Imperial Knights will be stomping into the new edition in style well not as much style as their chaos counterparts but still enough to make big robots look cool.

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Army Rules

The army rule for imperial knights is called Code Chivalric, as you would expect from honourable knights this army rule makes them take an oath at the beginning of the game which if your imperial knights complete the deed for awards 3 ! additional command points and you can say your army is honoured you also get the oath ability regardless so the deed is almost an extra secondary. 

The oaths you can take are =

• Lay Low the Tyrant – This oath gives each of your knights a re-roll to hit and to wound of a 1 when shooting or fighting in combat and the deed you need to complete to be honoured is to destroy the enemy warlord.
• Reclaim the Land – This oath gives your knights +1 to your movement characteristic , advance and charge rolls (which is okay but I much prefer the Lay Low the Tyrant oath) and the deed is control on objective in your opponents deployment zone. 

Imperial Knights also get the Bondsman rule which allows Questoris imperial knights with the Bondsman keyword to pick a friendly Armiger model within 12″ of them in your command phase and they both benefit from the bondsman ability on the Questoris knight’s datasheet.

Knights are also super heavy walkers which means they can ignore models that are not titanic and terrain features that are 4″ or smaller when making normal, advance or fall back moves.

Similar to the Chaos Knights the Imperial Knights have a rule called Freeblades which allows you to take a single titanic knight or 3 armiger knights in any Imperium army without breaking the armies’ faction.

Detachment Rule

Imperial Knights gain access to the Noble Lance detachment which gives them the Indomitable Heroes rule which confers the feel no 6+ ability and if your army is honoured that becomes a 5+ feel no pain.

Enhancements

• Revered Knight (Aura) – Imperial knight models within 6″ get +1 leadership and if your army is honoured the range is increased to 12″.
• Mysterious Guardian – This knight has the deep strike rule and at the end of your opponents turn if the bearer is not in combat then it can be removed from the table and can deep strike back on to the board next turn.
• Mythic Hero – Questoris knight only and this enhancement allows that knight to pick 2 armiger models for its bondsman ability instead of just 1.
• Banner of the Macharius – If this knight captures an objective then that objective remains under your control until your opponent takes control of that objective.
• Unyielding Paragon – Questoris model only, the bearer worsens the armour penetration characteristic of attacks that target it by 1.

Stratagems

• Shoulder the Burden 2CP – This stratagem gives a single imperial knight hat has lost any wounds +1 move, toughness, save, leadership, to hit and objective control until the start of your next command phase once per game.
• Rotate Ion Shields 1CP – After your opponent targets one of your knight models in their shooting phase you can use this stratagem and until the end of the phase this knight gets a 4+ invulnerable save.
• Thunderstomp 1CP – You can pick a knight model in the fight phase who cannot target monsters or vehicles but all melee weapons the bearer is equipped with gain the devastating wounds ability.
• Squires Duty 1CP – Pick 2 armiger models and one enemy unit and those armigers increase the strength and armour penetration of weapons by 1 when targeting that enemy unit if your army is honoured they also gain +1 to the damage of their weapons as well.
• Trophy Claim 1CP – This stratagem gives one of your knight models +1 to wound against an enemy unit in your shooting or fight phase and if you kill that enemy unit in that chosen phase you gain 1CP however should you fail to kill that enemy unit you cannot use this stratagem again for the rest of the game.
• Valiant Last Stand 1CP – This stratagem allows one of your knights that has just been killed in the fight phase to fight before it dies or rolls its deadly demise roll.

Datasheets

What I really like about the data sheets in the imperial knight index is the Questoris knight’s bondsman abilities, the Knight Paladin can give itself and an armiger model the lethal hits and lance abilities while the Knight Errant’s bondsmen rule gives out re-roll advance moves and changes its ranged weapons to have the assault ability both of which are amazing. The bondsmen ability makes all the Questoris knights worth taking and it adds a lot of flavour to list building especially when they are backed up by their squires ( armigers).

Did I pick the wrong type of knights, are imperial knights more fun than their chaos ones ?

Summary

I genuinely really like what they have done with imperial knights in this index, the oaths make the army feel like knights and the bondsmen rule creates soo much synergy between units that every unit is worth taking depending on whether you want a shooting army, combat army or a mix of the two. Dare I say this index has made me want to collect a knight army.

Published by Andy

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