We’re back today with the first of the list ideas that’s been percolating in my mind since the last article I put up about my evolving look at playing Chaos Knights with multiple big knights.
This first part I am writing before playing a game with the list. I’ll be adding a second section to the end with a mini battle report and some thoughts on the list. I am also, at the urging of many readers, picking up a Cerastus Knight Lancer, and I may even have a bead on a Porphyrion, which is another unit that has me intrigued.
The original list was somewhat more scattered than the list I’ve ended up on, and I’ve gone from two long ranged versions to one short range and one long range.
Here it is:
Knight Tyrant (510 Points)
• Warlord
• 1x Brimstone volcano lance
1x Ectoplasma decimator
2x Gheiststrike missile launcher
1x Titanic feet
2x Twin daemonbreath meltagun
1x Twin desecrator cannonKnight Tyrant (510 Points)
• 1x Darkflame cannon
2x Gheiststrike missile launcher
1x Titanic feet
2x Twin daemonbreath meltagun
1x Twin desecrator cannon
1x Warpshock harpoonBATTLELINE
War Dog Brigand (170 Points)
• 1x Armoured feet
1x Avenger chaincannon
1x Daemonbreath spear
1x Havoc multi-launcherWar Dog Brigand (170 Points)
• 1x Armoured feet
1x Avenger chaincannon
1x Daemonbreath spear
1x Havoc multi-launcherWar Dog Karnivore (140 Points)
• 1x Havoc multi-launcher
1x Reaper chaintalon
1x SlaughterclawWar Dog Karnivore (140 Points)
• 1x Havoc multi-launcher
1x Reaper chaintalon
1x SlaughterclawWar Dog Karnivore (140 Points)
• 1x Havoc multi-launcher
1x Reaper chaintalon
1x SlaughterclawWar Dog Karnivore (140 Points)
• 1x Havoc multi-launcher
1x Reaper chaintalon
1x SlaughterclawALLIED UNITS
Nurglings (40 Points)
• 3x Nurgling Swarm
• 3x Diseased claws and teethNurglings (40 Points)
• 3x Nurgling Swarm
• 3x Diseased claws and teeth
The change is basically dropping Panoply of the Cursed Knight from one of the Tyrants, which allows me to upgrade a Karnivore and the Moirax from the first draft to a pair of Brigands. I think this is probably worth the decreased survivability on the big guy, although with one of them now carrying the harpoon and flamer that might be erroneous.
My game plan is to basically move up the table with the flamerpoon Tyrant, flanked and supported by War Dogs while the Volcano Tyrant hangs out near the home objective and blasts things. I’ll be playtesting this for the first few games on GW standard terrain, which generally hinders the Volcano tyrant, but the event I’m preparing for uses player placed terrain where I expect it to be great.
It’s also possible that with that in mind, moving to two Volcano tyrants is the correct move, but I’ll try that out when we start playing with player placed options.
The Game
As always, we’re gonna have a mini battle report today against my usual Deathguard Opponent. His list was roughly:
Mortarion
Lord of Virulence (Big Contagion Aura Enhancement)
Plague Marines x5 (2x Bubotic Weapon, 1x Melta, 1x Plasma, 1x Plague Spitter)
Leader: Foul Blightspawn
Leader: Biologus Putrifier
Plague Marines x5 (2x Bubotic Weapon, 1x Melta, 1x Plasma, 1x Plague Spitter)
Leader: Foul Blightspawn
Leader: Biologus Putrifier
Plague Marines x10 (4x Bubotic Weapon, 2x Melta, 2x Plague Spitter, 1x Plasma, 1x Heavy Blight Launcer)
Leader: Biologus Putrifier
Leader: Tallyman
Deathshroud Terminators x3
Leader: Typhus
Deathshroud Terminators x3
Plagueburst Crawler (Big Gun Variant)
Plagueburst Crawler (Big Gun Variant)
Rhino
Rhino
Nurglings x3
Nurglings x3
We rolled up Scenario E, which is chosen ground on sweeping engagement with Take and Hold as the primary mission.
As neither of us felt like the uh….benefit? of chosen ground is worth wasting time about, we decided to set up the scenario as described on the card instead of messing about with placing objectives before rolling for sides.
(Seriously GW, delete this mission rule from the game in the next tournament pack please).
Chris chose Deploy Teleport Homers and Bring it Down as his fixed secondaries.
I went for Assassinate and then debated for a long time between Storm Hostile Objective and Bring it Down because his new list only gives up 16 on Bring it Down. I ultimately decided I wanted to just kill things, deny him Homers and try to bully primary hard to win.
Chris won the roll off for attacker/defender and opted to place the first models because otherwise I could screen his Nurglings with my own to make it harder for him to Deploy Teleport Homers on turn 1.
From left to right, the Deathguard deployment is Rhino with 5x Plague Marines and characters, 5x Plague Marines and leaders hiding behind the building, Rhino with the 10x Plague Marine unit, Nurglings dead center, Plagueburst Crawler, Mortarion, and Plagueburst Crawler.
From left to right, the Chaos Knights Deployment is Karnivore, Karnivore, the Tyrant with the flamer and Harpoon (yes I know, it’s an abhorrent chassis but it’s got the right weapons 😛 ), a third Karnivore in front of two Brigands, and then off in the corner dominating that firing lane is a Tyrant with the Volcano cannon and Plasma Decimator and a fourth Karnivore who is actually deployed behind the line, but my table is 2″ too thin for the mat so I didn’t want him falling off.
I also deployed my unit of Nurglings basically on the top left objective, but you won’t see them in this report because they all died on turn 1.
Round 1:
Deathguard won the roll off, much to my delight, and very little happened. The unit of Plague Marines in the top left Rhino hopped out and moved towards the Nurglings (you can see them poking out of the top left ruin). That Rhino moved up a touch, getting wholly within 8″ of the other unit of five Plague Marines who all hopped in their school bus of choice.
The Nurglings in the center performed a Teleport Homers action for three points.
The shooting phase saw a couple of wounds knocked off the top left Karnivore from Plagueburst Crawler mortars, and the Nurglings get utterly deleted by Plague Marine shooting.
On the Chaos Knight Turn 1, things got a bit spicier.
The left side of the board was basically a convoluted cluster of me trying to keep his deep strike from popping into my deployment zone, which ultimately was not possible. The red Karnivore in the picture top left actually started the movement phase by coming to the other side of the ruin to threaten the Rhino if it didn’t die to shooting, as I’d be able to bodyblock exits into the objective from Plague Marines and be able to take that zone over.
The Flamer Tyrant sidled up to get a bead on both the Rhino and the unit of Plague Marines in the ruin thanks to towering let it see through the ruin it was touching.
The Volcano Tyrant measured a spot that was 24.5 inches from Mortarion and could see both Rhinos, and the Karnivore moved behind it for support.
I took the center zone with another Karnivore.
My shooting phase saw the flamer Tyrant kill 4 Plague Marines and the Rhino, which did not explode. One Plague Marine died with the emergency disembark.
The Volcano Tyrant got greedy and turned its Volcano Lance on the far back unit of Plague Marines and every other gun into the center Rhino. That Rhino popped the smokescreen stratagem for -1 to hit, and survived handily. Three Plague Marines died to the Volcano Lance though.
I charged the top left Karnivore through the ruin with Knights of Shade, and the other Karnivore charged the center Nurglings.
I made a mistake here, and should have used Tank Shock on the Plague Marine unit. If I kill one marine, the fight first effect would only apply to one of the two characters instead of the marine and both characters. As a result, four more wounds get dealt to the Karnivore before it wiped the unit out. The other Karnivore sliced through the Nurglings, and at the end of the turn I had scored 8 on Assassinate and 3 on Bring It Down.
Round 2:
The Rhino passed its battleshock test, as did the remaining Plague Marines. Chris scored 5 on primary.
I’d set him quite the puzzle here, but ultimately he decided to go all in on a fairly low odds play to kill the Tyrant with the Volcano lance. This involved moving the Rhino down to the bottom objective and popping out the ten man Plague Marine unit, bringing a Plagueburst Crawler out to play, and deepstriking Typhus and his Deathshroud so that Typhus could try his mortal wound bomb trick.
The Lord of Virulence popped up in my deployment zone and performed a Teleport Homer for four points.
I used Rapid Ingress to bring my other unit of Nurglings down behind my center Karnivore because Chris makes more than 70% of his deep strike charges with Deathshroud against me, and I wanted the -1 to hit on there if he did.
The shooting phase went off and after some monstrously good rolling from Typhus (5 damage), Plagueburst Crawler (9 damage) and then two grenade stratagems from the Plague Marines (6 more damage), the Tyrant was alive on 4. It then proceeded to die to lethal hits from the Rhino and rolling 4 ones for saves. Poor guy. Chris got 5 points for Bring it Down there.
Chris also made his charge with the Deathshroud into the center Karnivore and into the top left Karnivore with the Plague Marines. Somehow, both dogs came out of it at half wounds exactly, and the top left Karnivore wiped the unit of marines in response (8 more Assassinate points!) and the middle one killed two Deathshroud.
In response, I scored 15 points on Primary and started trudging my army back towards the right side of the board to deal with all the Plague Marines. My center Karnivore fell back.
Chris used Rapid Ingress to bring down his second Deathshroud on the top left to threaten that Karnivore.
My shooting phase saw the flamer Tyrant once again be a hero, killing off 6 Plague Marines, the single remaining Deathshroud, and rolling the 6 for 12 dev wounds into Typhus.
The Brigand in the center did basically nothing, and then in my charge phase I made a long 9 charge with the top left Karnivore to the Lord of Virulence to get it away from the Deathshroud. The bottom right Karnivore killed every Marine and the non-Tallyman character. The Nurglings, heroes that they were, did a point of damage to the Plagueburst Crawler and engaged it in combat.
The Lord of Virulence exploded to two angry Karnivores and that was my turn.
Round 3:
With very few resources left, Chris had to bring Mortarion out to come after the bottom Karnivore. I had accidentally move blocked the big Primarch with Nurglings, which would have meant he needed an 11 inch charge to get into the Tyrant and decided not to go for that.
The Rhino ran away, and the Plagueburst Crawlers stayed put. Chris rolled and then rerolled an advance for the Deathshroud to get onto the objective. A final unit of Nurglings popped down in my deep deployment zone to score Homers.
The shooting phase saw one Plagueburst spike six damage through to the damaged red Karnivore on the far left and kill it, and then Mortarion charged into the bottom right Karnivore and killed that too.
I scored ten on primary, and responded by ignoring Mortarion completely, setting up my Tyrant to be able to see both Plagueburst Crawlers and moving the other red Karnivore towards the top objective.
The Nurglings fell back and move blocked Mortarion, who would once again need an 11 inch charge to get to my Tyrant because of it (and couldn’t kill him alone anyway).
The left side Karnivore moved up to threaten the Deathshroud.
Shooting phase saw the Tyrant kill the middle Plagueburst, damage the top one a little with the flamer, and connect with one Gheiststrike Missile into the Deathshroud, but roll a one into a rerolled one for damage, leaving it alive.
I also rolled anemically with the Brigand in the bottom of the map, failing to kill all three Nurglings in my deployment zone.
In my charge phase, I spent a CP to use Knights of Shade on both Karnivores, charging the center one through the ruin into the remaining Plagueburst Crawler and the other into the Deathshroud.
The big tank died, allowing me to consolidate back onto the Deathguard “home” objective. One Deathshroud died, and the remaining two failed to do more than surface damage to the Karnivore in return.
Round 4:
Chris scored 5 on Primary. With only a handful of models on the table, he opted to consolidate into the places he could reliably retake. Mortarian ran back to the top objective to deal with the Karnivore, and his Nurglings, who did not fail battleshock, did another Teleport Homers.
Combat saw Mortarion demolish the Karnivore, and then the top left Karnivore demolish the two remaining Deathshroud in turn.
On my turn, I scored 15 on Primary, flailed around doing zero damage to Mortarian or to the Rhino, and finally killed the Nurglings.
Round 5:
Chris stayed put, scoring 10 on primary thanks to sticky objectives.
I also stayed put, scoring another 15 on primary to end the game.
Closing Thoughts
I wanted to hate this list going into it. It seemed like it would be too one dimensional, and maybe boring to pilot.
Instead, I came out of the game buzzing and excited because having two real gun platforms on the table and FOUR Karnivores dramatically changed the way that my typical two knight lists have played throughout the last few years.
I got to bully the primary exactly like I wanted to, with two huge threats demanding constant attention and care from the other side of the table. A tyrant is significantly harder to kill than an Abhorrent as well, with the 2+ save, T13, and two more wounds making them a much higher investment than their slightly squishier cousins.
I obviously need to play it a few more times to decide if it’s “the one” for me, but it’s a promising early outing with the list and Chris agrees that it’s the most threatening of the builds I’ve put on the table against him.
I’ll likely try it out into some Custodes, as I have access to those as well, and see where we feel after a couple times trying to deal with 3 units of Wardens.
My main issue with this list, if I’m being honest, is my extreme disinterest in buying another dominus box. If I end up on this list, I might paint up the harpoon, flamer, and some missiles and attach them to an abhorrent and see if any TO I’m going to be working with cares at all. Most non-knights players can’t really tell the difference between the questoris/abhorrent and dominus/tyrant chassis, and they’re basically the same size and on the same base.
Aside from this list, I’m already thinking hard about future lists as well. I have a list with a Desecrator, four Brigands, a Lancer, and two Karnivores I want to try out.
My logic with this one comes from a lot of comments on reddit and the various facebook groups urging me to try a Lancer as a frontline shock piece, comparing very favorably to a rampager for a non-trivial but not excessive increase in price.
This should theoretically give time for the (very) accurate blob of Brigands and Desecrator to chew up basically whatever they want to and keep scenario pressure on my opponents from early in the game.
My other semi-obsession right now is trying to convince myself that the Porphyrion is good enough to take to a GT. It’s got a lot of interesting things going on, namely that it has close to double the output of a Volcano Tyrant into most targets for only 190 more points, and is also one of the most impressive models in GWs line up. I don’t know if I could even get one painted to the standard of the rest of my army by May, but it would certainly be fun to try. I have one on the way, and I plan to give it a whirl in several combinations of lists before making a choice one way or the other.
