wrong, and how more experienced players work around you when outgunned, which can develop your skills for the future.

Five Things You Need to Know

• A Mix of Big and Small Knights is a Must: If you want to go all Armigers, go play Chaos. Bondsman abilities mean that you want big and small Knights in your list working together to get the most out of them.
• Shooting is Where You Deal Big Damage: Your melee is still pretty good, and putting foes under pressure with charges helps lock them down, but your guns are where you get stuff done.
• Pick Lay Low the Tyrant: You have two choices for an Oath, and should basically always take Lay Low the Tyrant to provide a single hit and wound re-roll of a 1 each time you Shoot or Fight. It smooths out your damage so much that adding a bit of extra mobility from Reclaim the Realm can’t really compare.
• Tactical Objectives Aren’t Too Bad: As long as you bring some Imperial Agents to help with a few of them (which you should), you’re actually pretty decent at Tactical Objectives. Armigers can flip objectives with ease and have plenty of movement, and this edition Action-like objectives don’t exclude Vehicles.
• Watch Out for Your Key Weaknesses: As an army, you can end up struggling a bit with large targets with 2+ saves, and are vulnerable against lists that can just deck a bit Knight. Don’t be afraid to Strat Reserve a big Knight if you can only hide one, and if your metagame is heavy on Wraithknights, consider bringing something like Canis Rex who can just deck one outright.

What Are the Must-Have Units to Start This Faction?

First up, buy some magnets. Magnetizing big Knights is very doable, and while there are some clear standouts at the moment, almost all of them are at least good, and the churning eddies of rules and metagame changes could end up incentivising you to switch them in and out over time. Once magnets are obtained, your starting point for this faction is two big Knights, two Helverins, then Warglaives and Imperial Agents (Callidus, Exaction Squads and Eversors are particularly good, but any of the cheap infantry can sub for the Exaction) to fill.

By default, you can start those big Knights as a Crusader (with the RFBC as the second gun) and a Warden, and hey presto you have an extremely credible baseline competitive Knights build.

From there, the things you likely want to consider are either a third Questoris Knight to build as either Canis Rex or a Gallant or go big and get a a Knight Valiant. Gallants are cheap enough that you can take two Crusaders alongside them, while Valiants and Canis are terrifying enough that they change how some armies have to play against you.

How Does This Faction Secure Objectives?

Putting giant robots on them. Simple. Seriously though, your army is made up of huge, hard to kill robots with OC 10 and speedy, relatively numerous robots with OC 8. Your only real issue on this front is low board coverage if you start losing a few models, so to ensure against that you want to bring along some imperial agents to either hold your own backfield or come out of reserves in the opponent’s (or if it’s a Callidus Assassin, both), and you should also consider the extremely good Banner of Macharius Triumphant on a more mobile Knight. This provides them with sticky objectives, allowing them to stepping stone towards the enemy leaving locked-in objectives in their wake. It’s especially great on a Knight Warden thanks to their additional durability and incentive to play aggressively.

How Does This Faction Handle Enemy Hordes?

The standard Crusader/Warden tag team is exceptionally good at clearing out hordes. Crusaders get an eye-watering number of shots before Blast gets involved, while the Devastating Wounds that the Warden gains into such targets helps their shots go further. Helverins are also great at cutting through these, the Valiant’s flamer is excellent and most Knights with a melee weapon have a strong sweep attack if it comes to it. Warglaives get in on that too, gaining Sustained Hits when they charge, allowing them to cut through things.

The challenge in this matchup is not, therefore, killing them – it’s making sure they don’t out-score you on objectives. The first key to this is to lose as few models as possible – many horde mooks won’t be a real threat to any sort of Knight, so identify the things that are and take them out ASAP so you retain enough models to contest the board. Past that, make sure you identify which objectives there’s a threat of your opponent reaching, and double stack models on it if necessary – with two Armigers, it can be difficult for the enemy to fit enough models on a point to contest OC 16.

How Does This Faction Handle Enemy Tanks and Monsters?

This slightly depends on the defensive profiles you’re up against. At a baseline, the thermal spear on Warglaives is good for dealing some damage to big targets, as unlike a lot of melta weapons it’s been significantly bumped up in strength this time around, hitting at S12. Lay Low re-rolls work really well with this (low shot count, high quality is where this sort of thing is best), and can certainly do the lift for you against moderately crunchy target

If your metagame features a lot of hull/monster heavy forces, you may want to consider diverging from the Crusader/Warden default, especially if those forces have lots of 2+ saves. Because of how easy it is for large models to get cover (especially against Crusaders that want to stand still), the mix of AP-1 and AP-2 shooting this setup packs can fall short, especially if the opponent is smart and knows to prioritize killing Warglaives. If this is something you run into, there’s a couple of things you can try.

First up, make sure to be aggressive with the Warden, because even if it can’t kill this stuff at range, in melee it’ll chop them up. You can also just go for death by a thousand cuts – popping Trophy Claim on a Crusader will usually push some damage through even if the opponent is saving on 2+.

If that’s not enough, it’s time to start tinkering with lists. A Knight Valiant is your chunkiest option here, as the missiles and harpoon will put the fear of the Emperor into large targets. This model works particularly well with the Mysterious Guardian enhancement, allowing you to stash it in deep strike against Towering predators like Wraitknights, and redeploy it if the opponent flees before it.

Other options to switch in are Canis Rex, who will do truly horrendous things to enemy centrepieces in multiple phases, and perhaps switching out a Crusader for a Castigator, as the combination of twin-linked and being able to hit AP-3 helps their gunplay, and you can use them more aggressively thanks to having a serious melee profile.

What Combos Should You Build Around?

Knight combos don’t tend to be super complicated, but you can certainly augment the kinds of builds described above with any of the following:

• Mythic Hero on a Warden, creating a super durable spearhead by handing multiple Warglaives damage reduction.
• Unyielding Paragon on a Warden for maximum durability. If you go for this, make sure to remember to pop Shoulder the Burden on a key turn, as the combination of a 2+ save and AP reduction can make you almost indestructible.
• Mysterious Guardian on a Valiant or Gallant, creating a headache-inducing threat for opponent’s to worry about.
• Tank Shock with pretty much anything that isn’t a Helverin – don’t forget you can do this, it helps to guarantee the kill against big targets.

Army Lists

Noah Beddome – 6th Place – Lone Star Open

Army List - Click to Expand

This is an especially aggressive Knight build, going for a Valiant instead of the long-ranged shooting of a Crusader, and maximising the ability to protect the big Knights early on – you’ve got Mysterious Guardian on the Valiant, so it can deep strike, and Unyielding on the Warden for an effective 1+ save if it makes sure to be in cover. This list can bowl opponent’s over very quickly if allowed to.

Riley Carter – 2nd Place (Undefeated) – Board Room Brawl

Army List - Click to Expand

This is the kind of list you take if the metagame is full of other Knights, Wraithknights and Daemonic/Tyranid monster mash builds. Taking both Canis Rex and a Valiant gives you truly stupendous killing power into hefty threats, while adding a Crusader as well will help deck hordes.

Albert Lim – 4th Place – Iowaaagh! Open

Army List - Click to Expand

This build takes the Warden/Crusader formula and skews it a bit towards shooting rather than durability by subbing in the Castigator for a Warden. This provides higher AP and re-rolls into enemy heavy hitters, while still retaining great horde-clearance with Sustained Hits.

Wrap Up

Knights are in a great place at the moment, and are pretty flexible in which big toys they can play with, giving lots of variety to try out. Charge forth gloriously, and blow the enemy to bits.