Chaos Knights (Lords of Dread) vs. Deathguard (Virulent Vectorium)

I was pretty pessimistic about the codex, but other people on the internet who’s opinions I respect have been excited about it, so it’s time to actually test it out.

In particular, the Warphammer guy was raving about a six big knights list, and color me a sucker, but I bought knights to paint and play as many big knights as is competitively feasible, so here we are.

We rolled up Linchpin on Tipping Point from the new Chapter Approved mission pack. I lost the roll off for attacker and defender and became the defender, putting the Despoiler into deep strike.

I ended up deploying extremely conservatively, more than 33″ from any point on his deployment zone where I was visible so that no turn one Plague Marine shenanigans could occur. In hindsight, I’m not sure that this was correct, but this will require more testing.

Left to right we have a Rampager, three Abominants with the Warlord farthest left, and then the second Rampager deployed more aggressively.

Chris also deployed extremely conservatively, counting on his infiltrating Poxwalkers and the in-built sticky objectives from his detachment to force me out into the open if I wanted to play the game.

Here’s a shot of the entire table.

I chose to do what 99% of Chaos Knight players are going to do on turn 1 here and began the game in Darkness, with a free Deathly Terror thrown in.

Round 1

Deathguard 1:

Chris won the roll for first and drew Secure No Man’s Land and Marked for Death. He discarded Marked for Death and drew Extend Battle Lines instead.

His turn amounted to everything he had backing up as far as possible and staging some things slightly closer, scoring 9 for Secondaries, stickying three objectives, and calling it good.

Chaos Knights 1:

I chose to use my free Claimed for the Dark Gods on my home objective at the beginning of my command phase.

I drew Cleanse and Secure No Man’s Land. Awkwardly, I can only get to one objective so I’m only scoring two on each of these this turn.

I move forward a tiny bit, making it so that the following things are true.

1) His Blight Haulers are 19.5 inches away from the Rampager, so he cannot make his contagion range bigger and walk into range next turn. Also keeps him out of melta range.

2) If he extends his contagion range next turn, his bottom unit of Pox walkers need a 4 on the advance roll to tag my Rampager. I did this so that if they chose not to, the Rampager would be 12″ from the other objective, and at OC 12 he could go flip it.

I shoot all of his exposed Poxwalkers to death, but two Abominants do 3 total damage to his Smokescreened Rhino.

Round 2:

Deathguard 2:

Chris scores 13 on Primary and draws Defend Stronghold and Display of Might. Given that he can easily screen me off his home objective and I have zero units wholly within No Man’s Land, this is another free set of primaries. At some point in here he does go for +3″ of contagion range.

Chris rolls a six on the advance for his Poxwalkers, getting the bottom Rampager into contagion range.

This allows him to deep strike his Deathshroud + Lord of Contagion behind it. The other unit comes down to give the Daemon Prince Lone Operative.

I opt to rapid ingress my Despoiler in the center so it has choices next turn.

Things go a bit crazy in the shooting phase, where the topmost exposed Rampager takes 22 damage from the two Blight Haulers and Bloat Drones.

The charge phase sees the foremost Blight Hauler make the 9″ charge it needs to get to the Rampager, and the unit of Deathshroud roll their 6+ to make it into combat.

I use my once per round Claimed for the Dark Gods on the top objective where the Blight Hauler has made it into combat with my Rampager at the start of the fight phase.

Fortunately, I have a -1 damage stratagem, and the Deathshroud, despite rolling pretty well, leave the big guy on 15.

He turns around and splats the unit but does zero damage to the Lord of Contagion. Meanwhile, the other Rampager rolls very badly and leaves the Blight Hauler on 2, which is great because that means it can’t automatically explode.

Chaos Knights 2:

I get my CP, pass the battleshock test for the mostly dead Rampager, and proceed to have a very silly turn.

I draw Area Denial and Bring it Down, opting to keep both of those. My middle Abominant walks over the ruin in front of it and promptly rolls a 1, becoming battleshocked.

I fall back both Rampagers – the one nearly dead one leaving contagion range of the Blight Hauler and getting overwatched for his troubles. No sixes appeared on the three dice thrown, so we moved on.

At the end of the movement phase, my Abominants do a handful of mortal wounds to the things around them, and my shooting phase is a bit of a disaster. One Deathshroud dies top, I fail to hurt the Rhino again, the Despoiler completely whiffs everything.

The only good news is that the very top Abominant – the Warlord – kills the very hurt Blight Hauler with mortals and then shoots the other one to death.

I fail the 7″ charge into the remaining Deathshroud with the battleshocked Abominant and ship the turn, pitching Area Denial for a CP.

Round 3:

I opt to roll for my new abilities this turn, and roll a duplicate Darkness, but also unlock the “battleshock checks on less than starting strength” bonus.

I also got a challenger card because I was getting obliterated on points. I got the one which gives you 3 VP for killing a thing or is usable as an advance/fall back, shoot, and charge stratagem.

Death Guard 3:

Chris scores 13 on Primary again, drawing No Prisoners and Establish Locus.

He opts to just sort of body block my bottom edge Rampager with Pox Walkers and perform the Locus with the Lord of Contagion.

His middle Plague Marine brick hops out and moves into range of the battleshocked Abominant, and his Bloat Drones move forward to get lines on the three knights in the middle.

Because the Abominant is Battle Shocked, the shooting phase drops it to 6 or 7 wounds. I kept track, and it would have been on 16 at the end of the shooting phase with -1 damage.

His Bloat Drones do about 10 to the Despoiler, and then the Death Shroud charge the floundering Abominant and handily put it down.

Chaos Knights 3:

I drew Storm Hostile Objective and No Prisoners this turn, scoring 8 on Primary.

The middle Abominant moves over the terrain…and promptly battleshocks. However, given that NOTHING is on the objective, it still takes it back because the Detachment bonus OC is applied after setting the OC to zero.

The Rampager is 15 inches away from the Deathshroud, so it moves up….and promptly dies to Overwatch. It does explode though, killing off the remaining bodyguard models.

The Warlord Abominant moves up to get within 9″ of the Plague Marines.

Mortals pop off like crazy here – I can only imagine what it would have been like to have three Abominants alive at the beginning of this turn – and I kill off the Lord of Virulence, a handful of Pox Walkers, 2 Plague Marines, and about 1/3 of the Demon Prince with the Abominnt mortals. I believe I also forced the Plague Marines to be battleshocked.

I mess up here, and for some reason thought that I target the objective rather than the knight with Claimed for the Dark Gods, so I couldn’t have applied the sticky objective in the center at the beginning of the shooting phase like I did. This wouldn’t have mattered because later this turn I get onto the objective with a non-battleshocked model, and could have applied it then, but it’s good to know.

Once again, the Despoiler whiffs its big guns, but the missiles plus turret melta kill the Lord of Contagion for the first time (he comes back on a 2+). The Abominants put a few damage into the Plague Marines.

In my charge phase, the top Abominant makes it into combat with the Plague Marines after rerolling a failed charge, and the middle Abominant fails its 4 inch charge into the Demon Prince.

It’s worth noting that the dice disparity up until this point has been fairly gargantuan, things have NOT been working well on the Chaos Knight side of things.

The Abominant that does make the charge kills a handful of Plague Marines and takes about 6 damage back for its troubles.

The Rampager charged and killed the Lord of Contagion for the second time, consolidating back onto the objective.

I scored my vehicle kill for Bring it Down, completed Storm Hostile Objective, and used the scoring portion of my challenger card.

Round 4:

I drew another Challenger card this turn, this time giving something either sustained or lethal hits with the trade off being the weapon becomes hazardous. It scores a VP for each objective you control at the end of your turn to a max of 3 as well.

Death Guard 4:

Chris scores 8 only on Primary this turn, and draws Area Denial and Bring it Down.

His other unit of Plague Marines hop out and aim their guns at the battleshocked Abominant.

Once again, their shooting knocks it down to single digit health, and had it been not battleshocked I could have used the -1 damage stratagem to keep it in the healthy double digits.

In the charge phase, Chris needs a seven to make the charge into the battleshocked Abominant with his marines and rolls it exactly. Unfortunately for him, the models with the good attacks were at the back because he needed to get his guns into line of sight, and that means that only one good weapon from the unit and one good character weapon are swinging into the big guy. The Daemon Prince also charges that battleshocked Abominant. Somehow, it survives both the Daemon Prince and the Plague Marines, and the top Abominant kills enough Plague Marines to also survive (both are on 5 wounds here).

Chris ends the turn not having scored Bring it Down or Area Denial, opting to discard Area Denial.

Chaos Knights 4:

On my turn, I score 13 on Primary and draw Establish Locus and Engage on All Fronts. It’s also worth noting that each turn I’ve debated sending the Despoiler back into deep strike and each turn decided I’d rather not do so.

With the unexpected surprise of both Abominants being alive, the secondary surprise is that neither fails their battleshock checks!

Chris has screened out the Rampager fairly well, but if my stubbers and mortals do enough to clear 8 of them, it has a clean charge into the Plague Marines. Unfortunately, this is another turn where the shooting phase is almost a complete whiff. I kill 6 Pox Walkers and a couple of Plague Marines, the Despoiler missing every shot into the Daemon Prince. The Abominant in the top right goes ahead and Establishes a Locus while getting to shoot and being in combat because being a Titanic Character has some perks.

I did force the Daemon Prince and Plague Marines to battleshock though, and they both failed so no fun stratagems.

The Rampager charges and melts the remaining Pox Walkers before consolidating back onto the bottom objective and engaging a few Plague Marines.

The Daemon Prince eats the non-Warlord Abominant for breakfast, and the Plague Marines pull back to the Rampager where three of the little boogers do 8 damage to the big knight. Uh oh.

I end up scoring the Challenger card, and had the Rampager juuust on the other side of the center to score one point on Engage on All Fronts, while also scoring a small Establish Locus. If I had not scored Engage, I could have ditched it for a CP (which I wanted) and gotten a third Challenger card (which I also wanted). Alas.

Side bar – Challenger cards are not my favorite after one game. My opponent and I both felt like they didn’t really make the game any more fun or interesting. I’ll keep playing with them, but I’d like mission rules back I think over these.

Round 5:

I choose the additional -1 leadership ability for my fifth round.

Death Guard 1:

At the beginning of the command phase, I once again Claim for the Dark Gods, this time on the bottom objective.

Chris uses his only CP on Insane Bravery for the Daemon Prince, and then fails every other Battleshock aside from the bottom Rhino. He scores 3 on Primary, drawing a bunch of irrelevant secondaries and Overwhelming Force.

He goes all in on a plan to kill the Rampager and hold the bottom objective, but first his lone character up top at -1 to hit and wounding on sixes with a D3 pistol…does all those things and the Abominant fails its 5++ save. RIP to the Warlord, glad I used the free stratagem earlier in the turn before he died.

The Rhino goes onto the objective as mentioned, and the Daemon Prince charges in. He wounds the Rampager on 5s and needs three to go through, but he overachieves and puts 4 through.

I decide to gamble a bit and use the “explode on a 4+” stratagem here, as the Rhino is on 4 health and I could conceivably kill it before the Claim for the Dark Gods checks for control at the end of the phase.

I am able to roll two 4+ dice rolls in a row, killing the Rhino, the last normal Plague Marine, and leaving the Daemon Prince on 3. I also permanently control that objective, as Chris has exactly 7 un-battle shocked OC on the board, and most of it is nowhere near there.

Chaos Knights 5:

I draw Marked for Death (Rhino, Tallyman on the home objective, Daemon Prince) and Defend Stronghold after I use my CP to Insane Bravery the Despoiler.

The Despoiler moves up and finally kills a vehicle with its Melta 6 guns, taking the Rhino out.

It charges the single health Death Guard character and…fails to kill it. Womp Womp. The character swings back, fails to kill the Despoiler, and I end the game scoring 5 on Marked for Death and 3 on Defend Stronghold, as well as 15 on Primary.

Post Game Thoughts

Time to eat some crow – the knights did actually feel a fair bit more durable than they used to. Into lethals on 5s: the army, the toughness nerf didn’t matter at all and having four extra wounds kept at least three knights around for an extra turn each across the game.

The Abominant is weird. I think a single Abominant would be actively bad, but three felt kind of awesome, even with 2/3 of them battleshocking and dying without doing much. If I’d been able to have a go turn with three of them putting mortal wounds out, that would have been insane.

I think the army rule is very mid. I’d love to pick two at the beginning of the game, and I think you should get to re-roll any abilities that are duplicates.

Claimed for the Dark Gods is insane, and the fact the detachment rule is almost-but-not-quite just “do that for free once per round” and is still good enough is crazy.

This is a very tricky list to play. You’ve got six activations, so you can’t waste any of them, deploying is harder than I expected, and I think making sure your big guys don’t go down without buying a ton of space or points is going to be paramount.

I’m very interested to play this again – interested enough that I’ve ordered two more Abominant kits – and I will likely be taking this list or something very close to it to the Tacoma Open in 4 weeks. Can I paint 2 full new knights to my standards and an extra set of arms for a Rampager? Guess we’ll have to see!

All I know is that this is the first time I’ve played nothing but big knights and not felt terrible about it, and I’ve been chasing that high since I painted my Rampager as the first 40k model I owned and played with 2.5 years ago.

In the meantime, expect to see a few more of these reports soon, and keep an eye out for the last week in June when the webstore launches if you want to get some sweet sweet chaos faction tokens.

Thanks for reading, we’ll see you next time.