Longtime readers may remember this blog from the 2022-2024 era, when I was first exploring Warhammer and having good success with Knights.
Quick background here – I started playing 40k in 2022 with Chaos Knights, qualified for worlds in 2023 with Knights*, took Chaos Knights to worlds, and have top 8ed a handful of GTs with the big guys. In June of 2024 I decided to take a break from the army as I was very, very bored, and have since qualified for worlds again, won a GT, and top 8ed a few more.
The TL;DR on the Knights codex for me is this – it’s probably a sidegrade at best power wise, and it’s strictly a downgrade on how the faction feels to play.
Let’s talk specifics.
Army Rule
The current army rule is as follows:
– Enemy units within 12″ of Knight models suffer -1 to leadership and battleshock checks.
– Battleshocked enemy units get -1 to hit ours
– Our units get +1 to wound battleshocked units.
This is a massive upgrade from the start of the edition, where the second and third bullet point didn’t apply until round 3.
The new Army rule is, upon reflection, probably worse than the current one.
The new army rule says:
– Starting at the beginning of the game, enemy units within a 9″ aura get -1 to leadership and battleshock checks.
– On rounds 1, 3, and 5 pick one or randomly roll for 2 of the following effects, discarding duplicates if you roll.
– 1: Cumulative -1 to leadership and battleshock checks within 9″
– 2: +1 to wound battleshocked units
– 3: -1 to hit our models if battleshocked or more than 18″ away
– 4: Units below starting strength take battleshock checks within 9″ instead of below half strength.
– 5: Below half strength enemy units within 9″ of a Knight model suffer d3 mortal wounds when they fail a battleshock check.
– 6: +3″ range to auras (including the big knight auras, the auras in this chart, and auras from enhancements).
To my eye, you will 100% choose to start the game with -1 to hit from outside 18 if your opponent has any guns, or potentially just roll for two if they do not.
The army rule here is clearly trying to mimic the insanely cool army rule of the 9th edition codex and doing so badly.
Things I have issues with here include the following:
– 9″ is significantly worse than 12″. Nothing in the game makes more than a 5″ charge against you if they start the turn within 9″, plenty of things are looking at 6″ charges if starting within 12.
– Losing duplicate rolls when randomly rolling for this means in competitive play you will never roll for this. This is the first army rule in 10th edition codex releases that feels like it’s appealing to “fun from randomness” over just being “fun to play with”.
– The fifth one of these has anti-synergy with the fourth one of these since it calls out the unit must be below half strength.
To be honest, I think this should have been “pick two” on turns 1, 3, and 5. That would have been at least somewhat interesting, and given you the option to have something resembling the index rule – which wasn’t exactly lauded as strong – from the word go, or -1 to hit on turn one and something else relevant. I also think it should have been 12″ baseline still.
As it is, our army rule is “something irrelevant until turn 3” (-1 to checks within 9) and -1 to hit outside 18 for the most part, which is okay but decidedly uninspired. Can we just have the ninth edition rule back GW? Please?
Detachments
There are a lot of detachments here and I do not want to post direct pics or write every single rule up, so I’m going to do broad stroke overlays and call out the parts I think are most interesting or egregious.
Houndpack Lance
Rule: “Oaths of Moment” except sustained 1 instead of reroll hits.
War dogs get battleline, you must take three war dogs, and three war dogs become characters
Enhancements: All go on War Dogs, they are: Get Super-Heavy Walker, Re-roll wound rolls of 1 against targets within 6″, gain assault, and everything loses a pip of AP targeting you.
Stratagems: These are, in fairness, pretty good. Notable ones include:
– Fall back, shoot, and charge.
– Two+ things fighting a unit crits on 5s
– Reactive move
– Put a Dog back in reserves if they’re wholly within 12″ of a table edge.
This is probably the best detachment of the bunch, and that sucks because it’s still spamming War Dogs – just probably more of them and worse.
Lords of Dread
This is the big knight detachment.
Rule: Big Knights gain +2 OC, and you can use the sticky objective with OC 5 stratagem for free once per round.
Enhancements: Six of these, which is pointless since there’s still a restriction to the number you can take.
– Re-roll charge rolls, once per game advance and charge
– Assault, once per game fights first
– Gain deep strike, once per game pop back into reserves
– 2+ base save, once per game heal d6 in command
– Free re-roll strat once per round, vect aura
– Stealth, once per game blank a damage roll
Stratagems:
– Sticky objective, and keep it at OC 5 (this is the best stratagem in the book, possibly the game)
– Explode on 4+
– 2CP but -1 damage
– Re-roll hits and wounds of 1, or all hits and wounds against titanic
– Consolidate 6 as long as you end in engagement range
– Walk over a thing, roll 6d6 and every 4+ is a mortal wound
Frankly, these enhancements are decent to great, and a couple of these stratagems are also awesome. Unfortunately, the baseline datasheets (see below) still suffer from the same problems they’ve had the entire edition and are now less durable. This combines to make an army that wants to skew but can’t, wants to spam big knights but probably gets punished for doing so, and doesn’t do enough to make the languishing datasheets good.
My main issue with this detachment is that these enhancements feel like rules that the big knights should just have baked in, and you still can’t take more than 3 of them.
Additionally, I consider things like exploding on a 4+ to be extremely situational and would have loved to see this one be rotate ions instead.
Infernal Lance
Rule: Your knights can take a leadership test to become empowered. If they fail, they take d3 mortal wounds.
You pick one benefit to use up your empowerment on, once used, the empowered condition goes away.
– +3″ move for normal, advance, and fall back moves
– Lethal or Sustained hits for the shooting or fight phase
– For the phase, 5+ invulnerable save and Feel no Pain 6+
This is frankly the best version of their “hurt yourself to gain benefits” ability, but it is going to incentivize – once again – throwing a million War Dogs into a list so you can benefit from it more.
Enhancements:
– +1 WS, if you’re using the lethal/sustained ability you also get lance
– +2 wounds, reroll your leadership check if you fail it for wounds
– +1 toughness, while using the invuln save ability you get +1 to save against D1 attacks
– Gain assault, ignore modifiers while using the bonus move ability
Strats:
– Empower a unit again
– Shoot something, force a battleshock. If they fail they get -2 move and charge for the next round.
– Fight phase only, one units worth of incoming attacks loses a pip of AP.
– Gain “ignores cover”
– Sticky an objective when you use the leadership check detachment rule
– Rotate Ion Shields
This is probably my favorite set of rules for the army, but it’s once again hampered by the absurdly lackluster datasheets. I think that if bigger knights were better I would be very excited to play this detachment.
Once again, I feel like a lot of these enhancement bonuses should be baked into the bigger knight datasheets, not paid for with enhancements.
This is actually something we will run into a lot – our detachments are actually fairly interesting, the datasheets for the army are really bad. It reminds me a lot of post emergency buff Deathguard. We’re bad, so our models are cheap, and we might get propped up by the detachment bonuses, but that won’t feel very good for either the pilot or the opponent.
Traitoris Lance
Rule: Pick an extra army rule benefit at the beginning of turn 1
Enhancements:
– Each enemy unit in engagement range takes a battleshock at the beginning of the fight phase.
– Sticky objectives + has an aura like a knight for the army rule.
– Re-roll any number of dice you rolled for your army rule (sigh).
– 4+ Invuln against Ranged and 5+ against melee
Stratagems:
– When something within 12″ fails a battleshock test, do mortals on a 4+ from 6d6 and regain that many health
– +1 AP this turn in the fight phase, when you kill something each enemy unit within 6″ must take a battleshock test.
– 6+ Feel no Pain in the fight phase, 5+ against battleshocked units
– 2 War Dogs get an Abhorrent class Aura from anywhere on the table this round
– Walk through walls (2x dog, 1x big knight)
– Stealth and cover
Oh hey, it’s the index detachment. The new survivability enhancement is a step up from the negate AP one, and….the rest of it is the same or worse I suppose.
This detachment really cements to me that this book is a mess of design. Why does the strat check 12″ now? Why isn’t it 9 to match the army rule?
Why are we spending points on re-rolls for an enhancement…in the detachment that lets you start with two?
Why is the feel no pain STILL only the fights phase?
I think this is probably worse than the index detachment it’s based off of, which is impressive because I already thought that one was bad and leaning entirely on the walk through walls stratagem. This one doesn’t have diabolic bulwark, doesn’t have access to 12″ dread aura plus battleshock below starting plus +1 to wound plus -1 to hit from battleshocked things on turn 1. I don’t know how GW did it, but they made the index detachment probably worse. It’s truly amazing.
War Dogs
War Dogs universal changes:
– Toughness down to 9
– Wounds up to 14
– Thermal Spears to Range 18
– Lost battleline
– OC down to 6
– OC degrades with health now
Specific changes:
– Karnivores and Brigands hit on 3s now, though the Karnivore has sustained hits so it’s kind of a wash
– The Brigands rule went from bonus AP against closest to ignore cover against targets on objectives (this is much worse for this model).
– The Executioner kept its terrible rule, but now if it kills a unit things within 3″ must take a battleshock.
– The Stalker is no longer a character and got scout 6. This is one of the few buffs in the codex, and I like it.
– The Huntsman went from rerolling 1s to hit and wound against monsters/vehicles to rerolling wound rolls wholesale. I think this would have been more relevant if the Thermal Spear profile wasn’t nerfed significantly.
Overall, this is a huge series of nerfs. War Dogs are less durable (the extra two wounds does very little to compensate for the toughness loss), have less scenario presence, have shorter ranged guns, and the best War Dogs got worse (Brigands) or are a wash (Karnivore) while still having all of the universal nerfs.
This is clearly GW trying to make War Dog spam less of an oppressive spam skew, and if these were the only negative changes in the book this might have been successful.
As it is, these are going to be much less interesting to play, constantly be in danger if you want to use their thermal spears, and gained hardly anything of interest to compensate the loss of output and durability.
Early leaks had the War Dogs all moving 14, which I thought with current index offensive rules and defensive profiles would have been insane. With how these look now, I think that would probably be appropriate.
If these datasheets maintain the same point costs as the index, they are going to be mediocre to very bad. The Stalker and Huntsman are absurdly overcosted for their new rules, and the Brigand is also off by at least 30 points now. The Karnivore might be okay at 140, and the Executioner continues to be so mediocre that it would need to be cheap enough to take just for being a fastish hull to move block things before I really consider it.
Abhorrent Knights
Universal Changes
- Toughness 11 (down from 12)
- 26 wounds (Up from 22)
Specific Changes:
– The Abominant got a couple extra shots on its still AP 0 gun, which means it kills like 1.5 Terminators at range or does like 6 damage to a Rhino with its big gun. It also picks something within 24″ to make take a battleshock test now, so that’s nice, and it is otherwise unchanged.
Mind you, this is the most useless titanic knight we have, and it’s still just about as bad.
He’s sure pretty though, you have to give him that.
– The Desecrator looks to be completely unchanged aside from the nerfs to survivability.
– The Despoiler is slightly improved, giving War Dogs plus one leadership AND plus 1 OC within 9″ now, so we can make them OC 8 again by playing two of these guys (this is probably a bad idea).
– The Rampager lost once per game advance and charge, gained Dev Wounds on the charge, and all its attacks gained Sustained 1.
This is another example of GW completely missing the point on these model designs. The Rampager already basically killed whatever it got to. It needed to be able to get there. Now its effective threat range is approximately 4 inches shorter, and that means it’s going to be immensely less effective in its role.
– The Ruinator has a 2d6 shots S8 AP 1 D2 flamer, a 2d6 shots BS 3 S8 AP 2 D2 Missile pod, and then a bizarre melee weapon, which has the following profile.
| Name | Range | A | WS | S | AP | D |
| Strike | Melee | 4 | 3 | 14 | 3 | 6 |
| Sweep | Melee | 10 | 3 | 9 | 2 | 2 |
The strike has anti-monster and anti-vehicle 2+, which…is fine I guess, though it’s wounding every monster and vehicle I can think of on 3s already. This is otherwise an Abhorrent class chainsword with 1 less AP, and I think on the balance that’s just worse.
It has two abilities. First, pick a unit at the beginning of the game and you get re-roll wounds against it (yes, the anti-monster/anti-vehicle 2+ is super relevant here /s) and when it dies you pick a new one. I actually really like rules like this, and am enjoying seeing them out in the game more.
Second, War Dogs within 9″ get +1 AP against the closest target. The insult of taking this away from the Brigand, making the Brigand much worse, and then letting us pay 350+ points for that ability back is…something. This makes me want to take Executioners more than anything, but the two are completely at odds. The Ruinator is an up close knight, the Executioner is a long ish ranged platform.
I currently rate this model below the Rampager, Desecrator, and Despoiler, but points will largely be the determining factor.
The Tyrant
This thing got massacred.
- T12 from 13
- 3+ Armor Save from 2+
- Harpoon lost Anti-Monster and Anti-Vehicle 4+ and got d3 shots and blast instead. I consider this a strict downgrade.
- 28 wounds from 24
Just like the other knights, this guy took a massive survivability hit, but unlike the other knights he got the sweet sweet double tap of lower toughness AND worse save.
Oh also now it’s got a dedicated S24 AP -6 D12 anti-tank gun with blast. Why? Who knows! You can’t take vehicles in units of 5 at all at this point I believe. Crisis Suits? 4 max. Sisters of Battle Nundams? 4 models max. Mephitic Blight Haulers? 3 max.
Yup, this makes tons of sense. It also makes it so that tying up BOTH versions of the Tyrant and hiding other units from it makes it functionally useless. I already wanted blast gone from the plasma gun and volcano lance just so that this thing could still function properly if it got tagged by random chaff and this bizarre change makes that weakness worse.
I am really upset about this particular models’ changes – I got really attached to my Tyrant model as I painted it and it frustrates me that instead of making it more playable it has instead become significantly worse.
Potential Point Leaks
When I first saw these, I was intensely dubious. They all seemed really cheap. Now, aside from the Huntsman whose ability is definitely not “cracked”, they all seem like they might be too expensive, and the Huntsman points being as high as they are makes me think that they aren’t legitimate.
That aside, this is about as expensive as you can make these new datasheets and maintain any semblance of trying to have this be a competitive book. I think the Abominant is still probably 50 to 75 points overcosted at 325, I think most of the big knights could drop another 30 points, and I think the Tyrant should probably be 400 tops.
The more I think about it though, the more I expect that the actual point costs are going to be somewhat higher. We’ll just have to wait and see on that one.
Closing Thoughts
GW has been on a streak of fantastic, thematic, flavorful, and genuinely fun codices in the last few months, and unfortunately the Chaos Knights codex is only interesting and thematic in the detachment rules.
Clearly, the goal for this book was to create a reason to play something other than 13 War Dogs, and instead I think GW have just pushed us to play…well as many War Dogs as we can.
Both the big knights and little knights have been universally nerfed in either output or durability, or in some cases both. None of the core rules surrounding these models support the playstyle that most knight players – and most knight opponents most likely – want to engage with.
If these rules are locked in stone for now, I don’t think we’re going to see this codex make much of a splash competitively.
If I had to work with these rules and make suggestions to bring the codex up to scratch outside that, I would add the following.
1) Super Heavy Walker allows fall back, shoot, and charge just as it did in ninth edition. This would make the big guys – especially the tyrant with all of its blast weapons – much more able to engage with the game.
2) Make the enhancements in the big knight detachment either free or make them able to be taken in pairs on a single knight.
3) Let all the detachments pick two from the army rule table in round 1 and 3 and then give Traitoris Lance back the rule it had for 8th and 9th edition which was +1 Attack and AP on the charge.
Really though, in my opinion the datasheets just need a complete rework. If the points come out cheap enough, this army will be strong enough to compete, but even then it won’t be particularly fun compared to editions and codices of the past.
Thanks for the post, I think sell it, It’s worse every day
Thank you for sharing. With traitoris lance can’t you roll for two (with re-rolls from the enhancement) and pick one (because of the army rule). So you would start the game with 3?
Good read !