Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Questoris Knight Crusade (30k)

Why Play Questoris Knights

FW have decided in their infinite wisdom to make it viable to be able to field an entire detachment of Imperial Knights, and so we get this, an army where you can have Knights actually be part of a regular force organization chart. You can have specialist Fast Attack Knights, Elite Knights. Heavy Support Knights and HQ Knights.

Admittedly though your models will be immune to small-arms fire and any melee attacks of S6 or less. That is not an excuse to get complacent as each Knight lost will diminish your army considerably.

Special Rules

• Ion Shield - Your Knights get a 4++ save against shooting on a facing of their choice, chosen each turn.
  • ALWAYS remember to position your Ion Shield for each knight at the start of your opponents shooting phase, don't wait for him to start rolling, otherwise he'll just assume it has the same position as the previous phase.

Questoris Knight Crusade Detachment

Nothing really special with this army, besides the whole KNIGHTS EVERYWHERE bit. Your FOC is kinda like normal, but you lose one compulsory Troops choice meaning your army must consist of two knights minimum, and also loses a HS choice, and an FA choice. If you're truly desperate/filthy rich, you could make a legit Titan your Lord of War.

Warlord Traits

1. Hell Rider - Warlord & Knights within 12" get +1 to Movement and to wound/armour penetration on turn 1 of a game.
2. Glorious Renown - Friendly units within 12" may re-roll failed morale checks and enemies suffer -2 to Ld
3. Favoured of Mars - One Knights weapon (singular) gains Master Crafted
4. Lord of the Abyss - Warlord gets Monster Hunter and Adamantium Will
5. Puissant Commander - +1 to Seize the Initiative and -1 to enemy reserve rolls
6. Indomitable - It Will Not Die. Enjoy being the 30K equivalent of Gerantius.

List Analysis

There is a special rule called Household Rank where each Knight must be selected for one of these force org slots, gaining special rules and additional costs based on the selection. Issue is that this is only available to a detachments made up using the Questoris Knight Crusade Detachment FOC or an Allied FOC and can't be used if you bring knights to other detachments or use other FOC types.

HQ Ranks

• 0-1 Seneschal - +1 WS/BS and +1 to ANY Invuls, better than 40K because some knights (ie: the Lancer) have close combat invulnerable saves which can now be improved, you want these guys in the lead. He also gives WT re-rolls so you may end up with a Master-Crafted D-weapon!

• 0-1 Lord Scion - +1 WS/BS. It's half the cost of the Seneschal for half the benefits. It's not a bad choice if you're strapped for options, but do aim for the one above moreso.

• Arch Magos Draykavac (Traitors only) - a non-Knight special character for your army who must be the warlord if this is your primary detachment, also fills that "costs nearly as much as a Land Raider" role, but thankfully it doesn't mean much in an army of Super-Heavy walkers. He's a Tech Priest with a Paragon Blade, Graviton Gun, is Relentless, has Toughness 6 and can be bought an Abeyant if you want to pay more points.
  • He's great in a Knight Army because he can repair hull points due to the Battlesmith rule and allows you to bring Castellax as non-compulsory Troops and Vorax as Fast Attack which can provide your army much more flavour.
  • Also, if he's the Warlord he adds +1 to Charge & Sweep distances for all walkers, superheavy walkers and monstrous creatures in his detachment in addition to his unique warlord trait of granting Preferred Enemy (Infantry) to EVERYTHING in his detachment as long as they're sitting within 3" of an objective.

Elite Ranks

• Preceptor - While this guy's alive, other knights in reserve get +1 on their rolls. In addition, all knights within 6" get Interceptor and can Overwatch with anything they have, even though it usually can't happen. If you have any Hellfire weapons, they'll auto-score d6 hits.

• 0-1 Aucteller - You get to choose a sworn enemy: A Warlord, a LoW that doesn't fly, a Superheavy Walker or tank, or a GC. If your Actueller kills it, you win d3 Victory Points. If someone else kills it, you win nothing, and if the sworn enemy's still alive, your enemy gets 1 VP. If your enemy ever kills the Actueller, then the knight gets one last attack at initiative against the enemy before blowing up. Take the one guy you know can hold up in a fight if you know you're up against something titan-killy, or just take someone who can flatten the flimsy warlord quickly.

• Legendary Freeblade -

Troop Ranks

Note: Troop Knights all gain the ability to score in Age of Darkness Missions, or Objective Secured in Maelstrom of War / Eternal battles mission.

• Scion Martial - your basic Knight, costs you nothing extra but gains no other special rules, use to fill compulsory troops slots and claim objectives.

• Scion Aspirant - drops the WS, BS and Ion Shield invulnerable save by 1 at a saving of -35 smackeroos, The downside is that you can never have more of these guys than any other knights (in total), so you can't plan on using the savings of several knights just to cheese up one particular monster knight, but in particularly large games you can fill your troops slots with them so long as you have an equal number of knights across other slots.

Fast Attack Ranks

• Scion Dolorous - Re-roll all failed charges and sweeping advances. Essentially, make this a melee specialist, because they need to charge at everything they see.

• Scion Uhlan - While free, you have to lose 1 AV to the front to gain Scout and Hit & Run. They also lose the ability to reliably shoot at long distances, being forced to snap-shots at targets 24" away, which means Blast weapons cease to function (since they can't be snap-fired)

Heavy Support Ranks

• Scion Arbalester - You get Tank Hunter and if you don't move, you also get Skyfire. Fucking murder with the proper setup. Is Golden on when parked next to a Preceptor to gain interceptor.

• Scion Implacable - Get +1 to all building damage and can re-roll stomps. It also gains a 5+ invul against melta bombs, but it can never sweep.

Unit Analysis

Questoris Knight Paladin

Your basic Knight with a "Questoris Battle Cannon", which unlike the 40k counterpart is a Strength 6, Ordnance 3 weapon, but it can be replaced with the more familiar (and higher strength) Rapid-Fire Battle-cannon for free.

Its 2 Heavy Stubbers may also be upgraded to Bio-Corrosive Rounds which reduce its range by 6" but grant them the Poisoned special rule, making them a "bit" more of a threat against high toughness units (such as Primarchs or Monstrous Creatures), but mostly this has no significant impact vs MEQ... and it has its Reaper Chainsword for hitting things with.

Both types of cannon are the general purpose weapons that fire multiple AP3 large blast templates and are Ordnance, meaning it gets several chances at trying to penetrate vehicle armour. In particular, the Questoris cannon is also very good at wiping out large units of enemy soldiers (I'm looking at you Legion Marine squads. But for more general uses switch to the Battle-Cannon instead since it does better against vehicles,

While the Chainsword is entirely overkill against most things, you're better off with the stomp attacks unless you are fighting a superheavy, monstrous creature or high value enemy warriors such as Primarchs. But you get both Stomp Attacks and chainsword anyway, so you're very likely to chew things up in melee, just be aware of what your opponent is bringing against you.

Questoris Knights may also be upgraded with Occular Augmetics which grant Night Fighting but the epic ability to re-roll 1s on Vehicle damage tables AND on Destroyer tables so long as the target was within 12", meaning death to things struck by your sword ranged weapons only.

Paladins make decent Knights for pretty much any Household rank.

Questoris Knight Errant

Very similar to the Paladin, though with a Thermal Cannon which is S9 AP1 for chewing up Terminators & Land Raiders. For all other tasks look to the Paladin instead.

The shorter range means that it's going to be much closer to the center of the table where it will inevitably start taking your opponent's heavy weapons fire and is also more likely to get drawn into close combat. So it is a good option for a Seneschal/Lord Scion to give him more stamina against enemy heavy weapons and better odds in melee.

Either that or use it as a flanking Aucteller (to benefit from its good chances of killing things in one-shot) or Dolorous (since it's going to be close anyway) and stalk up one side of your opponent's battle line looking for good targets.

Like the Paladin, you can buy Occular Augmetics & Bio-Corrosive rounds.

Questoris Knight Magaera

One of the "standard" sized (compared to the Cerastus) Imperial Knights, armed with a host of funky new archaeotech gear:

First, his Ion Shield also reduces the strength of incoming shots and it also has equivalent to IWND (6+ instead of 5+), meaning it has a bit more survivability than your regular knight.

It also has a larger variety of ranged weapons than your regular knight too; it's main cannon is a Lightning Cannon, which is S7 so it can't insta-gib things like the Battle or Thermal Cannon can, but it does have shredding and rending, so it is more likely to wound things and is probably better for you against terminators than the Knight Paladin but worse than the Errant.

As for support weapons, it's got a Plasma Fusil from HH, allowing you some S6 AP3 salvo goodness for dropping MEQ, which does considerably better than the heavy stubber.

In the melee side, you can replace the chainsword with the Siege Claw, which arguably does exactly the same, since D melee weapons are D melee weapons. It only gives you bonuses against fortifications, which were screwed beforehand anyway. But the claw does come with an arm mounted weapon: it's got one of those Rad Cleanser weapons too, which is basically a fleshbane flamer, with the added bonus of dropping the toughness of multi-wound models by 1 if they have taken a wound (doesn't stack). 25 points for a rad cleanser? Definitely not.

As for everything else, it's more likely to go nuclear when it dies, but you don't want to stand next to a dead super-heavy anyway, so that's not a terrible thing. And it does have initiative 2, meaning it's gonna strike last against everything bar fists and hammers which tend not to come in huge numbers. Though the thing to look out for then is melta/haywire bombs, but since Haywire mostly comes with Eldar you were striking last anyway.

Finally, what sort of rank should it hold? It's an infantry killer and fortification buster and NOT a tank hunter or character slayer. So if it's not doing jobs its suited for then it's just a Zombie Knight wandering around being nigh-useless. Use it for forward line-breaking and not trading shots in the back of the field.

Avoid using it for HQ slots unless you absolutely have to due to a lack of models for other jobs as WS upgrades are neither here nor there when the damage output is practically the same as any other knights (except that I2 will see it dead before it swings against another Knight) and the BS upgrade could be FAR better spent on anything else.

Makes for a good Scion-Implacable, since the added bonus to buildings will combo with its Siege Claw and literally bring houses down. Whilst the re-roll on stomp attacks and added defense against grenades & bombs will mitigate slightly against its poorer melee capabilities.

Questoris Knight Styrix

Just a bit more expensive than the other Questoris, but with a Volkite Cherovile: a 5-shot, Strength 8, AP3 weapon. It also has a Graviton gun, so you can trap people wherever you want so you could set them up for the Volkite goodness.

Like the Magaera it has a Flare Ionic Shield, 6+ IWND and can come with a Siege claw with a Rad-Cleanser, which comes with all the risks implied above, since this is a mere template gun instead of something like Hellstorm or Torrent.

It can also go kaboom more likely, so keep a distance from it if you fear it going boom.

The Styrix is the OTHER candidate for promotion Arbalester (after the Castigator), due to getting skyfire & Tank Hunter on the Cherovile, but is probably more suited for the Preceptor rank, as optimum use of Volkite deflagration depends on targeting infantry.

Cerastus Knight Lancer

Faster and with a completely different load-out to the traditional types of Knight.

The Shock Lance has no blast, and is essentially a rapid fire plasma gun, so it is not as effective against vehicles at range and doesn't really give any benefit against vehicles in melee either over the Reaper Chainsword other than the +1 to Initiative.

Don't forget it's shooting attack has concussive. So it can hunt MC's and other bug things reliably.

What you want to do with this one is get it stuck in to squads of dudes and tear them apart. It is helped here by having an invulnerable save in melee which the other Knights don't get, more attacks, a -1 to hit penalty on enemy superheavy walkers and Gargantuan Creatures, and extra initiative on the charge.

More likely to be shot at by your opponent. Being bigger means it is more likely to present a target, but also being an expensive piece of Forgeworld kit means that it is also a more attractive target for your opponent. Plus, it can't move its shield behind itself.

Makes an acceptable Scion-Arbalester, since its multi-shot S7, tank hunting plasma gun will fry most aircraft easily, but a Castigator or Styrix could both do that job better, and this is your primary melee Knight and you don't want it standing still just to get Skyfire. Also as one of the few knights with a good AP ranged attack (the other being the Errant) you want it focussing on high value targets like terminators or characters.

Makes a good Seneschal since it would then gain a 4+ invulnerable save in melee, and creating a WTF moment when your opponent finds the many of his attacks just bounce off the thing!

If you already have HQ slots filled by something else, then consider the Aucteller, since the Lancer is one of the few knight patterns that is really going to have a good chance at killing that "one guy"

http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Downloads/Product/PDF/L/lancer.pdf

Cerastus Knight Castigator

This guy has a 8 shot str7 bolt cannon which -much like the Fire Raptor's Avenger Bolter- makes a good job of killing MEQ out in the open or knocking hull points off of mid-AV vehicles.

His sword is also pretty nifty, if only S10, with deflagrate and sunder rather than a destroyer weapon. Though deflagrate + tempest attack means that it can theoretically kill every single model in base to base contact with itself, this works better for large units of weaker enemies where a Destroyer melee weapon might have been preferred against smaller, more resilient units. There is always Stomp attacks however.

This guy's real weakness, though, is that he only has the bolt cannon. You need to charge the thing you shoot at, and whatever he shoots at is going to be hurting a lot anyway, so you are going to have issues of overkill when you shoot up 8 Tactical Marines, and charge them just to kill the two leftover guys, not the next unit over.

As for making seneschal? The answer is no The the Castigator doesn't really need WS/BS 5 to make it any better, since Tempest attack hits automatically and its gun is already quite accurate.

Is a top candidate for being a preceptor (or being close to one) or arbalester, due to getting overwatch and/or skyfire on the bolt cannon.

Making it an Arbalester is a REALLY good option, since Tank Hunter works well its melee weapon (as opposed to a Destroyer melee weapon, which doesn't need any help) and having Skyfire on a S7 massive fire-rate weapon that re-rolls failed armour penetration will tear aircraft out of the skies.

http://www.forgeworld.co.uk//Downloads/Product/PDF/C/Castigator.pdf

Cerastus Knight Acheron

This thing is an absolute monster. It is equipped with a Hellstorm S7 AP 3 flamer that will wipe out anything that isn't in Terminator armor. Being a template, it ignores cover, meaning anything in power armor that comes near it might as well just be swept off the table. Since it's a Cerastus Knight, it has flank speed, allowing it to run 3d6". Between that and its 12" movement, you should have no problems getting into place to use the flamer to devastating effect.

Its chainfist of absolute death allows it to reroll 1's on the D table whenever you are hitting something with AV. Essentially, if you punch it, it dies, but that was already true for a D weapon. Also, it has a heavy bolter as a secondary weapon, not a heavy stubber, giving you a tiny bit more punch.

It's an effective horde manager and pairs well with the longer ranged knights, or with an Errant to kill off any Terminators that get close to it. The biggest drawback to this monster, other than having to buy it at forgeworld prices, is that it costs 40pts more than a paladin, and it can't hit anything more than 16" away. You pay a premium, and you are going to have to work to kill people every turn.

Because of it's close ranged nature, making the Acheron your Seneschal is worth considering. It has to get in close to use it's weapons, and a 3+ Invulnerable will vastly improve it's chances of reaching the enemy. That said, the Acheron will lose it's Invulnerable in Melee, unlike the Lancer.

It actually makes a really good Uhlan too, since its shorter ranged weapons aren't really affected by the reduction in ranged distances (the Heavy Bolter is twin-linked, so still retains a bit of function if you really HAVE to shoot has something out of flamer range), whilst the ability to scout coupled with its already increased speed (due to being a Cerastus) means you are going to get the best use out of that flamer.

http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Downloads/Product/PDF/A/Acheron.pdf

Cerastus Knight Atrapos

This is your answer to any superheavies in your way. It gets Twin-Linked against Superheavies or Gargantuans, and considering that one of its weapons is a Strength D Lascutter that can be fired at short-range or in combat, it WILL see use, even if it's just to break buildings because of Wrecker. And the other gun, oh, it's just a Graviton Singularity Cannon which is a S8 AP2 large blast, has Armorbane and Concussive. Also, you roll a d6 before firing that singularity - a 1 means you lose an HP, a 6 turns this singularity into a goddamn VORTEX. On top of that it has 7 HP, IWND 6+ and a Ionic Flare Shield meaning anything not D or haywire can fuck off and die.

All considered, this is a 0-1 option for every 2000 points in this army because you seriously don't want to be on the wrong side of this thing's gun. For these reasons, throwing him in as Actueller or as an Arbalester would probably be the smartest move as those would make the most use of the vehicle-demolishing weapons.

http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/resources/fw_site/fw_pdfs/Horus_Heresy/Cerastus-Knight-Atrapos.pdf

Allies

• Solar Auxilia: With their access to numbers

and plenty of anti-horde firepower, the Solar Auxilia is the PERFECT ally for a Knight Crusade. A Nanyte Blaster Legate with Volkite Charger Veletaris sitting in an Arvus lighter is essentially Kryptonite to tarpits, and will cause them to experience critical existence failure in the span of a single shooting phase. And if you don't like the idea of waiting until turn 2 to remove tarpits with extreme prejudice, then 300 points worth of Lasrifle Sections can do pretty much the same thing, pumping out 120 shots as 36" Heavy 2 Lasguns.