Imperial Armour Compendium - Knights

Welcome, Scions, as we continue our coverage of the new Imperial Armour Compendium coming out soon from Forge World.  Having hit the Titans of the Imperium of Makind and the forces of Chaos, followed by the Eldar, we’re going to a smaller chassis of war engine today: the Knights.

We’ll get an easy one out of the way first.  Imperial Knights and Chaos Knights are exactly the same in profile, weapon stats, and options.  No god dedications, no inspirational attributes, nothing different but the relevant keywords.  With that said, we’ll look at the Knights in general and point out things of particular note.

Stats

The first thing that jumps out is that the wounds counts have not changed from 8^th edition and are very much in line with the standard GW Knights (which are in the 24-28 wound range depending on class).  We can take this as a sign that Knights won’t be receiving any kind of wounds boost when their new codex drops since the Imperial Armour Knights stayed at their current levels.

In terms of the general stat line, nothing has really changed on these guys other than some small tweaks (like the Cerastus chassis losing a single wound).  As far as your Forge World Knights go, it’s almost completely business as usual.

However, it would seem that the changes to points and Power Levels were somewhat mixed.  A few Knights received a minor drop while many remained the same.  A few, notably in the Cerastus chassis (but not all), increased but not to a large degree like we saw in the later days of 8^th edition or when 9^th first came out.

Weapons

We’re going to rifle through these really quickly and hit on the high points since there are so many weapons:

• The Asterius Volkite Culverin loses its AP and has changes to how it deals extra wounds.
• Lancer and Castigator weapons remain unchanged.
• Acherons gain a new profile for their chainfist, able to keep the original attack profile or use a sweep like the Armiger Warglaives.
• Hekaton Siege Claws also gained the new Smash profile while the Crush profile retains the previous edition’s stats, while the Atrapos does the same with Focus and Sweep modes, respectively, on the Atrapos Lascutter.  We’re sensing a theme here for the melee options.
• Helios Defence Missiles on the Porphyrion now suffer a penalty against non-aircraft but gain the bonus against them.  Interestingly, the Ironstorm Missile Pod profile is missing.
• Titanic Feet as an attack profile seem to have been removed.

Final Thoughts

Realistically, all the Knights got were minor tweaks.  Those Knights with melee options generally happened to get a second profile designed to help them deal with hordes while most ranged weapons were left untouched.  Coupled with the lack of changes to almost all stats and a rollercoaster of changes to points and Power Level, this really does feel like nothing more than a rebalance for them.  However, Knights are powerful in smaller games and so we didn’t expect to see anything earth-shattering here.