A Knight's Tale, AKA Some days you eat the bear and some days the bear eats you

In my quest to be a somewhat well rounded 40k player (or I just like a challenge and/or am a masochist), I figured I should play a game against nothing but Knights. Luckily I have recently built several for my buddy Steven so I hit him up for a game. I wanted to try out 1500 points since I have pretty limited gaming time and my recent games have been taking a bit too long to play to completion. The local Feast of Blades tournament was also 1500 points and I contemplated trying to play in that, so this is the list I wound up bringing:

Chaos Lord: power fist; lightning claw; Chaos bike; sigil of corruption; Mark of Nurgle; The Slaughterer's Horns; Daemonheart; blight grenades 215

Sorcerer: Chaos bike; The Balestar of Mannon; Psyker (Mastery Level 3) 155

10 Chaos Cultists 50

10 Chaos Cultists 50

5 Chaos Spawn: Mark of Nurgle 180

2 Obliterators: Mark of Nurgle 152

1 Obliterator: Mark of Nurgle 76

1 Obliterator: Mark of Nurgle 76

Lord of Change: Psyker (Mastery Level 3); 2× Greater Reward 295

11 Pink Horrors of Tzeentch 99

6 Screamers of Tzeentch 150

1,498 points

man, this force looks puny...

The Lord is their for stone killin' and tanking wounds for the Spawn. The Sorcerer is there for Divination tricks and warp charges for Horror summoning. Everything else is pretty self explanatory. In hindsight I should have found points to give the LOC a staff for the buff against Knights, but I waffled and bumped the Horror unit up to 11 instead in the name of overall well roundedness.

Steven brought 4 battlecannon Knights.

big brawlers

My initial plan to handle those guys went something like this:

Gangbang the HQ knight with the LOC (who will challenge), Screamers and Lord in an attempt to get first blood and slay the warlord in one swoop while using terrain, Spawn and summoned lesser demons to hold up the other 3 and grab VP from objectives with my OS troops. I'll deep strike the Obliterators to try and surround another Knight and drop some sweet melta knowledge on its ass.

Pre game stuff:

The Lord gets Hatred for his warlord trait. Strong.

I opt for telepathy hoping for invisibility since I will be deep striking the Oblits. I get Shroud and two other useless powers.

The Horrors get Cursed Earth. I'll take it.

The LOC gets re-roll invulnerable saves and +1W/IWND from his gifts and Scrier's Gaze, Precognition and Perfect Timing. Just about as perfect as a thing could be (Armorbane instead of reroll saves and Misfortune instead of Perfect Timing would have been the perfect scenario, but I ain't greedy) . In hindsight, I should have realized this was a warning sign that the chaos gods are huge dicks.

We roll for mission and get Maelstrom: Cleanse and Control and I go first. I deploy the LOC and Screamers on my right flank with the Spawn/Lord/Sorcerer on the left while the Horrors are in the center with Cultists in the rear to claim objectives. The Obliterators are all in reserve. My cunning plan is to set up the warlord Gangbang (who is deployed in the center) while tarpitting the other center Knight with the Spawn. The LOC will Scrier's Gaze for the Oblits while the Horrors will summon Demonettes or Shrouding on the Sorcerer to take some heat off the Spawn.

we have denuded the forest, commence play

kaw kaw

He deploys all the Knights on the line and promptly seizes. Here is where the wheels begin to fall off.

set...HIKE

Now I complain about dice as much as the next guy -maybe even more, but I am old and crotchety so I can get away with it (also get off my lawn)- but this game really was one of those 'if it could go wrong for me it did, and if it could go right for him it did' games. Read on to see...IF YOU DARE!

Knights, turn 1.

The Knights trundle forward and open up with their big guns.

SALLY FORTH

These guys have the most accurate battlecannon gunners EVAR. Of the 8 shots fired, 6 are direct hits, one scatters 4 and one scatters totally off some Cultists. The Spawn take 6 wounds and the Lord's attempt to tank them leads him to taking 2 wounds despite his 2+ armor. I lose another Spawn from LOS from a different barrage. The Horrors are forced to GTG in the trees to avoid being wiped and manage to not all die. The Cultists behind valiantly GTG and pass their LD. My lads are reeling from the oh-so-rude surprise assault. My Lord at least regenerates one of his wounds with IWND, so that's somethin'.

Behold the carnage

The Knights score 1 VP from an objective card in the middle of the field.

Knights-1

Chaos-0

Chaos, turn 1.

Despite that fiasco, I still feel like I can salvage this game with some cagey play. Unfortunately my cunning plans were dashed by the seize, so now I have to change up. I now don't have a turn to spend summoning demons and setting up Scrier's, I have to put Operation: Knight warlord gangbang ASAP. I send the Spawn towards the Knight to the left of the warlord and send the LOC, Screamers and Lord at the warlord. The Sorcerer retreats to the Cultist unit and everyone else is pinned.

I obligingly roll a 1 for the psychic phase, leaving me with 8 dice. Delightful. I use 3 dice to get Precog on the bird successfully, and use 5 to try and Prescience the Screamers and roll this:

IMPRESSIVE, MOST IMPRESSIVE

Spectacular. The Lord throws a poo grenade at the warlord but it passes its I test. Everyone makes their charges, so there's that.

This is a terrible, terrible pic. Pro photo maker I am not

 Big Bird challenges and is forced to SMASH because I'm a genius and didn't give him the Staff. Lesson learned. He does manage to knock a HP off the warlord. In return the warlord hits 2 of his 3 attacks. Now the only thing that can really bone me here is if he rolls a 6 with his chainsaw arm of DOOM. Anything else and I am virtually guaranteed to survive with my re-rolled 5++ and 6 wounds. Naturally he rolls a 6, so I go from getting Slay the Warlord and First Blood to giving up First Blood and not Slaying the Warlord. Groan. The screamers manage to strip a couple more HP from the Knight while my Lord, apparently incensed at the ignominious demise of Big Bird manages to off the warlord. It does me the kindness of stumbling just far enough away from my Lord so he avoids the strD hit, but I lose several Screamers in the explosion.

The shattered remnants of my Operation:Gangbang

The Spawn manage to lose exactly enough wounds to a super efficient flurry chainsaw attacks and stomps to all die. Yay, strD!



I forgot to take a pic of the Spawn fight. Please enjoy this post-consolidate pic of the warlord fight

I do manage to score a couple VP from cards, both objective and killing the warlord.

Knights-2
Chaos-4


Knights, turn 2.

Two Knights continue their rampage into my half of the table and the other stays back to deal with the insolent Screamers and Lord.

These pics are seriously bad. Like cover-your-eyes-awful

The battlecannon beat down continues, leaving only a handful of Cultists and one Horror alive. They actually didn't roll hits a couple times, but still managed to murderize my poor lads. The stubbers also managed to wreak havoc on my infantry as well. How embarrassing, lol.


My Lord gets charged and dies unceremoniously to a giant chainsaw. 4++ will only take you so far I suppose. The Knights score a couple objectives and Slay the Warlord.


Knights- 5
Chaos- 4




Chaos, turn 2.


Both singleton Obliterators show up but the unit of 2 doesn't. They both DS around the loner Knight that just killed my Lord. One deviates out of double-dice meltagun range and one stays in.

JUDGE ME BY MY SIZE, DO YOU?

Dude, where is everyone?

I roll a 3 for the psychic phase. My attempt at summoning some demons fails with 0 successes on 7 dice. Solid.


My shooting follows the general downward trajectory of the game, the twin linked melta gun hits and pens but is saved by the ion shield while the multi melta just straight up misses.


I decide that at this point desperate times call for desperate measures, so I charge the Knight with my Screamers hoping for some craziness. They strip a couple hull points and then all die to the stomps.




FOR FRODO!

I score a couple more VP on cards.


Knights- 5
Chaos- 6




Knights, turn 3.


Feeling feisty after squashing 400ish points of guys, the lone Knight turns his sights on the Obliterator in the middle of the board....

I HAVE YOU NOW

While another sets his eyes on the poor Sorcerer...

Bad news, very bad news

And the last one directs his ire to the other Oblit.

The Oblit in question is out of frame to the left of the Knight. Toldja these pics were bad

The Sorcerer dies to shooting, as does the Oblit in the center. 2+ saves are clearly overrated.

Now you see Oblit, now you don't

The last one, however weathers a bunch of shooting wounds...

YEEAAAAH, BEOTCH! WHAT NOW!

Only to dishonor himself by rolling a 1 to the str10 Hammer of Wrath hit. Har!

The Knights fail to get any VP this turn, however.


Knights-5
Chaos- 6




Chaos, turn 3


At this point it's looking pretty grim for the forces of Chaos, but I figure that I can maybe try and force at least a draw if I can get some demons on the table and get lucky with the remaining Obliterators. Unsurprisingly, they do not come in from reserves. I get 6 dice to try and summon and fail that as well. At this point I concede the game, more out of aggravation at the vagaries of dice than the fact that I have a near-impossible path to victory.




THINGS I THINK I THINK:


Despite the colossal failure in this particular game, I think both the list and my tactics were actually fairly sound. Had I not been seized on, I would have had:


a) a psychic phase to set up my assault better, i.e. Scrier's Gaze, Summoning, Shroud, etc.
b) a better set up to weather the shooting.


Even after that with a little less ridiculous luck from the Knights (freakishly accurate battlecannons, need a 6? Get a 6!) I think I could have had a pretty good shot.


That's not to say I couldn't have done things better, I deployed a bit too aggressively, I should have anticipated the potential damage incurred from a seize. I definitely should have found the points for the Staff of Change, that is the biggest no brainer EVAR. I dunno how useful the Balestar is when I have very few actual targets for Prescience, he should probably just go with Telepathy and spend those points elsewhere (LIKE A FREAKIN' STAFF OF CHANGE).


I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that Knights are not good for the game. Even toned down I don't think that D weapons have any place in a regular game of 40k, and if they're gonna allow super heavies they need to at least give you extra VP for knocking off hull points like in Escalation.


Playing against 4 Knights was pretty terrifically boring. While I enjoyed the challenge it presented (coming up with a plan, executing it, adjusting yadda yadda), overall it was a pretty boring game. Had things gone my way it would have been equally boring with me spreading out to claim objectives and out score the knights on VP, essentially avoiding conflict. In other words, yaaawwwnnn.  This is what I imagine it must feel like to be at the helm of the all Knight list:






KUH KUH KUH