Codex Imperial Knights might be here a little later than it’s Chaotic sibling, but it’s no less exciting for Imperial Knight players who have been eagerly waiting for it’s arrival.

Up for pre order today alongside the repackaged Knight Questoris kit (which now contains a new Knight variant, the Defender), Codex Imperial Knights is one of the final Codexes to release for Warhammer 40k 10th Edition. With the Chaos Knights performing really well at the moment, we’ll be taking a deep dive into what has changed for the Imperial Knights, what rules have been updated and checking out the rules for the brand new Knight Defender. We’ve also been lucky enough to check out the Knight Questoris Kit and build and painted the Defender to see what it looks like in the flesh.

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us over Codex Imperial Knights and the Knight Questoris kit to check out on the site. If you would like to support the site then why not order your Knight goodies through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

We’ve also filmed a full unboxing and review of the Knight Defender which you can see on YouTube or just below!

So without further ado, let’s dive into the new Codex and check out what’s changed!

Codex Imperial Knights (2025) Review

It seems like only yesterday that Games Workshop released the first Imperial Knights Codex and that very first kit – It’s safe to say they were ridiculously popular, being one of the largest plastic kits at the time, and appealed because they could be taken in numerous different armies.

Fast forward to 2025 and the latest Codex is finally up for pre order! While the Chaos Knights may have had a head start, there’s lots of fun to be had in the Imperial version too.

For starters, as with the other 10th edition Codexes this is a gorgeous book. Filled with beautiful army shots, some brilliant art and filled with lore and background there’s a lot to get your teeth into either a newcomer or existing player.

One of the things that is really useful for Knight players looking to get lore-accurate heraldry on your Knights are full backgrounds to the Knight Households – these include the markings and names of a couple of the households, and for some even includes the names and ranks of the pilots. I really like this as it helps with building a narrative around your army and leaning into the fact that these arent just big robots, they are steeds of noble pilots who are leading them to battle!

The Freeblades and Canis Rex also get some love, but not quite to the depth that the households get, which I feel is a shame, as there’s lots that could be done to bring these to life. As ever there’s some great short stories in the book too alongside guides for colour and transfer placings too. For someone new to Knights this is a great set of info to get your Knights looking as lore-accurate as possible!

There’s also a full painting guide for House Terryn too, which has some decent info that can be applied to any Knight, and a guide to painting the chevrons of House Raven. Some of this stuff has been printed in previous Codexes, but I’m glad it’s still here. With Knights not having a spearhead I feel it’s good that they have used those pages for stuff like this

Codex Imperial Knights – Army Rules

So on to the rules themselves in Codex Imperial Knights! A few things have been tweaked since the Index in how the army works.

Bondsman is the same, with each “big” Knight having some abilities that trigger off Armigers that are within 12″, usually giving your smaller Knights a bonus for being nearby them. As you can imagine this encourages a mixture of both in your army.

As before, the Super Heavy Walker rules stay the same – allowing you to move through enemy models and ignore low sections of terrain.

We also keep the Freeblade rules which allows you to take a Knight or 3 Arimgers in any Imperium army.

Where things do change up are in the Code Chivalric rules. These consist of a “Deed” your Knights are trying to complete during the battle. This could be to kill a specific hero, control more objectives than your opponent or destroy more units than the number of the battle round (For example kill 3 units in Battle Round 2) These can either be picked at the start of the battle or randomly generated (with more rewards granted if you randomly generate one)

Once done you get a “Quality” unlocked for your Knights – this can be rerolling a hit and wound each time it shoots or fights, increasing movement and charge moves or increasing control or leadership. Again these can be picked or randomly generated.

Once you’ve completed the Deed your entire army becomes “honoured” (which triggers other abilities in the army) and you get a bonus 2 CP if you picked your Deed/Quality or 3 CP if you rolled at random. I really like the reward of extra CP if you decide to roll for it, and feel this is what I’ll probably be doing!

Detachments

There’s 4 detachments in the new Codex, and they cover a couple of different playstyles.

Valourstrike Lance is a cool one – in this you get to reroll any advance moves, and if you do advance then all your weapons gain the Assault rule. Basically Knights charging headlong into battle with guns blazing!

There’s some really nice enhancements in this one – Bearer of the Iron Chalice allows you to heal a Knight within 12″ for D3 wounds every turn, which actually increases to 3 if honoured. Bearer of the Evanescent Ion gives a friendly Knight Stealth until next turn, which is all kinds of hilarious! Bearer of the Judicant’s Helm allows a friendly Knight to ignore cover, and Bearer of the Lancer’s Sigil allows a friendly model to reroll charges. You’ll notice that all of these give benefits to everyone other than the bearer, which is kind of cool and makes you think about which ones you want to dish out.

Strats are fun for this one too, including the ability to give up to three Knights the Lance rule, give three knights that are within 9″ of each other Lethal hits or increase the movement of Knights that are nearby each other – again a lot of these affect up to 3 Knights at a time, which is pretty cool.

Gate Warden Lance is all about knights holding the line. At the start of the first battle round you draw a line between two objectives, and while your Knights are are standing on that line they get Sustained Hits 1 and ignore any shooting penalties. This is really cool and dials up the damage that your Knights can put out if they spike those sustained hits rolls!

Most of the enhancements lean into this more with abilities that trigger when the bearer is on the line. Acquisitor at Arms allows you to add the Knight’s OC to your friendly Armigers, making them very good at holding objectives. Purgations Hand allows a model on the line to reroll hits and wounds of 1. Augury Halo gives your Knight Ignore Cover while on the line and finally Vengeful Tread allows you to Tank Shock for free.

Like with the enhancements, most of the strats want your units to be fighting on the line. Drive Them Out for example gives you critical 5+ while on the line (which helps with those Sustained hits!), while Steadfast Superiority gives you re-rolls to hits while on the line. Lancebreaker is a nice defensive strat that makes the enemy -1 to wound your Knight if it is standing on the line, if the strength of the weapon targeting it is higher than it’s toughness.

Questoris Companions is the next detachment in Codex Imperial Knights, and this also looks like a fun one to try out. basically it allows you to generate a new Deed and Quality each time you complete one, and you get to keep the bonuses of all the ones you’ve completed. Essentially this allows you to complete all of them by the end of the game and have some seriously tooled out Knights that can reroll a hit and wound, and move faster and have higher OC and leadership! There’s no real downside here – but because of that all of the Enhancements are only single use, making them a little less appealing. There’s some good stuff here such as the ability to do splash mortal wounds or gain sustained hits 2, but one use only makes them quite expensive to take compared to other detachments.

This detachment favours Titanic models over Armigers, with all of the strats having no affect on Armigers. There’s some good abilities here though, such as giving a model a 6+ FNP, Allowing models to charge after falling back or advancing or even adding 1 to hit and wound rolls when targeting other Monsters, Titanic or Walker units. For people who rather big Knights over little ones this is probably a good choice, I just wish that all the enhancements were not single use only.

Spearhead at Arms is all about Armiger spam! Firstly, it makes Armigers Battleline – allowing you to flood the board with them! In addition when you trigger a Bonded ability it can go on 3 Armigers rather that just one. This is really good and I feel we will see quite a bit of Armiger spam with this one in the book.

While you can go full Armiger if you want to, you’ll still want to bring a Knight to take advantage of Bonded abilities and the enhancements. Each of these basically makes their bonded ability better by offering an additional special rule – Re roll hits of 1, gain the precision rule, ignore hit and wound modifiers or use counter offensive for free. There’s options for all here, and I like that this allows you to tailer somewhat for your list.

For the strategems, most of these revolve around picking a either a long Armiger, or a large Knight plus all nearby Armigers affected by their bonded rule, making them suitable for multiple builds of army here but at their best when its a single Knight and 3 Armigers. There’s some good stuff such as increasing your AP, or dropping the AP of incoming fire, adding 1 to hit rolls or even giving Armigers rapid fire 1 or the ability to go into strategic reserves. I think this is going to be a popular pick in Codex Imperial Knights, and feel this is the most “competitive” of the detachments.

Datasheets

So what’s changed in the book? We’re going to be having a dive into the updated Datasheets in the book and will call out any changes – some small things may slip through, but these should be the main differences compared to the Index lists.

Knight Castellan – Their OC has dropped a little from 10 to 8 and they how punch a little harder with their guns, the Plasma Decimator now Ap 3 base and Ap 4 when supercharged! this makes it a brilliant marine killer now. It’s also even better at killing Monsters or Vehicles with its random damage weapons as it can now reroll any damage roll rather than just 1s

Knight Valiant – This has had some pretty good rules changes to the Thundercoil Harpoon. The base damage of it is now 10 rather than 12, it hits on a 3+ and has lost all the “anti” rules it has, but it now has the chance of dealing D3 mortal wounds to everything within 6″ of the target, which is pretty cool for some splash damage! Oh, and it also gets D3 shots and Blast too! Very cool

Knight Paladin – The humble Knight paladin gets a small update, with it now improving the AP of its ranged weapons by 1 if it targets the closest target, making it’s Battlecanon more reliable. Has also lost some OC like all the other Knights

Knight Errant – No big changes here other than the dropped OC

Knight Gallant – Some small updates for this, as it now can consolidate an extra 3″ as long as it can get into Engagement Range with that move. Sadly it’s no longer -1 to hit in close combat.

Knight Warden – The role of the Knight Warden has changed somewhat with it now having a Bondsman ability that gives Armigers Sustained hits and Ignore Cover, as the old ability it had has shifted to the new Defender.

Knight Crusader – No real changes here other than dropped OC. It still can be given a selection of ranged weapons from the other Knights and gets Sustained Hits if it stands still.

Knight Defender – The new kid on the block, and it’s really cool! It’s bonded ability is the old rule from the warden, reducing the incoming damage on a nearby Armiger. What you take this thing for is it’s Shield Generator though – it has a 4+ inv safe itself, and if this Knight is even partially obscuring any other Knights then they also get a 4+ invulnerable save and the benefit of cover too! I really like this and this Knight will quickly become a bodyguard, getting in the way of enemy shots and making your other Knights stay in the fight longer. It’s weapons are pretty good too – The Plasma Executioner is basically the old profile off the Castellan, while the Conversion beamer is a 3 shot S12 weapon with damage 4 and sustained hits D3 (And these trigger on a 4+ if the model is more than 18″ from its target) – I really like this Knight and think it’s going to be a popular one in Codex Imperial Knights

The new Knight Questoris kit builds all of the variants other than the Preceptor and Canis Rex, and the main reason most people will be picking it up is for the new Defender.

Most people reading this will have built many, many Knights but you can see the new sprue in the above images. It’s a pretty small additional sprue, but it looks really nice when build up and painted.

I’ve painted this one up to match my existing Knight army, and I love the look of both the shield generator sitting on top and both of the new weapons. The Knight kit is an old one, but I feel it still stands up to many other kits today, and the collection of sprues in the box allows you to build pretty much whatever you like!

Knight Preceptor – Available in a separate box, the Knight Preceptor has had a couple of tweaks too. It now gets to pick a model at the start of the battle, and allows it to reroll wounds against that target. Once it’s killed the target it gets to pick a fresh one. The Bonded ability interacts with this by giving a nearby Armiger reroll wounds against the same target.

Canis Rex – The Epic Hero was always pretty popular in part due to his ability to get critical hits on a 5+. In the new Codex Imperial Knights that’s no longer the case and he instead allows a battleshocked Imperium model within 12″ to not be battleshocked. Not quite as cool, but would still have some use taking. I also feel this captures the feeling of him turning up and rousing spirits when they are most needed. He still has the ability to use a strat for 0CP though, and his melee attacks are still bananas good!

Armiger Helverin – This has changed quite a bit. Previously it used to have Anti-Fly 2+ making them very good against some armies. Instead it now makes a unit hit by the autocannons have -1 to hit. I feel that GW have decided that a lot of “anti” weapons were a little too powerful and are now course correcting a little.

Armiger Warglaive – The Warglaive has also had some changes, now being a close combat power house – it gets to increase it’s attacks when charging, which seems more reliable than the sustained hits rule it used to have.

Crusade

The book ends with a very cool Crusade section that puts a real focus on the Pilots of your Knights. The Knights are just the vehicles they are using, with the Pilots being the real focus of your Crusade. They can gain Chivalric Points for doing suitably heroic deeds and going on quests such as striking down monsters or killing heroes, and these points can be spent on ranking up your Pilots through a number of different skill trees. Each of these Masteries has 3 different levels with the bonus increasing as your hero ranks up. So for example maybe they have heralded from mars and follow the Mastery of Mechanisms. This allows them to heal a friendly Knight for D3 in the hero phase, but get them up to the top level of it and they heal 3+D3.

If a Knight is destroyed your Pilot still exists, you’ll just need to assign them to a new Knight by replacing the current pilot or purchasing a new one. I really like this approach as it feels like it’s the Pilot with the skills, not the Knight itself, and if they become particularly good at a specialist role you can then assign them to a different Engine to fight in.

All the usual upgrades, battle scars and agendas are also included too.

Summary

So what do I think of the new Codex Imperial Knights? Yes some thing have gone or changed – I know some people won’t be happy that army wide Feel no pain is a thing of the past, but honestly I feel the new detachments make things interesting without simply relying on making Knights hard to kill. there’s now a nice mix of play styles from flooding the board with Armigers to taking nothing but big Knights and everything in between. i feel the rules changes on the units also make them feel more like they are trying to represent in the lore, and gives each of the Knights their own distinct role. it’s always a strange one being one of the last few Codexes in an edition, especially if the next edition is compatible with the Codexes from this one – so there’s always a chance that some of the changes we have seen will be based on things that we are going to see in 11th Edition.

With only Drukhari left to go, I don’t think it’s going to be too long till we start to see things wind down for 10th Edition, and this is a fun and thematic Codex to see out the rest of the edition with.

Codex Imperial Knights is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 20th September

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews with free copies for review purposes.

Published by Matt Crowther

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