How You Beat Dem: Imperial Knights

from 40k Daemons


Imperial Knights make a fine addition to almost any army because they must be dealt with somehow. A competent player will probably run 1-2, maybe 3. Anyone playing 5 Knights is probably not at the tourney to win it and most-likely has a very snappy paint job. Chaos struggles to kill these more than most armies. Tau can drop them like flies, as can Elfdars. Space Marines with bikes or pods also have few troubles. Chaos has none of these luxuries. So what you do if you see one or several? There are a few techniques: let’s call them, trolling, tarpit and keel! Whether you face one or five, these are the only three things you can really do about it, and it should be enough to let you hang in there in most missions. But if you face five Knights in a KP mission, you gonna lose!


Trolling

Trolling is where you feed a big bad expensive unit a throwaway unit that isn’t worth its time or what it wants to kill. To do it properly, you need to be able to summon. Drop ten Daemonettes in front of a Knight and run them such that they prevent it from going where it wants to. It will charge and kill them, but you have bought yourself a turn safe from its charge, if not its gun. Repeat ad nauseam. This is also how you defeat death stars, which is what a Knight is, more or less.

Tarpit

To tarpit, you need something fearless, expendable and durable. Nurgle Spawn fit the bill. Unless the opponent rolls lucky 6’s on their stomps, five Spawn will tie up a Knight for two to three turns quite easily. If a Chaos Lord with a power fist is also in the unit, you may be able to bring it down while you’re at it. Other than Spawn, anything else you'd want to be tarpitting it, like something protected with the Grimoire should probably be keeling it instead.

Keel!

Not so easy. Be’lakor can do it if he can get there. You’re telegraphing your intentions any time you go into glide mode, but the odds favor a dead Knight if Be’lakor gets the charge, especially if he’s invisible. He is unlikely to kill more than one in a game.

Obliterator spam is probably good enough to bring down one Knight. If you can get enough meltas through on different facings, you should be able to bring it down. You’ll need to DS in to get the drop on the Knights against a competent opponent because nobody is going to walk up to Obliterators.

Melta Havocs or Chosen in Rhinos could help if you can sneak them to within 6” amidst a lot of other threats. Sounds tricky to me.

I suppose prescience on a Forgefiend with Daemonforge could do a pretty good job of stripping HP, but if you’re bringing a Forgefiend, you’re not trying that hard to win, now are you?

A Maulerfiend with lasher tendrils drops the Knight’s attacks to one. Put the Grimoire or Invis on it and it just might solo the thing, though the odds go up if you send in something else to help out like Screamers. Three Maulerfiends without support (one with tendrils) should bring one down in a single turn.

Grinders with the Grimoire and Cursed Earth, or Invis will likely only die to a stomp result of 6. Otherwise, they are worthless.

Screamers really struggle to put glances on Knights with base S5 on their biteys. Invisible Screamers can do a bit of damage, but without the Grimoire, will probably lose combat and take instability checks due to stomps. Not bad for absorbing a Knight charge and forcing it to lose HP while you tie it up, though. I did this at the team tourney and got five HP off the thing while holding it up for three rounds of combat. On the third round, I rolled three hits to knock off that last HP and go no 8’s to glance.




With both the Grimoire and invis, it would have gone down. Heck, the Grimoire alone might be enough for Screamers to do the job. Ah well. Knights are not a great target for Screamers. They prefer to fight things that don’t hit back, but the option is on the table.

A Lord of Change with the Staff of Change and decent powers or a boost from the Grimoire has a pretty decent chance to solo a Knight. A lot depends on luck, however.

The key to killing the things is to hit them with as much as you can all at once because the longer they wail on you, the lower your odds of actually killing it. Feed it one Maulerfiend at a time, it beats them all. Give it three at once, and you’ll probably drop it.

A lot of these techniques recommend the use of Be’lakor, both for invis and the fact that he’s the only thing in the Chaos inventory that can solo Knights by his lonesome. Also, just about all of them entail using things you should be using anyway. Chaos is Screamers, Nurgle Spawn, Obliterators, Maulerfiends, Grinders, summoning and Be’lakor right now.