Attended a RTT today at Dreamers Vault. Unfortunately, because I missed my bus and the next one was delayed, I ended up being late for the RTT. Whoops. Fortunately, there was an odd number of participants, so I could sit out the first round, but I essentially missed the first match. It counted as an auto-loss for me. That's fine, it's my fault for being late. And it didn't really matter to me anyway, I was there for fun.
Truth be told, this was actually my first time playing with the Nephilim missions, and my first time playing 9th edition Imperial Knights with the new codex. I never had a chance to try out my new Imperial Knights codex...until now. And I relished the chance to experiment with the new list, abilities, stratagems and other combos or strategies, especially with the Exalted Court stuff.
My list looked something like this:
Knight Errant Master Tactician with Knight of Mars Warlord Trait
Knight Paladin Princeps with Ironstorm missile pod
Knight Preceptor Master of Lore with Revered Knight Warlord Trait and Mentor's Seal
3 Armiger Warglaives with meltaguns
Armiger Knight Moirax with 2 graviton pulsars
Add to that House Taranis and Questor Mechanicus, I tried to build a resilient list. Not sure if it worked, but hey. If it works, it works.
My first opponent was Astra Militarum, and he brought tons of anti-infantry stuff. I think he had a couple of infantry squads or veteran squads, but he had like a lot of mortars. Even his infantry and veteran squads had mortars in them. He also brought 2 Vultures with punisher cannons, 4 Leman Russ tanks - 2 Demolishers and 2 main battle tanks - and a few company officers.
Long story short, his mortars and Vultures couldn't do much other than scratch the paint of my Knights. His tanks, on the other hand, did excellent work, and though I did my best to blow them up as quickly as possible, he was able to kill my Knight Errant and Knight Preceptor, as well as a single Armiger Warglaive. The rest of the Armigers survived. I eventually took out all four tanks and both Vultures for 13 points (apparently some weird rapier thing counted as a vehicle too). Also killed a couple of squads of infantry, but that was about it. I focused on grabbing objectives and eliminating the armor threats, so he actually had a full squad and a lot of infantry surviving the game. That said, it was difficult for him to contest objectives, and other than the tanks, he didn't have much that could hurt my Knights reliably.
Eventually, I won the game 89-64. Phew.
My second game was against Chaos Knights. Almost a mirror match, but it's Loyalist versus Traitor or Imperial versus Chaos. Pretty fun matchup, especially between two Knight lists that play very differently. I couldn't wait to see what the Chaos Knights could do - there was the Knight Abominant, the Knight Desecrator and Knight Despoiler with thermal cannon and stormspear rocket pod. They are joined by two...uh, War Dog Karnivores? I think that's their name? Basically, the melee ones with claws and blade. And two War Dog Stalkers, the ones with the chaincannons. He played House Herpetax, the one that gives them extra wounds (2 for War Dogs and 4 for the big Knights). Kind of a contrast to my Mechanicus Knights, but while I only get 1 wound for Armigers and 2 for the Titanic Knights, I do recover a wound each turn during my command phase, so I'm not complaining.
I was lucky enough to get first turn and I almost nuked his Knight Abominant using the Calculated Targeting Stratagem. Somehow I rolled 4 sixes. No idea how that happened, but that was like 32 mortal wounds. Ouch. I failed to finish him off, though, so...yikes. To put it frankly, I was stupid enough to forget to announce that I was using the Calculated Targeting Stratagem when I first started shooting. I mean, it was fairly obvious - it's the combo most people are using, but still, I should have done it. My bad. Anyway, I'll make sure to remember it next time instead of taking it for granted that people would know that I plan to use it. He hit me back hard, but I managed to survive the onslaught and psychic powers before I finished off the Knight Abominant and killed maybe one or two War Dogs. As the game went on, I killed all of his War Dogs, but I lost all three of my Titanic Knights. Eventually, we were down to my 4 Armigers versus his Knight Desecrator and Knight Despoiler, and I couldn't do anything except watch my Armigers get mowed down one after the other. The game ended with my single Warglaive running away after being savaged in melee, and I was almost tabled. Only one survivor. Ouch. That was brutal. His two Titanic Knights reigned supreme.
Guess what the score was.
Surprisingly enough, I actually ended up winning the game 68 to 55. I honestly have no idea how that happened, though I think it had something to do with me dominating the primary objectives and camping on them, carrying out my secondaries like Yield No Ground and Renew the Oaths. I had to sacrifice a bunch of points for Yield No Ground because I fell back to shoot the enemy Knights a few times, but I scored plenty on primary objectives before my opponent turned the game around and began massacring my poor Loyalist Knights.
In the end, I finished 5th place out of 12 people, which isn't too bad! Nice.
I need to find a way to...uh, improve my Knights. I have no idea how, but we'll see. I think. Anyway, I'm glad I managed to squeak a narrow victory out of that slaughter, ha ha. Yay. I'll continue experimenting with my Knights and figure out how to play them better. Maybe next time I'll switch to Imperialis instead of Mechanicus and focus on a more melee based army instead. Till then!
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