The new edition of the Horus Heresy is here, and there’s no better time to dive into playing the terrible battles of this dark age.
Third edition brings Knights to the fore like never before. New rules for statuses and high damage weapons make them less of a hard stat-check than in second edition, and a well thought through system of vows, traits and prime advantages makes listbuilding and gameplay much more interesting. It’s definitely time to unleash Knights, whether as Lords of War or in their own special detachment, so let’s dive straight in to a monster deep dive on the Questoris army list.
Table of Contents
How Knights Work
Despite the fact they’re all giant, stompy, mecha, Knights split into two rule sets. Armigers are all walkers – big giant infantry that can’t be poisoned easily and get to shoot with all their weapons. The walker sub-type is clearer and easier this time round, as opposed to the nightmare of different rules that we were presented with in second edition. Big Knights get their own sub-type of Vehicle, so the vast majority of Vehicle rules apply, but again this is much cleaner and clearer than in previous editions. There’s some small quirks here – all your defensive weapons count as assault for volley attack purposes (very nice, don’t charge, or be charged by, a Castigator) and can only Consolidate or Gun Down after combat (don’t lose a combat to a Castigator). Knights can also rush, charge and move through terrain, making them surprisingly mobile.
Three big quirks are definitely worth planning around – Facings, Reactions and Split fire.
Facings
Most Knights have to have a base, and it’s the base that determines which way you’re facing at any one time, drawing a line along the longest axis of the base. If you don’t have a base, it’s just the widest point laterally. That gives you two very large facing arcs, rather obviously called front and back.
With better armour up front, you want to make sure you’re taking advantage of that arc to keep your front facing the best weapons the enemy has to offer while keeping your target in arc to shoot. It’s not a particularly difficult proposition – that 180 degree arc of fire is very generous – and the handy way to do it is point your head towards footslogging, knight-killing heavy infantry. They’ll not be able to move into your rear arc, but you’ll still be able to shoot virtually everything on the board. Sacrificing a couple of inches of movement to get the best possible firing arc is a wise move – pushing an inch or two forward can take a huge section of the board out of arc.
Your rear arc is massive, and usually pretty vulnerable. Don’t fret, though, third edition’s extremely permissive arc/facing rules are going to be your saving grace. Any attack that can hit two arcs hits the one chosen by the controller of the vehicle. The illustration in the core rulebook (page 220) shows a clear example of when a line can be drawn from an attacking model to two arcs of a Spartan – the same applies to your knights. This is a big deal for knights – unless an opponent is right behind you, it’s possible they will be able to draw LOS to both arcs, letting you choose to take attacks on the front. While the oval shapes of big knight bases won’t let you do weird positioning shenanigans, you’ll still end up with a surprisingly large number of flanking shots hitting your front arc. Use this to your advantage!
Reactions
In addition to the standard reactions (which you should learn, and use, beyond Overwatch and Return Fire), Knights have their own set of reactions that cover some of their weaknesses. Three of these are stock – Stomp, Rotate Ion Shields and Joust – while each of the Questoris traits gets their own advanced reaction.
Stomp is probably funnier than it is useful, allowing you to reach out and touch models that move too close. As a movement phase reaction that does damage, it’s pretty nice to have, allowing you to place a small blast touching your base and covering the enemy to do AP3, D2 hits at a strength equal to your hull points. You also get a small setup move for it – up to your initiative characteristic, which will let you maneuver to get your blast in place. If a melta squad is moving within close range, you might be able to take a few out with a well placed template, or even brutally stomp on a vehicle that’s got too close – if you’re canny with placement, your blasts hit your choice of armour facing.
Rotate Ion Shields will take finesse and good timing to use. The reaction gives you a +1 to your invulnerable save for the remainder of the triggering shooting attack, in exchange for -1 to further saves that turn. You’ll use this to save you from very high damage anti-armour attacks, but make sure you’re using it on the highest damage potential attacks you’re facing. Used at the wrong time you’re trading some saves for much worse chances to save later on, so think about what your opponent has left to shoot and where it might go. This reaction has no reaction point cost, so you can do it multiple times – but only one reaction per turn, per Knight, remember?
Joust! Is for the Knights who really need to charge while protecting, effectively setting up a counter charge when a friendly unit is targeted. If the enemy charges at something else – not the Knight making the Joust! Reaction – within 12, you get to make a charge roll. If you make it, you lock the enemy unit in combat and count as charging. Very nice for getting a close combat Knight into the enemy in their turn, but a little tricky to work around with the large bases of your knights. It’ll be better for Lord of War knights, where charging in to protect your little friends is much easier than intercepting a charge aimed at another Knight.
Snap Shots – Don’t Do Them!
Vehicles in third edition face far fewer restrictions on their ability to shoot than in prior editions. You can move full speed and still unleash hell (which is nice, isn’t it?), which makes Knights a very mobile army. However, before you tool up every Questoris chassis, it’s worth remembering the rules for split firing. Vehicles can choose a single unit to shoot at, or split fire with every gun shooting a different target. Great! However, this will make every shot a snap shot which will soon drop your efficiency right down. Questoris and Cerastus Knights, with their BS of 4, will suddenly only be hitting on a 5+, perhaps not so bad with high volume weaponry, but terrible news for the low-shot melta and Las-Impulsor.
As a result, I’d recommend you either keep weapon loadouts focused on a single role – anti-tank with Thermal Cannon and Las Impulsor, for example – dual-weapon (One rapid fire battlecannon! Two rapid fire battlecannons! Ah! Ah! Ah!), or one ranged/one fist. Trying to squeeze off an extra couple of shots by splitting fire and missing everything is going to feel very, very bad. There’s a small workaround with defensive weapons, which can split fire without penalty, but with most of these restricted to heavy stubbers, multi-lasers (which do come with Suppressive!) or flamers you’ll not get a huge amount of use out of them. The Avenger Gatling Cannon and Castigator Bolt Cannons, at strength 6, are the only main weapons on big Knights that count as defensive, and only one of them can be taken alongside another ranged weapon (which would then have to snap fire).
The one notable exception to this is the Acastus Knights, who, with their Independent Fire rule can shoot whoever they want, whenever they want.
Statuses
If you think statuses are bad on Marines and Auxilia, wait until you’ve got one on every single one of your models. Vehicles collect statuses like the rest of us collect regrettable Warhammer purchases – easily, repeatedly and at great cost. The effects of statuses are magnified by your small unit count, and a suppressed, pinned or stunned Knight represents a massive loss of offensive and objective scoring potential. With a front armour value of (usually) 13, and only a variable invulnerable save to protect you, strength 7 weaponry can inflict glances that stack up the statuses. Your opponent might have to get lucky, but weapons don’t cap out at RS7 so expect statuses early, often and repeatedly.
You don’t have a lot of ways of dealing with them, either. All non-Armiger knights have auto-repair (to varying degrees), allowing you a single boosted attempt to make a repair test in the statuses sub-phase. Passing that allows you to remove one status, but it’s at the end of the turn, by which point you’ve already lost the full capabilities of any status-afflicted knights. Imperial Knight houses can grab a once per game extra repair check in an enemy end phase with the Rallying Cry reaction which is a nice bonus but hard to plan around. One Knight in your army can be made the Lord Scion, giving them two repair tests in the status sub-phase – you should probably always have a Lord Scion.
Battlesmith is your other major source of status-removal, with Battlesmith models allowing an intelligence check to either repair hull points (or wounds) or remove a variable number of statuses. This happens in the movement phase, so lets you run around repairing Knights before they move, shoot or fight. It’s a much more useful version of repair checks – unfortunately if you’re running Knights as a primary detachment your access to it is limited to a (or more if you’re Mechanicum) Knight with the Preceptor vow. A Preceptor knight seems like a bit of an auto-include if you’re going for multiple big knights, counting as intelligence 8 with Battlesmith (2). As Battlesmith has a 6 inch range, a central Knight dishing out repairs can anchor your whole battleline, but it’s still only one per turn and has a good chance of failure.
Lord of War Knights can be followed around by a veritable swarm of techmarines and/or tech priests, who will happily keep you topped up and status free. Techpriests are cheap, cheerful and good at repairs, so it’s definitely a good shout to take a mass of weirdo priests to keep your Lord of War in the fight.
Types of Knight Army
Knights, either as Lords of War or their own Households, come with three potential army traits representing Freeblades, Imperial Houses and Mechanicum Vassals. Each one comes with its own Tactica trait, Vow and Reaction. For most of us, the theming and lore of our Knight armies will end up dictating the choice, but luckily they’re all at least quite good.
Mechanicum vassals pushes you down the Mechanicum route, with easy access to the Automata talon, multiple Battlesmith Knights with the Preceptor trait and a vow to boost the scoring potential of allies. As is, I’m not sure this Vow works with the Automata talon, but it will certainly help you to boost victory point scoring if you take a Lord of War ally with a Mechanicum detachment – modifying an objective by +2 is nothing to sniff at. Your Advanced Reaction gives you a one-time Rad Purge, automatically hitting every model in combat with one of your Knights with Phage (T) and Poisoned (2+). There’s an ideal situation here where you’re somehow in combat with a massive horde of models where they’ll all die to poisoned AP5, but then why Phage to reduce their toughness for the rest of the battle? Bit of a weird one.
Imperial Houses support lots of Big Knights, with easy access to the Lord Scion prime advantage to let you double autorepair each end phase and a powerful advanced reaction that lets you once per game make an additional repair test in the enemy End Phase. That reaction runs across every Knight in your army, on their usual autorepair value (5+ or 4+). Clearing off statuses in the enemy’s turn is fantastic, even if you’re still having to roll the dice on it. Entering your turn status-free is incredibly powerful, so use this one well and time it right to nullify the effects of shooting. Your Vow is also very good, allowing you to increase Vanguard-scored victory points by 2 the first time any Vanguard model scores. With most Big Knights having Vanguard (2), taking this vow will take you most of the way to Victory.
Freeblades (more properly Knights Mendicant) are what you want for your Lord of War Knight, or if you want to take a vast amount of Armigers in an all Knight army. Your Vow is less useful, applying only once for 2 victory points if your vow-equipped Knight is in the first winning close combat of the game. If you go second, expect not to get this (unless you use the Joust! Reaction well). The advanced reaction is a lot of fun, using a reaction point to auto-explode, which with the right placement can take out a big chunk of the enemy army. If you’re mad enough to take an Asterius, auto-explode it for fun in the middle of the enemy army.
Knights as Lords of War
You can take a single Knight as a Lord of War in any army (except the Knight and Titan detachments, funnily enough), as long as it’s less than 25% of your army’s points total. At 3,000 points that allows you one of any knight, with lower points games capping out at Questoris and Cerastus knights. That Lord of War can be battlesmithed by anyone in your army, and with Tech Priests and Techmarines pretty cheap and easy to stack with auxiliary detachments, have fun repeatedly fixing your big lad as it waddles around the battlefield.
That’s not all you get, though. When you take a Lord of War detachment, you also need to give the Knight a faction trait (discussed above), and each faction trait allows you to bring along one more detachment. The Lord of War (Imperial House) and (Mechanicum Vassal) Knights unlock the Yeomanry Mesnie and Automata Talon detachments, which are useful ways to bring a little Mechanicum, Solar Auxilia or Militia with you, though lacking the flexibility and ease of just chucking in an allies detachment of those factions.
The real Knight Soup comes in adding a Freeblade Company Lord of War, allowing you to also take four armigers with you in the Armiger Talon detachment. The text – “this additional detachment is linked to either a Knight Households Primary Detachment or a Lord of War additional detachment” is clear – one big and four littles, easily taken with one of the best faction vows and certainly the funniest reaction. Freeblades also let you take a Prime Advantage, so if you wanted to get another four Armigers by taking Scion Aspirant, you can take One Big and EIGHT little knights in any other army.
This is great – Armigers are cheap, pretty tough and very fast, allowing you to add a lot of muscle (or just a lot of conversion beamers) into otherwise squishy Solar Auxilia and Militia.
Building a Knight Army
Building a Knight Army is fairly permissive, using the Questoris Familia core detachment and a list of Knight-specific auxiliaries. The Primary Detachment is four Big Knights that each come with a Prime advantage. The downside is that using this flat forbids the use of allies detachments, and locks out all Prime Advantages other than the Knight-specific ones.
While that does mean you can take four Porphyrions (2,900 points, but no friends afterwards), if you want to hit 3000 you’re going to have to take Auxiliary detachments. Unlike the standard Crusade detachment, Auxiliary slots aren’t auto-unlocked with Command because you have no command choices. Instead, you’ll need to take specific prime advantages or Knight Household types to unlock further detachments. We introduced these in the review of the Questoris book, but let’s dive a bit further into what you can get:
Armiger Talon
The Armiger Talon allows you to take up to four armigers, one of the very rare multiple-warmachine detachments in the entire game. You do want to take Armigers, as they provide flexible and potentially very fast utility pieces that can be tooled up in a number of different ways. Warglaives in particular will fill a much needed niche as close range armour hunters that can swing fairly hard in melee.
However, it’s a bit of a bugger to unlock. You can either take the Questoris Mendicant (Freeblade Company) trait, which gives you a single Armiger detachment, or the Scion Aspirant Prime Advantage. While I think Freeblades are probably the best – or at least the most fun – way to run Knights, the Scion Aspirant is a struggle, reducing your Auto-repair by 1 in exchange for Expendable (1). Expendable is useful, denying victory points to your enemy, but Auto-repair being worse is crippling. You’ll have a Knight that can’t move, can barely shoot and spends much of the game doing nothing as you hope for a 6 to clear a status. If you want to run lots and lots of Armigers, take Freeblade and stick Aspirant on your cheapest possible knight with a chainsword and fist and use it as a linebreaker, hitting your big explode reaction in the middle of enemy lines. 400 points not particularly well spent.
Support Banner
Support Banner is the most straightforward choice, unlocking an additional two large Knights via the Scion Martial household Prime rank. These Knights also have Prime unlocks, making for more Prime ranks – you can infinitely stack this detachment with enough points. Scion Martial is the “default” rank which can be taken several times in an army – it has no bonuses and no unlocks other than the Support Banner.
Taking an extra couple of Knights, then, is about opportunity cost. There’s a lot of good Prime ranks, and taking a Knight without one gives up the opportunity to get solid bonuses. If your 6 Knight army needs it, take it, but for all but the largest battles four big knights is probably going to be enough – use those Prime ranks to do something more interesting than squeezing in a barebones Questoris (you can see below that I ignore my own advice here).
Automata Talon
Unlocked via the Questoris Mechanicum trait or by taking a Preceptor Knight, the Automata Talon allows you to cherry pick a couple of units from the Mechanicum list, unfortunately without any Tech Priests accompanying them.
The units you can take aren’t bad by any means and there’s use here in picking up some things your knights otherwise lack. You can take one unit of Domitar, Castellax, Vorax and Vulturax (no double dipping here – one of each is all you get). Each offers something you don’t tend to have in Knight lists – usually volume of shooting or combat attacks. Knights can struggle in melee against big units, so high-volume blenders are very helpful for whittling down things like 20-man tactical Squads before a Knight charges in to finish them off and hit the big Vanguard piñata.
Domitars are tough, fast and hit hard on the charge, but are pricy enough to make a big unit of four compete with taking another Questoris. Castellax are a good line choice, with a huge amount of heavy bolter fire and can form a strong charge deterrent with firestorm. The winning pick though is probably the Vorax (if they ever make it to plastic), as their ferocious turn of speed, armour and melee capability can be used as a melta-seeking missile to eliminate horrible things like lascannon heavy support squads before they can hurt your precious knights. Without Techpriests and arcana they can’t score, or in fact do much of anything, but they’re a good fire and forget unit for you.
Yeomanry Mesnie
The squishy human version of the Automata talon, the Yeomanry Mesnie represent the feudal troops of the Knight Households. You can choose here from the Solar Auxilia or Militia lists, but until we get a Militia list let’s just talk about Solar Aux. Unlocking this one is easy – either Questoris Imperialis trait or the Lord Scion Prime Advantage. You’re probably taking Lord Scion anyway, so this is there if you need it.
However. Need is an interesting thing here. Troops, Vanguard, Recon and Heavy Transports from the Auxilia list doesn’t give you a huge amount of useful, interesting, stuff to play with. Without the Auxilia’s command squads their troops are a bit, well, shit. Lasrifle sections can bring you line (probably leave the Dracosans at home), which is handy, but also offer up an easily-killed bonus for Vanguard units. Speaking of, the Vanguard Slot could be a good place to put a Veletaris section, with Transport to get them to an objective, but you have a lot of Vanguard already. The Recon slot can be filled with Hermes Light Sentinels, which makes for a very fun never talk to me, my son, my son’s son, or my son’s son’s son cavalcade of different walker types.
In all, this is a fun and fluffy way to bring some tiny humans along with your big knights, but there’s not a lot here that’s really worth taking. All Knight armies make your opponent’s bolters completely useless. Don’t bring some humans along unless you want to give every tactical squad on the opposite side of the board an easy job.
Prime Advantages
Household ranks have returned with a Vengeance in 3.0, and no longer cost points. Instead, most are limited to a single choice per army – the unfortunate thing about them is that many are good. There’s going to be some real choices here, though some pair better with certain Knights than others. They have an opportunity cost in that many tie you to specific vows, but you’ll usually want to stack the Prime bonus and the corresponding vow anyway.
Seneschal
The only real absolute must-take, as it unlocks an extra reaction point for Knight household armies. That aside, it’s still pretty useful, offering a reduction in damage (-1 to a minimum of 1) that will keep your Knight alive that little bit longer. Melta will still absolutely wreck you, but you’re losing less to D2 weapons. You’ll need it, as Seneschal paints a big target on your Knight, counting as a High Command choice for Slay the Warlord. The bigger the Knight the better this is – on the Asterius it’s outright hilarious.
Lord Scion
The double repair roll prime rank, simply allowing two repair tests in the status sub-phase. On an Autorepair (5+) knight, you’re increasing your likelihood of getting to remove a status, while on a 4+ Knight you’re coming as close as you can to guaranteeing one status removal a turn. As discussed above though, Autorepair isn’t that great. You need it, but you’re then standing in front of the enemy for another turn – those statuses will be back on shortly. You’re saving yourself from chip damage via multi-stacked statuses, at least. Good on a 4+ knight like the Styrix where you really want to get into position quickly.
Arbalester
Into the very good stuff – Arbalester allows you to move up to half your movement and still benefit from Heavy and Ordnance. There are a lot of guns that go from good to great with Heavy or Ordnance in the Knight list, so an Arbalester knight is a no-brain must pick in your army. There’s a lot of competition for where it will be best, so prioritise relatively short ranged Ordnance and Heavy weapons. On a dual-battlecannon Knight it will allow you to move and still fire FP2, AP3 blasts, but you’ve got 48 inches of range already. The Acheron is a good shout – high movement maximising that half-range move, then toast everyone with AP3 hellstorm.
Scion Aspirant
The Aspirant rank exchanges your ability to auto-repair fairly well for Expendable (1). Reducing the amount of Victory points your Knights give up when dead is good, but taking 1 away from your auto-repair rolls makes you much easier to kill anyway. I am absolutely sure someone with a larger brain will find a good use for this, but at 400 points minimum, I want my Knights to do something other than get stunned, suppressed and pinned then glanced to death.
Auctellier
The Auctellier makes your Knight a character-killer, with Precision 5+ on any Melee weapons. It’s pretty obvious you want this on a melee focused knight, and it will work best with high-strength attacks which you have in spades. On a Thunderstrike Gauntlet, you’re fishing for one Precision hit that will mulch a character, or stick it on the Castigator where you’re getting a lot of extra attacks when outnumbered – you can at least get a few more precision hits then.
Scion Dolorous
One of the most fun ranks, Dolorous makes your knight absolutely terrifying, with Fear (2). You have access to a lot of weapons that can stun, pin, suppress or panic, and reducing enemy advanced characteristics by two is very powerful. Fear has a 12 inch range, so you’ll need to be up close, but with the right loadout you can force a lot of checks that are much more likely to go through. It’ll work when shooting or fighting any fear-affected unit with any other knight, so a Dolorous knight right in the middle of the enemy can be a powerful force multiplier. Pick any Knight with a status-inflicting weapon to put this on – Gatling cannons have Suppressive, the Acheron can inflict panic, but once again give it up for the Castigator, with Suppressive bolt cannon and Aflame combat weapon to really stack those negative multipliers.
Scion Implacable
Simple and highly effective, Implacable gives your knight Firestorm, making all Volley attacks at full BS and can cancel a charge after the volley fire step. You’ll need good defensive weapons to make this work, and there’s only two choices for me here – the dual Gatling Cannon and Multi-Laser Questoris or the Castigator. Because you do deserve nice things, and that nice thing is rolling a preposterous amount of dice twice per turn.
Scion Martial
The default rank – does nothing, but allows you to take any vow. Can unlock additional banners, if you’re wanting the six knight list.
Preceptor
As discussed above, Preceptor might be a must take, allowing you to Battlesmith (2) at I8. Battlesmith is almost entirely absent otherwise in a Knight army and will be a key part of keeping your Knights moving. Your enemy doesn’t need to kill Knights if they can be locked down via statuses, so having a chance to remove statuses in your movement phase is incredibly useful. In an all-Knight army, you should have one Preceptor (or more if you’re Mechanicum and like that sort of thing).
Scion Uhlan
Your fast charging knight, giving you Fast (2) and Impact (A) special rules. There’s no question for me here. The Uhlan was a lancer. Put this on a Lancer and it gets Impact on Attacks, Initiative Modifier and Damage. I guess it’s useful on any melee knight, but it belongs on the Lancer and we all know it.
Vows
The very last block of considerations for Knight army building is in Vows – ways your Knights can score additional victory points for fighting in various themed, fluffy, ways. Each of your Knights may have a vow – only one, and vows cannot be repeated across the army. As noted above, some Prime benefits force a vow selection, which will rule it out for other knights in the army. Playing around the vow system will be key to actually winning battles, no matter how well you’ve managed to tool up your Knights with weapons, traits and auxiliary detachments.
Vow of Excecution is a nice simple one, giving you an additional 2 victory points if the vowed Knight kills a High Command choice from your enemy. You could put this on a high damage shooting knight and use them to wipe out isolated commanders (or just pour on the volume until everyone in a retinue is dead), or give it to a combat knight and finish off a wounded Commander. It might be hard to pull off in combat, with high weapon skill enemies being the bane of combat knights, but at least a Thunderstrike Gauntlet hit can pulp all but the strongest enemies, especially with the vow-locked Aucteller Prime advantage giving precision 5+.
Vow of Slaying is one to take if you know your opponent likes to take Lords of War, of if you’re facing other Knights. Extra points for Giant Killer is nice – put this on a Porphyrion to almost guarantee the kill. Dolorous Knights may only take this vow.
Vow of Resolve is all about staying on the board, giving you two additional points to Last Man Standing, should you be lucky enough to be able to score it. A backfield Knight or a very tough one is a good choice here, but you know your opponent is going to gun for it to deny you the points. Implacable Knights may only take this vow.
Vow of Alacrity belongs to a fast or long ranged Knight, with additional points for first strike. Use your firing order well to guarantee your Alacrity knight gets the killing blow with shooting attacks – it’s worth softening up likely targets with Helverins before unloading your big Knight guns to get the first strike kill. Otherwise, just chuck a Lancer or Acheron up the board and force a kill or off-table fall back. Unsurprisingly, Uhlan Knights may only take this vow.
Knight Army Units
With all that pre-amble, let’s get into the units you’ll be fielding. Questoris army choices come in two types – War Engines (Armigers), who share the Walker sub type with Dreadnoughts, and Lords of War (Knights) who use the Knight rules. The Big Knights all have at least a 5+ invulnerable from the front, with some variants packing slightly better shielding. Armigers can’t have Vows or Prime advantages and don’t have Vanguard, but do have move through cover and outflank, giving you some flexible and surprisingly fast utility pieces. Armigers are not as tough as you think – Toughness 7 with 7 wounds will evaporate quickly in the face of high damage weaponry, but use them to kill anything with a melta – anything to keep the big ones alive!
Armigers
Helverin
The Helverin is your shooty option, with two phaeton autocannons. The base profile is alright, each armiger kicking out six autocannon shots at strength 7, ap3 and 2 damage. With Breaching 5+, they’ll do well into a lot of heavy infantry. If they’re moving, the range is respectable – 30 inches. With Ordnance (R) stationary Helverins can stand right in the back corner with good lines of sight and still contribute. Keep the heavy stubber rather than paying for the melta – they’re best sat at the back.
Warglaive
Completely opposite to the Helverin, Warglaives want to get up close and personal. They’re a bit split between an alright combat weapon and an excellent anti-vehicle gun. The Thermal lance is an excellent vehicle killer on a 10” move platform, with a healthy 12” melta range that will punch through a huge amount of damage if you’re in the right place. The reaper chainblade is pretty good at AP2 and high strength. You’ll get extra attacks (much needed) if you’re outnumbered, which you will be. A Warglaive might not be able to take on the combat monsters of the 31st millennium, but it can pop a heavy tank and at least thin out whatever combat-related retribution comes its way. At 150 points, it’s not cheap enough to trade for a Rhino, but a Land Raider with a cargo of Terminators is an excellent target.
Moriax
As befits the Mechanicum knight Armiger, the Moriax is a more complex beast. It’s slower than the Warglaive and Helverin and has lower initiative, but can be tooled up much more flexibly. Here you’re all about your weapon options – the Siege claw (with irad cleanser) and Volkite veuglaire are your stock options, but there’s plenty of choices including the twin-conversion beamer “mini Porphyrion”. Moriax come equipped with rad furnaces, which lower enemy toughness when locked in combat. That might push you towards paired Siege claws, but they aren’t that great – strong and certainly good at punching through tank armour, but with few attacks.
It’s hard to make use of the rad furnace, so consider your ranged weapons. The Lightning Lock is a source of Suppressive, with a good chance of breaching, shredding attacks, perfect for lighting up an enemy before a Knight charge. Volkite veuglaires have a horrendous deflagrate (7) and a high volume of shots, but will likely get stopped by any significant armour. The Moriax conversion beamer is, as before, very good fun, getting up to Strength 9 on a small blast at A2 and D3 at long range. It’s pricey to equip two, but might be worth it. Sniper Moriax with lightning locks or conversion beamers look like useful utility pieces.
Max, long-time master of weird and esoteric weapons, wants me to go to bat for the Grav Impulsor, which if I’m honest I had completely forgotten about as an option. He might well be right – pinning (2), native AP3, Breaching and Shock make for a ridiculously useful weapon for stopping transports, killing marines and protecting your other knights through the magic of statuses. It’s a solid option for multiple targets and you get a lot of shots.
Knights
You get every currently released Cerastus, Questoris and Acastus chassis in the Questoris list, but fans of the Dominus chassis will be sad to know it’s still absent in the battles of the Heresy for some reason.
Questoris
While the Cerastus knights are split out into separate choices, the Questoris has all the plastic kit options available within one data sheet. The cheapest possible choice is 400 points (two Reaper Chainswords and a heavy stubber), so any and all other options will cost you more points.
You’re tooling these out to do what you want them to do – long ranged options offered by the Rapid Fire Battlecannon, Gatling cannon for anti-infantry and Thermal Cannons when you really need a Spartan or opposing knight to die. All options are good in their niche.
The Las-Impulsor is very weird, giving you a melee/short ranged hybrid that I’m not sure works. I might be missing something, but if you want a good ranged gun and a melee threat that works on everyone, go Thermal Cannon and Reaper Chainsword.
Carapace gun/missile pod choices give you a bit of utility and, if you know you’re going to be facing flyers, bringing an Icarus will give you some rapid tracking skyfire defence. Taking multiple knights with one of each option will cover your bases, but the points will rack up – try the Stormspear on a Double Battlecannon Knight for the ultimate Marine-killing machine.
Magaera
The Magaera is a tougher Questoris, with a better chance to self repair and an anti-armourbane shield. They also explode slightly easier than other knights, so self-sacrifice taking down a horde of enemies is their likely end. With no options at 460 points, it ends up just slightly more expensive than a tooled up Questoris. As a ranged/melee hybrid it’s a Marine killer, with all of its guns and melee weapons either bypassing armour or having a good chance to do so.
I think this is going to be a choice you take if you have one – you can get a Questoris doing most of what a Magaera can manage for a little bit cheaper. You’ll miss the insane power of the Hekaton Siege claw (x2 Strength!), but with only four attacks, initiative 3 and WS4, you’re likely hitting with it less than you’d like. Max, as mentioned, the lord of weird weapons, made a great point that you’re using this to smash up vehicles (not Knights, you’ll miss), so if your opponent keeps bringing a Fellblade, Praetor Launcher, Mastodon or one of the billion Baneblade chassis, this is the fist you use to crack it.
Styrix
The other-other dishonorable Knight, much of the above about the Magaera also applies to the Styrix. It’s a little cheaper (all of five points) and comes with different guns that make it more of a Solar Aux killer, pinning the little guys with a graviton gun and then toasting them with the Volkite, but this is not an army that lacks AP4, so spending a big chunk of points on a resin monster designed to kill easily killable things seems like a bit of a waste. However, if you’ve got one, go for it – you’ll enjoy rolling ten volkite shots with deflagrate (7).
Cerastus Knights
The Cerastus Knights are incredibly quick – a full 14 inch movement, ability to rush at initiative 4 and the potential for massive setup moves means they’re moving into combat quickly and very good candidates for vows which give them extra points for killing favoured targets. With 12 HP they can take a little more beating than the Questoris, but they’re still surprisingly fragile.
Castigator
The sword and bolter knight was probably the least popular option last edition but I think that might change this time round. The Castigator bolt cannon certainly chucks out a lot of shots that will kill marines, but you’re mainly here for the Suppressive (2) defensive weapon, giving you a weapon that can semi-reliably suppress threatening units to keep your other knights alive. The Tempest warblade is another thing altogether, with an astonishing Reaping Blow (6) making the Castigator your highest volume attack knight when outnumbered. It also comes with the Aflame rule, making forcing a rout after a combat much more likely. It’s going to be great if you can manage charging it into a big 2+ save unit, kicking out a huge number of attacks and hopefully forcing a rout. It’s really, really good.
Acheron
The Acheron is the most expensive Cerastus at 500 points, with the iconic reaper chainfist and acheron cannon. The cannon remains a good fun choice using the big flamer template, hitting AP3 with Heavy and with Panic (2) to rout enemy units when shooting at them. You want to get up close and personal (though does the Hellstorm template count as close?) and roast multiple enemy units. Beware though, close proximity to other knights can result in you not being able to shoot – template weapons can’t touch friendlies, and the hellstorm template is preposterously huge. It’s a bit of a confusing one for Prime ranks – you want to take Arbalester to hit AP3, but Dolorous gives you Fear (2), making the Panic check all the more likely to go through (Panic at -4!). There’s a hammer of math in here as to which one is best to take – do you want to guarantee the check happens, or make the check more likely to go off?
Compared to that, the reaper chainfist is a bit of an afterthought – a good armour-killing weapon. But you’re not here for that. You’re here for the flamer.
Lancer
I love my Lancer, but I think it might be crowded out by how fun the Acheron flamer and Castigator sword are. It’s certainly trying to fill a different niche, with the shock lance having a good ranged profile with Stun (2) shutting down reactions before a charge grants you an incredibly high damage, high initiative set of attacks. Sticking the Aucteller trait on a lancer will give those precision (5+), making it into a comedically huge character killer, while Uhlan will make you hit incredibly hard. The ideal Lancer turn is going to be stopping a unit with a character from reacting, then charging in to hit that character with several damage 5 attacks. The Castigator is better into large units, but the lancer is great into incredibly tough ones. You’re able to spike a huge amount of damage into other Knights, Lords of War or even Titans on the charge, so there’s good options here for a lot of different targets. Just don’t get charged!
The Ion Gauntlet shield will provide a little melee protection with a 5+ invulnerable, but don’t count on it, you’re still pretty squishy against anyone packing high strength or god forbid armourbane melee.
Atrapos
The meanest of the Cerastus Knights, the Atrapos is a solid 600 points, making it the largest knight you can take as a Lord of War at 2,500 points, and a very chunky investment in an all Knight army. It shares the same basic stat line as the other Cerastus knights, with a better auto repair roll (4+), so it’s the weapons that are adding on the additional 100 points.
The Graviton Singularity cannon has a niche as a high damage blast weapon that will absolutely chew through armour, but a melta gets that (and more) at close range, so the significantly cheaper Thermal Cannon does more when it’s within 12 inches. The Phasecutter (ranged) is another very effective anti-armour weapon that’s going to penetrate for 6 damage half the time it shoots, following up with the melee option to finish off a target. I guess there’s a role here for medium range anti-armour, but if you’re getting within 12 to use the phasecutter, there’s cheaper and only slightly squishier options available.
Acastus Knights
Let’s be honest, you’re taking these anyway if you have them because a) they’re cool and b) you spent a ton of money on them. Last edition, the Acastus Knights were a pant-shittingly terrifying force on the battlefield with AV14, hideoAus weapons and It Will Not Die. You were, absolutely, telling your opponent “you are about to lose this battle” when you took one, unless you really messed up your targeting priority. Their rules still don’t require a base, and have a specific carve out that they block line of sight because they’re so damn big. I love seeing an Acastus on the battlefield, and hopefully with slightly toned down rules we’ll see more of them without their appearance being accompanied by a pained grunt.
Now with only two facings (AV14 and 11) and 18HP, it will be possible to punch through their armour with a wider range of weapons, though armourbane won’t work through their Ionic flare shields. While the weapons aren’t worse than last time round, most weapons have got a little bit better (at least) so the disparity between the insanely up-gunned Acastus and everyone else is a little narrower. They’re also expensive, taking them out of the Lord of War at 2,500 range.
Porphyrion
At 725 points, the Porphyrion seems to have been set as “too big for 2,500” and just about fits into 3,000 point battles, which will limit its use as an allied Lord of War. In all-Knight armies though, you can take as many as you want! The Porphyrion is still an absolute nightmare to face, but it’s notably less nightmarish than in previous editions. You’re still packing some of the most horrific guns you’ll ever see on a model that can reasonably fit on a table, and they can still split fire at full ballistic skill.
However, the guns haven’t had as much of a glow up as many other weapons have received in the transition to third edition. The main guns are still hilarious, with a ten foot long range, 8 damage and 12 strength (luckily at AP2), but the missile battery is very disappointing for all that it’s a large blast. Without blast though, the days of shooting a Porphyrion vaguely at your enemy is now over. You’re picking a target and killing it, rather than just spilling death everywhere.
While AV14 at the front will preclude many penetrating hits, you’re still able to severely impact the walking turtle by stacking up the statuses. With all that, in a shorter game can you definitely guarantee you’re going to get the shots off that make it worth bringing along? I hope so – I’ve put the effort into making one after all!
Asterius
The much less cool looking Acastus Knight (except Colin’s, below), the Asterius is a solid 750 points and can – blessedly – auto repair much better than the Porphyrion. It’s bringing along the best named gun in any GW game, the Mounted Conversion Beam Desolator Array, and what a gun it is. At full range (4-6 feet) this is just full on silly, hitting everyone under a 7 inch blast at strength 10 for 4 damage (with Ordnance (D) to boot). The range drop off is harsh though, with the 18-42 inch range band where you’re likely sitting for most of the game dropping down to AP3, and danger close shots (sub 18 inches) a disappointing AP4. There’s absolutely no way enemies line up obligingly four feet away, so how well your Asterius does is going to depend on if you can convince an event organiser to make the standard board length eight feet across (you can’t).
This is one for those big, big games where titans walk and you manage one turn before everyone has to go home. The Karacnos mortar is a little more useful with a bevy of special rules designed to melt the flesh of your enemies, but it feels a little like an afterthought compared to the Desolator array. You’re never, ever going to get good use out of this guy, but that’s not why you bought him, is it?
Putting It All Together
I’ve put together a 3,000 point list based around my favourite big Knights – Cerastus Knights! It might not be fantastic, but it’s got a lot of anti-armour, a ton of anti-infantry and a lot of fun effects to mess up your opponent with the Dolorous, Implacable and Uhlan Prime Advantages. It’s a bit lighter on Armigers than I would normally go, but the lure of five Big Knights was too much to resist:
Knight Questoris (Mendicant)
Knight Households Detachment
Acastus Knight Porphyrion – 735
Hyperios Missile Launcher
Seneschal
Cerastus Knight Lancer – 480
Uhlan
Cerastus Knight Castigator – 480
Implacable
Knight Questoris – 440
Thunderstrike, Thermal Cannon, Stormspear
Scion Martial
Auxiliary Detachment: Support Banner
Cerastus Knight Acheron – 500
Dolorous
Auxiliary Detachment: Armiger Talon
Armiger Moriax – 195
Graviton Pulsar, Graviton Pulsar
Armiger Moriax – 170
Lightning Lock, Gyges Siege Claw
It’s all about using your Suppressive weapons to make your Castigator and Lancer charges as super-effective as possible, while the porphyrion deletes the AV14 the rest of your army might struggle with. Very, very little can stand up to the Dolorous Acheron, and keep the Castigator nearby to maximise the number of units you’re hitting with Panic, Suppress and Aflame under the heavy gaze of the Dolorous knight!
Final Thoughts
That’s your lot! Knights look very good fun this edition, despite the wailing doom that a meltagun threatens. You’re given an awful lot of tools, options and potential builds to play around with, and most of them at least are pretty good. You’ll need to get clever with your reactions, target priority and turn order, but once you do you’ll find yourself blowing away your opponent with firepower, big swords and victory points. It’s probably never been a better time to play Knights in Heresy, so stoke up your rad-furnaces and get out there.
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