Can I Unleash Havoc On Some Daemons? Imperial Knights Battle Report
Last time, I talked about my first "real" Warhammer 40K tenth edition game. In that game, I learned how important movement and placement was for my Imperial Knights. Clearly, having had my butt handed to me so severely, I would never make those mistakes again.
Yeah….okay. We'll see about that later.
I *did* modify my list based on my first game. Given how slowly I was able to get across the field, I adjusted my warden to have the enhancement that allowed him to teleport across the field. Secondly, I swapped out the vindicare assassin for a callidus assassin for the same reason - giving me two units that I could get across the map quickly.
Lastly, I recognized that "Tactical Objectives", where you are randomly dealt secondary objectives, was probably not the right play for Imperial Knights. While tactical gives you more potential points, they are too situational for a Knights player. So I decided to go with fixed secondary objectives for my second game.
Game 2: Imperial Knights vs. Chaos Daemons
In 9th edition, I hated playing daemons with my Knights. Especially when I first started playing them and I was unfamiliar with their strategems, I would find myself quickly losing to them. So when I got asked to play against a Daemons army, it was another game where I was not looking forward to the outcome. However, I also knew that this list featured a lot of characters, so I loaded up my secondaries with "Bring them Down" (kill monster/vehicle units) and "Assassination" (kill characters). Most of the daemon characters I was facing were monsters, so it worked in my favor.
The opening dice rolls go into my favor, and I get to go first! Huzzah, now I can make sure to do some damage….oh wait. I get to the very first step of my turn and realize I already screwed up. Remember what I said about placement? Well, it turns out I stuck my Knight Crusader off in the corner. That's fine, its better for him to stay still, and he can see most of the battlefield. Except I put the enhancement on him to let him target 2 armigers with his bondman abilities. As you can see in the picture above…there's only 1 armiger near him. So for the entire game, he was able to only give one armiger a bondsman ability.
Oops…
Ok, so let's get started. First thing I do is get armigers on as many points as possible. Using the cover that's nearby, I try and place them so that they won't get *immediately* blown off the board. The mission we are playing is "Scorched Earth", which means as we get into later turns of the game I can use units to get rid of objective points if I need to. Right now, I've secured 3 of the 5 points, but now it's time for the daemons to roll out.
Time to Terrorize
The daemons army I was facing utilized its characters to blanket each other and protect them from being attacked outside of 12". Basically they formed a bubble of evil that I couldn't pop from far away. But it also meant that they tended to stick together to protect each other. So my knights on the far side of the board were relatively safe for the moment. Meanwhile, the daemons marched towards my lone armiger on the right side of the board (from my point of view). They managed to get some licks in, but the armiger held its ground.
Then it was my turn again. Using the Warden and Callidus abilities, I moved them into position to protect the armiger. With there being 4 large daemons marching to this objective, I knew that things could easily swing against me at the roll of a dice. Therefore, I decided to use the assassin to do the Scorched earth action. With a knight and 2 armigers there, it meant it had a greater chance of succeeding thanks to the assassin's lone operative ability.
Now, it was time to go to work. With daemons able to shrug off so many wounds with their invuln saves, I knew the only chance I had was to focus fire them down one at a time. So the Warden got to show off in this game, since it died so quickly last time. I managed to take out not only one of his characters but his warlord as well, popping the bubble and turning the tides in my favor. However, the knights in the area didn't live long enough to enjoy it, as with all the vehicles and monsters in the area, *several* explosions went off, cleaning up several of the units that were on that side of the board.
A Barren Board State
You'll see that the board looks a lot cleaner at this point, which is the top of Turn 3. I still have the Knight Crusader and 2 Armigers, while there is one daemon character left and two smaller units on the board. I moved up one of the armigers to the center objective point so that I could still earn points while working on those remaining daemons.
Meanwhile, the Knight Crusader had to give up its sustained hits by moving towards the far end of the board. You see, there was a small unit of daemons there that was earning points by being in one of the three corners. While the giant throw down was happening on the right side of the board, the Crusader had been trying and failing to whittle down those units. Mostly because it was only in range of about half its weapons. So I needed to get the knight into position so that I could have more weapons available to get through those dang invuln saves.
But…I had miscounted above.
There was a second daemon character still alive, and it was time for it to shine. It had been in reserve this whole time, and I had forgot about it. It lands on my opponent's turn, getting up close and personal with the Crusader. I watched in vain as my second Knight blew up, leaving me with only the two armigers. By unit count, things looked pretty tight.
Points-wise, I had held onto 2-3 markers for most of the game, so I had a tiny bit of a buffer. At the top of turn 4, I used my center armiger to clean up the remaining small daemons and last daemon character. This left just the one daemon character left vs my 2 armigers. If this were Turns 2 or 3, things might have been bad. But considering at this point we are at the end of turn 4, my opponent realized that there was not enough time to finish off my armigers to make up the points difference. He conceded, giving me my first 10th edition win!
Conclusion
I *still* have a terrible time with positioning. I'm getting better, but I think I'm going to switch up my enhancements. While the crusader's improved shooting buff is great to give to multiple armigers, it means making sure to keep 2 nearby which can be very tricky.
Likewise, I know the Warden is the "meta" favorite right now, but I want to try out the Knight Errant. Giving the assault keyword to the armigers, while giving *it* the 2-armiger bondsman enhancement may help with getting my units around the board faster.
That Cerastus Knight Lancer does look oh so tempting……