How do we deal with the New Knights?

[brassangel]

Jun 21, 2018 9:34:57 GMT arapaima said:

Thank for the tip fellas.

I swear one of the most depressing thing abt playing knights is seeing our big scary monsters getting squished lik bugs in 1 round of combat.

Gonna grab me more hiveguards.

It isn't really depressing because it makes sense. Their 400-600 point giant robots should be squishing our far smaller, 120-220 point mid-sized monsters.

[hiveminded]

Jun 21, 2018 8:49:04 GMT mule said:

After picking up the codex and reading it through I still feel the solution I'm going to take is just Biovores. 

...

Yes OOE can hurt them, yes Tyrant Guard can hurt them, but in general you're probably not taking either of those models vs any other army and I'm not going to list tailor unless the meta as a whole changes.

The long range shooty knights won't care much that you impede their movement. However, I agree, the spore mine strategy could be useful against something like a Galliant. Problem is...300 points is too steep to take biovores in a TAC list. So if I added biovores, I'd be adding them just to list tailor for knights.

[mattblowers]

Jun 21, 2018 8:49:04 GMT mule said:

I also don't think taking gargoyes is a good option, even though they're still a chaff unit I think just dumping the 200 points into biovores will do more vs every list than the 60/120/180 points of gargoyles will, though someone can disagree with me if they'd like.

Have you actually tried gargoyles? They are excellent. 200 points gets you 4 biovores. Even with shifting, you will be lucky to get more than 3 models to deploy. Knights move pretty far, so you might slow 1 down. At the old points level I never ran gargoyles, but now I find the biovores too pricey (I used to run 9). Leviathon gargoyles in units of 12+ take some focus to actually kill. I typically move to just outside of 1" on my turn and then do nothing. If you can effectively screen knights out for 2-3 turns you should be able to outscore them.

If you opponent takes an IG CP farmer, focus on killing that with everything you have. You have to starve knights of their CP.

[wcgnidz]

Played against "new" knights 3 times so far. Granted my opponent doesn't have any of the new knights(no onagers or the dominus giant knights).

They're certainly good/improved. They're crazy killy.

But I mean with my recent style list I've managed fairly well(10+ MC's cause fex's are stupid cheap run double scytal) and I don't tailor my lists. I think that's sort of what brass characterizes too. Knights are crazy good. But they're standalone models and even one casualty hugely hurts a knight player. When you have 10 MC's if you lose 3 in a turn you still aren't near out of the fight. Especially when you also have like 50+ small bodies scoring objectives the knights aren't necessarily scoring.

I've won 2 and tied 1 against the knights. Usually I deal some grievous blows early. But start losing steam fast. I outscore heavily early and by the end of the game I'm barely on the board vs 1-2 knights. But then I win on points. Rippers being able to easily hide from knights makes them super good.

That said my experience in anecdotal and I'm TERRIFIED of going up against a list taking a knight detachment of like 3+ onagers with autocannons. THose things EAT mc's from far away.

[mattblowers]

Jun 21, 2018 12:11:03 GMT hiveminded said:

The long range shooty knights won't care much that you impede their movement. However, I agree, the spore mine strategy could be useful against something like a Galliant. Problem is...300 points is too steep to take biovores in a TAC list. So if I added biovores, I'd be adding them just to list tailor for knights.

Helverins won't care. Everything else will. Titanic feet is like half their damage output. If you make it a shooting war, stagnant Knights won't win because of their damage output and lack of objective scoring.

[kazetanade]

Just feel that 3 biovores dont impede any movement, so its 6 or nothing.

Apparently 3 new Valiant Knights can be played with a gaggle of IG squads in Chimeras, so they have decent scoring alright. All that remains is to see if there are enough objectives on the board. My friend says our major tourney is going to have only 3 based on ITC champions draft??? If that's true then Knights dont need a lot to massively overpower and deny you objective space.

Edit: while were on the subject, does ITC primary score 1 per objective held and 1 per unit killed, or 1 for holding/killing any at all?

[zimko]

Jun 21, 2018 15:27:28 GMT kazetanade said:

Just feel that 3 biovores dont impede any movement, so its 6 or nothing.

Apparently 3 new Valiant Knights can be played with a gaggle of IG squads in Chimeras, so they have decent scoring alright. All that remains is to see if there are enough objectives on the board. My friend says our major tourney is going to have only 3 based on ITC champions draft??? If that's true then Knights dont need a lot to massively overpower and deny you objective space.

Edit: while were on the subject, does ITC primary score 1 per objective held and 1 per unit killed, or 1 for holding/killing any at all?

The current ITC Champion primary scores 1 point total for holding an objective at the end of your PLAYER turn and 1 point total for holding more objectives than your opponent at the end of the BATTLE round. Similarly, you get 1 point at the end of the PLAYER turn if you killed a unit and 1 point at the end of the BATTLE round if you killed more units than your opponent.

Note: this can lead to weird situations where you did not kill a unit during your turn, but you DO kill a unit during your opponent's turn, which can give you the 1 point for killing more units than your opponent but not the 1 point for killing a unit during your turn.

[hiveminded]

Jun 21, 2018 15:27:28 GMT kazetanade said:

Just feel that 3 biovores dont impede any movement, so its 6 or nothing.

Apparently 3 new Valiant Knights can be played with a gaggle of IG squads in Chimeras, so they have decent scoring alright. All that remains is to see if there are enough objectives on the board. My friend says our major tourney is going to have only 3 based on ITC champions draft??? If that's true then Knights dont need a lot to massively overpower and deny you objective space.

Edit: while were on the subject, does ITC primary score 1 per objective held and 1 per unit killed, or 1 for holding/killing any at all?

Yeah...three doesn't do much. Even with six, you're averaging four spore mines dropped per turn, so you MIGHT be able to impede one knight if the dice don't betray you. 300 points to potentially speedbump one knight doesn't sound like a good use of points to me.


Lots of other things you could do with those points.  

[infornography]

Can't knights just step over the mines and have huge movement values? You can probably slow them down slightly by placing them near the far end of their movement range, but you aren't going to stop a knight cold with 4 spore mines.

[hiveminded]

Jun 21, 2018 17:44:18 GMT infornography said:

Can't knights just step over the mines and have huge movement values? You can probably slow them down slightly by placing them near the far end of their movement range, but you aren't going to stop a knight cold with 4 spore mines.

Knights can't move over the spore mines, so far as I know. Still doesn't make it a point efficiency tactic. 

[mynameisjeff]

Jun 20, 2018 10:29:35 GMT silentrob said:

Jun 20, 2018 8:00:41 GMT mynameisjeff said:

I have a friendly knight battle coming up and very much leaning towards running the following with OOE. At the moment I can field two stone crushers with wrecker claws and a single screamer killer for CC. Also have two dakka fex’s with ES, SC, HVC and mix of DS and DV’s. Supporting I’ll probably run either a walkrant or SL with multiple genestealers.

Definitely get the Swarmlord to catapult OOE or one of the stonecrushers up the field.
If you do use Genestealers remember toxin sacs otherwise they are lacklustre. Dakka Fexs with HVC/ES/DS/Spores are great but if you've got the models and the points a Flying Hive Tyrant with HVC and smite/psychic scream will always trump it. I'd be slightly tempted to equip a Hive Tyrant with the miasma cannon for autohits and free damage if it gets charged.

--------------------------------------

Key points:
1.Don't charge a Knight armed with a gauntlet with a MONSTER.
Stratagem which basically autokills them with continuous STR tests.

2.Don't charge a Knight armed with a reaper chainsword with a heap of INFANTRY.
Stratagem each model within 3" takes a mortal wound on a 6.

1. & 2. Unless you can kill it on the charge or your opponent is out of command points. Also if its worth the risk.

-------------------------------------

Remember to win the mission objectives with ripper swarms or gaunts because your opponent isn't gonna waste his heavy weapons on them when hes got so many Carnifexs to deal with. If your opponent has any Armigers or allied infantry kill them first to deny victory points gained from objectives.

Surround your monsters with a screen of gaunts to absorb charges and remember to mob Armigers as they can't step over units to fallback.

Might be useful to keep a 30 Gargoyles to charge the Valiant Knight absorbing overwatch for Carnifexs.

Grab some HiveGuard or Biovores otherwise you're losing out on using [Single-Minded Annihilation]

If a catapulted OOE or a stonecrusher kills a knight and is left exposed remember to use the [Overrun] stratagem.

One dead knight is always better than two damaged ones in my book and 99% of Tyranids are Hive Fleet Kraken.

Goodluck

Thanks for taking the time to write such a detailed reply rob, very appreciated. I’ve just been sent this buy the knight owner and it’s the loadouts for the Two Knights, ignore that ones a renagade for now.

“So current load out for imperial is heavy stunner, stormspear rocket pod, avenger Gatling cannon and rapid fire battle cannon. And the renegade is melting, twin Icarus autocannon, reaper chainsword and thermal cannon”

I do have 6xHG to build up so may just get cracking on with those and arm all with shock cannons for MW spam.

[mule]

Jun 21, 2018 12:11:03 GMT hiveminded said:

Jun 21, 2018 8:49:04 GMT mule said:

After picking up the codex and reading it through I still feel the solution I'm going to take is just Biovores. 

...

Yes OOE can hurt them, yes Tyrant Guard can hurt them, but in general you're probably not taking either of those models vs any other army and I'm not going to list tailor unless the meta as a whole changes.

The long range shooty knights won't care much that you impede their movement. However, I agree, the spore mine strategy could be useful against something like a Galliant. Problem is...300 points is too steep to take biovores in a TAC list. So if I added biovores, I'd be adding them just to list tailor for knights.

The long range shooty knights don't really have things to shoot vs my list. Swarmlord, and a -1 Chamelonic Flyrant at best. Other than that they're dumping multiwound shots into gribblies which doesn't really bother me at all.

Biovores can also stop other armies from moving as well they're not just for this army, stopping infantry from moving forwards or etc is just as good against other lists. Yes 300 points is steep but as i said biovores will do the same thing (stopping a unit from moving its full distance) vs every other list with a few exceptions. 

[mule]

Jun 21, 2018 12:32:20 GMT mattblowers said:

Jun 21, 2018 8:49:04 GMT mule said:

I also don't think taking gargoyes is a good option, even though they're still a chaff unit I think just dumping the 200 points into biovores will do more vs every list than the 60/120/180 points of gargoyles will, though someone can disagree with me if they'd like.

Have you actually tried gargoyles? They are excellent. 200 points gets you 4 biovores. Even with shifting, you will be lucky to get more than 3 models to deploy. Knights move pretty far, so you might slow 1 down. At the old points level I never ran gargoyles, but now I find the biovores too pricey (I used to run 9). Leviathon gargoyles in units of 12+ take some focus to actually kill. I typically move to just outside of 1" on my turn and then do nothing. If you can effectively screen knights out for 2-3 turns you should be able to outscore them.

If you opponent takes an IG CP farmer, focus on killing that with everything you have. You have to starve knights of their CP.

Yeah I've taken them, I'd rather just take Horma's, they do the exact same job. (Obviously not vs knights but against every other army they do just as good. They're pretty fast and once they get into combat the consolidation into multiple units is just disgusting.) If they take more than one knight that means even MORE of their list is locked up and thus its even easier to out score them, just have to make sure my army isn't murdered by them, which generally shouldn't be too hard. Even if they move far creating a straight wall of 4-6 spore mines is like 12-18 inches of space that they have to move past. 

Yeah the Knight/IG is what i think most lists will be taking and I haven't really had problems vs IG since the gaurd nerf. 

[mule]

Jun 21, 2018 16:45:50 GMT hiveminded said:

Jun 21, 2018 15:27:28 GMT kazetanade said:

Just feel that 3 biovores dont impede any movement, so its 6 or nothing.

Apparently 3 new Valiant Knights can be played with a gaggle of IG squads in Chimeras, so they have decent scoring alright. All that remains is to see if there are enough objectives on the board. My friend says our major tourney is going to have only 3 based on ITC champions draft??? If that's true then Knights dont need a lot to massively overpower and deny you objective space.

Edit: while were on the subject, does ITC primary score 1 per objective held and 1 per unit killed, or 1 for holding/killing any at all?

Yeah...three doesn't do much. Even with six, you're averaging four spore mines dropped per turn, so you MIGHT be able to impede one knight if the dice don't betray you. 300 points to potentially speedbump one knight doesn't sound like a good use of points to me.


Lots of other things you could do with those points.  

You can bump it up to 5 if you move and keep them out of synapse and force them to shoot at things that aren't the closest model.

[mule]

Jun 21, 2018 17:44:18 GMT infornography said:

Can't knights just step over the mines and have huge movement values? You can probably slow them down slightly by placing them near the far end of their movement range, but you aren't going to stop a knight cold with 4 spore mines.

No they cannot move over them, only infantry and swarms. They don't move that fast they're 10" + advance (most of the guns are heavy if they want to advance then they cant shoot) there is a stratagem that lets them advance and shoot but if they're using that then they can't use those CP for their other more scarier stratagems, so it doesn't hurt my feelings. Additionally because their bases are so big you can put the spore mines 5 or 6 inches away from each other and the knight still cant move between the two. You don't need a large amount like 9. I agree with most people that 6 is probably the number.