Well here we are, over two months into Warhammer 40K tenth edition. If you listen to reddit and the competitive scene, there are so many bugs/errors in the game that GW needs to fix IMMEDIATELY! Do they need to be fixed? I dunno, I don't pretend to be a game designer in my free time. But I did figure that this would be a good opportunity to fire up my Battle Reports again.

Beyond the Grey...

So I stopped playing Grey Knights. A couple of reasons for this. First of all, I played them a LOT for the first 2 years of my 40k-ing. Last fall, I spent the time/energy into getting an Imperial Knights army together. I do love some stompy robots and I have had a lot of fun playing them. I did learn that playing them at smaller games is *not* a good idea though.

Fast forward to 10th edition. I'm figuring out what I want to play in his new edition and the Grey Knights look...not great. Their army rule of being able to teleport places is super cool and definitely is how I end up playing the army. However, thats about it for them. They all have psychic abilities that are cool, but I feel like all of them having the "Psyker" keyword hurts them more than helps them in this edition. Maybe the codex will fix that. I'm also in the middle of painting up some Ultramarines, but I'm taking my time with them and want to get in some games in the meantime.

So let's go Imperial Knights! It also doesn't *hurt* that they are doing well right now in the meta. That didn't really influence my decision, but it is nice. For my army, I'm rocking a Knight Crusader as my warlord, a Knight Warden, and 6 armigers (3 Helverins, 3 Warglaives). I had some free points available, so I threw in a Vindicare Assassin to fill in the gaps. The hope was that the Assassin would help me kill the enemy warlord, thus making my army "Honorable". Family Pic time!

Game 1: Imperial Knights vs. Blood Angels

I knew this game was going to go bad from the start. One of the guys training for the Nova Open GT wanted to test his list against Imperial Knights and thus asked me to play him. He's *really* good. Which, I would hope he would be to go up against all the people in Nova. So I told him that I would try, but not to expect much from me in regards to how the "meta" players are playing Imperial Knights. Heck, this was technically the first "standard" game of 10th edition I had ever played. So we set up the battlefield and choose the mission: the ritual.

Both of us choose to go the "Tactical" secondaries route, which means we would draw cards each round and that would be our secondary missions until we completed them. Looking at the battlefield, I knew that I needed to get towards the center objective so that I could get an objective placed down. So I positioned my Warglaives on each side in places that would make it easy for them to spring out and dash towards them. Plus, the armigers are small enough to fit on terrain, so I made sure everyone had the benefit of cover. The Helverins I placed around in positions where they could fire on targets. I *thought* I had done a good job of positioning them.

Then turn 1 happened.

So I went second. Which made all the difference in this case. As the Blood Angels royally proceeded to maul my face off. One group was able to get launched forward by a librarian dreadnought, and they managed to do like 28 damage to my Knight Warden, taking it off the field immediately. Then.....the drop pod came down. Turns out, when I had placed down my units, I had left a *small* gap in the back corner. Big enough the the Blood Angels drop pod was able to come down and deposit another unit of marines on my back line. Things were not looking good by the end of his Turn 1.

But now it was my turn.

One thing that I've learned in the short time that I've been playing Imperial Knights is that I am very much an aggressive player. That is something that pairs well with the Knights and their firepower. So I opened up on the Blood Angels and started focusing fire on units, trying to weed them out. I quickly got revenge on the unit that took out my Knight Warden and the Knight Crusader was able to take out the drop pod easily enough, leaving the units on my back line easy pickings for the Helverins.

What wasn't working in my favor, was the objectives. With most of my armigers dead or wounded, I didn't have people in place to get towards the center objective. Well....I did have my assassin....but I was really wanting to use him for shooting. I realized that it would be far more advantageous to have him drop another objective that it would be to have him shoot. Plus, I was getting AWFUL secondary objectives so I needed to get some points from somewhere.

Second verse, same as the first

By the time we got around to turn 2, there was little "infantry" left on the board. The few units the Blood Angels had left were on the back line to help with his secondaries. So he had just a ton of land raiders left on the board to deal with. As for me, I was down to my Knight Crusader and a bunch of Armigers.....actually scratch that....one to two Armigers by the time it got back to my turn. The assassin was killed off in a drive by shooting from one of the Land Raiders, giving my opponent full access to the objective that I just dropped. And he had enough firepower to take out most of the wounded Armigers I had.

I had *hoped* that on my turn I'd still have some Warglaives available to charge the land raiders and do some damage. I did have one succeed on that, but I did horribly on my rolls and didn't manage to do much damage. Which resulted in my remaining Helverin having to attempt to do some melee damage, something he's not equipped to do very well. By the time we finished turn 2 and turn 3, I just had my Knight Crusader and one Helverin left to do anything. Being my first game, I hadn't really looked at the "Gambit" cards that come into play in 10th edition: long shot objectives that give you huge points if you complete. Honestly, that was my only chance to get some points. I probably wouldn't win, but at least I wouldn't get completely blown away...

What it did was gam-bit my ass. The Gambits were awful. Not that they aren't good in general, just they were terrible for me as a Knights player. Most of them revolved around getting remaining units to specific sections of the board, but to be successful, I'd have to have more units that the 2 I had left. I trudged forward the Crusader to attempt to take out more tanks, but it became apparent that I was not going to get very far here. I conceeded not long after seeing my horrible gambit options. The score ended up being like 14 to 50 something. I don't remember, because it was not great.

Conclusion

1. Everyone kept saying movement is key in this edition, and I get it now. Decided to give my Warden the enhancement that lets him redeploy elsewhere on the board. Also swapped out the Vindicare Assassin for the Callidus for the same reason.

2. Just like in 9th edition, I still have a lot of work to do in remembering abilities, like applying bondsman abilities to armigers and what triggers what, etc.

3. The Knight Crusader did a pretty awesome job. The Knight Warden....well I guess I'll have to find out next game....