Games Workshop - Warhammer 40,000 - Chaos Knights: Knight Abominant/Rampager/Desecrator

Product Information

For such murderous butchers it is not enough to simply defeat the foe. They must fell every opposing war engine, blasting and crushing their mechanical targets until nothing but smouldering scrap remains. Devastating Reach: A large number of words for “you can fight a unit on a ruin”. Fine when it’s relevant if you can remember it exists. They must level every fortification and trample its ruins to rubble, massacre every last warrior who stands against them or flees before their wrath, then tear down every temple, monument, dwelling and structure, every trace that their enemies ever existed. Warp-Haunted Hull – The Warlord can deny one power per psychic phase, and if it takes mortal wounds from a psychic power, roll a D6 for each wound; on a 5+ it doesn’t lose a wound. Trail, Rotate and Full Tilt are your bread and butter here. That is, at least, a pretty nice set of stuff, even if it’s fairly boring. The Rest

As we saw in the announcement at AdeptiCon , the War Dog Karnivore is a dedicated melee monster, equipped with a reaper chaintalon for sweeping away lesser chaff and a slaughterclaw for crushing hard targets. Unburdened by ammunition stowage, the Karnivore’s impetuous spirit also gives it an extra burst of speed, so it won’t be left languishing in no man’s land.Daemonic Guidance System: Shoot a shieldbreaker missile at a character without LOS. This would only really be good if Tyrant Castellans popping Trail of Destruction were common. Since they aren’t, it’s terrible.

Skyreaper Protocols: Covered earlier, gives a Helverin War Dog re-rolls against fliers. Very good if you have one in your list, but tragically worded so it doesn’t cross-apply to Moiraxes. To put (molten, tainted) icing on the cake, the Knight Desecrator helps improve the accuracy of your War Dogs. The Valiant basically falls down on those grounds as well. The goal with a Chaos Knight detachment is to sneak in three full fledged LOWs as cheaply as possible so you still have room for some Lords Discordant or a Daemon bomb, and spending 600pts on a big hefty boi just doesn’t contribute to that. In more casual games it’s probably be fine as either Infernal (to get the damage boost on the flamer) or Iconoclast (taking the Veil of Merengard and re-roll 1s to wound against vehicles so the Harpoon is one-shotting a tank a turn), but it’s done nothing on the top tables. Knight Desecrator You can only select the Despair ability if you selected the Despair or Doom ability in the previous battle round.

What’s in the Box?

The Knight Desecrator is a truly imposing kit in every sense of the word – it towers over most other models on the tabletop and a choice of vicious faceplates and optional chains, pipes, spikes and horns allow you to customise your Knight, making it as malicious as you want. They can also be armed with a choice of either reaper chainsword or thunderstrike gauntlet with which to crush any foe that survives a barrage from its laser destructor. Basically every Infernal Knight should either have an avenger gatling cannon or be a Castigator, and real play experience has generally suggested that the thermal is cheap enough that you always want it over the melee choices, so this is Infernal option 1 – the slightly cheaper one. Unless you’re very confident that there will be a lot of other Knights or T8 vehicles this is probably the safer bet, as it’s 37pts cheaper than the battle cannon option. Avenger/Battle Cannon Infernals Piloting mighty walking war engines, bearing terrible armaments from the time of man’s greatness, they were blazing torches in the dark. When the Emperor’s Great Crusade reunited mankind’s lost domains, the Knight worlds pledged their blades to his cause. Compounding this is the limited access Chaos has to “relevant” small Battalions. In Imperium, a Loyal 32 (2 Company Commanders, 3 Infantry squads) and a Graia Rusty 17 (Two Tech-priest Enginseers and 15 Skitarii) make a perfect complement to filling out the rest of your army with Knights – both Battalions add something to your list (highly mobile troops from the Guard, anti-psychic + Knight repair from Graia) and come in at a bargain price (345pts total for the combined barest bones versions). Chaos has cheap Battalions, but they aren’t nearly as helpful. You can certainly do a very cheap Daemon Battalion, but it doesn’t add that much to the Knights. The Spiky 17 (Red Corsairs Battalion) adding 8 CP is great, but it’s 315 points at its very cheapest (more if you want some actual relevant units), and 15 1-wound models with boltguns don’t do a lot for you strategically. These knights can’t gain enhancements or be your army Warlord, but this does allow your Chaos Space Marines, World Eaters, or even Chaos Daemons to enjoy some super-heavy walker support.