A few websites have been posting pictures of the new 40k Scale Imperial Knights. I think they look great.

It's debatable whether they would ever really have much impact on the 40k RPGs as PC s: Like Dreadnoughts, Titans, Super Heavy Tanks etc they're kind of the wrong scale for the sort of roleplaying experience offered by any of FFG's game lines.

However, as NPCs, there seem to me to be all kinds of possibilities:-

In a Rogue Trader campaign, with a small planetary invasion a group of freeblade Knights would seem to me to be a useful asset. Perhaps an endeavour could be based around recruiting them to your Dynasty's service, with a combination of threats and diplomacy.

In a Dark Heresy adventure, perhaps a murder has been committed in the Castle of an ancient Knight House, and all the signs point to it having been carried out by an Adeptus Mechanicus Techpriest. If the Techpriest is proven to be a murderer, this will potentially cause a breach between the Knight House and their feudal overlords, leading to the loss of a major Imperial ally in the region. The players are tasked with investigating the murder and, if possible, finding the true culprit.

In a Deathwatch Campaign, the players seek to bring a lost Knight world back to the Imperium. This will involve proving their worth to the Knights by trials of combat, perhaps with the Deathwatch squad pitted against Knights in a serious of ritual quests and jousts.

In a Black Crusade campaign, the players seek to corrupt a Knight household. The players must infiltrate the House's castle and find ways to murder the Baron, replacing him with his warp tainted son. They must then guard the newly appointed Baron against the counsel of his retainers and keep him from being overthrown by his vassals.

In an only war campaign, the players are sent behind enemy lines to rescue a lone knight who has been captured by the enemy during a battle, and to destroy his walker before it can be used against the Imperium. The players find the knight, and discover that the walker is virtually operational: can they free the injured knight and return him to his Knight, wreaking untold damage upon the enemy?

I think it's beyond the realm of most games. But they do have stats for the Baneblade at least, so there's hope for these Mini-Titans yet.

In Rogue Trader, encountering a lost Knight World in the Koronus Expanse would be an intriguing endeavour. Or rather, a contingent of Knights that fought during the Angevin Crusade and were caught in a warpstorm and thrown way off course.

It leads up to so many possibilities; they could retain some semblanced of void capability, though they're not warp capable. Imagine a system of agri-moons surrounding medieval nightmare worlds, burgeoning on their own industrial revolution. The Knights are the local lords who wage occasional war upon each other for control and band together to defend their lands against xenos.

In Only War, your squad could be part of an effort to bring them back to the Imperial fold. A Rogue Trader could have brought that squad (and regiment) along to that place and a campaign could be played from that perspective. The Deathwatch can shoot stuff till the Knights comply, I suppose.

Knights are significantly smaller than Warhounds, right? -And there are Warhound stats in Deathwatch , so I could see Knights serving as high-level opponents in OW (maybe the Severin Dominate has a couple in mothballs that they are trying to bring on-line...?).

When it comes to large scale equipment like titans and ordinatus, ive always seen them more as a set piece then an actual combat stat, whats your average squad of IG going to do against something like that? throw krak grenades and hope for the best? tag it with a Melta-Gun and hope they dont get stepped on?

Dont get me wrong ive always liked the concept of Imperial Knights since the old days of Adeptus Titanicus/space marine/Epic 40k and was tickled to death when they were mentioned in the Horus Heresy Novel "Mechanicum", i just dont see them as a viable interactable/combatable Unit for Only war. though, Lightbringer had some great idea for including them in games, those ideas still seemed to use them as set pieces.

To me these models just seem to be GW trying to cash in on their fan by making a really expensive model that people "have" to have in there army in order to stand toe to toe with opponents but thats just my opinion and I could be wrong, but more importantly is this the first signs of a imperial guard codex coming soon, and what does this mean for only war?

To me these models just seem to be GW trying to cash in on their fan by making a really expensive model that people "have" to have in there army in order to stand toe to toe with opponents but thats just my opinion and I could be wrong...

-You mean like the way every single army recently got a very expensive Flyer model?

(And yes, there is a new Imperial Guard- or 'Astra Militarium'- Codex coming soon. The early buzz is that there are going to be plastic Storm Troopers [yay!] and plastic Orgyns [meh...].)

Now I maybe the only person to say this but I hope they haven't got rid of ratlings. Every new edition I get worried that they will, and then just wipe them out of history like squats. I love our little snipers

I doubt that they will. If you like them, then they work; if you loathe them, then they are single page in a codex, and a little picture of them. There'd be no need to remake more that no one will buy, if that were the case, so leaving them in, for those who DO use them, isn't hurting anything.

I agree. I hate Ratlings, but I have no problem with them being included in the Codex for those who like them. I just won't include them in my army.

-And I hope the new Codex includes some new Abhuman troop types, but I doubt it will: from 5th Ed. on, 40K has been moving toward reducing troop customization options rather than increasing them...

how did this conversation segway into ratling bashing? i thought we were talking about Knights?

as an aside, it wouldnt surprised me if they phased out Ratlings on the tabletop, ever since 3rd edition when they created the specialist catachan lists with their own sniper/scouts armed with sniper rifles, i saw that as the deathknell for the little mutant runts.

" Kill the Mutants . Burn the Heretics. Purge the unclean"

how did this conversation segway into ratling bashing? i thought we were talking about Knights?

This is how:

as an aside, it wouldnt surprised me if they phased out Ratlings on the tabletop...

smartypants!

the topic already segwayed before i had mentioned it

Well, there may be stats for a Baneblade but to be honest a Knight is the smallest one of a complete different "league". There might be some ways to include them but as Malatoris has mentioned, they are more a set piece than something that actually play a role of itself. Another frightening aspect of them is, that they come in packs and are most likely supported by additional tech-orientated troops. Like most war machines that are only in the possession of the mechanicus they act like an "I win"-button unless your opponent has troops of the same quality or an amazing advantage in numbers. Do not forget that these carry weapons capable of wounding even the strongest of opponent and unlike a bane blade they are awe inspiring "agile" and can even perform in close combat.

To have a more intimidate contact with them you might have a game around a crusade where they support a campaign to hunt some daemon knights that betrayed their house some millennia ago but if they appear, **** is going real and you wont have an "ordinary" battle any more but cross the line to APOCALYPSE!!!! xD

.......and here it is on the GW site in all its resplendite glory

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440160a&prodId=prod2380151a

"At 8 inches tall the Imperial Knight is a towering war engine."

...All right Guardsmen, be careful not to step on the Knights. (I know that they gave the size of the miniature, not the size that the Knight is supposed to be in universe, but it just sounds so silly.)

Okay... personally I think it's not too bad for an 'element' in Only War.

It's just shy of double the durability and firepower of a Leman Russ, and about halfway between it and a Baneblade.

Has anyone played any games with a squad as a Tank Regiment rather than infantry?

yes i did GM for a Tank Regiment with Leamn Russ
normal infantry in a open field is hardly a threat and makes the players feel kinda allmighty, but watch them sweat when they have to travers a forestroad or through a city, so many chances of ambushes
dont forget a wooping -30 awarness penalty to characters not being turned out (or even more) makes them think twice about not sticking their heads out

I love these Knight Titan models. I've love it when they take old epic and make a good job of translating them into 28mm.

Game wise, I can see the difficulty using them for the players. Even with a Baneblade you can have the whole PC team in there and there's a natural progression from a Leman Russ tank squadron. Knight's having a solo pilot is going to be a lot of power in the PC's hands. Finding big bads for them might be difficult, it'll invariably end up being titans and then the Knight's are in danger of being one shotted by the big guns before they take out the void shields.

What is more interesting to me is the background that it brings with it. Knight's have been in the 'lost in ancient fluff' void for a while. Not only is that another power structure with the Imperium (or Ad Mech) but also brings the Knight Worlds back (presumably). The idea of an Ad Mech Agri world is a good place to investigate. Especially for an Ad Mech themed game. I'm thinking of a game where the players regiment is supporting a Knight squadron trying to protect it from ambushes while they accrue damage like some video game objective.

some good ideas above;

I'm pretty sure with a little thought we could have an entire suppliament around making a team of PC Knight pilots and suitable enemies for them (thanks to Forgeworld there are actually a few of them out there for most armies) would probably work for most of the settings one way or another.

Either that or we just got given an alternate rank in an AD-Mech specific game

Or maybe even one of the classes in a Titan themed game (and on that note I'll run and find cover)

Regards

Surak

.......and here it is on the GW site in all its resplendite glory

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440160a&prodId=prod2380151a

It's a great model, but $140 for something 6" tall...? Is that a realistic price point...?

It's $170 Canadian, or as I like to call it 'Nope'.

it's a hobby, there is no realistic pricepoint

It's just shy of double the durability and firepower of a Leman Russ, and about halfway between it and a Baneblade.

In my conception an imperial Knight is even stronger than a baneblade. They might not have so much combined firepower but for example a paladins large caliber battle-cannon is still able to harm even imperator titans while the chain swords are just as powerful as their warhound counterpart.

But their real advantage is their high agility and speed allowing them even to charge enemy war machines though lesser machines like a SM dreadnought would just be crushed without much notice. Also they bring some ion shielding on top of their adamantium shielding. Real titans decide the fate of planets, these decide the fate of entire battles.

Still not great for PC's in OW...unless you want to do Super-Dimensional-Battle-Mecha-Save-the-World-from-God-and-all-his-Demons-Anime-Style.

Then go crazy, Ikari-san.

The models 8 inch tall by the way, and one of those pictures on the GW website shows the scale next to a Marine and it turns out 8 inch is a lot.

Over here it's £85, which is isn't an insignificant amount of cash. But Dreamforge was selling their Leviathan for £75 bucks and is about the same size, and that was very successful for them. In fact on Wayland games the Knight is selling for less. And it's for the most armies possible. So I'm going to to say that they will sell a hell of a lot of these.

I'm more interested to know if anyone is planning on by this weeks White Dwarf, and what fluffs in that.