Imperial Knights 8th Edition Codex Review: Part 1- Household Traditions and Warlord Traits

The Imperial Knights codex was released a few weeks ago and has been making a big impact on both local club games and tournament games. The codex features three brand new Knights to add to your army, as well as a whole host of unique stratagems and Relics to add to your force. This week, I will be reviewing parts of the new codex. 

The first part of the review will take a look at the Household Traditions and Warlord Traits. 

Household Traditions

These are the "Chapter Tactics" of the Imperial Knights, giving them army-wide bonuses if the army is battle-forged an in a Super-heavy Detachment. The traditions are split between Questor Imperialis and Questor Mechanicus. 

Questor Imperialis Household Traditions

There are five of these traditions that can be chosen for a Knights army. These focus mainly on combat-orientated bonuses for the units. These traditions can be a big bonus to any combat-armed Knights in the army. 

House Terryn- Roll an additional D6 when determining the distance this unit Advances or Charges, discarding the lowest result. 

This is good for getting your Knights around the board quickly or for ensuring that you can make it into combat. However, for most Knights, advancing for a turn is a waste of their potent firepower, so something you are not going to be doing that often. If you want a more mobile Knight army, the House Raven tradition (see below) is far more effective for doing this. Not one I think you will see used often. 

House Griffith- Add 1 to the attacks of a model during any turn it charged or performed a heroic intervention. A model with this household tradition can perform a heroic intervention as if they were a character. 

A pretty good trait for a combat-orientated Knights, as they don't get too many attacks on their profile. With the titanic feet ability, this actually gives you an extra 3 attacks on the turn that they charge. The heroic intervention ability is a nice bonus, as your opponent could expect to be charging a small infantry unit and suddenly have an Imperial Knight to contend with in combat. 

House Hawkshroud- Models double the number of wounds they have remaining for the purposes of determining what characteristics to use on their damage table. 

For me, the best of the Questor Imperialis Household Traditions. With this ability, a standard Imperial Knight will need to lose 18 of its 24 wounds before it degrades a profile. This keeps your Knights at optimal effectiveness for much longer, as it can be quite hard to wound the Knights. In an army with so few models, keeping them at full strength for as long as possible is a big bonus. 

House Cadmus- Re-roll to wound of 1 in the Fight phase for attacks made against units which only contains models with a wound characteristic of 12 or less. 

Again, a nice bonus for combat-orientated Knights. Most Knights will be wounding standard infantry on a 2+, so re-rolling all misses is a nice bonus. It also helps with the massive combat weapons that are S16, so will be wounding most units on a 2+, saving you from spending command points when you roll a 1 to wound. It will be useful against almost all infantry and many vehicles/monsters, so there is good scope for getting the bonus. 

House Mortan- Gain +1 to hit in the Fight phase during any turn this unit charged, was charged or performed a heroic intervention. 

This is a good bonus for those Knights with the deadliest of combat weapons that are generally -1 to hit. This allows them to strike on a 3+ in combat still, and with only a few attacks, every one that hits is going to cause a lot of damage. With most other weapons, the Knights will be hitting on a 2+ in combat, great for going through enemy vehicles and infantry squads with Titanic feet. 

Overall, some decent household traits. I think the House Hawkshroud is the best by far. Keeping the Knights at full strength for longer is a huge bonus, as for most armies they can be very tough to destroy or bring them down to a quarter of their wounds. I think the strength of most Knights is in their firepower, especially the new Dominus Class Knights, so you don't really want them in combat all that much. 

Questor Mechanicus Household Traditions

This household contains four traditions for your Imperial Knight army. I think these are the stronger of the household traditions as you will see below. 

House Raven- Models do not suffer the penalty to hit for Advancing and firing assault weapons. In addition, during a turn in which the unit advanced, count all Heavy Weapons as Assault weapons. 

I think this is the strongest of the household traditions for Questor Mechanicus, maybe even of all of them. In fact, it is the only Household Tradition that I have ever faced with against for Imperial Knights. This trait gives the Imperial Knights increased mobility on the battlefield without suffering any penalties for most of their shooting attacks. I've faced it a few times and it is very powerful, allowing the Knights to move quickly around the board and still keep up a very strong rate of fire. 

House Taranis- Roll a D6 each time the model suffers a wound, on a 6 it is ignored. 

The standard 6+ feel no pain save. On Knights this has much more scope for being effective as they have many more wounds than an average unit, so much better chances of blocking them. This should save about 4 wounds on average on a standard Knight. Not sure it is worth taking, I think House Hawkshroud is a better option for keeping the Knights effective for longer than saving wounds. 

House Krast- Re-roll all failed to hit rolls in the Fight phase in a turn you charge, was charged or perform a heroic intervention. You can re-roll failed to hit rolls against Titanic units in the fight phase as well. 

For a combat Knight, I think this is a very effective trait to use, helping you to make the most of your attacks in the Fight phase. Great for taking on other Knights or superheavies. 

House Vulker- Re-roll to hit rolls of 1 for ranged weapons when targeting the closest enemy unit. 

A nice bonus, but may not be useful all the time. Given the range of many of their weapons, the Knights can afford to sit back and outrange most enemy guns, so this trait may be less effective in practice. 

Overall, the Imperial Knights have some strong "Chapter Tactics" they can use for their army. In competitive play, I think that House Hawkshroud and House Raven are the two that are going to see use most often, as they are very powerful in the Knight army. The others can have their uses, but I think these two are the strongest by far. 

Warlord Traits

The Imperial Knights have access to six generic warlord traits, as well as house-specific traits for boosting your army. 

Cunning Commander- Re-roll one to hit, to wound, damage roll or saving throw for your warlord. In addition, gain 1 command point. 

A decent warlord trait. The bonus command point is very useful for the Knights, though I might have expected the "regain command point on a 5+" that seems to be common with this type of trait. 

Ion Bulward- Your warlord gains a 4+ invulnerable save against ranged weapons. 

I think this is one of the strongest. Knights are already very hard to take down for some army builds, so getting to block almost half of all wounds is a huge bonus. Gets even better with the stratagem that boosts their invulnerable save. 

Knight Seneschal- Your warlord gets +1 attack. 

A nice bonus for a combat Knight, but not the best. Good when combined with the House Griffith tradition to get a bonus 2 attacks on the charge. 

Landstrider- Add 2 to all advance and charge rolls for friendly Household units within 6" of your warlord. 

Really strong when combined with the House Raven Household Tradition, allowing your warlord to move at least 15" a turn and still fire most weapons. 

Blessed by the Sacristans- Choose one weapon your warlord is armed with, on an unmodified 6 to wound the weapon suffers an additional mortal wound. 

This could be really strong when combined with weapons such as the Avenger Gatling Cannon or Conflagration cannon.

Fearsome Reputation- Enemy units within 12" of the warlord suffer -1 Ld, enemy units within 6" suffer -2 Ld. 

A decent bonus for your warlord, but not one of the best available. 

House Terryn- Warlord re-rolls failed charges. 

Good for a combat Knights. With house Terryn, you roll 3D6 for charges and discard the lowest, so a really good chance of getting into combat when combined with this. 

House Griffith- When your warlord completes a charge move, chose one enemy unit within 1". On a 4+, they suffer D3 mortal wounds. 

Nice enough, but will only work 50% of the time when you charge. 

House Hawkshroud- Select one unit in the enemy army before the game starts. You walord gets +1 to hit against that unit. 

A really strong bonus against a powerful enemy unit. If your warlord is a Dominus class Knight, you probably only get one turn of this, as there is little that can stand up to their firepower for more than one turn. 

House Cadmus- Reduce all damage suffered by the warlord in the Fight phase by 1 to a minimum of 1. 

Good for keeping your warlord safe from powerful attacks in combat. However, most of your damage will probably come from high strength shooting attacks, so may not be of too much use often. 

House Mortan- Your warlord is at -1 to hit from ranged attacks over 18" away. 

This one is really strong. With many of the Knights, you can afford to sit back and use your increase firepower to cause damage, with enemy attacks suffering in reply. A bit of a weird combination for a household tradition that relies on charging and combat. 

House Raven- Add 1 to the saving throws made for your warlord that have an AP characteristic of -1. 

A decent warlord trait for one of the best Household Traditions. This gives you a 3+ armour save in most cases against the range of -1 AP weapons in the game. 

House Taranis- Each wound roll of a 6+ gets an additional -1AP. 

Quite strong if your weapon has a high volume of fire. With most of the low shot weapons, the AP is already good enough to negate most armour, but a nice bonus still. 

House Krast- Re-roll to hit rolls of 1. 

A strong boost for your warlord in both the Shooting and Fight phases. 

House Vulker- Wound rolls of 1, 2 and 3 made for attacks against your warlord always fail. 

This is actually a pretty solid bonus. In most cases, your toughness will be 8, meaning it is only really effective against weapons of S9 or higher, such as Lascannons. In most cases, these high strength weapons will also be high damage, meaning it gives your warlord a better chance of shrugging off these attacks. 

Overall, some decent warlord traits. I would say that Ion Bulwark to get a 4+ invulnerable save is one of the strongest and probably going to be a popular choice. However, I can see a use for many of them in the right list. The warlord traits are not as clear cut as they usually are in a code though. 

Overall

Some really strong Household Traditions and warlord traits for the Imperial Knights. Knight players now have a lot of options for which style of army they wish to play. 

The next part of the review will look at all the great stratagems available for the Imperial Knights.

8th Edition Imperial Knights Codex Review
Part 1- Household Traditions and Warlord Traits
Part 2- Stratagems
Part 3- Relics
Part 4- Armiger Class Knights
Part 5- Knight Castellan
Part 6- Knight Valiant