Hey guys, so whats with the title you ask? Imperial Knights of course and what a surprise GW pulled on the community. The Knights have been out for over 2 months and still I'm amazed on how great the model looks and what they bring to the game. The Knights of course could be seen as their attempt to fix the meta. I dont think that is the reason these were released, GW just wanted to release a model and a concept that would sell well as well as to get a reaction from those old veterans who have nothing good to say bout GW. They definitely hit it out of the park with this model and the concept of an army of super heavies is rather interesting. Now with everything looking good why is the release getting such a backlash from certain circles. The D weapon of course that the Knight is armed with but GW made this D weapon a little more acceptable. By making it a CCW weapon and giving it more "conventional" ranged weapons, the Knight is seen as not that game breaking. What else did GW do to make it less broken? By giving it a high points cost and only giving it 6 hull points, the knight is far from being invincible. Will some armies struggle against 1,2, or 3 of them. Of course they will but by adding in such a unit and making it available to all imperial armies and some Xenos, it changes the meta and forces even those death star armies to bring something to combat it as its one of the few things that will counter such armies. Death star players will have to use points on countering such monsters which might cut down on us seeing the same lists over and over again or at least limit the options said player has to spend on the deathstar itself. Will it be a dramatic change to the meta? Probably not but at the very least players will have another option to use against these lists.
Now I do have some complaints about the release.
1. The fact that the army consists of one model and yet this justified a full codex release? I would have thought that the codex itself would have at least several models for players to use to fill their army. The codex basically just gives players access to 2 models, what about the lancer, etc? Yes we know that Forgeworld is releasing the lancer and what a kit it is but what about rules for it? Since its a Forgeworld model, now we need to deal with players or tournys that will only allow it. GW should have just included it in the codex and told us that it would be released later. The Imperial Knight codex in my opinion could have been an ebook just like the legion of the damned book, a 20 to 30 page supplement for 16 bucks and not full book price.
2. What about Chaos Space Marines Knights? Geez this really bugs the crap out of me as I am primarily a CSM player and a Knight would have helped the army tremendously. The abilities of the Knight would fill in some of the weaknesses of the army and also help it fight against the deathstars. I have a dark mech army and would have loved to add one or two of these beasties to my army. I guess the rumor is that Forgeworld will be creating these but just like the lancer, since its forgeworld it will "exist" in tourneys that allow them. I just hope we dont get a separate codex for these guys and its handled through a simple supplement download and not a full codex release. Now dont get me wrong, you give me more options in Chaos Knights and then I wont mind a full codex release.
So in conclusion, Imperial Knights, I give them a big thumbs up!! Its a release that came out of nowhere, is a fantastic looking model, and will hopefully change the meta a bit.
