Best way to deal with Imperial Knight in 7th?

[beefythepug]

Hey Hive,

Well this past weekend was my first official game vs an IK with the new 7th changes. My rolls were mediocre, but even had they gone my way I am struggling to see any reliable way to deal with an IK post vector strike nerf.

Please don't tell me to buy my own/ally with nids, and yes I understand 2 tentaclids have the *potential* to be 6s on haywire, then 5+s on stripped HPs for killing the thing outright in 1 turn. Odds of that are nowhere near reliable.

*edit* sorry thats 6th rules, now in 7th best we can do is glance, even rolling all 6s. This never happened as my rolls sucked so no harm done this game.

game was Relic, and we played around 1450 points.

I was facing Blood angels:

Tac squad + asteroth deployed in ruins
Stormraven loaded with death company + lemartes
Imperial Knight paladin? the S8 AP3 double blast, stubbers, D-chainsword

My list, was built to go against more of an all comers scenario, not necessarily anti AV, or the low number of targets I faced:

HQ
1 Flyrant TWLDVS, e-grubs, hive commander
1 Tervigon

Troops
3 Warriors, deathspitters
20 gants

Elite
2 Zoanthrope
1 Zoanthrope
1 Venomthrope

Fast
1 Crone

Heavy
T-fex acid spray (outlanking with HC)
3 biovores
1 Exocrine

Not going to do a full battle rep, but impressions from the game. My list had a lot of wasted units against what I was facing. If there were multiple scoring objectives I might have done better. As it was the IK/Stormraven controlled midfield and made retrieving the relic a waste of my time. Overall I feel like having an IK in your list allows you to be insanely agressive, and not worry about tactical mistakes, because what your shooting fails to kill, your assault/stomp will finish off. Anyways heres some of what I'm taking away from the game:

Flyrant nothing to say its still good.

Tervigon, why do I use these again? Did pick up the relic at one point, then the storm raven flew in from reserves and between IK/SR high S AP2/3 weaponry, The tervigon fell over dead killing majority of spawned gants.

Warriors and biovores were meant to be flanking anti infantry, but given opponent, had basically nothing to shoot at. They got 1 shot on Tac squad and did minimal damage rest of game. Warriors were basically baby sitting and not worth their points.

Zoanthropes lance proved unreliable to manifest, but did strip 2HP from the IK. obviously S10 AP2 is good AV. Could have been better, but I failed to manifest 3x when rolling 5 dice each time.

Crone's BS3 sucks, But by far the change to vector strike vs ground targets made me see just how hard that nerf hit us. My rolls on haywire table didn't help either (yes I rolled 1). Only 1 of the 2 vector strikes managed to glance a HP off of the IK.

Exocrine the couple shots it threw towards the IK had some real potential to cause harm. But the IKs invuln save to the rescue turned some good shooting into nothing. Once opponent realized it had AP2 shots it only lived 1 more turn.

T-fex outflanking and flushing infantry out worked like a beast. He killed the tac squad and finished off Asteroth in assault. But also removed the only target that Biovores could shoot at and harm.

Venomthrope - cover helped give me possibility to save tervigon/exocrine against the high AP stuff, but was having trouble making the cover saves.

So against this list or similar ones with Imperial Knights, what do I do sans skyblight + flyrant? Is there anything else? the 18" range on warp lance has me hesitant to use Hive Guard with haywire as its just too short.

[overmind1769]

Hey, we'll it sounds like as far as the warplance goes there was some bad luck ( 3 failed manifests on 5+ dice is real bad luck)
Does anyone know the F/S/R and I of the IK?
Also as far as I know the tfex can't outflank, hive commander only works on troop choices

[greyseer]

13 / 12 / 12

I run a full Knight army in causal games sometimes. They're exceedingly vulnerable on their own to flying things in general. The stubbers aren't necessarily overly effective.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using proboards

[beefythepug]

Man well... you are correct about hive commander, I guess I fudged it with T-fex, wouldn't have changed outcome of game though. Given Tac squad deployment Tfex would have been in range T2 even if I had legally deployed. Funny I lost so bad and even cheated .

And yeah knights are lacking anti air defense, but using my crone and flyrant e-grubs on it all game only netted me 1 HP stripped. I realize I had some bad luck. But if things can go that poorly it also means that I can't consider 1 flyrant and 1 crone enough Anti AV to reliably kill an IK? I need something more.

[greyseer]

I wish I could help you more, but I haven't had the opportunity to find my "groove" with them yet. I've not had many games, and they're still a secondary passion to my 'nids.

As it stands, I still get defeated by mis-positioning my ion shields and getting shot up by heavy weaponry. Also, the rules were 6e.

I do wish you luck, however!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using proboards

[DukeMantis]

I've really struggled against them, got nothing concrete I'm afraid.

[seanster3000]

I know it might not be a big help, but I am buying a Barbed Hierodule for that very reason. 12 S10 AP3 shots sounds pretty good to me. He is also T8 and has W6 with a 3+ save and Feel No Pain. Yea he is a Forge World model and a Gargantuan Creature, but if your enemy is allowed a super heavy walker you can have a Hierodule its only fair. I personally wouldn't listen to someone who would argue otherwise.

[overmind1769]

No personal experience but from what I have heard about the shields it does need to be a multi unit effort. A trio if dakka fexs puts an average of 4.5 glances on 12 A. Have them nailing it's side and some zooms on the front to make him have some hard choices on where that shield goes. With proper spacing he should only be getting 2-4 hits a turn on the fexs with its gun and a screen + venom gets it a 3+ cover. Expensive but will be very useful for more than just killing the IK.

[beefythepug]

I agree that the Barbed Hierodule would be a good counter, but I don't personally plan on buying FW models. I'm going to guess its a fair bit more expensive (points wise) to throw in a list than an IK?

I have another harpy/crone still in box, I guess building a 2nd Crone would be step 1?

Skyblight is fine and all, I just was really hoping to find a solution that doesn't force me to use formations. Partly because I don't own enough gargoyles, but partly because in some weird way I'd like to just stick to regular FoC. Formations feel more like an officially allowed loophole and perhaps its just me, but I don't want to feel like im using a loophole in order to compete. I want to compete with a legit army and still have a chance at winning.

As it stands I think I can pretty much be sure to be fighting this IK most games from here on out, friend may switch between his BA, SW, or Tau, but I'd be shocked if there isn't a giant walker IK ally staring me in the face on a regular basis.

Also overmind1769 thanks for the dakkafex suggestion, I haven't used them in so long they slipped my mind. And I agree, if finishes off AV, can turn to and shred some infantry too .

[gigasnail]

Going to have to kill them via weight of fire and haywire, instead of being able to just mow them down with crones and VS. Or tarpit them, now that that stupid controversy has been taken out back and shot in the head.

[l0rdf1end]

Giga beat me too it, they need to be concentrated on to put it down until you kill it dead then shoot it again for good measure.

You can do it in a turn with a bit of luck using 3 Flyrants, (Grubs/Devs) Crone and your 2 Harpies (HVC's).
Get your FMC's on multiple facings also so you can avoid some of the invulns.

Tarpit is also another good option since we can now charge what you can't hurt so a big unit of Gargs would be good for this.

[beefythepug]

gigasnail yeah tarpit failed me this last game too, so much fail on my side of table/dice. I was in process of setting up waves of bubble wrap to tie it up while trying to move the relic away, but 1 failed run roll of "2" caused a traffic jam and once they were assulted/stomped there were no survivors.

[gigasnail]

Problem isn't going to be one knight. Problem going to be a detachment t of 3 plus OS land raiders and pods. Or an army of 5.

[blackrainbow]

Jun 2, 2014 20:18:52 GMT beefythepug said:

I agree that the Barbed Hierodule would be a good counter, but I don't personally plan on buying FW models. I'm going to guess its a fair bit more expensive (points wise) to throw in a list than an IK?

I have another harpy/crone still in box, I guess building a 2nd Crone would be step 1?

Skyblight is fine and all, I just was really hoping to find a solution that doesn't force me to use formations. Partly because I don't own enough gargoyles, but partly because in some weird way I'd like to just stick to regular FoC. Formations feel more like an officially allowed loophole and perhaps its just me, but I don't want to feel like im using a loophole in order to compete. I want to compete with a legit army and still have a chance at winning.

As it stands I think I can pretty much be sure to be fighting this IK most games from here on out, friend may switch between his BA, SW, or Tau, but I'd be shocked if there isn't a giant walker IK ally staring me in the face on a regular basis.

Also overmind1769 thanks for the dakkafex suggestion, I haven't used them in so long they slipped my mind. And I agree, if finishes off AV, can turn to and shred some infantry too :).

I totally agree with the formations, and the idea of buying your way to victor with FW is a poor option. Weight of fire is I guess what it comes down to. Did you have much warning on what you were up against? Swapping out the biovores or changing the warriors may (sans luck of the dice) helped.

I have only sat in on a game half-done vs IK, so just side chair generaling it. And definitley beware what Giga said above, but that would apply to any army I think.

[beefythepug]

I didn't know what I'd be playing, I knew friend had bought IK, didn't know he had already built/painted it. So I was walking in blind this time.

Looks like a lot will come down to having the right units, but also having some good luck with dice for a change.

For some reason I am blanking on this today, but So haywire tentaclid 2-5, glance and straightforward. on 6 it pens, but that just means roll on vehicle damage chart (with no possibility of 7) right? When i originally posted I was still thinking 6th rules where a haywire 6 + 6 could result in D3 HP removed. So now best case with haywire is just to strip 1 HP even if we get that previously wished for 6 + 6?