The Imperial Knight Destrier is here to reinforce the forces of the Imperium, bring a brand new pattern Knight Chassis equipped with rocket boosters to help it close the distance on the enemies of Mankind. In this full unboxing and review we’ll be checking out the kit, seeing now it goes together and painting up the Imperial Knight Destrier to see what it looks like in the flesh and how it stands up against other Knight models.

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us these over a little early to check out on the site! If you would like to support the site then why not pick up your models through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

We also have full reviews of all the other Eye of Terror releases right here on the site.

We’ve also done a full unboxing video which you can see below or over on YouTube

So without further ado let’s check out the Imperial Knight Destrier

Imperial Knight Destrier

It’s been a while since we’ve had a new Pattern of Knight, and I was interested when we learned that there was a new one coming that sat somewhere between an Armiger and a Questoris. And I have to be honest I was a little surprised when I saw the price tag – £105! Now maybe it was just me, but from the preview I was expecting this to sit just a little larger than an Armiger and so that seemed very expensive to me. Thankfully, it’s actually pretty much as tall as a Questoris, just sitting a little slimmer and on a slightly smaller base.

Everyone with a Knight army will know the pains of having multiple Knights all striding forward in the same pose, but thankfully that is something they have addressed in the new kit. This time around there’s two different assembly options for having the left or right forward and even a 3rd “advanced” option that has you shave off the locator nubs and position it any way you want! This is a great change and I hope that in the future we see a recut Questoris kit that allows you to do the same! Hopefully all future Knights are just as posable, as it let’s you do some fun stuff with positioning and making things a little more dramatic.

I opted for duel guns for my Imperial Knight Destrier with a pose of him swinging around to fire. I also built it so that the top hatch was open in order to see the crew member inside. You can of course opt to glue this shut but I like the detail and made it stand out from my other Knights. Some people will leave the guns to be moved mid-game, but I find if you glue them in place you can get some more natural and dynamic poses compared to the “weapons flop” you tend to get if you don’t glue them.

The Destrier is absolutely gorgeous when built and I’m already looking forward to building up another one, perhaps more geared for close combat.

So how does it stack up to other Knights? Well, the Destrier is a little smaller and slimmer than a Questoris, but still has a nice bulk to it and fills a similar silhouette on the battlefield. But it’s more slender form means that it can sneak through smaller gaps that it’s wider brother cant

Compared to an Armiger it’s considerably larger and I feel it does fill a really nice role of a mid-way Knight between the two of them.

So what about rules?

Clocking in at 250 points this fills a niche within the Knights list, making list building a little more interesting. It’s quick at 12″ and can move an additional D3 inches every time it moves too with its ram jets – this applies to when it advances too! At toughness 10 and 18 wounds its still pretty tough and still boasts a 3+ save and 5+ Inv.

From a weapons point of view the Melee ones are very good – boasting decent damage output, AP and damage, with the Knight getting additional attacks if you give it both weapons. I opted to build mine with duel guns as I hadn’t seen the rules yet, but I do still think there’s a place for this loadout. Firstly, it looks cool, which always comes before anything else! But seriously, a duel gun Imperial Knight Destrier can put out a lot of fire power, with up to 30 damage 2 shots being pumped out – yes, these are only AP1, but you have volume of fire here and with the strength of those guns you’ve got a good chance of wounding a lot of 2 wound targets too – it also ignores cover when shooting into cover, which based on the information that has been shared might be something very handy to have going into 11th Edition…

Im summary I think this is an ace kit, and I’ll be picking up another one to add to my force soon!

The Imperial Knight Destrier is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 18th April

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