I love chaos knights. Nothing will make me switch. However, why does our army rule do so little?
So real… why does GW not love us xD what did we do to them!!
Honestly, I was kinda hoping for a slight update with this dataslate like admech but no luck.
Yeah, i feel like Knights get forgotten a lot
big knights being able to crash thru buildings along with being able to action and shoot isn't enough of an update?
There aren't enough of us and they don't really know what to do with us. That's my honest answer. Like, yeah, we're big stompy bois, but what else?
I mean, I have ideas. So Games Workshop should hire me.
Battle shock is great....when it actually happens. It sucks that our army rule is largely based on luck. Can't really plan for it to do anything, just nice when it does work. I hope they make some changes to it.
To be fair our brigands and karnivores are flat out better than armigers but this is still valid
sometimes style has a price
The cost for drip is one I’m willing to pay any day
So our Battleshock rule works against horde and non elite armies. But as we all know, "Dice Tell Tales". But I agree it is kinda lame that we only cause battleshock. I'm hoping that once the Codex comes, we will get Daemonic Allegiance/Icons for bonuses. Khorne - Melee Str/dmg Nurgle - toughness/FNP Slaanesh - Movement/Melee Devs Tzeentch - Rng/Dmg Maybe add the CSM rule that causes a mortal upon failure of a roll
Its kinda ironic that ive had more failed battleshocks from my oponents playing custodes and marines than any other faction.
Dice cancer always a thing
Same here. In almost every game with my CK, i suffer more battleshock than my opponent. Dogs being a 7+ LD hurts
It might has something to do with them being elite. An elite army is going to have their units survive long enough to actually have to take the tests.
The battleshock mechanic as a whole is so underwhelming. I've played almost every week since 10th edition dropped, and I've only ever seen it be relevant once.
I have to look it up every time I use it because I think I misremember it due to how bad it is!
I've been playing tyranids since their 10e codex, I've had the army wide battleshock and every turn multiple battleshock tests from neurolictors be relevant only a handful of times. That's with spamming like 20 additional tests per game on average with a game a week. It's just a meaningless mechanic
meaningless, but still a bit better than just arbitrarily losing extra models. it does need a rework though. something that feels significant while not just punishing you for bringing your models to the table.
We've houseruled it so once you're battleshocked, you need to pass another test to be unbattleshocked... still underwhelming, but at least you get to feel like it's doing something.
Won me a game at the last GT, though that was the Rad Zone from AdMech not my Knights
We need a way to make battleshock rolls happen via stratagems
It feels like GW somehow thought Battleshock would be more impactful than it is. Loads of units or enhancements in other armies that either force battleshock tests or make battleshock tests easier to pass. They also made kind of a big deal about battleshock in the run-up to the 10th ed release. It's like they wanted it to be a big deal but then wrote the rule so it just isn't.
It feels very thematic for CKs to have battleshock related rules; those things absolutely should strike terror into the hearts of those facing them. Battleshock just doesn't actually come into play very much.
My latest game against new sisters
Vahl block -> passed, was BR 2 so not worth autopassing
(First) Immolator -> passed
Vahl herself, later -> auto pass, via miracle dice
Immolater -> autopassed twice, via miracle dice
Triumph on objective -> true autopass via strat
Castigator -> passed
Dominion squads took a total of 5 tests -> 4 passed, 1 fail. The fail wasn't on an objective.
So like... you could say my combined army rule and detachment rule caused my opponent to spend 3 miracle dice and 1cp, but also... who cares, she had tons of miracle dice. Or maybe it was 4 miracle dice and no cp, can't remember.
If she DID fail then I'd have +1 to wound her t3 models. That I wounded on 2's anyway. The only time it'd matter is against the vahl brick, who REALLY does not care about -1 to hit. With -1 to hit, those paragons still hit on 3's with full rerolls.
Yeah, against sisters, custodes, and other extremely high ld armies we have literally no rule. Sucks to suck I guess.
I find it funny that dread talons essentially gets both our army and detachment rule, and yet it is still probably the worst detachment CSM have excluding maybe the cultist one.
Important note, dread talons gets bonuses against below half strength
Because they knew battleshock sucks so much
I'll be honest, my heart dropped the second I saw everything getting tied to battleshock.
It's a pain that the actual impact of the army rule and detachment don't come online until T3. Obviously there's some strong datasheets carrying the faction, but it would be nice if we had anything helping the army T1 and T2.
The dread table was such a wildly cool mechanic that I really hope we can get something similar once the codex drops.
My gaming group, (who I play with once a week and I have been playing Chaos Knights since start of 10th ed) , do not even know about the - 1 to hit and +1 to wound since it just never comes up. Goes to show how useless it is.
I do use Pterrorshades now and then, though.
The only time it's come up for me was against other Chaos Knights.
We don’t suck because of our army rule, we suck because Battle Shock sucks. In terms of lore I think it’s super cool, that being the enemy seeing us and going “oh shit oh fuck giant demon robots” and I like how the rules work to engage in battleshock a lot, but with everyone’s LD stat being at least decent, and the effects of Battleshock not doing much, it makes our rule suck.
Our whole army is pretty meh to be honest. Awesome models but a smaller range than Imperial Knights, plus their models got several benefits in 10th that we didn’t. It’s like Chaos Knights got the short end of the stick this time, we were powerful last edition and then we lose our psychic and a few other things. I had to switch to Necrons so that I could end my losing streak with this army, which is funny because I had way more success last edition with psychic and everything. We deserve better.
Ngl it rarely does anything and we're still performing just fine without it. I usually get to use pterrorshades once or twice a game and then the rest is spent on Shade.
The army rule is not that bad, battleshock rules are
The army rule just makes it not as bad
Our ONLY trick is way worse than the side tricks of many other armies that have battle shock mechanics, or army and detachment rule are the worst of any faction, I would trade either or both for a ham sandwich.
I play thousand sons, so I can't really complain, but yes
I think even death guard has a straight up upgrade to your rule lol
And against demons it's straight up a nerf, I healed my opponents units 5 times in a game, and only one unit was battle shocked
XD yup, thats a good way of putting it!
New Tyranids have it good, putting battleshock on a 9 in the right conditions. It's still not a guarantee, but it matters a lot more than our rules that can obviously still work, but but they can be a little feels bad vs IK (imo)
Unfortunately new dataslate says you can't make ld go beyond 8+, which is a shame
I’m a big fan of Battleshock being our army rule personally, I think it’s something thematic to being the harbingers of dread!….but I do wish it was implemented better. It’s like GW was afraid of making Battleshock too strong or something.
It’s gonna be a flip of the coin on whether our codex slaps or is terrible but at the end of the day I think we’ll end up at the same place. We’ll start bad and just get some points drops/ignored or we’ll be really good and GW will nerf the hell out of us🤷♀️
I think our real army rule is "Toughness 10+", honestly. That's the thing people need to play around, the thing they need to counter to win.
And imperial knight get Toughness 10+, free rerolled, army wide FNP, and the chance for extra CP. Compared to them we have nothing.
I'm convinced they wrote big impactful rules that made battleshock really significant for 10th ed, which then got needed through the deck by playtesters. How else do you account for characters like the Necrons Psychomancer, or our Battleshock rules, to say nothing of those Dark Angels players who have a whole detachment of nothing until they fail a battleshock test...
I think what we need to boost us more relevant is to introduce a rule that says "If a unit was Battleshocked at the start of their command phase, or is below starting strength, then that unit must take a battleshock test in that step of the command phase" or whatever the exact wording is.
Problem is that our army rules is not meh, it'a just very difficult to balance imho. If you do it better, battleshock the entire opponent's army every turn because you make it reliable, it will.be broken. Being battleshocked really sucks in 10th. But if you keep it as it is now, then it is very occasional and nothing to rely on. It seems half of a rule.
I would like to see a side upgrade, like Tyr. Tyr now is: -you do battleshock tests; -also you gain +1 SR in synapse range.
I belive the easy way to buff CK is to add a second bullet completely independent from the battleshock effects. Just a straightfoward buff.
So that the codex rules seem better by comparioson
Because Knights/wardogs essentially don't fit that well into Warhammer as a game. It's ultra hard to balance, because everything else is balanced around the t4-5 s4-5.
The more they can avoid touching them when they still are relatively unbroken, the better
It’s honestly not as bad as chaos knight players make it out to be. I’ve played it a couple times and it’s not awful
You are correct, sir. Play new Chaos Space marines. Our rules hurt them badly. Tau, gaurd, orcs all can be crippled easily to battleshock.
I play against my chaos marine buddy often. Battleshock has only been an issue gor him 1 time and it was a slight inconvenience at best
All their dark pacts are leadership tests. So, they should take mortals from failure more often.
Great in theory. In practice passing the tests even with the pentaly isn't hard.
Bad luck for some, I guess. I think enemies fail around 1/4-1/3 of tests for me and up to 1/2 against poor leadership armies. Seems right for dice and our -1. With the extra tests we can impose and the old change Insane Bravery it feels relevant. It's not as good as rerolls and feel no pains, but our rules can do some work.
I fully agree. Causing Battleshock is genuinely a big deal and I find it matters in about half of my games.
I don't understand why I'm getting downvoted.
Because your experience is vastly different from the rest of us who have maybe gotten 1 or 2 actually meaning tests through the entire edition.
So rather than try to figure out why it works for me, the response is to bury the response. Neat. OK.
I don't know but I'm really hoping for a nice update when the codex comes out.
Army rules:
IK: Free rerolls and one-time 3CP
CK: -1 to battleshock.
Detachment:
IK: 6+++ that improves to 5+++
CK: battleshock checks slightly more often for opponents
Yeah, those are similar power levels. 🙄