Six Big Chaos Knights, 3 Games

This is my regular sparring partner Chris running a slightly different Virulent Vectorium list than last time. He’s got roughly this:

Mortarion
Daemon Prince with 5+ FNP enhancement
Typhus

10x Plague Marines with the sustained hits and crits on 5s characters
Rhino for the Plague Marines

Deathshroud x3 w/ Lord of Contagion and +1 to Strength, Attacks, Dev Wounds enhancement

Deathshroud x3 w/ Lord of Contagion

Heavy Bloat Drone x2
Mephitic Blight Hauler
Poxwalkers x2

We rolled up Terraform on Crucible of Battle and went off to the races.

Top to bottom for me is Despoiler, Abominant, Atrapos, Abominant, Abominant, Rampager.

And for Chris top left is a unit of Poxwalkers, then top right is the Rhino, Blight Hauler, and Mortarion. His Daemon Prince is central, with the Bloat Drones hiding in the back and another unit of Poxwalkers in the center bottom.

He has all the Deathshrouds and Typhus in Deep Strike.

We had a chat after the game about this deployment, and we both agree that the top left Poxwalker deployment was an error, because if I go first they instantly evaporate for no cost to me, and even if he goes first I can deal with them trivially.

Both Deployments:

Side note – I designed all this terrain, it’s super fun to be able to play some games with it!

Chris has decided to take fixed Assassinate and Bring it Down against me, which is perfectly reasonable as each Knight is worth 10 points. I took tactical and started the game with Darkness online for my Harbingers of Dread.

Round 1

Chris won the roll off, shuffled around a tiny bit, stickied three objectives, and terraformed the two he controlled in the center.

I responded by drawing Engage on All Fronts and Marked for Death. Chris picked some things I’d never kill for Marked, so I picked his Poxwalkers as my gamma target, killed them, and terraformed the top objective.

Chris also left a line for the bottom Abominant to take a pot shot volley at Mortarion, which I spiked 3 sixes for damage on, leaving the big guy on 10 after his Feel No Pains.

I also made the top objective be Claimed for the Dark Gods for free at the beginning of the charge phase.

Round 2

Death Guard:

Chris decides to get really aggressive, because I’m going to passively score secondaries if he does not, and puts both Bloat Drones, the Blight Hauler, Mortarion’s guns, and Typhus’ spell into the exposed Abominant, however between Darkness giving -1 to hit for the Blight Haulers and the -1 Damage Stratagem, the Abominant survives very healthily.

Typhus has Terraformed the center objective, so Chris gets two there and I get one at the end of his turn (He scored 8 on Primary at the start of the turn).

Chaos Knights

I score 8 on Primary, and draw Area Denial and Behind Enemy Lines.

I have a prime opportunity to dramatically swing the attritional fight here, with the goal being to shoot Mortarion to death and kill Typhus and the Blight Hauler in melee, as well as engaging the Rhino with a consolidate move (it’s in the top ruin against the wall).

The top Abominant has to walk over a ruin and fails its battleshock d6 (3/4 1s so far!). I stick an Abominant in the middle as well, and everything lines up on Mortarion. He does reactive move away from one of them at some point here, but the other is plenty close to him.

I shoot Mortarion down to 1 health, which allows the center Abominant to charge in and Tank Shock him to death. Things go downhill pretty hard after that when Typhus makes 7/8 4++ saves and the Blight Hauler makes 4/6 5++ saves and both survive.

Fortunately, Typhus is battle shocked, so I still score Area Denial, and I pitch Behind Enemy Lines for a CP.

Chris scores 2 more on Terraform and I score 1. This is going to be true until the end of the game, so if I stop mentioning it, that’s what happened every turn.

Round 3

I roll randomly and get Doom and Dismay. Keen eyed readers here will note that my widget is wrong about what Dooms effect is – it SHOULD be +1 to wound, which would have been much more useful this game. I’ve fixed the file and will be cutting a new one of these for myself ASAP.

Chris is also down by at least six here, getting the Harboured Power challenger card.

Death Guard

Chris scores 8 on Primary.

Both units of Deathshroud drop 6.1 inches away from my central knights. The Blight Hauler falls back after passing its battleshock check (both it and Typhus pass) and between it and the dropping unit of Terminators they steal my corrupted objective from me.

The Blight Drones do some good damage to the central Abominant, and charging Deathshroud finish both off. Notably, the central Abominant explodes, killing Typhus.

Chris will score 20 points off those two models for his secondaries. He also completes his Challenger card for 3 points. At some point here I Claimed my home objective for the Dark Gods.

Chaos Knights

I only score 4 on Primary here, and draw Defend Stronghold and Overwhelming Force.

I bring out the three non-warlord knights – though the Despoiler draws a bead on the Deathshroud up top – and I get to shooting. Chris throws a -1 damage stratagem on the top unit of Deathshroud, which means that the Despoiler getting through 5 wounds kills 1 and a bit instead of 2.5 Terminators.

Shooting and charges clean up everything in the middle and upper portion of the table, except the non-enhanced Lord of Contagion who comes back on his 2+ once per game rule. This scores me max on Overwhelming Force, and my Defend is ongoing but unstoppable at this point.

Round 4

I’m way behind on points so I get a challenger card on my turn this round.

Death Guard

Chris scores 8 on Primary here, and brings out his Plague Marine brick. Between them and the Bloat Drones, they drop the top Abominant to about 8 health, and then just barely, barely manage to kill it in combat through the -1 damage stratagem. The Lord of Contagion charges my Rampager and does nine damage to it before getting pasted. Chris scores another 10 for killing the Abominant, and I finish Defend Stronghold.

Chaos Knights

I draw A Tempting Target (bottom right) and Assassination.

The Despoiler moves up, the Rampager moves to the bottom objective. My Atrapos shoots the bottom most Bloat Drone to death, and then the Despoiler whirrs up its Gatling cannons and kills 10 Plague Marines and one of the characters. Just casually.

The Atrapos charges the surviving Bloat Drone, and the Rampager charges the Poxwalker unit. The Bloat Drone dies, the Poxwalkers lose 7 models. My challenger card got used as a stratagem for rerolling hits and wounds because the conditions to complete it were unappetizing for some reason.

Round 5

I chose the Delirium aura here, making enemy units that battleshock on less than half health take mortals. Unfortunately, when the Poxwalkers fail their battleshock, they just Feel No Pain them all off.

I also get another challenger card.

Death Guard

Chris tries for an insanely long bomb charge with the Rhino to tank shock the Rampager and have a sub 2% chance to kill it, but it’s all he has so he goes for it and it doesn’t quite pan out.

Chaos Knights

I draw my challenger card, and it gives points for having units in different portions of the table. I opt to insane bravery the Rampager.

I’m down by 23 points at the start of the turn. Chris can potentially score two more from Terraform, so I’m down by potentially 25.

I draw Cleanse, Cull the Horde (auto Discard) and Storm Hostile Objective. I can’t Storm a Hostile objective here, so I look through the rest of the options and realize only 2 of the remaining 8 are bad for me, so I spin the wheel and draw No Prisoners.

I am going to score 15 on primary at the end of the turn. I can complete the challenger card for 3 – that’s 18 of the 26 points I need. Cleanse is easy between the Atrapos and the Despoiler, so that’s an additional 5, putting me at 23 points. If I can kill two units for No Prisoners, I win by 2, so the Rampager stickies the objective for free at the beginning of the movement phase and walks over to the Rhino.

The Atrapos and the Despoiler each cleanse and shoot, obliterating the remaining Plague Marine character, and the Rampager charges in and guts the Rhino, ending its movement in Chris’ deployment zone to complete the challenger card.

Post-Game Thoughts

First of all, I am in love with the gatling Despoiler. It contributed every turn, it killed an entire unit of Plague Marines by itself, and it put good chip damage into things repeatedly. The sheer amount of shots at AP2 D2 is pretty mind blowing, and that felt great.

The Atrapos was “fine” this game, though if I’d realized the Harbinger effect was +1 to wound I suspect I would have been much happier with it. It never got touched, killed a fair bit of stuff, and generally took over controlling the center once the Abominants went down.

Rampagers are great. The Dev Wounds change from the codex is good, it’s not overkill like I originally thought, and it allows it to be very, very consistent.

Overall I really liked the list, and was excited to play it again later that day.

This game I had originally thought would be into Death Guard as well, running a similar Virulent Vectorium list, but my opponent decided to swap it up last minute for a Berzerker Warband list. I don’t have exactly the loadouts for everything but I believe the general build was something like this.

Lord on Juggernaut
Daemon Prince of Khorne
Kharn the Betrayer with 10x Berzerkers in the Rhino
Master of Executions with 10x Berzerkers
Slaughterbrute with 3x Exalted Eightbound
Jakhals x10
Jakhals x10
Eightbound x3
Eightbound x3
Chaos Spawn x2
Forgefiend x2

There were some enhancements in here, but I don’t know World Eaters that well and I don’t recall what they were.

We rolled up Supply Drop in Sweeping Engagement.

I won the roll for attacker/defender and made Chris (different Chris, same name!) deploy first. This let me see where he put his Rhino and his last Forgefiend and put my Atrapos down immediately opposite them for maximum vehicle pressure.

His deployment, left to right: Rhino with Kharn unit, Juggernaut Lord, Forgefiend, Jakhal, Forgefiend, Jakhals (back), Berzerkers with Master of Executions, Spawn. He has the Exalted Eightbound in deep strike.

My deployment, left to right: Atrapos, Abominant, Abominant, Despoiler in the back. Abominant, Rampager.

I lost the roll off for first.

Round 1

I believe I took battleshock on below starting strength for my Harbingers of Doom, but if I’d realized it was +1 to wound and not +1 to hit, I probably would have taken that.

The bottom objective in the following pictures was chosen to disappear first, and the top one disappearing last.

World Eaters

He scouted forwards with stuff before his secondary draws, which were Secure No Man’s Land and Sabotage.

He staged up on the bottom objective with the Rhino, as there is a sliver of objective to hold there without being in the ruin.

His Master of Executions Berzerkers posted up in the central ruin to Sabotage and his Spawn went onto the top objective.

He stuck the bottom Forgefiend out just enough to take some potshots at the Abominant, but wounding on 5s is rough and none of them connected.

Chaos Knights

I drew Recover Assets and Assassinate for my secondaries, which is fine because I can chill in my deployment zone with a Knight and shoot and action, and then the Rampager wasn’t going to get into combat anyway so it could also just chill and action in No Man’s Land.

The Atrapos came forward menacingly, getting Line of Sight on the Juggernaut Lord for Assassinate (this was a mistake, more on this in a second). The two bottom Abominants came forward to mortal wounds things, and the Despoiler toed up into the terrain feature to draw Line of Sight to everything.

The Atrapos rolled badly and didn’t do more than a couple damage to the Juggernaut Lord. What I should have done here is just shot the Rhino with the Atrapos, killed that almost guaranteed, and then had two charges with the Abominant and the Atrapos, using Epic Challenge to kill Kharn.

My Despoiler pointed at the Forgefiend and deleted it while doing a Recover Assets, and the other Abominant shot up the center ruin unit of Berzerkers that were performing a Sabotage, killing about half of them.

The Rampager decided that a spa day sounded nice, so he did a Recover Assets and chilled out as well.

In the charge phase, the Atrapos and Abominant both charged in, the Abominant into the Juggernaut Lord and the Atrapos into the Rhino. They both killed their targets, and the unit of Berzerkers lost a guy to the emergency disembark.

Again, I should have just charged and killed Kharn because he’s much scarier when he’s leading a unit and also much easier to kill than a Juggernaut Lord but hey, lesson learned. I believe I used Claimed for the Dark Gods for free on the bottom objective at the beginning of the Fight Phase also.

Round 2

World Eaters

He got sustained and lethal hits both for his blood rites this round.

Chris scored nothing on Primary, and moved up aggressively. He had drawn Extend Battle Lines and Marked for Death, and I chose all the hard to get to Knights so he picked the Abominant that Kharn’s unit was going to try and kill. He deep striked his Exalted Eightbound 9.1 inches away from my Despoiler.

I chose to use Claimed for the Dark Gods on the Rampagers’ objective at the beginning of the charge phase, since even if the Eightbound killed him, I’d still control the objective.

Things charged, Kharn’s unit got to the Abominant, the Eightbound got to the Rampager. He chose to fight with Kharn’s unit first, and I ultimately decided not to use the -1 damage Stratagem, which meant that I did lose the Abominant, but was able to interrupt with the Rampager and paste the unit of Eightbound, leaving the big guy untouched.

The Daemon Prince also charged the other central Abominant, and did a bit of damage there. The Abominant in return wet noodled the Prince.

The Berzerkers did manage to snatch the bottom objective away from me though.

Chaos Knights

I scored 5, drawing Establish Locus and Behind Enemy Lines Free CP At The End of Turn.

My shooting phase was very mid this turn, wherein I killed one (1) Daemon Prince, one (1) Exalted Eightbound, two (2) Berzerkers in the center, and one (1) regular Eightbound.

My charge phase was sweet though, taking out the Forgefiend, his entire unit of Berzerkers, and Kharn.

At the end of the turn, Chris had zero objectives under control, three meaningful combat models that were at least 18 inches from any knight, and a pretty poor prospect of prolonging the game much from there, so he opted to call it.

Post-Game Thoughts

I mostly play against Death Guard and….Death Guard are scarier in melee than World Eaters? and have guns? I don’t get it. I feel like GW kind of missed with this codex, although this does also feel like kind of a difficult matchup for normal ish marine bodies and offensive profiles. Nothing wounds me on better than 5s except the one unit of Exalted Eightbound, and the -1 damage stratagem is brutal here.

This is also possibly the best deployment for Knights in the game, with a good amount of defensive terrain to screen the big guys that can be immediately walked over or ignored with towering to bring the guns to bear on stuff.

For the final game of the day, I had the chance to play into Jordan’s Starshatter Necrons. Jordan is a great player and on some state teams. I don’t get to play into him very often, and it was nice to catch up and play some Warhammer.

He was playing this:

+ DETACHMENT: Starshatter Arsenal
+ TOTAL ARMY POINTS: 2000pts +
+ ENHANCEMENT: Dread Majesty (on Char1: Catacomb Command Barge) & Chrono-impedance Fields (on Char2: Skorpekh Lord) & Demanding Leader (on Char3: Technomancer)
Char1: 3x The Silent King (420 pts): Warlord
• 1x Szarekh: Sceptre of Eternal Glory, Staff of Stars, Weapons of the Final Triarch
• 2x Triarchal Menhir: 2 with Annihilator beam, Armoured bulk
Char2: 1x Catacomb Command Barge (150 pts): Resurrection orb, Gauss cannon, Overlord’s blade Enhancement: Dread Majesty (+30 pts)
Char3: 1x Skorpekh Lord (115 pts): Enmitic annihilator, Flensing claw, Hyperphase harvester Enhancement: Chrono-impedance Fields (+25 pts)
Char4: 1x Technomancer (90 pts): Staff of light Enhancement: Demanding Leader (+10 pts)
5x Flayed Ones (60 pts): 5 with Flayer claws
3x Canoptek Scarab Swarms (40 pts): 3 with Feeder mandibles
3x Canoptek Scarab Swarms (40 pts): 3 with Feeder mandibles
3x Canoptek Scarab Swarms (40 pts): 3 with Feeder mandibles
1x Lokhust Destroyers (40 pts): Close combat weapon, Gauss cannon
6x Canoptek Wraiths (220 pts): 6 with Vicious claws
1x Canoptek Reanimator (75 pts): 2x Atomiser beam, Reanimator’s claws
1x Doomsday Ark (200 pts): Armoured bulk, Doomsday cannon, 2x Gauss flayer array
1x Doomsday Ark (200 pts): Armoured bulk, Doomsday cannon, 2x Gauss flayer array
1x Doomsday Ark (200 pts): Armoured bulk, Doomsday cannon, 2x Gauss flayer array
1x Triarch Stalker (110 pts): Stalker’s forelimbs, Heat ray

We randomed Take and Hold on Tipping point with Terrain layout 1.

I won the attacker and defender roll, and deployed hyper conservatively.

Left to right, Atrapos, Abominant x2, Abominant in front of Despoiler, and Rampager.

Jordan deployed from top to bottom:

Doomsday Ark, Reanimator and Command Barge, Wraiths inside the building, two more Doomsday Arks, the Stalker central, the Silent King and Skorpekh Lord and Destroyer behind. He had some random Scarabs scattered around and some forward deployed Flayed ones.

IMPORTANT CONTEXT: I forced the Silent King to battleshock every turn from turn 3 onwards with Abominants, which is why he never reactive moved away from the shooting.

I lost the game roll off again, and started with Darkness active.

Round 1

Necrons

Because I had left him no targets to speak of, and his turn one draws were Engage on All Fronts and Marked for Death (discarded) into A Tempting Target (the farthest away objective) , Jordan opted to move up conservatively. His top right Doomsday Ark moved forward three inches so that it could sit still, his Wraiths came forward (yes they look like Skorpekhs, his Wraiths were en route still), and everything sort of just hung out.

Chaos Knights

I drew A Tempting Target and No Prisoners.

I advanced the Atrapos up to the objective (using Claimed for the Dark Gods at the beginning of the shooting phase to take it) and moved the far right Abominant over the terrain so it could get a line on the Doomsday Arc. The Despoiler also touched some terrain to get a line on it.

My plan was to throw shots at the Doomsday Arc and (probably) kill it, try for a re-rollable 8 inch charge into the Flayed Ones, and then consolidate onto the objective for my Tempting Target.

The first part of this plan worked perfectly, with the Abominant and Despoiler deleting the Doomsday Arc.

The second part didn’t pan out, and the Abominant was floating around doing not much. I scored a small No Prisoners and discarded A Tempting Target for a CP so I’d have two on my turn to use -1 damage.

Round 2

Necrons

Jordan drew Area Denial and Bring it Down. He scored 10 on Primary.

He came forward aggressively with the Stalker, and drew some very tight lines with his Doomsday Arcs onto the exposed Abominant.

I ran some math on this after the fact because I was curious. One Doomsday Ark should get 4 shots, the other should get 5. One of those is at -1 to hit from Darkness, but being generous and saying that’s the four shot guy, here’s the math.

Darkness one hits twice, wounds 1.5 times. Non-darkness one hits 3 times, wounds 2 times. I should save one of these, and take 9 damage or so after the -1 damage stratagem. The Stalker should hit and wound mayyybe once, doing about 5 damage with melta 2.

What actually happened, was one Doomsday Arc did 21 damage to the Abominant and the other two gun models all whiffed horribly.

This meant that the Flayed Ones moved up and only needed to shave five wounds off the big guy, and with him at below half health, their “every hit is sustained” and “we have twin linked” rules put just enough wounds through to kill him.

I stand by this play, and I’d make it every single time as the math says the big guy should live on about 8 wounds, but that was unfortunate.

Chaos Knights

I also scored ten and drew Sabotage (yuck) and Storm Hostile Objective which is easy mode because I want to kill the Stalker and get the middle objective anyway.

I’m really proud of one piece of movement placement this turn, and mildly irritated with another portion of it.

Proud: the middle Abominant moved onto the objective and I Claimed it for the Dark Gods at the start of the charge phase. I had killed off the Stalker by then, so it charged the Flayed Ones and got off the objective to deny the Starshatter buff of +1 to hit targets on objectives. I also put the Rampager in a REALLY annoying place.

Irritated: The Atrapos moved up to get a line on a Doomsday Ark that it really should have killed, but I got closer than I needed to by at least 4 inches, and it could have been back a bit more, off the objective, and still been off the objective.

Instead, I put it like 17 inches away from the Doomsday Ark, and even with the reroll ones to hit and wound stratagem I rolled a glut of 1s to hit, leaving it on 2.

This was, to put it mildly, a disaster.

I did charge and kill the Flayed Ones with the Abominant though, so it was off the objective, and that was good.

I scored Storm Hostile Objective and tossed Sabotage. In hindsight, I should have probably done a Sabotage with the bottom left Abominant, but I really wanted the extra CP so I could use -1 damage again.

Round 3

I chose to move into the -1 to leadership checks within 9, as it felt like a useful thing to have to offset the Silent Kings’ leadership buffs. Jordan put the Silent King into “ignore modifiers” instead of re-roll hit and wound rolls of 1.

Necrons

Jordan scored 10 on Primary and drew Overwhelming Force (ha! Jokes on you, I’ve only got two models on Objectives and you can’t get to either of them) which he promptly pitched (Jokes on me) and drawing Recover Assets and Behind Enemy Lines.

He put everything he had into the Atropos, but with some mildly low dice on the Silent Kings’ part, the big guy was alive on 2 at the end of the turn.

Worth noting, had he been 4 inches back, the Silent King would have needed an eleven on the charge and he almost certainly lives on more than half wounds.

The Wraiths started tangling with the middle Abominant, flicking the objective back over to Jordan.

Chaos Knights

I scored ten and drew Recover Assets and Extend Battle Lines.

I was able to shoot the Silent King down to 3 wounds in the shooting phase, but the Atrapos chose to gamble and shoot the Lord it was in combat with instead of the Silent King so that it could charge. This was another play mistake, as I believe it would have finished the King off pretty reliably here.

The Rampager moved way up, used the Claimed for the Dark Gods stratagem on the objective, charged the almost dead Doomsday Ark, killed it, and stayed where it was so that it wasn’t on the objective.

I failed a charge with the left Abominant into the Wraiths, so the Wraiths and the middle Abominant continued their noodle fight.

Round 4

The Silent King went back into reroll ones to hit and wound.

Necrons

Pretty simple turn here, the majority of the remaining guns dropped the Rampager down to about half health, and a charging tank shock from the Command Barge dropped it below 10, and took the objective back as well at the end of the charge phase.

The Silent King charged and killed the Atropos. The Rampager killed the Command Barge and consolidated back onto the objective and into combat with the Reanimator to take the objective back.

Chaos Knights

I scored 15 on Primary and drew Engage on All Fronts and Defend Stronghold.

The Despoiler blasted the Reanimator off the table – being a vehicle has some downsides – and the Abominants shot and failed to do much to the Silent King. I failed the 4 inch charge into the King with the middle Abominant, but the Rampager charged and obliterated the Doomsday Ark.

I scored one for Engage on All Fronts and was working on Defend Stronghold.

Round 5

I picked the “things that fail a battleshock check below half strength take d3 mortals” for my final round.

Necrons

The Silent King…failed his battleshock at 2 wounds, and died to the mortals from the Harbingers of Despair rule. I…cannot believe that rule actually worked.

The Wraiths took damage too, what the heck!?

Anyway, Jordan drew Secure No Man’s Land and Display of Might, neither of which he had a prayer of doing. His Wraiths slapped the Abominant, it slapped them, Jordan passed the turn over and conceded.

I would have scored 3 on Defend Stronghold, picked up Assassination, and Display of Might, both of which I trivially accomplish, along with 15 points on Primary in the last turn.

Post-Game Thoughts

I was expecting to have knights be a lot deader a lot faster. However, a couple really important key things.

1) With -1 to hit and me never letting the Doomsday Arks shoot things on objectives OR things they could sit still to shoot at, their damage is actually fairly bad, especially with the -1 damage stratagem. Three Arks shooting the same target assuming -1 to hit and -1 damage or making 14 shots, hitting 7, wounding 5, I’m saving 1 or 2, and taking either 12 or 9 damage total. From three, three Doomsday Arks. That’s wild.

2) Claimed for the Dark Gods is such a good stratagem, and you can abuse the living daylights out of its permissive timing if you can see the play patterns. I’m really in love with this rule.

As per usual, the Gatling Despoiler impressed me, the Rampager continues to mow things down, and the Atrapos whiffed a bit but I let him die so that one’s on me.

I had this down as a close loss in my teams’ matrix, but I think this is actually fairly favored for the Knights player assuming the layouts aren’t parking lots.